Divisional weekend is behind us, and we’ve got you covered at The MMQB. All my takeaways are here for you right now. And be sure to check in later Monday, for a quick first look at the conference title games.
Buffalo Bills
Sunday wasn’t about revenge for the Buffalo Bills, but you might not believe it based on how they spent the week leading up to Sunday’s divisional round playoff game. Their opponent, the Baltimore Ravens, pounded Buffalo back in Week 4. The 35–10 beatdown was as thorough as it gets. Baltimore ran for 271 yards on 34 carries, while holding Buffalo to 3.5 yards per rush. Lamar Jackson’s passer rating (135.4) was nearly double Josh Allen’s (73.9). Baltimore went up 14–3 on the first play of the second quarter and it never got closer than that.
The Bills were beaten every which way on that final day of September. So last week, Sean McDermott’s staff went looking for answers—with defensive coordinator Bobby Babich dispatching his coaches on a journey through the Ravens’ entire season. Every game. Every play. Every detail.
“I don’t think a full staff that I’ve been around has ever done this,” McDermott said, leaning on a table in the Bills’ training room, around 10 p.m. Sunday night. “I did it for the Super Bowl, for myself, as a play-caller [with the Carolina Panthers] years ago, looked at every play from their whole season. … Late, late nights. But you got to do what you got to do in order to try and figure out a plan that would at least manage them.”
What Babich and his staff found only confirmed what Week 4 showed—the Ravens were really, really good. It would take everything they had to slow down Lamar & Co.
On Sunday, the truth is, they did, with a rare Mark Andrews drop coming on a potential game-tying two-point conversion to preserve the Bills’ 27–25 win. There was no magic wand that Babich, McDermott or anyone else could wave coming out of those early-week meetings. More so, it was just knowing that the fight the Bills had on their hands was very real, and would, in all likelihood, take all four quarters to settle.
And four quarters it took at Highmark Stadium, with the Bills never harboring much doubt about how this one would end, even if a fan base that’s been beaten down over the years with heartbreak had every reason to think bad things might happen.
Inside the locker room, this year, that idea has been flipped on its head. In fact, if you ask what’s different about this group, the answer will come back that this is a more poised team than the past few iterations of the Bills—and, as such, there was a certain calm about the team not just coming into the week, but within the game itself.
“I’ve seen it,” McDermott says. “Now it’s kind of just who we are. They understand. Every week of the season, their focus has been there. We haven’t always won, but every week of the season, Albert, they’ve been so darn consistent with when I see them Wednesday morning, first thing. They’re in there, they’re focused on improving, they’re focused on how they can become better teammates, how they can eat better, how they can rehab better.
“They’re all about the process that leads to winning, which is not different than our other teams. It just seems like it’s at a little bit of a higher level.”
So where there might’ve been some nerves for past Bills teams going into a showdown like Sunday’s, this group had none—just belief that doing the right things would keep yielding positive results, as has been the case, really, all year for the team.
Against the Ravens this time around, with the chance to atone, that meant they’d just keep responding. Baltimore opened the game with a breezy eight-play, 73-yard touchdown drive. The Bills came back with an 11-play, 70-yard touchdown drive of their own, then scored again to take a 14–7 lead. Their 21–10 halftime lead shrunk to 21–19 after a third quarter Baltimore owned, so the Bills grinded out a few first downs and Tyler Bass nailed a 51-yard field goal to stem the tide. It happened over and over and over.
“It’s just the resilience, man,” linebacker Terrel Bernard, one of two team captains (along with Allen), said later, in a cleared-out locker room. “We’ve had to find ways all year to win. Different guys made plays all year. Josh has been great all season. That’s the confidence, where that comes from, it’s that we’ve been through a ton already this season and we find ways to win. So we know when we get in those situations, we’re going to find a way.”
On defense, that meant going and getting the ball.
Through that intense film study, the coaches saw a Baltimore offense that made things simple on its players, but hard on opponents, through a lot of shifts and motions and window-dressing designed to confuse. With the weather conditions, though, there was the thought that the Bills’ advantage might be in any way the Ravens slipped with their ball-handling.
Sure enough, Jackson sailed a ball that Taylor Rapp picked off, a Damar Hamlin sack led to Jackson dropping a ball that Von Miller would collect and run back, and Bernard was able to pop one free from Mark Andrews and recover it himself. And implicit in those things happening was the belief that if the Bills kept playing, those sorts of chances would come and any one of the Buffalo players would be there to pounce.
“We all just leaned on each other,” Bernard says. “I don’t think there’s anybody that looked outside that, that they’re the ones that have to make the play every time. I felt like we put equal responsibility on everybody out there. And we have the best quarterback in the NFL. So we feel like as a defense, if we can get the ball to him, we’ll be successful. That’s our whole idea, our mantra: Stop the run, take the ball away, affect the quarterback, and let Josh go to work.”
And Allen did, albeit in a little different way, moving the chains, and running for two touchdowns, and taking care of the ball when it mattered most.
Then, there was the emotional lift he gave the team.
With old leaders and captains such as Micah Hyde, Jordan Poyer, Tre’Davious White, Stefon Diggs and Mitch Morse gone (though Hyde is now back on the practice squad), Allen’s been thrust into a more vocal role as a leader this year. Each week, that can mean something different. This week, his message was clear—he heard the outside world doubting his team.
The players talked about it before the game. Allen reiterated it at halftime.
“Before we went back out there,” McDermott recalls, “he just said, Hey, all we hear all week is we’re not good enough, we’re not big enough, strong enough.”
That was tested in the third quarter, and again at the end, when Jackson led a wild eight-play, 88-yard dash to the end zone to cut the Bills’ lead to two. The two-point conversion was next, and Andrews was open—only to drop the ball and essentially secure the Bills’ win.
Of course, that’s not how anyone would’ve drawn it up.
But the game going off-script really surprised no one. The Bills knew how good the Ravens were coming in. They also believed they could be just a little bit better.
Which, it turns out, they were right about.
Washington Commanders
The Washington Commanders’ story is better than Dan Quinn could’ve imagined. When we talked over the phone amid the jubilation of the postgame locker room Saturday night in Detroit, he stopped short of saying he couldn’t believe how quickly this has all come together. But when I asked him, point blank, if I’d told him a year ago that he’d be standing where he was Saturday night, having upended the mighty Detroit Lions in their imposing home environment, he hinted at how he felt.
“I’d have said, Boy, I hope you’re right, Albert,” Quinn says. “It hasn’t hit me at all. When you’re in the moment, you’re just thinking about this game, this week, this matchup. How do we win? There’ll be time to look back. But we’re not there yet. AP [general manager Adam Peters] and I, we’re just battling through this week. There’ll be a time to look back, but we’re not there yet.”
No one saw the Commanders landing where they are now. Maybe eventually, but not this fast.
And, yet, there Quinn was, with a rookie quarterback who’d put together an incomprehensible night, and a roster full of competitive, hard-edged veterans, some inherited and others acquired by Peters and his staff. He and his team pulled off the kind of 45–31 win that no one saw coming last season—and very few outside of the building saw coming even last week.
The Commanders franchise that Quinn and Peters were hired to turn around hadn’t so much as won 10 games in a season since Mike Shanahan was the coach in 2012. Washington hadn’t won a playoff game in 19 years. It hadn’t been to an NFC title game in 33 years.
All those markers of failure and dysfunction are history now.
In their place is a confident bunch that walked into Ford Field with a coherent plan, behind coordinators Kliff Kingsbury and Joe Whitt Jr. The Commanders have a certain type of player, in seemingly every spot, that fills Peters’s and Quinn’s vision for the program’s personality—even if the talent level isn’t quite where it’ll likely be in a few years (those things, of course, take time).
Here are some keys to how the stunning upset came to be.
• After the game, Quinn said the win was all about “the ball”—phrasing he learned working for Pete Carroll in Seattle. The implication, of course, is that you take care of it, and take it away, and the Commanders did just that in Detroit, winning the turnover battle 5–0. But there was one key in particular that the coaches and scouts saw in their prep.
“We just knew there were more [Lions] interceptions against zone than there were against man—big difference,” Quinn says. “We play both, but we led more with zone today. That was a big deal. I don’t know if that’s why, but it had been the case. Good job by the scouting staff looking into it, and saying, Hey, there’s a big difference between man and zone. Those guys were the ones that delivered on that.”
Add that to how the Commanders played in the red zone (they were 4-of-4, and the Lions were just 3-of-6), and you can see where Washington owned the critical statistical areas.
• As for the critical situations, one came halfway through the second quarter. The Lions had ridden out an early turnover and a three-and-out, and marched 70 yards in seven plays, capping it with a spectacular Sam LaPorta one-handed score to go up 14–10.
“We just said they made a big play,” Quinn says. “Same thing on the reverse: That’s a play. Keep your chin down and keep swinging. We talked about that all week. They’re going to make some plays. Can’t get sideways about it. I remember on the headset with Joe [Whitt], and on the sideline. Chin down, keep swinging. That’s the fight we’re in. I knew they were going to make some plays, and they did. These guys have been a fantastic offense.”
Within the next six plays, Terry McLaurin scored on a 58-yard touchdown pass and Quan Martin had a pick-six. The Commanders went up 24–14 and never trailed again.
• Then, there was the real uppercut. The Lions got a stop to start the second half and drove 91 yards to cut the Commanders’ lead to 31–28. That could’ve been the point where an underdog would slump its shoulders. Washington did the opposite, going 70 yards in 15 plays, and converting two fourth downs on the way to the end zone.
“The natural tendency when you see teams ahead is to back off,” Quinn says. “Backing off, you just get tighter, and we weren’t going to do that. We were going to use the same aggression we did to build the lead. …That was the message for the guys: Same attitude it took to get the lead, we are going to need the same attitude to finish. That’s what happens. You’ve seen it a million times, you get tight. We weren’t going to do that.”
When the drive was over, Washington was up 38–28 with just 13:21 left on the clock.
And then, of course, there was Daniels, who finished 22-of-31 for 299 yards, with two scores and a 122.9 passer rating. Obviously, the Commanders thought a lot of Daniels to take him second in the 2024 draft. But the cool … the calm … on this stage? At this point, the Commanders expect it from Daniels—and that was reflected in Quinn’s fourth-down decision-making.
"He’s got it,” Quinn says. “He’s the X-factor. In that space, to make plays, it’s significant for us. We knew we would have to do it, simply because of their offense, we wanted to win time of possession. So going and doing that, that was the risk worth taking. It wasn’t every time. We weren’t going to be reckless, but when we noticed some chances, we had to take our shot.”
When I asked Quinn if he’d ever seen a rookie like Daniels, he responded, “No, man. The poise in these moments, when it’s the hardest, he’s literally at his best. That to me is really cool.”
Lots of cool stuff is happening with this team now, and way before most expected it.
But, as Quinn reminded me, there’s no time to reflect on that because they’re not done yet.
“This is a really tough-minded group,” he says. “Other people might count us out, but we have a lot of belief in one another—that’s the A, No. 1 top-of-the-pile thing. Their belief in themselves and one another, that commitment and connection, really comes through.”
Philadelphia Eagles
Like most weeks this year, the result of Sunday’s Philadelphia Eagles game came down to Philly having a bunch of ballers. First, it was Saquon Barkley, with less than five minutes left, making one move in the backfield to find a seam and then bursting through it for a 78-yard score to put the Eagles up 28–15 (en route to his second 200-yard game against the Los Angeles Rams this year). Then, it was Jalen Carter, putting a filthy move on rookie center Beaux Limmer, on his way to sacking Matthew Stafford and ending a valiant L.A. comeback attempt.
And there were a bunch of other plays before that showing the strength of the Eagles’ roster, and how the Rams, like most other teams have, would collapse under the weight of it.
But there’s more to the story of Philly’s 28–22 win in the NFC divisional playoffs, and the Eagles’ return to the NFC title game two years after their last Super Bowl trip, than just having a bunch of great players. Because if that was it, there were things early in the season, when things didn’t look this way, that might’ve gotten to these Eagles. There was a coach on the hot seat. There was the quarterback-receiver drama. There was the offseason changing of two coordinators and the unrelenting spotlight their city puts on its football team.
There was also a group of guys, Nick Sirianni insists, that were more than just talented.
“We’ve had talent,” he said, back home, a couple of hours after the win. “[GM] Howie [Roseman] does a great job of getting us talent every year. Obviously, we’re talented. You don’t win 16 games without talent. That’s for sure. You also don’t win 16 games without having connection. There’s a lot of talented teams. There’s a lot of talented people. But football is the greatest team game that there is. A lot of teams have good players, but we have great teammates. Good teams have good players. Great teams have great teammates.
“I think at the end of the day, the guys don’t want to let each other down. Talent gets you to the starting point, but the way these guys love each other and are connected to each other brings out another level of these guys. I think that’s overlooked a lot of times. We have special leaders and a special team. That’s part of Howie bringing in the right guys, too.”
That, Sirianni continues, is what got the Eagles through all the stuff they went through earlier in the year. It’s also what pulled them through Sunday.
Consider this: Jalen Hurts only threw for 128 yards against the Rams. A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith had six catches for 35 yards combined. Just when it looked like Philly might get some separation, up 16–13 with the ball, Hurts took a sack for a safety. And even after Barkley’s 78-yarder, the Rams went 70 yards to draw to within six, then had a first down from the Eagles’ 21 with 1:25 left and a chance to take the lead.
Each time, the Eagles kept swinging until they found a way to knock the Rams out, and there’s something to be said for that—that, as Sirianni said, is about more than just how good your players are, even if the Eagles’ players are plenty good.
“To win a game like that, in those conditions, you’ll remember it,” he says. “I’ll remember Saquon and the guys sliding in the end zone after the score. I’ll remember the snow angels they were making in the end zone after a turnover. You remember the locker room celebrations after a struggle. I didn’t play; I’m exhausted. When you give everything, that’s what happens in this game over and over again each week. This is a sport where you empty the tank every single week. …
“[But] you remember the exhaustion. You remember the hugs in the locker room, the celebrations in the snow. We all still love this game because, at the heart of it, we fell in love with it as a kid.”
And as a result, for another week at least, the Eagles get to keep playing it.
Kansas City Chiefs
This Kansas City Chiefs team is about more than just a few guys. But if you’re ranking them, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo should be way up the list. And Saturday’s 23–14 win over the Houston Texans in the AFC divisional round stands as another notch in his belt.
With a homegrown defense and moving parts on offense, the Chiefs have allowed just 15.4 points per game over their past five playoff matchups, which accounts for this year and last. And on Saturday, Kansas City rolled despite being outgained 336 to 212, largely because of how Spagnuolo’s crew showed up in the game’s biggest moments.
That was best encapsulated by a three-play sequence with about 10 minutes remaining in the game. The Texans were down 20–12, with first-and-10 from the Chiefs’ 40, right on the fringe of field goal range. On the four plays to follow—three incompletions and a sack—the Chiefs got two free runs at Stroud, and George Karlaftis dropped Stroud for a 16-yard loss on fourth down after being matched one-on-one with a tight end.
In each case, the scheme sprung the rusher (Justin Reid came free on one six-man pressure, then created the Karlaftis matchup by occupying the tackle) or the rusher did something smart (Nick Bolton picked the right gap to come in unblocked), which is at the heart of what Spagnuolo’s built. Yes, the system works, but only when sharp signal-callers (Bolton, Reid, Drue Tranquil) and savvy, team-first guys (such as Mike Dana and Tershawn Wharton) understand the why to make it go.
Anyway, that sequence essentially ended the game. But even when the Texans were able to generate a sliver of hope in the final three minutes, driving into the red zone down 23–12, the Chiefs’ defense was there to slam the door shut. They recorded consecutive sacks after the Texans got into second-and-2 from the Chiefs’ 5-yard line, which led to Leo Chenal and Reid busting through the line and blocking a 35-yard field goal attempt.
Now, Kansas City has a lot of good players on that side of the ball.
But Spagnuolo’s experience timing up pressures and knowing when to go after a quarterback, and when to lay off, loomed large Saturday night—and everyone wearing red was well aware of that.
“He did a great job,” Andy Reid said postgame via text. “Anytime you get guys with that type of free rush to the quarterback is special. That’s because of scheme, and knowing how and when to use those calls.”
Which, obviously, Spagnuolo does.
Detroit Lions
The Lions will have more bites at the apple, but this one will leave a mark. The roster, of course, is built to last. The list of young, homegrown talent—Penei Sewell, Alim McNeill, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Aidan Hutchinson, Jack Campbell, Jahmyr Gibbs, Brian Branch, Jameson Williams, Terrion Arnold and on and on—is mind-blowing. The cap is healthy, and the team’s future draft picks are intact. The Lions should be good for a long, long time.
But it’s pretty easy to see where it might never be the same as it was this year.
The strength of the Lions’ operation, to me, is its depth on just about every level. They have good people doing important jobs all over the place. And while losing Lance Newmark to Washington was a blow last year, the next few weeks could really take a chunk out of the infrastructure over which Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes built their football operation.
I am, of course, talking about the likelihood that they’ll lose both of their coordinators, maybe as soon as this week.
I think OC Ben Johnson is much more ready to take a job now than he was the past couple of years. I don’t know if losing the way Detroit did might lure him back for one last run with Campbell, but I do know his interest in the Las Vegas Raiders, Chicago Bears and Jacksonville Jaguars jobs is real—and Newmark’s emergence as a GM candidate with the Raiders is proof positive of how serious Johnson is (Tom Brady’s been a difference-maker in Vegas’s pursuit).
As for DC Aaron Glenn, he’s in a different position than Johnson. He turns 53 this summer. He’s a defensive coach. There are two teams with openings—the New Orleans Saints and New York Jets—that he has very close ties to. He almost has to strike while the iron’s hot, and I’d expect he will.
On top of that, defensive line coach Terrell Williams was about as close a confidant as Mike Vrabel had in Tennessee, and could certainly go to New England to become a coordinator. Highly regarded line coach Hank Fraley interviewed for the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive coordinator job. So more attrition could be coming.
And, again, the Lions’ foundation is sturdy enough to withstand that.
But you can understand why it’d sting for a special group of people who couldn’t get it done together.
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys made their bed on this one. A lot of folks have asked me what Dallas’s plan is here, and the truth is, I’m not exactly sure there is one. Mike McCarthy did enough to get another year and, in my opinion, would’ve gotten one if there was a year left on his contract.
Instead, the Joneses and McCarthy did an awkward eight-day dance before cutting ties early last week—after the team had denied McCarthy permission to talk to other teams.
First, I’d like to note that I know a ton of people who loved working for that franchise over the years. The Joneses have traditionally had a good work environment, and there’s a reason why so many people return to Dallas after leaving. Which is why it was disappointing to see them push an entire coaching staff down the plank this season.
McCarthy wasn’t the only one in a contract year. Virtually his entire staff was, too. Mike Zimmer’s willingness to take a one-year deal to replace Quinn as defensive coordinator was said to be a factor in him getting the job over Rex Ryan last year. And that Jerry Jones has been a leader in the owners’ push to stop paying dead money on the contracts of fired coaches (there have been slides at owners meetings) colors all of this.
For his part, McCarthy didn’t complain about any of it. In talking with him over the summer, and again in the fall, he kept saying that this wasn’t much different than having a pending free agent in a prominent role on your team—it just so happened that, in this case, the contract-year person in question was the head coach.
But, as I’ve heard it for a few months, the way it was handled didn’t sit well with McCarthy, or the members of his staff looking ahead at their own uncertain futures.
Then, in the days leading up to the Jan. 14 expiration of McCarthy’s contract, my understanding is that while there was discussion, there was no real negotiation. That left the Cowboys behind the other six teams looking for coaches and, importantly, without the chance to meet with the Lions’ or Chiefs’ assistants until after those teams were eliminated, since they missed the window to interview those guys (they got lucky with the Lions losing in the divisional round).
So, here they are, unable to get to Spagnuolo or Matt Nagy (and it could’ve easily been Johnson and Glenn, too), wading through the idea of Deion Sanders and contemplating bringing back Kellen Moore, once seen as their future head coach. If it looks like they’re all over the place, it’s because they are—and playing catch-up due to a series of unforced errors.
Meanwhile, this is an offseason in which they’ll have Dak Prescott coming off a major injury, Micah Parsons’s contract situation to wade through and big holes to address.
They certainly could’ve gotten the offseason off to a better start, regardless of whether McCarthy was around for it.
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots have a lot of work to do, and while they still have to add more, they do have good people to get started. All the attention will be on Vrabel, and rightfully so. Landing their old edge rusher, who’d probably have had a few offers had he sat on the market awhile, was a big win for a franchise that hasn’t had many of late. But the reality, as we laid out last week, is that this was no one-man problem in Foxborough.
I trust Vrabel knows that, and he didn’t waste much time implicitly confirming it by bringing aboard Ryan Cowden as vice president of player personnel. The New York Giants let Cowden out of his contract Monday and, by the middle of the week, he was meeting with Patriots personnel folks at Gillette Stadium. He’s under executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf, but the two know each other, which is at least a start here.
I also think that Vrabel will have the kind of juice to push ownership—which was clearly feeling the heat of back-to-back 4–13 seasons, reaching fast for the narrative-turning PR win that was hiring the new coach—to make the changes, and additions, necessary to take an outdated, past-its-prime football operation into the present day NFL.
We won’t go through it chapter and verse like we did last year, but the reality is that Bill Belichick did so much on his own that he was never going to be replaced effectively by a single person. He, essentially, was an oversized piece of a teetering Jenga tower that started to fall in 2023 and collapsed completely in ’24. The good news is that Wolf and former coach Jerod Mayo had made an effort to begin building out football ops, and Vrabel coming in with the ability to forcefully ask for greater resources could be a difference-maker.
One area I’ve heard they’re already adding to is on the player-development side—a staff where the Patriots had next to nothing. The Eagles, for example, have former player Connor Barwin leading that area, with Barwin basically overseeing the development of the bottom of the 53-man roster and practice squad. They also have a team working on mental wellness. So, New England should have a chance to catch up in those areas, or in other spots such as football analytics/research (Marshall Oium looms large in that department) and sports science.
As for the structure, my understanding is that it will remain the same for now. Both Wolf and Vrabel will report directly to ownership. My sense is ownership really likes the changes that Wolf has started implementing, modernizing the scouting system and building out the football operation, and so that’ll continue. And, during Vrabel’s time with Tennessee’s Chad Brinker—who is very close with Wolf from their decade together in Green Bay—he learned the Green Bay Packers’ grading system, and I heard he really likes it.
There are also guys in Foxborough whom he’s familiar with. The team’s college and pro scouting directors, Camren Williams and Patrick Stewart, are Ohio State alums like Vrabel, with Vrabel the OSU coach who recruited Williams, a former Buckeyes linebacker, to Columbus.
Now, with all that said, there are a lot of people in New England who have to look in the mirror, facing how the team turned into a doormat, and one without much of a foundation for the future outside of maybe two players (Drake Maye and Christian Gonzalez). I think Wolf’s done that. You’d hope ownership has, too.
And that should be evident soon, in what the Patriots look like in the run-up to the draft, and then how they look coming out of the draft from a staffing standpoint.
Because these aren’t your older brother’s Patriots, they won’t have a shot to get back to where Belichick and Brady took them for a glorious couple of decades without a pretty serious look inward.
Tennessee Titans
The Tennessee Titans made the second big hire of this cycle, and I think they hit a home run bringing Chiefs assistant GM Mike Borgonzi aboard. Initially, I was like a lot of people looking at the Tennessee opening. With president of football operations Chad Brinker in charge, and coach Brian Callahan in place, it was natural to ask whether the position the Titans were hiring into was a “real” general manager position.
The Titans insisted it was.
Landing Borgonzi, one of the top GM candidates in the league, seems to prove it.
That said, the structure, intentionally, is a little different than what most NFL teams employ. Or a lot different. Callahan will report to Borgonzi, and Borgonzi will report to Brinker in a setup that mirrors what you’d see in other sports. Borgonzi will oversee coaching, scouting, sports medicine, sports performance and player development, and have final say on the roster. The idea, generally, is to allow Borgonzi to focus on building the team and football operation, and take some other newer-age elements of the job off his plate.
So how did the hiring go down? It really started with the existing relationship between Brinker and Borgonzi. Both came into the NFL in 2009, and got to know each other on the road. More recently, because of the trust they share, they were the respective point men on trades involving L’Jarius Sneed and DeAndre Hopkins. And so that was the foundation off which Borgonzi’s case was built the past few days, as he started to win the interview …
• The Titans came to view him as the most complete candidate, both in his experience and in how he could articulate a clear plan for the franchise, and one that showed he was legitimately prepared for everything—be it in coaching, scouting, player development, sports science, analytics … whatever came his way, he showed he’d be ready.
• He was in a small decision-making circle in Kansas City with GM Brett Veach, coach Andy Reid, and SVP of football operations/strategy Chris Shea. So every decision made over the past eight seasons in Kansas City had his fingerprints on it.
• Before that, he was part of a team building back from the most horrific of circumstances, dealing with the Jovan Belcher murder-suicide as part of a 2–14 season that led to a total house cleaning in Kansas City. Coming out of that, Borgonzi worked under new GM John Dorsey, and the Chiefs had the No. 1 pick. And instead of reaching for a quarterback, the Chiefs traded for Alex Smith, took a tackle and waited for Patrick Mahomes a few years later, an outside-the-box strategy for the position that, obviously, has paid massive dividends.
• Under Dorsey, he learned the Packers’ grading scale, so he and Brinker speak the same language—and he relayed to the Titans how he really came to embrace that scouting system as his own after first learning the Patriots’ system under Scott Pioli.
Then, there were the references. Brinker did spend 45 minutes on the phone with Veach. But he also talked to those who worked under Borgonzi to get a better feel for how he’d manage a staff. And in the end, he found a top-shelf personnel man, who was different from a top-shelf scout (the personnel man sees the big picture, and how the pieces fit, while the scout is just trying to figure out who can play).
So, now, the Titans will go forward with Brinker, Borgonzi and Callahan (and I’d expect former Raiders GM Dave Ziegler to come aboard soon, too), and a very big offseason ahead. And for what it’s worth, I think you could do a lot worse than roll with those three.
How front offices are structured
Speaking of Borgonzi, his arrival in Nashville, and the Commanders’ win in Detroit, reminded me of the common root they share. Washington GM Adam Peters was brought into the league from his alma mater, UCLA, by then Patriots VP of player personnel Scott Pioli in 2003. Six years later, and then in Kansas City, Pioli plucked Borgonzi from a Boston College program that proved, over the years, to be fertile ground for the former Chiefs GM.
And if you keep digging, many more names spring out.
It starts with Ravens GM Eric DeCosta, whom Pioli helped bring to Baltimore in his one year there. Then there’s Bob Quinn, Jason Licht, Nick Caserio, Thomas Dimitroff, Jon Robinson, Monti Ossenfort and Peters, who were all hired by Pioli in New England and went on to become general managers. Pioli also had Brian Flores (another Boston College guy) and Josh McDaniels on his Patriots personnel staff, with both becoming head coaches. Then, there were the hires of Borgonzi and Ryan Poles (also from BC) in Kansas City.
You can throw high-end execs on the cap/operations side, such as Mike Disner and Brandt Tilis, into the pile, and a pattern becomes evident—Pioli brought aboard a lot of brain power in the different places he worked.
It also makes me wonder about the idea of a team bringing a guy like Pioli aboard to be an over-the-top type of football executive at some point down the line.
You hear a lot from personnel people about how the GM job is too big to just put a scout in charge—Tennessee’s new structure is an implicit acknowledgment of that. So wouldn’t it make sense for other teams to have someone to put the right scout, cap guy and coach in place, with oversight over them to ensure everyone stays aligned?
That’s just a thought I’ve had. And if you can find someone who’s got an eye for finding the right people to build around, I think it’d make a ton of sense, given the scope of these jobs in 2025.
Quick-hitters
Plenty to get to in the quick-hitters this week. So let’s go …
• I do think Josh McDaniels would be the right pick to be Vrabel’s OC in New England, and not just because of what he’s accomplished, but how he used his year off—spending time with NFL and college programs to evolve his offense. In particular, I think McDaniels’s study of the college game will make what has been a pretty complex offense more user-friendly with the adaptations he’s got coming. So maybe that’ll be with the Patriots. It also could be with a team such as Detroit or Buffalo that loses a coordinator, and McDaniels is also atop the OC wish lists of some head-coaching candidates. I’m excited to see where he ends up.
• If it’s not Newmark, I’d keep an eye on Tampa Bay Buccaneers assistant GM John Spytek for the Raiders’ job. He was with Brady for three years in Tampa, and was the point man in running the Tuesday scouting-the-opponent meetings Brady carried with him from New England (where Belichick and later Caserio ran those meetings).
• Eddie George getting an interview in Chicago is at least interesting. Anyone who’s spent five minutes around George knows he has the personality to lead. He also has the skins on the wall. But does he have the coaching chops? Certainly, he’d need a strong staff around him. That said, in four years as a head coach, he took a Tennessee State team that was sub-.500 his first two years to 6–5 last year and to 9–4 and a conference title in 2024. (Yes, I know, FCS football certainly isn’t the NFL.)
• That McCarthy has only interviewed with the Bears has gotten my attention. Some are taking it as a signal on where he’d like to land.
• Jeff Ulbrich is a really solid choice by Raheem Morris to take over the Atlanta Falcons’ defense. He was with Robert Saleh’s New York Jets when they built the defense into one of the NFL’s best—it did backslide this year, but it’s tough to blame that on Ulbrich, who was thrust into the head-coaching job after five games and stretched thin the rest of the year. I’d expect the former NFL linebacker to bring an edge and toughness that Atlanta needs on that side of the ball.
• Houston should come out of the weekend feeling really good about its future. With some tweaks to push the offensive scheme forward, and to the offensive line, I think Stroud will be who everyone expects him to be. He’ll have Tank Dell back next year (and maybe Stefon Diggs, too). And the defense should be a monster next year with the combination of edge rushers (Will Anderson Jr., Danielle Hunter) and corners (Derek Stingley Jr. and Kamari Lassiter) they’re building around.
• The way Mahomes is officiated isn’t unlike the way Brady was during his playing career. It’s disappointing seeing defensive players taking bullets for that. But it is, and has been, the NFL’s reality, and I feel pretty comfortable saying it’s not changing.
• I’ve heard Buccaneers OC Liam Coen did well in his lone interview with the Jaguars. He may or may not get that job (it could also go to Johnson or Saleh). But my bet is even if he doesn’t get it, he’ll have momentum to land a job at this time next year with another good season.
• The Saints took Sunday off after wrapping up their first round of interviews—they met virtually with Glenn, Moore, Bills OC Joe Brady, Giants OC Mike Kafka, Dolphins DC Anthony Weaver and their interim coach/special teams coordinator Darren Rizzi through the first round. The plan is to bring some of those guys back in person this week.
• Packers VP of player personnel Jon-Eric Sullivan was a finalist for the Titans’ GM job, and my sense is he did well with the Jets. It’s also interesting that Green Bay defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, a New Jersey native, followed Sullivan’s interview as one of the last guys to interview for the head coaching job there.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Divisional Playoffs NFL Takeaways: How the Bills Turned Tables on the Ravens.
