KANSAS CITY TO HOUSTON TO GULFPORT TO MOBILE—It’s Senior Bowl week, which means commuter jets for me. Until we get there.
Bob Donnan/USA TODAY Sports (Rivera); Albert Cesare/The Enquirer/USA Today Network (Burrow); Steve Roberts/USA TODAY Sports (Garoppolo)
• We’ve got another team for you that’ll be all the way into the 2022 quarterback derby.
The Washington Football Team is preparing to take a big swing at a quarterback this offseason, per team sources. The team has just one quarterback, veteran Taylor Heinicke, under contract for next year, more than $40 million of cap space to work with and the 11th pick in the draft to potentially dangle in a trade.
Last year, Washington threw its hat into the ring on Matthew Stafford, initially offering the 21st pick and a third-rounder for him, then upping its offer (talks stalled when the Lions asked for players in return) before the Rams got more aggressive. From there, Washington turned to Plan B: signing Ryan Fitzpatrick to a one-year deal. Fitzpatrick suffered a season-ending hip injury in Week 1, and Heinicke took over from there.
As to the effort to find its next franchise quarterback, with big names like Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson and Deshaun Watson potentially out there, Washington feels like it has plenty to pitch such a veteran. While Brandon Scherff’s free agency looms (it’ll be open-minded approaching a new contract), WFT had the NFL’s sixth-ranked offensive line per PFF last year, and its depth was proven through significant absences that led to the coaches going to their fourth center, fourth tackle, and fourth and fifth guards.
Washington also has a 1,000-yard receiver (Terry McLaurin), a 1,000-yard rusher (Antonio Gibson) and other weapons on the offensive side of the ball, like Logan Thomas and Curtis Samuel, returning from injury. And the defense has a good foundation in its still-young defensive line, particularly with Chase Young coming back from ACL surgery.
Then, there’s the intangible factors—getting to live in the D.C. area and being on the front end of a team rebrand that’ll be unveiled Wednesday. And the fact that the cap flexibility would give a quarterback a shot to bring a piece or two with him.
So if you put all that together, there’s reason to pay attention to Washington, as the Football Team again throws its hat in the ring. There’s no guarantee, of course, that Ron Rivera, Martin Mayhew and Marty Hurney reel in their big fish in March or April, and the failed pursuit of Stafford is proof. But if they don’t land one, it sure won’t be because their line isn’t in the water.
• I’ve said it a few times over the last few months: I think Joe Burrow is the closest comparison to Tom Brady to come into the league since Brady himself came to prominence two decades ago. And I feel like the comp probably needs further explanation.
Yeah, there’s a part of it that’s physical. I think Burrow’s arm strength, pocket movement and spatial awareness are similar to Brady’s at an early stage. I also think there is common ground in how Burrow sees the field, processes information and manages situations. But the biggest thing? How Burrow is a flat-liner in the most stressful spots—down big, down the stretch of a close game, whatever it is. Brady, obviously, was very much that way, and when I asked Burrow where it comes from for him, he said it came through experience.
“I’ve been in these kinds of spots before,” he said. “I played in a national title game, I played in a state championship in high school. And you can look at those two things and say, Well, this isn't the conference championship. But at that time in my life, it's the same feeling, you know what I mean? I've been in those kinds of spots. And I trust my preparation, and I have the utmost faith in all my guys.”
Those who’ve been around Burrow have seen it in him for years. Bengals safety, and captain, Vonn Bell said it was obvious going all the way back in 2015, when he was an All-American safety at Ohio State and Burrow was the 18-year-old freshman quarterback being redshirted.
“Oh yeah, his freshman year—I knew that back at O-State,” Bell told me. “And I'm saying as he got older, you start seeing the confidence growing, and it's brewing, and he knows he's that guy. He's a special talent. When he walks with that swagger, walks with that belief that the guys' going to rally behind him, we're gonna be all-in for him.”
And the Bengals clearly were Sunday, even when things were bleak, down 21–3 in the second quarter, and most especially when everything was on the line at the end of the game.
• My early fun/dorky story line for Super Bowl LVI: The Bengals staff knows the Rams offense, from scheme to personnel, very well. Zac Taylor, of course, worked alongside Sean McVay on the Rams offensive staff in 2017 and ’18 and was actually Cooper Kupp’s position coach for the first of those years before moving over to quarterbacks in his second year (setting the stage for Taylor to land the Bengals job). Meanwhile, Cincinnati offensive coordinator Brian Callahan was Matthew Stafford’s position coach for two years in Detroit
(‘16–17), and defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo was the Giants defensive backs coach in ‘18, meaning he spent plenty of time working against Odell Beckham Jr. in one-on-ones, seven-on-sevens and team drills during Beckham’s final season as a Giant. Does that stuff help? It might. At the very least, you’d think Cincinnati might have a beat on a tendency or two with those players or the scheme.
• The Niners’ plan remains to turn to Trey Lance in 2022, based on what I could gather last week—I figured I should circle back on that then given the run San Francisco was on. That said, I can say without equivocation that the team has a ton of respect for what Jimmy Garoppolo did in navigating an incredibly difficult situation. “Jimmy's been unbelievable this year,” Kyle Shanahan told me earlier this month. “And I really think when Jimmy's been healthy, he's played how he always has, which is more like a top quarterback. I think people are a little unfair with him, but Jimmy, he's the same guy regardless. I mean, I've known him for five years, and he's always the same guy and the guys really fight for him.” So, where does Lance stand? In a nutshell, his rookie year was a bit of a roller coaster. The first 10 days of training camp were a revelation to the coaches and front office—Lance came back from summer break looking like a different quarterback. It made the team ask itself if it could hand what it believed was a championship roster over to a rookie. Then, he leveled off a little, and, when pressed into action against Arizona in Week 5, put some really shaky tape out there. The good news is he learned from the experience. The staff felt like he was ascending again as the regular season came to an end. The Niners feel good about where they are with Lance and are poised to hand him the reins.
• What would the market bear for Garoppolo? It’s an interesting question. He’s got just one year left on his deal at a reasonable rate for a starting quarterback: His base for 2022 is $24.2 million, and he’s got $800,000 in per-game roster bonuses and a $600,000 workout bonus. And the reality is that teams are going to strike out on the Watsons of the world, and Garoppolo is out there as a pretty good Plan B. Maybe Carolina strikes. Maybe Houston—based on who it hires as coach—takes a look. Or if Derek Carr (also in a contract year) isn’t the guy for Josh McDaniels (and I don’t know one way or the other on that), then Vegas could be a natural fit. Regardless, the next phase of his career is likely as the veteran placeholder for a team, where he can either compete with/help mentor a draft pick, like he did this year, or be the starter for a year or two to give a team flexibility to wait on drafting one, like Alex Smith did for Kansas City.
• On Monday, Brian Daboll was introduced as the 20th coach of the Giants. And since his introduction elicited so much Daniel Jones talk, I figured I’d give you, reader, what new Giants GM Joe Schoen told me impressed him most about Daboll’s work with Josh Allen. “It started with Sean [McDermott] and Brandon [Beane],” Schoen said. “They had been in Carolina with Cam Newton, so they had seen the progression of a young quarterback. Cam was taken No. 1. So from the minute he got in the building to his first offseason, there was a very detailed plan when he left after the 2018 season to embark on his first offseason as a pro. And we didn't inundate him with 9,000 things to work on. Each year, it was three or four things. Hey, all summer, let’s work on … whether it’s footwork, hips, arm angles, whatever it was. And he’d go out and he'd work with Jordan Palmer and just incrementally, he got better and better. And, you know, to me, their relationship was outstanding. It’s a head coach, or offensive coordinator-quarterback-coach relationship is very important. And those two had an unbelievable relationship.” Which, of course, will be good news for Jones, so long as the Giants decide to stick with him.
• New Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett might’ve given me the most thoughtful answer I’ve ever heard on getting fired. The initial question I’d asked was how getting canned in Buffalo and Jacksonville affected him, on the path to becoming a head coach. “Richard Mann was one of my greatest mentors as a wide receiver coach at Tampa,” Hackett said. “And I remember he used to always tell me, 'You don’t become a real coach until you get your heart ripped out.' And I never understood what that meant. And I think going through this profession, all coaches have, and I think that when you have to go through that, there’s something about becoming a real coach, going through that adversity. Because we’re asked to help guys through losses. And we’re asked to help people through all these different things that you go through as a football player and the ups and downs of that. So I think as coaches, you have to go through all this stuff. And I think it makes you stronger. It makes you better.” And that’s a really good perspective I hadn’t heard before.
• So where do the Patriots go to replace McDaniels as their offensive coordinator? A familiar place, I’d bet. Alabama OC Bill O’Brien makes all the sense in the world to succeed McDaniels, which he did once before (in 2009). O’Brien’s background in the offense, and the program, is there. And Mac Jones’s presence in New England, to me, only adds to it. Jones actually helped teach O’Brien the details of the Tide’s offense in early ’21, as O’Brien was getting settled in Tuscaloosa. So there’s a standing relationship there. And on top of that, after a year under Nick Saban, O’Brien has an invaluable perspective on what Jones was asked to do in college, and what maybe he could add to the offense from Bama as a result. So O’Brien returning seems like the easy answer, even with promising young assistants like Nick Caley and Mick Lombardi already in-house.
• The emergence of Rich Bisaccia as a late-add to the Jaguars’ list only furthers the point I made in the MMQB column Monday morning—there’s no reason why, three weeks after the season ended, a team that fired its coach in mid-December should be resetting and bringing in new candidates out of nowhere the first week of February. I like Bisaccia and think he did a fine job in Oakland.
• My player to watch this week as I land in Houston, for my connection to Gulfport (which is followed by a drive to Mobile) for the Senior Bowl: Pitt QB Kenny Pickett. He has a lot to gain and a lot to lose this week. A couple of people mentioned to me during the season they believed Jones’s play in New England would help Pickett, in that it showed that a quarterback without physical superpowers could be worth a first-round pick.
