We made it through the checkered flag. And the offseason is coming fast. So there is plenty to get to this week. We’ve got the champs covered, and here’s the rest in the Takeaways …
Kansas City Chiefs
The Chiefs’ imperfections, in the end, showed up at the worst time. We knew coming into Sunday’s game that Kansas City had to work around its offensive line issues—after all, they did have to move an All-Pro guard out of position to address their left tackle issue, and right tackle hadn’t been a strength, either. We knew the defense had to work around some depth problems at corner after trading away L’Jarius Sneed in the spring.
We also knew most issues Kansas City has had over the past few years, Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Chris Jones, Andy Reid, Steve Spagnuolo and Matt Nagy have been able to work around, small or large. And as someone who picked them to win the game (27–23, if you’re keeping score), I figured they’d do enough to keep it close, then pull it out at the end.
The Philadelphia Eagles, it turned out, were just too big, too fast, too strong and too sound to let them do it again. The evidence tells us now the Chiefs at their best would’ve had a hard time winning that game Sunday night. With a lot less than that, Kansas City had no chance.
“I mean, they just got after us in all three phases,” Kelce said, less than an hour after the game. “And then on top of that, turnovers, penalties, playing behind the sticks on offense, just dropped passes, not taking advantage of the play call and executing them, there's a lot that goes into it. You don't lose like that without everything going bad.”
Joe Thuney, that All-Pro guard who’d performed so admirably at left tackle, was similarly out of answers—“It’s tough. Trying to think back, I just gotta play better. … I can only speak for myself, I just gotta play better. Brutal. A tough one.”
Of course, there were plenty of guys in that locker room that felt that way.
But the franchise itself has been here before. The offensive line got whipped four years ago against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the front office responded by signing Thuney, trading for Orlando Brown Jr., and drafting Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith. So my guess would be they’ll be aggressive again (we’ll get to that), in fixing what ailed them Sunday.
That, of course, wasn’t going to make anyone feel better about a 40–22 loss that wasn’t even near that close. It should, though, help to provide a road map back out from underneath that defeat for a franchise that’s been on this stage five times in the past six years.
Speaking of the way out of 2024 …
Chiefs and Eagles
Both Super Bowl teams have a lot of business to handle in the weeks ahead. And the cold reality of the calendar holds that they’re now behind the other 30 teams.
So here, then, are three questions for each team, heading into 2025.
Let’s hit the Chiefs first …
1) If Travis Kelce were to walk away, how do they replace him? And that’s not just a question at tight end, where they’re relatively well fortified, having Noah Gray as an established presence. It’s a question for the skill group in general, with Marquise “Hollywood” Brown, Juju Smith-Schuster and DeAndre Hopkins all free agents. I wouldn’t rule out a big swing at receiver—if Kelce walks away.
2) Which young stars will they try to re-sign? GM Brett Veach went on quite the draft heater the past few years, and how they handle impending homegrown free agents from the class of 2021 (Nick Bolton, Trey Smith), and stars from the class of ’22 (Trent McDuffie, George Karlaftis) will help set their course for ’25. And if Smith walks, it’s fair to wonder how much the team will re-invest in a line that had its ups and downs in ’24.
3) Attrition in the front office will test Veach’s staff. He lost assistant GM Mike Borgonzi this year, after losing Brandt Tilis to the Carolina Panthers last year, and Ryan Poles to the Chicago Bears in 2022. There’ll be promotions, though they may not become official until after the draft. And a shot for guys such as Mike Bradway, Tim Terry, Ryne Nutt and Chris Shea to shine through what’s shaping up to be a pretty important offseason.
And now, the Philadelphia Eagles …
1) Who replaces Kellen Moore? This, of course, is an important one. My guess would be Moore takes his right-hand man Doug Nussmeier with him to New Orleans, perhaps as offensive coordinator (pairing him, perhaps, with Brandon Staley as DC). That, as I see it, would leave pass-game coordinator Kevin Patullo as an internal option to be OC, if Nick Sirianni doesn’t go outside the building this time around.
2) Can the Eagles uncover gems such as Zack Baun and Mekhi Becton again? Both those guys earned a shot to cash in on renaissance seasons in Philly, and my guess would be each will get more on the open market than the Eagles are willing to pay. So Howie Roseman and his personnel department will go to work on finding more guys like those two—distressed assets with potential to do more in the right situation (though they’re well-stocked with offensive line options to replace Becton)
3) Do they re-sign Super Bowl hero Josh Sweat? Still just 27, but already seven years into his career, the edge rusher was an ass-kicker in the playoffs, and owned the Chiefs tackles in this one. He should be positioned to cash in. Will Philly open the checkbook? It’s a fair question, with so much spent last year on Bryce Huff, and Nolan Smith Jr., Jalyx Hunt and Sweat having overtaken him.
And as for timing with all this stuff, life’s gonna come fast for last night’s winner and loser. The combine is just two weeks away.
New York Jets
The Jets’ decision to let Aaron Rodgers go does have implications. First, it’ll weigh the team’s salary cap down for the next couple of years—whether you take the bullet all at once, or designate a post–June 1 release, there’s $49 million in dead cap to deal with. Second, they’ll now have to go find a new quarterback in what’s probably not the ideal year to have to be doing that, given the dearth of high-end talent in the draft.
That said, this doesn’t have to be a franchise that subjects itself to quarterback purgatory for the foreseeable future. New GM Darren Mougey dealt with a supposedly debilitating cap situation post–Russell Wilson in Denver, and those Broncos made the playoffs. New coach Aaron Glenn was part of a Detroit Lions group that detached from its superstar quarterback, Matthew Stafford, at the very beginning of Glenn’s time in Detroit.
What did both those teams do in the aftermath? They acted with resolve in finding fits, rather than stars, at quarterbacks. And they drafted exceptionally well.
The good news is Mougey and Glenn have a better roster to work off at the starting line than those teams did. Yes, guys such as Davante Adams (there’s no chance he’ll be back on his current contract, with $36.5 million due to him next year, and none of that money guaranteed) are going to be gone. But there’s a crew of young talent and assets on hand in Garrett Wilson, Breece Hall, Olu Fashanu, Alijah Vera-Tucker, Quinnen Williams, Quincy Williams, Jermaine Johnson and Sauce Gardner, and a top-10 pick, and two picks in the top 40.
Therein could lie an attractive situation for a veteran quarterback, who could at least hold the fort for the time being as Mougey and Glenn work to establish their program.
Aaron Rodgers
As for Rodgers, his options going forward are TBD. The Jets could try to trade him, though he’s due $37.5 million next year, and that may be more than a team is willing to spend on him (he has a $2.5 million base, and a $35 million option bonus due before the start of the 2025 season). They could take his lead on it—and my guess would be he’d rather be cut, and given the freedom to choose his destination.
Either way, before any of that can be put in motion, he has to decide whether he’s going to play a 21st season at 41 (he turns 42 in December), and it sounds like he didn’t tip his hand on that, one way or the other, to the Jets.
If he does choose to play, there are teams that think he has bullets left in the chamber. Last year, of course, he was coming off the torn Achilles—and, generally, an older quarterback sustaining that injury in his plant foot isn’t the same in his first year back. You saw it with Kirk Cousins, too. Oftentimes, it takes time for a guy to drive the ball the same way. So there’s a chance that Rodgers would be better next year than he was this year.
And the reality is the 2024 tape wasn’t all bad.
“I thought mentally, and arm-talent-wise, he was still high-end,” texted one NFC pro director on Sunday. “The two tackles weren’t very good, so any time he had to move in the pocket, he struggled. Not sure if that gets better in Year 2 after the injury or worse with age. [But] the Jacksonville game in particular he made some impressive decisions and throws.”
Now, obviously, if he comes back, the list of suitors will be short, because teams would have to check a bunch of boxes for interest on either end to develop. But if he doesn’t want to go out like this … I’d have to think someone (Pittsburgh? Cleveland?) would take a swing.
Matthew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams
The Rams’ call on Matthew Stafford will have a lot to do with timelines. Sean McVay is in the final year of his 30s, and the franchise is heading into its 10th season back in Los Angeles. And in so many ways, the team itself has found its fountain of youth.
Thanks to the work of McVay, GM Les Snead and VP of football and business administration Tony Pastoors, and so many others, an operation that was win-now for a half-decade has effectively turned the page and now fields one of the NFL’s youngest cores. Byron Young is 26, Kobie Turner, Braden Fiske and Steve Avila are 25, Jared Verse and Kyren Williams are 24, Puka Nacua is 23, Kam Kinchens is 22, and all have multiple years left on rookie deals.
That gives the Rams the flexibility, with cap space and a full complement of draft picks, to again become the aggressor on the veteran market.
But it also raises a bigger question with Stafford. Last year’s negotiation lasted months, and was difficult, and resulted in a $5 million raise for 2024, in exchange for the removal of all guarantees thereafter. Also, that money was borrowed for the two remaining years on his deal, so his number for ’25 is $4 million less.
Obviously, the quarterback market has changed. Stafford signed a new deal with the Rams three years ago at $40 million per year. Nine quarterbacks are now making more than $50 million annually. So, will Stafford want to stay in 2025? Will the negotiation drag through the entire offseason again? And do the Rams want to do this again with Stafford, if this is just a year-to-year thing, knowing they could be right back here again in ’26?
When the sides agreed over the summer to revisit all this, they knew these would be the questions they’d have to answer. The coaches, for their part, want Stafford to be with them in 2025. But the bigger-picture part of this equation has come into play. And if a team such as Pittsburgh came along offering a first-round pick, the math could certainly change.
Russell Wilson and the Pittsburgh Steelers
While we’re on the Steelers, I’d maintain what I’ve thought for a while—Wilson is probably going elsewhere. I don’t think I’m breaking much new ground in saying that this year was challenging for the Pittsburgh staff. Wilson’s calf injury in the summer gave Justin Fields an audition that some thought should’ve led to the former Chicago Bear seizing the starting job. When Mike Tomlin went against strong sentiment to give Fields that assignment when Wilson got healthy, the Steelers responded with six wins in seven games.
Then, the bottom fell out. Pittsburgh lost four straight to finish the regular season, blowing a two-game December lead in the AFC North, then went one-and-done in the playoffs, while failing to score more than 17 points in any of those final five games.
Wilson wasn’t an innocent bystander in all of that. His limitations in the dropback game, and throwing the ball over the middle of the field, could only be worked around for so long. And so some friction surfaced as the season circled the drain, and the collapse showed that, while the Steelers are consistently in the running, they aren’t all that close to the elite.
This week some pro-Wilson narratives surfaced, and my sense is that probably wouldn’t be very well received by the Steelers as they mull their future at the position. As for Fields, I feel like they’d like to keep working with him, but I don’t see them just handing him the starting job for 2025—if he’s back, my guess is it’d be with Fields needing to compete to earn playing time.
Meanwhile, you’ve got T.J. Watt turning 31, and Minkah Fitzpatrick turning 29, and that makes you wonder if it’s time for the team to take a bigger swing on a guy like Stafford.
Myles Garrett and the Cleveland Browns
And while we’re on the quarterbacks, if the Browns are holding out hope on keeping Myles Garrett in the fold—and I think they are—then having a plan at QB would be a good start. And as the saying goes, hope is not a plan.
The news of Garrett wanting a trade broke last Monday, but his request had been in for a couple of weeks. My sense would be that the request becoming public came as a result of some level of frustration from the former Defensive Player of the Year. The Browns told him they wouldn’t deal him. They’ve messaged that to other teams. And Cleveland planting its feet in the ground on that would motivate Garrett to go public.
So now that it’s out there, the Browns don’t have to do anything. They can wait for the calls to come in and reassess if they need to. What they can’t do, though, is control Garrett’s feelings on the situation. And I do believe Garrett that his primary motivation is to find a place where he can go compete for a championship.
That makes the Browns’ next move at quarterback pretty vital if they so badly want to keep Garrett. The good news is, even before this, and even before Deshaun Watson hurt his Achilles again, Cleveland was planning to be aggressive. Initially, the thought was to add competition, rather than a supporting cast, to the quarterback room, be it through the draft or free agency. Now, there’s a good chance they’ll pull both levers, with Watson’s injury situation, as it relates to the season, still in flux.
Maybe that means a quarterback with the third pick and an economical veteran addition. Maybe it means a Day 2 draft pick at the position, with a starting-level vet coming in. Maybe Cousins’s background with Kevin Stefanski will come into play. Regardless, it’s fair to assume the quarterback room in Cleveland will look a lot different next year.
What that means for Garrett remains to be seen.
San Francisco 49ers
Deebo Samuel’s future is just one of a number of big-box items that the San Francisco 49ers have to deal with this offseason. First, of course, would be Brock Purdy’s future, with the team’s quarterback going into the final year of his rookie deal. Second, then, would be how much of the existing nucleus sticks around—and, really, the sum of the parts has to be considered.
Samuel is the easy one. We told you two months ago that the team’s bottleneck of big contracts in 2025 was going to force tough decisions and, much as they love Samuel, his injury history, declining production, contract status (with a big, non-guaranteed number for next year, and his contract expiring after that), and San Francisco’s depth of investment at the position made the former first-team All-Pro the most logical first piece to move.
So they’ve given him and his agent permission to seek a trade, and could cut him if the right offer doesn’t come along, with Brandon Aiyuk now signed long-term and the team’s 2024 first-round pick, Ricky Pearsall, having already flashed his potential.
After that, it’ll be tough to hang on to pending free agents Charvarius Ward, Dre Greenlaw and Talanoa Hufanga for sure; they’ll have to figure out where Trent Williams is at for next year; George Kittle is headed into a contract year; and then there’ll probably be some more cap gymnastics to perform to make it all work.
These, of course, are first-class problems, and they’re the types of problems the Niners have navigated before—having had a top-of-market quarterback contract (Jimmy Garoppolo’s) to work around, and tough choices to make in the recent past (one was to keep Arik Armstead and trade DeForest Buckner). But they’re problems nonetheless that mark a pretty significant deck shuffling for one of the NFL’s most successful operations of the last decade.
Grass vs. turf
One thing from Super Bowl week that should be noted is the surface the Chiefs practiced on. On one hand, I’ll give the NFL credit here—for the second consecutive year, they laid down grass over a college program’s turf field, and this year the Chiefs didn’t have any of the issues that the Niners had last February (when the surface was loose and slippery). On the other hand, simply putting the grass down exposes hypocrisy.
For years, as players have called—over and over and over—for grass to replace turf, based on the injury risk and general wear-and-tear turf puts on their bodies, the NFL has responded with talking points on there being little tangible difference between the two. So if there really isn’t any difference, then why would the NFL and Chiefs work to lay down grass over the turf field at Tulane, especially when the Super Bowl was set to be played on turf?
Similarly, it’s at least notable that all 32 teams generally hold the great majority of their outdoor practices on grass fields, even if they play their games on turf.
It is obvious why, of course. The players, trainers and medical people all know that there’s less risk on grass, and players feel better after practicing on the natural stuff, so it makes sense to keep them off artificial turf as much as possible.
This has been, and I think will continue to be, a big subject of discussion for the NFLPA, as it should be. And I just wish owners would be more honest about it. The reality is the price point of franchises and stadiums has risen to a level where owners feel compelled to jam as many events as they possibly can into these venues, which makes it harder and more expensive to maintain a grass field. So they just go to turf, because it’s a cheaper and easier alternative that allows them to book their stadiums for way more than 10 football games.
It’s that simple. I do wish more teams would consider doing what Real Madrid did, with an NFL game going to that stadium next year. Or, again, just own up to these decisions being business decisions.
Quick-hitters
And, now, with the season complete, we have one last set of quick-hitting takeaways for all of you. Let’s roll …
• I’ll say it one more time: Don’t make us wait another dozen years for another New Orleans Super Bowl, NFL. It should be here again very, very soon.
• You want some evidence of the NFL mulling when to go to 18 games? The league has given both San Francisco (Feb. 8, 2026) and Los Angeles (Feb. 14, ’27) dates for their upcoming Super Bowls. They have not given Atlanta one for Super Bowl LXII, which has made planning difficult for the city. That one will cap the ’27 season, which is ahead of the ’29 opt-out in the broadcast deals (and like I said earlier in the week, I think they’re going to want to have an 18-game slate to sell when they go back to the table with the networks).
• Adam Vinatieri not getting into the Hall of Fame is flat-out ridiculous. In fact, I’d love to know what the logic would be against him getting in. (Congrats to Eric Allen, Jared Allen, Antonio Gates and Sterling Sharpe, by the way … my feelings on Vinatieri have nothing to do with those four getting in.)
• I’m excited to see what Nic Caley does running the offense in Houston—with his blend of experience working under Josh McDaniels and McVay. McVay effectively blended some New England Patriots elements (gap-scheme running, elements of control for the quarterback) into his system with the help of Caley, Ryan Wendell and Jerry Schuplinski the past couple years. Which, I think, gives Caley a good foundation. Also, for what it’s worth, I do think Caley will build a strong relationship with C.J. Stroud, which will be crucial to the job there.
• Great get by Jacksonville Jaguars coach Liam Coen in poaching Grant Udinski, Kevin O’Connell’s 29-year-old right-hand man, off the Minnesota Vikings staff. Udinski should be a resource to Coen in the same way Shane Steichen was for Sirianni early on in Sirianni’s time in Philly.
• While we’re there, my sense was, before he pulled his name out, Tampa Bay Buccaneers assistant GM Mike Greenberg was way up the list of general manager candidates for Coen in Jacksonville. So that was a nice win for Tampa to keep him.
• Joe Burrow certainly is letting Cincinnati Bengals ownership know where he stands on Chase, Higgins and Trey Hendrickson (and others like Mike Gesicki, too). It’s going to be a fascinating offseason in Cincinnati.
• It made things bumpy, but I appreciate the desire to win that showed in Tyreek Hill’s back-and-forth with the Miami Dolphins the past few weeks. The reality, all along, was that last year’s contract made the idea of moving Hill a pretty difficult thing to envision. Now, they’ll go forward together. And maybe the Dolphins will feel the urgency from one of their star players in how they handle the offseason.
• I think every team in the top five will at least look at the idea of trading down, with a dearth of top-end players available (Abdul Carter and Travis Hunter are, for a lot of folks, the only two real blue-chip players) and a shaky quarterback group in the class. Of course, those elements could make it tough to find teams willing to trade up.
• And, finally, congrats to Josh Allen. This was the best thing I watched all week.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Super Bowl LIX Takeaways: Chiefs Doomed by Imperfections .
