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This week we’re getting the best Monday Night Football matchup since the 54–51 Chiefs-Rams showdown in 2018. And I don’t think it’s overstating it to say this one might be even better. Bills at Bengals has high-end quarterbacks, high-flying skill players, a high level of balance in roster quality and, as much as anything else, stakes. If the Bills win, they’ll be one win, or one Chiefs loss, away from home field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs. If the Bengals win, they can steal the second seed from the Bills (which would mean potentially hosting them in the divisional round) and, with a little help, could even rise to the top seed. So what’ll decide how this one goes? I gathered a group of front-office types from five teams who have faced both teams, plus a defensive coach who’s game-planned both to break it down. And after those discussions, I have six takeaways. Here they are …
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The quarterbacks are justifiably the headliners. But the challenge is pretty different from one team to the next. “They’re both really good, obviously,” our first AFC exec says. “What [Joe] Burrow has done, and how he’s grown, he’s playing as good as anyone, and he has three receivers, a tight end, two backs and the line is playing better. The Bills, offensively, they’re not as good as Cincinnati skill-wise; the x-factor is the quarterback [Josh Allen] and what the quarterback can do with his legs. That’s the difference between the offenses. Cincinnati’s more conventional and difficult to defend because of its weapons. Buffalo’s difficult to defend because of the quarterback.” A second AFC exec adds, “[The Bengals] adjusted the passing game to get the ball out quicker than before, and [Joe] Burrow is so f---ing smart; it’s impressive. It looks like he knows what’s going to happen before it happens. And it’s almost like Drew Brees; it’s a catch-and-shoot offense from the quarterback … the timing, the decision-making, he’s throwing guys open. If these two [Allen and Burrow] aren’t the best two, they’re close to it.” The first AFC exec has another comp for Burrow: “To me, it looks like Tom [Brady] when Tom first started rolling. That’s what it looks like. The difference is Burrow’s got dudes to throw to.” A third AFC exec adds this about Burrow: “Those three receivers are a problem. You’re not gonna have enough DBs, and the quarterback is so accurate; you can play man, you can play zone, doesn’t matter. This year, we played more zone, and he picked us apart.”
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Combatting the quarterbacks might come down to offensive line play. The Bengals are better than they were up front last year but still aren’t great. The Bills are solid, too, but beatable. “I think this game is won up front,” a fourth AFC exec says. “The Buffalo defensive front’s really good, and the Cincinnati line isn’t great, and same with the Cincinnati D-line and the Buffalo O-line. I think that’s where the shift is. If Buffalo causes havoc up front, and really executes well on the back end, it could drive Burrow crazy.” Our fifth AFC exec adds, “Cincinnati’s offensive line is catching up with the rest of the offense, and Burrow’s offset that, too, with his ability to get to him.” So, therein, our defensive coach says testing the Bengals’ willingness to run the ball with Joe Mixon and Samaje Perine, and creating third-and-long situations will be important, “so he has to hold on to the ball, and so the offensive line has to protect. First and second down, you’re forced to play shell defense so he can’t just throw it up to [Ja’Marr] Chase and Tee [Higgins], and that’s a problem, too, because they can get the ball out fast to Chase underneath and now you have to tackle him. You want to get them in situations where you can actually pass-rush him and test the line.”
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Third-and-long would be a problem for the Bengals on the other side of the ball, too. And this is, of course, specifically a Josh Allen problem. “The thing that makes them so tough is even if you get them into third-and-medium, the quarterback can ruin whatever you just did, even if you’re playing good defense, by running for the first down,” our first AFC exec says. “That’s what’s frustrating about playing Buffalo. You can do everything right, and the quarterback ruins it.” That said, Cincinnati defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo’s scheme is smart, sound and adaptable. And edge rushers Sam Hubbard and Trey Hendrickson bring versatility, which allows him to disguise and mix fronts—he can stand them up and go into a run-stopping 3–4 to set edges and contain Allen, rush them from down positions, or even drop them into zone coverage. It’s with that versatility, that our defensive coach gave us a rough blueprint for handling Allen. “If you have athletes who can chase him down, and I’m not totally sure if Cincinnati does, you can rush three and then chase him with [a linebacker], or run simulated pressures where you bring some from the secondary and drop one of those guys off the line.” Our coach, by the way, mentioned how Anarumo’s success dealing with Patrick Mahomes—and he’s had some—should help the Bengals draw the blueprint for handling Allen when he plays off schedule. And in this game, it might come down to keeping him in a box in those situations. “You might think I’m crazy, but I still think there’s a part of Josh where when s--- gets tough, and it’s third-and-8, and he has to be accurate and not put the ball in harm’s way. He’s not bad; I’m not saying that. But he’s not on the level of someone like Burrow. Which is nitpicking, but it’s there.”
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Both secondaries are fighting through injuries. The Bengals lost top corner Chidobe Awuzie for the year, and the Bills lost long-time captain and star safety Micah Hyde, and both defensive backfields have had to work around those and other losses. Anarumo and Bills DC Leslie Frazier have managed the absences deftly. But the challenge each will face tonight is, obviously, a steep one. “Buffalo is so sound, but its secondary is slow,” our second AFC exec says. “The scheme covers for that, and so does the fact that it can rush the passer. The coverage is good, but it shows itself after the catch. … [Jordan] Poyer is older, [Damar] Hamlin, [Xavier] Rhodes.” Our fifth exec adds, “Frazier does an awesome job; they really do play together, and they have an aggressive front and can get after the passer with multiple people. So it’s mitigated because of the way he coaches them, how sound they are and how they get after the quarterback.” With all that said, one thing that was repeatedly pointed out is that Buffalo isn’t overly complex—with a simpler, play-fast approach, and with some variation in coverage. And that could allow Bengals coach Zac Taylor and offensive coordinator Brian Callahan to manufacture some matchups by moving receivers around. “How will the Bills cover their receivers is obviously the real question,” our third exec says. “If they get those guys in man coverage, it’s going to be an issue.”
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The number of possessions could be low. Why? Well, because the defenses lack game-wreckers and will likely be guarding against shots; we could see a lot more eight-, 10- and 12-play drives. “Both of them are really steady, dependable units,” our first AFC exec says. “Both are good tackling, both are fundamentally sound, good schemes. And after Buffalo lost Von [Miller], it’s kind of similar structurally, a bunch of good players, but no one where you’re like, Holy s---, this guy is gonna ruin the game.” One key, in this vein, would be how willing each team is to run the ball, with Cincinnati typically a little more willing to lean on that phase of the game than Bills OC Ken Dorsey. “Buffalo’s run game, it’s very reliant on Allen,” our fifth AFC exec says.
- How will the Bengals handle Stefon Diggs? Whereas the Bills are almost forced to be balanced defensively to deal with Tyler Boyd, Higgins and Chase, the Bills have one standout skill guy—Stefon Diggs—who’ll likely dictate the Bengals’ defensive plan. “Buffalo, it has talented, good skill guys, but Cincy’s skill is high-end across the board,” our fourth AFC exec says. “Buffalo has the one guy, Gabe [Davis], [Nyheim] Hines, [Dawson] Knox, they’re good players, but the sum of the parts are better than individual talent. That’s sort of the separating factor for me. “Cincinnati has better skill.”
And so who wins? All six of these guys struggle to answer that. So this should be a good one. Buckle up.
The Patriots are here again and control their destiny for the final spot in the AFC playoffs. But that doesn’t mean it’s been pretty. The Patriots finished Sunday’s de facto elimination game against the Dolphins with 249 yards of total offense and 14 first downs. For every clutch third-down throw Mac Jones made, he had a bad miss. The run game was inconsistent.
So how did New England escape with a 23–21 win? With its defense scoring. Again.
For the first time in the franchise’s 63-year history, New England has scored on defense in four (!) consecutive games. And for the season, that unit, led by Jerod Mayo and Steve Belichick, has a team-record seven touchdowns. All of which is pretty impressive, considering the history of Bill Belichick’s Patriots defense over the past 23 years.
“It’s definitely something we practice,” safety Kyle Dugger says. “It doesn’t always happen that way, so we’re definitely still blessed to be a part of a defense where it is happening, and we’re just able to really focus on our fundamentals, do what we practiced. Obviously getting the ball out, turning the ball over is great. But it doesn’t always happen, even if you do things the right way.”
So as to how the Patriots drill this stuff, Dugger says, during the week, every week, they work on going “defense to offense”—“it’s always something we talk about.”
And the 6'2", 220-pound 26-year-old is, more or less, made for these situations—which bears out in the fact that he’s responsible for three of the Patriots’ seven defensive touchdowns this season.
The interesting thing, to me, was how he answered when I asked whether he’d ever scored three touchdowns in a season before. He told me, yes, he had, but it actually happened in college, not in high school. In his last year at Lenoir-Rhyne, he had two punt returns for scores, and a pick-six, despite being limited to seven games that season.
That experience as a punt returner, he continued, really helped in making him more effective in quick-change turnover situations on defense. And it paid off again in a big way Sunday, with the Patriots down 14–10 with less than four minutes left in the third quarter, the Dolphins having just lost their second quarterback (Teddy Bridgewater) in as many weeks, and his rookie replacement, Skylar Thompson, in Dugger’s crosshairs.
“Just dropping in Cover 2 as the middle player,” he says. “Once my threat originally went away to the strong side, I was able to get my eyes back to the quarterback and saw him looking for; it looked like an in-cut [route] coming from the other side. I was able to get around, and he didn’t see me. So I was able to get in there.”
From there, Dugger shook Miami running back Jeff Wilson Jr., and weaved through a sea of linemen to cover the 39 yards he needed to hit paydirt.
And, again, this probably isn’t the way the Patriots drew up a late run to the playoffs with all the work they did in working over the offensive staff and trying to renovate the system with a defensive coordinator, Matt Patricia, calling plays on that side of the ball. But that’s what they’re left with right now. That, and a shot at the Bills next weekend, with their season on the line.
“It’s a must-win for us,” Dugger says. “We gotta make sure we’re doing everything we can, putting everything into it, getting in the preparation and once game day comes, we’re ready. We know we gotta win and we’re definitely trying to make sure we prepare as best we can.”
We sure know this—for a number of reasons, that defense will have to bring it.
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The Steelers might really have something in Kenny Pickett. For the second consecutive week in prime time, Pittsburgh had to lean on its first-round quarterback to win a game. And Pickett delivered again.
Against the Raiders, he, and the offense, got the ball on their own 24 with 2:55 left, trailing 10–6. Pickett promptly drove his group 76 yards in 10 plays, capping the march with a laser down the middle of the field for the game-winning 14-yard touchdown pass to George Pickens, a dart that split a two-high safety shell look.
In this case, against the Ravens, the Steelers took over with 4:16 left and the ball on their own 20. Strikes of 20 and 28 yards to Pat Freiermuth and Steven Sims got the offense going, and were a precursor to another gorgeous game-winning play. On third-and-8 from the Ravens’ 10, and with Baltimore leading 13–9, Pickett was chased left out of the pocket and found Najee Harris streaking down the sideline. Pickett put just enough on it to drop it right in the bucket and give the Steelers the win.
As impressive? To me, it was how Mike Tomlin gushed about his quarterback postgame.
“I can’t say enough about our young quarterback," he said. “He smiled in the face of it. He’s always ready to be that guy in the moments that we need him. And it’s just good to see the young guy. We marched forward.”
And march forward at .500, needing just a little help next week to get in the playoffs and, most importantly, they’ll do it with a guy who looks like he’ll be the quarterback there for a while.
Weird as it sounds, I think the way Sunday played out was sort of the idea in how the Packers have built around Aaron Rodgers the past few years. Trading Davante Adams last March was, for sure, a big-time risk for Green Bay. But if you look at where the Packers have invested, it actually lines up with what they’ve been doing, in trying to construct a run game and defense to take the pressure off their all-time great quarterback.
The idea? To me, it’s to ask your quarterback to do a little less, not more, as he gets older.
So here’s why Sunday’s 41–17 shellacking of the Vikings brings all that to life …
• The Packers scored 41 points, despite Rodgers throwing for just 159 yards and a touchdown on 15-of-24 passing.
• Green Bay rushed for 163 yards on 33 carries.
• The Packers scored on special teams (on a Keisean Nixon 105-yard kickoff return) and defense (on a Darnell Savage 75-yard pick-six).
• Despite not throwing it much, Rodgers found a way to get seven different receivers catches, including the two rookies everyone’s been waiting for.
This, by the way, all came in the Packers’ fourth consecutive win, which puts them at 8–8 with a shot to win the NFC’s last wild-card berth at home against the Lions.
"It feels really special; it does," Rodgers said of the win. "It’s been an interesting year. It hasn’t been my best football at times, but I’ve been asked to step up my leadership and be someone the guys can count on to keep it together, even when it doesn’t seem like there’s anything to play for or we don’t have a chance to make a run. There’s been a lot of special moments throughout the year."
And the result, I think, is a team that’ll be dangerous in different ways than they have been in the past, if they get past the Lions and into the tournament, and maybe in the kind of way the Broncos were in John Elway’s twilight.
The Chiefs aren’t firing on all cylinders, so Saturday’s game will be interesting. Last four weeks: Close win at Denver, close win at Houston, convincing win vs. Seattle and, Sunday, another close win, this one at home, over the struggling Broncos. So is it a little weird to point this stuff out about a four-game winning streak? Sure. Maybe. But for one thing, when Patrick Mahomes is your quarterback and Andy Reid is your coach, the bar is higher.
For another, the Chiefs very clearly know that.
“There’s not a lot satisfying for me,” Mahomes said in the postgame.
Again, this a sky-high bar we have set for the Chiefs, but they’re one of a couple of teams in this era that has real dynasty potential. And having to go to Las Vegas and play against a Raiders team that just gave San Francisco all it could handle should be an interesting test for Kansas City. Also, it’ll help determine whether they get to stay home in two weeks, or have to face the Patriots, Ravens or Chargers in the wild-card round.
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As is probably obvious, the Raiders’ decision to move off Derek Carr wasn’t just about getting a chance to evaluate Jarrett Stidham. Or really about that much at all. It was about protecting the team from an injury guarantee of $40.4 million vesting, in case Carr got hurt and couldn’t pass a physical in mid-February. So between now and Feb. 15 (if Carr’s on the roster that day at 4 p.m. ET, the $40.4 million becomes fully guaranteed), the Raiders will seek a resolution to move their quarterback of nine years off the roster. Why? Well, there are a few reasons for it, beyond just his 63–79 record as a starter, which, to be fair, is in part on him and in part a product of his surroundings.
• The first issue, as I understand it, connects to his fit with a new culture that draws hard lines on toughness and accountability. The second and third can be drawn from there.
• On the former—toughness—Carr has had a reputation for not hanging in the pocket, letting plays develop and taking a hit to strike downfield. That showed at times. One was against the Steelers in Week 16, on third-and-5 in the fourth quarter, with 3:07 left. The Steelers got pushed up the middle and rather than hold the ball and buy time, Carr quickly threw it over Davante Adams’s head and into the bench area—when Adams was in single coverage and would’ve had a chance to make a play downfield. Other issues from earlier in his career (like his ability to play in the cold) resurfaced, as well.
• On the latter—accountability—there was a feeling, among coaches and players, that Carr hadn’t shouldered his share of the blame for the mountain of close losses that piled up over the weeks, with the Thursday-night loss to the Rams, a prime example.
• The fourth element I could ascertain was an ability to make the plays to turn close losses into wins, with Carr missing a wide-open Hunter Renfrow high on his game-sealing pick in Pittsburgh as the most recent example.
• And fifth, and this relates back to knowing when to take risks with the ball, is how much the Raiders were able to get from Adams in his first season. Adams’s numbers, to be sure, were fantastic with Carr in there (88 catches, 1,290 yards, 12 TDs). But even still, there was a lot of meat left on the bone with Vegas’s headlining acquisition of 2022.
So what’s next? My sense would be there’ll be a market for Carr. The Jets, Commanders and Panthers are three teams that should be looking, with teams that are ready to win now, and Carr would join Jimmy Garoppolo in a class of free-agent quarterbacks with experience and, almost certainly, an ability to come in and improve the position quickly. As for the Raiders, my sense would be they’ll give Carr’s camp permission to seek a trade ahead of the mid-February deadline, to see whether they can get anything for him. And if Carr isn’t inclined to help the team after all this (definitely possible), he could well sit on his hands, wield his no-trade clause and force them to cut him. After that, my understanding is the Raiders will look hard at the idea of bringing in Tom Brady or Jimmy Garoppolo, with their connections to Josh McDaniels and Dave Ziegler. Either way, for the Raiders and Carr, it’s over.
What you didn’t get to see in Atlanta overnight was pretty cool. You probably wouldn’t notice, offhand, a ton about the difference in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium from Saturday night’s Peach Bowl between Georgia and Ohio State, and how it looked Sunday for Falcons-Cardinals. The turnaround time? The college semifinal ended as the ball dropped on 2023, and the field wasn’t clear until around 12:45 a.m. ET. And everything had to be turned around, really, by around 11:30 a.m., when the doors swung open for fans.
So for senior director of stadium operations Adam Fullerton, there was, indeed, something to root for as the Bulldogs and Buckeyes traded haymakers—no overtime.
“As a sports fan, I would love it. As a building operator, I don’t love it,” Fullerton said Friday. “We’ve got a job to get done, and any delays in the game or anything like that only shorten our window. But we gotta wait for the championship celebration, the trophy presentation and the confetti to go. And then the second, really, that last piece of confetti drops on the field, we’re starting to clean that confetti.”
The venue, now in its sixth season as the Falcons’ home, had nine NFL home games on the slate this year, plus another six college games, and that’s on top of other events (concerts, etc.) that it hosts. So turning over the place isn’t new—the crew did it just a few weeks ago after the SEC title game (the Falcons had a 1 p.m. game with the Steelers the next day). But this one was particularly tight after the CFP committee put the Peach Bowl in prime time, and the Fiesta Bowl in the afternoon slot, squeezing the window to flip the stadium to its limit.
Fullerton was nice enough to take me through the process. And I figured, to give you something a little different this week, we’d pass some of that stuff along.
• The effort takes around 400 people in the stadium overnight, and that’s not including those working the perimeter of the building and the parking lot (those folks take the number to more than 500), and that includes food and beverage, cleaning, grounds and security staff and workers. As for Fullerton, he’s in the building from 12 p.m. Saturday, with his engineering team, through around 6 p.m. Sunday. “We have enough staff in certain capacities where we can flex half a crew here and then bring a fresh crew in in the morning, and we’ll do that,” Fullerton says. “On the field, it’s really all-hands-on-deck all night. There’s not really an opportunity to split that crew, but where we can, we try to do that.” And there are actually air mattresses stationed around the stadium so people can steal cap naps when there are gaps. But, Fullerton says, go to sleep and “you’re likely to get barged in on.”
• First comes the field. “If you don’t have a field ready,” Fullerton says, “you don’t have a game.” And that meant Saturday first cleaning up the 80–90 pounds of confetti shot off after Georgia’s win. Perspective on that? One pound of confetti is approximately 11,000 pieces. Worse, there’s no great way to pick up the pieces, so they use rakes and pick up much of it by hand. The confetti, Fullerton says, “doesn’t do us any favors. But we understand it’s part of the game.” From there, the logos at midfield and the 25s, hash marks, coaches boxes (they’re different in college), and end zones have to be essentially erased and done over. To help the process, the stadium crew works with the Falcons’ marketing team to keep the field as basic as possible (the end zones had simple ATL wordmarks Sunday). The cheerleaders are generally first on the field, around 8 a.m. At that point, the paint’s drying.
• As for what has to be turned over fastest, it’s the locker rooms. The Falcons maintain control of their own locker room, so that one’s not a problem. For college games, one team is in the visitor’s team locker room, another in an auxiliary locker room. In this case, it was Ohio State’s locker room that had to be turned over for the Cardinals, and it had to happen before Arizona’s setup crew started to show up (which usually happens between 3 and 4 a.m.). So, realistically, with the Buckeyes filtering out after 1 a.m., there were only a couple of hours for that. “Other than the field,” Fullerton says, “that’ll be our 1A priority, the locker room, to receive the visiting team.”
• Then there’s food and beverage, and concourse cleanup, which includes the disposal of some 8,000 garbage bags. “One of the bigger challenges is getting the trash out of the building, down through our trash dock and then out of the building so that we can start receiving trash from the following day,” Fullerton says. “That’s a pretty big logistical challenge.”
And to cap the whole thing off? The Falcons drove 72 yards in 12 plays to set up a game-winning, walk-off field goal from Younghoe Koo to beat Arizona. So everyone went home happy (and tired).
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J.J. Watt is right there with Aaron Donald as the very best defensive player of the last 15 years or so. Which makes it a shame that he’s going out playing out the string with a Cardinals team that’s circling the drain—but to me, the silver lining is Watt, who’s been injured plenty, is still playing well, and on his own terms, which is a luxury afforded to few of even the very best players. He had another sack Sunday against the Falcons, which gives him seven over his last nine games, and the sixth double-digit-sack season of his career (he’s played more than half the season in only eight of his 12 NFL years).
And this stretch run sends off a guy who I can say is held in even higher regard by those who’ve been around him than he is by any of the rest of us who know he’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. So much so that when I asked Romeo Crennel, who coached him in Houston from 2014 to ’20, I could barely get the question out of my mouth before the old defensive coordinator gave me all the historical perspective anyone would need.
“I’m going to tell you right now, because I know what [question] is coming—I rank him at the top of my list, and I got two of them,” says Crennel, marking the best he’s coached. “I got Lawrence Taylor and I’ve got J.J. Watt. Both of those guys, I had both of them, and they’re both at the top. And if I had to choose one, and like I’ve told people before, Lawrence is slightly ahead because I had Lawrence first. But J.J. is right there with him.
“When you look at the numbers, when you look at how disruptive he is on the football field, what a good guy he is off the football field, all of those things go into it. So those are my top two.”
If you’re too young to know, LT’s probably the greatest, and most impactful, defensive player in the history of the sport, and Crennel coached historic defenses with both the Giants and Patriots, as part of his 40 NFL seasons. So, yeah …
Watt announced his retirement Tuesday. He’ll walk away standing alone alongside Donald and Taylor as the only guys to win Defensive Player of the Year three times. But the actual images of the things he did—both on the field and off it—will endure as much as all the accolades and individual honors he took home over a dozen seasons. And so to paint the picture, we hit up Crennel and Bill O’Brien, who had Watt for seven of those seasons.
The latter, Watt’s head coach for more than half his career, can remember what he thought of when he got the Texans job, that he’d be the beneficiary of plays such as the one Watt made in the playoffs against the Bengals his rookie year, when he plucked an Andy Dalton throw at point-blank range while he was rushing and returned it for a touchdown to turn the game and deliver the Texans their first playoff win. It wouldn’t be long until O’Brien got some memories like those of his own.
In Week 16 of O’Brien’s first year, 2014, with Houston at 7–7 and needing a win in Baltimore to stay alive, it got one. That was the game where Watt famously busted his nose open and bled all over the place, and in the fourth quarter, with less than three minutes left delivered a message to his coach—I need a timeout. If you give me a timeout, I’ll win the game. O’Brien used his second timeout with 2:34 showing.
“I think I only had two left, but I was like, It’s worth it to give him a little extra rest,” O’Brien says. “And sure enough, he came off the edge, sacked Joe Flacco … and we won the game. He was just … it’s like you said, he completely could take over a game without a shadow of a doubt.”
And while his story was a great one—of the Central Michigan tight end, who walked on at Wisconsin and became an All-American pass rusher and first-round pick—it also belied the sort of freak athlete he really was.
O’Brien mentioned to me the rare ability Watt had to rush speed to power, essentially able to pivot on a dime from speed rushing a tackle, to engaging him and walking him back to the quarterback. Then, there was the move Watt had—Crennel called it his foot-freeze move—that seemed to the coaches to be nearly humanly impossible, and more or less indefensible.
“When he was on the backside of a run, so if you were running the ball away from him, he had an incredible ability to basically freeze the guard or tackle that was trying to cut him off and then really bend flat down the line of scrimmage,” O’Brien says. “He had I don’t know how many tackles for loss in the running game on that move. It was the quickest, fastest move I’ve ever seen for a guy that size. And he was incredible at it.”
“Plays you don’t expect a guy, a defensive lineman, to be able to make,” Crennel says. “He would foot-freeze, get the guy, and then boom, he goes in the opposite direction and then he’s in the backfield, making the tackle.”
Crennel said he saw Watt do it, repeatedly, in his Week 16 game against the Bucs.
And in a way, it’s a shame Watt couldn’t do it more into the twilight of his career. Injuries cost him most of the 2016, ’17, ’19 and ’21 seasons, and so the brilliance of his first five years was seen again, but not nearly as consistently as we got them when he was younger. Which, to me, makes the fact that he’s still playing at a high level, and was in position to generate his own graceful exit from the sport, even more impressive.
There’s no question he’s earned that. Just like there’s no question we’ll be seeing him in Canton in 2028, when he’s eligible for induction.
We’ve got some quick-hitters on the coaching carousel. Because, that’s right, it’s that time of year again. A few things to get to ahead of next week’s chaos.
• One thing that’s emerging as a theme this year is the owner-driven GM-coach search. Sometimes, these things are farmed out by owners, to be handled by their executives or front-office staff and only brought back for a rubber stamp. That won’t be the case—as I see it—in Indianapolis, Carolina, Denver, Tennessee or Arizona.
• It sounds like Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill is intrigued with a co-GM sort of setup that would leave VP of player personnel Quentin Harris and VP of pro scouting Adrian Wilson in charge. Both interviewed for GM jobs last year. Wilson is, of course, a legendary former player in Arizona, and Harris has come up through the team’s scouting department. The two would also satisfy Bidwill’s preference to stay in-house with his front-office hires.
• I think Steve Wilks would’ve had a really good shot at sticking as Panthers coach if Carolina had won the NFC South. As is, he still has a chance—he has built a real identity for the team, put out the fire of an in-season coaching change and captured the loyalty of the locker room in short order. Owner David Tepper was looking at young offensive coaches before the team bounced back. Wilks’s keeping the job would likely mean GM Scott Fitterer sticking, too, and someone such as Eagles QBs coach Brian Johnson coming in to be OC.
• One thing I hear about Denver: experience, experience, experience. I don’t think it’ll roll the dice with a first-timer, and it’s willing to spend to ensure that. So guys such as Sean Payton, Jim Harbaugh, Frank Reich and Dan Quinn should be in the mix (if they want to be).
• Harbaugh’s stated his desire to stay at Michigan. Still, Harbaugh’s said himself he has unfinished business in the NFL, and his name is as hot with NFL teams as it’s been probably in a half decade. Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard his name connected to Denver and Indianapolis. So it looks like the ball will be in his court.
• The survival of GMs in Indy and Denver, and it’s likely both Chris Ballard and George Paton make it, I think will tie to the coach searches. Which is to say, if the owners need to bring in a certain GM to attract a coach (e.g., hiring Jeff Ireland or Ryan Pace to land Payton), that’s where things could get a little sketchy for Ballard and Paton.
• The assistant coach carousel will spin, too, and one thing I’m interested to see is whether the setup in Green Bay (Matt LaFleur–Adam Stenavich), San Francisco (Kyle Shanahan–Chris Foerster) and Miami (Mike McDaniel–Frank Smith) is repeated elsewhere, where play-calling head coaches are paired with guys with offensive line backgrounds. Along those lines, the Jets’ John Benton and Bears’ Chris Morgan could be names to watch.
• It’s hard to get a bead on where owner Amy Adams Strunk is going to go with the Titans’ GM search, other than the belief that Strunk could very well go back to New England for the sake of pairing Mike Vrabel with a like-minded personnel person. Former Chiefs GM Scott Pioli, former Lions GM Bob Quinn and current Titans director of player personnel Monti Ossenfort all fit that bill.
• If the Texans do move on from Lovie Smith, and GM Nick Caserio still has the hammer, I’d expect Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon to be a name to watch in Houston. The two have a relationship, sharing Northeast Ohio roots, and Gannon interviewed there last year.
• New England’s Mayo should be one of the more interesting names out there. And while he’s definitely in the head coach mix—and I wouldn’t rule out his landing one of those jobs—I get the sense he’d be open to leaving Foxborough to be a coordinator elsewhere and will look hard at those sorts of opportunities once the Patriots’ season ends.
And some quick-hitters on Sunday’s action. Right here for you, to wrap up the takeaways.
• It’s weird watching the Buccaneers screw around every week for stretches, and still show the ability to summon championship football—that throw from Tom Brady to Mike Evans to beat the Panthers on Sunday was a work of art—when it matters most. Because of that, I think just about everything is on the board for their expected wild-card game against Dallas.
• The Jets and Dolphins are 0–10 since Dec. 1. Meanwhile, the Patriots have beaten only those two, and Arizona, since Veterans Day. So much for the resurgence of that division. Buffalo’s now out in front of the field by four and a half games.
• The Jets will be in the market for a quarterback in the offseason. My question is whether the Dolphins will be, too, given the uncertainty surrounding Tua Tagovailoa and his concussions, and the point they’re at in his contract, with a decision on his fifth-year option due in May.
• It’ll be interesting to see how the Giants handle next week. They’re locked into the sixth seed. Would the chance to rip the No. 1 seed away from the Eagles be worth really playing that game?
• I wouldn’t be surprised if Carson Wentz is out of the league soon. His time as a starter is done, and I don’t know whether I see him fitting in as a backup, or even having the desire to be one somewhere. We’ll see what happens.
• I do think the Commanders will have a nice situation to offer some veteran quarterback, whether it’s Jimmy Garoppolo, Derek Carr or someone else. Terry McLaurin, Jahan Dotson, Brian Robinson Jr., Antonio Gibson, Curtis Samuel, an improving line, and the chance to be a star in D.C. as new ownership is ushered in? Seems like a good deal to me.
• If the Chargers beat Denver on Sunday, the Seahawks wind up with, at worst, the third pick in the draft. Which means they’re probably getting Will Anderson Jr., Jalen Carter or a quarterback with the second Russell Wilson first-rounder (the first one was left tackle Charles Cross, who’s been awesome).
• Dennis Allen, for all the noise he’s had to endure the past few weeks, has the Saints fighting. That was a heck of a win in Philly.
• While we’re there, Arthur Smith has quietly done a really good job in a tough spot in Atlanta. I think it’s gonna be a playoff team next year.
• Detroit’s 265 yards rushing is either a real statement on the Lions’ newfound physicality or an indictment of the Bears’ defense. Probably both?
