Less than a week until the trade deadline! But that’s not all we’re covering in this week’s mailbag. Let’s dive in …
From ChipRommel (@RommelChip): Do the Packers pick a tackle or QB?
Chip, I can’t believe we’re already at the point of having draft talk, but I understand why Packers fans would be asking these big-picture questions now.
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I’d put the Packers, Bears and Patriots into the same category with their young passers. I’d explain that category by detailing what my approach would be if I were each team and everything remained the same with their quarterbacks between now and April’s NFL draft. In each case, I like the idea of going forward with Jordan Love, Justin Fields and Mac Jones, getting another year of information on each. That said, I would also be all in on scouting the quarterbacks in this next draft class.
I believe Love, Fields and Jones have shown enough to get another look from their teams, but zero of the three have done enough to make me pass on a quarterback in April if, and only if, one that I have absolute conviction in is there for me when I’m picking. In other words, if I have the first pick and love Caleb Williams, or the second pick and love Drake Maye or the 10th pick and love Bo Nix, J.J. McCarthy or Michael Penix Jr., then neither Love nor Fields nor Jones has done enough to make me pass on drafting a quarterback.
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Remember, too, decisions on the fifth-year options for Jones and Fields aren’t due until after the draft.
The bottom line: It’s hard for teams to get it right at quarterback, so you don’t want to give up on one who has shown ability and upside before you have to. But if you have a high draft pick and you think the right guy’s there, especially when you consider the chance to reset the QB-on-a-rookie-contract clock, then you’d have to be awfully good with your current quarterback to say no to taking the next one.
So, yes, there’s a bit of a dichotomy there. But that also gives you multiple shots to get the position right.
From Tom Marshall (@aredzonauk): Has Kirk Cousins buried the “He can’t win in primetime” narrative?
Tom, narratives like that are dumb. If it’s a playoff record, that’s different. I think the idea that a player is thinking about what time his game is on beforehand shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how these guys operate.
And if you really think about it, it makes sense that your record wouldn’t be as good in prime time as it would be, say, at 1 p.m. ET Sundays. Generally, the opponent is going to be tougher because, yes, those are the teams that make it to prime time. Which means that, just like in a playoff setting, your statistics are probably going to dip.
Like, maybe, you’d have expected Cousins’s numbers to dip against the Niners’ defense Monday. At least until they didn’t.
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From Ricker81 (@D_Ricker81): The Daniel Jones contract has an out after 2024. Assuming the Giants do not have a shot at Caleb or Maye, would there be a QB3 or even a QB4 who is worthy of a top-10 pick? If so, can you see the Giants drafting that QB knowing they have to carry Jones in ’24?
Ricker, I’m going to stack my take here up with what I said about the Packers, Patriots and Bears—I’m fine with going into 2024 with Daniel Jones as my quarterback if I’m the Giants, but Jones hasn’t been good enough for me to pass on one in the first round if there’s one I love when my pick comes up. So, again, if I’m picking fifth, and love McCarthy, Penix or Nix, then I’d pull the trigger. And if I’m No. 1 or No. 2, with a path to Williams or Maye, it’s academic.
That’s especially after seeing what Tyrod Taylor looks like running the offense at a fraction of the cost, which is not to say Jones isn’t a good player. I am, in fact, O.K. with doing the deal they did with Jones. The contract sends a good message to the locker room about rewarding players who do things the right way and buys time for coach Brian Daboll and GM Joe Schoen to find their long-term answer should it not be Jones.
That contract basically dictates that Jones will be a Giant in 2024, and that’s fine even if you do draft another quarterback in the first round. He can be the placeholder for a rookie. But it’s hard to imagine Jones will still be around in ’25 at his cost. So I think you’d look at this year, ’24 and ’25 as a period of transition at the position.
From Diddyhead1 (@diddyhead1): What the hell is going on with Deshaun Watson?
Diddy, I don’t see this as overly complicated. The teammates, coaches and front office people I’ve communicated with in Cleveland are good with Watson. It’s his throwing shoulder, and that’s something you don’t mess with. In fact, it will keep him out this week with coach Kevin Stefanski saying Wednesday that PJ Walker will start this week at Seattle. So I feel compelled to take this whole thing at face value and believe Watson simply needs time to get the shoulder back to a point where he can function at his accustomed level.
He played his best game as a Brown in his last healthy outing—Week 3 against the Titans. The plan is that we’ll see him again against Seattle this week, which gives him a five-week lag between full games (assuming he finishes this one). In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that long of a stretch, especially with the bye considered, for a quarterback to get his throwing shoulder right.
So have some patience. And if there’s new information on this that becomes available, or that I come across, then I’ll reconsider my feelings. For now, that’s where I’m at.
From bradley ryder (@bradleyryder): There’s been a lot of speculation recently that the NFL is rigging games. Totally off base right? Just losing teams complaining?
Stop. No one is rigging games.
What I do think happens is the league is giving points of emphasis in officiating to get the result they desire. They want points and yards and offense in general, and they’re not getting it now. So do I think the rainstorm of penalties on defensive coverage last week was an accident? I do not. But that’s a theory, not a fact. And it’s about the product, not certain teams winning.
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From Keith Horton (@KeithKhorton): Is Ron Rivera officially on thin ice now given the negative tenor of this season?
Keith, unfortunately (because he’s a really good person and coach), I think hanging on to that job was always going to be difficult for Rivera. The pattern with new owners is to go through a trial year with their existing coach, then fire them and bring in their own people. Since 2002, eight teams have been sold, and seven of the eight owners fired the coaches they inherited within two seasons. The one exception was Stephen Ross, who arrived in Miami as a new coach was coming in. And four of the last five owners fired their coaches within a year.
New owners come in with their own ideas and generally don’t spend what they do to get the teams without wanting to implement those quickly. I can’t imagine Josh Harris, the league’s ninth new owner since 2002, doesn’t want to do the same, even though he’s said and done all the right things with his existing football staff.
That means the bar is really high for Rivera, as well as personnel chiefs Martin Mayhew and Marty Hurney, to keep their jobs. Rivera went through this before in Carolina—he was coming off an 11-win season when David Tepper bought the team and was just two years separated from a Super Bowl. That bought him an extra year. He went 7–9 in 2018 and was fired after 12 games, with the Panthers at 5–7, in ’19 (the team finished 5–11).
I’d also say Jonathan Allen sounding off after Sunday’s loss to the Giants doesn’t help.
From Fahad (@mfahad24_): The question we all need an answer to: Will Les Snead work his magic and get Aaron Donald some help?!
Fahad, you can never rule out the Rams’ taking a big swing—but I’d temper anything due to the spot the franchise is in. They’re carrying $74 million in dead cap. They have their first-round pick intact for the first time in eight years. They had 19 rookies on the 53-man roster in their opener. Seven games in, they’re 3–4 in a division that has two real NFC contenders.
So on paper, this doesn’t seem like the time for Snead to strike with a win-now move.
That’s why I think if they do make a move, it’d have to be for a guy who’s still young, who would be a building block for them for the next half a decade, the way Jalen Ramsey was when they dealt for him in season in 2019. And the one name lingering out there that still makes sense would be the Panthers’ Brian Burns, who’s 25 and for whom the Rams offered a monster package before last year’s deadline (a ’23 third, and first-round picks in ’24 and ’25).
Remember, despite the fun flashes we’ve gotten and, on the flip side, the dumb and now debunked “tank for Caleb” story line, this has been a reset year for the Rams. To me, what we’ve seen over the season’s first seven weeks certainly isn’t enough for Snead and the Rams’ brass to reverse course.
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From Chad Williams (@chadwill801): What does the future for the Broncos look like? I’d assume Russ has to go, but Sean Payton is interesting and not sure where they're headed.
Chad, we detailed this last week—but there’s almost as big a penalty for the Broncos to walk away from Russell Wilson after 2024 as there is to do it after this year, meaning the decision the team has to make about its quarterback after Payton’s first season will be a real one. Now, Wilson hasn’t been the problem for Denver. He’s actually been a lot better than he was a year ago, in his first season in Denver. But he hasn’t been good enough to justify the contract, and that’s why I think early ’24 will be the time to cut bait.
After that’s done, I do think Denver will undergo a more thorough retooling, with Payton captaining all of it. Which is why the Broncos are going to listen to trade inquiries on Jerry Jeudy, Courtland Sutton, Garett Bolles, Josey Jewell, Justin Simmons and even Patrick Surtain II over the next six days. The Broncos aren’t close, they need picks and it makes sense exploring getting more.
It’s also, to me, the smart thing to do, if you’re Payton, George Paton or Greg Penner, in charting a course out of this near-decade-long malaise for a very proud franchise.
From Dexter Williams (@agentninja0): Albert, do you have any confidence that the Chargers will start throwing to Quentin Johnston moving forward? Most of the rookie receivers on their respective teams seem to be flourishing while Justin Herbert barely looks QJ’s way.
Dexter, let’s look at the facts first.
Here are the snap numbers for Johnston for the first six games: 22, 10, 16, 33, 35 and 34. The uptick in Week 3 was a result of Mike Williams’s tearing his ACL against the Vikings. And, still, it goes to only about half the snaps in the three most recent games, with Johnston still getting significantly fewer than Josh Palmer (56, 71, 62) and Keenan Allen (49, 70, 59) over that stretch, one in which the tight end group played a lot more, too.
That tells me that Johnston’s still learning the offense and adjusting to the NFL, because the obvious thing to do here, in Williams’s absence, would be to just play the first-rounder.
This, by the way, isn’t uncommon. Seattle’s Jaxon Smith-Njigba has played 58% of the offensive snaps, while the Vikings’ Jordan Addison is at 70%. The Ravens’ Zay Flowers would be the outlier of the group at 87% of the snaps. And a key difference between Flowers and the others? He played four years of college football, while the others played three. All of which is to say it’s a process for young receivers to assimilate to the NFL passing game.
Now, why Johnston’s production has lagged behind the others—he has seven catches for 64 yards through six games—is a different question. Could be that he’s not getting open. Could be that he hasn’t earned Herbert’s trust. Could be how the Chargers are using him. At any rate, it’s worth monitoring going forward. You’d expect some improvement soon.
From Mark Hughes (@mark31333): Any chance the Pats move on from Parker or JuJu at the deadline?
Mark, I bet they’d love to. No one will take on those contracts.
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From Nate (@ColtsguyNate): What NFL team will Jim Harbaugh be coaching in 2024?
Nate, this is an interesting question. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the investigation into Michigan. But it seems like a pretty fair bet, voluntary or not, that he’ll leave his alma mater after this year to pursue the NFL. Because either the allegations are warranted and the choice won’t be his, or they aren’t, and in that case you’d certainly see where he’d be done with being chased by the NCAA.
He’s also been open about the unfinished business he has in the league.
Where would he fit? I’ve said before that I see him as a Bill Parcells type as an NFL coach. And that type, to me, would be ideally suited for a team that’s not far away from competing for a championship. Of the jobs that could open, Washington is one that would make some sense, where you can see key pieces in place and augmentation needed more than a total overhaul. Chicago could be a landing spot, where he played during his NFL career. And maybe he’d lift up Justin Fields like he did Alex Smith in San Francisco.
Then there would be teams that are stocked with vets where a downturn could lead to an owner getting itchy—such as Buffalo or New Orleans or Las Vegas.
Either way, I do like him as an NFL coach. He has a very identifiable style and belief system that’s traveled with him from Stanford to San Francisco to Michigan, and he’s shown himself to be outstanding at hiring a coaching staff. And as the hires of coaches such as Chip Kelly and Pete Carroll showed us over the years, NFL teams don’t really care about college infractions.
From Scott Carisik (@CarasikS): What kind of penalty do you think the Falcons get for the Bijan Robinson-injury thing? Similar to what happened to Mike Tomlin and the Steelers (fines)?
I don’t know, Scott. I just think gambling adds a layer to all of this that didn’t exist before.
For those unaware, the NFL fined Mike Tomlin $25,000 and the Steelers $75,000 for violating the injury report, in regards to then injured QB Ben Roethlisberger, in September 2019. But, again, it was a different world then, and the league is in bed with gambling companies and casinos now, and that does change the dynamic.
From James Palmer (@JamesPalmerTV): Let’s make it a Michigan cheating scandal-only mailbag! A lot to cover there, Albert.
James, since I’m a man of integrity, I’m going to let the facts dictate where that goes.
As you know, that’s how we operate.
From Tyler Grahl (@tyler_grahl): Is Josh McDaniels done in LV?
Tyler, I don’t think he is. I do think this has been proved to be a larger-scale rebuild than coach Josh McDaniels and GM Dave Ziegler thought it would be when they took over two Januarys ago. And the reworking of key elements of the roster last offseason is, to me, proof of that.
The team’s still not good enough on the lines of scrimmage, and it takes time to change that. There’s also the issue at quarterback, with Jimmy Garoppolo hurt again and Aidan O’Connell the closest thing resembling hope for the future at the position. So if you’re owner Mark Davis, the hope would be that next year McDaniels and Ziegler can get a whole lot closer to answering the big questions in those areas.
In the meantime, you’d be looking for incremental improvement as the year goes on. I think you did see it in how the team closed out the Packers and Patriots—those are games I believe the Raiders would’ve lost a year ago. But that was followed by a bad blowout loss in Chicago to an undrafted rookie quarterback.
Which is to say that I believe Davis wants to go forward with the program he invested so deeply in two years ago. But that doesn’t mean there’s no pressure on the guys in charge to show progress over the next couple of months. They’ll have to. Or those postgame meetings Davis has with McDaniels will get a lot more uncomfortable.
