NFL Wild-Card Playoff Takeaways: Jordan Love Is ‘Playing at an MVP Level’
We’ve got nine games and 10 teams left, with a surprise doubleheader coming Monday …
Jordan Love was off the charts Sunday in Dallas. And if you want a colorful description of what the 25-year-old quarterback has become this season for the Green Bay Packers, coach Matt LaFleur gave me one, as the team buses made their way to the airport to get the group back to Wisconsin.
“F---ing stud,” LaFleur says.
Hard to argue.
Love was spectacular in his first career playoff game, picking apart the Cowboys in Dallas.
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If Love wasn’t perfect Sunday, I’ll leave it to you to pick apart what we all saw during Green Bay’s 48–32 rout of the Dallas Cowboys (and yes, it was a rout, even if LaFleur taking his foot off the gas created a scary moment or two at the end). Love’s passer rating actually fell just 1.1 points short of perfect, at 157.2, and his results on the eye test were pretty much right there, too. He connected on 16 of 21 attempts for 272 yards, three touchdowns and no picks.
He made wow throws. What was probably his worst throw of the afternoon went for a 38-yard touchdown. He had everything working, and looked every bit worthy of the throne he inherited from Aaron Rodgers last spring.
And his best play of the day vividly illustrated the level at which Love is operating right now, which is a healthy distance from where he was even at the beginning of the year. It came on a third-and-7 from the Dallas 20, with the Packers up 14–0 with 3:23 left before halftime.
First, LaFleur asked for, and Love gave him, the play call for the situation. Then, as Love approached the line, he identified a zero blitz and adjusted the protection to keep extra blockers in to combat it. After that, he stood in the face of a rush he knew would probably get to him, and with Markquese Bell coming free and leaping at him to close down his throwing window and make it impossible for him to step into the throw, Love flicked his wrist and dropped a dime to Dontayvion Wicks right down the middle of the end zone for a 20-yard score.
With that strike, the game was effectively over.
“He saw a zero blitz right away, maxed it up, and Tucker [Kraft] did a great job, the O-line did a great job, and he allowed the routes to work because usually you can’t hold up that well when somebody all-outs you,” LaFleur says. “They did, and that allowed him to get that extra hitch—and then the catch by Wicks was a hell of a play.”
And a pretty wild throw?
“Totally insane throw,” LaFleur continues.
The kind that very few quarterbacks could make?
“He is playing at such a high level,” LaFleur answered. “Like, he is playing at an MVP level.”
Which was, interestingly enough, just as vividly illustrated by what may have been, again, his worst throw of the afternoon.
You may remember in Week 1, when rookie tight end Luke Musgrave came impossibly open for a 37-yard gain against the Bears. The play, it turns out, is designed to spring him that way, and as such the Packers use it sparingly—and had tucked it away completely since. So when I saw Musgrave come stupid open again against Dallas, the same way he had against Chicago, I had to ask LaFleur about it.
“That was the same play, buddy,” the coach says.
Turns out, the Packers put it back in this week. But that’s not the end of it. The snap before Green Bay ran it, LaFleur actually had it called. Love didn’t like the look, checked out of it, and Aaron Jones broke loose for 27 yards. Afterward, Love gave his coach a look.
“He was signaling over that he wanted the same play call again,” LaFleur says. “So we called it.”
Love wound up underthrowing Musgrave pretty badly. But the tight end was so wide open—because it was the right call at the right time—that he could wait for it at the 15, gather it and sprint to the end zone for six without incident.
“There’s a lot of trust there, I would say, between myself [and] him,” LaFleur says. “It’s been so much fun to be a part of this journey with him. To see how far he’s come, I couldn’t be happier for him.”
And LaFleur’s not alone.
Before all this growth that’s become as obvious to the rest of us as it is to a football coach, there were a lot of Packers people pouring into Love, and investing in his development and, as a result, rooting for him. Because as they worked with him, they became more and more convinced that they had not just the right player, but also the right person—a kid LaFleur described to GM Brian Gutekunst before the 2020 draft as “just a very likable dude.”
“And I think that’s important from that position to see that love, and just to see how he’s worked to get to where he is now from where he was,” LaFleur said. “He’s done it, man. He’s done it.”
Which, considering how high the bar is at that position in that place, is pretty remarkable.
Goff beat his old team in his new home Sunday night in a game that came down to the wire.
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Detroit got the party it deserved Sunday night. And maybe what I loved most about the Detroit Lions’ gritty, tough 24–23 win was how Dan Campbell had his team, playing its first home playoff game in 30 years, close it out.
Quite simply, he put the ball in the hands of Jared Goff on the night of Matthew Stafford’s return to Detroit—three years after Stafford was traded to the Rams and Goff was included as what outsiders assessed as a salary dump—and had his quarterback go win the game for him.
The Lions’ last possession started with 4:07 left. The Rams had just one timeout. Detroit could’ve loaded up and just run the clock down behind one of football’s best lines, played the odds and not risked stopping the clock or losing yardage if something went wrong.
Instead, Goff threw a swing pass to David Montgomery on second-and-7 for 11 yards to move the chains once, then a curl on second-and-9 for another 11 to move them again—and put the Lions in victory formation. Which made it so Stafford got the ball only once after Rams kicker Brett Maher kicked a 29-yard field goal to cut the Detroit lead to 24–23 with 8:10 left.
“I have unwavering faith in Goff in the most critical moments!” Campbell texted an hour and a half after the game. “Today he did what he’s done for two years by sealing it for us.”
And the Lions did what they’ve started to do more recently and, just as poignantly, Campbell did what he’s trained them to do—bet on themselves.
So, for now, and with the Cowboys’ loss, what it means is Detroit will get to throw another party next weekend, with either the Eagles or Buccaneers coming to town Sunday. Bigger picture, this will be the first team in the franchise’s 94-year history to host two playoff games in the same season, which is really cool, for one, and also an indication of how much has changed since Campbell and GM Brad Holmes got to town, with the trade request from Stafford already in hand.
It just so happens that the other quarterback in that trade has had a lot to do with it.
“I’m just so proud of the coaching staff and these players for rewarding Detroit with a home playoff win,” Campbell texted. “Our fans took it to another level today, and it helped us win! To those fans who have kept the faith, you deserve this! To the doubters, stay off our train—it’s too late for you!”
Campbell, as you can see, was pretty excited.
He’s got every right to be. Goff, too.
We know how great Mahomes is, but the Chiefs’ defense may be the key to reaching another Super Bowl.
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The blistering weather in Kansas City gave us all a look at how the Chiefs might have their best shot at repeating. And it’s not, believe it or not, by leaning even more on Patrick Mahomes, though the two-time Super Bowl MVP did sacrifice his helmet to the cause on this particularly frigid Saturday night at Arrowhead.
No, their path, at this point, to Las Vegas and another Lombardi Trophy could actually run through a Steve Spagnuolo defense that, yes, was aided by the weather—but also really did carry the night, as the Chiefs unceremoniously dumped the Dolphins from the AFC bracket by a count of 26–7.
That defense, very clearly, is no longer just a sidecar to Kansas City’s Lamborghini of a quarterback.
“I’ve said, back to the offseason, that this defense is special, that we were creating something special,” All-Pro corner Trent McDuffie told me afterward. “Throughout this whole year, guys have just continued to work and work and build that chemistry and build that trust in each other. Tonight, I felt like everything was running smooth. The chemistry was there. Guys are just going out there and playing. We trust each other. We know where guys are going to be.
“It allows us to play so much faster and just communicate so much sharper. So when it’s cold and things are going fast, there’s not those mental errors, those little mistakes that can haunt you.”
And no one better exemplified that than the Chiefs’ do-it-all burgeoning star at corner.
The first example came with 4:35 left in the first half, and Kansas City’s lead at 13–7, with the Dolphins in fourth-and-1 at the Chiefs’ 44. The Dolphins ran a rub that caused McDuffie to crash into L’Jarius Sneed, knocking him off-balance and freeing up Tyreek Hill. But McDuffie gathered himself, located Hill and rebounded back in time to knock away Tua Tagovailoa’s throw to Hill. The Dolphins didn’t get back into Chiefs territory again until midway through the fourth quarter and were down 26–7 by then.
Which brings us to the second example, on that final Miami surge—a bone-chilling hit McDuffie put on Hill to short-circuit the drive and, really, exemplify the way this night went. Tagovailoa swung the ball out to Hill in the flat. McDuffie had him sized up from 10 yards out, with all that runway and buildup to deliver the blow, turn third-and-10 into fourth-and-16, and essentially send the Dolphins packing.
“The weather can affect some guys,” McDuffie says. “I always say it’s the only way I know how to play football—fast, physical. No matter what weather, no matter what’s going on, that’s always going to be the foundation of how I play. Go hit somebody in the mouth.”
It’s also an easy way to sum up the game itself. The Chiefs looked ready for the elements, and just as ready to see whether their opponent was—and the Dolphins sure didn’t look like they were.
Along the way, Mahomes was tough and efficient, absorbing the blow that cost him a chunk of his helmet and throwing for 262 yards and a touchdown; and the Kansas City run game was rugged and persistent, grinding out 147 yards on 34 carries. But it was that defense that took the Dolphins completely out of their element, and made sure the game would be played on the host’s terms.
Which, by the way, doesn’t mean those guys weren’t cold, too. In fact, McDuffie told me he covered himself in Vaseline to deal with it, while some of his teammates worse scuba suits (the old Tom Brady trick) or heated vests. And when asked whether he’d ever played in anything like that before, he said, “No, sir, and, honestly, I ain’t trying to do that again.”
But the Chiefs were more than ready for what they were faced with.
“It shows the resilience … the mental toughness of this team,” McDuffie continues. “This year, we’ve battled so much and guys really just stuck together. … With a young [defense], I feel like guys are still trying to go out there and prove something. There’s still that chip on their shoulder. There’s still that feeling that we can go out there and do anything.”
And it may even be the reason for the Chiefs getting back to where they’ve finished three of the last four years.
The Texans are moving on to the divisional round after a decisive win over the Browns on Saturday.
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The Texans and Browns could both go home satisfied Saturday. I know, I know. It sounds weird to say that when one team absolutely bludgeons another by 31 points in the playoffs. So we can start with the easy part—and we’ve got more on Houston coming in the MMQB lead on the site Monday morning—which is that the Texans are in an enviable spot.
They have a trio of 22-year-old, franchise-level players at premium positions, in quarterback C.J. Stroud, pass rusher Will Anderson Jr. and corner Derek Stingley Jr. They have a coach, in DeMeco Ryans, who’s just 39 and has superstar potential. And what really makes them dangerous is that the kids on the roster who are growing up so fast are well aware of just how good they can be.
“We knew what team we had,” Stroud told me, postgame. “We knew that we can do whatever we put our minds to, with hard work and dedication. And I’m just blessed enough to be able to be with a great coach, with great teammates. And we’re putting it together so it’s on to the next one.”
And the next one sure won’t be a layup for whichever team draws Houston next, regardless of whether that’s the Ravens or Chiefs in the divisional round (which is pending Monday’s Bills-Steelers result), based on what we saw Saturday.
Now, as for the team that lost 45–14, I don’t blame people in Cleveland for doubting everything they saw over the past four months, since Browns fans have certainly had the rug pulled out from underneath them before.
I’d just tell you to trust your eyes. In their fourth year, the strength of what coach Kevin Stefanski and GM Andrew Berry have built was evident. They won with four starting quarterbacks in a league that was drowning in incapable backup signal-callers this year. They won with their fourth and fifth tackles, with many teams struggling to find two. They won with their most important offensive player, Nick Chubb, out for the year, and with fourth and fifth safeties, and on and on and on.
That, I’d say …
• Is a credit to Stefanski’s coaching agility, allowing for the team to play different types of games with the players they were able to put on the field in a given week.
• Is a credit to assistant coaches such as DC Jim Schwartz, OC Alex Van Pelt and, as much as anyone else, line coach Bill Callahan, for very obvious reasons.
• Is a credit to Berry and his assistant GMs, Glenn Cook and Cat Raîche, for filling the roster with suitable answers for injury questions, and finding more (see: Flacco, Joe) when the roster might not have one.
• Is a credit to the locker room for riding out all the bumps, when it would’ve been pretty easy to start looking at mid-January flights to Mexico, given how tattered the lineup was at midseason.
And what I’m saying is there’s a lot to look forward to for the Browns, in my humble opinion. In fact, I’m willing to go this far on it—if Cleveland can somehow summon the 2019/2020 Deshaun Watson out of the ashes of this season, then I don’t see why the Browns wouldn’t be in the Super Bowl conversation a year from now.
What the Bills and Steelers have gone through the past couple of days hasn’t been ideal, but I’m not sure that looms as much more than an inconvenience, as far as how it’ll impact Monday's game. And that’s because as I asked the two teams about the logistical challenges Saturday and Sunday presented, and who helped them through it, I got a collective shrug, with both saying it really wasn’t that big a deal.
For the Bills, the truth is this storm wasn’t nearly as disruptive as the two blizzards that displaced them last year. Buffalo finished its walkthrough Saturday around 11:30 a.m. ET and, as the team wrapped up, one coach approached GM Brandon Beane saying he heard the game was moved. Beane called the league, and the league told him nothing was official yet. Within a half hour, though, it would be, with New York Governor Kathy Hochul holding a press conference to announce it, after consulting with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
The Bills sent their coaches and players home and, with a travel ban instituted, they stayed home Saturday night and through most of Sunday. The team’s operations folks, led by Andy Major and Brendan Rowe, got snow removal for the stadium set up and worked ahead to make sure there’d be rooms put aside at the team hotel for Sunday, as there were Saturday. When the travel ban stuck for the Southtowns suburbs (Orchard Park included) late into Sunday, the team told everyone to stay home Sunday night and held meetings over Zoom.
As for the Steelers, they kicked off their walkthrough at their facility at 12 p.m. Saturday, getting word early on in the session that the game would be Monday. They went through with their practice, with Mike Tomlin cutting it short by maybe five or 10 minutes. Then, Pittsburgh repeated its Saturday routine on Sunday, with morning meetings, the 12 p.m. walkthrough (again) and a 3 p.m., 35-minute flight to Buffalo. The only delay there was to deice the plane before takeoff, and the team landed to sunshine at the Buffalo airport.
The Steelers were at their hotel by 5 p.m. Sunday afternoon.
So I’d expect two teams ready to go Monday afternoon. The bigger question, to me, is how it’ll affect next week. The winner will play Sunday, rather than Saturday, in the divisional weekend. But even playing Sunday leaves the winner playing on six days of rest against (for Buffalo) a Chiefs team on eight days or (for Pittsburgh) a Ravens team coming off a bye.
Which means if there’s an impact to all this, it’ll probably be felt next week, not this week.
The Commanders’ process moved fast. And, really, the wheels started turning a little over three weeks ago—when former Golden State Warriors GM Bob Myers, who’d gone to work as an advisor for Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, reached out to former Minnesota Vikings GM Rick Spielman, and asked whether he’d come to Miami to meet with new Commanders owner Josh Harris. Spielman’s been living on Florida’s Gulf Coast and is in Fort Lauderdale every weekend for his work at CBS.
That made things easy on everyone. Spielman got there over the weekend of Week 16, and Harris told him that while no decision had been made on coach Ron Rivera or his front office, he wanted to be ready to roll if the Commanders did move on. He invited Spielman to join Myers on his search committee and, as soon as Spielman accepted, asked the old GM to start doing background work to find a head of football operations and head coach.
Two weeks later, the original list of 15 that Spielman worked off was whittled to five. Three days after that, 49ers assistant GM Adam Peters was aboard as new head of football ops.
The Commanders still have a ton of work to do, of course. That includes hiring a head coach. It also includes filling out both that coach’s staff, and Peters’s staff, making decisions on incumbents such as Martin Mayhew, and starting to build a reimagined football operation as Peters and his counterpart see fit.
But a big domino has fallen. Here’s how that part of this came together in D.C.
• Spielman’s work through the final two weeks of the season was done quietly. He made calls but didn’t tell folks who he was working for, gathering information discreetly. Then, the Monday after Week 18, once Harris let Rivera go, Spielman drove to Miami and got to work talking with folks such as former Arizona Cardinals GM and Fritz Pollard Alliance exec Rod Graves, former New York Giants GM Jerry Reese, former Jacksonville Jaguars exec Michael Huyghue and former Pittsburgh Steelers GM Kevin Colbert, all of whom worked in the league for decades, and attended last month’s accelerator program.
He was on the phone from 7:30 a.m. to about 11 p.m., checking every box on the five guys he’d identified, all of whom carried assistant GM titles: Peters, as well as Kansas City’s Mike Borgonzi, Cleveland’s Glenn Cook, Chicago’s Ian Cunningham, Philadelphia’s Alec Halaby.
• The first round of interviews happened at Harris’s offices in Miami. Each candidate spent two and a half hours with Spielman, then another two and a half hours with Harris and Myers. Borgonzi, Cook and Peters went Tuesday, in that order, then Cook and Halaby went Wednesday.
• The group then reconvened to pick two finalists, Peters and Cunningham, then met with three of Harris’s co-owners—Mitchell Rales, David Blitzer and Magic Johnson—to get a consensus and finalize those two as the leaders who’d get 90-minute second interviews Thursday morning.
• After that, the larger group met one last time to pick Peters. It was close between the final two, with Peters’s seven years of experience as a No. 2, and the success his 49ers have had serving as a tiebreaker. (Cunningham is in his second year as a top lieutenant, and while the Bears seem headed in the right direction, they’re not there yet.)
And, again, there’s still plenty to figure out. But the framework now is in place. The club is set up like Harris’s other pro teams, the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and NHL’s New Jersey Devils, with a head of business (president Jason Wright) and head of football (Peters) reporting directly to the owner. The plan is for the coach to report to Peters, and finding that coach is obviously the next big priority (they’ve already interviewed Baltimore Ravens coaches Mike Macdonald and Anthony Weaver), with elements such as analytics and sports science left to be built out.
For now, it’s fair to say landing Peters is a big win. He’s been picky on taking interviews the past couple of years, and it so happened that just as he fit Washington (with Harris looking for an expert in personnel, and a guy who had knowledge in other areas, and was humble enough to know what he didn’t know and find experts in those areas to help him), Washington presented Peters with what he was looking for.
So six months in as an owner, Harris has made his biggest hire. And now, together, they’ll get to the hard part.
Mayo will take over after 24 seasons with Bill Belichick on the Patriots’ sideline.
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The Patriots’ hire of Jerod Mayo was no knee-jerk reaction or panicky decision in the wake of Bill Belichick’s firing last week. Patriots owner Robert Kraft has known Mayo for nearly 16 years. He had him for eight years as a player, with Mayo serving as his team’s captain for seven of those seasons. He helped him break into the world of finance when he was done playing and had him as an assistant coach the past five years.
With that in mind, here are a few things you need to know on all of this ahead of Mayo’s press conference Wednesday in Foxborough …
• As the timing, and his contract would indicate, Mayo was the guy from the jump, and the availability of Patriots Hall of Famer Mike Vrabel (who’d have been a home run hire) did little to move Kraft off his spot. The reason? Well, it actually relates back to the hire of Belichick. Kraft is fond of telling the story of when Belichick was one of Bill Parcells’s assistants in New England in 1996, and how he became enthralled with the coach’s command over the salary cap and team building—and considered hiring him after Parcells left.
The problem at the time was that things ran so hot with Parcells that Kraft saw hiring one of his right-hand men as impractical at the time. He’s told people since he immediately regretted not following his instincts on that one and made up for it three years later by hiring Belichick. And, sure, it sounds a little hokey, but this is a case of Kraft following what’s in his gut, the way he did in 2000, and the way he wishes he had in 1997.
• The gut feeling on Mayo, I’m told, is about what the Krafts believe is most important in a head coach in today’s NFL—leadership, work ethic, emotional intelligence, overall intellect and, maybe most of all, an ability to communicate, connect with and motivate young guys. The Krafts, again, aren’t guessing on that part. They’ve seen it as Mayo swiftly ascended through the ranks of Belichick’s coaching staff. He’s been the voice leading the defensive meeting room, more or less, since he dived into coaching for the 2019 season.
As such, they gave Mayo a contract last year, to stop him from interviewing for the Panthers’ job, that laid out a clear succession plan, with language allowing for the Patriots to skip a drawn-out search process and simply put him in place. But it wasn’t the first time the Krafts had spoken to Mayo about it. They’d told him, and others, as far back as two years ago that if Belichick were to have to leave abruptly for any reason, he’d be the guy they’d put in charge.
• Another thing that bolsters the link here is that Mayo has shown, while his heart is in football, the intellectual agility to apply his skill set in another area. The Krafts introduced him to Optum CEO Larry Renfro, Optum hired him, and Renfro’s crew thought enough of him, and his management potential, that they were willing to send him to Harvard Business School to get his MBA.
• Now, all of that does not mean the Patriots think that Mayo can step in and do everything Belichick did; they don’t. The plan for now is to empower a scouting department that, over the years, has had talented folks frustrated that they weren’t being heard in the final decision-making process. The N’Keal Harry pick (which we outlined in our Thursday takeout on the team) was a flash point for a lot of those guys.
The Krafts do believe they’ve got good people in scouting, and people they know Mayo can work with (again, they’re not guessing on that). So, for now, director of player personnel Matt Groh, director of scouting Eliot Wolf, senior personnel adviser Pat Stewart, pro scouting director Steve Cargile and college scouting director Cam Williams will run free agency and the draft, as the Patriots consider how they want to reshape the department.
• Kraft is headed into his 31st season as owner and has never employed a general manager. That doesn’t mean he won’t decide he needs one in a month, after the draft, or next January. But, for now, he’s going to watch how the personnel department works in a new setup, where big decisions will be theirs. He could decide, in time, he doesn’t like it and go hire a Patriot alum with GM experience (Scott Pioli, Jon Robinson, Thomas Dimitroff, Bob Quinn, Dave Ziegler, etc.) to be VP of player personnel or even his first GM.
But they’re going to take their time on that and give the guys in-house a big opportunity to show what they’ve got. Which was reflected in the Krafts’ meeting extensively Friday with Groh and Wolf right after Mayo was officially installed as Belichick’s successor.
• Mayo, for his part, has already shown a desire to work with personnel folks, inviting the advance scouts from the pro side into his defensive meeting room, both to observe and to present their evaluations to the players on different opponents and individual players. And he’s on board with moving forward as the Krafts are setting this up, with the idea, on his end, being to knock down barriers and silos within the organization.
• As for staff, I’d expect the Krafts to empower Mayo to fill out the staff as he sees fit, with some coaches likely to follow Belichick, and for Mayo to conduct a full search for an offensive coordinator. While it’ll likely include incumbent Bill O’Brien, who could also wind up going with Belichick, I think the Patriots are going to be very open-minded in trying to find the right guy for what’ll probably be Mayo’s most important hire.
And, just to wrap this up, one other thing worth noting is that Belichick’s sons, defensive play-caller and linebackers coach Steve, and safeties coach Brian, have both already been offered the opportunity to return to the team for 2024. Mayo and the elder son (Steve) have grown close as they’ve collaborated to run the Patriots’ defense the past five years.
Richard Seymour is an interesting figure in the Raiders’ coaching search, and one who shouldn’t be ignored. The Pro Football Hall of Famer spent only a third of his career—the final four years—with the Raiders. And he’ll be forever remembered as an early foundational piece for the Patriots’ dynasty and, generally, simply, a Patriot.
But in his post-football years, his time as a Raider has opened doors.
One, he’s on owner Mark Davis’s search committee for the team’s next head coach, alongside team president Sandra Douglass Morgan, SVP of football administration Tom Delaney, board of directors member Larry Delsen, and adviser and former NFL exec Ken Herock. Seymour’s voice, I’m told, has been a valuable one for the group, which still has a ways to go with Saturday’s interview of interim GM Champ Kelly wrapping up the first round of GM interviews and the coach search ongoing.
That said, it might just be the first step for Seymour to get back into the NFL in a full-time capacity. Davis’s legendary father, Al, identified the big defensive lineman as someone with superior leadership skills and intellect, and had talked to him, before Davis’s 2011 passing, about a role in the front office whenever Seymour chose to retire. In time, Seymour got closer to Mark Davis, and the offer to join the team in some capacity stood.
The issue had been that Seymour and his wife were East Coast people, with four kids, and so it would have been tough for them to uproot from the Atlanta area to work in Oakland.
So Mark Davis took advantage of the relationship in other ways, leaning on Seymour for insight and wisdom as he learned the ropes as an NFL owner. And the result has been continued conversation on what might happen when Seymour and his wife become empty-nesters—their youngest is a little more than a year away graduating high school.
This, then, with a new GM and coach coming in, would set up as the natural entry point for Seymour to take a bigger-picture role with the team after having some say in the search for those two positions. Seymour’s taken courses through the NFL to prepare to work in such a job. Again, he has the leadership skills and smarts to do it. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we see the next chapter of a once great player’s NFL story start to unfold soon.
It’s possible to think Mike McCarthy has done a good job in Dallas and also understand why Jerry Jones might move on. I like to traffic in reality, and the reality of this situation is that the Cowboys’ owner will turn 82 this year, and has a roster ready to win right now. Guys such as Tyron Smith, Zack Martin and DeMarcus Lawrence aren’t getting any younger. Others, such as CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons, are going to need new contracts soon. And then there’s the decision on how much to pay Dak Prescott, too.
If Jones wants to act with urgency, that’s his right.
Dallas COO Stephen Jones, for his part, has long loved defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, and the Seattle job coming open might force the Cowboys to show Quinn just how much they think of him. Then, there’s Belichick, with whom the Joneses have built a very solid relationship through league events and football business over the past few years. And former Tennessee Titans coach Mike Vrabel, I think, would be all ears if the Cowboys approached him about the job.
That said, as of right now, the job isn’t open, and it’s not like McCarthy’s been some sort of mess. The fourth-year coach has won 12 games in each of the past three years, posting a regular season mark of 36–15 in that span, while leading the league in scoring in 2021 and ’23, and finishing third in ’22. But they’ve won only one playoff game over that time, and Jones’s team hasn’t been to the NFC title game in 28 years (the fifth-longest such drought in the NFL, bested only by the Browns, Commanders, Lions and Dolphins), and all this can affect a guy’s mindset.
If Jones feels Quinn, Belichick or Vrabel can get his team there, should he do it? Again, it’s hard to say McCarthy deserves to be on the chopping block. But I can understand why, in the situation he’s in right now, personally and with the team he’s got on hand, now is the time to make a move.
There’s a lot going on. So let’s waste no time, and get you our quick-hitting takeaways for this third Monday in January …
• The Raiders’ search will focus on head coach candidates soon. And with the first round of GM interviews wrapping up over the weekend, it sounds like Colts assistant GM Ed Dodds would be the top challenger to interim GM Champ Kelly for the job. For what it’s worth, I’ve also heard that Kelly and interim coach Antonio Pierce aren’t necessarily a package deal. In other words, Kelly and Pierce could both be hired, but those will be decisions made independently of one another.
• It was interesting hearing Maxx Crosby say on his podcast this week that “we f---ed it all up” by not hiring Rich Bisaccia full-time after the playoff run in 2021 that followed the Jon Gruden mess. Davis certainly listens to his players, and has listened specifically to Crosby, Josh Jacobs and Davante Adams ahead of making big decisions. Those guys have been unified in their support of Pierce. One of the obvious keys with Pierce will be his staff, though I’ve heard from people there the former Giants linebacker does, to use a cliché, know what he doesn’t know and would look to hire staff to cover his trouble spots.
• The Seahawks’ job, on the surface, is really attractive. Great city. Deep-pocketed owners. An ascending young roster coming off a pair of loaded draft classes. An accomplished GM, in John Schneider, and experienced personnel staff. But there is a drawback few are talking about, and that’s the prospect that the team could be sold within the next couple of years. And a team getting sold usually means a lot of people winding up out of work.
• We’re a week out from the college football national title game, and I actually think there are two assistant coaches from that one who will garner NFL interest in the coming weeks. One is Washington’s outgoing offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, who is seemingly ticketed for Alabama to serve in the same role he did for Kalen DeBoer in Seattle. The other is Michigan defensive coordinator Jesse Minter. The assumption is that Minter will follow Jim Harbaugh to an NFL job, but if Harbaugh doesn’t wind up going, I’d bet there’ll be a lot of interest from the pros in poaching him from Ann Arbor.
• Now that the dust has settled on Wink Martindale’s dustup with the Giants, the free-agent defensive coordinator will be an interesting name to watch. His scheme, run by Mike Macdonald in Baltimore and Minter at Michigan, is a hot one. The Jaguars are bringing him in to interview for their DC job Tuesday.
• My buddy Andrea Kremer’s done a lot of great work with the Concussion Legacy Foundation, and one thing she’s preached in speaking out at their events is how the media has to learn how to talk about concussions on the air. For what it’s worth, that was a pretty big problem on the networks this weekend. And honestly, I really do feel invested in this, because the survival of the sport, as I see it, depends on people having honest conversations on the topic, rather than just protecting against legal liability or bad PR.
• How Monday night affects the Eagles’ staffing going forward bears watching. The front office has been aggressive in the past in pushing change when things have gone south (to be fair, on balance, they’ve also been right a lot in knowing when to pull the plug).
• And now, the Dolphins are looking at the price on Tagovailoa going up to $23.17 million for 2024, with a decision to make on whether to pay him long-term. I think they probably should. But I don’t know that it’s a slam dunk the way it was for his draft classmates Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert.
• A new one in the always wild world of college recruiting—the University of Miami has flipped former Washington State QB Cam Ward off his commitment to … the 2024 NFL draft.
• Speaking of the draft, Monday is the deadline for underclassmen to declare, and five of the presumed top six quarterbacks—North Carolina’s Drake Maye, LSU’s Jayden Daniels, Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy, Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. and Oregon’s Bo Nix—are in. What’s the delay with USC’s Caleb Williams? I don’t know. But I do know in recent weeks, he’s been doing prep for the draft with NFL-experienced quarterbacks coaches.
