Albert Breer’s NFL Notes: Sam Darnold Praises Klint Kubiak

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Seattle Seahawks
New England Patriots
Inside Drake Maye’s winning run
Sean Payton’s fourth-down call
Los Angeles Rams
Buffalo Bills
Coaching searches
Wil Lutz’s blocked field goal
Philip Rivers
Jacksonville Jaguars

In transit from Denver to Alabama for the Senior Bowl, and delivering a few post-championship game notes …

Seattle Seahawks

I wanted to give Sam Darnold credit for the electric, six-play, 74-yard drive through the heart of the Rams’ defense after the game on Sunday—the Seahawks covered all that ground despite getting the ball with 54 seconds left in the first half and the ball at their own 26.

I raised two throws, in particular, to him. The first was a seam route to Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who survived a big-time hit from Kam Curl to make the grab and move the ball from the Seahawks’ 36 to the Rams’ 22. The second was a corner route, again to Smith-Njigba, thrown into a dead spot in the coverage.

But Darnold wasn’t having it. Instead, he told me that Seattle should’ve scored a play earlier, and that the two aforementioned plays weren’t about him or even Smith-Njigba.

“To be honest, I missed him before the play before the touchdown,” Darnold said. “We should have had a touchdown on the one that I overthrew to him—he had to jump up, and he ended up catching it out of bounds. But he’s an unbelievable player. I think he would say this, too, but those [other two] plays were all the coaches. I mean, he was wide open on both those plays. And what Klint [Kubiak] and our entire offensive staff have been able to come up with is remarkable what they do on a week-to-week basis to get ready for these games.”

“So I got to give it to the coaches on that last touchdown play. That last drive to end the half was huge for the whole team, just for our confidence going into the second half. “

Indeed, that drive put the Rams in chase mode for the rest of the game.

But it also says plenty about the players’ respect for Kubiak, who was prominent on the head coaching interview circuit this month, and is still squarely in the running for the jobs in Las Vegas and Arizona (and Buffalo might want to take a look at him, too). The thing with Kubiak: He’s very much like his father, Gary, a bit blunt, very level and quieter by nature. But Darnold’s words there reflect how his personality hasn’t prevented him from reaching players or from getting the most out of them.

New England Patriots

If it seemed like every time the Patriots had the ball in the second half of Sunday’s game, the drive started with “74 is reporting as eligible,” there’s a reason for that.

No. 74 is third tackle Thayer Munford Jr., and his presence on the field is no accident.

In midseason, the New England run game was in a rut, struggling to find consistency and relying heavily on TreVeyon Henderson to hit home runs. The team was still winning. Drake Maye was rolling. But Mike Vrabel and Josh McDaniels knew that going along like nothing was wrong could wind up costing them against better defenses, more capable of crossing up their young quarterback, and the worsening weather conditions that come in January.

Looking for a spark, McDaniels suggested using big personnel. And it just so happened that Munford, who played the third-tackle role for McDaniels in Vegas in 2022 and ’23, was sitting there for the taking, on the Browns’ practice squad, after having spent most of September on New England’s practice squad. So the Patriots brought him back two days before Thanksgiving, and rolled him out there the following Monday against the Giants.

He played six offensive snaps in that game, 10 against the Bills, and a whopping 32 against the Ravens in Week 16. The Patriots rolled to 246 rushing yards in the Buffalo game. And while the numbers weren’t great against Baltimore, New England took control late by getting the ball to Rhamondre Stevenson.

A month later, the idea couldn’t have been more valuable. Munford played 17 of his 21 offensive snaps Sunday in the second half. He was in on five snaps of New England’s 16-play, 64-yard field goal drive that chewed 9:31 off the clock, and gave the Patriots the game-winning points. He was in for the first play of each of New England’s final five drives. And as the snow dictated the game would be played in a phone booth, the jumbo sets helped extend drives and create better down-and-distance spots as New England leaned on Denver.

The Patriots finished with 141 rushing yards in an environment demanding that they keep the ball on the ground to keep it away from Denver’s playmaking defense. And it happened mainly because the staff figured a day like Sunday might come, where they’d need to win a game a different way.

Inside Drake Maye’s winning run

Speaking of winning the game, there’s been a lot of discussion about Drake Maye’s ad-libbing on his game-icing seven-yard run with less than two minutes left, putting the Patriots in victory formation.

While it’s true his teammates didn’t know he was running, he didn’t really make it up on the fly, either. The Patriots’ first two calls of that series, after Christian Gonzalez’s pick with 2:11 left, were basic outside-zone runs to Stevenson, good for four yards and a yard, to put New England in third-and-5. Then, McDaniels called the same outside-zone run again on third down, but he said to Maye over the headset, “I want you to keep this one.”

McDaniels and the offensive coaches had noticed that the edge defender on the offensive left side was crashing down the line to run down Stevenson on first and second down. So, in what was effectively a predetermined zone-read call, and an old Mike Shanahan staple, the other 10 guys ran the play as if it was outside zone, and Maye was left wide open on the naked bootleg to the backside of the play for the finishing first down.

Sean Payton’s fourth-down call

My two cents on the fourth-down call by Broncos coach Sean Payton: I don’t like the analytics, and that’s not to say the numbers aren’t helpful.

I think analytics often create probabilities based on, say, a particular situation playing out 500 times. That data is useful. However, does that data consider the presence of a quarterback, in Jarrett Stidham, who hadn’t thrown a pass in two years before Sunday? Does it consider the trouble Denver had blocking Milton Williams, who ended up wrecking that play, early on? Does it consider, then, that Denver wasn’t running the ball effectively heading into that spot, which would affect any play-action throw?

These are humans playing a kids’ game. Momentum and emotion, and what happened on the previous handful of plays, go into it. Primarily because in football, similar situations arise all the time, but because of all the variables, no two are the same.

I’d have taken the points there, mainly because it was Denver’s first short-yardage play of the game (a third-and-3, in which they threw for earlier in the drive, was the closest thing to that situation). Stidham was also still getting settled in, and putting the Patriots down 10–0, given how the Denver defense was playing, could have changed New England’s offensive approach for the rest of the first half.

Also, to me, the extra four points you’re going for there aren’t worth giving the other team that kind of opportunity—to flip the momentum and change the game. The Patriots’ defense was ignited from that point forward, creating a turnover on the next possession that New England scored on from the Denver 12, setting up the game’s only touchdown.

Bottom line: You have to play the game for what it is. This one was a rockfight from the start, and even became more so once the snow came, which only amplified every chance each team had to score—and not scoring on that particular chance was a real killer.

Los Angeles Rams

The Rams have some interesting roster decisions to make this offseason, with Kobie Turner, Steve Avila, Bryon Young and Puka Nacua entering contract years. All four have become valuable pieces, as the team has leaned into spending draft capital on players to line the defensive front and populate the offensive skill positions.

The development of three of the four is part and parcel to that strategy, and it’ll be instructive to see if the Rams double down on it with new contracts. And with the team’s struggles at the corner position, which has intentionally received a little less investment, it became a bigger issue late in the year.

Buffalo Bills

The rules will likely prevent the Bills from including Kubiak (or Seattle DC Aden Durde, for that matter) in their coaching search. It’s because the window this week for Super Bowl assistants to talk to teams is only for second interviews—and the window for first interviews was closed before the Bills were eliminated from the playoffs. Buffalo, I’m told, has Kubiak on its list and would absolutely interview him this week if the rules allowed, which essentially means they’re behind the eight ball vs. other teams that advanced in the playoffs.

Coaching searches

The Cardinals, Raiders and Browns are moving into the final stages of their searches. Arizona had Dolphins DC Anthony Weaver at its facility Monday, and the Browns and Raiders were traveling to meet with Rams passing-game coordinator Nathan Scheelhaase and Broncos QBs coach Davis Webb, respectively. We should know something soon.

Wil Lutz’s blocked field goal

Great nugget picked up by James Palmer postgame—he had Broncos kicker Wil Lutz pointing out that the holder’s spot was a yard shorter than usual from the long snapper (at seven yards, rather than eight), which was a result of the lines not being shoveled out from the snow, on his 45-yard miss in the fourth quarter. That, of course, affected the kick’s trajectory, and may have given Patriots special teamer Leonard Taylor III the inches he needed to get his hand on the ball.

Philip Rivers

I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the “Philip Rivers as an NFL coach” storyline. And it’s worth mentioning that this fall, his eldest son, Gunner, is in his final season as a high school quarterback. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if wanting to coach his kid through that was part of Rivers’s thought process.

Jacksonville Jaguars

OC Grant Udinski got a raise in Jacksonville as a precursor to pulling his name out of Cleveland’s search. But I’m told he didn’t do the same in Buffalo, so stay tuned. The Bills, I will say, have been pretty open-minded through their search.