Albert Breer’s NFL Takeaways: The Patriots Don’t Want to Be Called Cinderella

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Quick-hitters

Sunday’s conference title games, and a whole lot more in the takeaways.

New England Patriots

The Patriots don’t want to be anyone’s Cinderella. But it was hard not to see it that way—in a Gillette Stadium snow globe—as the clock ticked down and the crowd belted out Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer. In so many ways, the moment illustrated how Mike Vrabel’s first team in New England has been viewed from the outside: A scrappy, talent-deficient bunch, leaning on its new coach and a second-year quarterback playing at an MVP level.

How could a team that went 4–13 in 2023 and ’24 be in this spot? The notion of this scene, punctuating a breezy 28–16 win over the Texans and their vaunted defense, seemed too far-fetched to even pray for five months ago.

Yet, here were Vrabel’s Patriots, 16 wins later, headed for the AFC title game. And they’ll be the first ones to tell you that they’ve arrived at this point of the NFL season on a whole lot more than fairy dust. All along, the players on a roster that Vrabel and personnel chief Eliot Wolf, along with lieutenants such as Ryan Cowden and John Streicher, built into a contender saw a team that was better than most of us (my hand’s up) imagined possible.

In a quiet moment at the end of the locker room, with a black hoodie on and a backpack slung over his right shoulder, ready to head out into a white winter New England night, the team’s 23-year-old superstar quarterback wasn’t afraid to say as much. He knew what people were saying about their schedule. But he also knew his team wouldn’t wilt as the competition stiffened.

“We’re not trying to prove anybody wrong or anybody right,” Drake Maye told me. “And when we’re in games, we’re playing good defense, trying to show good teams that we can play with them. I think we’ve done that all year. I don’t think we’ve shied away yet.

“We haven’t really gotten our butts kicked by anybody.”

It was a subtle way for Maye to point to the obvious—maybe we’ve all underrated what we’ve been watching. Because if the talent were still deficient, as it so clearly was the two years before this one, someone certainly would’ve exposed that by now.

The reality is that it’s actually been the opposite. Seven of the Patriots’ 14 wins came by double-digit margins, and both of their playoff wins have as well. New England’s three losses, all one-possession games, were by a combined 18 points. Their point differential for the season was plus-170, which ranked behind only the Seahawks (191) and the Rams (172).

Yes, the schedule was a factor. But that doesn’t mean the Patriots aren’t good.

“I don’t think we buy into what everyone else [says],” Stefon Diggs told me, as he was leaving Gillette Stadium. “Everybody that comes into work each and every day here ain’t over here saying we got a Cinderella story. Like, nah, we come in and work hard, we do what we are supposed to—and we try our best on Sundays. It’s not too much of a story. Everybody else can buy into that narrative. For us, we try to be a good football team, a well-coached football team, and do the right things consistently.”

So much of that is due to the near-spotless offseason overhaul that Vrabel, Wolf, the coaching staff and personnel department orchestrated. Diggs was a big-ticket item that hit, as was Milton Williams. Mid-level free agents such as K’Lavon Chaisson and Khyris Tonga, twin terrors on the defensive line on Sunday, are part of it, too. As has been a bumper crop of draftees, headlined by Will Campbell, TreVeyon Henderson and Craig Woodson.

But on this day, it was as much about the guys Vrabel inherited.

It was DeMario “Pop” Douglas, sixth-round pick in 2023, taking a slant on fourth-and-1, 28 yards to the house to start the scoring. It was Marcus Jones, a ’22 third-rounder, picking off a C.J. Stroud throw that had popped in the air on a Chaisson hit and running it back 26 yards for a touchdown after the Texans took their only lead of the game, 10–7, and had a chance to add to it. And it was Kayshon Boutte, another ’23 sixth-rounder, notching a spectacular catch on third-and-4 with 13 minutes left for a 32-yard touchdown to push the lead to 28–16.

That, by the way, came against a historic Texans defense, which had a very clear and concise talent edge coming in. Or so everyone thought.

“This has become a really good team,” another holdover, Rhamondre Stevenson, said. “We know what the Texans’ defense brought and what they were going to bring throughout the week—great defense, especially when you look at the numbers and stats. They’re up there in everything. So we knew it was going to be a hard fight. But we knew we’re good, too. Our offense is good, too. We know how to get the ball rolling good up front. We’re disciplined.

“So, no Cinderella stories around here.”

This story may not be unlike one Vrabel was a part of a generation ago, in his first year as a player with the Patriots. That year, 2001, the Patriots came out of nowhere to win a Super Bowl, and that group was considered a ragtag outfit, pieced together with underdog draft picks (like the guy who wore No. 12) and mostly forgotten free agents.

That team had Tom Brady, Matt Light, Troy Brown, Richard Seymour, Willie McGinest, Tedy Bruschi, Ted Johnson, Ty Law, Lawyer Milloy and Adam Vinatieri. That foundation won two more championships and was much better than anyone thought at the time.

And it was a group that was famously together, insisting on being introduced as a team at the Super Bowl, the way this group has become.

“We’re just trying to play for ourselves and play for each other,” Maye said.

Los Angeles Rams

The Rams had to pull out all the stops in frigid Chicago. And one of the measures they went to in order to deal with the cold was, as mentioned on the NBC broadcast, finding the spiciest vegetable imaginable.

“There were some guys on the team pouring cayenne pepper on their feet,” safety Kam Curl told me postgame. “That’s something I’ve never seen before. I didn’t try it this time, but they said it worked. So I’m going to think about it. But I might not do it. That was pretty crazy.”

So, too, was the game, and it took that kind of resourcefulness for L.A. to eke this one out.

The final was 20–17, and there were too many big moments to count in a game that felt like it was being played on the Blackhawks’ ice, rather than the Bears’ grass, because every play felt magnified by the conditions.

There was a fourth-down touchdown from the Bears on their second drive, mixed in with three fourth-down stops by the Rams’ rugged defense—the first a pick by Cobie Durant, the second with Curl leading a group of Rams to bury Kyle Monangai in the backfield, and the third an Omar Speights pass breakup with 3:03 to go, and L.A. up 17–10.

There was then a fifth fourth-down attempt from the Bears, which produced the wildest play of the playoffs: with four yards to gain, the ball at the Rams’ 14 and 27 seconds left. On the play, Williams retreated to the 40, and launched a moonshot that Cole Kmet ran under and caught in the back corner of the end zone to force overtime.

“Nothing went wrong,” Curl said. “That’s just a free play. Caleb makes those types of plays; that’s the type of guy he is. Throwing it up to a big guy like Kmet—he kind of pushed my dog Cobie Durant at the end to get the ball, but the ref didn’t call anything. So when that happened, we just had to reset and forget everything.”

And that’s when Curl made an even bigger play in overtime, stopping a Bears drive that had moved from the Chicago 16 into Rams territory, giving the hosts a shot to end it with a field goal. On the play, Williams tried to lead DJ Moore across the field. Moore slowed down. Curl, recognizing the play, didn’t slow down, essentially running the receiver’s route for him and snaring the ball.

“There was a little bit of tell—the shots they like to take, they go in a certain direction,” Curl said. “We saw that on film. And when the play started, I could see what routes were developing. And I knew I had my corner backside to help me, and I was in the post, as the post safety. So I went to take the shot, he threw the ball and I made the play.”

Matthew Stafford did the rest, with big-time throws to Colby Parkinson, Davante Adams and Puka Nacua setting up Harrison Mevis’s 42-yard game-winner and sending the Rams back to Seattle, where they lost another overtime thriller in December.

So what this one lacked in football aesthetics, the Rams made up for in guts, scratching past the Bears to get another shot at the Seahawks.

As for what they’re expecting when they get that shot, it could be more of the same.

“It’s going to be a game of the defenses like today—both defenses were hooping today,” Curl said. “I feel like that’s going to be the name of the game— whichever defense plays the best is going to win the game.”

That was the Rams on Sunday, barely.

Seattle Seahawks

The Seahawks are pushing all the right buttons—and have the most complete team in football right now. This isn’t just that they absolutely blew the wounded 49ers into a million pieces on Saturday night. It’s how quickly they did it, and how just about every phase and facet of the operation was in on it.

How do you score 41 points with your quarterback throwing for 124 yards? Here’s how:

• You have your midseason acquisition/big-play machine, Rashid Shaheed, take the opening kickoff back 95 yards for a touchdown.

• You stop your opponent on fourth-and-1 near midfield on their first possession, and then have Ernest Jones IV (a trade acquisition last year) wrestle the ball loose from Jake Tonges on their second possession to set up short fields for your offense.

• Your offense turns that turnover-on-downs and that turnover into 10 points, possessing the ball to keep your defense, playing with a ton of momentum, fresh.

And if it’s 17–0 in the blink of an eye, now you can lean into your run game (175 yards on 33 carries) and get more exotic on defense because your opponent gets more predictable (Brock Purdy finished with a 54.6 passer rating). Which is how Seattle’s virtuoso performance at an electric Lumen Field pretty much defined the well-worn complementary football cliché.

“I think it’s fair to say that this was a game where all three phases of football were really firing on all cylinders. Really complementary football,” all-pro defensive lineman Leonard Williams said over the phone an hour after the game. “The kickoff team was doing its thing, putting us in a great position on defense. The offense was capitalizing on offensive turnovers. It’s easier said than done, but I think every team says it wants to be a team that performs well in all three phases of football.

“And it’s truly one of the [first] times I’ve ever been on one that has been able to do that.”

So how did they get there?

It’s pretty interesting. I’ve mentioned in this space over the course of this season that the Seahawks really felt like, in Mike Macdonald’s second season, they’d worked the roster to a point where it fit his vision for the team.

Asked to sum up what that looks like, Williams said Macdonald wants a team that’s “loose and focused,” which has been a mantra around that place for the past two years. “It makes it fun to be at work,” he continued. “And when you make it a fun environment to be at work, guys work hard, guys are more connected, and guys are more locked in.”

Along those lines, there was a full-circle moment for the defensive players at the team hotel on Friday. Going back to OTAs, Macdonald would pull players up to the front of the room to explain why they play football. The answers were pretty standard—for family, for a high school coach, for their faith. It was what you’d expect.

So the evening before the game, defensive coordinator Aden Durde had his players look around the room and told them that he believed they were doing it for each other.

“We’ve adapted another why,” Durde said, “and that’s this room right here.”

It was evident again Sunday, with another performance that showed a team playing as Macdonald wanted—loose and focused. And for each other, with each unit picking up the next. It’d been coming for a while, manifesting the model as the season wound down. “We started peaking toward the end of the season at the right time,” Williams said. “I felt like we just started getting better and better.”

And by the looks of Saturday, if that keeps happening, Seattle’s gonna be tough to beat.

Denver Broncos

Denver is in a fascinating and challenging spot. It was about an hour after the Broncos’ incredible 33–30 overtime win over the Bills that a trainer entered Sean Payton’s office at Mile High to find the Denver coach and GM George Paton to deliver the news. Payton had already broken the team down, done his press conference, and was preparing to turn the page when he got the word that Bo Nix had fractured a bone in his ankle and needed surgery.

This sort of thing isn’t unprecedented, of course. But examples like Jeff Hostetler in 1990, Kurt Warner in ’99, Tom Brady in 2001 and Nick Foles in ’17 came with quarterbacks getting hurt during the regular season or, in Warner’s case, even before that.

The Broncos lost their quarterback on the doorstep of the AFC title game, on the final series of the divisional round, leaving their backup, Jarrett Stidham, with only a single snap played this season to lean on, as he settles in as the team’s starter going into the NFL semifinals.

So this will either be the end of this year’s Broncos or a story without precedent.

Is there any reason to believe the latter will play out?

To get there, you have to have some level of belief in Stidham, and the Broncos do. There’s a reason why Denver outbid the Raiders—who wanted to keep their backup to push Jimmy Garoppolo in 2023—for Stidham, even with Russell Wilson and his massive contract in place. Payton and Paton wanted a contingency plan at quarterback in case things didn’t work out with their big-money starter. Stidham was a fit because they knew—given his experience with Josh McDaniels both in Las Vegas and New England—that he could handle a complex offense.

That’s why they signed him to a two-year, $10 million deal in 2023. And he did enough in his first two years as a Bronco, including a short-but-solid stint starting after Wilson was benched, to earn a two-year, $12 million extension in March of ’24. He followed that up as PFF’s top preseason quarterback this summer (yes, I know, that’s like touting a guy being an International League all-star before his MLB debut), with a 5–1 big-time-throw-to-turnover-worthy-play ratio.

Here’s how I’d add all this up: I think, for three and a half quarters, Denver might be able to assimilate what Nix brought to the position. Stidham’s a good athlete, though not the runner Nix is. He’s got real arm talent, and always has. What we don’t know is whether he’ll be the player Nix was when it mattered most. Remember, the Broncos’ starter led seven fourth-quarter comebacks in the regular season, and another against the Bills (plus a game-winning drive for a field goal in overtime).

Can Stidham make the high-difficulty throw Nix did to Marvin Mims Jr.—the 26-yard strike to put Denver ahead with 55 seconds left—when the chips are pushed to the middle of the table? It’s hard to say. But based on what they know about Stidham, the Broncos feel O.K.

“We were devastated for Bo, but no one’s flinching,” said one staffer. “It’s like, ‘O.K., it’s Stiddy now. We think he’s a starter in the league.”

He’ll certainly have a shot to prove it on Sunday.

Buffalo Bills

Josh Allen will turn 30 this offseason, and that’ll put pressure on a lot of folks in Buffalo. In fact, I could sense a little bit of that already in how Sean McDermott aggressively addressed Saturday’s officiating (and I actually agree with him), first in his press conference and then again in an impromptu pool report with Jay Skurski of the Buffalo News.

McDermott sounded like a guy who knows how precious these opportunities are with Allen, who will turn 30 on May 21. And he was crushed that the Bills couldn’t take advantage.

There was no Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow or Lamar Jackson in this year’s AFC bracket. Yes, the Bills had some tough injuries, including one that took their best defensive player, Ed Oliver, out for most of the season, and then again for most of Saturday’s loss. But they also had the NFL’s rushing champion (James Cook II), a couple of excellent tight ends (Dalton Kincaid, Dawson Knox), a solid line and a defense performing in big moments.

It wasn’t the best team Allen’s had around him. However, Buffalo found itself in a string of comeback wins—over the Buccaneers, Steelers, Bengals and Patriots—during which the Bills took full command in the fourth quarter. It happened again in the wild-card round in Jacksonville. And nearly again in Denver.

Instead, Allen and his teammates, and McDermott and his coaches, are done for 2025 instead of finishing the job and going on the road for a matchup against the Patriots in the AFC title game.

And there’s plenty to lament from the Denver game. There was Allen missing Knox on what might’ve been the game-winning touchdown, and the pass interference calls (one of which was fine, the other terrible), and Joey Bosa’s roughing flag. But there was also the feeling that the Bills could’ve kept themselves out of that spot if Allen had played a little cleaner, which probably would’ve happened if Buffalo had a little more around him.

There were points Saturday, and throughout the season, when things just looked too hard for that offense, with the best player on the planet under center. That’s not to exonerate him for his mistakes (the fumble at the end of the first half in Denver was as ugly as it gets), it’s just what the Bills’ reality was this year.

The Bills missed on Keon Coleman, Band-Aided the problem with Brandin Cooks, and became too reliant on Khalil Shakir. It’s put them in a position, as I see it, to have to get creative to find Allen more help this offseason.

There’s going to be a cost to that, of course.

But it won’t be as costly as missing the window to win with talent at the most important position in sports.

New York Giants

The Giants’ commitment to getting John Harbaugh is apparent in the reason for the delay on the contract. By now, everyone knows what that was about.

New York is undergoing a very real restructuring in football operations.

Dating back to George Young and Bill Parcells, the coach has reported to the GM, and the GM has reported to the owner. It even worked that way when Tom Coughlin was there, and Jerry Reese was promoted to GM after Ernie Accorsi walked away in early 2007. That same setup has been in place under the regime led by Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll, which worked to modernize many other aspects of the football team.

Landing Harbaugh meant going a step further. In the new model, Harbaugh and Schoen will both report to John Mara. Seeking alignment and commitment from the organization, the new coach also had to have other things in place.

One was making sure he could work with the people on hand, and he got to that point with Schoen over the past 10 days. (Schoen was a significant part of the team’s recruitment of Harbaugh.) Harbaugh knew, too, that it'd be crucial to get to know Chris Mara, with John’s younger brother taking on more within the organization as the elder sibling has been in the throes of a cancer fight. “He was great,” Harbaugh told me when we spoke Saturday.

The second was ensuring that things were formatted correctly. After 18 years in Baltimore, working in one of the NFL’s most built-out football operations, Harbaugh had a pretty good idea of what he’d want from a resource standpoint. In some areas, the Giants were where they needed to be (sports science). In others (analytics), they had a ways to go. Harbaugh wasn’t asking anyone else to arrange this for him. He just wanted to pull it off himself.

The Giants’ commitment assured him that he’d get what he needed. And now, in his words, “We gotta go in and build it.”

In the end, I would say everyone’s heart was in the right place. Harbaugh wanted the best chance to win wherever he went. The Giants wanted the best coach they could get, and someone who could—as Coughlin did two decades ago—set the tone for an organization that’s fallen on tough times. And now, we get to see where that goes.

What I can say, having talked to enough people in the Giants’ organization, is that everyone is on board with Harbaugh’s vision going forward.

Which is a great place for them all to start.

Atlanta Falcons

The Falcons got what they were looking for in Kevin Stefanski. When the report that Arthur Blank ordered from the consultants at Sportology near the end of the regular season came back, the Atlanta owner had a pretty good idea of what he had to do. They advised him to hire a senior officer to oversee the football side of his franchise, which turned out to be Matt Ryan. Blank had to find ways to create greater accountability across his team, and Ryan’s role fit the bill.

The shortcomings had festered over the years. They were there before the now fired GM Terry Fontenot and coach Raheem Morris took over. Seeing Ryan demand accountability among his teammates as a player gave Blank confidence he was the right fit. And they needed a coach to pair with him who’d be able to bring that same sort of quality to lead the on-field product.

They didn’t have to wait long to find it in Stefanski.

After dinner at Blank’s house on Saturday night, Stefanski actually suggested to Ryan that the two go back to the team facility to work through staffing. Ryan reminded him that the team’s headquarters were nearly an hour drive away from Buckhead, in Flowery Branch, which sits in the city’s northernmost suburbs. So they found another spot to retreat to, away from the others, to have the discussion.

That was after a night of celebration at the owner’s estate. It started with Stefanski having an hour-and-a-half meeting with Blank, his son/VP Josh, team president Greg Beadles and Ryan. After that, Blank had a steak and potato bar for dinner. He cooked the ribeyes himself. And after everyone ate, Blank offered Stefanski the job.

What the Falcons saw in Stefanski’s first interview, and again in this last one, was a coach reenergized by the chance at a new start, and one with a clear plan for how to attack it.

That energy was apparent, too, with the coach’s chomping at the bit to start identifying assistants. Atlanta blocked DC Jeff Ulbrich, who got incredible growth from a young defense this year, from interviewing for coordinator jobs during the search, and he’ll likely stay aboard under Stefanski. Ex-Titans coach Brian Callahan and Browns OC Tommy Rees are considerations on the offensive side.

And after that, they’ll move onto the GM search. I’d expect both Chicago’s Ian Cunningham and San Francisco’s Josh Williams to be in the running, after interviewing for the president of football job that Ryan landed. Detroit’s Mike Disner and Carolina’s Brandt Tilis, on the other hand, were more just candidates for Ryan’s job, with their current roles parallel with the GMs within their teams.

Cunningham’s been the presumed front-runner for the job, in part because his boss in Chicago, Bears GM Ryan Poles, is one of Ryan’s best friends. There’s also a link to Stefanski, with Cunninghaming having worked with Browns GM Andrew Berry in Philadelphia. Berry still has strong relationships with both Stefanski and Cunningham, which could work in Cunningham’s favor.

I’d expect the coaching staff to take priority over the next couple of days, with the team diving in on finding a general manager at some point this week.

It’s fair to say that with Ryan and Stefanski in, the Falcons are off to a good start.

Miami Dolphins

Jeff Hafley may be the next domino to fall in the coaching cycle. Hafley will meet with the Dolphins on Monday afternoon, as Miami kicks off its second phase of interviews. And this one could heat up quickly, as there is some competition there.

The Packers’ defensive coordinator is scheduled to go to Tennessee for a second interview with the Titans on Tuesday, and the Raiders and Cardinals are also looking to bring Hafley back for second interviews. So while this isn’t a don’t-let-him-leave-the-building situation like John Harbaugh, there would certainly be some level of risk (if Hafley is their guy) in allowing him to board the plane to Nashville.

The fit’s there, too, for several reasons. Among them:

• The Dolphins are looking for a coach who can collaborate, primarily with new GM Jon-Eric Sullivan and SVP of football and business administration Brandon Shore, who’ll be part of a three-headed model with the head coach—rather than going and finding a Bill Parcells–type ruler of football ops. Hafley’s background and very powerful ties to Sullivan, built over the past two years in Green Bay, make him an easy pick on that count.

• First and foremost, Miami wants to improve at identifying and developing young talent. Over the past four years, the Dolphins have had the fewest draft picks of any team in football, and the results have shown on a roster lacking in cornerstones. Landing Sullivan was a precise strike at fixing that. Hafley’s not only from the same draft-and-develop machine in Green Bay, but was also able to identify and develop talent in his previous job as head coach at Boston College.

• Hafley’s ability to get the most out of guys is a big piece to that puzzle, and it’s something that’s going to be important for a coach working in South Florida (given all the distractions for young players there). He got the most out of guys like Micah Parsons and Xavier McKinney, who’d worn out their welcomes elsewhere, and he built a strong enough bond with Zay Flowers to keep him at Boston College, without the NIL resources of other schools.

So Miami makes sense. But I’d also say there’s a strong mutual interest between Hafley and the Titans, which could make for an interesting afternoon on Monday.

Green Bay Packers

The Packers did the right thing in reupping coach Matt LaFleur, and in working to do the same with GM Brian Gutekunst. To me, this was a no-brainer all along—but in today’s Fire Everybody environment, sometimes people have trouble seeing the bigger picture.

So let’s lay this out, in black-and-white terms:

• Over LaFleur’s seven years in charge, the Packers have gone 76-40-1. That’s a winning percentage that ranks 16th all time, ahead of Andy Reid, Sean Payton and Mike Tomlin, as well as LaFleur’s own close friends/old coworkers Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan. It’s also fourth among active coaches, behind only Nick Sirianni, Jim Harbaugh and Sean McDermott.

• LaFleur successfully helped the Packers navigate the end of the Aaron Rodgers era, getting two MVP seasons out of the future Hall of Famer, in 2020 and ’21, while he was at odds with the front office. LaFleur’s role as buffer in those years was absolutely invaluable—and came after there were a lot of questions over whether his scheme, which in the past hadn’t given much control to the quarterback, would even work for Rodgers.

• LaFleur helped to identify, draft and develop Jordan Love, putting the Packers in a place where they could seamlessly move from one era to the next, the same way they had gone from Brett Favre to Rodgers (though there was a little drama in both cases).

• And the people skills LaFleur displayed in those situations—managing Rodgers’s issues within the organization, and the transition to Love—have been apparent of late, in helping to enable the acquisitions that we cited in discussing Hafley earlier. Xavier McKinney and Micah Parsons have fit into LaFleur’s program, and that’s a credit to the coach.

Now, is there going to come a point where just making the playoffs (and the Packers have done that in six of LaFleur’s seven years, including Love’s first three years as starter) won’t be enough? Sure, that could eventually happen. But for now, he has what looked like a Super Bowl team at points earlier in the season—that lost Parsons, Devonte Wyatt and Tucker Kraft—coming back next year with one of the NFL’s best rosters.

Pulling the plug on that, to be frank, would’ve been malpractice.

And we all know the Packers are a lot better than that.

Quick-hitters

And with that, we’ll dive into the quick-hitters. Let’s go!

• My colleague Conor Orr had a solid column on how defenses have made quarterbacks look off in the playoffs—and I think that’s more than fair. It’s also reflected in the number of defense coaches (Hafley, Chargers DC Jesse Minter, Rams DC Chris Shula) who have received many interview requests from teams.

• Mike McDaniel has made the rounds, and if I had to guess, he’ll probably wind up as an offensive coordinator in the next week or so. I’ve heard Tampa Bay could be a good spot for him, and that, if he does a good job, he could be set up to be Todd Bowles’s eventual successor.

• I like the potential fit of Steelers OC Arthur Smith with either the Chargers or Lions, where he could bring the power run game that both head coaches crave, mixed with some Shanahan-McVay principles that could help give the quarterbacks a better chance.

• I always like to ask teams about the coaches they didn’t hire because it can help know who’s doing well on the interview circuit. Along those lines, had the Falcons failed to land Stefanski, they were hoping to bring Hafley and Minter back for second interviews.

• The presence of Jim Schwartz in Cleveland is interesting. While I don’t think the next Browns coach will necessarily be forced to keep him as DC, based on how the defense has played and how the staff on that side has developed talent, it’s clearly the preference of the folks there to have him on the coaching staff in 2026. And if things break a certain way, maybe it’ll be as head coach.

• The Titans are bringing 49ers DC Robert Saleh to Nashville on Monday, and are slated to have Chiefs OC Matt Nagy and Hafley in by the end of Tuesday, though they may have to work to get Hafley not to take the Miami job first. I will say that the Titans are looking for a coach with presence, and all three of those guys can bring that to the table.

• I like the match of Vance Joseph with the Cardinals, with Joseph having spent four years in Arizona previously as Kliff Kingsbury’s defensive coordinator. The question, then, will be whether the team is willing to wait for him, as the Broncos make their way through the playoffs.

• One interesting rules quirk: The Steelers won’t be able to interview any Broncos or Seahawks assistants until after the playoffs. Pittsburgh missed the first window because it was playing on wild-card weekend, and the second window (during the Super Bowl bye week, should either or both make it) is only for second interviews.

• While Hafley’s market and Stefanski’s decision may push a slew of decisions in the next 48 to 72 hours, I’d be surprised if the Steelers or Ravens rushed anything.

• On the defensive coach thing: It’s at least interesting that half of the divisional round coaches, and half of the championship round coaches have defensive backgrounds. That’s not really what hiring trends would indicate has been happening, but it’s where we are in this coaching cycle.