That was in the heat and humidity of a downtown Cincinnati summer day, and almost a month deep into camp, with the Super Bowl champions on the other side — Jalen Ramsey, Aaron Donald and the rest of the Rams’ defense. And to hear Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan tell the story, his quarterback Joe Burrow was just sick of L.A.
Not really the team or the players, so much as what they tried to do to him.
“The Rams play this particular style — it’s an off-the-catch technique where they get vision on the quarterback, so they can break quickly on the ball,” Callahan explained. “And he said we’re not doing this anymore.”
So Burrow looked to Ja’Marr Chase, beckoning in his own language, for a double move. Then Burrow called for the snap, and from there it didn’t matter how many All-Pros or Super Bowl champions lined up against them. None of them had a chance.
“It was a good rep,” Burrow said, recalling it Wednesday. “They’ve got Aaron Donald and their pass rush, in my opinion, is the best in the league, so they can play more aggressively on the outside because they know the pass is going to come home eventually. So you’ve just got to throw it at them from time to time time to get a little more respect. And in practice, there aren’t many consequences; there aren’t seven points on the board in front of millions of people.
“But it was nice to get such a long one.”
You could almost see the smile across Burrow’s face through the phone.
He and the Bengals have a lot to smile about these days. That “good rep” came after Burrow missed three weeks of camp following an emergency appendectomy in July. It happened against a team that kept Cincinnati from winning a championship only seven months earlier. And while Burrow can sink it, it’s just another example of not only where Burrow has taken the Bengals but where he’s capable of taking them from here.
Often, those of us outside of the NFL define a player’s potential by his measurables – height, weight, speed and strength. That’s where so many pundits have missed Burrow over the years, for the same reasons Tom Brady was pegged as a system quarterback 20 years ago in New England.
Because what sets the Burrow ceiling is what you can’t see.
“His command over the last year has really grown,” Callahan said. “And that’s the fun part. You’ve invested all these reps, you know the guys you’re playing with, they know the offense, you can have a lot of fun as a quarterback. You can do all kinds of cool things. That’s what made Peyton [Manning] great. They could never be right. The defense could never be right because he would see whatever was across him, know what they were playing and know what the answer was.
“That’s the development you want, which Joe has the ability to be.”
Simply put, it’s where Burrow is going, and where he’s taking the Bengals.
Katie Stratman/-USA TODAY Sports (Tourist); Jasen Vinlove/USA TODAY Sports (McDaniel); Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports (It hurts)
This is the last MMQB before the season starts, when these columns become more game-centric, and so I have a lot to give you all. In this week’s column, you’ll find…
• A look at Mike McDaniel, and how he knows what you’re thinking.
• How Jalen Hurts is improving in areas quarterbacks typically don’t.
• The training secrets of the Bosa brothers.
And much more. But we start with Burrow, the Bengals and where they can go in 2022 and beyond.
This immeasurable quality that Burrow carries must be, at least in part, God-given, because it seems quite impossible that a third-grader somewhere learned it.
Burrow was 8, just starting tackle football, just starting as a quarterback, and it was then that he first showed this innate ability to process what’s in front of him better than almost anyone else.
Seeing Burrow was a smart kid, and knowing that he was the son of a coach – his father, Jimmy Burrow, had just received the job as defensive coordinator at Ohio University – his first coach in Athens gave him a very specific piece of freedom. He allowed the new QB, if the center was uncovered, to tap the lineman on his side and run a quarterback sneak. Early that season, it may have been in his team’s first game, the coach called a play with four receivers to Burrow’s left and an empty backfield. The call was a spotlight.
The young quarterback counted the defenders in the far flat where the receivers were, then counted the number in the box, saw his center exposed and tapped him on the side.
“And then he went about 70 yards on a fullback for a touchdown,” Jimmy Burrow said. “And literally that was third grade. So he got the responsibility, the freedom to do things like that for a long time.”
“I don’t really remember that part—I’m pretty sure it was called by our coach,” Joe said when I told his dad’s story. “But that was one of our good plays. It was in third grade; teams really aren’t great at defending that kind of thing, so I took a couple of those to the house.”
The video shows a kid in a helmet and shoulder pads that look way too big (as they do for all kids that age) speeding away from a defense that reacted in total slowness—almost like the footage was a warning of how this 8.-year-old would always look like he was a step ahead on a football field.
But to say that this is just a natural gift of his would be wrong, and even unjust. As Burrow sees it himself, his unlearned talent is his ability to see the field. But having just that would be worthless without having answers for all the questions he poses when he breaks the huddle and looks at the defense. All these years later, so much of the work he’s done is matching the number of answers he has to the number of things he sees.
“I could always tell if a play was going to work or not by the look of it,” he continued. “Like, I always knew if it was going to work or not, but I didn’t always know what to get at to make it work. So I worked hard to have answers to every aspect that I could see. And maybe I change it; maybe I don’t. But I’ve always had that feeling.”
And that much was clear almost from the jump in Cincinnati.
“He sees it so well,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said. “If you got a check that week, he’s not going to miss it. He’s going to understand what we’re trying to achieve. Now as you grow further, I think his comfort level—just coming out of a play completely, something completely new because he likes what he sees—it’s there. He has full rein to do it.”
Of course, at the NFL level, that has to be earned. In this case, it was absolutely from Burrow.
Burrow in his secret to success: “I worked really hard to have answers to every aspect that I could see.” Jeffery A. Salter/Sports Illustrated
Jeffery A. Salter/Sports Illustrated
Having the freedom to make decisions at the line of scrimmage didn’t last long because of the rare combination Burrow has to add his gift (to see it) to his work ethic (to arm that with the answers).
But there are examples, many of them, that his coaches have been raving about for the past two years.
Here are four such plays just 30 starts into Burrow’s career:
Situation: Fourth quarter, 4:23 left, down four; 1st-and-10, Bengals 37
Result: 15-yard completion to Tyler Boyd
The call, an option play, was identical to the one the Bengals ran on fourth-and-4 the first time they played the Browns in Week 2 of Burrow’s rookie year — and Burrow found Boyd on the one with a tight back. -shoulder throw to move the sticks. But Burrow also learned something about that particular play, watching the Browns’ defensive backs communicate and adjust for the corner covering Boyd out of the slot to make the save, run around the pick and cover him over the top (why the throw was hard to make) .
This time, Burrow had the recall at the line to react in real time in a way few quarterbacks can.
“So Joe sees it, and goes against that play,” Callahan said. “When you know they’re teaching guys to play over the top, you fake the pick and go vertical—fake it, and he comes back underneath. We never call that play because you have to be dead right on it. But it’s in his toolbox , Hey, if you see the look, you can do it. So he remembered that moment, you can see him, he signals the initial play, wants to run this, then he sees those guys communicating, sees them talking to each other, and then he switches it to this one and TB hits it.
“And it’s a conversion, first down, it’s not a huge play, but it’s a 15-yard gain. It was that moment where I was like, Holy s—, that’s impressive. It’s his rookie year. He has the ability to mentally say, OK, first and foremost, I’m going to change the play. That’s the first thing. This makes more sense. Second, he had the resources and memory to know that they were going to play it that way when he saw them communicate. Pay attention to the choice. Then signaled it, and then changed it, in probably 25 seconds.
“To be able to do that, and then it hits for the first time, that’s the stuff, man. Those are things through the first season where we were like, God, this guy is on another level, processing. Football is just easy for him.”
On tape, it looks like Boyd ran some drag and found a dead spot in the defense – easy money. The truth is that it only looked that way because Burrow made it that way.
“Yeah, that was fun,” Burrow said. “That was exciting.”
The Bengals took the lead seven plays later on a fourth-down scoring pass from Burrow to Gio Bernard before the Browns came back to win the game on the next drive.
Situation: Fourth quarter, 1:09 left, tied; second-and-13, Jaguars 46
Result: 25-yard completion to C.J. Uzomah
Within two minutes and with just one timeout, battled back from a rough start to pull even with the Jaguars, that play came with the clock running after Boyd picked up seven yards to cut a first-and-20 to a second-and-13. The key was the defensive coordinator, Joe Cullen, because he was new in Jacksonville of the Ravens.
“I knew that their coordinator came from Baltimore, had a lot of experience there, and so I figured that in any critical situation I would get zero pressure,” Burrow said. “And so I knew my answer as soon as I saw it because I prepared for that before the game.”
Indeed, before the snap, all 11 defenders crowded the line of scrimmage.
“We’re empty (no running backs behind Burrow), and they’re showing zero,” Callahan said. “And Joe knows, 100% I check to this screen, except we were in a formation where C.J., the tight end, was all the way out. We’ve never run it like that before. Joe didn’t care.”
“Like Brian said, we don’t usually throw that screen to tight ends,” Burrow said, “but I knew C.J. was going to make it happen for me, so don’t hesitate.”
“It was just, I’m going to check to the screen, I’m going to beat the blitz,” Callahan said. “He controls it, we communicate it, throw it to C.J., C.J. rips off a 25-yard run. Now we’re at the 20-yard line and we’re going to kick a field goal to win the game. … In that moment, with the pressure to win the game, he sees zero. He recognizes it. Controls the play. Knows he’s going to get hit. Gets the ball away.”
The Bengals got that kick from Evan McPherson, minutes later, to win the game.
Situation: Overtime, 7:27 left, tied; second-and-12, Bengals 28
Result: 12-yard run by Samaje Perine
Taylor remembered this one fondly—though he couldn’t quite place it in the moment.
This wasn’t Taylor directing Burrow to do anything, even in an If they show this, do that kind of way. It was Burrow seeing something and doing something all by himself.
“We called a pass on first-and-15 or second-and-12 or something, and all of a sudden, he’s handing the ball over for a 10-yard gain,” Taylor said. “And it’s like, okay, well, I guess we’re doing that now. And that’s great to see, because most guys will take every opportunity to throw it. But he sees something in the defense and he’s going to take advantage of it any way we can.”
“That would be against the Packers,” Burrow said. “We got a light box, and the Packers played [their safeties] really deep. It was either first-and-15 or second-and-12, something like that. We were able to get it back to third-and-possible, which was ideal.”
Indeed, situationally, Burrow’s job was to dig out the Bengals after a two-yard loss by Joe Mixon put the offense behind the sticks, and his audible to Perine run led to an easy excursion through that light box and into a third-and- 2. Cincinnati then capitalized getting aggressive with a 21-yard back-shoulder connection to Chase to help set up a 49-yard McPherson kick to win it in OT. He missed, and the Packers won. But still…
Situation: Second quarter, 5:16 left, tied; third-and-3, Bengals 32
Result: Five plays, 48 yards gained
The Bengals came out of timeout and went down the stretch of the first half.
And then the headset in Burrow’s helmet died.
“Zac was in the middle of calling the third-down play, and it came out halfway through it,” Burrow said. “I knew the rest of the play, based on the start of the formation, so I called that. But then, if I remember correctly, we were out of timeouts, so we couldn’t call one to turn it on. So I knew that I’m on my own. I ended up calling four plays in a row.”
Burrow is actually wrong about one thing there—the Bengals did have a down time. They didn’t use it. And in that place? Many coaches would have called it. Cincinnati did not.
“Sure they would,” Callahan said. “And some quarterbacks would panic.”
On the first play, he gave the ball from left tackle to Mixon for a yard. Then, the broadcast showed Burrow holding his hands over his helmet, and recognizing that, yes, the headphones were out, while Taylor flipped his play sheet and tried to speak through them. The quarterback started toward the sideline, but instead of using the timeout, turned and went back to the line, and called the play. Taylor allowed it.
On his next call, he hit Tee Higgins for 15 yards on a snap to convert a second-and-9, then he went to Mixon in the flat for another four yards. And then things got interesting on second-and-6 from the Titans’ 42.
“I called one play that we usually pair with another play if we get a certain look that we don’t like,” Burrow said. “And we got that look. So I had to change that play call to the play we would normally pair it with and get the protection directed. So that was fun.”
Not so much for the titans. Burrow did all the communication necessary, on the road, in the playoffs, against the top seed in the AFC, dropping from center in the shotgun – and then he decisively got the ball out for 22 yards to Higgins, on a dig, like clockwork . ticked down to the two minute warning. Which, of course, is not easy. “And to do it in a way that still attacks the defense and puts us in that position,” Callahan said.
“And after that we started joking with him. It’s like, Oh, yeah, the headset went off again,” Callahan continued. “It’s like the headset can’t always come out, man. But I think he kind of liked that. He liked having that kind of control and command. … About that one, I just said, ‘Good job to him. But that’s who he is. He never panics.'”
Burrow checked to the right play to win the Super Bowl but didn’t have enough time to execute it.
Then there was the one that didn’t work, on the last game snap Burrow took. But even that can be instructive to the point – fourth-and-1 with the season on the line in the Super Bowl. And it’s best illustrated by different perspectives on Donald’s signature play.
The Rams, as we detailed back in a story a week after the Super Bowl, saw nickel corner David Long as the hero of the play. Long sensed Uzomah’s speed to the flat to Burrow’s left, and thought he was cleared to allow the quarterback an easy window to throw a slash to Higgins. That’s how Long stepped into Burrow’s vision, and the Rams thought that gave Donald the second he needed to get to the quarterback.
But, it turns out, that wasn’t what Burrow did. Burrow, before the snap, identified man coverage, and checked Chase to go over the top—in Let’s get this over with now. He never went left. His eyes were only there to draw safety Nick Scott out of the deep area that Chase would run to.
“We went all the way there,” Burrow said. “We got a man and if we get a man, I’m going to go to Ja’Marr. The safety [Scott] was out of the hash, kind of helping out on [Chase’s] side, so I knew I had to move him a little bit. And in the process of doing that, I didn’t have enough time to move the safety and get back to it.”
Probably, by the time Burrow successfully moved Scott and pivoted to get to Chase who was running free past Ramsey, he had Donald’s face and that was that.
“He did check on me; he definitely checked me out,” Chase says. “I mean, at the end of the day, nobody really knows what would have happened. Nobody knows what would have happened if it had happened, I can’t stop that play.”
“I got over it,” Burrow said. “Obviously, you would have liked to have that one, but we’re going this year and making the most of this year.”
Both, of course, have a better idea than they let on of what would have happened. In a way, though, the result only goes further to show why Burrow’s mastery of the details, and ability to see and win on the margins, is so important in how close things were to everything being so different.
And that goes for (as if he needed more validation) the work he’s always done honing the finer points of his game and the continuation of that, as, now, he’s working furiously to make up for the time lost when his appendix burst. Last year, when he came back from ACL surgery, the focus was on increasing the speed on his ball. This year, his progress as a professional has him at the point where what he does is more granular.
Taylor, for his part, is looking for another leadership step. He facilitates it by authorizing Burrow to teach new linemen Ted Karras, Alex Cappa and La’El Collins, along with the young kids, the offense. “His voice is getting louder now in meeting rooms, while the facilities are less Cally and I say, This is how we do it,” Taylor said. “Now there’s a lot more, Joe, do you have anything you want to add? Joe, you want to take us here with how do you see this?”
Callahan, meanwhile, could see a little less courage from his quarterback. “The first quarter of the third game of the year in some heroics where you’re going to get smoked if you make a 20-yard gain, it’s like OK, I mean, I get it. That’s just the way he is,” Callahan said. “But sometimes just letting it go, living for the next one, is good.”
Burrow hears all that. He took the leadership piece to heart with teammates. He knows there are games he can give up. But, really, there’s not one thing he’s working on. Again, the steps he’s taken to plug holes left in his game now, at this point, just 28 months into his NFL career, have given him the freedom to work on, well, a little bit of everything.
“At this point, I think I’m happy with where I’m at overall,” he says. “So I can spread that work out over the entirety of my game and make incremental improvements in my overall game.”
Then Burrow related that to where his team is, and how the Bengals came at the end of last year, and what it takes to make it not what they were but who they are now.
“You want to be hitting on all cylinders early in the year, so you’re not going to go into the bye week 7-6 like we were last year,” he continued. “We want to be one of the top offenses in the league, and we have the ability to do that year in and year out. But like I said, it’s going to take consistency of work and preparation and practice. And so, yeah, I would say [last year was] the beginning of something. But it’s not just going to happen.”
That’s Burrow’s own way of saying that, no, at 25, he doesn’t have all the answers.
But he’s trying to get there. And the scary thing, for the other 31 teams, is he’s already a lot closer than almost everyone else.
McDANIEL IS UNAPOLOGETICALLY HIMSELF
McDaniel faced many arch eyebrows over his non-football-coach-ish appearance and presentation. On the same subject : Downtown Greeley is buzzing with the 43rd Annual Arts Picnic, the first 8th Street Art Fest, and the return of the Tointon Gallery Public Exhibition of Fine Arts.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Mike McDaniel knows what you’re thinking.
In fact, the new Dolphins coach knows what everyone is thinking. And for a while, the stereotypes did get to him.
“It happened early in my career,” he said. “I try to empathize. And I got comfortable with thinking like, OK, am I going to get mad at people for not waiting for uncharted territory? People play percentages. You do it 100% of the time like when the Alabama receiver who won the Heisman that we practice against [DeVonta Smith] is skinnier than a lot of receivers. And I’m sure there’s a small percentage of the league that was like, That doesn’t look like what we’re used to.
“I’m not mad at people for not being visionaries. … They go in the abstract. At first, maybe it bothered me. But then it’s like, I get it. I didn’t spend time being angry at people. How many times have I heard the whole Can he lead men? I guess we’ll see.”
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the point he made—McDaniel brought it up on his own after we began our recorded conversation with a discussion of his leadership style. I’ve known the lanky 5’9″ ex-Yale wide receiver for quite some time, and while I can say it’s accurate that he’s faced a lot of raised eyebrows over his non-football practice appearance and performance, I’ve been wondering if we’ll get to it when we sat down and talked.
That he took me there, and not the other way around, I think, is proof positive that he has and will continue to ask such questions.
At least for now, it seems to be working. On the steamy, triple-digit heat-index day I stopped by to watch practice, the quarterback McDaniel was charged with advancing was asked in his press conference what was different about this year versus the past two, under Brian Flores, and Tua Tagovailoa answered simply “everything.” He then added that McDaniel is perhaps the most optimistic person he knows, and that the team’s confidence has soared as a result over the past few months.
That, by the way, is because of who McDaniel is, which if you can’t tell, is excuse me. And to sort out how to pull the idea of it all together, Miami PR head Anne Noland asked him how he would explain what leadership means to him. The two put it down to five words—Leadership is sacrifice and service.
“I really looked at what, day to day, how I look at leadership, and one part of it is service,” he said. “So you serve all these people. I mean, you’re doing the whole situation an injustice if you don’t look at what that person’s dream is to work here—the people in the dining room, the weight staff, the coaches, the players. So every day, I don’t have to give myself a pep talk. I am organically motivated to serve them because I recognize that this is my role. …
“So I have to do everything in my power to make sure that the time they’re with me, which is a very big piece of the pie of their dream, I maximize that. That service is something that’s at the forefront of my mind all the time. In doing this, there is a lot of sacrifice, if you do it right, where I have to sacrifice feelings. It doesn’t matter if I feel like just closing my door and having people leave me alone. I don’t feel that’s right, because people need that role in one way, shape or form.”
And that part of the job is, well, different, too, than where McDaniel worked with Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco, where he would be given carte blanche to disappear on Monday and reappear on Wednesday with that week’s running game plan—whatever. a big reason why the 49ers have been such a nightmare to deal with on the ground the past five years.
Still, by making himself available and setting an optimistic tone, McDaniel doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities a head coach must deal with, even if those realities are packaged, again, differently than you might see them with another head coach. . McDaniel has been effusive in his praise of Tyreek Hill, but isn’t afraid to call him out in a team meeting, as he will criticize anyone who doesn’t have something the way they need it.
McDaniel’s message to his players: Everyone is responsible, including the player they pay the most.
“Who should be the safest person in the building?” McDaniel said. “Probably the guy we pay the most. So what happens when you start meetings every time and you praise him for things but immediately you explain, Hey, do that better; Or Yes, it’s good, but this could be so much better?”
So when McDaniel puts GPS speed-tracking numbers from practice for each player on the projector in a huddle, no one blinks. If Hill can be held accountable, everyone else can be, too.
And the message is sent on a team-wide basis, too. For example, the Dolphins came out sluggish in their first practice, a non-padded session, after a preseason win over the Buccaneers. As a result, McDaniel put the team in full pads the day before their joint sessions with the Eagles, for their first practice after their second preseason game.
“Why do you have to be a—— about it? Why can’t you just say, Hey, look, this isn’t enough?” McDaniel continued. “I’ve always thought it’s funny how there’s a misconception with players that as a coach, people want to be liked. They will like you if you can help them. And if they know you’re 100%, with no agenda, just trying to make them better.”
So as opposed to pushing them that way—McDaniel said many players told him this spring’s OTAs were the toughest set they’ve been through as pros—there are a lot of other things he’ll leave out.
If Hill wants to do a podcast tour, so be it. On the day I was there, McDaniel joked that “Jaelan Phillips wore three-inch pants today, they were the tallest things I’ve ever seen.” Other than possibly taking some crap from the guys over it, Phillips will get zero pushback on his choice of clothing.
And in that particular case, McDaniel did have a more serious point to make. “I think it’s very important for him not to give a s— if I care,” he said. “Like, what are we talking about?” Even better, the way McDaniel sees it, if he lets everyone be himself, he’ll have a better shot that they’ll buy into the coach being himself.
“Nowhere in the building do people ever think I’m worried about how I’m doing,” he said. “That’s not what it’s about. It’s about the meat and potatoes of what we do. All that comfort in the skin, there are probably times that I myself wanted to be comfortable in that weird, steep auditorium that’s huge there, like team rooms, because I know it’s my job to make people feel comfortable. If I’m just … whoever I am, then eventually they’ll realize that I’m not judging them for stupid, trivial things.”
So sure, there was a time when McDaniel let the perception get to him, but one thing he never did was allow his fitness to be a head coach to be doubted. In fact, he thinks it’s something he’s had in him since he was a kid, and the light bulb went on for him making the correlation in his first year as an NFL assistant under Mike Shanahan in Denver in 2005.
That team lost their first game, and fell behind 10–0 in their second game, before coming back to win that one, finishing 13–3 and making it to the AFC title game. What impressed McDaniel the most, looking back, was how the elder Shanahan—“this is freaking football God to me”—wrought belief out of the group, as well as a certain young assistant, to the point that by the end of the year, they didn’t think that team could be beaten (and they were shocked when it was).
And that faith shone brightest in the darkest time, which is where the leader-of-men questions loom largest. This is where some of the doubts about McDaniel lived, and he’s not afraid to address that one either. Because even if some people keep feeding that doubt, he always knows, even when he couldn’t show it, how prepared he is for those situations.
“I’ve been preparing for my whole life,” he said. “I’ve seen the world in a certain way since I was very young. And I’ve always been able to see from a wider scope how things in the moment that seem terrible end up being the best thing that ever happened to you. Case in point point: Pretty dark time when I stopped drinking. OK, well, if I just observed life, it’s one of the best things that ever happened to me.
“I’ve always been able to look at things from that perspective, whether I’ve been in high school, talking to teammates, college, friends, I’ve always been able to help motivate people in times of distress. I think what you’re talking about is the part that nobody could ever see that I always knew was there. I mean, s—, I was an only child, a single mother. Nobody went to college. I’m from nothing, but I’ve known that kind of determination.”
McDaniel then told the story of how his wife looked into “some kind of Eastern medicine” and it led them to a therapist of some kind. The woman met with the coach to evaluate him and called him an empath, meaning he had strength in his ability to relate to other people’s experiences. “I always knew I could reach people,” he explained. “I think I’m pretty tough. I’ve won a lot. I already play with house money in life in general.”
And so, when the Dolphins are no longer undefeated, a feeling that every team over the past 50 seasons has had to reckon with, and more serious problems emerge, he doesn’t have an inch of the anxiety that some on the outside might. of his ability to manage that.
“That’s how I see the job, in the most difficult moments, where people will be most unsure of themselves or the team or really everything, that’s my moment that I have to lead,” McDaniel said. “That’s the moment that gives you a purpose to be in the position if you’re trying to be in… Why are you the person for the job? Well, that’s defined in those kinds of moments, and that’s what’s great about the position.”
In those moments, McDaniel might surprise other people. But he will not surprise himself.
HURTS FINDS A WAY TO GET BETTER
Hurts enters a pivotal third season leading one of the best rosters in the NFL. This may interest you : Washington Mystics coach Mike Thibault apologizes for digging up Minnesota Lynx travel news.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla.—There are reasons, of course, to have doubts about Jalen Hurts.
He is, after all, the guy pulled from a national title game because his college coaches wanted to get aggressive throwing the ball, and didn’t think he could make it easy. The same guy who, months later, lost a quarterback competition and, months after that, had to transfer to find playing time at a second school. And regardless of how well he played at that second school — he was a Heisman finalist — the NFL showed where it stood on Hurts by letting him slip to the 53rd pick (and many thought he was overdrafted there).
But here Hurts is going into a pivotal third NFL season not just a starter in the league, but one tasked with piloting one of the best rosters in football, one that made the playoffs last year, and has been to the postseason in four of the. past five years. And there we can get to the reason to believe in the 24-year-old Hurts.
He continues to find a way to improve.
“He loves football,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni told me just before a joint practice with the Dolphins. “He’s such a gym rat, he’s always into it. You expect that from a coach’s kid, right? Frank Reich would always say that men who love football, who are tough, who are competitive, find a way to reach their ceiling. And that’s what I see in Jalen. He’s got all the intangibles. You just know he’s going to get better.
“And he’s done it every year of his career, going back to his freshman year at Alabama — getting better, getting better, getting better. Going to Oklahoma, getting better. Then from his first year in the NFL to this year, you keep seeing big improvements.”
Of course, this is not entirely unusual. What is unusual is how Hurts is improving as a quarterback.
Usually, quarterbacks don’t make it to the NFL and get much more accurate. Hurts has Usually, quarterbacks don’t make it to the NFL and make big strides in throwing with anticipation. Hurts did that too. And usually, a quarterback can’t improve his presence in the pocket much either. And yes, Hurts has made strides there, too.
But what those close to Hurts will tell you is before he could make those leaps, he first needed to see himself as capable of it. Going from true freshman starter to bench sophomore to junior backup at Alabama wasn’t easy. And beyond just that, there was the simple truth – from high school to college, Hurts really was a dual-threat quarterback in the truest sense of the term. He needed his legs to cover what he couldn’t do with his arm. So there was a reason why he lacked a certain level of confidence in that part of his game.
“I don’t think he saw himself doing it at a high enough level,” said Quincy Avery, his pitching coach. “His time in high school, he wasn’t a great thrower of the football. College, he wasn’t that great of a thrower of the football. Tua [Tagovailoa] was noticeably better than him.”
What Avery saw when he started working with Hurts, after his second year with the Crimson Tide, was a rock-solid athlete who was built like a running back, strong like an ox. The problem was that it created some natural stiffness in his body that limited him as a pitcher.
Over time, Avery said, Hurts has gained more mobility and fluidity in his motion, a result of working smarter, not necessarily harder, in the weight room. And that opened the door for Hurts to enter a new world when it came to playing the position – seeing the improvement in how he threw the ball then changed his mindset, which gave him confidence, and then led to an increase in, again, accuracy, anticipation and pocket presence .
“So I agree that those aren’t usually things you can improve a lot,” Avery continued. “I think it had a kind of cascading effect. His accuracy improved. He just became more consistent with how he throws the ball, so he now has more confidence, which allows him to play with a higher level of anticipation. He just feels like he can make the throws. And they may have been throws that he could make before, but his confidence is so high that he plays with more anticipation because he throws the ball early.
“And I think that’s the biggest factor in all of this, a level of confidence I’ve never seen him with before in the way he throws the football.”
It’s also, at least in Sirianni’s eyes, a result of Hurts’ resilience, which has always been there, whether it materialized in his decision to stay at Alabama after the title game benching to compete with Tagovailoa for the job, or the one to go. to Oklahoma where he knew the quarterback talent wouldn’t allow him to slip much and keep a choke on the job.
Pains continued to fall apart, regardless of how scattered he might have been four or five years ago. And even though he needed to build confidence in himself over time, he never let himself think that doing the work somehow wouldn’t pay off.
“What I’m surprised about is that he’s just unfazed by things,” Sirianni said. “It could be anything from a play in the game that doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to, to me yelling at him on the sideline or him scoring one of the biggest touchdowns of the year. And I know there’s been a lot of good touchdowns in the history of Philadelphia, but the one he had against New Orleans, kids all over Philadelphia will imitate that run where he scratches the defensive end, goes and scores to put the game away. , for the next 20 years.
“And he is unfazed by it. He has the same behavior. The stadium falls on him in Washington, he is unfazed. The guy hits him out of bounds in the first preseason game, the first drive, he’s unfazed. So I think it’s just who the man is. He doesn’t mind things you want. You want a guy who doesn’t ride the waves of the season. You want that with all your guys, but especially at that position.”
And, again, this is a pretty big year for Hurts. He will be eligible for a second contract after the season. The Eagles have two first-round picks with a promising quarterback class on the horizon in 2023. The team is built to win with strength on the lines of scrimmage, and a mix of youth and experience that few boast.
So maybe Hurts will have a massive year, and the Eagles will cut him a huge check in the offseason. Or maybe he’ll just be fine, and can’t get past Philly’s Matthew Stafford and Tom Brady in the NFC.
Which way that goes remains to be seen. But regardless of what happens, it’s pretty cool to see how Hurts has become such a self-made passer and it’ll be fascinating to see where he takes it next—because if there’s one thing that’s a safe bet, it’s that if there’s a way to get better, Hurts will find it.
WHY THE BOSA BROTHERS COULD MAKE HISTORY
John Bosa (middle) vowed to tell his kids (Joey, left; Nick, right) everything about the NFL he wishes he had known as a first-round pick in the 1987 draft. To see also : 10 Best Movies Based on Video Games.
Jeffery A. Salter/Sports Illustrated
SANTA CLARA, Calif. and COSTA MESA, Calif. – About 10 minutes into our conversation about training and injuries, and where he can improve, the 49ers’ star 24-year-old edge, Nick Bosa, let his frustration out. about the ACL he tore in September 2020.
It happened in Week 2 of that year against the Jets at MetLife Stadium. I asked if he ever got over his unfortunate injury fortune, with the ACL injury added to a hip injury that ended his career at Ohio State two years earlier, and another torn ACL he suffered three years before that, putting him on hold. to his playing days at St. Thomas Aquinas, the Jesuit high school he attended in Fort Lauderdale.
“Yes, after it happens,” he replied. “But yeah … the only thing is, I really think FieldTurf is a problem in the NFL. And the turf I played on in New York was brand new. It was super soft, and apparently, they rolled cement roller over it twice after the game because we had two ACLs and a bunch of other injuries on it. So I think if the NFL cared about our safety at all then we’d all be playing on grass like the best football teams do. So that’s kinda BS for me.”
So, as you can tell, it’s something Bosa feels strongly about.
“Yes, very much,” he continued. “But when it comes to that play, how I go on the field with a mindset of being aware and awake. Sometimes you could go on the field and early in the game just be kind of out there without being super locked in.”
Which was a reference to it being 10 am. body clock game, another NFL creation he’s not wild about, and the lessons he’ll take from the experience.
That brings us here—Nick and his older brother Joey could be on the precipice, with better luck health, on the kind of season that no siblings on this side of the Mannings have had in NFL history. Little brother is coming off a 15.5 sack season, and had a full, healthy offseason leading into a contract year. Big brother, meanwhile, was able to resolve a nagging neck issue last year, is in Year 2 with Brandon Staley, and now has former Defensive Player of the Year Khalil Mack playing opposite him in Staley’s 3-4 front.
And just as important is how my discussion with Nick Bosa got to his stance on FieldTurf.
The reason he’s so willing to stick his neck out and say something about the surface he plays on traces right back to the level to which the Bosas have cracked the science of putting themselves in the right place to succeed (something I did a story about ). preliminary draft with Nick). Many players say that, for them, football is a business. Few have put that into action like the sons of John Bosa, the Dolphins’ first-round pick in the 1987 draft, who made his mistakes as a player and vowed to tell his kids everything he wishes he knew.
This offseason, all of that kicked into overdrive. After losing in the NFC title game, Nick Bosa took short getaways over four consecutive weekends to, more or less, get the need for a vacation out of his system — “that was really enough” — and spent the rest of his time in Fort Lauderdale. (he did buy a boat to make it a little more fun to hang around) with his brother, working in a gym Joey built in a building he bought downtown. And to hear Joey tell it, the time together was just as good for him as it was for the kid three years behind him.
“He motivates me as much as I help him,” Joey said. “He’s the guy who shows up every day no matter how I’m feeling. I’m fussing and moaning about the sun or whatever because I’m old now—at least I feel old. And he’s a huge motivating factor for me. Just like he trains, how physically crazy he is, how he lifts and everything…”
Joey’s voice trailed off a little.
“But I always kind of look back on the hard times we had because you spend so much time together and see your brother in pain and also with my neck,” Joey continued. “It’s easy to try to take it out on other people when you feel like crap all the time, but I think those tough times really made our bond grow.”
And it fostered the bond with the third member of their offseason team – coach Todd Rice who, according to the story, was let go by the Chargers in the middle of a coaching change, and was quickly hired by Joey after the two had long talks about the methodology of strength training
More or less, what Rice said made sense to Joey, which then led to Nick moving in with his brother after his college injury to start working with Rice, too.
“It’s not a new concept at all, actually,” Joey said. “Olympic lifters have been doing it since the beginning, when they started. He’s almost 60 years old, so he’s definitely not a new-school guy. He’s been doing it for many years. People just don’t like to listen. But, yeah, I mean, it it’s a pretty simple way to train. It’s biomechanically sound. We don’t have 800 different machines in our weight room—this crazy technology or whatever.
“We train very simply. We don’t mix it up. We follow our plan, and we kind of judge it by percentage and then work the weeks.”
“When you train in college, it’s a lot of just body building. It’s bull—-, honestly,” added Nick. “You’re just trying to prove that you’re a leader, and you’re not really optimizing what you’re doing. could do as an athlete on the field. You just lift a bunch of weight and get as big as you can, and then go out and risk things. Now that I’ve been with Todd, I’ve really put together three amazing years.”
“I was just a meathead,” Joey continued. “So it’s not perfect. I wish more than anything that I could have started this in high school when I was still flexible as a freshman and it wasn’t this complete process of working backwards before we moved forward. Where, I mean, if you have flexibility, it’s easy to maintain it, as long as you do the right things. But if you are very tight like me, trying it back is a difficult process. It changed the way I play. I certainly don’t think I’d be the same player without it. I know I wouldn’t.”
So within this tight circle, for the first time, you had a new gym, a full offseason with two healthy players, a coach who moved to Florida to work with them, and everyone fully committed and all in almost half a year. . They trained. They took pity. Both guys grew up. And just as Joey said Nick encouraged him, Nick used Joey as a sounding board for some of his frustrations, stemming from minor inconsistencies, from 2021.
The cool thing was the biggest problem Nick had, which his brother, and very few others, could help with—how the frustration of the inconsistency was caused by the constant stream of double teams and protection schemes set up to slow him down.
“I wasn’t really prepared for the attention I was going to get as a player because I was double-teamed most of the time and I was getting chipped every play, and I kind of started to feel bad for myself,” he said. I was like, I can’t help this game. I double over.”
And while he thought about reaching out to guys like Aaron Donald for advice, it was easy this offseason to just get advice from Joey, and take it to his position coach, Kris Kocurek, in San Francisco. The wisdom is pretty technical—like where to line up on a tight end to avoid setting up too wide, but also not so far inside so you’re a sitting duck for the tackle—but a lot of it boils down to how he’ll handle these situations going forward.
“This year, I’m coming in with the mindset that I’m going to double up,” Nick said, “and have to be able to win doubles.”
Which leaves him in a place to improve on a season in which he finished fourth in the NFL in sacks coming out of a torn ACL, and leaves the brothers in the place they are collectively, where some dreams could become reality.
“No numbers or anything like that, but I think we’d both like to sit together one day at NFL Honors, maybe for Defensive Player of the Year. “As long as we go out every day and just play hard, we’ll be proud of where we end up. … He is prepared. I mean, he’s a total freak. He is ridiculous. The shape he is in now is amazing. I can’t stay on my diet like he does. If I could, I would have his six pack, but too often I like to cheat.
“And yeah, every year we want to have a great year, but I think mentally, more important than anything, I just feel good—which makes it a lot easier to come out and work hard every day. And we have that relationship, so we can talk. He’s in great shape, obviously, and we all have to try our best to stay healthy but it’s a long season. But knock on wood, it should be good for both of us.”
Which in this case could mean that some history is being made.
TEN TAKEAWAYS
The Russell Wilson deal is a really smart trade for the Broncos. Before explaining why, going through the details of the successful five-year, $245 million extension is important. Some of what you need to know…
• Wilson gets $124 million fully guaranteed at signing—that’s in addition to the first three years of the deal.
• The $37 million he owes in 2025 vests, at the start of the 24th league year. That means they’ll have to cut him before March ’24 to keep the guarantee from climbing to $161 million. In that scenario, the Broncos would pay Wilson $124 million over two years before saying goodbye ($62 million per!), which obviously isn’t happening.
• So as a practical matter, this is a four-year, $161 million deal with three team-option years attached at the end. In those first four seasons, Wilson would turn 34, 35, 36 and 37.
• That puts what the team pays at $40.25 million per year. And from Wilson’s perspective he was set to make $51 million over the next two years, so this gets him $110 million in new money over the first two new years of the deal.
OK, so why does this make so much sense for the Broncos?
For me, it’s relatively simple. The minute they gave what they did for Wilson in March (two first-round picks, two second-rounders, Noah Fant, Shelby Harris, Drew Lock and a trade of Day 3 draft picks), they awarded the futures of coach Nathaniel Hackett and GM George Paton to Wilson. In other words, if Wilson isn’t around three or four years from now, there’s a pretty good chance those guys wouldn’t be either.
And with that as the background—that this happened sooner or later—sooner, especially with a quarterback, is almost always better. This offseason alone, the number of signal-callers with a base salary exceeding $40 million per year went from three to nine, and that number will likely continue to climb with Lamar Jackson’s situation still unresolved (we’ll get to that), and Burrow and Justin Herbert eligible for new deals in early 2023.
Plus, if you wait and go through another year, not only will the price go up, but you’d have one less existing year on the old contract to fold into the new contract to help manage the dollars (as Denver kept that). a four-year sum of approximately $40 million per year).
So that means all the work the Broncos have done, from first discussing a new deal with agent Mark Rodgers around the league meeting in March, to new co-owner/CEO Greg Penner jumping in the past three weeks, to Rodgers flying into town early last week, it was worth it. And now everyone can move forward with certainty, knowing what the future looks like, both from a team building point of view and a financial point of view.
If Jackson is looking for a fully guaranteed contract, Wilson’s deal likely means he’ll have to wait. And that’s what’s so interesting about his situation with the Ravens—Jackson might just be willing to wait. I had a really smart executive tell me once that his job wasn’t to give a player what he was worth or what he wanted. Rather, it was finding the number he couldn’t say no to. That, sure, is part of all these quarterback contracts. The Broncos found a number that Wilson couldn’t say no to, just like the Bills did with Josh Allen, the Packers did with Aaron Rodgers and so on and so forth.
Does Jackson have that number? Not that Baltimore is ready to make a fully guaranteed deal (I don’t think that’s happening), they will find out quickly. And if he doesn’t, that likely means he’s ticketed for the exclusive franchise tag next year (that one will likely change based on other negotiations, but would be set at $45.46 million right now), and possibly a second tag in 2024 (as it stands, he would be at $54.55 million for that one).
Then, he would come to free agency, unless the Ravens decide to tag him a third time at a number that would likely be around $80 million.
To me, that path of Kirk Cousins to the market could be the only way for Jackson to get to where Cousins and Deshaun Watson are contractually, unless Baltimore is ready to start moving. Because if you look at the history of these things, those two guys were very different for a very specific reason.
When I asked agents back in 2018 if Cousins’ fully guaranteed deal that March was a true turning point, the answer I got from most was simply that it depended on what happened with the next guys. Then, Matt Ryan made a conventional quarterback deal, Rodgers made a conventional quarterback deal, Wilson made a conventional quarterback deal and, really, that was it.
Same this year in the aftermath of the Watson trade. Derek Carr, Kyler Murray and Wilson almost certainly got theirs, but fell short of getting fully guaranteed contracts, which allows owners to say the Watson deal, like the Cousins deal, is an outlier.
So what did Cousins and Watson have in common? Simple. Both had multiple bidders, Cousins on the free agent market, and Watson in a crazy trade situation. And when you’re pitting one team against another, as we’ve seen over nearly 30 years in free agency, teams will throw away their principles or their rules to get somebody. The Browns tried to keep Watson away from the Falcons, Saints and Panthers, just as the Vikings tried to keep Cousins from the Jets, who also offered a fully guaranteed deal for more money.
The Ravens aren’t competing against anyone for Jackson, and if they use the more expensive exclusive tag the next two years, they won’t have to worry about it until March 2025. Because of that, again, why next week has Jackson in. a fascinating place. And I will say that part of what made Jackson great is how he always did things his own way. Perhaps this is another example of that.
SIX FROM SATURDAY
1) It was so good to be back at Ohio Stadium on Saturday (and a big shout out to the reporters I spoke with before that on Friday). The atmosphere in the place was off the charts. And I’m biased but for a big night game like that, few places in college football bring out the stars and generate an atmosphere quite like The Shoe.
2) C.J. Stroud has a lot to clean up after Ohio State rode its defense and ran a game to a bully-ball victory over Notre Dame. But he also has time, and it’s understandable why, returning as a Heisman Trophy front-runner and potential top pick, he might be under a bit of pressure.
3) Anthony Richardson’s name is familiar if you don’t already know it. The Florida quarterback has always been a huge talent. And in winning his opener against Utah, the big, fast, strong-armed star showed he’s been coming since last year.
4) It’s wild to think that it’s possible that the two best prospects among the starters on last year’s Georgia defense could be two guys who weren’t in last year’s draft. But it’s pretty easy to argue that defensive lineman Jalen Carter was the cream of that crop, and corner Kelee Ringo could have an argument for being No. 2. Add their return to that of edge rusher Nolan Smith, and it’s not hard to see how . the Bulldogs embarrassed Oregon.
5) North Carolina-Appalachian State is another reason college football is so great—a game no one expected to matter on Saturday morning had everyone’s attention at 3 p.m. And by the way, Carolina QB Drake Maye, who was once an Alabama commit, could be interesting down the line as an NFL prospect.
6) I like the move of the College Football Playoff to 12 teams (even if I recommend that it be more difficult to enter, to maintain the importance of the regular season, I understand that this is where the times take it) . And if one change is needed, it’s for the quarterfinals to be on campus. No fan travels to three playoff games, and the only people who would be upset to see these games held in home stadiums would be the bowling enforcers who have been fooling everyone for decades. I think the conferences and schools could afford, at this point, to tell those guys where to go out.
I caught a really fun nugget from Jets-Giants joint practice. You’ll remember last year ex-Jets coach Rex Ryan went off on New York radio about the comparisons made between him and Robert Saleh. Specifically, he said, “This guy is supposed to be a defensive guru. I take it personally. All I heard was that this guy is a lot like me, but without the bad part. Some of the bad part that you need because the team doesn’t want to play with any damn heart. That’s the thing that disappoints me. Don’t ever compare this guy to me.”
Ryan later said he regretted the comments, and spoke to Saleh in the aftermath, and as I found out a few weeks ago, that speech went far beyond an apology and a few pleasantries.
In fact, nine months later, there are marks of the conversation on the Jets’ roster.
“Rex was amazing, he’s the one who reached out. He has the moment on TV and he called,” Saleh told me. “And you know what? I totally understand where he was coming from. … It was a good conversation, it was more than half an hour, we had a conversation about different things, and I just asked him about how he dealt with things. And I just wanted to pick his brain, he sat in the same chair many years ago, and he had a lot of success, so I just asked him some questions. …
“And he told how when he got to the Jets, he brought in guys like Bart Scott, [Jim] Leonhard, all these guys that he knew would not only be champions of the message, flag bearers, but also guys that understood his . scheme and understood the style of play they were looking for. He felt that was such an instrumental part of his early success that, for us, it triggered a thought: Hey, is it too late to take that approach?”
Saleh and GM Joe Douglas decided it wasn’t too late, and set to work in March to find their so-called new flag bearers.
“Part of our whole charge since we got here is to bring in guys who love this game,” Saleh continued. “We’ve talked about it, character has been such a priority these first two offseasons. And it’s not like it was intentional, like we forced the issue, guys just became available. Solomon Thomas was available, and it’s awesome to have him in the building. Marcel Harris. Kwon Alexander. Laken Tomlinson.”
All four of those guys were in San Francisco with Saleh and Jets offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur, and so in all four cases, there was no guess on what the Jets got. They knew it. And even in cases where there were players available that Saleh and Douglas liked that maybe they didn’t know personally, the Jets worked their back channels to make sure whoever came in would be a good fit.
Jordan Whitehead, who has shown signs of being a home run addition at safety, and played last year in Tampa Bay with a friend from the Jets’ Niners alumni club, is a really good example of that.
“Then Whitehead is a guy that Sherm [Richard Sherman] called us just adamantly — adamantly — that this guy is going to be everything we’re looking for,” Saleh said. “So he was easy because he fit the mold of guys who love the ball. We didn’t quite know him, but Richard Sherman was the one championing that one, vouching for character and playing style and all that.”
The difference all those guys have made, Saleh says, is already palpable. One is in the togetherness of the team, and the coach cited Alexander as important in that regard, with Alexander going so far as to create personalized handshakes for each of his teammates. “He has a handshake with everybody on the team—a specific handshake,” he said. “What, I have no idea how he remembers everyone. Everyone has their own. As soon as he walks into the building, it was, Hey, come with a handshake and I’ll remember it.”
From a more football-centric point of view, it shows how competitive camp was, which makes sense because if the field is full of guys who are passionate about the sport, that would naturally create a strong environment.
“Not that it’s going to translate to wins and losses, but the one thing that I feel has happened this training camp, at least speaking on the defensive side of the ball, is the volume of their voices—the communication, the chirping, the confidence. , the speed—it’s elevated,” Saleh continued. “That’s not how you win and lose football games, but when you have that option and you have that chippy-ness, and you have that relentless pursuit of greatness like these guys do, I think that’s important, it translates. How will it translate to Sunday? We will see. “
If so, interestingly enough, Jets fans might have an old friend, and an unlikely one at that, to thank.
Deshaun Watson will begin working out this week heading into Week 13. My understanding is that prior to Watson’s suspension, Browns coach Kevin Stefanski, offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt and quarterbacks coach Drew Petzing worked with Watson’s pitching coach, Quincy Avery, to come up with an individualized plan, and pitching scripts, to keep Watson sharp while he’s away from the team.
That plan will be implemented this week by Avery and Watson who, for the time being, and until Watson is allowed in the building, will not be allowed to have contact with Browns trainers or anyone else with the team. The way I’ve heard it, Watson and Avery will have sessions to include field drills, film and board work four days a week, and that will continue for the next five weeks, with Watson allowed to return to the Browns’ practice facility in October. 10, and begin practicing five weeks after that on Nov. 14, before his Dec. 4 return to the playing field.
At least on paper, that looks like a lot of time for Watson to rehab, though it’s fair to wonder how rusty he’ll look after about 23 months without playing in a real NFL game.
I really like where the Vikings are. And it doesn’t just focus on what my buddy Ty Dunne wrote for his excellent site. It’s also because I love how new Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell and GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah resisted the urge to blow up the roster, mostly because what they found wasn’t really broken, with that sentiment backed up by the roll call by Rick Spielman. -Mike Zimmer players retained by the new guys.
It’s Kirk Cousins, of course. But there’s also Dalvin Cook, Justin Jefferson (OK, that one was easy), Eric Kendricks, Harrison Smith, Danielle Hunter and a bunch of other guys who have won a lot of games in the Twin Cities.
“I never thought [it was a rebuild], from the time I actually sat down to interview about possibly becoming the head coach of this team,” O’Connell told me. “I got a lot of respect for the coaches who were here before, the team that was put together, some of the football principles that are already there. Now, obviously my football philosophy and culture, the things that mean a lot to me may or may not to be different in certain areas. And that’s really where leadership comes in. …
“I think we’ve got a really good group that’s bought into that. It’s early, Albert, but ultimately I feel like we’ve at least established that standard, so now we can train outside of it on the football field if we need to train harder or we have to adapt from change to fit what the identity of this team will be.”
And this is why, as you’ll see this week in our staff predictions, I have the Vikings in the playoffs.
I really think the mix of old and new in the building, both on the roster and in coaching, plus maybe a little bump from the change in atmosphere, sets the ceiling relatively high for O’Connell’s group. I also believe that the investment he has made in the current guys, allowing the leadership council of the team to help plan the course, will help speed up the process of installing new schemes and playing quickly.
“He wants feedback,” Cousins said. “He’ll ask for a meeting on Zoom just to connect with guys, and tell them the schedule, and ask if they have thoughts on it. During OTAs, he told us what his plan would be for the three weeks. He doesn’t just make decisions in a vacuum. He wants feedback before he does it.”
“I feel like he’s a players’ coach,” Jefferson added, with an arm around his QB. “He likes to get feedback from the players, he likes us to be comfortable, he loves to connect with us, just have fun with us. I like that in a coach. He’s been phenomenal.”
So will that add up to wins? I actually think it will, at least in the short term. Because as the actions of the new brain trust would indicate, there’s a pretty nice core already in place.
It’s good to see that Jordan Poyer will be playing on Thursday. Bills coach Sean McDermott indicated as much over the weekend, with Poyer returning from a hyperextended elbow and a contract dispute that dragged on for much of the offseason. And, to be clear, it will be good to see Poyer out there because he, along with his running mate at the position, Micah Hyde, has been at the heart of the Bills’ rebuild since the beginning, with those coming on board. McDermott’s first year.
But Poyer’s case is an example of how the enhanced holdout rules have created awkward situations for teams and their players.
Back before the 2011 CBA was made, a player like Poyer could take a stand on his contract, and stay out of camp, and those kinds of resistances could, at times, expedite a resolution (be it a trade, a new contract). or agreement to play the year). But in ’11, and then ’20, owners tightened the rules to a point where, just logically, a holdout made no sense to anyone but the Aaron Donalds of the league.
And so now you get these situations where players are sitting outside practicing while in the building, and teams are acting with less urgency to make deals and, well, things can get awkward.
I don’t think Poyer’s situation will be like that. And I don’t long for the era of the 25-day hold to return. But there are consequences to giving teams this kind of hammer.
While we’re on the Bills, all the best to the Dawson Knox family. The 22-year-old brother of the Buffalo tight end, Luke, a linebacker at Central Florida, died on August 17, an unimaginable tragedy; and over the weekend, Knox shared her thoughts for the first time, via her Instagram account.
“There are no words to describe these last few weeks,” he said. “All I know is that I am beyond grateful for the outpouring of love and support for my family. Luke is not lost because we know exactly where he is. God has him, and I know I will see him again ever. Luke’s legacy will live on through all the lives he touched in incredible ways. This is not goodbye, it’s just goodbye. I love you Luke.”
If there’s one silver lining in this otherwise dire story, it’s that the Bills fan base, which always seems to step up in these types of situations, has done it again. Finally a check, close to $200,000 was raised in the younger Knox’s honor to benefit P.U.N.T. Pediatric Cancer (Buffalo fans made similar drives after Josh Allen’s grandmother died, and after Andy Dalton led the Bengals to a win over Baltimore that clinched the Bills’ first playoff berth in 17 years).
I think, to close the book on it, the Niners’ decision to renew (temporary) pledges with Jimmy Garoppolo is an attempt to make chicken salad out of the chicken you-know-what. I can also say with confidence that, when the team went to its 30-year-old now-backup quarterback, it did so knowing it was running with an idea that really wasn’t what anyone wanted.
Garoppolo wanted to start. The Niners wanted picks for him
Garoppolo had shoulder surgery in March, which made it difficult for any team to grant him his wish, especially since this happens to be a contract year for him. And because it was hard for quarterback-needy teams to come to terms with the idea of trading a quarterback with a dodgy throwing shoulder, it became impossible for the Niners to get fair value for him.
That’s why we’re here with a compromise that has Garoppolo back as the backup — with Kyle Shanahan declaring Trey Lance the starter — on a deal worth, purposefully, less than the rookie deal Lance is playing on. Making the deal, which has a base salary of $6.5 million, $500,000 in per-game roster bonuses, and $8.45 million in incentives, buys both sides time to see if, through injury or poor play, another opportunity arises for business.
In the meantime, and if they don’t, if Garoppolo gets a chance to play, due to injury or whatever, between now and the end of the year, there would be no better place for him to show himself for 2023. than with a team and in a scheme he knows inside and out.
So as we said in the mailbag last week, this is by no means ideal. But I understand why the Niners would do it. There’s too much on the line with the roster to worry about hurt feelings. And even though I heard Lance was a little upset right after, he’s a smart, mature kid who I think can handle it. Truth is, if he couldn’t, you might have bigger questions about where the Niners are at the position.
Cam Newton is one of the most important figures the NFL has had over the last two decades – his impact really changed the game – but I understand why he’s having trouble finding work. And I don’t think it’s really about whether he’s one of the top 32 quarterbacks on the planet. More so, is that starting quarterback, and backup quarterback, are very different jobs.
The former has an offense built for him. The latter must fit one built for someone else.
To maximize Newton, you have to build the scheme around him, and what at least was his rather rare ability to run the ball from the quarterback position. If he’s your backup, you don’t do that. And look around. How many offenses are built in a way that would work for Newton? Baltimore, maybe. Anyone else?
That, by the way, is not the only problem facing Newton. But it may be the biggest.
There’s a reason, of course, why the Panthers signed Newton only when he was in position to become their starter last season, and why the Patriots let him go when he lost the starting job in Foxborough in 2020. Part of it is, surely, whether it’s hard for people to reconcile his big personality with the job of backup quarterback. But it’s more because, really, from a football point of view it’s hard to give him a job that has him holding a clipboard on Sundays.
Newton told the Pivot Podcast that last year, with the Panthers, he “put me in another f—ed situation.” But the way I see it, that’s the kind of situation that will have to arise again for him to re-emerge in the NFL. Which is a shame. Because, again, he’s a pretty historic player, and it would be awesome to see him get another shot or two to see if he can make it work.
We’ve got quick hitters to close out the takeaways – your last set before the game details start filling (and dominating) the column. So let’s get to those…
• Jason Peters would be a smart signing by the Cowboys, even if only as a sort of mentorship/insurance policy for rookie Tyler Smith. And I think they’re going to push that one across the finish line soon.
• Did you know that Tom Brady is the only non-specialist in his 40 years in the league? It’s true. And Cardinals punter Andy Lee is the only other 40-something, period. Peters singing in Dallas would change that, and 49ers kicker Robbie Gould turns 40 in December.
• I think Matthew Stafford will be fine. The Rams and his pitching coaches had to do a lot to manage his elbow problem last year. The difference this year is that he’s going at it more aggressively. Which is a good thing.
• Really cool of the Texans to host the Uvalde High football team at their home opener this week.
• Losing Harold Landry for the year deserves more attention than it got last week—the Titans’ best pass rusher tore his ACL in practice. No Landry means it will be easier for teams to focus on shutting down Jeffery Simmons inside.
• Jalen Thompson’s three-year, $40 million extension in Arizona is well deserved. The Cardinals think he could already be their best safety, and everyone knows how they feel about Budda Baker. Having two interchangeable pieces like that was huge for Cardinals DC Vance Joseph.
• I mentioned this in my camp wrap, but I figured I’d put it in here—the Giants really like what they got from an outfield standpoint from No. 5 pick Kayvon Thibodeaux. They thought entering the draft that others lacked him from a character point of view, in reading too much into the team of advisers he had around him. As New York’s new brain trust saw it, it was just a sign of the times in the new NIL-driven world of college football. So far, at least, they think they got that one right.
• The Ravens’ preseason streak is still one of the strangest things in the NFL. They won 23 in a row. And I don’t know if there’s a greater meaning to it or not.
• Good for Josh Gordon, doing everything he can to keep playing, joining the Titans’ practice squad. It’s not hard to root for the guy, after all he’s been through. And there are many people who have worked with him over the years doing just that.
• That Bears president position, which will be vacated by the retiring Ted Phillips, should be coveted, at a pivotal time for one of the league’s flagship franchises, with a possible move to the suburbs on tap.
BEST OF THE NFL INTERNET
A lot of criticism of Bill Belichick this summer, and a lot of it is valid. But you really can’t question whether the guy is still completely on the job. He showed that he is in almost every way.
Those numbers are pretty good, I’d say. #analysis
Jason Jenkins’ Celebration of Life is Monday at Hard Rock Stadium. RIP, Jason.
Still a weird situation in San Francisco, even if you think (and I do) that Kyle Shanahan will figure it out.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
We have a lot ready to come to you on the site all week. Our annual staff predictions will have all of our award picks and Super Bowl matchups. Plus I have a few more things for you before Thursday’s opening.
What does who dey mean?
It’s more than just ‘Who Dey’ You might only hear "Who Dey" in the coming days, but there’s actually more to the chant, which makes it clear that it’s just another way of saying "who are they?" The whole cheer goes: "Who, who, who thinks that will beat those Bengalis?" Fans then respond: "No one!"
Where did the saying Who Dey come from? Sean Payton says he’s kind of rooting for the #Bengals in the playoffs but their “Who Dey” mantra came after the Saints “Who Dat”. Locals object to the phrase arose from a call-and-response between the crowd at Bengals games and a Hudepohl beer vendor walking up and down the aisles yelling “Hudy!†.
Why do the Bengals fans say Who Dey?
For a time, Hudepohl was sold in the stadium by beer vendors during games. Walking up and down aisles, salespeople were heard yelling, âHudy,â short for Hudepohl, which sounds a lot like âHuDey,â or âWho Dey.â It was a catchphrase. born
When did the Bengals start saying Who Dey?
It’s a Cincinnati tradition and part of a chant that breaks out after the Bengals score touchdowns at a home game at Paul Brown Stadium. The origins of the chant date back to the 1980s, and a local beer company is involved.
Whats the Who Dey chant?
Bengals fans, and opponents, have heard the chant for more than 40 years cascading from the stands of Riverfront Stadium and Paul Brown Stadium. The chant is a staple on game day with fans screaming after singing “Bengals Growl†after a touchdown, and the mascot, aptly named Who Dey, runs along the sidelines.
Who is the youngest quarterback to win a Superbowl?
Youngest quarterbacks to win a Super Bowl Ben Roethlisberger is the youngest quarterback ever to start and win a Super Bowl, when he led the Steelers to a title in 2006 at just 23 years old. When Wilson beat Peyton Manning, he was the same age — to the day — that Burrow will be when the Bengals meet the Rams on Sunday.
Who is the only rookie QB to win a Super Bowl? And as the long and storied history of the NFL reminds us, no rookie quarterback has ever won a Super Bowl. In fact, no rookie quarterback has ever even made it to a Super Bowl, with the few plucky youngsters who made it to their conference championship games unable to take that final step.
Who is the youngest NFL player to win a Super Bowl ring?
Troy Aikman Troy Aikman won his first Super Bowl at just 26 years old, three years after entering the league, with the Dallas Cowboys.
How old was Tom Brady when he won his first Super Bowl?
Louis Rams in Super Bowl 36 at the Louisiana Superdome Sunday, February 3, 2002 in New Orleans. During his second season in the NFL, Brady won his first Super Bowl. He became the youngest quarterback to do so at age 24.
What is Joe Burrow ranked?
And coming in at number 27 on the list is the NFL’s 2021 Comeback Player of the Year, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow.
What is Joe Burrow’s rating? Burrow enters this year’s edition with an overall rating of 90, quickly surpassing proven playmakers like Russell Wilson, Lamar Jackson, and Super Bowl LVI champion Matt Stafford. With so much talent, the question has to be asked: How high will Burrow climb the rankings as the season progresses?
Where does Joe Burrow rank?
The Bengal star is considered one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. CINCINNATI â Joe Burrow is a top five quarterback in the NFL according to league executives, coaches and players. The 25-year-old is fifth in ESPN’s rankings.
Who is better Herbert or Burrow?
Burrow is great. Burrow had 150 fewer pass attempts than Herbert last season, which largely negates comparing their seasons. That said, Burrow was better at completion percentage, TD percentage, YPA, NFL passer rating and PFF grade. Herbert was better at interception percentage, sack percentage, and QBR.
Is Joe Burrow a top 5 QB?
Burrow was voted the fifth best QB in the 2022 rankings, according to ESPN. The Bengals’ 25-year-old franchise star is ranked below fellow AFC QBs in the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes and the Bills’ Josh Allen. Burrow ranks higher than the Rams’ Matthew Stafford and fellow 2020 Draft classmate Justin Herbert.
