Let’s rank the NFL’s six coaching openings
Plus, the monkey's paw comes to the NFL.
Black Monday came and went, adding three new positions to the league’s list of high-profile job openings. Anthony Lynn, Doug Marrone, and Adam Gase joined Matt Patricia, Bill O’Brien, and Dan Quinn as the NFL’s most recently fired head coaches, leaving some pretty important vacancies to be filled.
There will be several qualified applicants for these jobs. Budding offensive minds like Eric Bieniemy, Byron Leftwich, Brian Daboll, and Arthur Smith are available to develop 2021’s ideal passing game. Defense-first assistants like Robert Saleh and Matt Eberflus can cultivate the schemes to stop them. There’s also Urban Meyer, who may just be fucking with the Jaguars.
What franchise has the most to offer this offseason and beyond? There are two clear-cut favorites, then things get messy.
1a. Los Angeles Chargers
1b. Jacksonville Jaguars
Would you rather buy an existing mansion with a solid foundation but major aesthetic flaws, or a beautiful, somewhat swampy plot of land on which you can construct whatever you’d like?
That’s the difference between the Chargers and Jaguars right now. Los Angeles is the NFL’s easiest turn-around job — and has lost 20 games the past two seasons, but only five of those games by more than eight points. Anthony Lynn’s team was best known for blowing big leads and other miserable finishes behind a wide range of weird calls. His successor may be just a few sound decisions from running to a winning record.
Whoever steps into the role will inherit a rookie quarterback who set first-year records for both passing yards (4,336 in 15 games) and touchdowns (31). Justin Herbert is under contract for only $21.7 million in the next three years combined, which is the kind of cap saving space that creates Super Bowl contenders. The Chargers won’t have too far to go, however; any free agent or draft additions will join a core of players that includes Keenan Allen, Austin Ekeler, Derwin James, Joey Bosa, and Casey Hayward.
On the other side of the spectrum lie the Jaguars. The Jags have a stellar group of young playmakers led by D.J. Chark, James Robinson, and Laviska Shenault along with one of the league’s more reliable linebacker combinations, but these may be the only areas in which they’re above average. That means this job won’t be a total tear-down and rebuild … but it’s close.
Fortunately, Jacksonville has plenty of resources to pave their road back to prosperity. The No. 1 pick of the 2021 draft will almost certainly go toward franchise quarterback Trevor Lawrence. The club will have four more selections before the third round draws to a close. Additionally, no team in the league is slated to have as much salary cap space next spring; the Jags have the leverage to sign up to $84 million worth of free agents.
While team owner Shad Khan has vowed to take a more active role in team management, this is an opportunity for a head coach to call his roster shots in a way he couldn’t in LA. The Chargers are handing their next HC a ready-made foundation from which to build; the Jaguars can offer the chance to be the architect, construction crew, and superintendent all in one.
3. Atlanta Falcons
Tough decisions will have to be made regarding the future of soon-to-be 36-year-old Matt Ryan. The defense hasn’t ranked better than 20th in yards allowed since 2017. The offensive line features a smattering of former first-round picks and is still a mess. Something drastic will need to be done about the -$32 million (!!) of projected cap space.
Still, a top-four draft pick means a shot at a young quarterback who can learn in a low-pressure environment behind Ryan. Calvin Ridley looks like the latest in a long time of bonafide WR1s. The defense has improved in each of the past two seasons despite having few recognizable stars beyond Grady Jarrett.
There are reasons for optimism in Atlanta, but the biggest may be the quarterback situations across the NFC South. The Saints and Buccaneers each rely on passers pushing into uncharted territory in their mid-40s. The Panthers’ measured gamble on Teddy Bridgewater paid off less and less as 2020 wore on (more on that later). There’s an argument that even a mediocre Falcons team can rise to the top of its division in the near future.
4. Detroit Lions
The key to five-plus years at the helm in Michigan may be the extremely low bar of “be better than Matt Patricia,” so that should provide some job security and plenty of time to see plans to fruition. The Lions have a moderate amount of cap space, and after Patricia’s disastrous run any addition who wasn’t a former Patriot will be given an extra layer of credibility. Matthew Stafford will only be 33 years old next season and has swung heavily from “overrated” to “underrated.” He is dying for an opportunity to prove he’s:
Still a franchise quarterback
Capable of leading Detroit to its first playoff victory since Crystal Pepsi was a thing.
Unfortunately, taking over the Lions also means taking control of the league’s worst defense despite a handful of solid starters. That’s a bad spot to be in when you’ve got to face Aaron Rodgers and Dalvin Cook/Justin Jefferson at least twice each season.
5. Houston Texans
Pros: Houston has Deshaun Watson and Laremy Tunsil locked into long-term contracts, securing a Pro Bowl quarterback and his Pro Bowl blindside protector. Zach Cunningham just led the league in tackles. David Johnson and Brandin Cooks aren’t quite washed up yet (but probably shouldn’t be at the top of a pro team’s depth chart at their respective positions).
Cons: The Texans don’t have first- or second-round picks in 2021 because of various Bill O’Brien overpays. They have -$20 million in cap space, meaning J.J. Watt may be an unavoidable release and Will Fuller likely won’t be coming back. Unless Houston has the greatest value draft of all time, the 2020 version of this team will be roughly as good as it gets until at least 2022.
Oh, and also Watson would have had DeAndre Hopkins to maximize his passing talent, but the last coach/GM traded him away FOR A SECOND-ROUND PICK WHAT THE HELL.
6. New York Jets
If you looked at options 1a and 1b and said “you know, I’d love the rebuild but I’m afraid it’s not challenging enough,” hoooo buddy, you’re gonna like the Jets. New York’s proposed renaissance isn’t quite in Jaguars territory, but Adam Gase’s old team will have plenty of resources to burn in order to make the world forget it ever employed Adam Gase.
The Jets have five picks in Rounds 1-3, including the second overall pick and the first-rounder the Seahawks sent in exchange for Jamal Adams this season. That can be used to replace Sam Darnold with Justin Fields or Zach Wilson. The club could also bet on a Darnold rebound without Gase clouding his judgment and trade back from No. 2 in order to add extra draft picks in 2021 and beyond.
That will lead to an influx of young talent for a team that already has foundational pieces in Mekhi Becton and Quinnen Williams. $68 million in cap space will bring some additional immediate help. These are all good things!
But New York offers a tremendously unstable quarterback position and an offensive line that, though recently bolstered in the 2020 offseason, still suuuuuuucked. The defense ranked 28th in the NFL against the pass, per Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric. Whichever linebacker the team signs away from the Ravens will either get immediately injured or turned into a pillar of salt by a vengeful god.
There’s potential with the Jets, sure. But the franchise couldn’t effectively crush its fans without a little hope to build them up first. — CD
The Dreamstone effect
Unlike most everyone else who has seen Wonder Woman 1984, I don’t have a strong opinion about the movie. I took issue with some of its plot and editing, but I also didn’t dislike it. What I don’t like, however, is how its MacGuffin, the Monkey’s Paw-esque Dreamstone, seems to have infiltrated the real world this week.
It began before the Week 17 games kicked off Sunday, when Bean Dad became the internet story of the day. Who’s most to blame for that: Bean Dad himself? Cancel culture? Our need for a daily main character on Twitter? No, it was Bush’s Beans:
The NFL is not immune to the curse, either. The Browns ended their 18-year playoff drought with a close win over the Steelers, a deeply cathartic result for a beleaguered franchise. Their celebration in the locker room after was subdued, and everyone, including coach Kevin Stefanski, was wearing a mask. And now Stefanski, along with two other coaches and two players, is the latest in a long line of Browns to test positive for Covid.
The frontrunner for NFL Coach of the Year will have to miss the Browns’ first playoff game since before Stefanski was even allowed to legally drink. That’s a cruel enough fate for him and for the team. It’s also especially heartbreaking for Joel Bitonio, who toiled away on so many dreadful Cleveland teams:
Because this is the NFL, there are no plans to reschedule the game, despite the Browns’ continued Covid problems. So the Browns will make their long-awaited return to the playoffs, facing off against their most hated rival for the second time in as many weeks, and they’ll be without key personnel on the sideline and on the field. Unfortunately, that sounds about right.
They may not be the only ones affected by this sinister trend. Bucs coach Bruce Arians warned Chase Young that he should be careful what he wishes for, after the Washington rookie set his sights on his next sack victim:
It’s easy to understand Young’s boldness. The destroyer of worlds anchors the NFL’s best defensive line and is about to go up against the GOAT for the first time in his career. Brady is also twice Young’s age, and there’s the whole Ohio State vs. Michigan angle to boot. But considering past examples of “disrespect” that Brady has used as motivation, and that Young’s own quarterback situation is in dire straits, maaaybe he should renounce his wish before Saturday night. — SH
More Week 17 reaction
We had so much to reflect on after Sunday that we easily crashed over Substack’s word limit. Seems like a compliment to me! Let’s drop back into the final week of the regular season and see what we may have learned from it going forward.
But first, I received more questions about last week’s picks than ever before. Thanks for reaching out! I mean this in a way that is legitimately grateful and not sarcastic! I don’t know why I keep using exclamation points!
There were two choices that fell under scrutiny, and they turned out to be a split in two close games. Let’s do a little postmortem.
Why my Lions pick failed to pan out, in two tweets:
Of course, this fails to account for the fact that Kirk Cousins was in his perfect element — a meaningless game — and going up against the tattered remnants of Matt Patricia’s horribly realized defense. Or the fact the Lions got zero stops on fourth down and gave up a 40-yard touchdown pass to CHAD BEEBE WITH 4 SECONDS LEFT IN THE SECOND QUARTER ARE YOU KIDDING ME? CHAD BEEBE??? But still, the universe hates the Lions enough. Why add extra obstacles toward even the faintest levels of optimism, ref?
Why my Giants pick *did* pan out, in two GIFs:
New York’s receivers caught a bunch of thrown way-too-hard passes that hit them in the dang face:
*bonk*
*schtoink*
The other factor working out in New York’s favor, aside from refs that ruled this Giants’ ball?
A playoff-adjacent Week 17 game for the Cowboys brought out the playoff version of Andy Dalton, and that is ... not great. Dalton came into Sunday with a 1:6 touchdown-to-interception ratio in the postseason and a 57.8 passer rating in those four games — all losses. In northern New Jersey, the former Bengal stared down the league’s 24th-ranked passing defense and needed 47 passes to throw for only 243 yards. He had zero touchdowns but did make one extremely notable play in the red zone; his late end zone interception all but sealed a win for the Giants.
Mason Rudolph is … not bad?
Listen, I’m roughly 75 percent sure Mason Rudolph isn’t the future of Steelers football. But while he’s limited as a quarterback thanks to a slow progression through his reads, limited pocket awareness, and the mobility of one of Fraggle Rock’s Gorgs, there’s no denying he throws a beautiful deep ball:
Rudolph was, coincidentally, able to thrive in the situations where Ben Roethlisberger struggled in 2020. His checkdown game was lacking and he often missed open receivers closer to the line of scrimmage. He also showed off pitch-perfect passing on home run swings multiple times, allowing young wideouts Diontae Johnson (three catches, 96 yards) and Chase Claypool (five catches, 101 yards and a touchdown) to thrive.
Rudolph finished the game with 315 passing yards and a pair of touchdowns, but needed 39 passes to get there and threw an interception in the process. This wasn’t enough to prove he’s the quarterback of the immediate future in Pittsburgh. Given Ben Roethlisberger’s declaration he’d be back for 2021, he doesn’t have to be. Rudolph showed the growth to play to his strengths, one year after an eight-game stint as starter produced exactly one memorable moment in which he was donked in the head with his own helmet:
At the very least, Rudolph looks like a useful backup quarterback with potential for improvement. He’s under contract next season for only $1.2 million, so the Steelers will have another full year to address his progress. This game against the Browns wasn’t flawless, but it likely means Pittsburgh won’t have to spend a Day 1 or Day 2 draft pick on a quarterback unless they’re *really* concerned about Roethlisberger’s age-39 season.
That’s valuable for a team who likely had no shot at a top-four QB prospect without massively overpaying to move up in the first round. And when you’re a team that relies on the internal development of early-round picks as heavily and reliably as the Steelers, keeping as much draft capital as possible is a win.
(Also, Josh Dobbs got put in the game for five touch passes and completed four of them. For two net yards. 0.4 yards per pass. That’s incredible.)
The Panthers’ quarterback situation may not be as fixed as I was led to believe
I am a big, dumb Teddy Bridgewater stan. I appreciated the stability he brought to the Vikings in his first two seasons, particularly as someone who frequented the flyover-state airport environment of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome multiple times in the 2015-16 seasons. I cheered for his comeback because it was awesome and heartwarming and one of the NFL’s few catastrophic injury stories that actually lent room for a happy ending. I watched intently as he burned through high-level preseasons with the Jets and Saints like it actually meant something.
So when he led New Orleans to a 5-0 record as a spot starter last fall and signed a three-year, $63 million deal to kick off the Matt Rhule era in Charlotte, I was 1000% on board. The admiration grew after he got his team off to a 3-2 start while restoring Robby Anderson’s value as a wideout and recording a 101.9 passer rating. Teddy Bridgewater, franchise quarterback, was back, baby!
But the man who started the year with a 6:3 touchdown-to-interception ratio threw nearly as many picks as scores over the final two-thirds of the season. That included this, uh, less-than-stellar line in Week 17:
Gaaaahhhh. Bridgewater only had one game you’d classify as “good” in his final 10 starts — a 310-yard, two-touchdown performance against a Kansas City secondary that serves as the defending champions’ most glaring flaw. 70 percent of those games ended with one touchdown pass or fewer. All but one saw him average fewer than eight yards per pass attempt. These are not the numbers of a franchise quarterback.
That leaves Rhule and the Panthers’ management in a conundrum. Bridgewater is under contract for next season with a $23 million cap hit and a $20 million dead cap hit. He’s not going anywhere. A 5-11 season will bless the club with a top 10 draft pick, but that might not be enough to land one of the top four passing prospects next spring (depending on how North Dakota State’s Trey Lance grades out in pre-draft workouts). The team only has an estimated $16 million in 2021 cap space headed into the offseason, and that’s without re-signing starters like Russell Okung, John Miller, Chris Reed, or Curtis Samuel.
What’s Rhule to do? The most likely outcome is another year of Bridgewater as an entrenched starter with XFL alum PJ Walker (seen above being bad at football) and a potential developmental draft pick on the depth chart. If the veteran QB plays like his back-end 2020 self, that means another year of losing in Charlotte. But, plus side, that could create the leverage necessary for a top-five pick and a clearer-cut franchise quarterback for 2022. — CD
man vicent jackson died fed 15 2021 at age 38 and he couldn,t played his next season im sure he would want to play
I think it'd be sweet if Byron Leftwich got the Jags coaching gig. Just sayin'...