Mailbag: What's the Best Solution For a Rescheduled Steelers–Titans Game?

Looking at the pluses and minuses of the proposed solutions for the Steelers and Titans. Plus, is this A.J. Green's last year in Cincinnati, inside the Panthers' and Giants' front offices, Nick Foles time in Chicago and more.

We’ll get to your mail, but first I figured, with the news of the day being the Steelers–Titans postponement, we’d lay out for you the options the NFL has in front of it for rescheduling the game, along with the downside for each plan.

Scenario 1: Move the game to Monday night.
Downside: Titans get just one practice day (Saturday) before game day.

Scenario 2: Move the game to Tuesday night.
Downside: Both teams are schedule to play a week from Sunday at 1 p.m.—the Titans host the Bills, and the Steelers host the Eagles—so each would in essence be playing on TNF-level prep against an opponent with a full week to get ready.

Scenario 3: Move the game to Week 8 and shift Ravens–Steelers to Week 7.
Downside: This works on paper, as I wrote about Tuesday. The issue then is that the Steelers and Titans are losing their bye weeks (since this certainly won’t feel like one) and then are forced to play 13 weeks in a row. Also, in doing this, the league’s margin for error with those two teams is gone.

We know what the NFL’s preference is. That much was clear in the league’s statement. They want the teams, pending more testing results like the good ones that came back on Wednesday morning, to play in some form or fashion in Week 4. Yes, it stinks for the Titans. No, it wouldn’t be fair for either team to come out of all this and go into a short week against a rested opponent in Week 5.

But this is sort of what everyone signed up for in going forward with the season amid a pandemic, and finding a way to get the game played in the coming days could provide a template for the league later in the year.

Come late November and December, playoff implications will loom large, flu season will be underway and teams will have already had their bye weeks. It’s certainly possible that a situation like this one could arise then. And if it does, and there’s hand-wringing from teams over competitive balance, it would be nice for the league to be able to point to precedent: The Steelers and Titans didn’t like this in September either, but they dealt with it.

And that gets to the crux of the matter. We all knew that competitive balance could be tipped if COVID-19 reared its head midseason, and teams were warned that some life-isn’t-fair moments could be coming. Now that they’re here, to some degree, everyone just has to accept them.

Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

On to your mail …

From Cincyfan (@Darktraveler1): What does Cincy do with A.J. Green? Looks slow and can’t get separation, hard to justify a long-term deal at top receiver money.

Cincy, I’d start here—Green’s been awfully banged up the last couple years, and so I do think you want to give him some time to get his feet underneath him. That said, he’s been banged up, he’ll be 33 during the first week of 2021 training camp, and a second tag would cost $21.8 million. That number’s a non-starter if he doesn’t start to look more like his old self. Right now, he’s on pace for a 69-catch, 619-yard year.

Add that to the fact that the Bengals are paying Tyler Boyd already, Tee Higgins looks promising as a rookie (even if his numbers thus far are pedestrian), and next year’s draft class is another one rich with receivers, and I can sure see where the Bengals might want to spend the money Green would be making to try and get Joe Burrow some protection.

And that’s nothing against Green, who’s been great. But based on all this, I think, if you’re Cincinnati, you let Green go to the market, wish him luck and tell him you’d be more than happy to talk if he wants to come back at a reduced rate, if what’s out there for him isn’t what he was hoping for. That is, of course, if he doesn’t return to form. If that happens, we’re having a different discussion.

From SalesMan (@95KeepPounding): Do you think David Tepper will ever fire Marty Hurney?

SaleMan, make no mistake, this is Matt Rhule’s operation going forward, which is pretty clearly evident in guys who have been acquired over the last eight months or so (Robby Anderson, P.J. Walker, etc.). And while Hurney remains the GM—he’s become a close confidant of Tepper since Tepper bought the team—Rhule’s fingerprints are now pretty clearly there in the team’s personnel department.

Director of player personnel Pat Stewart, hired away from Philly in May, worked with Rhule back at Western Carolina a decade-and-a-half ago, and Stewart’s influence has already been clear in the number of ex-Eagles that have been picked off the last four months. Also, Tepper brought in Samir Sulieman from Pittsburgh (where Tepper was a minority owner) to be director of player negotiations and salary cap manager, giving Rhule a guy on that side of football ops to start with.

Eventually, I think Hurney will retire or move into more of an advisory role, giving Rhule a major say in who succeeds him. But regardless, this is very much Rhule’s ship already.

From Derek Nelson (@_derekn): What are the Giants going to do about their front office? Can’t just keep firing coaches…

Derek, it’s not that different from the Panthers’ situation. The Giants have a veteran GM who’s close to ownership and is older. Long story short, I don’t think you’ll see owner John Mara dropping the axe on GM Dave Gettleman in the way you’d be used to seeing it, and I don’t think that should happen anyway—he’s done a better job than most people realize of building up what was a broken roster.

But there have been bad misses (like Deandre Baker), and it’s not hard to see where eventually the front office will get reshuffled or Gettleman will retire. If that happens, and Joe Judge and staff have shown promise, it’s pretty easy to deduce that a GM search would begin with a dive into the head coach’s Rolodex.

I’ve mentioned the name of Titans director of player personnel Monti Ossenfort a few times for this one—he and Judge know each other well from New England. So that would be one name to start with. And given how Mara values familiarity, there likely would be in-house candidates in Jersey, with assistant GM Kevin Abrams an obvious one to start with, and veterans of the organization like Tim McDonnell and Chris Pettit also well regarded there.

From Chris Maltby (@ChrisMaltbyBD): How do you think the move to Nick Foles will work out for the Bears?

Chris, the bet for Chicago here is that Foles’s playing style will help the other 10 guys in the huddle moving forward, and in particular guys like Allen Robinson, Anthony Miller and Jimmy Graham. The bottom line is that Foles has a better grasp of the scheme and plays more consistently on time and faster than Mitch Trubisky, which should allow for the offense to work better for all those skill guys.

There was a sequence of two plays in the Atlanta game that illustrates the disparity nicely. With a minute left in the second quarter, and the ball near field, the Bears broke the huddle into a 3-by-1 look, and had the two inside receivers to the left go vertical. Miller came free as the play was designed by bending his route in, but Trubisky hesitated, held the ball, then sailed it over his head. Two quarters later, with Foles in, a similar call came in (with the two outside receivers running verticals). Foles adjusted Miller’s route slightly in the huddle, got rid of the ball on time and put it right on the receiver’s chest plate for the game-winner.

So that’s a little example with big fallout. And the sort of thing that receivers sure do notice. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a different-looking Bears offense on Sunday.

From Mister Biggs (@PopBurgandy_): If Denver is in position to take Trevor Lawrence, would they? Or is Lock their guy for sure?

Mister, this is a fun topic that Conor Orr covered for the site last week and I’ll give you my blanket answer: There are very few teams that wouldn’t take Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence if they had the first pick. Kansas City would trade the pick. Seattle, too. Baltimore and Houston (which doesn’t even have a first-round pick) probably would. Cincinnati, Buffalo and Arizona probably (?) would. Dallas I actually think would be a toss-up. Who else? I think Green Bay would take Lawrence. I think the Rams and Eagles would, too.

That’s the kind of prospect we’re talking about here. Lawrence is in the John Elway/Peyton Manning/Andrew Luck category, which means he’ll be the best in eight years, and a legit once-in-a-decade prospect. On top of that, a team would be getting him on a rookie contract, which means they’d be building their team with a pretty serious advantage in the short-term, with the hopes that Lawrence will rise to a level, by Year 4, where he’d justify the big second deal.

And just before anyone tries to head off my argument here—I’m talking about how guys were seen as prospects. Patrick Mahomes has, pretty obviously, become the best player in the sport. This isn’t about that. This is about how guys are viewed coming into the NFL, and Lawrence will be in rarefied air in that regard, assuming nothing weird happens between now and April.

So to answer your question, Mister, the Broncos like Drew Lock. But I don’t think they like him enough to say no to a guy who might be the best quarterbacking prospect since, well, the guy who would be picking him, in your scenario.

From Grisu (@Drachenreiter77): Where do you think the Patriots land in the division? Greetings from Austria

From BradyForcesJetsFansToCry (@Pats_1988): If a player—for example RB Damien Harris—returns from IR to the 53-man roster and he is injured again and put on IR, can he return a second time to the active roster? What’s your opinion of the new IR rules? Best regards from Austria

Two Patriots questions from the homeland! Thanks fellas. Grisu, I’m going to stick with the Bills as my division champion. They’re 3–0, Josh Allen’s improving, and the defense can still be a lot better—cornerstones Tremaine Edmunds and Matt Milano just returned to the lineup against the Rams. I think Buffalo’s a 12-win team. That said, I feel good about having put the Patriots in the playoffs in my predictions a few weeks ago.

I think Bill Belichick and Cam Newton will get them to around 10–6. The schedule’s tough, but New England is going to get better over the course of the season, because that always happens. And I think how much better will ride on the continued development of young guys like J.C. Jackson, Chase Winovich, Isaiah Wynn and N’Keal Harry.

On the second question, I actually thought you could put players on and pull them off more than once. As it turns out, after I checked with some people, you can’t. So if you put a player on injured reserve a second time, he’s out for the year. That said, I do like the new rules, and the NFL has been going in that direction for a while anyway, with the designated-for-return adjustments of the last few years.

Now, there are reasons the NFL has been hesitant to go this far before—mostly because they view the gameday inactive slots as places where you put your injured guys, and also because it’d create some interesting challenges in roster-building. But my feeling’s always been that the more you can do to get the best players on the field on the most consistent basis, the better. This year’s COVID-related changes have certainly done that.

Form Mike Durand (@MikeyD_31): Who is the Patriots QB in 2021?

Simple answer: Cam Newton. Either on the franchise tag or a long-term deal. As we detailed in last week’s GamePlan, I’d pursue the latter route now if I were the Patriots. But New England could choose the former. Either way, I think Newton’s in New England in 2021.

From M William (@WilYukon85): When will Allen Robinson get re-signed?!

M, I wouldn’t underrate the extension done for Rams receiver Robert Woods as a factor in the thaw in Robinson’s situation in Chicago—both guys are in their late 20s, and came into the year seeking their third long-term contracts (a fairly rare thing) as NFL players. And Woods’s deal wound up at $65 million over four years, a tick over $16 million per year, which creates a template for getting a fair rate for Robinson in Chicago.

Other players right in that range of pay: Brandin Cooks, Adam Thielen, Cooper Kupp, Jarvis Landry, Davante Adams and Stefon Diggs. So, as I see it, the market is set. We’ll see if it’s enough to get a deal done. I think it should be.

From Not who you think I am (@DonRidenour): The 2nd round QB pick looks a bit different for the Eagles today, no?

I think what Don is saying here is that Philly might have had some doubt in Carson Wentz when it took Jalen Hurts in April. I don’t think that’s the case. GM Howie Roseman was raised in the Andy Reid school of team-building, and Reid learned at the knee of Ron Wolf, who believed you could never have enough quarterbacks (he drafted Matt Hasselbeck, Aaron Brooks, Mark Brunell and Ty Detmer, among others, while Brett Favre was on the roster).

Reid, you’ll remember, wound up flipping guys like A.J. Feeley and Kevin Kolb in Philly, like Wolf once did Brooks, Brunell, Detmer and Hasselbeck, for draft capital. And that was the idea here—develop Hurts behind Wentz and, hopefully, three years down the line, he’d prove valuable enough to bring back a return after giving the team a few years of very valuable quarterback depth.

Now, could things change from here? I think it’s way too early to pass that kind of judgment on Wentz. But this situation is just another example of why you can never have enough reinforcements at that position.

From Tanner James (@PatriotsDisect): Give me your top six teams in the NFL as of now!

Sorry, Tanner. My top five runs in Thursday’s GamePlan. But I’ll give you my No. 6 team here as a teaser for tomorrow: It’s the Titans.

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From All happy teams are alike (@AllHappyTeams): Keeping coaching, talent, and culture in mind, if you swapped Josh Allen and Russell Wilson, does their respective cooking taste as good for the Bills and Seahawks?

Happy Teams, I think Allen can cook, but not like Russ. So I think if you plant Wilson in Buffalo right now, they’re a little better. And I’d definitely have some question over whether Allen is ready, at this point, to cover up flaws the way that Wilson has in Seattle.

That, in fact, is why, while I believe that while Patrick Mahomes is clearly the best quarterback in football, Wilson might be the most valuable one right now. To me, there are plenty of really good quarterbacks who are capable of keeping the train on the tracks when things are good around them. Conversely, the last level of quarterbacking greatness, as I see it, is where a guy’s team is an automatic contender, regardless of what’s around him.

Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers (and a little before that Peyton Manning—check out what he did in 2010, before he got hurt), prove they were that guy. I think now we have very real evidence Wilson is too. There’s been a ton of change around him the last few years, and he’s kept Seattle in the running throughout—and just like the Patriots never bottomed out through their 2009–11 reset because of Brady, the Seahawks have navigated the post–Legion Of Boom transition deftly in large part because of Wilson.

From Tyler Kind (@TylerKind8): I got a more hypothetical one. Do you think we will ever see a time in the NFL where every team has a true franchise QB, and isn't in need to either draft or sign a QB via free agency?

Tyler, the answer is no, because there’ll always be an elite tier—guys that are clearly ahead of the pack. But where I do think you see what you’re referencing is in the quarterbacking depth across the NFL. I don’t think the position’s ever been healthier, which to me is a direct result of the emphasis put on the position across the sport. Quarterbacks are like golfers now in how carefully they’re developed, and it’s showing.

Here’s proof: Ahead of what should be a very strong quarterback class draft-wise (Lawrence, Justin Fields, Trey Lance), I don’t know if there’s a single team that you can count on taking one in the first round in April. Now, Lawrence, Fields and Lance will go in the top 10, because they’re great prospects. But to do it, some teams will be throwing other QBs overboard or putting succession plans in place.

And I’m not sure it’s ever been like that before. Used to be that, every year, there’d be a handful of teams staggering around in the wilderness without a real answer at the position, that were a good bet to take one the following April. The lack of even a single team fitting that description tells you what you need to know.