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Super Bowl Preview, Mahomes Has Answers, Brady’s Broken Offense, QB Trade Market
1. Tom Brady starting in the Super Bowl at age 43 is incredible, but making it more impressive is the fact that the offense he’s running is a decade behind the times. It’s been primarily a play-making defense that has gotten the Bucs to this point, and the receiving corps is good enough to make a handful of plays every week. (For instance, remember in the NFC title game, when their biggest play was a 52-yarder Chris Godwin pulled down. The play design didn’t work, the play-call wasn’t good, and it resulted in Brady essentially throwing a Hail Mary... that worked.)
Slogging through an offense that provides him few answers—Tampa's great offensive games came against bottom-feeder defenses like Carolina, Atlanta (twice) and Detroit—while lacking the ability to create the time and space necessary to make second-reaction plays? This has to have been the biggest challenge of his career, and regardless of how they got here, it's ending in another Super Bowl appearance.
2. If the Bucs pull off the upset, you figure it will look at lot like the Giants knocking off the Patriots in Super Bowls XLII and XLVI. The Chiefs, after all, will be playing without their two starting offensive tackles, and both Shaq Barrett and Jason Pierre-Paul (who is apparently delightful!) are capable of wrecking this game.
Patrick Mahomes is the greatest second-reaction quarterback in NFL right now and probably in league history, which gives the Chiefs one potential answer. But, also, K.C. had two weeks to figure out how they can get Mike Remmers and Andrew Wylie some help. The most obvious solution is to make it an evening with Darrel Williams and keep him in to pass-protect. Another one is to go heavy on chips from their receivers, an old staple of Andy Reid’s Eagles teams (a Jason Avant classic!). I’m ecstatic at the prospect of Byron Pringle lining up tight and chipping, buying a split-second for Mahomes and the many weapons who can win early in the down, rather than keeping an eligible in to block.
3. If you don’t feel like watching the entire game—it’s a very long game—the final score will be Chiefs 27, Bucs 19, with Mahomes winning MVP.
Also, this game has no effect on either quarterback's legacy. Tom Brady has been to 10 Super Bowls. Patrick Mahomes might get to 10 before he turns 35. If Mahomes loses this game and goes on the kind of dominant run he poised to go on, no one will remember.
4. I have little interest in ever writing or reporting in-depth about Antonio Brown again. I hope at some point he takes responsibility for his abhorrent treatment of other people—especially women. It’s clear the organization currently employing him doesn’t have interest in addressing his years of problematic behavior (yes, it’s all well and good that he hasn’t been a disruptive locker-room presence, but the bigger issue is, like, everything else).
But I did want to, oh so very quickly, touch on a tweet from Jalen Ramsey, in response to our Michael Rosenberg correctly pointing out that, yes, Antonio Brown still doesn’t understand that he isn’t a victim.
Ramsey, a bright guy with a tremendous capacity for learning, is just 26. He will gain a greater understanding and appreciation for the world outside of football as he gets older and wiser. But a little background on his claim that asking Brown about his behavior at a Super Bowl press conference is in any way out of line:
We at The MMQB spent months working on this Antonio Brown piece in the summer of 2019. Before it published, we reached out to Antonio Brown—through his agent (Drew Rosenhaus) and his team at the time (the Patriots)—to ask him about specific incidents in the story, and to ask if he generally had any comment he’d like to make. We, and many other outlets, have tried to ask him to address his treatment of women in the 16 months since. The only time he did so was when he told ESPN’s Josina Anderson, “I feel like I never really got in a conflict with no woman.” There are not many people who would agree with that statement; also, he has filmed himself doing so.
On Wednesday, Brown had to do a required Super Bowl media session, which provided an opportunity for journalists to ask him about past behavior that he has never addressed in any satisfactory way. He once again chose not to address it in any satisfactory way. This was not a case of every journalist on the planet deciding to wait until Super Bowl Week to ask him, like some kind of bizarro surprise party. Brown has had many opportunities in the past 16 months to address his behavior and chose not to. Because of that, when he had to make a required media appearance, he was asked some uncomfortable questions.
As for the suggestion that he was off-limits because this will be the biggest game of his career... well, it’s a football game, guy. In the larger scheme of things, it's not that important. Is he also off-limits next week because he’s looking forward to a very special episode of Young Sheldon?
Now, as for whether he would “take away from the big game.” I haven't played in a Super Bowl so take this with a grain of salt, but was there a potential scenario in which Tom Brady would zone out and wander the field aimlessly on a few dozen snaps, going, Four days ago Antonio Brown said “I regret the way I’ve treated women in the past,” and it’s making me forget I’m playing in a football game?
In summation: Brown never has to say anything about his past. The Bucs can continue to employ him and never give a satisfactory answer. And journalists can continue to ask him—and the team—questions about it until someone gives a coherent response.
5. This Wentzian news cycle coming through on Saturday was a doozy. Mort and Schefter reported (correctly, you’d assume, because it’s Mort and Schefter) that Carson Wentz would be dealt as early as next week. But within the report was that Eagles GM Howie Roseman was “looking for, in the words of one well-placed source, ‘a Matthew Stafford package.’” Which is a bit like if reliable reports came out that Mrs. Glick was on the verge of selling her candy dish.
Carson Wentz has nowhere near Matthew Stafford’s value right now for two reasons: 1) Stafford has shown over the past two years that he can still play at an elite level, whereas Wentz completely bottomed out last season; and 2) Stafford is due $43 million over the next two years, while Wentz is due $66 million. (UPDATE: Well now, that's not true. He'd cost the Eagles $66 million. He'd cost an acquiring team $47.4 million.)
Wentz is younger, but Stafford has, conservatively, three or four years left in his prime. Wentz comes with enormous risk, and age doesn't matter if you're playing that poorly. A team getting 2020 Wentz under center for a decade is less a selling point and more a fresh new take on Dante’s Inferno.
Wentz is a tricky evaluation because we’ve seen the ceiling and the floor, all in a four-year span. NFL coaches are a particularly optimistic lot, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking they can unlock 2017 Wentz, especially considering the Eagles' issues beyond him the last two years. But the contract is hugely problematic—if he doesn’t work out and you have to cut him after the 2021 season, you’re still eating $24 million in dead money. (Do you “eat” dead money? Or any money? That’s a strange phrase.)
The Eagles know Wentz better than any other team, and if they’re willing to trade him, that tells you a lot about how they handicap his chances of recapturing his 2017 form. In other words, anyone taking Wentz off their hands, considering his contract, is probably doing them a favor. A team like the Bears makes sense because they could send a bunch of bad contracts back—they have many!—and because they don’t really have a pathway to another quarterback upgrade (save for mortgaging multiple future drafts). So if this is a situation where the Eagles will take back Nick Foles, Robert Quinn and Jimmy Graham, sure, send a Day 2 pick Philly's way for the right to see if you can press the right buttons on Wentz.
6. I don’t know Nick Caserio, but he seems like the kind of guy whose house you went over and he had Mario-Kart but he would never want to play it, so instead you played Stratego and figured out, Man, Stratego is a pretty sweet game. (And then he’d get squirrely when you tried to invite yourself over again, and later in life you found out that his parents didn’t think you were a good influence on him, because you were the kind of kid who'd invite yourself over another kid’s house to play with his toys.)
Caserio also seems like the kind of guy who does not want to cement his legacy as, “The Guy Who Traded Deshaun Watson” (which makes it weird that—for a guy who supposedly had options—he chose the Houston job). The question becomes whether he can get something resembling equal value and save the franchise from a debacle that wasn't his making. And to do that, the when ties in with the what they get.
A lot of folks get caught up in the “how many first-rounders!” part of these trade discussions, which is a broad way of looking at things. Matthew Stafford cost the Rams two first-round picks, but those picks will—not definitely—but most likely end up in the 20s, which makes him a tremendous bargain (considering talent and salary). Think of it like paper currency. If I give you two 20-dollar bills, that is worth more than two 5-dollar bills. (But both are worth less than that cupholder full of tokens I have from playing the junior pop-a-shot at the arcade, because I'm gonna trade them in for a bunch of those little plastic parachute guys—arcades are the only place you can get those.)
If Caserio acts before draft night, he can guarantee that one of the picks he has coming back is high in the first round (Jets at 2, Miami at 3, etc.). If he waits until after the draft, he’s going to be settling for picks that will likely end up at the back of the first round, because whomever acquired Watson is going to be significantly better. That’s not a 100% guarantee, because after all Watson did just go 4–12. But I’m not sure there’s another franchise that can match Houston's level of dysfunction and figure out a way to lose double-digit games with Watson as their quarterback.
7a. This year’s NFL Honors were all correct. (I would have given Travis Kelce Offensive Player of the Year over Derrick Henry—much greater positional value—but they were close enough.)
Or, should I say, they were all correct with the exception of Kyler Murray winning the Snickers Hungriest Player of the Year because what does that mean? And he’s giving a $60,000 Snickers chain, which was the award for winning, to frontline workers in Arizona? Can Snickers just give $60,000 to frontline workers or do the frontline workers have to put the chain on eBay, where it surely won’t fetch the full $60,000. And, if so, how do they decide whose account to use? This whole thing seems like an unnecessary headache.
7b. Also, Baker Mayfield should have received some kind of award for his acting in the Progressive spot where he's carrying all the groceries into the stadium. He is, legitimately, tremendous in that ad. You could hire Mark Ruffalo to act out that scene and it would be a lateral move at best.
8a. I’m sure The Weeknd is an agreeable fellow, but I’d like to once again point out that the perfect Super Bowl Halftime show is as follows: “BTS Does BTO.”
You appeal to the younger crowd by booking the K-pop sensations, but bring in the older crowd by having them crank out “Takin’ Care of Business” and “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.” Maybe “Let It Ride,” but you’re pushing it with anything in BTO’s catalog that doesn’t include a colloquialism involving an apostrophe.
But the best part is: The set is only two or three songs long, so you can get back to the game quicker.
8b. My wife and daughter are avid BTS fans, and I mistakenly called them BTO sometime in those few weeks after I heard of them for the first time. So that’s where that joke came from. She didn’t think it was funny either.
9. According to league sources NFL teams are not going to play any more games this season after this one, so I therefore am not going to write any more game previews this season. Normally, this is the part of the column where I try to write a goodbye with the proper amount of emotional heft. But a season this weird probably deserves a more disjointed farewell.
I already had to chop a “Tom Brady Adult Swim comps” item because I’m running about three hours behind schedule tonight (and because approximately 14 people in the world would understand it). The best one I had come up with was MC Pee Pants from Aqua Teen Hunger Force—he takes on different forms every time we see him and runs a diet pill pyramid scheme, while Brady takes on different forms every time we see him and has the TB12 Method. My main point is: Though I run the NFL beat at a national publication while also raising three kids under the age of 10, I still manage to fit a heroic amount of cartoon-watching into my schedule.
I might pop up and write a thing or two this offseason, but my main focus in the offseason is going to be on the ambitious stories we have coming up, along the lines of the journalism we’ve been doing over the past two years. Hopefully, you have supported and continue to support local journalism in your community—it really, really is important, and it's a tragedy that many communities no longer have reporters covering town/city halls. And, if you have the means and can support our journalism (and maybe some other silliness) as well, it is much appreciated.
I remain extremely grateful and a little bit worried that anyone reads this column (and all the way down to No. 9!) but I have spreadsheets that prove it. And only some of those numbers are a product of running through the Apple Store every morning and opening it on every device.
Honestly, thanks for being here.
10. I believe Don requested GBV, and who am I to say no? Ladies and gentlemen… Guided By Voices!
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