SI

MMQB: How the Bengals and Their Small Scouting Staff Built a Super Bowl Team

Cincinnati has just six people canvassing the college and NFL ranks, but they’ve gotten a lot right lately. Plus, the Rams six years into the L.A. experience, top story lines, Matt Eberflus on his plans for Justin Fields and plenty from the Senior Bowl.

Albert Breer

In this story:

LOS ANGELES — The guy who built the Bengals would dispute he’s responsible for it. He wasn’t on the podium after Cincinnati won the AFC championship. He was on the coaches’ headset during the game, but only to listen. He basically operates as the team’s general manager, if only he cared about having the title.

He could use all of this to become visible, yet is totally fine being able to walk clear through the concourse at Paul Brown Stadium on game day without a single fan stopping him.

Duke Tobin built the Marvin Lewis Bengals into a team that went to the playoffs five straight years, survived Lewis’s departure and has built an even better team for Zac Taylor—one that’s arriving here in California two days from now for its first Super Bowl in 33 years. His fingerprints are all over a rebuild that’s been total—punter Kevin Huber, snapper Clark Harris and tight end C.J. Uzomah are the only ones left from Lewis’s last playoff team.

Just don’t tell him that.

To Tobin, what’s been a three-year facelift isn’t a tribute to him. It’s a tribute to everyone.

And most especially the six-man scouting staff he captains, easily the NFL’s smallest.

“With a small organization, the No. 1 thing we want them to have is pride in their work and a belief that what they’re doing at Texas State that day truly matters,” Tobin said Friday, from his office. “And it does truly matter because they’re our eyes there. So when a guy is at a place, he doesn’t feel like it’s redundant. He feels like, ‘Alright, the organization is relying on me to be good today.’ And there’s a tremendous amount of pride that comes with that.”

You’ll hear a lot of remarkable stories this week, of individual players, coaches and staff who overcame a lot to land a Feb. 13 date at SoFi Stadium, all of them worthy.

But when it comes to team-building there may not be a better one than what Tobin and his staff have consistently done for a small-market, small-budget franchise. It’s the anthesis of what the forward-thinking, envelope-pushing Rams are. Cincinnati’s decidedly old school, and Tobin won’t apologize for it. Because just as his way, the Bengals’ way, built an annual contender around Andy Dalton, it’s now built a burgeoning champion around Joe Burrow.

Since 2011, only five teams—the Packers, Seahawks, Steelers, Patriots and Chiefs—have been in the postseason more consistently than Cincinnati. So that the Bengals are here? Yes, that’s a surprise. Again, it’s been 33 years. But that they’re in the running shouldn’t be.

Maybe, eventually, someone can get Tobin to take a bow for it.

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Trevor Ruszkowski/USA TODAY Sports (Duke Tobin); Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports (Sean McVay); Jon Durr/-USA TODAY Sports (Justin Fields)

I’m writing this as my JetBlue flight crosses over Hamilton, Ontario, and I’ll be in downtown L.A. (presumably) by the time I file it, which means it’s Super Bowl week. And it looks like it’ll be a pretty normal one compared to last year’s. We’re going to get you ready for the big game and cover some other ground in this week’s MMQB. In the column …

• The Rams’ return to L.A. six years in, and the benefit of being home for the Super Bowl.

• A look at the five best story lines of Super Bowl LVI.

• What Matt Eberflus sees in Justin Fields—and how the Bears will build for No. 1.

• Josh McDaniels’s fresh start in Las Vegas.

• More on the Brian Flores lawsuit, and the results of Senior Bowl week.

But we’re starting with how a six-man scouting staff built a Super Bowl team.

There are challenges, of course, that Tobin and his staff face. They can’t be at a dozen schools on a fall Saturday. There’s no cavalry to send to Alabama for pro day in March. And to make sure the Bengals just get the coverage they need, on both the college and the pro side, requires a lot of groundwork being done ahead of time and an ability to think strategically on how to be most efficient.

But if you are efficient? If you do have the groundwork in place? Tobin believes what he has can grow into an advantage.

“The biggest thing that’s important to us is organizing the info and the schedule,” Tobin said. “As long as you’re organized, we get multiple looks on guys. But we rely on our looks, we rely on quality over quantity. And the longer you work with guys, the more you know how they grade and get a feel for what they see. And our guys are all very consistent in how they view players. And so we feel really good about the looks that our guy gives, and then you don’t get it muddied by eight opinions.

“You might, at the end of the process, when we throw our coaches in, have four opinions or five opinions on the main players. And that’s plenty. And so I think when you work with a smaller group it becomes tight-knit, people know each other, they all believe that they have a real role, and they don’t believe they’re just out as information gatherers.”

Tobin’s top two lieutenants are college scouting director Mike Potts and pro scouting director Steve Radicevic. Trey Brown, Andrew Johnson and Christian Sarkisian work underneath them, and their titles are apropos—simply “scout.”

All three are expected to work on both the pro and college sides. Potts and Radicevic cross over plenty and are told to assign Brown, Johnson and Sarkisian out as they see fit. And while that may be necessary, given the size of the group, for Tobin, it’s by design, too. He wants all of his scouts to have the versatility to do both, mostly to build perspective into how they evaluate players.

“The easiest way to describe our department is everybody works some in every area,” Tobin continued. “The reason I do that is because I want them to be fresh in, A) knowing what’s playing in the NFL, and then B) having a context for grading college guys. All our guys have to have an awareness of A) what’s in the NFL and B) what’s coming from the colleges. And I think that gives them a great context when they’re looking at a college player, knowing what’s in the NFL. And when they’re looking at an NFL player, knowing what he was in college and the progression.

“It gives them a real perspective on comparisons. And I feel like comparisons are the most important thing in scouting—Who does he remind you of and why? And what is his upside, and what is his role on our team?”

Familiarity helps too. Tobin’s been with the team since 1999, the year he left the Colts to go about an hour and a half down I-74 to Southwest Ohio. His 81-year-old dad, former Colts GM Bill Tobin (you’ll remember him for Mel Kiper–related reasons) works for the team as a personnel executive, bringing NFL experience going back to his time as a player in the ’60s.

The multitasking Radicevic was hired out of UCLA in 2012. Potts, who has a steel trap of a scouting mind, came from the Falcons in ’15. Both are still in their mid-30s. The cerebral, experienced Brown is another 30-something, having jumped on board from New England last year. Meanwhile, Johnson started as an intern in Cincinnati in ’15, and Sarkisian came aboard from Northwestern in ’19—both dogged workers who are still in their 20s.

So in the group, there’s varied experience, but also a lot of investment in having helped to build a program that everyone can identify with. “They’re all very similar,” Tobin says, “because they’ve all grown up in the same system.”

Also, all of them live in Cincinnati, which may make the travel more arduous at times, but is something that Tobin, even in today’s Zoom–centric world, views as key to all of it.

“Every guy we have lives in Cincinnati, is in the office and is communicating daily,” Tobin said. “Not only with the scouts, but the coaches after the season’s over. So one thing that benefits us is the closeness of it. You just have to walk up one flight of stairs to visit with somebody and discuss it. And we meet a lot as a group to try to hash out the differences that we might have. Over time, I try to incorporate anybody that has a history with the player—anybody. Our sources go just beyond our guys.

“But it’s important for our guys to be on board.”

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Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer/USA TODAY NETWORK

In the weeks leading up to last year’s draft, reporting (some of it my own) emerged that Burrow had made a passionate case to the offensive-line-needy Bengals that they should take his college teammate and No. 1 receiver Ja’Marr Chase, rather than just drop one in the middle of the fairway and draft Oregon tackle Penei Sewell with the fifth pick. And Tobin will confirm it did go down like that … sort of.

“You want people to be on board,” Tobin said. “Really, the biggest thing I try to do in my role is to get as many people on board with a guy we’re bringing in our building, whether it’s a first-round pick or a seventh-round pick. So when the guy walks in the building, he’s there, and everybody that touches that player knows why he’s there and is on board with him being there. And I think that’s important for a young player’s development.”

And as to Burrow specifically, Tobin conceded, “It’s a little different. You want him to understand the why’s about it, especially on offensive players that we bring in. And you want him to see the reasons and you want him to have some voice in it: Hey, here’s what he did for us. The great thing about our players is when we ask them, they’re not expecting to be decision-makers, they’re information sources for us. If we can use that information source, then that’s great.”

Burrow, as you might expect, was A-plus on Chase across the board and, as you might expect, a lot of others inside the building were, too—so by the time Chase was holding a No. 1 jersey up on stage in Cleveland in April, everyone was invested in him.

As Tobin said earlier, the coaches’ voices are always heard, and they were on Chase, too, the same way all those voices were heard a year earlier when the team identified Burrow as their quarterback and didn’t budge even a little when Miami came calling (and the idea of getting Justin Herbert at No. 5 and a bounty of picks for No. 1 instead might’ve crept in for a less-resolute operation).

“There was no offer,” Tobin said. “They wanted us to engage, but there was no engagement. I never engaged, nor did I want to give them the idea that I was going to engage or going to solicit any offer. And if they’re mad about that, tough s---.”

And just as reaching a consensus buoyed the Bengals on Burrow, doing so again was impactful as ever in landing last year’s game-changing free-agent haul on defense, with Cincinnati taking advantage of the cap space that comes with having a quarterback on a rookie deal.

Doing that in Cincinnati first required an honest assessment for the team on where it was on that side of the ball, and that meant taking a cold look at the Bengals’ own free agents versus the others out there. That led to the decisions that Trey Hendrickson would be better for them than homegrown Carl Lawson and that letting William Jackson go could create room to bring in multiple corners.

In Hendrickson, the coaches saw a guy who wasn’t playing as many snaps in New Orleans as he would in Cincinnati, and figured his production would explode if they could afford him more opportunity (correct). In Chidobe Awuzie, Radicevic and the coaches found a remarkable level of consistency that was exactly what the secondary needed (correct). And they thought Mike Hilton was, simply put, the NFL’s best slot corner (correct).

Add to that where those guys were coming from—with big-game experience from the Saints, Cowboys and Steelers—and they figured an intangible value would be there, too. But if they needed proof, Awuzie gave it to them right away. After agreeing to a deal with the Bengals, another team swooped in with a better, 11th-hour offer. Awuzie told them he’d given Cincinnati his word and wasn’t backing out of his verbal agreement.

Given that, as you might expect, those guys had some things in common with Burrow, Chase and the rest of the guys on the offensive side of the ball, too.

“The thing that we’ve hit on is players that love to play football,” Tobin said. ‘They love what football brings them, but that’s not their motivation. And if you can avoid the players that are just motivated by what football brings them and buy into players who love the actual football, love the preparation, love the grind, love the locker room, love being around teammates, love being coached, that’s the biggest thing.

“We’ve got a locker room full of people that love football. … Every free agent we’ve brought in has 100% buy in. Some are making a ton of money, but they’re 100% bought in. And same thing on the college level.”

It may seem like a little thing. It’s not. Last year, after the Bengals lost Burrow in Week 11 in Washington, it would have been easy for the team to go in the tank. Maybe some would’ve seen it as better for Tobin and his staff, draft pick-wise. But it didn’t happen.

Cincinnati beat the AFC North champion Steelers with Ryan Finley at QB in Week 15 to snap a five-game losing streak, then beat the Texans with Brandon Allen in there in Week 16.

“The belief on our team was that we had what we needed and so really, the camaraderie was still there,” Tobin said. “We weren’t winning, but the belief was there. And the camaraderie was still there.”

Tobin gets on the headsets during games because he wants to be up to speed on everything that’s happening with his team. By going on, and not saying a word, he gets real-time context on his team’s why’s while the what’s play out below. And it also gave him insight into how the intangibles of guys like Burrow, Chase, Awuzie, Hendrickson and Hilton, and even long-time Bengals like Sam Hubbard and Tyler Boyd, were showing up in a very big way.

More than anything, there was no panic amid the coaches. Down 21–3 at Arrowhead, with a red-hot Patrick Mahomes tearing through their defense, the Bengals’ staff reflected the level and confident approach of its players. They’d been there before. They’d do it again.

“It shows up in the confidence that they play with and the belief in each other that we’re gonna come back and we’re gonna be in the game,” Tobin said. “I don’t think when things go against us that we get the finger-pointing and the infighting. Not everything goes your way all the time, and you gotta have people that are tough-minded enough to grind through it, not blame each other and then ultimately succeed. There’s a belief that the people in the locker room are gonna come through when it matters the most. That’s the important thing.”

They have, the coaches have too, and so has Tobin’s little corner of the Bengals’ operation.

This department of a half-dozen (seven, when you include Tobin’s dad) is in the Super Bowl over a lot of massive groups in bigger markets. And that’s not to say smaller is better. But it would indicate that being bigger isn’t always best, especially when you make every person count a little more than other teams might.

How much do the scouts in Cincinnati count? It’s proven every time a player walks in the building, in how much has been invested in each of them.

“Most importantly, they know what the guy’s all about because they were part of the process,” Tobin said. “I try to get everybody that’s going to touch the player to be somewhat part of the process, and I want to hear opinions. And ultimately, we’re going to make the decision. These are tough decisions, but everybody’s going to know why we make the decisions.”

Lately, a lot of them have been right. And testimony to that will be landing in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

Joe Nicholson/USA TODAY Sports

YEAR SIX IN L.A.

We’re now six years in to the NFL’s reentry here, to Los Angeles, and there’s a new stadium in place and a promising team with a dynamic, young quarterback playing there. And then there’s the team that was the first one back, the one that built the stadium, and the one, now, playing in its second Super Bowl since being rechristened the L.A. Rams.

Three years ago, Rams COO Kevin Demoff and I talked for this column, the one the week before the Super Bowl, about how his team getting to the big game would make a difference in the effort to make a real dent in the nation’s second-largest market, a transient place that, for 20 years, had been conditioned to root for different teams and watch the biggest games every week on television.

Demoff mentioned then how he was seeing more Rams jerseys at his kid’s school. The kids who were in middle school then are in high school now, elementary schoolers are middle schoolers, and the work’s been steady in trying to ingrain the team in the community.

“I think it’s a little bit different,” Demoff said on Saturday. “It all happened so fast the last time. For us to get to the Super Bowl so quickly, we were still new to people. While everyone enjoyed it, it did come out of nowhere to some degree. And it really did help us sell out SoFi Stadium, have the best seat-license campaign in NFL history—it set us up for all of that. This time is different in that we’re at SoFi, and players are so much more well-known around the city.

“Cooper Kupp and Aaron Donald are household names. Sean McVay’s been here five years. There’s real star power on this team, and we’ve had three more years in the market. And there are plenty of teams that pop up and have a great year, that don’t have sustained success. Sean’s body of work—five winning seasons, four times in the playoffs, three NFC West titles, two Super Bowls—is incredible by any standard. So those kids who got jerseys three years ago are bigger fans now.”

And Demoff and I talked about that as a jumping off point in discussing what’s in front of his team now, which is the chance to play a Super Bowl in its home stadium.

This is the second consecutive year that’s happened, after 54 Super Bowls without it happening once. So while it’s no longer unprecedented, it’s still pretty rare, and the rarity of it has its (mostly) plusses and (some) minuses. To prepare for that, the Rams did talk to the Bucs, who went through this last year.

But given that last year had all the COVID-19 restrictions that handcuffed the teams, wiped out most events and cut stadium capacity down to below 20,000, this is actually uncharted territory. Here are a few elements in play for the Rams.

• For the team itself, there isn’t much not to like. “From a football perspective, it’s all plusses,” Demoff said. “The NFC team hotel is our hotel for home games. So if you want to approach it with your normal rhythm and routine, we’ll get exactly that. The players will be in their own beds for the same amount of time; they don’t have to travel. We were home Week 18, had the wild-card game at home, and we did go to Tampa. … But over six weeks, we’ll have gotten on a plane once. That’s ideal for the players.”

• Ditto for the operations people. “From an operational perspective, it is probably a little bit easier. And it’s a ton easier, having been in the game recently,” Demoff said. “When we went to Atlanta [for Super Bowl LIII], we were trying to cobble together best practices of other teams, other coaches, other organizations, in how to attack it. And nothing works like experience, with how we handle tickets, hotels. We’re three or four days ahead of where we were when we went to Atlanta. And not having to worry about flying family in makes it much, much easier.”

• There were issues that arose during the playoffs. In a normal year, the NFL would take over the Super Bowl stadium right after the regular season. This year, with the Rams in the playoffs, that was impossible. But they still started chipping away, and there were things that were unavoidable—a third of the team’s parking at SoFi was gobbled up for the NFC title game as the league worked on building its security perimeter for the Super Bowl. That meant holding a lottery for parking for the conference title game for season-ticket holders, which is less than ideal.

• Some elements of that were pretty funny too—this year’s Super Bowl colors, colors that’ll be built into the stadium, are red and purple. And construction on that was halted because, yup, the 49ers wear red.

• Appeasing the home fans at home is challenging too. Because the act of getting to the game doesn’t require the travel of a Super Bowl in Miami or Tampa, actually getting into the game will be harder for those who want to go. “The hardest thing is having 60,000-plus season ticket holders and running a lottery where everyone wants to go,” Demoff said. “You’re not gonna wind up with a lot of happy people. We don’t have control over the prices. The ticket allotment, the teams get 17% of the ticket inventory, so there’s less than a 1-in-10 chance of winning the lottery. It’s hard.”

• And the events surrounding the game, too, are tougher for the team. “For a year, you’ve been planning for all the events to take advantage of your position as the host city,” Demoff said. “And now you get the demands of fans, partners and stakeholders, who want to be a part of it. It’s a challenging dynamic, but our group has worked tirelessly on that.”

With that, Demoff doubled back to the overwhelming positive here, and cited that the NFC title game was the most-watched local sporting event since Lakers-Celtics Game 7 in 2010, as a measure of how far the Rams have come. “The Dodgers and Lakers are where they are,” he said, “because they had sustained championship success. It’ll help us continue to grow.”

And as they do, they’ll get a unique experience to boot.

“Sometimes you say something is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” Demoff said. “But this is the first Super Bowl in L.A. in 30 years, it’s our first year with our fans at SoFi and we’re playing in the game. You don’t want to lose sight of the fact that it really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for everyone involved.”

And now, McVay, Matthew Stafford & Co. will try to make it even more of one.

SUPER BOWL STORY LINES

What’s impressive to me about the Rams’ being here is the inverse of how remarkable it is that the Bengals are here—McVay’s crew was faced with, and met, huge expectations.

And that it’s played out this way reminded me of a longer conversation I had with the Rams’ coach last summer, when he brought up the pressure he and his team would operate under before I even could. We were talking about his focus on trying to live in the moment, after a whirlwind first four years in charge that included a trip to the Super Bowl, and two years later a borderline unprecedented quarterback swap that turned the temperature way up.

“We come out of the gates, our players do a great job, we end up winning the division our first two years, we go to a Super Bowl our second year, and you just kind of think this is the norm,” McVay told me. “But then, what accompanies good things is expectations. And I’d say, in a lot of ways, whether it’s for the last four years, or especially the last two years, you can let those expectations get in the way when you’re not as inside-out, and you’re letting an outside-in approach affect your daily enjoyment.”

So McVay basically resolved this year—he even had the Urgent Enjoyment slogan (actually borne of his former assistant Taylor telling him, “You’re very urgent”)—to try to make the most out of every experience that’d come his way. And when I got around to asking him about how he’d manage the expectations with his players, he promised he’d double down on his own approach.

“Best thing I can say is, you’re not gonna run away from the expectations,” he continued. “Every single team in the NFL has one goal right now, and that’s to win a Super Bowl. And I believe the teams that know, and teams that have actually accomplished that, they know that you only do that by being where your feet are planted. The one thing that I would say, there’s a belief in the ability to do what we want to be able to do.

“Now, you don’t do that unless you are where your feet are planted. But there’s a belief, there’s a confidence in the people you’re around. And when you enjoy that? We’re not gonna ask anybody to do anything that’s more than they can actually accomplish. And there’s a real peace of mind that accompanies that if you know, Hey, there’s gotta be hard work, there’s gotta be a process, there’s gotta be standards we uphold day-in and day-out.”

Bottom line, McVay believed that he had the right people to win, and he knew this year that would mean having people who could handle the pressure that was going to precede all the wins. And he was proven right.

Anyway, the Rams’ being here in an all-in year is my first Super Bowl story line. Here are five more to get you ready for the week.

1) The quarterbacks. The head to head between guys who don’t actually go head to head—the QBs—is always a big story line, and this year’s no different. For Stafford, though I’m sure he’s not looking at it this way, there’s the opportunity to completely change the way he’s viewed nationally—and maybe set himself up for a late-career run at the Hall of Fame. Meanwhile, a win would make Burrow the fourth quarterback to win a Super Bowl in his second year, putting him in a category with Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger and Russell Wilson. (Technically, Kurt Warner did, too, making it in his second accrued season, but he came out of school in 1994, and won it all in ’99.)

2) The coaches. Taylor was on McVay’s first two staffs, as an assistant receivers coach in 2017, and quarterbacks coach in ’18. You may also remember that he was one of the poster boys for the “Friends of McVay” narrative that ran rampant before the Rams’ last Super Bowl, three years ago. The NFL’s now littered with success stories to sprout from the McVay-Shanahan tree. This game will be Exhibit A in showing it.

3) The Bengals’ offensive line woes. Burrow was sacked nine times against the Titans and got knocked around pretty good against the Chiefs, even if he only took one first-half sack in that one. Things got a bit better in the second half of the AFC title game, as the coaches worked rookie Jackson Carman back into the lineup in place of struggling right guard Hakeem Adeniji. But Carman missed time last week with a back injury. And Taylor said late in the week he’s still unsure how he’ll manage the position in the game itself. Add that to the issues Isaiah Prince has had at right tackle (where the injured Riley Reiff had been), and that side of the line is a pretty major concern, particularly with Aaron Donald and Von Miller on deck.

4) Odell Beckham Jr. on the big stage. Cooper Kupp’s had an incredible, record-breaking season. It’s fair to say that Cincinnati defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo’s going to do all he can to take him away. And that could well leave opportunity for Beckham, who was signed as a sort-of luxury item back in November, but became so much more when Robert Woods went down with a freak practice injury. I’d imagine there’ll be opportunity there for the star-crossed ex-Giant and Brown.

5) The success of the NFL’s return to Los Angeles. Expect to hear a lot about that one this week, and rightfully so. The Rams aren’t what the Eagles are to Philly or the Browns are to Cleveland, and maybe they never will be. But they’ve been really good the last five years, and their following is growing accordingly. Their new stadium has set a new standard. And the second team to return to town, the Chargers, have potential to grow, too, with Herbert as their centerpiece. The league was careful about coming back here for two decades because it knew coming at the wrong time, with the wrong teams, or going into the wrong stadium, might mean losing the market forever. Their patience has paid off. So the victory lap is coming. Which is fine, of course­—a lot went into it.

New Bears coach Matt Eberflus and GM Ryan Poles
David Banks/USA TODAY Sports

TEN TAKEAWAYS

Matt Eberflus isn’t an offensive coach. But he does have an offensive philosophy, believe it or not. The new Bears coach wasn’t born yesterday, and he didn’t spend the last 15 years with horse blinders on—so he knew all along, coming up as a defensive coach, how hard it would be for him to find the sort of opportunity Chicago just gave him.

“You have eight jobs open, six of them are going to offensive guys, that’s already a given,” Eberflus said over the phone on Saturday. “So you have to be spot on when you’re doing your interviews to make sure that you have a plan in place for the offense. And I wouldn’t say that’s No. 1; I would say that’s No. 2. Because what’s really going to be the one that gets you the job is the type of man you are and the type of leader you are.”

Eberflus, of course, went into No. 1 with Bears ownership over the last month, explaining to them how any piece of the team would fit with the next, how he wanted to develop coaches through the program and all of that. But, sure, he knew that he had to sell the people on the other side of the table on his vision for an offense, one that someone else would be calling, and for second-year quarterback Justin Fields.

His vision was clear when we talked.

“I want an offense that’s going to be attacking, that stretches the defense horizontally and vertically, and I want them to be willing to have the ability to punch the defense right where it counts and to be able to move the ball down the field,” he said. “I want the attitude and the style to be right. Are we going to talk about route concepts that hurt defenses, and run schemes that hurt the defense? Yeah, that’s important. But the way in which you play is more important, and that’s what I want in the offense.”

And the triggerman is important too, which is why Eberflus spent an hour and a-half with Fields on his first day on the job. He explained his vision to make Fields as efficient as he can be, and to build an offense around, and for, the former first-round pick.

“I just see a guy that’s ready to develop. He’s so ready to develop and wants to be sponge,” said Eberflus. “We’ve talked about giving him an education on the defensive side in terms of coverages as well as the offensive side in terms of schemes. He’s ready to develop and excited to get going. Certainly, he has the skill set to move the ball with his legs, and we’re also looking at the concept of him being able to get the ball out of his hands, take what the defense gives you, and not only the underneath throws, but also the deep throw.”

Which is to say, yes, even though Eberflus is a defensive coach, he not only knows how important Fields’s development will be, he’s also not afraid to get in the weeds of it.

Here are a few more things from our conversation …

• The Bears also immediately landed Packers pass-game coordinator Luke Getsy, then got most of Eberflus’s defensive infrastructure, led by new DC Alan Williams, out of Indy. And that’s a pretty good sign for how things are getting off the ground. “I pulled out my list that I had when I interviewed, and I’m looking at it and I’m going, ‘Jeez, I wanted to be right around 65 to 70%, and if I could get those guys, I’m doing pretty good,’” Eberflus said. “I told those guys in the interview, I said, ‘Yeah, I think I can give you a little close to that.’ And things happen and guys decide for different reasons what they want to do. But we have a lot of good relationships with these coaches, and they’re all like-minded.” Safe to say the Bears did better than 65 to 70%? “Yes,” Eberflus said, “it’s safe to say that.”

• New GM Ryan Poles and Eberflus, who share an agent, were introduced a couple of years back through mutual friends—the kind of matchmaking that commonly happens with rising young execs and coaches—and it didn’t take long for the two to realize something was there. The first conversation lasted over an hour. They talked about style of play and preferences in personnel, and they resolved to keep in touch afterward. “I was just like, ‘Man, that was really good.’ And he said the same thing after talking to him later,” Eberflus said. “And we just kept our conversations going and the relationship going, and sure enough, this year during this cycle, he was up for a bunch of jobs, I was up for a couple jobs and it just worked out.”

• Eberflus always says what’s on the tape is a coach’s résumé—it’s one way he’s worked out his staff hires with guys like Getsy whom he hasn’t worked with before. All the same, he correlated Chiefs tape with conversations he and Poles had, and there was a lot he wound up liking. “What I see in terms of their length, the explosive athletic ability, the speed is all over the tape when you watch those guys,” Eberflus said. “And I just love the way they have put together that roster. … The 80-20 rule, to me it’s 80% skill and talent you have on the field, and then the 20% is the other part, the coaching, the scheme, the culture, how we play, the physical style, all that. But really, 80% of it’s the players. This is the NFL. It’s about having the best players you can on the field, and that’s really what Ryan and his group are going to do, is bring those guys in.”

Doing that would build on an already good start for the new Bears brain trust, which was manifested in all the staff hires Poles and Eberflus made. And from there, yup, getting the quarterback going would be a pretty good next step.

Mike McDaniel’s hire in Miami should get your attention. The fact that he’s biracial is, of course, important given the way this hiring cycle has gone. As is the fact that McDaniel is widely seen among those in the Shanahan coaching tree as the other side of Kyle’s brain. In fact, the 38-year-old Yale graduate may well be the smartest branch off that tree—and it’s reflected in how close Shanahan kept McDaniel over the years. Shanahan’s always surrounded himself with smart young coaches, but McDaniel was the only one he took to work under him at all five of his NFL stops as a coordinator or head coach (Texans, Washington, Browns, Falcons, 49ers). And in each of those places, Shanahan had no issue delegating to McDaniel, which is a good a sign of his trust in a guy he first got to know as a ball boy for his dad’s Broncos teams. In San Francisco over the last few years, Shanahan would spend Mondays and Tuesdays almost exclusively on the passing game, going to work with top lieutenants like former pass-game coordinator Mike LaFleur, while McDaniel was left to draw up the team’s run game for the week. By the time Wednesday rolled around, what McDaniel would draw up could be so inventive that it’d take a couple of days for the other guys on the staff to wrap their heads around what he was thinking. But Shanahan had so much trust in McDaniel that he gave him great latitude to roll with those sorts of ideas—and they paid off with one of the NFL’s best run games. The question now with McDaniel will be how he’ll be in front of the room when things go wrong. And it’s a fair question to ask. But based on what I know about how McDaniel’s grown in that regard, and how comfortable he is in his own skin, I think he’ll be alright. And I will say that I’m pretty certain that, going forward, his Dolphins are going to be a difficult team to coach against.

The one thing I really like about how Josh McDaniels approached this year’s coaching carousel, and really the hiring cycles of the last few years, is that he wasn’t trying to convince anyone that he was something he’s not. That happens way too often in these interviews—a team will be buying into something presented in that setting that doesn’t come to life when a hire actually gets on the job. And a while back, McDaniels decided he wasn’t going to be that guy anymore, and he’d present himself, and find someone willing to buy all the way in. “I don’t want to win the interview,” McDaniels told me Sunday. “I want to be myself and have them want me to be there. To me, when I stopped trying to do that, that was one of the things that I was most at peace with. And that was after Denver and St. Louis, and I had the opportunity to learn and really self-reflect and then come back here and do it. And still, taking some years here in New England to do that, too. Because, Albert, I’m just telling you, there’s a lot of people that want to tell you, ‘Hey, say this and don’t mention this.’ And, ‘Hey you might want to mention this person as somebody you can get on your staff. This will go over well in the interview.’ And I kind of graduated to a point where I thought to myself like, ‘Look, I’ve done the job that I have now well, and I’ll continue to try to get better at that, and if they’re interviewing me, they’re interviewing me because of who I am and what I’ve done, not because of some contrived answer that I’m going to give them or something that somebody tells me to say.”

So here’s where that comes back around in Las Vegas for the new Raiders coach—owner Mark Davis and his group (Dan Ventrelle, Marcel Reese and Ken Herock) bought into McDaniels for McDaniels himself and are going to go all the way in on his vision, which will become the Raiders’ vision. It’s hard to say, of course, whether it’ll work, because it’s hard to say that of any new coach coming in the door. But I really believe McDaniels has this set up the right way now, and he’s one of the NFL’s best coaches (and that’s how he’s seen by coaches across the industry), so the Raiders have a shot. Here’s some more from our talk.

• A big part of that vision is GM Dave Ziegler. The two go way back. McDaniels hosted Ziegler on his recruiting visit to John Carroll in the 1990s, and they wound up living in an off-campus house together when McDaniels was a senior and Ziegler a junior. Then, McDaniels brought Ziegler into the NFL in Denver, and the two were reunited again in New England. “He’s kind of grown up a similar way that I did,” McDaniels said. “Came into the league, lowest guy on the totem pole, great work ethic. Basically, any task you give him, he figures out how to do it the right way and then asks for more. He’s a great multitasker, he’s very organized, disciplined. And he’s extremely thorough and independent. And he can give you his opinion regardless of what yours is, and that’s always impressed me. Some guys get into the league and they spend more time trying to figure out what you’re going to say and what you want to hear, as opposed to giving you their own opinion, and it’s so important to have that in this type of an environment. And for me and Dave to be in these two spots, we can’t always see things the same way. And we won’t.”

• That brings us to another misconception of McDaniels: that he craved control. Those who know him know that, of late, as he considered other jobs, that hasn’t been the case. “Nope, it’s actually the opposite,” he said. “You know it’s ironic but it’s actually always been about the opposite for me. Would I like to have an opportunity to build the team the way that I feel like is right to do it? Sure. But I also know I don’t want to do every other role. I want to be good in the role that I’m good at, and that I’m supposed to be good at. And to have somebody that you trust and that you can lean on and count on in all those other areas, that’s really important.” That somebody, of course, being Ziegler.

• We can call this what it is: Most people look at Davis and can’t see past the haircut. McDaniels saw something different—an owner who desperately wants to win, who could offer a first-class work environment and who was going to go all the way in on the coach he hired. “He cares about really supporting his coach, his team,” McDaniels said. “He made it very clear to me that he wants me to come out and try to build the team the way that I feel like is best to build it. He asked good questions, and my answers were my answers, and it was authentic. I tried to be myself. You just get an overwhelming sense of commitment to, he wants to win, he wants to do it the right way, he wants to represent the team, the history of the organization and the city of Las Vegas the right way. All those things are important, and they’re important to me and clearly they were important to him.”

So McDaniels has the structure and support he always wanted, and that, as much as anything, is why he’s a Raider today. And after all these years—his second stint as a Patriots assistant spanned an entire decade—it’ll be fascinating to see just what he makes of it. (We’ll have more with McDaniels in Monday’s MAQB.)

The quarterbacks at the Senior Bowl showed as they were expected to. And that’s not great news. The group, compromised of all the top guys outside of Ole Miss’s Matt Corral, came in perceived to be an average lot. It left Mobile with a lot of NFL folks convinced of that. A couple of veteran NFL evaluators told me late in the week that they don’t believe there’s a single NFL starter in this year’s quarterback class. Not everyone was that harsh, but it was unanimous that these quarterbacks aren’t close to last year’s—and most agreed that all five of last year’s first-round signal-callers would’ve been the top guy at the position in the 2022 draft. Here’s a sampling of those takeaways.

• AFC exec: “You might have some people who’d take Malik [Willis] over Mac [Jones], just because of the physical stuff. But comparing them to Mac’s résumé, [Kenny] Pickett had nice stats, but he wasn’t Mac. So yes, I’d say all these guys are behind those five. … Pickett and [Desmond] Ridder look more ready to go. They’re playing a calmer brand of football. The ceiling’s not as high, but they’re more confident, they’ve played a lot, they’ve been on good teams, they’re pretty consistent players. Willis is a wild card. He could be something, but also could be nothing. That one would scare me. … Even the way he played this week, he holds the ball, runs around a lot, and it’s gonna take him a long time to get adjusted.”

• AFC college scouting director: “What’s your threshold for a starter? It’s kind of a broad term. I don’t think there’s an above average starter in the group. Maybe there are a couple of average starters. … If there’s two guys you can make an argument helped themselves it’s Ridder and Willis. Ridder almost by default, just by being consistent. I’m not saying he had a great week, but he comes out ahead by just looking steady. And he was very steady. The highs weren’t that high, but there was no Whoa, what was that? Willis has an absolute cannon; he can rip it. He doesn’t read the defense, but his arm even more live than on tape.”

• AFC exec No. 2: “It was an average showing all the way around. No one really stood out as a top-level guy. Malik showed the most athleticism and arm strength. You just question how ready he is, coming from the offenses [at Auburn and Liberty] he is.”

So, in summary, it does feel like the quarterbacks left Mobile with more questions than they came in with. For all the jokes about Pickett’s hand size, his are smaller than just about any NFL starter, scouts did feel like it was an issue in how the Pitt product threw it at a rainy outdoor practice Wednesday. North Carolina’s Sam Howell physically looked like a mid-round pick to the evaluators on hand. And that Western Kentucky’s Bailey Zappe was even at America’s premier college all-star game and draft showcase, per one scout, “tells you everything you need to know about the quarterback class.”

We covered the Brian Flores lawsuit in earnest on Friday, but there’s one other point that I thought was important to cover. And it’s one that Rod Graves, the former Cardinals GM who is now executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, articulated nicely for me last week. The idea, more or less, is that there aren’t a lot of examples of Black coaches rising through the ranks like, say, the two Super Bowl coaches did. That, of course, isn’t an affront to McVay or Taylor (and McDaniel does give us one example of it), so much as it is concern that Black coaches aren’t being identified as aggressively as white coaches are.

“It’s how those opportunities are going elsewhere, when you’ve got people who have less experience, who have been in the league far fewer years,” said Graves. “You just feel like the goalposts are being moved on you constantly. And that’s the word that I often hear from members and constituents and stakeholders and so forth that have done a lot to prepare themselves professionally for this moment. And yet, they don’t get the opportunity to interview in some cases. In others, where you have people like Todd Bowles and Leslie Frazier, Raheem Morris and Jim Caldwell, who have been head coaches, and in my opinion, who were far better prepared today after those opportunities than they were when they first took those jobs, we don’t see them getting the second chances. So those are the areas of frustration that I most hear about.”

So, to me, Morris’s case mirrors Josh McDaniels’s—both of those guys are brilliant, weren’t ready for their shot when they got it, at an awfully young age, and have rebounded in a very big way since. Caldwell’s case isn’t unlike Dan Quinn’s. And if you’re looking for young guys to be fast tracked, I really think the two would be 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans and Patriots linebackers coach Jerod Mayo. Neither Ryans nor Mayo will get their shot this time around. But both deserve their shot, and should be square in the running next year, given their Mike Vrabel–like profiles. So keep an eye on those two.

The Commanders nickname in Washington is going to take some getting used to. I think the people who were involved with developing it know that. Titans, for example, didn’t instantly win everyone over as the former Oilers rebranded themselves after moving from Texas to Tennessee. But a lot has gone into it, from the initial phases, to identification of three finalists (Wolves and Redtails were the others) to then creating everything needed around the new brand. And to give you an idea of just how this whole process has worked, consider this: Ron Rivera had a pretty good idea at the beginning of season, five months ago, that Commanders was going to be the name. Which meant he had to keep it under wraps for all that time. “The best thing I found was just denial. Denial. Denial. Denial,” he said. “I don’t know if you saw my press conference, but at the end of the year, they were trying to probe to find out, and I said, ‘You know, that’s a very admirable thing, and it’s a very commanding situation we’re in.’ I kept dropping those things just to have a little fun. But like I said, it’s a little bit of a relief now.”

Per Rivera, between 50 and 75 people were inside the inner circle and knew where this was going. Rivera did loop his wife in; and his son and daughter, both team employees, knew too. And by the time Wednesday came, Rivera was most certainly ready for everyone else to know, too. “It really was a big relief,” he said “But also, for me, one of the things I want to do, I want to use this as a catalyst of going forward, getting past the old things that happened 10 years ago, 15 years ago, those types of things. Say we’re starting fresh, we’re starting new, we’re the Commanders. Let’s get past all this stuff. Let’s not have that hanging over us. Let’s be judged on where we are and where we’re going. I mean, respect what happened because there were some tough things, but let’s go forward.”

My opinion? You didn’t ask for it, but I think the nickname is fine—I’d put it in that Titans category in that it has decent ties to the local area and will grow on people. I think the logos and uniforms are mostly fine with two get-off-my-lawn complaints. The first would be that the “Commanders” name on the front of the home unis is way too big, and gives me bad memories of those terrible, let’s-never-talk-about-that-again Browns outfits of 2015 to '19. The second is the red color and gradient on road uniforms. I hope they eventually just make those burgundy with gold accents, and make them solid. So with some tweaks and time, I think the whole thing will grow on us.

I think the Jaguars’ coming out of all this with Doug Pederson is a win. It was my belief at the beginning of January that the former Eagles coach was in the catbird’s seat to land the Jacksonville job, in large part because he was so much of what Shad Khan needed for his franchise—a steady hand with expertise in quarterback development. So why did it take so long? My sense is that Pederson had some misgivings about the structure in place, with Khan holding GM Trent Baalke over to run the football operation. And with time, and a messy search, maybe the owner recognized that if he was going to regain credibility with his head-coach hire, he could no longer stay the course. I’ve been plenty critical the last few weeks of the Jaguars for how this has gone. Fair or not, trust in Baalke among those in the coaching ranks is nonexistent. And Khan isn’t around much, setting up a situation where, with no one to officiate disputes, another GM vs. coach scenario could easily materialize. Which is why it always made sense to bring someone else in, and credit to Khan for seeing the error in his ways and actually going through with it now. Ex-Viking GM Rick Spielman’s already interviewed, and shares an agent with Pederson, so he’s natural choice. But whoever it is, the fact that Pederson stood his ground, and the Jaguars still moved to get him, is a good sign of where this is going for Trevor Lawrence and a young, talented core in place down there. Especially since this is another pretty important offseason for a team with a mountain of cap space and the first pick for the second straight year.

I didn’t watch the Pro Bowl, other than a few plays in my hotel room. But it’s pretty obvious that the game itself is worthless—and it’s not getting any better. So I actually think the right thing for the league to do with the game is to lean into how Peyton Manning used to use it, as a sort of convention for star players. The stories of Manning gathering Pro Bowlers at the hotel pool in Hawaii a decade or two ago are legendary, and a ton of players came out of those summits with real value. So if the league wants players to want to go? If you can work the stadium situation out, stop worrying about monetizing it, put the game back in Hawaii and create events that players will want to go to. And sure, you can play the game, but there’s no need for doing it with the pretense that it’s anything more than glorified touch football (as it should be, by the way … no one needs to get hurt doing this). Just seeing what I actually did see on Sunday reminded me of the league telling everyone who’d listen that going to 17 games was about taking a bad product (a preseason game) and turning it into a good product (a regular-season game). I’d love to know where the Pro Bowl fits into that standard.

I like Jimmy Garoppolo’s honesty in speaking about his situation this week. And I’ve appreciated how up front he’s been about it all year. The bottom line is, regardless of how much money you’re making, seeing your team acquire your replacement sucks for a pro football player. Garoppolo conceded as much throughout, and told the media last week that he has, indeed, thought about his future. “I was talking to John [Lynch] yesterday about finding the right destination and whatever the future holds, just doing it the right way,” Garoppolo said. “I’ve got a long career ahead of me. I’m excited about it. I’m excited about the opportunities to come. I just want to go to a place where they want to win. That’s really what I’m in this game for. I’m here to play football, win football games and as long as I’ve got that and good people around me, I think the rest will take care of itself.”

Now, here’s the key part: Garoppolo never let his own personal situation affect those around him. He played his ass off and through injury. He helped get his team to the NFC title game. It was obvious the whole time how his teammates felt about him. And the one guy who you’d think he’d have given the cold shoulder to as a result of all this, that replacement, Trey Lance, called him a “big brother” last week. I don’t know if Garoppolo’s ever going to be another team’s long-term answer at quarterback again. But I do know that, with how this year played out, I’d feel pretty good about bringing him in as a for-now starter, and putting him in the room with a young quarterback.

I have some quick-hitters for you, as usual, to wrap up the takeaways. Even though, for the first time since early August, there’s zero game action to react to.

• Big win for the Cowboys in keeping both of their coordinators. But it certainly also put the requisite pressure on everyone there to get the job done in 2022.

• Landing Patrick Graham is a massive get for McDaniels in Vegas. And it’ll be important, I think, for the Raiders to start grooming his heir right away.

• That stadium in Vegas is going to be a great asset for the NFL. One exec told me earlier in the year that regular season games there have a Super Bowl feel. It’s easy to see why.

• I’m fascinated to see where Teryl Austin takes his opportunity as the Steelers’ new DC. As Jim Caldwell’s coordinator with the Lions, he was on the head-coaching fast track. Then, Caldwell was fired, he went to Cincinnati for Marvin Lewis’s last year, and everything changed, as can happen in the coaching business. Maybe now he’ll get back where he was.

• As I mentioned in last week’s MAQB—keep an eye on Washington as an aggressor on the quarterback market over the next two months.

• I think whether Bill O’Brien winds up back in New England—succeeding McDaniels for a second time—will boil down to Bill Belichick, Nick Saban and whether Saban will sign off on O’Brien going back home after just a year at Alabama. And how hard Belichick pushes for that.

• Jim Harbaugh lost a second coordinator at Michigan over the weekend, with OC Josh Gattis making a lateral move to Miami. It’s hard not to wonder if the assistants there believe he’ll be back on the NFL market in 2023, after spending the last month there.

• McDaniel’s leaving San Francisco leaves a void, to be sure. My expectation is that Shanahan will lean on line coach Chris Foerster a little more to help with the run game.

• Speaking of McDaniel, incumbent defensive coordinator Josh Boyer is there—and the Dolphins were a difficult defense for everyone to play the last couple of years. It’ll be interesting to see if McDaniel goes there, or looks at Vic Fangio, with whom he shares an agent.

• The Colts’ hire of Gus Bradley makes sense, given Bradley’s Seattle roots, and the ties that Eberflus had to that system, through Rod Marinelli. Bringing in Bradley will give Frank Reich the injection of new ideas he was looking for, while maintaining a scheme that fits the really talented group of guys Indy has on that side of the ball.

SIX FROM SATURDAY

Sure, we killed the quarterback class earlier. But there were plenty of positives to take from the week in Mobile. Here are a few guys who helped themselves, in the eyes of scouts.

1) Jermaine Johnson, DE, Florida State: The 2021 ACC Defensive Player of the Year faced questions coming in. Mostly, it was whether the year he had with the Seminoles was reflective of a step down in competition—he wasn’t nearly as productive in the SEC, before transferring from Georgia. Consider the concerns addressed. The 6' 4", 259-pound demon off the edge won the week, by winning in a variety of different ways in drills as a rusher. Pencil him into the first round.

2) Christian Watson, WR, North Dakota State: Playing for the run-heavy Bison, this three-year starter registered 14 touchdown catches for his career, seven of which came this fall. So there was promise there, and Watson’s game most certainly translated over to the practice field in Mobile. At 6' 4" and 208 pounds, Watson played big, showing off his catch radius, and also proved he can run a little, too.

3) Greg Dulcich, TE, UCLA: The tight end group in Mobile was one of the deepest the Senior Bowl’s had in years, with a bunch of guys vying to go on the draft’s second day. Dulcich may have helped himself more than anyone else. The Bruins star’s length stuck out to evaluators, as did his ability to find voids in the defense.

4) Trevor Penning, OT, Northern Iowa: Penning’s reputation is as an edgy competitor, and all of it showed up. In fact, when things got chippy on Tuesday and Wednesday, Penning pretty consistently seemed to be in the middle of it. “I’m not sure if he’s naïve or playing coy,” said one veteran scout, with a laugh, “but he acted surprised when people wanted to fight him.” And people wanted to fight him because he played plenty tough and bolstered the thought that he’ll wind up in the first round.

5) Perrion Winfrey, DT, Oklahoma: He wound up with two sacks, three tackles for a loss in the game itself and won MVP honors. And that only built on a week over which he consistently showed himself to be athletic and disruptive at 6' 4" and 303 pounds.

6) Boye Mafe, DE, Minnesota: The Gophers star is overly impressive physically—at 6' 3" and 255 pounds—but he showed an aggressive streak and played with heavy hands all week. His playing style stuck out and should help him distinguish him among a crowded group of pass rushers in the ’22 class.

And there were a few others, too, like UConn DT Travis Jones, Cincinnati CB Coby Bryant and Boston College OG Zion Johnson, and even Penn State P Jordan Stout, who helped themselves over the week in Alabama. A week that, of course, signifies that draft season is getting underway for all of us.

BEST OF THE NFL INTERNET

Yeah, these are quirky stats. But they also add context to what Brady accomplished. Other than punters and kickers, almost no NFL players go into their 40s. And yeah, playing quarterback isn’t the same as tailback or receiver. Still … Brady didn’t just play into his 40s, he won Super Bowls with two different franchises in his 40s.

The most mind-blowing fact I read all week.

If anyone wants to update me on Sunday’s Pro Bowl …

And yeah, I don’t care about the game. But there are some cool things that come out of the week.

A little unfair, but pretty hilarious.

One of the more underrated airport features in the country.

Faalele’s story will be a fun one for all of you to hear leading into the draft.

Under all the drama, on the field and off, people who know Odell Beckham Jr. best have always sworn there’s a big-hearted guy. Here’s a great example of it.

I really wish Ohio State had hired this dude before Notre Dame could.

Love this.

I did the same with my father-in-law back in 2013 at a Legal Seafoods. Not nearly as much drama, though.

What a great story.

Mitch, you did it. Unbelievable.

MAILBAG

This is my making up for the lack of a mailbag last week—lost in the mix of the Brady and Flores news, and my trip to Mobile for the Senior Bowl. If I didn’t get to yours in this abbreviated edition, I’ll try to for Wednesday’s regularly scheduled mailbag.

From Matt Ramas (@matt_ramas): Do the Saints hold Sean Payton’s rights indefinitely? In other words, if the Cowboys want to hire him next year, would that involve a trade between the two teams?

Matt, Sean Payton just completed the second year of a five-year deal—so he’d been signed up through 2024. That means that, yes, the Saints still hold Payton’s rights, and teams like Dallas would need to ask permission to talk to Payton about a job and ultimately negotiate with New Orleans to hire him. Do I think the Saints would help facilitate Payton coaching again if he wanted to? I do. It just might come at a price.

From Ryan Alexander (@GODEVLS): Is next season Kliff Kingsbury’s last with the Cardinals?

Ryan, I know things were uncomfortable for that coaching staff after the season-ending loss to the Rams in the wild-card round. A routine after-the-season personnel meeting was abruptly canceled in the days following the game, and the staff wasn’t given assurances that week. Eventually, things calmed down, and Kingsbury is, of course, going to be back in 2022.

But it doesn’t seem like owner Michael Bidwill is overly thrilled with how Arizona played down the stretch. And while I think it would have been ridiculous to fire Kingsbury after three years of steady progress, and given Kingsbury’s fit with Kyler Murray, enough happened before the Cardinals welcomed their coaches back to have my radar up going into ’22.

From Caimh McDonnell (@Caimh): It seems clear that the Rooney Rule, while well intentioned, is not getting the job done, but I’ve not heard many ideas for real changes that can be made to level the playing field. Are there any out there?

Caimh, the one idea that comes up consistently, one Ron Rivera raised with me again in Friday’s column, is the idea of creating events that connect owners and promising young executives and coaches. One common refrain that minority coaches and execs have grown tired of hearing is how an owner is “just more comfortable” with another candidate. Getting those owners together with good candidates, I think, would be a really good, positive step.

From RoyalChiefs1515 (@Royalchiefs1515): Will the league do another in-season Hard Knocks next year for HBO, or was this year a one and done?

Royal, yeah, I think that the league and HBO would love to. I also thought the product, even if it didn’t generate a lot of buzz, was actually really, really good. I think the question is going to be whether the league can find a team that’s willing to go through with it. The way it ended for Frank Reich and the Colts might not help.

From Jason Crawford (@bobcat2498): What are your thoughts on what the Raiders have been doing with their hires at GM and head coach? Give us fans your take and knowledge of Patrick Graham, please.

Jason, I love the start Josh McDaniels and Dave Ziegler have gotten off to, for the same reason I really like how Matt Eberflus and Ryan Pace kicked things off in Chicago—they’ve very quickly made a host of quality hires, not the least of which would be new assistant GM Champ Kelly and defensive coordinator Patrick Graham.

From Scott Zolak (@scottzolak): How was food in Mobile?

Zo! It was awesome, as usual. My three go-to’s there are Dumbwaiter, Noja and Dreamland. I got to the first two, but not the third.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

I’m encouraged this is going to be a relatively normal Super Bowl.

I was one of a small number of media people who actually went to last year’s game, and I can say not having the teams on site (the Bucs were there, of course, but in a virtual bubble the whole time) made the event feel totally different. And as of a few weeks ago, it looked like it’d only be a little better this time around—with teams set to travel to Los Angeles later in the day on Thursday.

Then, two things happened. One, the Rams made the Super Bowl, so they’ll be here. And two, the Bengals made it, too, and their lack of an indoor facility motivated the decision to come in on Tuesday and have practices at UCLA.

Add that to the return of a real Radio Row (last year’s was sparse and pretty sad), and it should be a good week. Which is a pretty fortunate twist for the organizers in L.A.—who were set to have last year’s game until stadium construction delays pushed their host date back a year.

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Albert Breer
ALBERT BREER

Albert Breer is a senior writer covering the NFL for Sports Illustrated, delivering the biggest stories and breaking news from across the league. He has been on the NFL beat since 2005 and joined SI in 2016. Breer began his career covering the New England Patriots for the MetroWest Daily News and the Boston Herald from 2005 to '07, then covered the Dallas Cowboys for the Dallas Morning News from 2007 to '08. He worked for The Sporting News from 2008 to '09 before returning to Massachusetts as The Boston Globe's national NFL writer in 2009. From 2010 to 2016, Breer served as a national reporter for NFL Network. In addition to his work at Sports Illustrated, Breer regularly appears on NBC Sports Boston, 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston, FS1 with Colin Cowherd, The Rich Eisen Show and The Dan Patrick Show. A 2002 graduate of Ohio State, Breer lives near Boston with his wife, a cardiac ICU nurse at Boston Children's Hospital, and their three children.

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