NFL Week 18 Takeaways: Eagles Back in Business With Jalen Hurts

Plus, the nation finds out why Cincinnati and the Bengals are special, the Seahawks are playoff bound without Russell Wilson, the Dolphins are headed back to the playoffs and much more.

More MMQB: What Damar Hamlin Meant to an Emotional Bills Win | Three Deep: Is Patrick Mahomes the MVP? Andy Reid Says ‘He’s As Good As It Gets’ | Six From Saturday: NFL Scouts Share What They’ll Watch in the Georgia-TCU Game

The Eagles really needed Sunday. And the reason why—as their second-year coach, Nick Sirianni, saw it—was because the two games they just played without quarterback Jalen Hurts, back-to-back losses to the Cowboys and Saints, really surfaced some warts that might have been otherwise masked through a 13–1 start.

“Here’s exactly what my message was all week—Hey, listen, it’s healthy to drag yourself through the mud and really look yourself in the mirror and say, I’m gonna look myself in the mirror, and I’m gonna say, ’That really sucked.’ How I coached in that New Orleans game wasn’t good enough. That’s not my standard,” Sirianni told me Sunday night. “Here’s what I did, Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I needed to fix that.

“Then I have players that are calling me and saying the same thing, like, this wasn’t good enough. That’s super healthy, because what you have there is accountability by everybody. You have everybody looking at themselves in the mirror first, saying where they screwed up, how they’re gonna get better from it. We’re gonna talk through it together, and that’s super healthy.”

Hurts returned to the lineup Sunday after being out with a sprained right shoulder.  :: Eric Hartline/USA TODAY Sports

On Sunday, Hurts returned. The Eagles beat a Giants team that was playing without a slew of starters, 22–16. And it wasn’t perfect by any measure.

But, it stopped momentum that was pushing in the wrong direction, it got Hurts’s rust off ahead of the playoffs and, more than anything else, if only flashes, reminded the Eagles of just how they can be. Which, as it turns out, was really the focus of the entire week, because as Sirianni and his staff saw it, the last time the best version of Philly took the field was the last time the Eagles saw the Giants, nearly a month ago at the Meadowlands.

And the problem since, of course, started with Hurts’s sprained shoulder, which took him out of the past two games, and really did a number on him the week before that, too.

“What he did in Chicago was Michael Jordan–type s---, to be quite honest with you,” Sirianni says. “What he did in Chicago to finish that game and will us to a win was Michael Jordan–type s---. For him to play through that, it was pretty incredible. He had to fight through it today, too. It was tough. He was hurting. It was pretty remarkable what he had to do to go through and get ready to play.”

It was bad enough to where, Sirianni conceded afterward, he probably wouldn’t have played Hurts in another circumstance. “Obviously, if we would have taken care of business,” he says, “then he probably wouldn’t have played.” That, of course, is in large part because the staff would’ve rested other starters, and they weren’t about to put Hurts out there surrounded with backups.

The starters weren’t going to sit this one out, because, for the third consecutive week, Philly was playing for home field advantage throughout the playoffs.

It just, like we said, had happened to be a while since they looked like the No. 1 seed, which is why Sirianni tried to spend the week reminding them of who they are. On Wednesday he showed the players clips of Muhammad Ali in “The Rumble in the Jungle” to illustrate how the legendary boxer was in a tough fight, but remained supremely confident in who he was as a fighter. On Friday, Sirianni showed them the Last Dance clip, laced with LL Cool J’s “I’m Bad” with Jordan scoring 63 on the Celtics at the Boston Garden in the 1986 NBA playoffs.

And, finally, on Saturday night, Sirianni showed them a video that mashed up Eagles highlights from earlier in the year with Jordan’s iconic night at the Garden, as if to send them the message, You still are that team.

“The message was, It’s healthy to dig yourself through the mud, but make sure we’re getting ourselves back up and not being cocky but being confident of who we are, of what our identity is,” Sirianni says. “And I said all that with this: Sure, momentum hasn’t been on our side there, but we know what our identity is. We’re completely confident in our identity of fast, physical, for each other. We just got to play like that more consistently each week. We didn’t play up to our standard in the last two weeks. That was the whole message of the week, playing up to our standard and playing up to our identity of what we want to be.”

Through the first half, that box was checked. The Eagles led 16–0 at halftime; they had 13 first downs to the Giants’ six and held a 187–77 edge in scrimmage yards. Things evened out a bunch in the second half, but the downturn was full of correctable stuff, and Philly already had what it needed, if it only came in flashes.

“They knew exactly who they were,” Sirianni says. “Bad game, bad momentum, bad whatever. They knew who they were, they knew what their identity was, and they knew they were, pardon my language, bad motherf-----s.”

Next up will be a game on Jan. 22 or 23 in Philly, and the extra bye week will give Sirianni and his coaches the chance to gather, the head coach said affectionately, like his brother Jay and the Southwestern Trojans staff might on a Friday night back in the day, in a way NFL staffs don’t often have the chance.

And as he looked around the room—a couple of hours after the win—seeing offensive coordinator Shane Steichen, pass-game coordinator Kevin Patullo and tight ends coach Jason Michael close by at Steichen’s suburban house, was a pretty nice reminder, too, of the chance they have in front of them, after (finally) bringing home that 14th win.

“You got a little bit of time to dig yourself in that mud,” he says. “That’s healthy. But then there’s got to be a switch that flips and says, We’re good, we’re really good. Because we are. We’re a good football team, and there’s gotta be a switch that flips and says, We’re really good. And it’s not blind faith on why we’re good, or blind confidence of why we’re good. It’s built up over the year.”

With the hope being that now, after Sunday, they’re back to where they were before. And maybe, just maybe, Hurts has some of that Jordan stuff left in him.

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Zac Taylor, the Bengals and Cincinnati really represented well this week. And talking with the coach about it Sunday afternoon, I was reminded of a conversation I had with him while he was still with the Rams, on how he and his wife, Sarah, prioritized returning to Cincinnati when the chance to interview with the Bengals arose in 2020. They’d fallen in love with Southwest Ohio when Zac was the University of Cincinnati’s offensive coordinator in ’16 before Taylor joined Sean McVay’s staff. So much so that they’d badly wanted to go back.

The reasons why have been on display for the nation to see over the past seven days.

“This is a tough profession,” Taylor told me Sunday night. “It’s not one you’d recommend for any person to sign up for, and move your family for and deal with the stress that we deal with. But we signed up for it, so the No. 1 thing for me is the happiness of my family. I knew if there was an opportunity to get back to Cincinnati, Ohio, I was going to do everything I could to get there, and it’s because of the people. I wanted them around good people. I wanted them to be happy every single day they woke up and walked out on the street or went to school or went to the grocery store.

“Cincinnati is a special place. I think everyone who’s lived here or visited here understands that. This was obviously a great opportunity for people to see how special Cincinnati is.”

This, of course, was the Damar Hamlin situation, which, in its bleakest moments brought the silver linings of people supporting a guy, and a family, in a most horrible spot. And nowhere did that shine more than in the city where Hamlin was injured.

“You start with our community and you work down from there,” Taylor says. “On a big scale, the people that were outside the hospital, the stadium, that understood the situation. It’s the first time in NFL history, in my understanding, that a game started and didn’t finish, and you had a stadium full of people that reacted appropriately and with compassion. I know people who … that was their Christmas present, to fly in and go to that game. Everyone understood that there’s a life on the line, and some things are bigger than football.

“And I thought this community really showed that and rallied around the Bills and rallied around Damar Hamlin and his family. And then you move on to our ownership group and how supportive they were of everybody involved, asked about our players, our coaches, do whatever they could to support the Bills. And then you look at the kids in the elementary schools.

“It’s an unfortunate opportunity where they can grow as human beings and see how special it is to be able to rally around and support somebody who’s in need. I got to see that first and foremost from my four kids and my wife. That’s an incredible bond that everyone created together. To see how they lift up another human being and their family was really cool to see.”

Those elementary school kids were actually spurred on by Sarah, who started a drive for kids to make cards for Hamlin at their kids’ school. The idea spread like wildfire, from class to class, and school to school.

“When I tell you there were thousands of cards, there were thousands of cards,” Taylor says. “They were all in my kitchen.”

All the same, he saw his players, and his organization, get behind Hamlin, too, while getting their own work done. And with the playoffs now here, it was pretty easy for Taylor to beam with pride seeing how his young team had grown in so many ways—and how the once-sad-sack operation around them has grown to shine as it did this week.

“I really love every single person that’s a part of this organization, and you can’t always say that and mean it,” Taylor says. “There’s not a player on this team that doesn’t have a special place in my heart. There’s not a coach that doesn’t fit that way, as well. Nobody in ownership, personnel. It’s a special building where everyone just pulls together and supports each other. It’s a really fun group to be around.”

Of course, winning’s fun, too. Which brings us to this …

Taylor’s Bengals might be as good as any team in the league right now. And if the coach was worried at all about the toll of the past week, his concerns were allayed quickly—the home team opened Sunday’s game with a forced punt, a 17-play, 63-yard drive for a field goal, a pick, an eight-play, 48-yard touchdowns drive, a pick and a three-play, 32-yard touchdown drive.

Less than 16 minutes in, it was 17–0 Bengals and the Ravens’ hope to force a coin flip to decide where the teams’ wild-card playoff game would be held was almost completely extinguished.

“Part of the reason why we’ve won our last eight games is this team has started strong and found a way to control the game,” Taylor says. “There’s an exception or two along the way where that hasn’t happened. But that’s what this team has really done. And then you get a chance to lean on the strength of our defense and the explosiveness of our offense and finish games off.

“We didn’t finish it off offensively today the way we’d want. But, defensively, they held strong throughout the day, gave us great opportunities, and gave us a chance to move forward next week with control of a home game in the playoffs and with a chance to do all the things that we want to do.”

Taylor is, of course, right with his nitpicking—after that fast start, the Bengals’ margin of victory over a Lamar Jackson–less Ravens team was just 27–16.

But, really, this one was never in doubt. It was 24–7 at the half, and 27–13 going into the fourth. And the Ravens didn’t cross the Bengals’ 45 over the final 15 minutes. So while, yes, there’s room for improvement for Cincinnati, there’s even more to build on, and build toward for Joe Burrow and his crew.

One such thing? The Bengals had a game Sunday that was really a worse version of what happened in Foxborough on Christmas Eve, starting that game looking like they were going to run the Patriots out of their own stadium. The Patriots, though, had other ideas, and hung around and hung around and hung around just enough to where the Bengals needed to force a fumble at the wire to win.

Afterward, Burrow was asked whether he thinks there’s a championship element in learning how to win in an ugly, resourceful way. He responded that a championship team would’ve put the Patriots away much earlier. And the comment resonated with me as, perhaps a sign of a young team that’s got its stride and is now looking to develop more of a killer instinct.

“There’s no question,” Taylor says. “This team is composed of a lot of players who have played for college national championships. And whether they played for the Super Bowl here last year, people who have played for conference championship teams and Super Bowl teams elsewhere. And so they’ve been a part of these teams, here included, that know how to finish people off and take control in December and January.

“We’ve got a whole locker room full of those guys, whether they played at Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State, all those places. Ted Karras came from New England, winning two Super Bowls. Alex Cappa won the Super Bowl in Tampa. We’ve added all these pieces, and they understood what it took, so then you put them all in a locker room together, and it’s just a huge group that’s got killer instinct. And so it’s been fun to watch these guys operate.”

And operate at a high level as anyone right now.

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Smith completed 69.8% of his passes for a team-record 4,282 yards, 30 touchdowns, 11 interceptions and a 100.9 passer rating to lead the Seahawks to the playoffs :: Joe Nicholson/USA TODAY Sports

The Seahawks are playoff bound in their first year, post-Russ. Which should probably tell you something about where the Russell Wilson–Seattle situation was at the end. And if you want to know even more about that, just look at Geno Smith’s numbers for the year.

The 32-year-old completed 69.8% of his passes for 4,282 yards (a team record), 30 touchdowns, 11 picks and a 100.9 passer rating, having the sort of season that compares to any Wilson had over his decade as a Seahawk.

“He has surprised me,” Pete Carroll told me, headed to the playoffs for the 10th time as Seahawks coach. “He has surprised me. But it wasn’t him doubting it. No, he always felt like this could happen. And that’s what kept him going and kept the drive in him to keep getting better and keep pushing so that he could seize the moment when the opportunity came, and then that’s exactly what he did.

“He seized this opportunity with all the leadership, with all the charisma and the poise and the toughness and all that that we could hope to have. And he did it in great fashion. It’s just a great, great story, and a success for him.”

Smith had one more success story in him for the regular season.

The Rams had fought and fought and fought for coach Sean McVay (more on him in a bit), and that staked the visitors to Seattle to a 16–13 lead well into the fourth quarter. Which is where Smith went to work, first engineering a 16-play, 82-yard drive to set up Jason Myers’s game-tying 22-yard field goal.

Then, the Seattle defense forced a three-and-out, and Smith was again on center stage, with the ball at his own 20 and 56 seconds left.

“We really talked our way through it, and looking O.K., we got one more drive, we got more opportunity here, let’s make sure that we’re all ready for it, and let’s just kick ass, doing things right, and executing,” Carroll says. “And he was calm and poised and perfectly in the mentality to go ahead and get this win. We knew exactly what the situation was, we handled it all, he had a couple timeouts and things we needed—that was more on the coaches than anything on the field—but he did a great job, again.

“And he’s the all-time passer in the history of the frickin’ franchise. So, he came through.”

He’d have to, and more than once.

A strike to Cade Johnson followed up by a 25-yard scramble and (questionable) personal foul on Jalen Ramsey, moved Seattle into the field goal range. But Jason Myers then clanged his 46-yard game-winning attempt off the right upright. And the Seahawks went three-and-out on their first overtime possession.

Which brings us to where Quandre Diggs gave Seattle new life, plucking a Baker Mayfield bomb away from Van Jefferson, giving the Seahawks possession back at their own 36. From there, Smith found Tyler Lockett over the middle for a 17-yard catch-and-run, and then Kenneth Walker III (“he’s a great fit in our organization,” Carroll says of the rookie, “we need runners like that”) found a seam, made a guy miss, went for 20, and, five plays later, Myers was banging home a 32-yard game-winner to atone for his earlier miss.

All that was left for the Seahawks was to wait—with an unequivocally successful regular season done, a bumper crop of rookies developed, and a quarterback, yup, found again.

“We’ll all be texting around and all that stuff and staying connected, so that we see what happens, and we’ll be rooting for [the Lions],” Carroll says. “My thinking is, they haven’t won there in Green Bay very much lately. So, man, the odds are really high that they’re gonna win this time.”

Seemed maybe a little like wishful thinking at 8:30 p.m. ET on Sunday.

A few hours later, it was reality. The Seahawks are playoff bound.

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The Dolphins are going to the dance, too, and they earned it. It’s been a weird first season for Mike McDaniel in Miami. He’s now on his third quarterback [Skylar Thompson], who is a seventh-rounder out of Kansas State. And his team had lost five straight as it went into the fourth quarter tied 6–6 with the similarly struggling Jets that, likewise, got hot early in the year before cooling off in a big way.

So I’m not sure anyone was expecting much when Miami got the ball back with 3:01 left on its own 32, needing a field goal to keep its playoff hopes alive (the Patriots were circling the drain in Buffalo at the time). Except, that is, the guys on the roster, who’d seen Thompson flash since camp.

“He’s a worker,” fourth-year Dolphins defensive tackle Zach Sieler told me postgame. “He works, he studies, he knows his stuff. He always is there early, there late, just kind of going through his thing.”

And because of that, McDaniel was comfortable putting the ball in Thompson’s hands when it mattered most—and Thompson responded by giving the Dolphins a relatively modest but resounding finale to the regular season.

Thompson ran for two yards, found Jaylen Waddle for nine, ran another yard, found Waddle again, with Waddle drawing a horse-collar flag, and that pretty much put Miami where it needed to be to set up Jason Sanders with a 50-yard field goal to win it—one the former first-team All-Pro stroked with ease. And that gave the Dolphins a 9-6 lead (they added a safety on the last play of the game to make it 11–6), validating a defensive effort that allowed the Jets just 187 yards from scrimmage, with coaches on that side of the ball under a little bit of fire, and a 162-yard effort in the run game.

So what does it mean for the franchise beyond Sunday? First and foremost, they get to play again this coming Sunday at Buffalo, with their first playoff berth since 2016 now locked up. But it also shows what the coaches and players have accomplished through a tumultuous season during which concussions kept quarterback Tua Tagovailoa off the field for two stretches, and backup Teddy Bridgewater had trouble staying healthy, too.

“It’s always having the mentality of just knowing it’s next-man-in mentality,” Sieler says. “Just knowing that, Hey, always be ready, always stay prepared. Teddy [Bridgewater], Skylar [Thompson], Tua [Tagovailoa] have all been amazing. You hope for the best for all of them. It’s just terrible seeing what’s happened so far, but thankfully we’ve gotten to where we’re at and hopefully they get healthy.”

Sieler then said he, and a lot of his teammates, didn’t know New England lost until they got back to the locker room. Some caught the last few seconds once they got back. Others heard through word of mouth.

And that was enough, for now, to put the long-term quarterback questions to the side. There’ll be time to answer those.

Somehow, even with Thompson in the saddle, the Dolphins have another game to play.

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The Texans’ firing of Lovie Smith isn’t a shocker. I know it’s jarring to see an NFL franchise go one-and-done twice, and, this one, for sure, calls for a thorough examination of GM Nick Caserio’s program as it goes into Year 3. But let’s not cloud the truth here. Smith really wasn’t up to the task, his staff lagged, the reasons he was fired from Illinois and the Buccaneers reared their heads again, and new issues came up, too.

Perhaps the main problem was that, in the building, the way the staff was operating was considered archaic. On defense, that meant relying on Smith’s old-school version of the Tampa 2, without much room for in-game adjustments. On offense, coordinator Pep Hamilton’s system didn’t offer much in the way of wrinkles, and Hamilton could be stubborn about adjusting it in any way, because he, like Smith, firmly believed in his ways.

The question, I was told, really came down to what exactly Smith and his staff were building toward, and where the upside was. Ownership, in the end, sided with Caserio in not seeing it, even after Smith made his case to Cal McNair.

So what’s next for Houston? If Caserio’s leading the search, I think Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, 49ers DC DeMeco Ryans, Patriots linebackers coach Jerod Mayo and Steelers assistant Josh McCown would be in the mix. If it’s ownership, it’ll probably be more wide open, and maybe the Texans become a dark horse for Jim Harbaugh.

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I think McVay takes a little time, figures some things out, and I don’t think it’s worth predicting what his decision will be. That’s mostly because I don’t think the Rams’ coach knows right now how he’ll feel in a week or two—once he’s fully detached from a 5–12 season through which he lost stars Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp and Aaron Donald for extended stretches.

That said, he was, to a degree, in this spot last year, and I think looking back at that can be instructive. It was two days after the Super Bowl that Stafford and Kupp came to his office, knowing that McVay was mulling things over, with a pretty direct and aggressive message for their coach.

You can’t leave.

“It was really when those guys came in, and I could see how genuine and authentic it was— You can’t not do this,” McVay said. “That was when I looked them in the eye and said, I’m not doing that. And when you tell those guys that, you know, O.K., this decision is final. I think more than anything, all the emotions that are released when you’re able to [win it all], and you’ve got other opportunities, it’s like, Oh, that’s an exciting option.

“But when you really sit down and think about it, the things I love most about coaching, and then the biggest thing I’d say, Bert, it’s the amount of people that would potentially be affected. … I love coaching. I love working with guys. I love being in the foxhole with the players and coaches. And you can’t mimic and emulate that in a media job.”

So, on one hand, a lot of this still applies. While there’s a very capable and ready heir in place in Raheem Morris, coaches in that building are still reliant on McVay. On top of that, Stafford has been telling some of those coaches, who’ve mulled outside opportunities, that he’s returning, and you’d think he’d want McVay back for that, too.

Now, on the other hand, from both a family and a football perspective, this has been a very long year. His wife’s family is in Ukraine. His legendary grandfather died. And the team has gotten old in spots, and injured in others, and bouncing back might be a tougher challenge than at any other point during the McVay era.

All of that should give the 36-year-old plenty to think over in the coming couple of weeks.

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The 49ers have won 10 consecutive games since acquiring McCaffrey in a blockbuster trade :: Cary Edmondson/USA TODAY Sports

I might be the only one who thinks the 49ers’ run is being overlooked. Maybe it’s because of quarterback Brock Purdy. Whatever it is, it seems strange with a team that has quietly gone on a 10-game winning streak. Especially with what the numbers are telling us. Here are a few of those.

• Through the run, which dates all the way back to the week before Halloween, these are San Francisco’s margins of victory: 17, 6, 28, 13, 16, 28, 8, 17, 3, 25. So seven of the 10 wins are by 13 points or more, and five are by at least three possessions. That’s wild.

• The 49ers are doing this with their second- and third-string quarterbacks. And the third-string, seventh-round rookie they’ve been playing has posted these passer ratings since entering the lineup in Week 13: 88.8, 134.0, 117.0, 114.6, 95.4 and 141.3.

• The defense has held half of its past 10 opponents under 300 scrimmage yards.

• The run game has produced more than 150 yards in eight of the 10 games.

“I feel really good about our team when we won the division there about a month ago and I feel better about them now,” Kyle Shanahan said postgame. “I think we’ve gotten better.”

I know the Eagles have been great. The Vikings have played well, too.

But I’m not sure there's a better roster in football, combined with a better coaching staff, than the one in San Francisco. And, honestly, because of it, I’m thinking about picking, when they make me pick over the next few days, a rematch of Super Bowls XVI and XXIII (you can look those up, young folks) in Arizona.

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I’m not sure if it’s time to be concerned with Dak Prescott. But I don’t know how I feel about Dallas’s ability to beat Tom Brady in Tampa right now, with the way the Dallas offense has stalled of late, and the way the Cowboys looked Sunday in Washington.

There was one alarming sight, in particular, against the Commanders, in a 26–6 loss for the Cowboys that wound up being irrelevant in the standings, and one Dallas has to hope isn’t a harbinger of things to come. It came at the start of the second quarter with a second-and-6, on which Prescott threw an out-breaking route to Michael Gallup that landed in the arms of a Commanders’ DB, who promptly dropped it.

That’d be O.K., if it was just a hiccup, and if it wasn’t followed almost immediately by a pick-six from Washington’s Kendall Fuller, one that made the score 13–0.

Prescott finished 14-of-37 for 128 yards, a touchdown, a pick and a 45.8 rating. As an offense, the Cowboys mustered just 182 yards and went 4-for-18 on third down. Which qualifies as the kind of performance that would be a problem in Tampa next week if Dallas plays this way again. And one that fits in an up-and-down season for Prescott individually.

“This one won’t linger,” Prescott told reporters postgame. “I mean, it’s easy to go back and look at our body of work and what we’ve done, especially with this not anywhere those past 16 games. So when you have a performance like this, whatever it was, whatever the reason may be, we’ve got to individually look at it, take accountability, learn from it and then understand when the plane touches down, we’re on to Tampa.”

After this one, there should be plenty to learn from.

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It’s the end of the regular season, and we’ve got quick-hitters for Week 18. Here’s what we’ve got …

• Aaron Rodgers, to me, looked, coming off the field, and at the podium, like a man who hasn’t made his mind up on what’s next—so I’d bet he takes some time after the Packers were eliminated from the playoffs by the Lions. He also doesn’t appear as if he’d be tormented by calling it quits.

• Should Rodgers return to Green Bay next year, I think receivers Romeo Doubs and Christian Watson will be in position to take a big leap, and make it materially a better situation for the four-time MVP. Both those kids ooze natural ability.

• Bill O’Brien’s going to have suitors, but if I had to guess, I think he winds up in New England as its offensive coordinator. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Matt Patricia flips back over to defense in the case that Jerod Mayo leaves for a head coaching or coordinator job elsewhere (absent an HC spot, I think Mayo would want to call plays somewhere, preferably in a place commutable from his family in New England).

• I have a hard time getting really worked up over Chargers coach Brandon Staley playing starters Sunday against the Broncos. These guys get only 17 of these every year. Hope Mike Williams is O.K. And Staley’s right to say you only have so many players.

• Hard not to be happy for Jared Goff, a legitimately good guy who’s making the most of a second shot after taking the Rams to a Super Bowl. And the Lions’ going 9–8 is pretty remarkable after starting 1–6, too.

• Packers LB Quay Walker getting thrown out of multiple games in the same season for shoving someone in street clothes is pretty ridiculous.

• Get ready for three months of arguing over Bryce Young’s height. And weight.

• The Panthers’ 10–7 win over the Saints does count for something—namely it’s another sign of that team fighting for Steve Wilks, as Wilks fights for the full-time head-coaching spot there. My understanding is owner David Tepper is very cognizant of these things, so the respect Wilks has commanded the past two months should be a factor.

• Much respect to Mike Tomlin. Sixteen consecutive years without a losing record is damn impressive. Even better, it looks like the Steelers might have their quarterback.

• Happy retirement, J.J. Watt. And for those who haven’t seen it, here’s a pretty sweet retirement video the Cardinals put together for the future Hall of Famer.

Your impact will never be forgotten.#ThankYouJJ pic.twitter.com/bF3fh2wiNW

— Arizona Cardinals (@AZCardinals) January 9, 2023

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One thing you need to know

This week is the start of job interviews! So here’s a little on some new rules you need to know …

• Teams cannot interview candidates working for other teams until three days after those teams’ Week 18 games. So that means you can’t interview a coach from the Titans, Jaguars, Raiders or Chiefs until Tuesday, or a coach from the other 28 teams until Wednesday.

• Candidates whose teams are playing in the wild-card round can interview the Tuesday (for the Saturday/Sunday games) or Wednesday (for the Monday game) after the first round of the playoffs is complete.

• Coaches from the bye teams, Philly and Kansas City, can interview during the bye week, three days after their Week 18 games (so in the case of those two, starting Wednesday).

These rules went into place last year to give coaches more time to prep for interviews, which makes sense for a lot of good reasons. Busy few weeks ahead!