Patrick Mahomes’s Historic Start, 49ers Considered Wildcat, Aaron Rodgers’s Trade Complications

The third quarterback designation would have helped San Francisco. Plus, the impact of Nathaniel Hackett’s hiring, Bill O’Brien’s influence on Mac Jones, the Bills’ championship window and much more in our Championship Sunday Takeaways.

More MMQB: Super Bowl–Bound Eagles Inspired by Their Coach | Seven NFL Draft Prospects to Watch at the Senior Bowl | Breer’s Coaching Carousel Update

Patrick Mahomes’s career start should not be taken for granted. He added another chapter to his legend Sunday night vanquishing his, and the Chiefs’, nemesis from Cincinnati. He threw a touchdown to Travis Kelce rolling hard to his right. He threw for another while stepping up in a collapsing pocket to find Marquez Valdes-Scantling in the end zone for a 19-yard touchdown on third-and-10. And when his team needed him most, he scampered for five yards and drew a flag for a late hit to set up Harrison Butker’s 45-yard game-winning field goal that delivered the Chiefs to their third Super Bowl in four years. And he did all of this playing on a high ankle sprain.

Statistically, this wasn’t the best we’ve seen of Mahomes, although it was very, very good (he finished 29-of-43 for 326 yards, two scores and a 105.4 rating).

But as far as guts and determination and will to win? This one will stick with the people in Kansas City. For his part, and for all the treatment Mahomes got, Andy Reid said his quarterback essentially took any idea of his not playing off the table by refusing to miss even a single practice rep during the week.

Mahomes and the Chiefs are headed to their third Super Bowl in four years :: Jay Biggerstaff/USA TODAY Sports

“People don’t realize how hurt he was,” Chiefs GM Brett Veach told reporters afterward. “We all saw the injury. High ankles are terrible injuries, and sometimes guys miss two, three weeks, and he was out there and running for a first down and a big play in the game that got us in field goal range.

“But it just adds to an already great legacy.”

In five years as a starter, Mahomes now has played in five consecutive home AFC title games, won three of them and will be gunning for a second Super Bowl title in two weeks with a second NFL MVP trophy almost certainly to be his in the days before that.

The other part of this? He’s doing without Tyreek Hill, and with a team that’s leaning on a lot of rookies, which is something we wrote about Friday. For the second consecutive playoff week, nine of the Chiefs’ 10 draft picks were active, with four starting. Isiah Pacheco had 85 scrimmage yards on 15 touches. Skyy Moore had three catches and a big punt return that set up Butker’s clincher. Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson played crucial roles at corner, and George Karlaftis had a sack.

And all of it works because of the guy taking the snaps.

Even if he’s not 100%.

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We have some early Super Bowl questions for you. And these are courtesy of a veteran evaluator who sent them along last night after the matchup was set.

• Can the Chiefs set firm edges in the running game on defense? The Eagles are going to test them by getting Miles Sanders to the perimeter, so the ability of Karlaftis and Frank Clark to funnel those plays inside will be key.

• Can Philly get to Mahomes without blitzing? It’s fair to say there were some encouraging signs on that in the 49ers game, especially with how Haason Reddick wreaked havoc on everyone.

• Can the Eagles cover Kelce without having to use two people? It’d be interesting to see whether [defensive coordinator Jonathan] Gannon uses a corner to cover Kelce—which was an old [Bill] Belichick tactic against him.

• How will Kansas City’s defense contain the quarterback run game without leaving A.J. Brown or DeVonta Smith one-on-one? This is where I think the Eagles, I think, can get one or both of those guys isolated on a rookie, so long as the down-and-distance is generally manageable, and they can really sell the run.

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Purdy was knocked out of the game with an elbow injury. But he was forced to return after his backup suffered a concussion :: Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports

The Eagles are headed back to their first Super Bowl since the 2017 season after defeating the 49ers 31–7 in the NFC championship Sunday. Here are five takeaways from what transpired at Lincoln Financial Field …

• The overwhelming story line coming out of this is how the 49ers quarterback situation, which had been managed so well, collapsed under the weight of two injuries—one to Brock Purdy’s throwing elbow and the other to Josh Johnson’s head. Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said in the postgame press conference that he first noticed a brace of some sort on Purdy’s arm right before he reentered the game. He also made the call to play tighter to the line on the Niners defensively to combat their barrage of runs and screens after Johnson exited the game and Purdy reentered after Johnson suffered a concussion. After Ndamukong Suh knocked Johnson to the turf, and his head snapped back before hitting the ground with 12:30 left in the third quarter, San Francisco managed just one first down and 27 yards on 16 offensive snaps. There was, really, just about nothing Kyle Shanahan or anyone else could do without a functional quarterback—Shanahan did say the Niners considered going exclusively to the Wildcat, but scrapped that after the score got out of hand.

• The Niners were down two quarterbacks already going into Sunday’s game, and obviously no one could expect a circumstance like this one to arise. But it’s worth mentioning that the NFL used to have a fail-safe for this sort of circumstance—the third quarterback designation. The rule allowed for teams to dress a third quarterback without it counting against the 45-man game-day roster limit (with rules limiting the first two quarterbacks from reentering the game once the third quarterback went in). The league abolished the exemption in 2011 when it expanded game-day rosters to 46, and most teams fell back on dressing just two quarterbacks for games. Former NFL QB Brady Quinn mentioned all this on Twitter on Sunday, and suggested bringing the rule back. I’d agree with him. What we saw Sunday in Philly wasn’t good for the game.

• We’ll have more on this in the rest of the MMQB column Monday morning, but the Eagles felt pretty strongly that they had won this game up front on both sides of the ball—Philly rushed for 148 yards, and all four of its touchdowns were scored on the ground. Defensively, the Eagles’ front was all over Purdy and Johnson (despite registering only three sacks) and held San Francisco’s vaunted run game to 81 yards. And when it comes to the makeup of that group of linemen, there’s a real rarity here, too, in that the Eagles are anchored on both sides with a pair of players (Fletcher Cox and Brandon Graham on defense, Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson on offense) who have been with the team for more than a decade.

• The Niners will be back. The question is what they bring back at quarterback. I think a swing at Tom Brady is possible. And if not, my guess would be that both Purdy and Trey Lance will be on the 2023 roster, and that the two will compete for the starting job in the fall.

• Because there’s always disrespect spliced into these things, it turns out there were some Eagles defensive players who took offense to what George Kittle said during the week. When asked Thursday if the Eagles could match the 49ers’ physicality, Kittle answered, “We’ll see, won’t we? I know we’re going to come out and be violent and physical. I’m expecting them to be the same thing. But we’ll see.” And the Niners did see.

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The Jets didn’t hire offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett to get Aaron Rodgers. But I can tell you, unequivocally, that Robert Saleh and the team’s decision-makers were very aware of the implication hiring the former Broncos coach would bring—and they aren’t shying from it. I think the reason for that is someone pretty high up in the organization won’t shy away from it—if and when the time comes.

And do you know who remembers that the Jets were 5–2 at the end of October and 7–4 on Dec. 1?

Woody Johnson, that’s who. And the Jets’ co-owner has, in the past, acted aggressively when he felt like his team was close. After a 10–6 uptick in 2015, he held on to an aging core for an extra year, and doggedly stayed after Ryan Fitzpatrick to return in ’16. In ’07, he had a burgeoning young core, and a coach he needed to pass judgment on, and pushed GM Mike Tannenbaum to go get Brett Favre—the ’08 Jets, by the way, were 8–3 when Favre got hurt.

This circumstance isn’t wholly unlike those. The Jets have a strong core of players that, with some injury luck this season, might have made the playoffs. They’ll have to make a decision on Saleh. And now, they have a close friend of Rodgers as their new offensive coordinator.

Again, there are other reasons that, after interviewing more than 15 candidates for the job, Saleh went with Hackett. He worked with him in Jacksonville, and watched Hackett call plays up close in 2016. He loves Hackett’s ability to connect with players (you can ask Rodgers about that one). He wanted someone who could build a dominant run game, and Hackett was part of those sorts of operations as a coordinator in Jacksonville and Green Bay. And he won with quarterbacks both average and elite.

So, regardless of whether they land Rodgers, I do think Saleh is content with the hire of Hackett. But he’s also not shutting the door on acquiring the Packers quarterback, and he indicated as much by telling reporters last week that the Jets were planning to bring in a veteran at the position (which, of course, could be Jimmy Garoppolo or Derek Carr, too).

This one should be interesting.

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Acquiring Rodgers won’t be a simple proposition for anyone. It will, obviously, cost another team a number of picks. It’s also going to take some fiscal maneuvering.

Here’s the outlay of Rodgers’s contract for the next two years …

• He has a $58.3 million option bonus due March 17 that’s fully guaranteed.

• He also has a $50,000 workout bonus next year and $1.65 million base salary, which brings his 2023 cash to $60 million.

• He has a $47 million option bonus for 2024 that vests as fully guaranteed next March.

• He also has a $2.25 million base and $50,000 roster bonus to bring his 2024 cash to $49.3 million, and two-year take to $109.3 million.

The one thing Rodgers doesn’t have is a no-trade clause—which is a matter of precedent for the Packers—but the reality is no one is trading for him, and that contract, and all that comes with acquiring a player of his magnitude, without him signing off on it.

The cap numbers, for another team, are manageable, thanks to a couple of void years on the back end of the deal and option-bonus structure. But the cash is another matter. How far will Rodgers be willing to go to get to the destination he wants? And how far will another team go, both cash- and cap-wise to get him? Those are fair, and interesting, questions.

We’ll get answers soon enough.

What we know now, though, is that things do seem to be trending toward Rodgers potentially seeking a 2009 Favre– and ’20 Brady–style late-career rejuvenation. And the Packers might be ready to let it ride with Jordan Love after a year in which he made the most progress of his three as a pro. Which, I’d say, would be understandable for all parties involved.

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The Raiders have not granted Carr's camp permission to seek a trade yet.  :: Stephen R. Sylvanie/USA TODAY Sports

This shapes up as an important week in the Carr saga. And that’s largely because this week is Senior Bowl week, which is the first tentpole event of the offseason when you get a big group of decision-makers (GMs, head coaches) in one place at one time.

I’m told Raiders GM Dave Ziegler will be making the trip. That’s significant, because if you look back at recent history, you’ll find that Mobile, Ala., is actually where the legwork for the Matthew Stafford deal got done two years ago—Lions GM Brad Holmes and COO Mike Disner made the trip, started talking with other teams there, and the deal with the Rams was done that Saturday. Conversely, it’s also where, years ago, contract talks between Washington and Kirk Cousins absolutely collapsed. So a lot of business gets done (or not done) there.

At this point, because there are still a bunch of head coach and offensive coordinator openings, and because the cap is still a moving target, the market for Carr hasn’t really materialized outside of conceptual conversations. As things advance, I’d think three of the NFC South teams (Saints, Panthers, Buccaneers) could throw hats in the ring, and maybe the Jets would, too (the Commanders and Colts are two others to consider, though they might be gun shy given their recent strikeouts on trades for second-chance veteran QBs).

My understanding as of right now is the Raiders have not granted Carr’s camp the ability to seek a trade. And even though there are the aforementioned teams out there with needs, dealing him before the Feb. 15 deadline—when his $32.9 million base for next year and $7.5 million of his 2024 money vests as fully guaranteed—won’t be easy. And he absolutely won’t be on the Raiders’ roster past that date, so there is the idea that teams that are interested in him should just wait for Las Vegas to cut him.

From there, there are a few questions.

• Why wouldn’t a team just wait for the Raiders to cut Carr? Obviously, you’d do it for the certainty of having your guy, and being able to start planning for 2023. The question, then, would be if someone would be willing to pay Carr $32.9 million next year, and effectively lock itself into him for ’24, or have to pay another $7.5 million before then to get out of it.

• Would Carr take a contract adjustment to facilitate a trade? The one reason why he might want to do it is the optics of getting traded are better than the optics of getting cut. And he’d be able to leave a team he spent nine years with on good terms.

• Why would Carr want to help the Raiders now? I actually have heard things aren’t on terrible terms between the team and quarterback, and that Carr’s handled all this professionally. So this isn’t one of those, at least I don’t think it is, where a player simply isn’t going to help the team out that he’s leaving.

• What else could gum up the works? With Rodgers’s name floated out there, and a ton of veteran quarterbacks (Garoppolo, Geno Smith, Baker Mayfield, Daniel Jones) potentially available at a cheaper rate, and not requiring draft picks for acquisition, teams might be content to wait until March to address the position.

Regardless, Carr has the advantage of knowing—whether he’s cut or traded—that he’ll be able to find a new home a month ahead of the market, and he has a no-trade clause to control his destination. So will the Raiders be able to swing a return for him? Or is he going to be the rare February free agent?

Stay tuned.

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The idea of a championship window closing in Buffalo is asinine. Do the Bills have challenges ahead? Yes. Are things going to get easier in a conference with great young quarterbacks everywhere? No.

But this notion that this year was one big last swing for that group? Ridiculous.

The hard part is already taken care of in Buffalo. It has the right coach (Sean McDermott) and GM (Brandon Beane), and both of those guys are still in their 40s. Its franchise quarterback (Josh Allen) is just 26. Its left tackle (Dion Dawkins) is 28. Its top corner (Tre’davious White) is 28. Its No. 1 receiver (Stefon Diggs) is 29. Its all-pro middle linebacker (Matt Milano) is 28. All have long-term contracts.

The fight the Bills have to wage from here will come on two fronts. One is now having to build around a top-of-the-market quarterback contract, as Kansas City has had to do with Patrick Mahomes. And two, and related, is having to fill the roster out with players drafted and developed in-house, without as much of the luxury of being able to go out and sign veterans to plug holes on the roster.

So with that as the backdrop, here’s what’s on the Bills’ agenda for the next couple of months …

• Trying to find a way to keep either former first-round linebacker Tremaine Edmunds or stalwart safety Jordan Poyer. My understanding is the Bills have confronted the reality that it’s going to be tough, from a cap standpoint, to hold on to both. Do they have answers internally if they can’t find a way to keep either? Part of the issue here is the team is already paying Micah Hyde and Milano at those positions. Which brings us to …

• Managing the salary cap. Buffalo is like the other 31 teams, in that the lack of a cap range (normally that’s distributed at the league’s labor seminar in December) has made it borderline impossible to start planning for March. But one way or the other, the Bills will probably have to rework a few contracts to reach cap compliance—even if the cap was set at $230 million—as it stands now—they’d be over.

• Getting healthy. The most obvious name here is Von Miller, and his comeback from ACL surgery will be a huge part of the 2023 equation. But another important one is White, who missed a whole calendar year hurt, and wasn’t himself when he came back. Getting a full-speed White, and some development from Kaiir Elam, plus a healthy Miller, would go a long way toward getting the defense where it’s going to need to be against teams such as Kansas City and Cincinnati next year.

• Getting Allen some help. In the end, when the Bills needed to lean on the run game, they too often either couldn’t, or had to lean on Allen to create it. So with Devin Singletary a free agent, James Cook and Nyheim Hines returning, and a strong draft class of tailbacks, Buffalo has a chance to rework its offense a bit. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the draft bring some help up front, too, though the Bills feel relatively good about their line.

And, sure, taking care of all of those things in one fell swoop won’t be easy. But it also won’t be nearly as hard as finding someone such as Allen was in the first place.

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The Patriots’ hire of Bill O’Brien is what’s best for Mac Jones. And, really, there are two main football-related reasons for that.

1. O’Brien’s institutional knowledge of the system that Josh McDaniels ran with Jones as a rookie in 2021 is as deep as almost anyone’s—he ran and called the scheme for Bill Belichick from ’09 to ’11—which gives the new-old OC rich background to build off in looking at what Jones did the past two years.

2. O’Brien ran Nick Saban’s offense the past two years at Alabama. And while it’s not identical to what Jones ran while he was there, there is a base for the offense that Saban insists his coordinators work off to make life easier on the players. So O’Brien has good command over what Jones did and was asked to do in college.

And then, for the Patriots as a whole, there’s this: He’s a far cry from what they had a year ago, when Belichick tried to jam two square pegs into round holes. My buddies Karen Guregian and Andrew Callahan had a pretty in-depth look at the offensive dysfunction in Foxborough, and it was centered largely on the failure of two former head coaches, Matt Patricia and Joe Judge, who slid over from defense and special teams to replace McDaniels.

I’d add that Belichick himself is on the hook for all this, too. My understanding is Belichick was active on the headsets on game day, having the sort of oversight over the offense that he’d traditionally had over the defense, and moonlighting as play-caller at points (which is why, at times, calls were late going in, and the offense could look messy from an operational standpoint).

That, of course, was a tacit acknowledgment of the mistake he’d made setting up the staff the way he did in the first place, and it’s certainly fair to ask why he didn’t just go get O’Brien last year—I’m told the reason he didn’t even pursue it with Saban was out of fear that O’Brien might do well enough in a year to land a head coaching job elsewhere, leaving the Patriots to replace a coordinator two years in a row.

Turns out, they had to do that, anyway, and now they’ve landed O’Brien. And as a result, ownership’s fingerprints are already all over this offseason, with a more transparent and conventional approach than we saw a year ago.

Will it work? I’d say there’s a better chance this year than last. And if not, well, then there’ll probably be bigger questions to ask.

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Getting Vic Fangio is a massive win for Mike McDaniel. The Dolphins deserve a ton of credit for moving fast on hiring the former Broncos coach. There was the chance Sean Payton would try to bring him in if he’d taken a job somewhere. Frank Reich and Carolina were interested. The Eagles and 49ers likely would’ve made a run in the event their defensive coordinators took head coaching jobs. And all that is for good reasons.

Check this out …

• In four years as 49ers defensive coordinator (2011–14), Fangio’s units ranked fourth, third, fifth and fifth in the league in total defense.

• In his four years as Bears DC (2015–18), his defenses ranked 14th, 15th, 10th and third.

• In three years as Denver’s head coach, his defenses ranked 12th, 21st and eighth.

So in all three cases, he left behind a defense in the top quarter of the league and, when given elite talent, he produced elite results. His scheme is also one that’s now being duplicated across the NFL, with guys such as Brandon Staley and Ejiro Evero climbing the ladder, in part, because teams are looking for coaches who can run it.

All of that makes it, again, a big victory for Miami, especially so in that it was able to hire him before teams such as the Eagles or Niners really knew whether they’d even need him. And, of course, it’s also very good news for Bradley Chubb, Jaelan Phillips, Jerome Baker, Xavien Howard, Jevon Holland & Co.

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Former Colts coach Frank Reich takes over the Panthers, who were 6-6 down the stretch :: Trevor Ruszkowski/USA TODAY Sports

Frank Reich’s hire is a solid, safe pick for Panthers owner David Tepper, who clearly wanted to park this one in the middle of the fairway at the end of the process. There was a point—after Tepper fired Matt Rhule—when he was set with the idea he was going to find a young offensive-minded head coach, from a crop that, this year, would include Philly’s Shane Steichen, New York’s Mike Kafka, Buffalo’s Ken Dorsey and Cincinnati’s Brian Callahan. And then Steve Wilks turned his team around.

Tepper really did take Wilks’s success into account, and it wasn’t just coaxing a 6–6 finish out of a team that started 1–4. It was that there was an identity developed on the fly—the Panthers became dominant on the ground by reemphasizing fundamentals at midseason, which helped lift up a talented defense and manage a troublesome quarterback situation.

Through that, I really do believe Tepper saw the importance of experience and leadership in the position. And while he didn’t fully pivot away from his initial plan (former Cowboys OC Kellen Moore was in the thick of the search right until the end), I believe it did make him rethink what he was prioritizing in his search.

With Reich, he gets an offensive coach who also happens to carry some of the same strengths as Wilks. Is it fair to Wilks? Not really. But the reality is interim coaches rarely make it—just 10 of 44 coaches who’ve served in that role since 2000 have gotten the jobs they were filling full time. And it’s not over for Wilks, either. Anthony Lynn and Dan Campbell are recent examples of coaches who did a nice job in interim roles that later became head coaches.

Wilks, who could land somewhere in the next couple of weeks, will probably be worth talking to for teams looking for head coaches next January.

Reich, meanwhile, should give the Panthers the best shot to get the quarterback position right there, once and for all, with a team that looks very ready to contend.

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The coaching carousel is spinning. And we’re keeping up with it. Some notes as we head into the fourth week of the hiring cycle …

• With the Broncos circling back with Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, it’ll be interesting to see whether the Waltons start to throw their financial weight around to get someone.

• Losing out on Fangio, I think, will open up the defensive coordinator picture for Reich in Carolina. On offense, I think it’s a little clearer—my sense is a run at Eagles QBs coach Brian Johnson is probably coming. Johnson, for what it’s worth, would’ve been Wilks’s OC.

• The Niners’ losing to the Eagles frees up DeMeco Ryans to take a job, and the Broncos and Texans have him at the top of their lists. It looks like this is trending toward Ryans returning to Houston, where he played his first six seasons in the NFL. Gannon has been the other one to watch in Houston.

• The Colts are planning to travel to Philly at some point this week to interview Steichen—it’ll be his second interview with Indianapolis, and first one in person.

• As important as the O’Brien hire is for New England, filling the offensive line coach job might be just as big. That spot, for most of two decades under Belichick, was a bedrock with Dante Scarnecchia. Since? Well, the Patriots’ next line coach will be their fourth in as many seasons. Oregon run-game coordinator Adrian Klemm and Bills assistant OL coach Ryan Wendell are among the contenders for the spot.

• Judge is locked in for 2023 in New England. Things are murkier with Patricia and tight ends coach Nick Caley, whose contracts have expired. I think each will have the chance to return. The question is what the roles will be.

• Word has been that Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy and departing OC Kellen Moore weren’t seeing eye-to-eye on things down the stretch of this year, which explains why a move that seemed to come out of nowhere happened. Brian Schottenheimer gives McCarthy an in-house option with which to replace Moore.

• The Rams are another team looking for a line coach, and I think they’ll take their time to try to find the right guy. I’d mentioned Browns OL coach Bill Callahan a few weeks back as a potential candidate, but he’s signed an extension and seems to be set to stay in Cleveland.

• It’s wild that the Bengals are in position to bring their entire staff back.

• If Eric Bieniemy leaves the Chiefs to call plays elsewhere after the season—and the Commanders have been sniffing around on him for a while—I’d think the Chiefs would quickly promote quarterbacks coach Matt Nagy (who is also a candidate for the Titans’ OC job that I believe will go to Tim Kelly). The former Bears coach is well respected in Kansas City to the point where I think he’ll be a very real consideration to succeed Reid down the line.

One thing you need to know

Damar Hamlin spoke this weekend. You can check it out right here.

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