More MMQB: Patrick Mahomes Got Help From Chiefs Trainers and Teammates to Win His Second Career Super Bowl
It’s disappointing that the 2022 Eagles will be remembered for the flag that was thrown on the play where their shot at a world title went away. Because that Philly team was talented, balanced, well-coached, well-constructed—it had just about everything, including a quarterback who could go blow for blow with Patrick Mahomes.
Jalen Hurts was absolutely spectacular. So it’s a shame this Super Bowl won’t be remembered in Philadelphia for the 304 passing yards he had in completing 27 of 38 throws, or the 70 rushing yards he churned out, or how he accounted for all four of Philly’s touchdowns—three on the ground—or the Houdini acts he pulled on a third-and-8 throw to Zach Pascal for nine yards and a third-and-6 to Dallas Goedert for 17 yards, or the absolute dime he delivered to Goedert for 17 yards on third-and-14.
It’s unfortunate, in the end, that this one will be remembered for what might’ve been for the Eagles, had the NFL’s alleged all-star crew kept the flags in their pockets at the end.
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If you’re in Philly, you’ve got the situation burned in your brain by now. Third-and-8. Ball at the Eagles’ 15. Chiefs driving. Eagles with one timeout left and 1:54 showing. If the Chiefs had scored, the Eagles would’ve gotten the ball back, down 42–35, with nearly two minutes left. If Kansas City could get the first down but not score, the game would be pretty much over. If the Eagles could get a stop, they’d likely be down just three with the ball coming back and plenty of time for a game-winning drive.
So the final result—the holding flag coming out on James Bradberry, giving Kansas City the first down short of the goal line—was about the worst-case scenario. And after the Eagles then called their last timeout, Jerick McKinnon slid down at the two-yard line on first down, Mahomes took two knees and Harrison Butker drilled a 27-yard go-head field goal, giving the Chiefs a 38–35 lead over the Eagles with just 11 seconds left. Which meant the game was effectively over.
Was the flag correct? James Bradberry said afterward it was, and that he’d hoped they wouldn’t call it, and referee Carl Cheffers told pool reporter Lindsay Jones of The Ringer that there was no debate between the officials on the veracity of the call. “It was a clear case of a jersey grab that caused restriction,” Cheffers said. After I looked at it, I could see where Bradberry did tug Juju Smith-Schuster as he came out of his break (there was a second instance that looked like a tug at first blush, but didn’t seem to be one with the video slowed down).
Which, to be honest, leaves me torn. The grab wasn’t egregious, and, had it not been called, I can’t imagine there’d be an uproar over the noncall. To me, that makes it a keep-the-flag-in-your-pocket play, with this one essentially ending the biggest game of the year.
Anyway, the Eagles and their fans have seven months to stew over that one. And if there was anything appropriate about the whole thing? It was definitely that—after the season the NFL just had, and the things commissioner Roger Goodell said about the officiating Wednesday (“I don’t think it’s ever been better”)—the season ended on the kind of flag that’ll have the debate shows roaring all week.
That, of course, is the bed the league made for itself.
Handling Jalen Hurts’s contract sits atop the list of the Eagles’ top orders of business this offseason. Because Hurts was a second-round pick, there’s no fifth-year option and no resulting cushion for Philly to lean on should the Eagles and Hurts struggle to find common ground on a new contract. That means there’s more pressure on the team to do something and avoid turning this into a Kirk Cousins or Dak Prescott situation (where non-first-round QBs played on franchise tags).
One thing we know is Howie Roseman’s Eagles will be creative in trying to find a solution to this “problem” (it’s a caviar problem, for sure), and that’ll probably mean looking at a few models for negotiating a quarterback deal. Are the Eagles comfortable that Hurts’s game is sustainable enough for the team to seek a Mahomes-type of structure? Or are they good with giving him a shorter-term deal that’d carry an average per year around what Russell Wilson ($49 million) and Kyler Murray ($46.1 million) got last year?
These are open questions, for now. Here are three more Philly faces this offseason …
1) Will Jason Kelce, Brandon Graham and Fletcher Cox return? One thing the Eagles have that’s unique is two 10-plus-year linemen on each side of the ball. Nick Sirianni has said those four (Kelce, Cox, Graham and Lane Johnson) are the foundation of the team. Three are free agents, and cap space figures to be tighter. I’m sure all four would be welcomed back. The question is whether the Eagles can make it work and who in the group may mull over retirement.
2) How will the Eagles manage their secondary? This is another area where there’s potential instability, with James Bradberry, C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Marcus Epps (three of the four DBs to play more than 90% of the snaps in the NFC title game) among the guys at those spots set to hit free agency. Also, the Eagles haven’t used a top-100 pick on a defensive back in six years. So this could be a year when you see some of Roseman’s aggression directed toward the secondary.
3) How will they rework Sirianni’s staff? There’s a good chance the Eagles will lose both coordinators this week (we’ll get to that). Both Johnson and Patullo would be in play to replace Shane Steichen as offensive coordinator, but Johnson’s likely going to have options elsewhere, as well. And on defense, my sense is Vic Fangio would have been the top choice to replace Jonathan Gannon, but he’s already agreed to terms with the Dolphins. So there definitely will be some level of shakeup in a staff that’s been an organizational strength since Sirianni arrived two years ago.
As for the Chiefs, a Chris Jones extension tops the list of offseason questions. The 6'6", 311-pound defensive tackle is as much of a force as he’s ever been and, with his 29th birthday still five months away, and his health not in question (he’s missed only six games in seven years as a pro), it’s fair to reason that he has plenty left in the tank. But how much will it be worth going forward? It’s a question the Chiefs are going to have to deal with the next few months.
Next year is the final year of the four-year, $80 million deal Jones signed off the franchise tag in 2020, and Jones would be well within his rights to ask for something in the neighborhood of what Aaron Donald got last year (and it’s hard to compare anything to that deal because that one had three years left on it). Either way, it’s going to be expensive, probably around $30 million per year, and maybe more if Nick Bosa gets his deal from the 49ers first.
Here are three other things the Chiefs have to work out over the next couple of months …
1) Will the Chiefs tag Orlando Brown Jr. again? With a second tag, his number is set at $19.944 million. And that means doing a long-term deal with the 26-year-old would probably have to put Brown in the range of Trent Williams, David Bakhtiari and Laremy Tunsil, who all average over $20 million per year. The good news is the Chiefs weren’t far off from there last year. You’d think they’d have to go a notch up from where they were, but it seems like this situation should be workable if both sides are reasonable, even if it takes using a tag as a placeholder to get there.
2) Will the Chiefs move on any of their younger stars? The two who would be worth monitoring would be 2020 draft picks Willie Gay and L’Jarius Sneed, who’ve both become integral pieces of Steve Spagnuolo’s defense. I’d expect that Kansas City will at least explore extensions with both of them, though the presence of ’22 rookies Leo Chenal at linebacker, and Trent McDuffie, Jaylen Watson and Joshua Williams at corner, makes those matters less pressing.
3) Who will Patrick Mahomes throw to in 2023? Obviously, Travis Kelce. And Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Skyy Moore and Kadarius Toney are under contract for next year. But Juju Smith-Schuster and Mecole Hardman are free agents, so there certainly could be some shuffling (again) at the receiver spot, where four of the top five guys statistically this year weren’t even on the team in ’21.
Order SI’s Chiefs Super Bowl Championship Commemorative Issue
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The Colts’ landing on Shane Steichen is a good result for a number of reasons. I know, I know—after 2018, the Colts aren’t going to presume anything until a contract is actually done. That said, the circuitous road taken, with four-hour first interviews and 12-hour, in-person second interviews (we’ll get to all of that in the next takeaway) and more than a dozen candidates, has real promise to have landed Indy in the right spot. Here’s why I believe that …
1) Steichen has worked with quarterbacks young (Justin Herbert, Jalen Hurts) and old (Philip Rivers) in seven years as a position coach or coordinator, and has seen (and made) systems change to fit their very different skill sets. So whoever the next quarterback is will be met with a head coach who has worked with young guys starting for the first time and older vets, and has adaptability to highlight that player’s strengths. And if it’s CJ Stroud, Bryce Young or Will Levis, it’s easy to see how he could use his experience with Herbert and Hurts to build the right environment for a first-round quarterback.
2) Steichen worked for Norv Turner, Mike McCoy and Anthony Lynn with the Chargers, giving him similar experience to what Kevin Stefanski had in Minnesota, and Arthur Smith had in Tennessee, where, as a young assistant, he got to see a franchise fire its coach, start over and try to restart. Then, he went to Philly as part of a new staff in Indianapolis. Add that to a year with Rob Chudzinski’s Browns, and he’s seen a lot of new programs on the ground floor, experience that will help in getting started in Indy.
3) Steichen was also part of a staff in Philly that was balanced and deep, and had great chemistry—there are a few older, experienced coaches there (line coach Jeff Stoutland is the most prominent), but otherwise, the group was made up of guys around the same age, with kids who are the same age, who worked together incredibly well, which set the stage for what we’ve seen there the past two years. Steichen now gets to try to build something similar in Indy.
4) The Indy brass was very clear with candidates on how much it thought of incumbent defensive coordinator Gus Bradley, whom they’d blocked from pursuing outside DC opportunities (one of those was in Carolina). The marriage between Steichen and Bradley should come naturally, since the two were together for four years with the Chargers.
And then, there’s this—on a few different occasions, Rivers explained to me how brilliant he thought Steichen was as a young coach. Rivers, of course, spent 2020 in Indy, so it’s not far-fetched to assume GM Chris Ballard and owner Jim Irsay got a glowing recommendation from an old friend. Which is just one more reason why this one makes sense.
The Colts were maligned for their process, but I actually think a lot of it, in the end, made sense. After an exhaustive five-week search, here’s some more on what was a very different, and thorough, set of proceedings:
• The process started with first-round candidates going through four-hour interviews over Zoom with GM Chris Ballard, vice chair Carlie Irsay-Gordon, assistant GM Ed Dodds, director of team development Brian Decker, HR chief Jasmine Park and president Pete Ward. Those interviews were, for the most part, standard.
• The second round, done in person, started with that same search committee, plus PR chief Matt Conti. Candidates were shuttled through different departments (strength and conditioning, training, etc.) and spent time with each, with the search committee sitting in on those meetings as well.
• The biggest difference in the second go-round was the amount of one-on-one time spent with Irsay, after Irsay had essentially sat out the first round of interviews. I’ve heard some of those one-on-ones went for around four hours.
• One of the more interesting elements to the process, according to a couple of candidates I spoke with, was the game-management and analytics drilling they went through. The Colts had senior football strategy analyst George Li put situations up on tape and go through them with each candidate, with the rest of the group watching.
So, yes, the process was a different one, and did feel, for a while, like it might be aimless, or even just an effort to get Irsay to look at guys who weren’t named Jeff Saturday. But in the end, it sounds like most of the candidates who went through it enjoyed it.
Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon is staying in Arizona, and could be the Cardinals’ coach before he gets on a plane again. We mentioned this last week—a lot of people in the league thought that it was weird how the team’s second round of interviews went. Giants OC Mike Kafka jumped on a Zoom on Tuesday with the same crew he interviewed with the first time, Bengals DC Lou Anarumo did the same Friday and all of it begged a question:
Why would Arizona, which had wrapped up its first round the week before, set up two interviews that wouldn’t require anyone getting on a plane over a week’s time, rather than just get them done at the beginning of the week and make a pick?
The stock answer was that owner Michael Bidwill didn’t want to take attention away from the Super Bowl. The real answer was what we told you it was last week, that there was a coach in the Super Bowl that they wanted to talk to but couldn’t during the bye week because of the rules (the Super Bowl bye week interviews have to be second interviews, and the Cardinals missed the first window with the Eagles’ assistants).
And so it is that Gannon’s still in Phoenix with the team going home.
This also isn’t the Cardinals’ guessing that they’ll like a candidate.
Over the summer, new Arizona GM Monti Ossenfort (with some help from his agent) came up with a list of 10 to 12 coaches that he’d wanted to get to know, so he’d have a solid list to work from in case he landed a GM job after the season. Three guys on that list wound up impressing him—Bengals OC Brian Callahan, Lions DC Aaron Glenn and Gannon, who, for his part, showed Ossenfort he had the sort of it factor needed to become a head coach in the NFL. The twist again, because of the rules, was Ossenfort would have to wait on him.
By the time Ossenfort got the Arizona job, the window to do first interviews with coaches in the playoffs was shut. So of his list of three, Glenn was the only one he could interview. After the AFC title game, the Cardinals got to Callahan. And, now, finally, they’ll get to Gannon.
I don’t think Gannon to Arizona is a completely done deal. But I do think things are trending that way, and that’s because I know this hasn’t been as haphazard as it might’ve looked. All of which makes me think that if things go well Monday, and Gannon wants the job, there’s a pretty decent chance he’ll get it, and soon.
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The Raiders are probably going to wind up cutting Derek Carr. If Carr is on the Raiders’ roster Wednesday, his $32.9 million base for next year, and $7.5 million of his money for 2024 becomes guaranteed. So he’ll be off the Las Vegas roster (effectively, at least) by 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the deadline for transactions to be processed that day.
Sometimes, deadlines spur deals. Don’t count on that in this case.
The Raiders have had five weeks to find a trade partner. At the very start, they established that a team would have to agree to trade parameters with them to get permission to talk to Carr. Thus far, one such team, the Saints, has gotten permission. And from there, the Saints had to agree to a revised contract, and Carr had to agree to waive his no-trade clause, and obviously those things didn’t happen. I’m told the Saints’ offer was the only one Vegas got.
At this point, Carr would have to be willing to give up free agency in mid-February, a month ahead of everyone else, to take less than what’s on his contract. And another team would have to be willing to give up a draft pick to get him, knowing he’d be cut Tuesday after showing little interest until now. The only way the Raiders had a chance was if Carr was willing to take a pay cut knowing he wasn’t getting close to what he has on his contract on the open market, and if a team didn’t want to compete for him with other teams on said market.
The chances of that happening were always slim, and they’re basically none now. So my guess is the Raiders will cut Carr, maybe Monday, maybe Tuesday, and the Saints and Jets (the only other team to inquire with the Raiders on him) will look into signing him later in the week.
That last part is tricky, though, because of the uncertainty of Aaron Rodgers’s status. Right now, Rodgers’s plans remain up in the air, and because of that, the market for Carr could be weighed down a little by teams that might figure that staying alive for Rodgers is better than signing Carr.
If you’re the Jets, do you go all in on Carr? Or do you wait for Rodgers? Those are the questions, and as we’ve written in this space before, the Jets, buoyed by owner Woody Johnson’s feeling that the team is getting closer to being a real contender, are planning to take the big swing, so I’d be surprised (even though they did talk to the Raiders about Carr) if they settled for the double now with a chance to hit a home run later.
As for the Packers, they are where they’ve been on this, and they’ll be good either way. If Rodgers says he wants to do another year in Green Bay, they’ll likely lock in for that. If he wants to be traded, they’ll work to accommodate that, with a natural turning of the page for them, with a decision on Jordan Love’s fifth-year option due in May.
That makes this a materially different situation than the past two offseasons, with a real chance Rodgers will be wearing another uniform next year. And if you want to know whether the league still thinks he can play, well, then a tepid market for Carr this week might be an indicator for you that teams are willing to wait for him.
The coaching carousel is, unbelievably, still spinning. Let’s jump in on some of the things that you’ll be talking about this week …
• If Gannon lands the job in Arizona, I’d expect Browns quarterbacks coach Drew Petzing to be a strong contender to go with him as the Cardinals’ new offensive coordinator. The 35-year-old Petzing has coached tight ends and receivers, in addition to quarterbacks, and was with Gannon in Minnesota under Mike Zimmer from 2014 to ’17.
• Brian Johnson’s situation is going to be fascinating. He and Kevin Patullo are both well positioned to succeed Steichen as OC in Philly. So Johnson could stay put and accept a promotion, go to Carolina to be Frank Reich’s OC, or potentially go to Baltimore or Washington to call plays under a head coach whose expertise is not on offense. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a head coach by 2025 or so.
• Patullo is another Philly name to watch. He crushed his interview with the Jets, and word on that sort of thing gets around.
• On Jay Glazer’s report that Andy Reid could walk away after this year—whenever that time comes, I wouldn’t discount the candidacy of quarterbacks coach and senior offensive assistant Matt Nagy, who has a great relationship with Mahomes and the Hunt family, and is very close with GM Brett Veach. Veach was a college teammate of Nagy’s, and helped Nagy get into coaching with the Eagles.
• So what becomes of Eric Bieniemy? I’d say there’s a good shot he’ll land in Washington with Ron Rivera, which would set him up either to save the Commanders or go down with the ship. The looming ownership change has a lot of people worried for their jobs in D.C.
• The fate of some Arizona assistants who’ve been blocked from interviewing for jobs elsewhere will be interesting. Defensive line coach Matt Burke was among those (Cleveland wanted to interview him), but he got a coordinator interview in Houston (which Arizona couldn’t block), and ultimately landed that job. Meanwhile, defensive coordinator Vance Joseph and passing-game coordinator Spencer Whipple are still twisting in the wind, well-regarded assistants who might have to find work very late in the process.
• My understanding is that Vic Fangio’s two-week consulting gig was why the Dolphins couldn’t announce their three-year deal with him, which will be worth more than $4.5 million per year. So I’d expect that announcement to come soon.
• The Texans did well to land Bobby Slowik from the Niners—the guy that was at the top of DeMeco Ryans’s OC list. The next one in Kyle Shanahan’s young OC assembly line figures to be tight ends coach Brian Fleury, who has been in San Francisco for four years, and actually first worked with Shanahan as a Browns defensive assistant (Shanahan was OC there) in 2014.
• The Bengals were the big winners in this hiring cycle. They’re positioned to keep Brian Callahan, Lou Anarumo and Dan Pitcher on what is a loaded staff (if Anarumo was to get the job as Cardinals coach, while we’re here, I’d bet former Vikings OC Klint Kubiak would go with him as OC). Callahan made it to the final round with Indy, Anarumo to the final round with Arizona, and Pitcher turned down the Buccaneers’ OC job.
• New Broncos coach Sean Payton certainly is looking to stock his staff with experienced hands. We mentioned last week that Denver has discussed bringing 75-year-old special teams coach Mike Westhoff out of retirement (he last coached in 2018). Mike Zimmer is another name that Payton’s Broncos have been connected to the past few weeks. And since, Rex Ryan has emerged as a DC candidate. The upshot here? Those guys would give Payton a chance to focus more on offense, and getting Russell Wilson back to where he needs to be.
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And since it’s Super Bowl Sunday, we’ll wrap with these quick-hitters to finish off the 2022 NFL season. Eagles-Chiefs sure gave us a lot to get to.
• It took some fits and starts (namely JJ Arcega-Whiteside and Jalen Reagor), but the Eagles have as good a pair of receivers as there is in football. A.J. Brown is about as unstoppable as it gets at his position. And DeVonta Smith came up huge for the second consecutive week, with seven catches for 100 yards, and one of the biggest of the game—a 45-yard go route with less than six minutes left to set up the game-tying touchdown. Add in his effort on the 35-yarder in the first half that didn’t count, and he had a wild night. The kid is a baller.
• Isiah Pacheco looks like he’s no fun to tackle. And he can take a hit.
• Goedert signed a four-year, $57 million extension with the Eagles 15 months ago, and it looks like that’s going to turn into a nice bargain.
• If the Eagles had beaten the Chiefs, how they handled defensive tackle Chris Jones would’ve been up there among the reasons why. Jones is one of the five best defensive players in the league, and Philly somehow silenced him.
• That said, Nick Bolton might’ve been the best defensive player on either team Sunday, and it wasn’t just the scoop-and-score (or the second one that was reversed). The 2021 second-round pick was a heat-seeking missile all night.
• Kenneth Gainwell is wildly underrated.
• Toney has a chance to develop into a terrifying weapon for Mahomes with a full offseason as a Chief under his belt.
• State Farm Stadium is built for big events such as the Super Bowl. But the field was a mess, and the players, to a man, said it after the game. I remember Ohio State–Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl in 2016—a national semifinal—being that way.
• That said, this was a field the league said it spent two years growing the grass for at a nearby sod farm. So it’s not like it’s the same grass causing the problem.
• It’s too bad we’re talking about field conditions and officiating the day after one of the greatest Super Bowls of all time. But, again, after the year the NFL just had, this is the bed the league’s made for itself.
Six from Saturday
With the draft about two months away, I thought we’d use this space to give you six things to take from the way the Chiefs and Eagles have drafted the past few years that can be lessons for anyone’s team going into the combine and pro days. …
1) Be open-minded with quarterbacks. Mahomes was seen as a sort of wild-horse prospect, and considered fundamentally raw enough to the point where some thought he was a second- or third-round prospect. Hurts needed so much work as a passer when he was at Alabama that some teams evaluated him as a running back then, and even coming out of Oklahoma there were serious questions whether he’d ever throw well enough to start in the league. And here we are. Both guys worked their tails off, and are A-plus competitors, and went to teams that built offenses for them, rather than trying to fit them into what they were already doing. There are limits, of course, to how far you can go with it. But there’s no question that the Chiefs’ and Eagles’ willingness to push limits paid off.
2) Invest in the lines of scrimmage. The Eagles have poured draft pick after draft pick into their offensive and defensive lines, which is why you have a developmental guy like Jordan Mailata in the hopper after striking out on a first-round left tackle prospect like Andre Dillard. Philly’s five offensive linemen were drafted and developed by the team, with first-, second-, third-, sixth- and seventh-round picks as part of the group. And on defense, there is a mix of homegrown guys (Fletcher Cox, Brandon Graham, Josh Sweat) and free-agent swings (Javon Hargrave, Haason Reddick) making up the front. Which is, of course, a lot of investment, and all by design—Howie Roseman’s really operated this way, with that emphasis, for more than a decade.
3) Take risks. We wrote last week how the Chiefs dialed back their risk-taking in 2022, and it resulted in a really solid group of rookies that are contributing pretty much everywhere (nine of their 10 draft picks were active for all three playoff games). But that came after a period through which Kansas City rolled the dice on guys such as Travis Kelce, Tyreek Hill and, more recently, Trey Smith (his concern was medical, not character). Meanwhile, Philly’s starting guys such as Landon Dickerson and Sweat carried significant medical flags into the draft process. The lesson? Drafting is an art, and part of that art is knowing when and how to take risks.
4) Draft years ahead of needs. The Chiefs took Bryan Cook this year knowing Juan Thornhill would be a free agent in 2023, and Leo Chenal knowing Willie Gay would be a free agent in ’24. Likewise, the Eagles drafted Goedert with the idea he could be a starter, but also with the knowledge that it’d take a year or two for him to become one, with Zach Ertz still in the fold. This, of course, gives you flexibility to let more expensive players go when the time is right, and also gives the players the chance to develop at their own pace.
5) Allow the coaches to be integral to the process. The Chiefs’ personnel staff is among the league’s best, and they’ll tell you the reason why is the coaches give them incredibly specific directives in what they’re looking for—which allows them to cull down larger groups of prospects, draft players whom the coaches will feel invested in, and find guys who’ll get on the field faster. This sounds obvious. But it doesn’t work that way everywhere.
6) Don’t let your own investment in a player cloud your vision. Roseman gave Carson Wentz a massive contract. That didn’t stop him from drafting Hurts a year later, when concerns about Wentz were starting to surface. He took Reagor over Justin Jefferson. That didn’t stop him from trading up for Smith the next year, or trading for A.J. Brown the year after that. And the Chiefs’ taking Clyde Edwards-Helaire in the first round didn’t stop them from grinding on Day 3 running backs last year and unearthing Pacheco. It’s easy to see the benefits now—and there’s real power in being able to see your missteps as they happen, and get them corrected fast.
One thing you need to know
The combine starts two weeks from Monday. And I have to get some rest and go skiing between now and then. But I need you to know how much I appreciate all of you sticking with us through the changes to the column this year. Really, all we wanted was to keep bringing you the best content possible, and deliver it in an easy-to-digest way, and hopefully we did that.
And I promise, we’ll keep working at it!
