With this week truncated by Christmas, we’re giving you the Tuesday notes a little later in the day. Here’s what we’ve got …
• Over the past 24 hours, I’ve tried to dig in and figure out just what sort of risk Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis would be taking in simply removing the interim tag from Antonio Pierce’s title, and making him the storied franchise’s next head coach.
Based on the conversations I’ve had, I’d say it would be a moderate one.
The upshot of hiring the 45-year-old former NFL linebacker into the top job would be how he connects with and inspires players, which is no small part of the job. He understands the dynamics of a locker room, and what it takes to lead one, having captained a Super Bowl champion as a player. He also, according to a couple of people working with him, knows what he doesn’t know and, thus, does a nice job of letting his coaches coach.
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On the flip side, he’s only coached two seasons in the league, putting him well behind what fellow ex-players Mike Vrabel, DeMeco Ryans, Kevin O’Connell and Dan Campbell had when they got head coaching jobs (only Campbell hadn’t been a coordinator). Also, Pierce doesn’t call the offense or the defense, and he’s leaned on director of football research Matt Sheldon in game management. So there is a fair question on how far just being the motivator-galvanizer can take a head coach.
Along those lines, there is the fact, too, that Pierce took over a moving train, and that the circumstances would change in February, March and April, when it comes time to lay a real foundation, and set an organizational structure. The learning curve, in that area, may be steep, though not unsurmountable.
So what does Davis do? Some in the organization think Pierce may have won the job with Monday’s win over the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium. Someone else who knows Davis figured he’d first take a big swing on Jim Harbaugh or Bill Belichick, with Pierce the pick if neither of those work out.
Either way, Pierce figures to benefit from some lingering regret I’ve heard Davis has over not giving Rich Bisaccia another year, after the former Raiders special teams coach managed an incredibly difficult finish to the 2021 season (Jon Gruden emails, Henry Ruggs III and Damon Arnette off-field issues, etc.) by getting Vegas to the playoffs, and nearly knocking off the Bengals in the wild-card round.
If Pierce gets the job, he’ll need help—and most assume he’d bring in someone such as Marvin Lewis (his ex-Arizona State staffmate, who’s been around the Raiders some this year) in a senior role. The hire would come with some risk for Davis, too. But as it stands right now, there’s plenty of reason to believe it could happen. And there’ll be even more reason to believe it could happen if the Raiders play the next two weeks like they did Monday.
• People might want to lay off Brock Purdy a bit. The 49ers quarterback did throw four interceptions Monday. But two were tipped, and a third came as he was getting hit—leaving the first pick (he simply didn’t see Kyle Hamilton) as the one that was really solely on him.
In 22 career starts previous to Monday (playoffs included), Purdy had twice thrown two interceptions, and never more in a single game. In 15 of those 22 games, he wasn’t picked off. So to treat this like it’s the start of something, just because it was a standalone game and everyone was watching, is a little ridiculous.
That said, it is worth paying attention to how things came undone for the San Francisco 49ers when they got behind. So much of the brilliance of Kyle Shanahan’s offense is how it marries the run game to the pass game, forcing a defense to play the 49ers straight up, and putting the offensive coaches in control of the chessboard. But that stuff doesn’t work the same when an offense is in long yardage or the team is down by a big deficit, and the run doesn’t have to be respected.
It’s been that way for a while. It’s also why, three years ago, Sean McVay was compelled to go get a quarterback—Matthew Stafford—who could excel in those situations, playing more of a straight dropback game. The 49ers have been so good that Purdy hasn’t had to be that guy much over the course of his career. We’ll see if he can be in the playoffs, when it’s a good bet he and San Francisco will have to win in those situations more often.
In that way, the Ravens game actually might’ve been a good experience for Purdy, and San Francisco.
• In our talk Sunday, New York Jets coach Robert Saleh was pretty effusive talking about Aaron Rodgers. So I figured this would be a good place to give all of you his extended quote on what the future Hall of Famer has brought to the team.
“I only know what I know with Aaron through my experiences,” Saleh says. “I stand by it, you can have an opinion on the man, but he’s an unbelievably thoughtful human being. He is all about his team. He’s all about supporting the people who he’s surrounded with. He’s been unbelievable. He’s been unwavering in his positivity, unwavering in his challenging of everyone in the organization, just like you’d expect a Hall of Fame quarterback to be.
“He’s just been awesome."
And that actually goes right down to gameday where, Saleh added, Rodgers would chime in with his thoughts between series, “having a bunch of different conversations with all of the different players, just talking with the quarterback about what he’s seeing.
“All of it’s been great.”
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• While we’re on quarterback testimonials, the belief the Dolphins have in Tua Tagovailoa really showed up Sunday against Dallas, with how the offense marched right down the field to respond to the Cowboys’ Dak Prescott-authored, 17-play, go-ahead drive. And, mostly, his teammates will tell you it was in how they responded to Tagovailoa who trotted into the huddle with so much on the line at the Miami 25 with 3:27 to go.
“I’ve seen him be a QB1, baby,” says veteran tailback Jeff Wilson, who grinded out the final yards to set up Jason Sanders’s winner. “I saw him be a quarterback that everybody said he’s not. I saw composure. I saw poise. I didn’t see him rattled. I saw a man that was ready for the opportunity, that led his team in the huddle, talked with confidence, and didn't have a tremble in his voice. The stage wasn’t too big for him. I’m so happy for that guy. He was a true QB1.”
Wilson wasn’t done.
“Just seeing the fire in his eyes, even in the huddle at the end, telling us, Let’s go, you could feel how much he wanted to win that game,” Wilson says. “He wasn’t trying to lose it. It was up to us to do everything in our power to help everybody. He’s not a one-man show. Everybody plays hand in hand. Everybody helps each other. It’s a team. You could tell that he wanted his team with him. We were happy to be there for him.”
The Dolphins, for what it’s worth, have tried to get the Tagovailoa MVP conversation going. Beating the Baltimore Ravens and presumed award frontrunner Lamar Jackson this week would do wonders for that effort.
• Watching Ravens coordinator Todd Monken’s offense work Monday night, and then seeing 49ers backup Sam Darnold look pretty explosive and sharp at the end of the game, reminded me that those two were almost together four years ago.
Monken was a hot name in 2019, and blew the Jets away that January in their interview. In fact, he was so good he almost upended their process, and won the job. Instead, the team decided to go with a guy who’d had NFL head-coaching experience, tabbing Adam Gase to work with Darnold, who was coming off a promising rookie year. Monken went to Cleveland and saw his stock plummet after the Browns had a trainwreck year. He returned to college—for a three-year stint at Georgia—while Darnold’s run with the Jets circled the drain.
We’ll never know, of course, what might’ve happened. But it’s hard not to imagine where Monken, with his creative, user-friendly offense, might’ve been a better fit for Darnold, who was still really raw as a player at that point.
• The Falcons have been seen this year as a team that’s a quarterback away. As such, the team’s inability to break through in Year 3 for Arthur Smith and Terry Fontenot has been hung on those in the quarterback room—primarily Desmond Ridder and Taylor Heinicke.
So I did want to ask Heinicke, when I had him on the phone the other day, if he thinks that the Falcons quarterbacks have taken too much blame. His answer was insightful.
"Most of the good stuff falls on the quarterback. Most of the bad stuff falls on the quarterback,” he says. “It’s just part of the job. You know that when you sign up. We want to play better. We’ve been pushing each other to play better. That’s not to say everyone on the offense hasn’t had a hand in it, but as quarterbacks, we want to be perfect. We want to go down, score points and win. Me and Des talked about it. We’ve worked hard every week. There hasn’t been a week where we’re down in the dumps. That’s a testament to that room.
“Even Logan Woodside comes in and works hard. We just want to go out there and win."
Which is the way most of the best quarterbacks think, too.
• T.J. Hockenson’s injury (obviously) sucks for the Vikings. The 26-year-old is second among tight ends this year in catches (95), third in yards (968) and he’s tied for seventh in touchdowns (5). The timing makes Hockenson’s ACL-MCL tear worse—that it happened in late December makes it no sure thing that he’ll be back for Week 1 of next year.
Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery for a guy who’s grown into one of the NFL’s very best.
(And while we’re there, it’s pretty remarkable that the Lions traded away Matthew Stafford and Hockenson, and can say they have zero regrets—having ended up with Jared Goff and Sam LaPorta.)
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• When I was trying to diagnose the issues the Chiefs have had on offense Monday, one rival coach raised to me the amount of mileage the guys have on their bodies from the long playoff runs of the past five years. Consider this: If you include the playoffs, the Chiefs have played 96 games from 2018 to ’22. That’s 14 more than a team would play just playing out regular seasons over that time, which is nearly an entire additional season.
It’s also actually more than the Patriots had in making four Super Bowls in five years, between 2014 to ’18. Those New England teams played 94 games over that stretch.
Throw in, too, that over that time the Chiefs have been everyone’s big game, and taken everyone’s best shot, and if the team looks a little beat up, or worn down now, there’d be a pretty good reason for it.
• The Tommy DeVito thing was fun while it lasted. It’ll also give him a shot to make good money for a long time as a backup. But while everyone had a good time, the Giants weren’t under any illusion that this was more than just a good story. In fact, I jokingly asked someone with the team a couple of weeks ago, after the Monday night upset, if he thought the team might really have something. He smiled, and deadpanned, “No.”
• DeVonta Smith went over 1,000 yards for a second consecutive year Monday, and I couldn’t help but wonder how this is going to affect how teams might assess smaller receivers going forward. I also remember asking him about his weight predraft (he came in at 166 pounds at the Indianapolis medical combine in the spring of 2021). His response was great—that he’d tried to put on weight before, and it never really worked, so he stopped worrying about it, and focused more on trying to be the best he could be at his size.
I’d say he’s doing pretty good with what God gave him.
