We’re past the midway point of the season, the contenders are starting to separate from the pretenders and there’s lots to get to in the Tuesday notes. So let’s not waste time …
• The Chicago Bears’ move Tuesday morning didn’t come out of left field—Matt Eberflus himself indicated change could be on its way Monday during his press conference. It’s also not wholly unwarranted, given that the Bears haven’t scored a touchdown since losing on a Hail Mary in Washington two weeks ago.
But there is a larger question here, unrelated to an unhappy fan base getting a scalp as Chicago moves away from offensive coordinator Shane Waldron and to Thomas Brown as the team’s play-caller.
And what exactly will this fix?
Brown’s a good coach. But his play-calling experience, at any level, is limited to what he did last year in Carolina, when Frank Reich started as the Panthers’ play-caller, then gave the duties to Brown, took them back three weeks later, and then was fired, which cleared the way for Brown to call the offense over the last six weeks of the season. He’s never coached quarterbacks, and, at least on paper, he doesn’t really fix the problem.
And a big part of the problem is there’s been very little experience on the staff coaching the No. 1 pick in the draft who is starting at quarterback. Waldron had none. Brown had one year of it, and that didn’t turn out great last year. Quarterbacks coach Kerry Joseph had none. So while there was acumen and expertise there, the staff was flying blind taking a quarterback like Caleb Williams from an Air Raid offense at USC into the pros.
Maybe the Bears will go outside the organization now to fill that void, and get Brown some help. Judging by how the offense has played, the staff could certainly use some.
• Obviously, there are big-picture questions with Eberflus, too, and it’s fair to say his future in Chicago rides largely on Brown’s job performance.
The NFL’s had two offensive coordinators fired in-season thus far this year, and they just so happen to be the two guys that Eberflus has hired to run his offense with the Bears—Waldron, and now ex-Raiders coordinator Luke Getsy.
So it’d stand to reason that ownership probably won’t let Eberflus make a third hire into the position after this year. So Brown turning around Williams and saving the Bears’ season is likely Eberflus’s ticket out of this. And if Brown delivers, then, obviously, Brown would probably become an easy pick to stick as the OC.
• A lot of folks deserve credit for what’s been built in Kansas City. Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid are at the front of that line, obviously. Travis Kelce and Chris Jones would be next. And there are a fleet of assistants such as Matt Nagy and Steve Spagnuolo, too.
But for one reason or another, you don’t hear much about Brett Veach.
So we’ll say it: The Kansas City Chiefs’ GM should be squarely in the race for Executive of the Year.
Now, having Mahomes is like going into the season with a two-touchdown lead on most teams, for sure. But Veach was among the first champions for Mahomes in the Chiefs’ building, a year before Kansas City traded up 17 spots for him in the NFL draft. And as Mahomes has evolved into a lock to get to Canton someday, the challenges facing the GM have changed.
With Mahomes, Kelce and Jones on big veteran contracts, the path to filling out the rest of the roster has narrowed. And while that’s a good problem to have, it needs solving nonetheless, and really the primary way to solve it has to come through the draft.
Veach has done that, and then some. It showed in how the Chiefs stole a wild one from the Denver Broncos on Sunday, with not one, but two of his young defensive stars, Leo Chenal and George Karlaftis, bursting through the Denver front to block Will Lutz’s game-winning field goal. Then, again, it shows every week, and all through the roster.
Of the 11 guys who started on defense for the Chiefs on Sunday, nine were homegrown. Seven of those nine are on rookie deals, with Jones and rotational DT Tershawn Wharton the exceptions. The other two were sensible veteran signings, Justin Reid and Drue Tranquill, both of whom have become smart, versatile pieces for Spagnuolo.
And just as the defense has affordable rising stars such as Nick Bolton, Trent McDuffie, Chenal and Karlaftis, the offense has guys such as Trey Smith and Isiah Pacheco (and Creed Humphrey just came off a rookie deal) to supplement the team’s pricey vets such as Mahomes, Kelce and Joe Thuney.
Eventually, of course, that’ll lead to more good problems to come down the pike—as they choose who to keep and who to let go.
Navigating that is never easy.
But, clearly, the Chiefs have the right guy to do it.
• Dak Prescott’s injury is a big one, of course, and probably extinguishes any hope the Dallas Cowboys had of getting back to the playoffs.
Dallas (3–6) already has more losses than it had in any of the past three years, and now will move forward with Cooper Rush (and, maybe eventually, Trey Lance). It has a banged-up, struggling rookie left tackle, Tyler Guyton. The best player on the roster, Micah Parsons, has battled injury, too. The defense hasn’t played well, and the team looked dead Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles.
The key here, to me, is how competitive the Cowboys look moving forward. They have all the information they’ll have in January on how Prescott looks and plays in the offense as presently constituted. This year, unlike the past three, won’t be judged on playoff success.
Can Mike McCarthy really get the team going again? And will that be enough?
Remember, to retain McCarthy, since he’s in a contract year, Dallas has to draw up a whole new contract. In a lot of places, winning 12 games three consecutive years like McCarthy would buy the sort of mulligan year McCarthy’s going through. But Dallas, as we all know, isn’t most places. Which explains both the contract situation, and how the Cowboys are now tangled up in it.
• In talking to New Orleans Saints interim coach Darren Rizzi the other day, he and I did cover the interesting fact that special teams coaches’ opportunities have been pretty limited the past 20 years. Ravens coach John Harbaugh is, in so many ways, their patron saint. Baltimore brought him aboard from Philly in 2008. He’s 167–102 since, which is the NFL’s fourth-best record over that time. He’s won a Super Bowl, the AFC North five times, and made the playoffs in 11 of 16 seasons (this year will almost certainly make it 12 of 17). He’s eighth all-time in playoff wins with 12.
And, yet, somehow, no trend followed that.
Ex-Giants coach Joe Judge is the only coach whose NFL experience was primarily on special teams hired in the 16 hiring cycles since Harbaugh got the Ravens job. So as I talked to Rizzi, who was actually a head coach at two different schools, I asked if he’d given up on the idea that it would happen for him at the NFL level.
“I’d be lying to you if I said it hasn’t been frustrating,” he said. “I feel like there’s been guys that have gotten opportunities where you feel like, I’m more prepared than that guy. That’s just human nature. At the same time, you got to stay ready. You got no chance if you’re not prepared. All the things I said to you earlier, I really believe with special teams coaches. They’re very well prepared. This [his circumstance] is the alternative way of your path to becoming a head coach.
“At the end of the day, it’s an eight-week audition for me to put my best foot forward. If I laid out this plan this week and it didn’t work, I might start getting some side-eye. Everyone bought in. If you get 100% buy-in, let’s see what the result is. The result is good now. I told the team, the challenge is going to be, Can we duplicate that? Can we duplicate the effort, the energy that everybody had all week? We’ll see what happens next week. …
“My path my entire life’s been alternative. I coached Division II football. I’m not worried about the alternative path—whatever it takes to get there. Let’s see how the next seven weeks goes, and we’ll take it from there."
• We’ll have more on the conclusion of the 2024 International Series over the weekend, but the plan for next year is to go to eight games abroad. NFL owners have already agreed to a model that’ll compel each of them to give up a home game every four years, and play internationally every other year. The eight-game setup allows for that, where 16 teams go each year.
As for where the games will be, the NFL is currently contractually committed to playing two games at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, and a third at Wembley under the Jaguars’ agreement, at least one game in Germany, and a game in Madrid next season. That adds to five. Commissioner Roger Goodell said on NFL Network that the league plans to return to Mexico City and Brazil, and that Ireland (which has hosted college games) is under consideration, too.
• One of the top concerns emanating from the New York Jets’ locker room after Robert Saleh was fired five games in was the effect it would have on the team’s defense. By firing Saleh, owner Woody Johnson was effectively removing the architect of the defense, and spreading its coordinator, Jeff Ulbrich, thin, in making him adjust to the big job.
Well, we now have a five-game sample to put against Saleh’s five games earlier this year, and it looks like the players were right. Through five games, the Jets were yielding 17 points and 255.8 yards per game. Over their past five, they’re giving up 25.8 points and 348.8 points per game.
That’s a pretty significant difference.
• I’ll be interested to see what Drew Lock does if he gets in there as the New York Giants’ starter, which seems increasingly likely with New York now clearly out of the playoff race, and the contractual risk the Giants would be taking by playing Daniel Jones (we explained that in detail on Monday).
• The release of Tyrel Dodson was fascinating, given that he’s been a starting linebacker the whole season for the Seattle Seahawks. But as I see it, it’s also indicative of the big scheme change taking place, going from 14 years of Pete Carroll to a Ravens-style defense with Mike Macdonald.
• RIP John Robinson—his late-1980s Rams teams were always overshadowed by the dynastic San Francisco 49ers of that era in the NFC West. But they were always entertaining, behind guys such as Jim Everett, Eric Dickerson and Flipper Anderson. And Robinson stands decades later as one of the few coaches able to build consistent winners at both the major college and NFL levels.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Matt Eberflus’s Future in Chicago Rides Largely on His New OC.