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Seattle announced Monday it was cutting Jason Myers, leaving Janikowski as the only kicker on its roster. Janikowski signed a one-year contract with the Seahawks in April.
The 40-year-old veteran was originally drafted by the Raiders with the 17th pick in the 2000 draft. He spent his entire career in Oakland before he agreed to join Seattle.
The Rams announced on Monday afternoon that defensive tackle Dominique Easley has passed his physical and is removed from the physically unable to perform (PUP) list.
Easley is cleared to practice immediately and is now a member of the Rams’ active roster, as the Rams enter their first week of practice after leaving training camp at UC Irvine.
Easley missed the entire 2017 season after suffering the second ACL tear of his NFL career a little over one year ago in training camp.
In 2016, Easley played in all 16 games of the season, recording 24 tackles and 3.5 sacks.
Drew Brees, Asshole Face and the Level of Expectation for the Saints By Albert Breer
Chris Graythen/Getty Images
METAIRIE, La. — Drew Brees didn’t just know it was coming. He knew when it was coming, and how Asshole Face was going to do it.
After losing consecutive games to start the 2017 season, a Saints team with minimal expectations went on an absolute tear. And seven games into what would become an eight-game winning streak, Brees could feel his teammates’ confidence starting to boil over and the buzz around the team growing strong enough to draw national attention. Payton, as a result, was growing antsy—and that could only mean one thing.
“You win a few games in a row, you sense the team is feeling good about themselves, and letting some things slide maybe they shouldn’t,” Brees said, smirking, in a quiet moment after practice on Wednesday. “And so I’m going to walk into the facility, and I’m going to expect to see mousetraps.
“And the message is going to be don’t eat the cheese—‘Hey, the media and your family and all these people are telling you how great you are, don’t eat it, that’s a trap. We still have a lot to prove, a lot of things to work on, we’ve got a bull’s eye on our chest, this is one of those games.’”
Going into his 13th year as the Saints quarterback, Brees is well beyond the old cliché of being able to finish Payton’s sentences. At this point, he can basically anticipate and begin them, if he wants to. And the same goes the other way for a coach who bought relatively low on a quarterback with a blown out throwing shoulder in March 2006, and has reaped incredible benefits since.
“[As] a first-time coach, … you get that three-year period to have success and make a difference, and [Brees has] been—shoot—it couldn’t have worked out better,” Payton told me. “To have a guy who you know who is not only going to play at his level but lead at his level, be here before anyone and leave after everyone …”
Payton shook his head, maybe realizing just how valuable it is to have his best player represent all he wants in his program.
“No doubt,” Payton continued. “And if your best aren’t that way, it becomes more challenging.”
It’s facilitated a few rebuilds and restarts for Payton and the Saints over the last 13 years, the latest of which has the two going forward into what feels like a new beginning in New Orleans, Brees’s age (40 years old in January) be damned.
Brees and Payton have been together for just as long now as Dan Marino and Don Shula were in Miami, and for three years longer than the 10 seasons Joe Montana and Bill Walsh teamed up in San Francisco. In fact, if you look at the 11 Hall of Fame QBs to come into the NFL post-merger, just one has had a run like Brees has with Payton.
Here’s a look at those 11, and the head coach he played with for the longest …
Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll: 14 years John Elway and Dan Reeves: 10 years Brett Favre and Mike Holmgren: Seven years Dan Fouts and Don Coryell: Nine years Jim Kelly and Marv Levy: 11 years Dan Marino and Don Shula: 13 years Joe Montana and Bill Walsh: 10 years Warren Moon and Jerry Glanville: Five years Ken Stabler and John Madden: Nine years Kurt Warner and Mike Martz: Four years Steve Young and George Seifert: Eight years
Peyton Manning did play with offensive coordinator Tom Moore for 14 years, but never had one head coach for more than seven. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick have been together for 18 years, and Ben Roethlisberger and Mike Tomlin together for 12, but both Belichick and Tomlin are defensive coaches. So it’s hard to find a marriage of offensive guru and quarterbacking prodigy as enduring—Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy in Green Bay would qualify here—as the one Payton and Brees have cultivated.
“It’s outstanding,” Payton said. “I’ll say this’it doesn’t feel like 13, it feels like seven. But then, [Brees’s] children were here today and I’ll look over, and be like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe how much Baylen’s grown or how much Bowen’s changed.’ And so I feel like we see age more in our children. When [my son] Connor comes to practice, Drew looks over, and here’s this guy who’s 6’ 1”, and when it all started he was six years old, a kid running around with a Star Wars light saber. So we see it our children.”
They see it in the results, too. Brees has made 10 Pro Bowls and four All-Pro teams since arriving to play for Payton. There have been nine 5,000-yard passing seasons in NFL history, and Brees has authored five of them. Meanwhile, the Saints have finished in the top four in total offense in all 13 of his New Orleans seasons except one, and they finished sixth in that one exception (2010). The Saints made the playoffs five times in 39 years pre-Payton/Brees. They’ve made it six times since, and won the team’s first Super Bowl.
All of this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There’s a cumulative effect that results from that mountain of accomplishment that few people in the history of the sport can understand like these guys can. So that instinct Brees has for Payton’s old motivational tricks? He’s got it for the coach’s playcalling and offensive innovation, too, which gives the Saints a leg up.
“I can anticipate a lot of what’s coming out of his mouth,” Brees says. “That’s communication throughout the week, but that’s also just history, and feeling how things are going throughout the course of the game and the momentum, and just knowing how he operates based on all those things that are happening. So when I can anticipate the playcalls, it really helps me visualize and stay one step ahead.
“That puts me in a really good place as far as confidence and momentum and communication with guys, and just the way we’re able to flow as an offense.”
On one play, it might be looking at the defense before the call comes into his helmet. On another, it may help him use the front end of the play clock to get to a teammate on what he’s looking for on the next play. And globally, the efficiency in communication is always there.
“He’s pretty good at remembering plays, very good at it. And I’ll be able to recall—hey, do you remember when we did this?” said Payton “Those things come up, and that bank of history is important. It makes it easier—‘Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re talking about.’ … It might even be a situation where we’re trying to draw someone offsides. There’s just a constant communication, a constant thinking, a constant preparation to win, to win, to win.”
Their foundation was laid back in 2006, when the Saints still hadn’t played a post-Katrina game in the Superdome, Brees was coming back from a shoulder surgery no quarterback had, and Payton was getting his first shot at being an NFL head coach—with a concept that’s more commonplace now, but was rarer in pro football then.
Forever, Brees and Payton have seemed like a perfect match, the hyper-aggressive play-caller paired with the gunslinger raised in a college spread. A piece of that, in fact, was manufactured. The starting point for these two was Payton doing what he could to make the offense work for Brees, rather than trying to make Brees fit into the offense that he’d built over six years as an NFL coordinator.
“Most first-year head coaches, especially offensive guys, would be like, ‘O.K., this is the way we’re doing it, my way or the highway, and you’re coming in and buying into it,’” Brees said. “And he certainly had discipline elements when he came in, he realized we had to clean house a little bit and bring in some new guys, and rebuild the foundation and the culture of the team.
“But from the x’s-and-o’s perspective of the offense, he basically looked at me and said, ‘We’re going to build this around you. I want to do what you’re good at. I want to do what you’re comfortable with.’ So he immediately started taking plays from my San Diego days that he had never had much experience with.”
From there? Brees remembers Payton asking, Do you like it? Do you love it? O.K., it’s in. You don’t like it? Alright, it’s out. And then, What did you guys call it? O.K., that’s what we’re going to call it. From there grew one of the best QB/coach relationships we’ve ever seen. Brees says that as a rookie he was told if he was lucky enough to last, he’d see four or five cycles of players come in and out around him. He and Payton have now seen about that many in their New Orleans years alone.
“Not at all do I ever take it for granted,” Payton said. “It seems like it’s flown by. It’s outstanding. There’s an evolution to the team. If you count up the number of receivers he’s played with, and tight ends, and running backs, and we’re constantly looking at new things offensively, and he’ll come up to the office and we’ll visit on a few topics … it’s unique, and certainly it’s not the norm.”
That brings us to 2018. The Saints’ starry sophomore class—fronted by corner Marshon Lattimore, tackle Ryan Ramczyk, safety Marcus Williams and tailback Alvin Kamara—has brought new life to the building, and it puts the franchise squarely in a championship window, something which Payton and GM Mickey Loomis implicitly affirmed with the move on draft day to get pass-rusher Marcus Davenport.
“For Drew and for me, it invigorates you,” Payton says. “You can’t help but get excited about [the younger players’] skill sets.”
Even with all those players still wet behind the ears, and the team was a miracle play away from playing in the NFC championship game. And yes, Payton and Brees understand the pressure that goes with being in a spot to win at the highest level—“We always feel that,” Payton says—and knowing this all won’t last forever.
But then, there’s that massive backlog of experience, which gives you as good a reason as any to believe that these Saints have a great chance to live up to the newfound level of expectation everyone has for them. And not, for that matter, to take the cheese.
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The big question I had became simple … Is having a more workman-like group around him helping Tannehill become more forceful as a leader?
“He was already going in the right direction—‘the best way for me to be an effective leader is to play well,’ which he did in ’16,” coach Adam Gase told me. “We were really starting to get things going, he was being more vocal, more aggressive in getting things the way he wanted them. And then he got hurt. … He came back for the spring, and in training camp, then I noticed he was a lot more aggressive.
“He was very direct in how he wanted things done, and he wasn’t afraid to say anything to anybody. When we lost him, we kind of lost a lot of that. That was really trending in the right direction for us.”
So they’re resetting, in a way, to where they were last summer, when everyone here was convinced Tannehill was ready to deal in 2017. That was before he tore his ACL, before the team went 6-10, before Hurricane Irma bumped the team’s first game of the season and before Chris Foerster’s episode, and before the team kicked the tires on this year’s draft class of quarterbacks.
Therein, in other ways, things aren’t quite the same. Tannehill’s 30 years old now, and doesn’t have another dollar fully guaranteed on a contract that runs through 2020. Another tough year could lead owner Stephen Ross to making more changes. And as Miami looked at guys like Baker Mayfield, Josh Allen and Josh Rosen, there’s been plenty of room for people down there to envision quarterback being one of them.
“Obviously, things could’ve changed, and it would’ve been hard,” Tannehill said. “But it doesn’t affect how I approach my job, how I approach my preparation. I was rehabbing in the spring, going through that process, and it didn’t really affect anything. Obviously, putting a vote of confidence in me does feel good, but it doesn’t change how I go about my business. I want to keep that urgency about myself, like we did draft somebody.”
And he added, “That’s part of what happened with [Ballage]. As an offense, I want us to keep our urgency. Time is ticking. It’s going to be regular season before we know. We’re three weeks into camp now. We can’t be missing assignments on basic things. And that’s urgency we have to take and attack every single day with it.”
As for the knee, Tannehill’s wearing a brace on it now—he wasn’t in 2016 when he suffered a partial tear, but was last summer when he tore it through—and says that’s more for prevention (lots of QBs do wear ACL braces over their lead leg for that reason) than anything else. “I don’t think there are any more hurdles,” he said, “The spring was a little bit of the hurdle for me, just getting back to playing football.”
So that means he can focus on the hurdles he would any other year, which figure to have an impact on the direction of the Dolphins moving forward.
--------------------------------------------------------------- The final roster cut-downis now less than two weeks away (Sept. 1), which means you’ll hear plenty of talk in the coming days about players landing on the trade block. There’s a good chance nothing seismic happens, and, using Jets quarterback Teddy Bridgewater and Raiders holdout Khalil Mack as examples, here’s why.
Let’s start with Bridgewater. The Jets love how he’s played, he has supporters on the coaching staff, everyone loves his comeback story and on paper, he’s turned into a nice trade asset for a team that’s committed long-term to Sam Darnold, who’s maintained the inside track to start on Sept. 10 in Detroit.
The problem is, what team is going to come get him? Bridgewater is on a one-year deal, and he probably won’t re-sign without a promise to start in 2019. How many teams are in position to give him that? How many teams even have an opening at quarterback right now?
It’s hard to envision someone giving up more than something in the middle rounds, if the plan isn’t to start Bridgewater. If there’s an injury somewhere, circumstances change, of course—the Browns gave up a third-round pick for Tyrod Taylor, with a year left on his deal, to be a placeholder for the No. 1 pick. But for now, Bridgewater would just be a competitive piece without any years on his deal for someone else.
Again, he’s a great story, and he’s better than some guys who’ll start in 2018. But it’s easy to see why, for now, it’ll be tough for the Jets to drum up a market. The Eagles only got what they did two years ago for Sam Bradford as a result of Bridgewater’s injury. It would seem something like that would have to happen elsewhere for the Jets to get a significant haul this time around.
As for Mack, this goes back to looking at the conditions that have to exist with another team for a deal to be done. That club trading for him would have to give up not just premium draft capital, but also a market-busting contract for the 2016 Defensive Player of the Year.
There’s not much of a chance that another team would give up pick-wise what it would take to get Mack without some sort of assurance that he’d be doing a long-term deal in his new home. And you can raise the fact that the franchise tag would be an option for that team, but that assumes Mack would report to a new home without a new deal, which seems unlikely.
Is there a team out there willing to give up a first-round pick (and maybe another pick), plus more than $20 million per year, with $60 million or so fully guaranteed, to get Mack? Maybe there is. He’s an incredible player, but that’s a hefty price for anyone who doesn’t play quarterback. For now the discussion is moot, as I understand it. Inquiries about Mack’s availability from other NFL outposts have been quickly met with a no.
And, hey, I know it’d be fun to see some guys moving around in a couple weeks, and the trade market certainly took on a new look this offseason, thanks to a raft of aggressive young GMs. I still wouldn’t hold your breath on much high-end action.
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A quick Q&A with new Titans coach Mike Vrabel …
The MMQB: What has been the biggest adjustment to becoming a head coach?
Vrabel: “You mentioned the staff—it’s critical to hire a good staff, guys that are loyal, guys that are willing to share your message throughout the team and their unit and their position group. I asked if they could do three things. Can they teach? Can they develop? And can they inspire the players to have confidence and trust to do their job. I think we do have those guys. I’m excited about our staff, and more excited about our players, I love our players.
And then the adjustment for me really is when to allow guys to coach, and then when to make sure that, hey, this is what I want done, and this is kinda how I want it done. There’s a fine line. Dean [Pees] and Matt [LaFleur] have been great, and Craig Auckerman coordinating their units. And it’s just being able to allocate my time in certain areas, and being around and being noticed, being in a special teams meeting, being in an offensive line meeting, just making sure that everyone understands that their job is critical to our success.”
The MMQB: I’ve heard you say to the players—I’ve been every one of you, the mid-round pick, the young special teamer, the veteran, the free agent, the older guy. What kind of leg up did that give you?
Vrabel: “It gives me an in. It gives me a way in to the club. But after that, I’m going to have to earn their respect in the way I coach this team, handle situations, handle discipline and make sure the guys are doing what’s best for the team. Really, the fact that I used to be one of those guys—being in different situations, as a young player, a veteran player, a free agent, on and on—it gives me an in, but that’s about it.”
The MMQB: Did you think you’d make it here this fast when you went into coaching seven years ago?
I don’t know if this qualifies as a meme, but it’s pretty funny that these seemingly off-the-cuff comments from Jalen Ramsey have numbers that line right up with them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- TEN TAKEAWAYS
1. Some buzz from training camps I hit this week … Miami’s pumped about how third-year corner Xavien Howard is coming along. The Dolphins have big questions at the position, and if Howard’s summer translates to the fall, that would go a long way to making the rest fall into place. … The Texans have to sort out who will be the third receiver behind DeAndre Hopkins and Will Fuller over the next few weeks. Keep an eye on fourth-round pick Keke Coutee, out of Texas Tech. He’s made an impression, and a push for playing time. …
Speaking of rookie receivers, Saints third-round pick Tre’Quan Smith is in great position to get on the field alongside Michael Thomas and Ted Ginn in Payton’s offense. He made a circus catch the day I was watching New Orleans practice, and I was assured that was no isolated incident. …
And here’s another rookie to watch: Titans pass-rusher Harold Landry. The second-round pick flashed in the team’s preseason opener, and he’s been stringing good days together in camp. The Titans felt like he had the natural ability to be a top-15 pick before injuries contributed to a just-OK final year at Boston College. …
Jason Pierre-Paul looks like the old JPP to Bucs people, and he showed it in his work in Tampa Bay-Tennessee joint practices last week going against the Titans’ stud left tackle, Taylor Lewan.
2. We mentioned the trade market. It’s still a little ways off from really heating up, but a number of teams are sniffing around for offensive line help. The reason why has been on everyone’s TV over the last couple of weeks—depth at those positions is spotty. So if your team has a few spare big guys, the return could actually be pretty good.
3. I asked J.J. Watt for his early opinion on the new helmet rule. Here’s his answer: “Obviously, we’ve had the refs come in and talk to us about it, we’ve learned about it. The biggest thing I’ve learned is just play the game. And in the preseason especially, you have to see how they’re calling it, understand what they’re trying to do with it. But if you let it change your game, it can really throw you off. You try to play the game as you can anyway, it’s not like I’m trying to be harmful out here. So you play, and then you learn as you go on how they’re calling it and if you have to change your game. But as of right now, I don’t see any reason why I would need to. …
Of course, it’s all going to come down to how they want to officiate. I’m not even 100% sure they know exactly how they’re going to. It’s going to come down to how the ref and crews handle it, what they call and don’t call. They’re in a tough spot, you could call one on every play if you want, helmets are going to touch on every single play. Do you want to call it on every play and have a flag on every single play for 100 plays? That’s their decision.”
Like I said last week, I think enforcement is the biggest issue, not the rule itself. Things happen so fast (San Francisco’s Raheem Mostert’s hit on Houston’s Tyler Ervin on a punt is a good example) that it’s hard to officiate anyway, and probably even tougher for the officials knowing the emphasis on the rule.
4. While we’re on the Texans, here’s coach Bill O’Brien on Deshaun Watson coming back from his ACL tear: “If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t think he had anything. … He did it at Clemson, and he told me when he came back pretty quickly from the Clemson injury, I remember [Clemson head coach] Dabo [Swinney] telling me that it didn’t even seem like he had a knee injury.
I feel the same way. We’ve watched him in camp, obviously he’s not getting hit in camp, but that’s the same with every quarterback in the league. I think he’s been good, footwork’s been good, he’s able to plant on the knee, I feel good about him.”
5. Bills rookie Josh Allen looked very solid the other night in extended action, and it’s worth paying attention to the progress he’s made with his feet. I’m not sure he showed the ability to avoid the rush and reset, as he did in Cleveland on his touchdown throw to Rod Streater, much at Wyoming. And it looks like coordinator Brian Daboll and quarterbacks coach David Culley’s lesson are being applied, which is an awfully good early sign.
6. Good to see that Josh Gordon is ready to return to practice. We all know what the Browns receiver is capable of. The good thing, to me, is that as Hue Jackson and Todd Haley have gone about building the offense, and they consider anything that they get from Gordon to be a bonus. Based on his history, that’s the smartest way to approach it—prep Jarvis Landry and Rashard Higgins and Antonio Callaway for bigger roles, and adjust to what Gordon can give you on the fly.
7. Jerry Jones said this week that he and the Cowboys don’t need to see any more of Ezekiel Elliott in the preseason, based on his performance this spring and summer. Everyone I’ve talked to agrees that they’ve seen a locked-in guy over the last four months, ready to get back to being the workhorse he was for Dallas in 2016. We’ve said this before—he’s probably not the happy-go-lucky guy he was as a rookie, but those in Dallas have seen a guy playing, and working, with an edge.
8. It looks like Bears tight end Adam Shaheen dodged a bullet with what looked like a significant ankle injury the other night—and that’s important for Chicago and new head coach Matt Nagy’s offense. All you have to do is look to the Eagles and Chiefs to see how important the tight end is to Nagy. The Bears love what they’ve been getting from Shaheen, Trey Burton and Dion Sims, and it’s big that the group will go forward (mostly) intact.
9. I understand Washington turning over all the rocks it can to stock the running back room following Derrius Guice’s season-ending ACL tear, and Samaje Perine and Byron Marshall getting nicked up the other night, particularly with what Alex Smith can bring in the option game.
But man … it’s weird to see Adrian Peterson’s and Jamaal Charles’s names in what amounts to a tryout for a roster spot. (Although the Cardinals coaches felt like Peterson had something left to give a team as first- and second-down back, if he wanted to keep playing, which he apparently does.)
10. Paxton Lynch not making the Broncos roster in his third year would be pretty nuts. I initially thought there must not be much of a precedent for a quarterback being cut two years after being drafted in the first round. Then I remembered it’s happened twice this decade to the Browns.
With or Without Laces, Jon Gruden Just Wants to Compete By Peter King
Getty Images
NAPA, Calif. — “No-lace football now!”
No-lace football. Anybody ever hear of that?
Jon Gruden has. When the drill started near midfield halfway through a Raider training camp practice one day last week, Gruden was fired up. “Let’s see what you got, Derek Carr!” he said. Derek Carr, getting ready to start the drill, had a big smile. He looked fired up.
A ballboy brought out a black Raiders ballbag with a dozen NFL footballs. What happened next was almost too fast to notice what was going on. Carr took six shoveled snaps from a ballboy in the span of 11 seconds and threw right, left, right, left, snap-way-high-and throw-right, and left. As happens often in a game, Carr had no time to center the ball in his hand to find the laces—he had to throw the moment he got it in his right hand.
And you noticed the color of the tight spiral was totally brown. Usually when you watch a spiraled throw, you see the fast rotation of the ball with the white laces flashing every, whatever, fifteenth of a second. Not here. Solid brown.
There were no laces on these dozen footballs.
That’s weird. It’s sort of Gruden. I’d come here to judge whether the 55-year-old Gruden—more sedate, a bit more thoughtful, with a voice that didn’t dominate practice the way the 38-year-old Gruden did the last time he was on a Raider practice field—was the same intenso guy who ran the Raiders a long time ago. Did his decade out of football dull his ardor for the game?
He’s still the sneering, calculating Gruden, I think. He does get up an hour later in the morning, but I give him credit for admitting he’s not the up-at-3:17 a.m. nut job he used to be.
Whether all that matters when the games start is another matter. But it’s a fun show out here in cabernet country.
This column was going to start at 5 a.m. sharp on the first floor of the Napa Marriott, the summer home of the Raiders, in the video den of Jon Gruden. But I took a sharp turn after seeing practice. First reason: On a quiet day in Napa, with only a handful of fans in the bleachers on either side of the fields out the backdoor of the Marriott, Gruden’s voice could not be heard for the first 51 minutes of practice.
He watched, he quietly taught. Later in practice, it was the No-Lace Football Drill. Shovel snaps, some of them purposely lousy, with six straight very fast throws per quarterback, using wall-to-wall brown footballs.
“That’s pretty Gruden right there,” Carr said. “Good idea. He had me do that at the ESPN QB camp a few years ago too. You get used to throwing without the laces. I’d guess 40 percent of my throws in college were not with the laces. Get it quick, pressure, get it out. I like practicing it with speed.”
Gruden: “All these ESPN shows we did with the quarterbacks—60 shows, I think. The TV copy from their college games … quarterbacks in the shotgun, and their fingers aren’t on the laces. Hardly ever. So I’ve said if you’re going to practice something in a drill, it’s got to be based on two things: what happens the most in a game, and what a guy needs to work on.
Well, if we’re going to throw the ball with your fingers not on the laces, we better get some balls with no laces, and we better practice using balls with no laces, and we better practice at the speed that they’re throwing with no laces in a game. You got a coach there telling the quarterback where to throw: ‘Left, right, right, bad snap, low snap, left, right.’ So that’s what we do. We gotta make these quarterbacks mentally quicker every day, gotta get them to be quicker with the arm and the ball.”
This was a continuation of what we talked about at 5 in the morning, when Gruden told me: “If there’s a better way of doing something in football, I’m gonna try and find out and apply and incorporate it into what we do. I’m not a big fan of the GPSs and the sleep bracelets. I don’t believe you wear [virtual reality] goggles in quarterback meetings and get 3D reps. I still think it’s about hard work. I think you need to go out there, practice it full speed.”
No one knows how this chemistry experiment between Gruden and owner Mark Davis and Oakland and Las Vegas will work out. The Gruden I saw for a day last week isn’t the in-practice foghorn he used to be. “Passionate, intense, but probably a little quieter,” said quarterback Derek Carr.
But in how Gruden acts, how he works and how he installs drills and plays and innovations like the no-lace ball drill, he looks like the guy looking for any edge he can find to beat the new kids on the NFL block—ironically, the ones he birthed in professional football.
Think of what you must think if you’re Gruden, looking at the NFL landscape. By the time you were 39, you’d made the playoffs three years in a row as a head coach and won a Super Bowl; you were an offensive phenom. Then you coached your last six years in Tampa and fell to earth a bit—zero playoff wins, you get dismissed, and you take a job in the TV booth that was never really all you. You always wanted to come back.
You also must think this: In 2004, you hired 24-year-old Kyle Shanahan for his first NFL job as a low-level offensive assistant in Tampa. In 2008, you hired 22-year-old Sean McVay for his first NFL job as a low-level offensive assistant in Tampa. Now they’re the offensive phenoms.
At 31, McVay took over the Rams last year and turned them from the league’s 32nd-rated offense to number one in one season, and the Rams won the division. At 37, Shanahan (“a genius,” Tony Romo calls him) looks to be set in San Francisco with Jimmy Garoppolo at quarterback so the 49ers can be a force for years.
You’re Gruden, and you started them on their road to phenomness, and now everyone’s looking at you. Can Gruden still do it? Have the students passed the teacher, and can the teacher be as good as he was a generation ago?
We’ll see. Week 1: McVay at Gruden. Week 9: Gruden at Shanahan.
“The one thing I would say that’s so different for Jon is, I don’t really look at it as he’s been out of football for nine years,” McVay told me last week. “I look at it as he’s had a different lens into the game. He’s always been preparing himself to use that platform as an advantage so when he did come back, like getting to know all the quarterbacks from his QB Camp, he’d be ready.
His up-close look at the different ways people practice from traveling around doing the Monday night games is valuable exposure. We’re all a product of our experiences and the environments you’re placed in. He’s been exposed to all of them. I’ve met with him throughout the course of the last decade, talking ball. I’m still always learning from this guy.
He’s sent us notes, using extra footage from his Monday night telecasts, to help us have better teaching tapes because of the angles that you’re getting from all of the cameras. He’s going to do a great job.”
“I just want to compete again,” Gruden said, back in his Marriott lair. “I’m proud of Shanahan, proud of my brother [Washington coach Jay Gruden], proud of McVay.”
“You used to be them,” I said. “The brilliant offensive guy.”
“Yeah,” Gruden said. ”They’re good. They’re really good. Unfortunately, I’ve got to get in the ring with them now. I know they want to get after me. I guess I could say the feeling’s mutual. I want to beat them too.”
Getty Images
Staccato, quick-hit Gruden:
• On his coaching style at 55: “I’m trying to match the work ethic that I put forth 15 years ago, whatever it was, when I was here. That’s number one. You have to get everybody on board. I haven’t seen my wife in like three weeks; she’s got to be on board. It’s hard saying goodbye to my mom and dad in Florida. I miss them. Being honest with you. I kind of felt sad about that because I like looking out for them. But I’ve got to do this. Time’s flying.”
• On the changes in football since he last coached in 2008: “I don’t like what we’ve done to the profession, personally. I don’t like the CBA. I don’t like regulating hard work. By god, if a guy wants to come here in April and learn his plays? Wants to go out there and watch tape with me? I think he ought to be able to do that. He wants to come in and use our billion dollar facility? He ought to be able to use that. Really disappoints me to no end. For players, this is their time in life to make a team, make a profession, make some money, have some fun. I don’t like it. Are the rules better, or are they just more rules?”
• On what he wants this team to be: “You gotta have guys that would jump over the water coolers to cover a kick when the game’s on the line. You gotta have guys that behind the scenes are always thinking about the game, that love it. We needed some passion. We needed more passion I think in this locker room. I think we needed more versatility. I hope we’ve got that. We’ve had one winning team here in [15 seasons]. It’s not good enough.”
• On his reported 10-year, $100-million contract, and a football coach making $100 million: “I’m not making $100 million, just so you know. Well, I never thought Tom Cruise, never thought his movies were any good but he’s making plenty of money. There’s a lot of things that I don’t understand. No disrespect to Tom Cruise. I’m sure he’s a great actor.
But you know what? You just go about your life as hard as you can. You try to find something you love and you do the best you can at it. I never got into coaching for the money. I got into coaching because I wanted to be a quarterback coach. What the salary cap has become, what free agency has become—it’s amazing.”
• On what he took from Al Davis, who traded him in 2002 to Tampa Bay: “I got a lot of respect for him, obviously. A lot of people think we clashed. We didn’t clash, really. Yeah, he traded me. But he fast-tracked me. He beat me up at times, and I probably needed beating up. I was probably in over my head when I first signed up for this job.”
• On Derek Carr: “There’s no question that he’s got more talent than anybody I’ve ever coached. He’s athletic. He can make any throw you can imagine. He loves it. If you’re a Raider fan, get a ticket, because he is really fun to watch. He has really done a great job at this camp. There’s really not anything he can’t do.”
We did have an interesting exchange about the Tuck Rule game. Raider Trivia: What was the last game Jon Gruden coached for Oakland? It was the playoff game in Foxboro in the 2001 season, when Charles Woodson stripped Tom Brady and in effect would have all but clinched the game … but the call was reversed, with ref Walt Coleman claiming the “tuck rule” should have been called, making the aborted Brady “throw” an incomplete pass. The Patriots kicked the tying field goal to send the game to overtime, then won on another field goal, and went on to win their first Super Bowl of five in the Belichick/Brady Era.
Smoke out of Gruden’s ears, 17-and-a-half years later.
“That’s probably a big reason I’m never going to be a fan of instant replay,” Gruden said. “Instant replay was [meant] to correct an obvious wrong. I don’t know how they worded it. But they shouldn’t have overturned that play. That’s a complete joke. Where’s the tuck rule today, Peter? It’s not even in the game. When you overturn a play for a rule like that, that’s no way to lose a game. Especially a playoff game.
“It is what it is, as they say today.”
That’s about it.
“Anything else you want to say?” I asked as my time ticked down. It was 5:19. I could tell he was itching for me, respectfully, to scram.
“I don’t want to say anything,” he said. “I just want to work. We’re a 6-10 team.”
Time to think of some more things like no-lace practice periods. He knows he’s got phenoms to keep up with, and to pass.
------------------------------------------ Numbers Game
No good team shook up the roster in the offseason as much as the Rams. How’d they do? We can’t know with finality until the fate of Aaron Donald has been decided. My sense is the great defensive tackle, a camp holdout, will not play on the contract (one year, $6.89 million) remaining. My money is on the Rams and Donald getting a deal done by Labor Day, but that’s just my gut.
Without factoring in the Donald deal, let’s examine what the Rams lost and gained this off-season—and whether they’re better off for it.
GONE Robert Quinn, DE: 1 year, $12.93 million (Traded to Dolphins) Alec Ogletree, LB: 4 years, $32 million (Traded to Giants) Sammy Watkins, WR: 3 years, $48 million (Signed by Chiefs) Trumaine Johnson, CB: 5 years, $72.5 million (Signed by Jets) Tavon Austin, WR/Ret: 1 year, $3 million (Traded to Cowboys) Total: 5 players, 14 years, $168.43 milion
ARRIVED/STAYED Marcus Peters, CB: 2 years, $11.1 million Aqib Talib, CB: 2 years, $19 million Ndamukong Suh, DT: 1 year, $14 million Brandin Cooks, WR: 6 years, $85 million Lamarcus Joyner, S: 1 year, $11.28 million Todd Gurley, RB: 6 years, $69.45 million Total: 6 players, 18 years, $209.83 million
How’d they do? Cooks is better for the Sean McVay offense than Watkins or Austin; he can play all three receiver spots in the Rams offense. Peters and Talib are short-term gains and give defensive coordinator Wade Phillips two potential shutdown corners—though both are incendiary players who may have an incident or two during the season.
Suh is 31 but still a major disruptive force inside. The Rams weren’t going to re-sign Quinn after this season, and he’s missed 16 games due to injury in the last three years. Phillips signed off on the loss of Ogletree, wanting the cornerbacks instead; they’re more valuable in his defense.
And this summer, the Rams have locked in ace running back Todd Gurley for his age-24-through-29 seasons, presumably his six prime years as a runner, at an average cost of $11.6 million a year.
All in all, if GM Les Snead gets the Donald deal done by opening day, the Rams will have managed a top-heavy roster very well this offseason. But signing Donald … it’s a very big, and crucial, if.
------------------------------------------------------------ Reining In Replay
The new NFL rules analyst for NBC Sports, Terry McAulay, tells me he thinks there will be a major change in how replay is adjudicated this year, and it’s the one element of 2018 officiating that has gotten “zero press.” McAulay said: “The league doesn’t want those technical reversals that we saw over and over last year. Replay is for clear and obvious errors, and that was not the case last year.”
Oh, I know that. The Kelvin Benjamin overturn of a touchdown that certainly was not indisputable wither way was a black mark on a replay system run amok last year. Vice president of officiating Al Riveron went way beyond reasonable in his overturns of several calls, none worse than the Benjamin play.
Now, after the Benjamin TD in the corner of the end zone in Week 16 at New England was overturned, look at this call that wasn’t overturned, or even questioned, Saturday in the Rams-Raiders game. Tell me that the referee shouldn’t have examined this one, ruled as a fumble by the crew on the field, in consultation with the officiating command center in New York.
“We knew the league was going to be more circumspect on replay this year, but to go this extent—this fumble wasn’t even stopped to be reviewed—is a big change,” McAulay said. “With my new job at NBC, I’m going to be much more cautious about saying a call should be reversed. Why have replay if it’s not going to reverse this play?”
Next week: I plan to address the leading-with-the-helmet hits now being flagged in the preseason, with McAulay’s thoughts and mine, and those of players from the preseason trail. It needs some space, and some thought, and I’ll give it to you next Monday.
------------------------------------------ The Cowboys, Remade
OXNARD, Calif. —You know what I love doing at training camps? I love watching the teams that have re-invented themselves quickly, for better or worse, and I love seeing what that newness actually looks like. Like here, last Monday, 1s on 1s, in a spirited late-afternoon scrimmage.
Dak Prescott (25 years old, round four, 2016), drops a dime to Swiss-army-knife Tavon Austin (27, traded from Rams, 2018, former eighth overall pick) down the left sideline. On another play, linebacker/modern-science miracle Jaylon Smith (23, round two, 2016) runs stride for stride across the middle with Ezekiel Elliott (23, round one, 2016); as a Prescott pass arrives, so does a big hit from Smith, and the ball skitters away, and Smith celebrates. Later, coach Jason Garrett says, “Our young talent has really emerged this camp.”
The whole scene brought to mind one of the intense drafts I’ve covered in my 34 years covering the league—Dallas, in 2016—and this Yogi-type cliché that has never been more true: Sometimes the best deals are the ones you don’t make. I said that to Jerry Jones here, and he knew exactly what I was talking about.
If Jones had his way on draft weekend 2016, the Cowboys would have exited the draft with Ezekiel Elliott and Paxton Lynch, the Memphis quarterback who has fallen down the Denver depth chart and may lose his roster spot there in the next month.
Instead, the Cowboys ended up with Ezekiel Elliott, Jaylon Smith, Maliek Collins (a solid rotational defensive lineman) and Dak Prescott. If you ask influential Cowboys, they’ll tell you that—if Smith’s health holds—he and Prescott will fill the two biggest leadership roles here for the next eight to 10 years.
Quick refresher: The Cowboys spent 67 minutes late in the 2016 first round on the phone trying to find a trading partner to move up to draft Lynch. They offered their second and fourth-round picks (34 and 101 overall) to Seattle, at 26 overall in the first round. Denver offered 31 and 94. Seattle asked Dallas to make the offer its second and third-rounders, 34 and 67. Jones agonized. He wanted a quarterback of the future badly, with Tony Romo close to the end. Dallas said no.
Seattle traded with Denver, and Lynch went to Denver. The next day, Jones said to me, “I’m second-guessing the hell out of myself for not giving the three. I have always paid a premium for a premium. So many times my bargains have let me down.” I will never forget the look on Jones’ face. This perpetual optimist, 18 hours after losing Lynch, was pissed off.
No Lynch. The next QB target, Connor Cook, was on the board at the start of round four. Dallas had the second pick in the fourth round and tried to move up with Cleveland, the pick ahead, to get Cook. The Cowboys made two offers. No dice. Oakland then jumped over Dallas, traded with Cleveland, and got Cook. So the Cowboys settled for Prescott with their other fourth-round pick, late in the round.
Two failed trades left Dallas with two cornerstone players.
As the story rolled around in my head watching practice—I swear, just at the same time—Prescott dropped back to throw 20 yards in front of me on the practice field at camp; Smith, pivoting to cover tight end Geoff Swaim, using the damaged leg everyone was studying in this camp, caught up to Swaim, reached across his chest and batted the Prescott pass away. Smith broke up three passes in this practice and was the best defensive player on the field.
In camp, Smith said he believes he can be a better player in Dallas than he was before his injury 32 months ago. The Cowboys are happy with this version of him. “You can run in a straight line all day, but you need to move in spontaneous ways out there, and that’s what we’ve been seeing,” Garrett told me. “Jaylon’s so much more fluid now.”
Jaylon Smith. (Getty Images)
I remember Garrett telling me during the ’16 draft about how excited he was to draft Smith and Prescott for another reason: leadership. Both are young captain types now, Prescott in particular. Garrett told me a story from the pre-draft process the other day that resonates now. Prescott’s draft status was clouded by a DUI charge shortly before the draft, and when he visited Dallas, Garrett drilled him on it.
The coach brought it up a couple times, saying he couldn’t understand why at such an important time in his life that he’d messed up. Finally, the kid, a little exasperated, said to Garrett: “Coach, I don’t know what you want me to say. I made a mistake. I learned from it. It won’t happen again.”
“I look back and I think that was a case of him being the adult, not me,” Garrett said.
Now, with Tony Romo and Jason Witten gone, it’s Prescott’s locker room. At age 25.
“Tony Romo and Jason Witten gave me a good foundation, taught me how to be a leader and wear the star the right way,’’ Prescott told me in camp. “You have to do things the right way. Lead by example. We have such a young team.”
Big duty for Prescott—leading this team while needing to get better as a player. His efficiency regressed last year (from plus-19 touchdown-to-interception differential in 2016 to plus-nine last year), and he says he’s concentrating on being a facilitator this year. With Elliott in the lineup from opening day instead of sidelined by his 2017 suspension, expect Prescott to be more consistent, even with a lesser group of receivers.
---------------------------------- 'Hard Knocks' Is Real
Tough training camp so far for former first-round tight end David Njoku of the Cleveland Browns. He had a bad case of the drops, as captured by the NFL Films/HBO cameras in town to shoot “Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Cleveland Browns.”
One difference between most of the previous 13 renditions of “Hard Knocks” and this year’s: former series might show footage with a somber voiceover about Njoku’s drops, while the 2018 “Hard Knocks” digs the knife into Njoku. It feels so much more real. In the second hour of the show last week, a downcast Njoku is shown walking off the field when he encounters two defensive mates, defensive linemen Nate Orchard and Chad Thomas.
Orchard: “What up David? Make sure you get on the JUGS, David.”
The JUGS. That’s the machine that pumps footballs at receivers, so receivers can practice the fastballs they’re likely to get from quarterbacks.
Njoku doesn’t appreciate the cattle-prod.
“F— you,” he says to Orchard.
“All right, cool,” Orchard says. “Good talk.”
The hazing continues from Thomas, who says: “You can’t catch a cold butt-ass naked in Alaska.”
David Njoku. (Getty Images)
I have been going to training camps for more than 30 years, and this seems so locker-room, on-field real. I am not a “Hard Knocks” savant, and I admit I have not seen every episode of the previous 13 series. But too often, I believe the show has been a faux reality show.
I won’t tell you the team, but I recall in one recent “Hard Knocks” season sitting in a head coach’s office during training camp, and the coach saying, “Hang on” before we spoke, and then opening a closet door to block the camera in his office, and covering the ambient-sound microphone in the room with a couple of towels, and then talking to me. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But it said to me, We’ll give HBO great visuals and sound, but we’re not going to be altogether real.
Not so this year. In the first two episodes of the five-episode “Hard Knocks with the Cleveland Browns,” I’ve laughed, I’ve almost cried, I’ve said to the TV, “You go, Jarvis Landry!” It’s the best “Hard Knocks” I’ve seen, by far. NFL Films is doing its usual excellent job shooting the show.
The difference is, the 35 NFL Films crew members have found a team and organization of desperadoes who know their jobs and futures are on the line, unlike many of the past teams featured in the series. You can hear it in the voices of the coaches and players and front-office men. Listen to offensive coordinator Todd Haley, as he pleads with the lackadaisical but supremely talented rookie receiver Antonio Calloway:
“Come on. We need you. We need you.This is important.”
And during the Browns’ preseason opener, Haley approached receiver Jarvis Landry, doggedly determined to win, on the sidelines and gave him what sounded like an order. “You need to take kid on,” Haley told Landry. “I don’t care if he’s f—ing living at your house. Can you do that? Larry Fitzgerald would.”
Landry: “Yes sir.”
It’s TV gold. Ken Rodgers is in charge of the project for NFL Films as senior coordinating producer, and he credits the Browns going 0-16 last year for paving the way to a good TV product. ”This is the most urgent situation you could have in the NFL,” Rodgers told me. “The scenes we’re capturing are tinged with that urgency.
The stakes are so high. This is the most urgent training camp ‘Hard Knocks’ has ever filmed, the most urgent team we’ve covered, the most urgent situation we’ve covered. The players and the coaches reflect that. It’s just a very tense time around the team and the organization.”
In show two, quarterback Tyrod Taylor went to coach Hue Jackson on the practice field and told him if he showed parts of the lax practice that day in a team meeting, it’d be a spur to the players. “All you gotta do is show it one time in meetings,” Taylor said. That night, Jackson ranted seriously in the meeting room thusly: “You can’t practice like this and be good! I want more! Unmotivated talent don’t do s—!”
The way the series works is that teams can kill stuff in the show—team officials watch it Monday night or Tuesday morning; the show airs at 10 p.m. ET Tuesday nights through Sept. 4 on HBO—only if it has bearing on competitive football situations. If the Browns, for instance, think Taylor’s cadence would give away some football clues, they could ask it to be scrubbed from the show.
Or if personal or medically sensitive information is passed on somehow, that could be killed. But the personality stuff, or the anger between coaches (there’s been some tension between Haley and other coaches), or the F-bombs that fly between players … it’s fair game. I hear the Browns haven’t had a heavy edit hand at all in the show, feeling that if they’re going to sign in for the show, they’ve got to expect reality.
That’s exactly what “Hard Knocks” has delivered. It’s good TV, and after a few seasons where it wasn’t must-see, it finally is again.
----------------------------------------- What I Learned
Arizona rookie quarterback Josh Rosen, on his first training camp as an NFL player:
“I think I see defenses a lot better than I did in college. Pre-snap moreso, because in college it’s like you had to acknowledge the front and coverage—just kind of take it in, snap the ball, then play. It’s like, ‘I think I got cover three, I get the snap and oh, it’s cover two. Well, gotta throw it somewhere.’ Now, I have to actually make checks and change plays according to fronts, linebackers, safeties.
So instead of just seeing it and reacting live and playing, I have to diagnose it, and when you have to diagnose the defense before a play, it means you pretty much have to learn it. Because you can’t just stand up at the line and guess. Processing that information at the line has helped me do more. I think I see defenses a lot more clearly now, and I’m understanding matchups much better.
Josh Rosen. (Getty Images)
“In the NFL, all the positions on defense are starting to blend, it seems to me. Here, [safety] Budda Baker has been at the line of scrimmage on one play, safety the next, and maybe even safety and the line on the same play. [Pass-rusher] Chandler Jones can drop and play linebacker. I’ve seen [defensive end] Rob Nkemdiche almost pick me off a couple times as I tried to throw.
Our linebackers can play safety, safeties play linebacker. I feel like that’s just where the game is heading overall. Everyone’s a hybrid of some sort because for the most part, defenses had to figure out ways to stop Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers, Drew Brees, Tom Brady. Part of that is all the disguises they put out there. That’s what I’m learning.
“Another thing: Chandler Jones is so fast, so quick, he’s made me shorten my pocket clock. I just don’t have the time I had [at UCLA]. But there’s a problem with that. If you’re consciously trying to play faster, if you think, ‘Be fast, be fast,’ then you’re kind of screwed. It just has to happen. It has to be just in you to react quickly. The second you’re thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta be quicker on this’ rather than just thinking about making the right play, I think the league might not be cut out for you.
----------------------------------------- Things I Think I Think
1. I think this is a partial list of the players who did not play in the second preseason game of the year in Los Angeles on Saturday, between the Raiders and the Rams:
I know a big reason why—because they meet in the first game of the season 23 days after this preseason game. Still, it’s another example of the disgrace of the NFL preseason. Every fan in that stadium (and there were 69,037 there to see the first Raider game in Los Angeles since 1994) should get a refund. Period. Because on the game ticket, the following words were not printed: Warning—the most famous player in this game is E.J. Manuel. When is the NFL going to get serious about addressing the abomination that is paying big prices for preseason football?
2. I think I’m not saying Pat Mahomes is going to be The Answer for Kansas City. It’s training camp, he hasn’t faced adversity, he hasn’t gotten his clock cleaned, etc. But with Tyreek Hill in triple coverage by the Falcons on Friday night in Atlanta, Mahomes reared and fired a strike his dad (former MLB hurler Pat Mahomes) would be proud.
The ball went exactly 70 yards in the air, over the three Falcons defensive backs, and nestled into the arms of Hill at the 5-yard line, and he pranced in for an easy 69-yard touchdown. Not many people can throw 70-yard strikes to beat triple coverage. Can Mahomes do it consistently? We shall see. But now we know why Alex Smith was sent packing to Washington.
3. I think that’s the play of the preseason through two weeks. I’m still shaking my head over it.
4. I think it’d be amazing if, now that presumed starter A.J. McCarron is out with a broken clavicle, presumed third-stringer Nathan Peterman (two summer games: 17 of 20, .850) wins the starting job in Buffalo.
5. I think I forgot how significant a game the late Week 1 Monday nighter is: Rams at Raiders. Student at professor … Sean McVay got hired to be “less than a quality control coach” (his words to me) out of college on Gruden’s last staff in Tampa Bay, and now the teacher will try to beat back the student he might have taught too well. McVay is so into this game that he didn’t play most of his starters in their preseason game Saturday.
He didn’t want to give anything away, even in such a silly setting as a preseason game. Even in a small way, like say the Raiders hearing Jared Goff’s cadence … McVay didn’t want any of that on tape. The Sept. 10 game is in the Black Hole, too. Man, what great theater that’s going to be.
I have a notion about injuries and today's NFL. I used to be a fan of the 6 million dollar man (Lee Majors). It was too much fun to think of being able to do super-hero type feats of strength, speed, endurance, etc...They used bionic parts. integrated with the character's body. As an adult, I see the foolishness of mixing a mortal body with parts doing things the mortal body was never meant to do. The human parts of the body were not meant to absorb the weight of a bus or a truck that Col. Austin was picking up. The torso was not meant to bear the twisting and motions of bionic legs running 60+ mph.
The players weigh, especially on the lines, 30-50 more pounds of muscle than players in the 70's. Those guys in the 70's were slower and smaller and probably couldn't match the measurables required in the game today. But, I wonder if their body weight made the game safer for them and opponents? These guys would show up to training camp to get INTO shape. They worked real jobs because their NFL players salary was good, but nothing like today. They did two-a-days in full pads and live tackling. It was survival of the fittest:
"We had 130 guys, and you could practice for six weeks," Redskins coach Jim Zorn said, who spent much of his playing career with the Seattle Seahawks. "There were a lot of those kinds of scrimmages, we'd go live. But nowadays with 80 players and really the idea that you want to keep everybody as healthy as you can, you have to limit that."
Then again, as Miami's Taylor pointed out, these aren't the old days.
No one talks about the scientifically constructed, Ted Rath created athletes. Is their muscle mass too heavy/strong for their physical frames? Are a super athlete's ligaments, tendons, skeletal frame increasing in strength along with muscles? I have a feeling, no. I know that I trust the durability of a steak eating, country strong guy than that of a weight room, green smoothie guy
25 most important Rams for 2018 – No. 25: TE Tyler Higbee
By: Cameron DaSilva
Each day until Sept. 10, we’ll discuss a new player on the list, providing a look back on his 2017 season and projecting what’s ahead this year.
To kick off the list at No. 25, we have a player who didn’t have a huge impact last season, but Jared Goff has already said he wants to get him “move involved” in 2017. That player is third-year tight end Tyler Higbee.
Higbee played 70.7 percent of the offensive snaps last year but only made 25 catches. That’s partly because just 45 passes came his way – 25 fewer than the next-closest player on the roster, Sammy Watkins.
He’s not a tight end who’s going to catch 55 passes for 800 yards with seven touchdowns, but he is important to the Rams. Gerald Everett is still seemingly learning the ropes in the NFL and is currently battling a shoulder injury, which his timeline to return remains fairly unknown outside of Sean McVay saying he’ll be sidelined for “another week” recently.
Everett is a player capable of reaching those aforementioned numbers, but he’s more of a question mark than Higbee is. With Higbee, the Rams know they’re going to get a capable receiver who’s a big target downfield, while also giving them a blocker on the line when called upon.
Tight ends have become increasingly important in today’s pass-happy NFL, and if the Rams want to utilize 12 personnel (one back, two receivers, two tight ends) more in 2018, Higbee will be a big part of that. He and Everett can do some damage if they’re on the field together more frequently in 2018, though with three strong wide receivers, Higbee is likely to see the majority of the snaps – at least early on.
I've mentioned this before, but these guys are off to an amazing start as a group. Almost across the board they have looked solid or better in preseason. IMO the teams in the top area who needed QB and outsmarted themselves are going to be hating themselves later.
It's still way too early to know of course. But based on early returns this class is going to be a hell of a group and a lot of team fortunes are going to rise/fall because of them.
I haven’t yet re-watched the Raider game, but I’d like to share a few impressions after camp reports and 2 PS games.
I’m very bullish on this Franklin-Myers kid. I predict that he will grow and develop steadily this season. He’s already a gem and will provide quality rotational snaps this season.
Speaking of gems, yeah, Noteboom was a HUGE find late in the 3rd round. I see a bright, bright future for this young man. I’m already 100% sold.
I’m just gonna say it. Our Achilles heel now seems to be backup QB. I’m uncomfortable there with all three guys. Surely McVay feels the same? Hope so. And I hope that Snead is scouring rosters for potential upgrades. Our season potentially could hang on the results.
Malcolm Brown’s hold on #2 RB seems to be slipping. He needs to make a statement in these remaining PS games, I think. Unless his performance in practices has solidified his slot? Kelly has just been looking so good in the 2 PS games. Kelly not only makes the 53, but might seize that #2 spot based on results I’ve seen so far.
I’m kinda liking our OL depth now with the addition of the 3 rookies. Yeah, Kromer needs to coach them up and they need to live in that weight room, but I feel cautiously optimistic about their respective ceilings. What a relief that is.
Reynolds and Hemingway need to do a better job of catching the damned ball. Both have disappointed me, falling far short of expectations. TE might be a high priority for next offseason. Sigh...
This Hodge kid is making a statement, huh? Comes in late to camp and yet has outplayed the bottom of our WR roster. Don’t see how they can keep 7 WR’s, but I also don’t see how they can cut Hodge if he keeps this up. Nice problem to have.
Good thing for Pharoh Cooper that he’s a helluva ST player, ‘cause he’s not impressing as a WR. TBH, this Hodge kid would otherwise seize Cooper’s WR spot, I think.
Westbrooks just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t he? He’s now reached the stature of a top tier rotational DL player. Not gonna be a whole lot of relief for opposing OL players this year as Rams rotate their DL players. Love it.
I don’t think that it’s too soon to feel cautiously optimistic about our LB depth. Joe Barry and Wade seem to have multiple LB candidates to develop. I’ve been particularly impressed by Kiser’s instincts. And Lawler, Scales, and Hager have been showing up constantly on my TV screen in these 2 games. Plenty for a coach like Barry to work with there.
We are loaded in our secondary, DL, and WR corps, aren’t we? And to think that just 2 years ago we were pathetic at WR. Now it wouldn’t be a big stretch to call all 3 units elite.
Okay--this always bugs me when I watch the Marvel films.
Why do they insist that the superheros battle without their masks on?
I got into this with my son just a little while ago and he defended the decisions with things like the Captain America character not wearing a mask at one point when he became nomad or some such thing? I don't follow any of that. I'm a child of the 60s and 70s and if my superheros had a mask they wore a mask.
I am hardly a comics expert. I will admit that I bought very few superhero comics growing up.
I DID buy a lot of Archie's and Sad Sacks and Dennis the Menace and Richie Rich and Tales From The Crypt and those guys ALWAYS kept their masks on.
Anyway--maybe it's an age thing and maybe I'm just being cynical but I have a theory and I'm just gonna throw it out there. Shoot it down if you must but it's my theory and I'm sticking to it:
Actor insecurity.
Look, some superheros aren't burdened by masks: Thor, Doctor Strange, The Black Widow, Hawkeye, The Scarlet Witch and probably others.
But what about the actors who have to wear masks?
Captain America? He didn't wear one at all in Avengers Infinity war.
Iron Man? They have cleverly rigged it so Robert Downey Jr. can have himself filmed while inside the mask.
Hulk? My God they would not even let him become the Hulk in this one(other than the beginning). Instead they put Mark Ruffalo in a Hulk like Iron Man suit where his face could be seen.
Spiderman? His mask is off at every opportunity. Sam Rami seemed to have it off for half of his films.
War Machine? I can't recall if his was ever on. I recall seeing Don Cheadle walk around with the suit on.
Black Panther pretty much did--I'll give them that one.
But hey--call me old fashioned. I want to see these heroes battling in masks without having to see the actors faces.
Winter Soldier had his face completely exposed as well now that I think of it.
The kid in me found an awful lot of fun in the masks. The films aren't as interested in that.
LOS ANGELES — By the time the ice hockey career of Joseph Noteboom topped out in the 11th grade, he was pushing 6-foot-5 and well over 250 pounds. He was a big, fast, tough defenseman whose skating skills defied his imposing frame. The job description was pretty simple: Go find the guy with the puck and crush him.
Noteboom had a particular knack for spotting unsuspecting puck carriers along the boards and then hurling himself at them with all his size, strength and might. Pity the poor opposing player and plexiglass when he timed everything up just right. Which was often.
“Oh yeah, for sure. I was a big guy so that was my job,” said Noteboom, his devilish grin about as chilling as you’d imagine.
About the only thing more absurd than imagining a kid that big flying around an ice hockey rink was the location. When you think hockey, Plano, Texas doesn’t exactly come to mind. But then, who would have thought a town in the middle of Texas would catch the hockey bug like Plano did in the 2000s? But that’s exactly what happened deep in the heart of football country.
Before you knew it, nearly every kid in the region wanted to be Sidney Crosby.
Or in Noteboom’s case, Drew Doughty.
“In my area (hockey is) really big,” Noteboom said. “There were at least five ice rinks within 10 miles.”
The pull of football and a prolonged growth spurt meant hanging up the hockey skates for good. That decision more than six years ago was as easy as it was wise, and it has led him to Los Angeles, where he’s a rookie offensive linemen with the Rams.
Now 6-foot-5 and 310 pounds, Noteboom delivered a crisp, efficient performance in a 19-15 preseason win over the Oakland Raiders on Saturday that, coupled with a strong training camp, gives the Rams hope they shrewdly uncovered a starting-caliber NFL lineman in the third round.
Somehow a man as big as Noteboom went missing from the NFL’s draft radar last April over the first 88 picks, allowing the TCU standout to fall right to the very fortunate Rams at pick No. 89. They went into the draft needing to add youth and depth to a position that was top heavy and extraordinarily lucky last year. They left it with Noteboom, Maine tackle Jamil Demby and Michigan State centre Brian Allen. All three have played well enough to at least allow the Rams to ponder the possibility that they secured three potential future starters.
That’s no small feat considering left tackle Andrew Whitworth is pushing 37, center John Sullivan is 33 and right tackle Rob Havenstein, left guard Rodger Saffold and right guard Jamon Brown are all free agents at the end of the season.
The likelihood the Rams go through another season like 2016 essentially unscathed along the offensive line — they needed just one half of play from a reserve last year — are slim. Chances are one or all of their rookies will be pressed into duty at some point. And with Brown suspended for the first two games of the regular season after violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy, Noteboom could be a candidate to replace him along with veteran Austin Blythe.
But even if they don’t need the rookies this year, the Rams — with their age and finances and the NFL’s hard salary cap — will need one or two new O-line starters to emerge in the very near future.
Noteboom (70) played both tackle spots and right guard against the Raiders. (Photo by Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports)
Noteboom appears the surest bet, at least initially. He played both tackle positions and some right guard Saturday against the Raiders, remaining in the game until the end of the third quarter. And he accounted himself quite well, flashing smooth footwork, balance and hands warding off pass rushers, and power and tenacity in run blocking. The Raiders sat most of their starters, so context is important, but just one month and two preseason games into his career, Noteboom continues to flourish even as the Rams thrust him into stressful situations by challenging him to play multiple positions.
“He’s shown a lot of good, encouraging signs for us,” Rams head coach Sean McVay said. “Confident. Smart, conscientious player.”
“He’s come in as a rookie and done everything asked of him,” said Whitworth, who has taken all three of the Rams’ young linemen under his wing. “He continues to show why he was a good player in college, and he’s continued to improve each and every time he gets an opportunity. And that’s what you want to see from a young lineman.”
You don’t play as long as Whitworth has and not know what to look for in a good lineman or how they should carry or conduct themselves. The veteran Pro Bowler has pulled aside Noteboom to point out certain things — what he did well, what he could do better — or to offer tips on an assignment or technique. Noteboom has quietly and appreciatively soaked it all in.
You can tell a lot about a guy by not only how he plays, but also how he accepts and processes criticism or advice. And Noteboom has left an impression as a player and a young teammate.
“He’s one of those guys that, honestly, he’s got the right character and attitude to be a really good football player,” Whitworth said.
As Noteboom was leaving the Coliseum on Saturday, he was already thinking about aspects of his performance to focus on in film study. He’ll narrow it down to two or three specific areas and then work on them in practice. Off the top of his head, he said he wants to get a better command of the playbook so he can play more freely rather than thinking so much. That’s easier said than done when you’re cross-training at three different positions, but as he showed against the Raiders, Noteboom is handling everything the Rams are putting on his plate.
“It’s all there for what you need to be successful,” Whitworth said. “He has the talent and all the things needed to be a good player. He just has to keep progressing.”
Top photo of Joseph Noteboom by Kirby Lee of USA TODAY Sports
Russell Wilson led the shecocks to 2 FGs while playing the entire 1st half. Rivers only played two series leading the chargers to 1 TD. Seattle's D hasn't looked to good and their O is all RW. Looks like they are close to done.
"Big spoon or little spoon?" I ask Todd Gurley, the Rams' All-Pro running back. "I'm big spoon, obviously," he says, leaving no room for debate. I acquiesce and take the front seat in our double tube, with Gurley's grimy aqua socks at my nose, just as we begin our rapid ride down an open-air waterslide. What's worse, Big Spoon won't stop screaming in my ears: "Yeeeaaahhh, boy! Woooh!"
Gurley turned 24 today, Aug. 3, an off-day from training camp, and he's marking his arrival on earth not with a club night, as many ballers would, but with a day at Six Flags Hurricane Harbor. The water park sits 33 miles north of LA -- a city that Gurley and his boys have won over following an 11-5 season and their first playoff berth since 2004, when they were St. Louis' team.
There's no better way to finish off an afternoon at the water park than ice cream cake. The1point8 for ESPN
All around this park are reminders of how far Gurley's Rams have come since their disastrous 4-12 debut season in LA just two years ago. Kids wearing Rams jerseys, park employees with team ball caps and flip-flopped parkgoers of all ages swarm-tackle the local celebrity to offer birthday well-wishes and congratulatory high-fives for his freshly inked four-year, $60 million contract extension, the richest-ever per-year average for a back.
Gurley is digging the adulation he's receiving here and on social media when a scroll of his Instagram reveals an interesting factoid he hadn't known. "Damn, it's Tom Brady's birthday too?" Gurley says, bemused to be sharing his special day with the guy who topped him in MVP votes last season 40-8. Most of the following conversation takes place in the kiddie pool. "Best spot in the whole park," Gurley says. And when it's over, we'll take to Gurley's private cabana, where his loved ones await with his favorite food ever: "It don't get any better than ice cream cake," he says.
You can probably afford all the cats. Congratulations on your new deal.
Thank you, man. It feels good to know all the hard work pays off. Going from being a little kid wanting to play in the NFL -- and playing it for the love of the game -- to signing the extension is one of the greatest feelings ever. The NFL's running backs were happy to see your deal. Are you proud to have reset the market for backs?
That's what I do, man -- I set the bar. It was not only big for me, but it was a statement for the running backs, for what we do and what we deserve to get in this league, as much as we put in. Le'Veon Bell showed support for your deal and you supported him in his negotiations with the Steelers. Are you all in this together as undervalued running backs?
All positions. I love to see a guy get his payday. That's what I think is unique about the NFL-it's a brotherhood. I hope Le'Veon gets something done. He probably won't get one done with the Steelers, but someone will pay him. I was terrible in fantasy last year, so I'm picking first. Who should I take, you or Le'Veon?
Me. Le'Veon is fighting for the deal you just got, though. He's motivated.
That ain't got nothing to do with the stats. I was No. 1 last year in fantasy. You want me for sure. If not, you can't go wrong with AB [Antonio Brown] or DeAndre Hopkins. When we spoke after your rookie year, you weren't quite an NFL star yet. Today I've noticed you're getting recognized a ton.
Yeah, it's happening more, probably because of the dreads. But I get confused for DeAndre Hopkins a lot. And in Cancun, someone called me Roddy White. People get excited when they think you're somebody you're not, so I go along with it, like, "If this make you happy, then I'm DeAndre Hopkins." It sure seems like you're kicking the Chargers' butts in terms of winning over the city.
The who? The Chargers.
Oh yeah, I forgot. [Smiles] You're not the only one. I live in LA and I know two Chargers fans here. Literally, two fans.
Yeah, man, they're from San Diego. We were the Los Angeles Rams before we were in St. Louis. And it's hard not to support us, we got a great team. But you can't beat being in this city, man. It's a great sports town, and, ya know, LeBron's coming.
Running backs aren’t getting played the same way, they aren’t getting paid the same way, and they’re not even being made the same way. But running backs coaches around the NFL don’t like to hear any of that.
“No, I don’t think the position has ever changed,” says Rams running backs coach Skip Peete. “I think people have utilized multiple backs to create freshness for the position, and then all of a sudden someone characterized it as a ‘by committee.’ Now it’s the ‘feature back.’”
Peete, who coached Matt Forte in Chicago and DeMarco Murray in Dallas and now instructs Offensive Player of the Year Todd Gurley, says the “new” running back skills emerging aren’t new at all. Instead, offenses are more willing to use certain skills now. Chargers head coach (and former running backs coach) Anthony Lynn agrees.
“It’s the same skill set, just people use running backs differently,” Lynn says. “The whole thing about devaluing running backs––no, no, no. You can’t win one without one, I can tell you that.”
So much has changed for running backs—how often they’re on the field, how many times they get the ball, and even where they’re supposed to lineup––but the core traits that make a running back successful have remained. Five areas in particular stand out: instincts, burst, elusiveness, pass-catching, and “gettting yards.” Many other relevant skills that can be learned and coached fall under these five umbrellas, but these are––and have been––the five most important traits for running backs.
Instincts
Lynn is quick to differentiate between ball carrier vision—understanding what is going on in front of the runner—and “instinct,” which is knowing where to go.
“Coaches coach the vision,” Lynn says. “The vision’s gonna be good, but once you get the vision right, their instincts kick in. You don’t coach that. Some guys just have that.”
One of the first players Lynn brought up is Le’Veon Bell. Bell is often described as the most patient back in the league, and with good reason. In a league where Super Bowls are won in two seconds or less, Bell can wait an eternity before committing to a lane:
Peete points to his star pupil as an example of an instinctual runner. Gurley can do everything on the field, but Peete is most impressed that Gurley gets better as the game goes on, much like a hitter who might be better the third time facing a pitcher than the first time.
“You kind of get a feel of OK, I ran this play this way, last time the linebacker played this way, the defensive tackle played this way, defensive end played this way, so I’m anticipating some form of that response the next time I run the play,’” Peete says. “And if [that responses happens], then you obviously have a counter-move for that.”
Burst
If instinct is sensing the right place to go, burst—or acceleration, explosion, whatever you want to call it—is the ability to get there. For all of the emphasis on 40-yard dash times, the true measure of speed for NFL running backs is how quickly they can reach an opening before it closes.
”The Chiefs backfield—they’ve got a lot of burst. [Kareem] Hunt has a good burst to him,” says Chargers running back Austin Ekeler. “He’s a bigger back but he still has got some speed, and [Tyreek] Hill has got a lot of burst in him.”
Hunt gets to the hole quickly for a 5-foot-11 back that weighs 216 pounds:
While Hill isn’t a running back, he has 41 carries in the last two seasons along with ample screen passes. When he gets the ball, his burst is evident, whether it’s from the backfield ...
Gurley is another player with excellent burst. This play occurs on third-and-20, so the hole Gurley is reading at the second level is more than 5 yards upfield. When he sees the bit of daylight, he kicks it into another gear and leaves the Seahawks in the dust.
Elusiveness
Juke, spin, stiff arm, stutter step, truck, hurdle––there are a lot of ways to evade tackles, and every back needs to make defenders miss. While running backs are expected to win one-on-one matchups in the open field, being elusive in traffic is key.
“I’ve had guys run the inside-zone course, the aiming point where they’re headed may be clogged, and they would physically run into the back of the linemen and kind of bounce to that spot,” Peete says. “A good, more agile, athletic back would naturally slide, as you’d say ‘cut’ to that position and get to that hole without bouncing or touching anyone.”
“[Some players] ... can move the pile, accelerate and push things for 3 or 4 yards, or if they get hit, always move for a yard ahead,” Peete says. “Then there’s guys that have unbelievable balance, and they get hit and don’t necessarily fall down, kind of stumble for another 2 or 3.”
Rare backs like Gurley and Dallas’s Ezekiel Elliott can do both of those things.
Eluding a defender in the open field is similar to a basketball player driving to the hoop. The individual moves can be worked on, but stringing them together during a game is best done without thinking.
“It’s based on where that defender is at, his leverage, based off the momentum that you have going in the certain angle. I mean, it’s a whole lot of different things,” says Rams running back Malcolm Brown. “That’s why to work on it, to make it as natural as possible … you can’t just be thinking about it the whole time. You just gotta work on it and work on it, and eventually you’ll get to the point where you’re not thinking about it. You’re just running.”
Pass-Catching
Lynn and Peete both push back when asked whether pass-catching is a new part of the running back repertoire. They contend that backs have always been able to catch, but now offenses are calling upon them more than in the past.
Receiving for running backs has long meant getting the ball in space on a simple route, but increasingly, running backs have the responsibilities of actual wideouts––including lining up on the line of scrimmage. Bell and Kamara get a lot of credit for this, but it’s worth praising a player who doesn’t even get his due on Hard Knocks: Cleveland’s Duke Johnson.
Johnson’s catching ability is so good that he’s been discussing a position switch. Statistically, he’s one of the best pass catchers among running backs. He lined up in the slot 62 times in 2017, tied for third most in football in the position, and finished with 153 receiving yards on 13 receptions on those snaps. Those numbers may not be eye-popping, but they’re a hell of a contribution from a spot outside a traditional running back’s purview.
When he motions out of the backfield and gets a linebacker ill-equipped to cover him one-on-one, he can be devastating. Here’s Johnson motioning from the backfield to the slot and exploiting the subsequent mismatch with a linebacker in 2015:
Even when Johnson doesn’t get targeted, his potential to burn a linebacker changes a defense’s approach to substitutions and coverages. A running back motioning from the backfield to the line of scrimmage has a similar effect as when the Celtics’ Al Horford steps behind the 3-point line; even if they don’t get the ball, just altering the defense is valuable. Here’s Kamara running a route that opens up a downfield play last season.
The more versatile the running back is in the pass game, the easier it is for the offensive coordinator to play mismatchmaker.
“Get Yards”
When asked about the traits that make a great running back, one immediately rises above the rest in Peete’s mind.
“The most important thing––this is what I’ve been told by many guys over the years––is when you turn on the film, and you watch a guy run, does he gain yards?” Peete says. I started laughing, but he was dead serious.
“You laugh, but that’s the first thing I do when I start studying a college back,” he continues. “I don’t watch a highlight tape. I watch the game and I want to see. Does he gain yards as they hand him the ball?”
It’s a hilariously simple but excellent point. Consistently getting chunks of yardage, especially beyond what the line created, is what it’s all about. The closest statistic for this concept is Football Outsiders’ success rate, which attempts to measure a running back’s consistency in gaining yards while factoring in the down and distance (for example, 2 yards on third-and-2 is a successful run, while 2 yards on first-and-10 isn’t.)
Last season, then–New England running back Dion Lewis was fourth in success rate, first in Football Outsiders’ defense-adjusted yards above replacement, and third in Pro Football Focus’s elusive rating, which measures how well players evade tacklers.
The backbone of Lewis’s season was not home runs––his longest rush in 2017 was for 44 yards—but his ability to “get yards.” Here’s a wholly unremarkable 6-yard run Lewis made the early in the third quarter against the Steelers in their pivotal Week 15 matchup.
There’s nothing special about this play, but it gave New England a second-and-4 in Steelers territory. The long breakaway touchdowns, ankle-breaking jukes, and gravity-defying hurdles are what go viral, but these are the plays happening between those highlights that keep offenses humming. If running backs are the essence of the sport, churning out these 6-yard gains is the essence of the position.
“You look at the guys rushing for the most yards,” Lynn says. “A lot of times that’s just guys running where they ain’t.”
Yeah, best wait for 3 years, I know. But what if one wants to get a “head start”, so to speak? I’m not waiting, dammit!
How about a team simply getting good value at each pick? Rather than comparing one team’s 1st to another team’s 2nd, for example? Some evaluators actually sometimes do that.
And what if a shrewd GM could make trade downs to gain extra picks and STILL get contributors and promising players for the future? Wouldn’t that be great, too?
1st was part of Goff trade. Good value, wouldn’t you say? Technically, McVay had no part of that. Gotta give Snead the glory there. Then again, wasn’t it McVay that turned Goff around from a “bust” into a Pro Bowler?
2nd was Everett. Kinda iffy so far. Might go either way, but hardly impressive.
3rd was Kupp. A steal for sure.
Next 3rd was Johnson. Another steal that Wade’s still smiling about.
4th was Reynolds. Another iffy pick that I loved at the time but now might go either way.
Next 4th was Ebukam. Gonna be a starter this year so he was clearly excellent value there.
Rest of ‘17 draft looks like JAGS at this point. But part of Goff trade, Kupp, JJ, and Ebu makes this a value laden draft by anyone’s estimation.
1st was traded for Cooks. A HR in my book. A for sure top WR that’s a perfect fit for McVay’s O while still young and a locker room plus for a pick that would be statistically a 50% starter? Dang!
A ‘19 2nd was traded away for Marcus Peters. Here again, a young and proven All Pro caliber player for a future pick that was statistically 35% likely to be a mere starter. And fears about him being disruptive have been laid to rest, as well. Hot Damn!
2nd was traded away for the failed Watkins experiment. Oops! Not a resume enhancer, to be kind. Big mistake there. Sigh...
3rd was Noteboom. So far, looks like excellent value. A probable future starter. As in next year, possibly even a quality (and very inexpensive) LOT. Wouldn’t THAT be something?
First 4th was Brian Allen. I dunno. Could be a future C, but not a sure thing just yet. Still, for a 4th? Pretty good value, I think. Stay tuned.
Second 4th was Franklin-Myers. Lotta good buzz from camp. It appears that he will be a heavy contributor in the rotation. Outstanding value, no doubt.
5th was Micah Kiser. Are you kidding me? Sure showed up in that Ravens game and possibly a future starter in this league. Love the value in a 5th rounder.
First 6th was John Kelly. Everybody loves this kid. Very possibly becomes our 3rd RB, maybe even replaces Brown as #2. Excellent value in the 6th.
Second 6th was Sebastian Joseph. Too early to tell. Might make the 53, might not. Meh...
Third 6th was Trevon Young. Some camp reporters have been quite impressed. Could be a gem, but best we wait and see.
7th was Justin Lawler. Some good reports from camp and he had a decent Ravens game, so we’ll see. But looks like good value for a 7th, to be sure.
Gotta mention Okoronkwo and Scales additions here. Off the charts potential value here as UDFA’s. C’mon...
When one looks at the Big Picture for S&M, one can’t help but admire the bang for the buck via draft and trades, huh?
Edit: Okoronkwo was drafted in the 5th round. Stupid SI. Lol.
