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https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/08/27/seattle-seahawks-nfl-camp-tour-fmia-peter-king/
FMIA: Legion of Whom? Fast, Efficient Overhaul Has Seattle Set to Surprise
By Peter King
Getty Images
MINNEAPOLIS — Post-game Friday night, Seahawks-Vikings, bowels of U.S. Bank Stadium. Seattle coach Pete Carroll, interrupted.
“Comparing your starting lineup in game one last year,” I began, “to what the starting lineup will be in game one this year, including the kicker and punter, you’re going to have maybe 18 of 24 new starters and—“
Carroll: “Isn’t it awesome?!”
I’ll get to that attitude in a while—it’s real, and it’s important.
For now, for one night no one will remember in October, in the den of the NFC runners-up, the new blueprint of the Seahawks looked smart and well-constructed. Newbies like Barkevious Mingo, Brandon Marshall, Sebastian Janikowski and super-punter Michael Dickson joined a Legion of Whom? The new secondary, on this night anyway: Shaquill Griffin (in Richard Sherman’s left-corner spot) and Dontae Johnson at corner, Delano Hill and Tedric Thompson at safety. Now that was weird.
The whole thing is weird. No Kam Chancellor or Sherman or Earl Thomas. No Michael Bennett or Cliff Avril. No Jimmy Graham, no Jon Ryan. No Tom Cable, Darrell Bevell or Kris Richard. For the first seven months of 2018 in Seattle, the sky fell. Now, on the eve of the season, there’s actually some hope that this won’t be just a bridge-to-2019 season, a carry-us-to-six-exciting-wins-Russell-Wilson year.
In ones-versus-ones in the final dress rehearsal for the season, for 35 minutes, Seattle’s first units built a 13-6 lead over the Vikings. Writing about moral victories in preseason games is the lowest of sportswriter lows, and I shall not do that. But the Newhawks competing on even ground with a team fresh off a final-four finish last January had the visitors pretty happy as they dressed for the flight home. Without Sherman, the quotes were antiseptic, but that’s a whole other thing Seahawk fans will have to get used to. If the new guys can play, they’ll take boring.
“You know,” holdover linebacker Bobby Wagner told me, “there was one point when nobody knew who Sherm was. Nobody knew who Mike Bennett was. They were able to come out and create names for themselves. The guys behind them can do that. I feel like we’re in great hands.”
It seems hard to move ahead that easily. But coaches and players have to—and I believe some in Seattle, Carroll and GM John Schneider mostly, are fine with the sudden reconstruction. For the rest of us, it’s still a head-shaker, this controlled burn of the Seattle Seahawks.
I’ll give you a few players in a minute. And this team: Seattle. Entering my camp tour, I thought the NFC West was going to be the Rams up top, the Niners a challenger, then a thick line of demarcation, then the Seahawks and Cards, in that order. Now I think Seattle’s on an even plane with San Francisco, regardless of if Earl Thomas returns from his holdout.
Six illustrations from Seattle’s game at Minnesota:
• Slot corner Justin Coleman (acquired in a trade with New England, 2017), on Minnesota’ first series, lines up across from the slot receiver on a disguised blitz, then storms in on Kirk Cousins, causing a throw-away. Looked like a Legion of Boom play.
• Outside rusher Barkevious Mingo (free agent, 2018), on the next snap, forces a whiffed block, steams in on Cousins and tips his hurried pass. Cliff Avril-esque.
• Left cornerback Shaquill Griffin (third round, 2017), playing Richard Sherman’s spot, runs stride for stride with playoff hero Stefon Diggs and breaks up a pass at the goal line.
• New offensive line starters Duane Brown (trade, 2017), Ethan Pocic (second round, 2017) and D.J. Fluker (free agent, 2018) helped keep Russell Wilson clean (zero sacks, 21 pass drops) in his 35 minutes of play.
• Wide receiver Brandon Marshall (free agent, 2018), trying to take the big-receiver spot that Jimmy Graham served for Wilson, out-worked star cornerback Xavier Rhodes twice on his second-quarter drive to make tough catches. “He’s never really covered,” Wilson says.
• Kicker Sebastian Janikowski (free agent, 2018) kicked a 55-yard field goal, and punter Michael Dickson (fifth round, 2018) did something I’ve never seen before: kicked two 55-yard-plus punts with each dying at the 3-yard line.
You’re not supposed to count these games. I get it. So I’m not saying Seattle’s winning the division, or winning 12 games. But this reconstruction job by GM John Schneider looks well thought-out so far, and it’s given Carroll a déjà vu feeling. Carroll, 66 going on 26, is presiding over the biggest offseason makeover of any good NFL team in recent years.
“This feels like when you’re in college,” Carroll, the former USC coach, told me Friday night. “That senior class graduated—those guys that did all the playing for you. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a good team next time around. New players, new coaches. There’s new juice about everything that we’re doing. I go back and do all my teaching again. I’m really happy about it.”
In the locker room afterward, Schneider, who’s the anti-GQ GM, looked like he was dressed for a U2 concert. White T-shirt, sneakers, big smile. I said something like: You’re used to tinkering with a top team. What’s a total makeover like?
“It’s like…” Schneider said, searching for words, “I mean, this is what the league is now. We move guys all the time. For a while, we were able to reward guys here at the top of their positions. Then we had to make decisions—who to keep and who not to keep—and we got the bad injury news on Cliff Avril and Kam Chancellor [forced to retire due to injuries]. We didn’t see those coming.
“But there’s another thing. You know Pete. He preaches competition, open competition, every single day. It’s hard to preach that when you got the best corner and the best free safety and the best strong safety and the best middle linebacker, all young, and you know those guys are locked in there. They were the youngest team to win it all. You don’t tear that apart.
“Now, this. It’s fun. Lots of enthusiasm. So much spirit, so much new. It’s pretty cool.”
Of all the things I didn’t expect on my camp trip, I’d put really liking Seattle at the top. And there is an advantageous early slate, starting with four teams (at Denver, at Chicago, Dallas, at Arizona) that combined for a 27-37 record last year. In the first eight games, Seattle plays one 2017 playoff team. I’m not saying it’s set up to be a magic season for the Seahawks. I am saying it’s got a chance to be a very interesting one.
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On Eagles and Wentz
CLEVELAND — What would you do if you ran the Philadelphia Eagles and:
• You’ve got an Eagle Scout-like franchise quarterback, 25 years old, coming back from a major left knee injury.
• That quarterback, Carson Wentz, looks great. Just watch the embedded video that Marisa Marcellino, my NBC videographer, shot on the field before the Thursday night preseason game against the Browns. But he hasn’t been touched by a defensive player since getting waylaid and injured on the goal line in Los Angeles last Dec. 10.
Your quarterback has not yet been cleared for contact by Eagle team medics.
• Opening night is 10 days away.
• You feel, sincerely, that Wentz is going to be your quarterback for the next 15 years.
• You have the reigning Super Bowl MVP, Nick Foles, the conqueror of The Great Belichick, ready to play for the first two or three weeks of the season, while Wentz gets his sea legs under him. (Even though Foles has played shaky football in August.)
Would you, despite how good and mobile Wentz looks in videos like the one you see here, hustle to get him ready to have his first contact in nine months against a Falcons team capable of generating significant pressure in the opening game of the NFL season?
I sure wouldn’t. And I doubt the Eagles will, despite this fairly alarming stat: In 14 preseason drives by the first-team offense (albeit with some starters missing), the formerly explosive Eagles have zero touchdowns.
An hour after the latest stinker, a 5-0 loss to the Browns (have you heard they were 0-16 last year?), Doug Pederson stood in his locker room for a cross-examination on Wentz, and on his offense. He certainly wasn’t happy about the state of his offense. But he also was not pissy.
“We have time to fix it before opening night,” he said. “Our team’s gonna look different. People have to understand that. But I look at what we’ve done, and the mistakes we’ve made, and I see it as totally fixable.”
On Wentz: Long pause. Six, eight seconds. Pederson is one of the nicest men ever to walk an NFL sideline, but he has had enough of the when’s-Carson-playing question. That’s not going to make it go away, though.
“We’ll find out,” he said. “Stay tuned, as they say in the business. As I’ve said, it’s going to be a medical decision. We are going to do the right thing for the team, and for Carson.”
I asked what he’d say to greater Philadelphia, which is likely feeling somewhere between uneasy and panicky this morning. “Well,” he said, “I hope they’re not basing it on three preseason games. We promise our fans—I can promise our fans—we’re gonna get this fixed. We’re gonna get it right. And we hope to see them all Sept. 6.”
Oh, you will. And the game will have the Eagles and the Falcons and a third component: mystique.
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FMIA Camp All-Stars
During my 22-team summer tour, here are the players I saw and really liked:
• John Brown, WR, Baltimore. Three 40-yard-plus deep strikes from Joe Flacco in one practice, two cleanly beating former first-round pick Marlon Humphrey. This is the player Arizona stole from Pittsburg State (Kans.) in 2014, and the player who had a few nicks in Arizona, causing the Cards to not commit to him after last season. The Ravens may have a steal in the young 28-year-old. He owned the practice I saw.
• Jaylon Smith, LB, Dallas. Smith had a tour de force practice the day I saw him in Oxnard, Calif., breaking up three passes in a ones-versus-ones scrimmage drill. Looks to be largely recovered from the devastating leg injury he suffered in the Jan. 1, 2016 Fiesta Bowl that caused his draft stock to plummet from top five overall to the second round. The Cowboys are so excited about his potential return to greatness—everyone in the organization is trying to play it down, but it’s obvious Smith is ready to contribute to a big defense.
• Michael Dickson, P, Seattle. A punter. Yes. The Aussie, Seattle’s fifth-round pick this year, played at Texas (and was MVP of his last college game, the Texas Bowl) and can do masterful things with the football. First punt Friday night in Minnesota: a 57-yard spinner to the 3-yard line, and it took a hard right turn directly out of bounds. Second: a 46-yard skyball; fair catch. Third: 48-yard skyball; six-yard return.
Fourth: 56 yards, perfectly placed at the 1-yard line, and it took another hard right turn. So … with the prospective first unit on the punt team, Dickson had a 50.3-yard net, with two punts dead inside the 5-yard line. (He did have another punt, a 61-yarder in side of three minutes left, with scrubs on the punt team—and Dickson made the tackle after a 34-yard return.)
• Marquise Goodwin, WR, San Francisco. So he’s not exactly new blood; this is his sixth season, mostly unused, and he’s determined in an Antonio Brown way to be sure he takes advantage. “One day,” GM John Lynch told me, “the players are off, and I look out my window here and there’s one guy out there working out—and working out for a long time.” Goodwin. To watch him run past corners, particularly up close the way you can do it in training camp, is borderline breathtaking. I saw it from feet away. By the way, I’d love to see Goodwin versus Tyreek Hill in a 100-yard dash.
• Braden Smith, OT, Indianapolis. I don’t know if he’ll win the starting right tackle job. The Colts really need one. But the day I saw the Colts, this was a well-built 6-6, 318-pound athlete who looked like he belonged. Strong and lithe, with a good punch to the wide pass-rushers.
• Orlando Brown Jr., T, Baltimore. What impressed about the guy who bombed out of the combine? He’s got a mean streak, a very good punch, and he’s got better feet than a 345-pound man should have. I don’t see how the Ravens keep the son of Orlando “Zeus” Brown out of the starting lineup.
• Parry Nickerson, CB, New York Jets. Competitive and feisty. If you can get Todd Bowles to notice you as a rookie, you’ve done something. Just Nickerson’s demeanor on the practice field shouts: I belong.
• Michael Gallup, WR, Dallas. Man, what a smooth, confident receiver this third-round pick from Colorado State is. I saw him catch a high ball and toe-tap on the sideline like no big deal. Looks like a very solid pick and potential early-career starter for a team that really needs a good young receiver.
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Hard Knocks Faves
1. Jets coach Rex Ryan, angry, ending a team meeting with a profane snack reference, 2010.There is nothing more perfect in NFL video history than Rex Ryan chewing out his team and apparently getting so hungry doing it that he had to finish the exhortation with a trip to the evening food room.
2. Browns offensive line coach Bob Wylie ruminating about calisthenics and world history, 2018.Wylie, 67, cut a memorable figure on the practice field. As distinctive as he looks, he sounds five times better. “How’d they play football in 1946 with no music?” mused Wylie, the star of the third “Hard Knocks” episode this summer. The rest is just too good.
3. Dolphins receiver Chad Johnson getting cut on national TV, 2012. “I don’t know if this is working for the benefit of you, me, the Miami Dolphins,” Miami coach Joe Philbin told a stunned Johnson, and there he went.
4. Texans coach Bill O’Brien, in a flat-lining way, telling his quarterbacks who won the starting QB job, 2015. His quick speech to his quarterbacks, less than two minutes long, about Brian Hoyerwinning the job over Ryan Mallett took less than a minute and was the realistic part of what is often dramatized to be much more eventful than things in football really are. I liked this because I know O’Brien, and this is perfect him.
5. Bengals first-round pick Andre Smith signing his first contract after a holdout, and being woefully out of shape, 2009. I don’t have the video on this one, but it was stunning how bad a start Smith had in Cincinnati, after holding out, signing a rich rookie contract, and clearly feeling like he’d arrived. But Bengals owner Mike Brown quickly reminded Smith how much work he had to do.
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On Officiating
In the Hall of Fame game and first two full preseason weekends, officials called 51 of the new helmet fouls in 33 games. This weekend, after the league clarified the rule and eliminated inadvertent or incidental contact as fouls, there were nine fouls in 14 games. Before the change: 1.55 helmet calls per game. After the change: 0.64 calls per game. Seems telling, but neither of these numbers should be taken as gospel because the sample size is too small.
In any case, 60 fouls in 47 games—entering the final two games of the weekend Sunday—adds up to 1.28 calls per game. Not really the decline of western civilization, or football.
Last week, the league made it less autocratic and inflexible with VP of officiating Al Riveron saying that inadvertent or incidental calls should not be flagged. That’s something that should have been in the rule in the first place, after seeing the inconsistent way it was applied in early preseason games. That’s my only problem with the rule: It was fairly revolutionary, and the verbiage and application that exist today were not altogether buttoned-up before the games started.
There’s one other problem, as told to me by the new NBC rules analyst Terry McAulay. “Officials now have to read intent in real time,” McAulay said. “Officials can’t do that. We have never had to do this before, reading intent. At the officials meeting in Dallas, Al said, ‘This is the first time we have asked you to read intent.’ “
That’s a concern, obviously. Officials will be under the harsh glare of the media and fan spotlight now for something they’ve not had to do before. The job is already impossible enough.
Here’s the exact rule: Players at any position who lower their heads to initiate contact with a helmet, and then make contact with a foe with the helmet, will be flagged for a foul. Add in the officials reading intent, and add in no calls on indavertant or incidental helmet hits—that’s a tough bunch of rules to apply at full speed.
However this rule was to be instituted, it was going to be painful. I’ve felt for a while that the game is on fire, and the league had better be proactive in trying limit concussive head hits. The long-term future of the game may depend on that.
Riveron said Saturday: “This is new for the officials, coaches, players. It’s a culture change, and not just for our games on Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays. The is for the college games on Saturdays, the high school games on Friday nights, the youth games on Saturday mornings—the 85-pounders should not be subject to unnecessary risks either.” It’s the parents of those 85-pounders the league is sending a message. It’s easy to say, This is a rough game. If you don’t like it, go play something else.
Riveron went to south Florida for the Ravens-Dolphins game Saturday night. He said he stood on the field to see how the players were adjusting to the new helmet rule. He said he watched running backs approaching contact with heads up, and linebackers and defensive backs doing the same. When we spoke again Sunday, he said: “This is football, live speed, and I saw this first-hand. The culture change has begun.”
One more number here. Riveron confirmed to me that 40 of the first 51 flags were correct calls after the league’s video review. FOX’s Mike Pereira made a smart point about that. “So it’s 40 legitimate calls in [34] games, with a lot of the fouls made by guys who aren’t going to be on teams when the season starts, the less-skilled players who are more apt to make plays like this because they’re playing so aggressively trying to make the team,” Pereira said. “We’re overreacting here. I think by Week 2 of the regular season we’re going to be more concerned about what is a catch than the helmet thing.”
I can’t swear that Pereira’s right, and that this will mostly go away by the middle of September. What I do know is these are dangerous times for football, and for the future of football. The more safety rules there are in the game—applied correctly—the better.
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“High schools are already playing in some states. The college football season starts next weekend, before the calendar flips to September; Alabama is ranked No. 1 again. The NFL kicks off a week later; Brady and Belichick are still in Foxboro but watch out for the Rams. We will play. We will watch. We will bet. Because football is big. And flawed. And dangerous. And most of all: Just a sport. Nothing more.”
—Sports Illustrated’s Tim Layden, in his excellent essay on America’s over-valuing of football.
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Mail from readers:
Second: I do think about the price some former players pay by playing the game, and it does bother me. Question is, should the game die? I don’t believe so. It’s gotten too big for its britches, and far too self-important, but there are other dangerous sports in the world—boxing, MMA, auto racing, hockey.
There is information out there, lots of it, about the dangers of the game. Forty years ago, players wouldn’t have known about the dangers. Today, they would. Players play the game at their own risk. We watch the game understanding the risks. And if we don’t want to accept the risks, we don’t watch. I may get to that point one day, particularly if the long-term brain trauma is borne out. I’m not there yet.
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Things I Think I Think
1. I think these are my one-sentence thoughts on the news and games from Week 3 of the preseason:
a. I don’t know what to think about the senseless shooting during a video-game tournament at the Jacksonville Landing (a few blocks from where the Jags play) on Sunday, but it’s another example of how no one in this country at any time is safe from the scourge of gun violence—the scourge we continue to do absolutely nothing about.
b. No way I’d start Josh Allen if I were the Bills, mostly because that offensive line could get any inexperienced quarterback hurt.
c. I will be surprised if Aaron Donald isn’t signed and playing by the time the Rams walk on the field for the last game of Week 1 of the NFL season, at Oakland on Monday night.
d. In other words, Donald becoming the highest-paid defensive player in history seems like a matter of time.
e. Adam Jones a Bronco seems right, because if you can handle Aqib Talib, you can handle Pacman.
f. Good for Eric Decker, who retired Sunday, walking away with his health at 31, and with a very nice NFL career: 439 catches (12 more than Paul Warfield) and 53 touchdowns (two more than Lynn Swann).
g. I continue to think Khalil Mack will not be traded, in part because it would be absolutely, unequivocally stupid for the Raiders to let walk one of the three best defensive players in football, in his prime and at age 27.
h. I know Jon Gruden doesn’t love pass-rushers the way he loves quarterbacks, but he simply cannot let GM Reggie McKenzie seriously entertain an offer to deal Mack.
i. Anyone who loves football has to hope for the best for Travis Frederick, the best center in the game, as he tries to recover from an auto-immune disease so he can resume his career.
j. It’s a sign of how much the Vikings are worried about that leaky offensive line that GM Rick Spielman made a bright trade for a marginal but experienced Giants’ center, Brent Jones, on Sunday.
2. I think Kirk Cousins could have looked sharper, and more accurate, Friday night for the Vikes. There’s a load of pressure on him already, and he hasn’t had the best preseason (60 percent passing, one TD, no picks, some clear misses in a half of play Friday night). He’ll be head-to-head with Jimmy Garoppolo, Aaron Rodgers and (presumably) Carson Wentz in the first five weeks, and the locals justifiably will be restless if he struggles in the first month.
3. I think this was the moral of the story I learned after watching Eagles-Browns on Thursday, and seeing the nightmare that is the Cleveland offensive line: Let’s pump the brakes on those 6- and 7-win predictions for the 2018 Browns. If they don’t protect the quarterback better than against that Philly front, Cleveland won’t have a quarterback standing by Week 8.
We forget sometimes that the Browns’ best player from an 0-16 team retired, and Joe Thomas is not coming back through those doors. I feel pretty sure the team’s on the right path; they still have miles to go to be good. The defense helps, certainly. But they’re not going to win many games 9-3.
4. I think I found myself thinking this in three NFL press boxes over the weekend: We’re in the sixth week of the preseason, and no public sign of the commissioner. Where is Roger?
5. I think for those who question the NFL’s determination to get high-speed collisions out of kickoffs, read this debut piece of former NFL offensive lineman Ross Tucker in The Athletic. It’s about a kickoff play. Good writing, too, by the Princetonian:
“If they don’t make these shifts to the rules, they’ll end up getting rid of the play forever, because it ends careers. I should know because it ended mine.”
Good luck, Ross Tucker. Keep writing those pieces that take people where they cannot go.
6. I think the Patriots are going to miss Brandin Cooks this year. Terribly.
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https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/08/27/seattle-seahawks-nfl-camp-tour-fmia-peter-king/
FMIA: Legion of Whom? Fast, Efficient Overhaul Has Seattle Set to Surprise
By Peter King
Getty Images
MINNEAPOLIS — Post-game Friday night, Seahawks-Vikings, bowels of U.S. Bank Stadium. Seattle coach Pete Carroll, interrupted.
“Comparing your starting lineup in game one last year,” I began, “to what the starting lineup will be in game one this year, including the kicker and punter, you’re going to have maybe 18 of 24 new starters and—“
Carroll: “Isn’t it awesome?!”
I’ll get to that attitude in a while—it’s real, and it’s important.
For now, for one night no one will remember in October, in the den of the NFC runners-up, the new blueprint of the Seahawks looked smart and well-constructed. Newbies like Barkevious Mingo, Brandon Marshall, Sebastian Janikowski and super-punter Michael Dickson joined a Legion of Whom? The new secondary, on this night anyway: Shaquill Griffin (in Richard Sherman’s left-corner spot) and Dontae Johnson at corner, Delano Hill and Tedric Thompson at safety. Now that was weird.
The whole thing is weird. No Kam Chancellor or Sherman or Earl Thomas. No Michael Bennett or Cliff Avril. No Jimmy Graham, no Jon Ryan. No Tom Cable, Darrell Bevell or Kris Richard. For the first seven months of 2018 in Seattle, the sky fell. Now, on the eve of the season, there’s actually some hope that this won’t be just a bridge-to-2019 season, a carry-us-to-six-exciting-wins-Russell-Wilson year.
In ones-versus-ones in the final dress rehearsal for the season, for 35 minutes, Seattle’s first units built a 13-6 lead over the Vikings. Writing about moral victories in preseason games is the lowest of sportswriter lows, and I shall not do that. But the Newhawks competing on even ground with a team fresh off a final-four finish last January had the visitors pretty happy as they dressed for the flight home. Without Sherman, the quotes were antiseptic, but that’s a whole other thing Seahawk fans will have to get used to. If the new guys can play, they’ll take boring.
“You know,” holdover linebacker Bobby Wagner told me, “there was one point when nobody knew who Sherm was. Nobody knew who Mike Bennett was. They were able to come out and create names for themselves. The guys behind them can do that. I feel like we’re in great hands.”
It seems hard to move ahead that easily. But coaches and players have to—and I believe some in Seattle, Carroll and GM John Schneider mostly, are fine with the sudden reconstruction. For the rest of us, it’s still a head-shaker, this controlled burn of the Seattle Seahawks.
I’ll give you a few players in a minute. And this team: Seattle. Entering my camp tour, I thought the NFC West was going to be the Rams up top, the Niners a challenger, then a thick line of demarcation, then the Seahawks and Cards, in that order. Now I think Seattle’s on an even plane with San Francisco, regardless of if Earl Thomas returns from his holdout.
Six illustrations from Seattle’s game at Minnesota:
• Slot corner Justin Coleman (acquired in a trade with New England, 2017), on Minnesota’ first series, lines up across from the slot receiver on a disguised blitz, then storms in on Kirk Cousins, causing a throw-away. Looked like a Legion of Boom play.
• Outside rusher Barkevious Mingo (free agent, 2018), on the next snap, forces a whiffed block, steams in on Cousins and tips his hurried pass. Cliff Avril-esque.
• Left cornerback Shaquill Griffin (third round, 2017), playing Richard Sherman’s spot, runs stride for stride with playoff hero Stefon Diggs and breaks up a pass at the goal line.
• New offensive line starters Duane Brown (trade, 2017), Ethan Pocic (second round, 2017) and D.J. Fluker (free agent, 2018) helped keep Russell Wilson clean (zero sacks, 21 pass drops) in his 35 minutes of play.
• Wide receiver Brandon Marshall (free agent, 2018), trying to take the big-receiver spot that Jimmy Graham served for Wilson, out-worked star cornerback Xavier Rhodes twice on his second-quarter drive to make tough catches. “He’s never really covered,” Wilson says.
• Kicker Sebastian Janikowski (free agent, 2018) kicked a 55-yard field goal, and punter Michael Dickson (fifth round, 2018) did something I’ve never seen before: kicked two 55-yard-plus punts with each dying at the 3-yard line.
You’re not supposed to count these games. I get it. So I’m not saying Seattle’s winning the division, or winning 12 games. But this reconstruction job by GM John Schneider looks well thought-out so far, and it’s given Carroll a déjà vu feeling. Carroll, 66 going on 26, is presiding over the biggest offseason makeover of any good NFL team in recent years.
“This feels like when you’re in college,” Carroll, the former USC coach, told me Friday night. “That senior class graduated—those guys that did all the playing for you. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a good team next time around. New players, new coaches. There’s new juice about everything that we’re doing. I go back and do all my teaching again. I’m really happy about it.”
In the locker room afterward, Schneider, who’s the anti-GQ GM, looked like he was dressed for a U2 concert. White T-shirt, sneakers, big smile. I said something like: You’re used to tinkering with a top team. What’s a total makeover like?
“It’s like…” Schneider said, searching for words, “I mean, this is what the league is now. We move guys all the time. For a while, we were able to reward guys here at the top of their positions. Then we had to make decisions—who to keep and who not to keep—and we got the bad injury news on Cliff Avril and Kam Chancellor [forced to retire due to injuries]. We didn’t see those coming.
“But there’s another thing. You know Pete. He preaches competition, open competition, every single day. It’s hard to preach that when you got the best corner and the best free safety and the best strong safety and the best middle linebacker, all young, and you know those guys are locked in there. They were the youngest team to win it all. You don’t tear that apart.
“Now, this. It’s fun. Lots of enthusiasm. So much spirit, so much new. It’s pretty cool.”
Of all the things I didn’t expect on my camp trip, I’d put really liking Seattle at the top. And there is an advantageous early slate, starting with four teams (at Denver, at Chicago, Dallas, at Arizona) that combined for a 27-37 record last year. In the first eight games, Seattle plays one 2017 playoff team. I’m not saying it’s set up to be a magic season for the Seahawks. I am saying it’s got a chance to be a very interesting one.
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On Eagles and Wentz
CLEVELAND — What would you do if you ran the Philadelphia Eagles and:
• You’ve got an Eagle Scout-like franchise quarterback, 25 years old, coming back from a major left knee injury.
• That quarterback, Carson Wentz, looks great. Just watch the embedded video that Marisa Marcellino, my NBC videographer, shot on the field before the Thursday night preseason game against the Browns. But he hasn’t been touched by a defensive player since getting waylaid and injured on the goal line in Los Angeles last Dec. 10.
Your quarterback has not yet been cleared for contact by Eagle team medics.
• Opening night is 10 days away.
• You feel, sincerely, that Wentz is going to be your quarterback for the next 15 years.
• You have the reigning Super Bowl MVP, Nick Foles, the conqueror of The Great Belichick, ready to play for the first two or three weeks of the season, while Wentz gets his sea legs under him. (Even though Foles has played shaky football in August.)
Would you, despite how good and mobile Wentz looks in videos like the one you see here, hustle to get him ready to have his first contact in nine months against a Falcons team capable of generating significant pressure in the opening game of the NFL season?
I sure wouldn’t. And I doubt the Eagles will, despite this fairly alarming stat: In 14 preseason drives by the first-team offense (albeit with some starters missing), the formerly explosive Eagles have zero touchdowns.
An hour after the latest stinker, a 5-0 loss to the Browns (have you heard they were 0-16 last year?), Doug Pederson stood in his locker room for a cross-examination on Wentz, and on his offense. He certainly wasn’t happy about the state of his offense. But he also was not pissy.
“We have time to fix it before opening night,” he said. “Our team’s gonna look different. People have to understand that. But I look at what we’ve done, and the mistakes we’ve made, and I see it as totally fixable.”
On Wentz: Long pause. Six, eight seconds. Pederson is one of the nicest men ever to walk an NFL sideline, but he has had enough of the when’s-Carson-playing question. That’s not going to make it go away, though.
“We’ll find out,” he said. “Stay tuned, as they say in the business. As I’ve said, it’s going to be a medical decision. We are going to do the right thing for the team, and for Carson.”
I asked what he’d say to greater Philadelphia, which is likely feeling somewhere between uneasy and panicky this morning. “Well,” he said, “I hope they’re not basing it on three preseason games. We promise our fans—I can promise our fans—we’re gonna get this fixed. We’re gonna get it right. And we hope to see them all Sept. 6.”
Oh, you will. And the game will have the Eagles and the Falcons and a third component: mystique.
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FMIA Camp All-Stars
During my 22-team summer tour, here are the players I saw and really liked:
• John Brown, WR, Baltimore. Three 40-yard-plus deep strikes from Joe Flacco in one practice, two cleanly beating former first-round pick Marlon Humphrey. This is the player Arizona stole from Pittsburg State (Kans.) in 2014, and the player who had a few nicks in Arizona, causing the Cards to not commit to him after last season. The Ravens may have a steal in the young 28-year-old. He owned the practice I saw.
• Jaylon Smith, LB, Dallas. Smith had a tour de force practice the day I saw him in Oxnard, Calif., breaking up three passes in a ones-versus-ones scrimmage drill. Looks to be largely recovered from the devastating leg injury he suffered in the Jan. 1, 2016 Fiesta Bowl that caused his draft stock to plummet from top five overall to the second round. The Cowboys are so excited about his potential return to greatness—everyone in the organization is trying to play it down, but it’s obvious Smith is ready to contribute to a big defense.
• Michael Dickson, P, Seattle. A punter. Yes. The Aussie, Seattle’s fifth-round pick this year, played at Texas (and was MVP of his last college game, the Texas Bowl) and can do masterful things with the football. First punt Friday night in Minnesota: a 57-yard spinner to the 3-yard line, and it took a hard right turn directly out of bounds. Second: a 46-yard skyball; fair catch. Third: 48-yard skyball; six-yard return.
Fourth: 56 yards, perfectly placed at the 1-yard line, and it took another hard right turn. So … with the prospective first unit on the punt team, Dickson had a 50.3-yard net, with two punts dead inside the 5-yard line. (He did have another punt, a 61-yarder in side of three minutes left, with scrubs on the punt team—and Dickson made the tackle after a 34-yard return.)
• Marquise Goodwin, WR, San Francisco. So he’s not exactly new blood; this is his sixth season, mostly unused, and he’s determined in an Antonio Brown way to be sure he takes advantage. “One day,” GM John Lynch told me, “the players are off, and I look out my window here and there’s one guy out there working out—and working out for a long time.” Goodwin. To watch him run past corners, particularly up close the way you can do it in training camp, is borderline breathtaking. I saw it from feet away. By the way, I’d love to see Goodwin versus Tyreek Hill in a 100-yard dash.
• Braden Smith, OT, Indianapolis. I don’t know if he’ll win the starting right tackle job. The Colts really need one. But the day I saw the Colts, this was a well-built 6-6, 318-pound athlete who looked like he belonged. Strong and lithe, with a good punch to the wide pass-rushers.
• Orlando Brown Jr., T, Baltimore. What impressed about the guy who bombed out of the combine? He’s got a mean streak, a very good punch, and he’s got better feet than a 345-pound man should have. I don’t see how the Ravens keep the son of Orlando “Zeus” Brown out of the starting lineup.
• Parry Nickerson, CB, New York Jets. Competitive and feisty. If you can get Todd Bowles to notice you as a rookie, you’ve done something. Just Nickerson’s demeanor on the practice field shouts: I belong.
• Michael Gallup, WR, Dallas. Man, what a smooth, confident receiver this third-round pick from Colorado State is. I saw him catch a high ball and toe-tap on the sideline like no big deal. Looks like a very solid pick and potential early-career starter for a team that really needs a good young receiver.
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Hard Knocks Faves
1. Jets coach Rex Ryan, angry, ending a team meeting with a profane snack reference, 2010.There is nothing more perfect in NFL video history than Rex Ryan chewing out his team and apparently getting so hungry doing it that he had to finish the exhortation with a trip to the evening food room.
2. Browns offensive line coach Bob Wylie ruminating about calisthenics and world history, 2018.Wylie, 67, cut a memorable figure on the practice field. As distinctive as he looks, he sounds five times better. “How’d they play football in 1946 with no music?” mused Wylie, the star of the third “Hard Knocks” episode this summer. The rest is just too good.
3. Dolphins receiver Chad Johnson getting cut on national TV, 2012. “I don’t know if this is working for the benefit of you, me, the Miami Dolphins,” Miami coach Joe Philbin told a stunned Johnson, and there he went.
4. Texans coach Bill O’Brien, in a flat-lining way, telling his quarterbacks who won the starting QB job, 2015. His quick speech to his quarterbacks, less than two minutes long, about Brian Hoyerwinning the job over Ryan Mallett took less than a minute and was the realistic part of what is often dramatized to be much more eventful than things in football really are. I liked this because I know O’Brien, and this is perfect him.
5. Bengals first-round pick Andre Smith signing his first contract after a holdout, and being woefully out of shape, 2009. I don’t have the video on this one, but it was stunning how bad a start Smith had in Cincinnati, after holding out, signing a rich rookie contract, and clearly feeling like he’d arrived. But Bengals owner Mike Brown quickly reminded Smith how much work he had to do.
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On Officiating
In the Hall of Fame game and first two full preseason weekends, officials called 51 of the new helmet fouls in 33 games. This weekend, after the league clarified the rule and eliminated inadvertent or incidental contact as fouls, there were nine fouls in 14 games. Before the change: 1.55 helmet calls per game. After the change: 0.64 calls per game. Seems telling, but neither of these numbers should be taken as gospel because the sample size is too small.
In any case, 60 fouls in 47 games—entering the final two games of the weekend Sunday—adds up to 1.28 calls per game. Not really the decline of western civilization, or football.
Last week, the league made it less autocratic and inflexible with VP of officiating Al Riveron saying that inadvertent or incidental calls should not be flagged. That’s something that should have been in the rule in the first place, after seeing the inconsistent way it was applied in early preseason games. That’s my only problem with the rule: It was fairly revolutionary, and the verbiage and application that exist today were not altogether buttoned-up before the games started.
There’s one other problem, as told to me by the new NBC rules analyst Terry McAulay. “Officials now have to read intent in real time,” McAulay said. “Officials can’t do that. We have never had to do this before, reading intent. At the officials meeting in Dallas, Al said, ‘This is the first time we have asked you to read intent.’ “
That’s a concern, obviously. Officials will be under the harsh glare of the media and fan spotlight now for something they’ve not had to do before. The job is already impossible enough.
Here’s the exact rule: Players at any position who lower their heads to initiate contact with a helmet, and then make contact with a foe with the helmet, will be flagged for a foul. Add in the officials reading intent, and add in no calls on indavertant or incidental helmet hits—that’s a tough bunch of rules to apply at full speed.
However this rule was to be instituted, it was going to be painful. I’ve felt for a while that the game is on fire, and the league had better be proactive in trying limit concussive head hits. The long-term future of the game may depend on that.
Riveron said Saturday: “This is new for the officials, coaches, players. It’s a culture change, and not just for our games on Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays. The is for the college games on Saturdays, the high school games on Friday nights, the youth games on Saturday mornings—the 85-pounders should not be subject to unnecessary risks either.” It’s the parents of those 85-pounders the league is sending a message. It’s easy to say, This is a rough game. If you don’t like it, go play something else.
Riveron went to south Florida for the Ravens-Dolphins game Saturday night. He said he stood on the field to see how the players were adjusting to the new helmet rule. He said he watched running backs approaching contact with heads up, and linebackers and defensive backs doing the same. When we spoke again Sunday, he said: “This is football, live speed, and I saw this first-hand. The culture change has begun.”
One more number here. Riveron confirmed to me that 40 of the first 51 flags were correct calls after the league’s video review. FOX’s Mike Pereira made a smart point about that. “So it’s 40 legitimate calls in [34] games, with a lot of the fouls made by guys who aren’t going to be on teams when the season starts, the less-skilled players who are more apt to make plays like this because they’re playing so aggressively trying to make the team,” Pereira said. “We’re overreacting here. I think by Week 2 of the regular season we’re going to be more concerned about what is a catch than the helmet thing.”
I can’t swear that Pereira’s right, and that this will mostly go away by the middle of September. What I do know is these are dangerous times for football, and for the future of football. The more safety rules there are in the game—applied correctly—the better.
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“High schools are already playing in some states. The college football season starts next weekend, before the calendar flips to September; Alabama is ranked No. 1 again. The NFL kicks off a week later; Brady and Belichick are still in Foxboro but watch out for the Rams. We will play. We will watch. We will bet. Because football is big. And flawed. And dangerous. And most of all: Just a sport. Nothing more.”
—Sports Illustrated’s Tim Layden, in his excellent essay on America’s over-valuing of football.
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Mail from readers:
- That’s part of our business. From Jason M., of Shanghai, China. “I know you have special relationships with many of the folks (players, coaches, owners, etc..) associated with the NFL. Does it ever make you feel upset/sad when you see what the game does to the men who suit up every week? The context for this question involves the latest Richie Incognito incident. (I think you and Richie have a relationship.)
- It is pretty clear that he has some serious issues he is going to need to work through in the coming years. While no one knows exactly how much of it is related to football, I am sure banging his head against other heads for 15-plus years didn’t help. Do you ever have regret or remorse about being so deeply tied to (and enriched by) a game that does these things to people?”
Second: I do think about the price some former players pay by playing the game, and it does bother me. Question is, should the game die? I don’t believe so. It’s gotten too big for its britches, and far too self-important, but there are other dangerous sports in the world—boxing, MMA, auto racing, hockey.
There is information out there, lots of it, about the dangers of the game. Forty years ago, players wouldn’t have known about the dangers. Today, they would. Players play the game at their own risk. We watch the game understanding the risks. And if we don’t want to accept the risks, we don’t watch. I may get to that point one day, particularly if the long-term brain trauma is borne out. I’m not there yet.
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Things I Think I Think
1. I think these are my one-sentence thoughts on the news and games from Week 3 of the preseason:
a. I don’t know what to think about the senseless shooting during a video-game tournament at the Jacksonville Landing (a few blocks from where the Jags play) on Sunday, but it’s another example of how no one in this country at any time is safe from the scourge of gun violence—the scourge we continue to do absolutely nothing about.
b. No way I’d start Josh Allen if I were the Bills, mostly because that offensive line could get any inexperienced quarterback hurt.
c. I will be surprised if Aaron Donald isn’t signed and playing by the time the Rams walk on the field for the last game of Week 1 of the NFL season, at Oakland on Monday night.
d. In other words, Donald becoming the highest-paid defensive player in history seems like a matter of time.
e. Adam Jones a Bronco seems right, because if you can handle Aqib Talib, you can handle Pacman.
f. Good for Eric Decker, who retired Sunday, walking away with his health at 31, and with a very nice NFL career: 439 catches (12 more than Paul Warfield) and 53 touchdowns (two more than Lynn Swann).
g. I continue to think Khalil Mack will not be traded, in part because it would be absolutely, unequivocally stupid for the Raiders to let walk one of the three best defensive players in football, in his prime and at age 27.
h. I know Jon Gruden doesn’t love pass-rushers the way he loves quarterbacks, but he simply cannot let GM Reggie McKenzie seriously entertain an offer to deal Mack.
i. Anyone who loves football has to hope for the best for Travis Frederick, the best center in the game, as he tries to recover from an auto-immune disease so he can resume his career.
j. It’s a sign of how much the Vikings are worried about that leaky offensive line that GM Rick Spielman made a bright trade for a marginal but experienced Giants’ center, Brent Jones, on Sunday.
2. I think Kirk Cousins could have looked sharper, and more accurate, Friday night for the Vikes. There’s a load of pressure on him already, and he hasn’t had the best preseason (60 percent passing, one TD, no picks, some clear misses in a half of play Friday night). He’ll be head-to-head with Jimmy Garoppolo, Aaron Rodgers and (presumably) Carson Wentz in the first five weeks, and the locals justifiably will be restless if he struggles in the first month.
3. I think this was the moral of the story I learned after watching Eagles-Browns on Thursday, and seeing the nightmare that is the Cleveland offensive line: Let’s pump the brakes on those 6- and 7-win predictions for the 2018 Browns. If they don’t protect the quarterback better than against that Philly front, Cleveland won’t have a quarterback standing by Week 8.
We forget sometimes that the Browns’ best player from an 0-16 team retired, and Joe Thomas is not coming back through those doors. I feel pretty sure the team’s on the right path; they still have miles to go to be good. The defense helps, certainly. But they’re not going to win many games 9-3.
4. I think I found myself thinking this in three NFL press boxes over the weekend: We’re in the sixth week of the preseason, and no public sign of the commissioner. Where is Roger?
5. I think for those who question the NFL’s determination to get high-speed collisions out of kickoffs, read this debut piece of former NFL offensive lineman Ross Tucker in The Athletic. It’s about a kickoff play. Good writing, too, by the Princetonian:
“If they don’t make these shifts to the rules, they’ll end up getting rid of the play forever, because it ends careers. I should know because it ended mine.”
Good luck, Ross Tucker. Keep writing those pieces that take people where they cannot go.
6. I think the Patriots are going to miss Brandin Cooks this year. Terribly.
