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https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/09/03/khalil-mack-trade-super-bowl-prediction-peter-king/
FMIA: On The Mack Mistake And Why Super Bowl 53 Will Be Rams-Patriots
By Peter King
Getty Images
My Super Bowl Pick
Here we are, three days before the start of the NFL’s 99th season, and there is no team in recent history that has done a 180 like the Rams of the past year. I’m about to do something that is either insane, or an illustration of how quickly life changes in a league that churns so fast and so furious, or maybe it’s a sign that building a good football team really takes only four or five cutting-edge decisions. But after seeing 22 teams in five weeks on my camp trip, it was hard to come away from Rams camp thinking they shouldn’t be a Super Bowl favorite.
Labor Day 2017: The Rams were trying not to be a laughingstock anymore, with the youngest coach in modern NFL history, a quarterback desperate for a detour from bust-dom, a GM hanging on for dear life, and no one to put on a billboard in a sprawling market that demanded stars. Best two players on this team: a defensive tackle and a punter.
Labor Day 2018: The Rams, defending NFC West champs, are darlings. That chortled-at peach-fuzzy coach, Sean McVay, is the reigning coach of the year. Todd Gurley and Aaron Donald are returning offensive and defensive players of the year. That disastrous quarterback, Jared Goff, had a 100.5 rating, fifth in the league and higher than a few great QBs—Rodgers, Roethlisberger, Ryan, Rivers and Wilson.
And now I’m going all-in on a franchise that last won a playoff game in January 2005, when “Meet the Fockers” was the top movie at the box office.
I’m picking the Rams because they’ve done a good job playing down their worst-to-first offense last year, realizing if they were really the Warriors of the NFL they wouldn’t have stunk it up in the playoffs against Atlanta. They added the kind of versatile and durable deep threat that Sammy Watkins wasn’t in Brandin Cooks, who can play all over the offensive formation.
McVay told me in camp he realizes he has to stay progressive to remain ahead of the defenses that have spent an offseason studying his play-calling, his tempo, even his cadences. Early one morning, in his tape den on the campus of UC-Irvine, McVay told me what he’d spent the last few months working on.
“The basic thing for us is: What are we doing offensively in order to try and conflict defenses? Whether it’s their matchup responsibilities, or being able to learn our cadence, learn our formations and motion and tempo. We have to use those as weapons to apply pressure to the defense. Our offense is totally different now from this time a year ago. I think it’s all about adjusting and adapting to our players.”
Why would McVay want to make his offense “totally different” from the best offense in the game last fall? “I would say that in terms of some of the core ways of we run the football—some of the personnel groupings that we operate out of might be different. But the way we’ll do it, whether it be formationally, whether it be tempo-driven, at the line, in the huddle … In the span of a year, our players’ ability to process has enabled us to have a little bit more versatility.”
The Rams got better on defense too, if a pair of incendiary corners can stay on the field. They added cover corners Aqib Talib and Marcus Peters, who need the kind of gentle but smart hand of defensive coordinator Wade Phillips to make them each 16-game factors. The Aaron Donald signing was vital, not just for Donald’s peace of mind, but to know this great player is the center of a strong defense for the next seven years.
Of course, the continuing development of Jared Goff is vital. I trust McVay here. How can you not?
The NFC Playoff Picture
Division winners: Philadelphia, New Orleans, Minnesota, Los Angeles.
Wild-card teams: Atlanta, Green Bay.
Seeds: 1. Philadelphia, 2. Rams, 3. Minnesota, 4. New Orleans, 5. Green Bay, 6. Atlanta
NFC title game: Los Angeles 26, Philadelphia 24.
As for New England: Man, the receiver position is an abject disaster. How they’ll beat defensively stout Houston and Jacksonville in the first two weeks with Chris Hogan and Phillip Dorsett as the lone vet receivers on the roster is beyond me. (More about that in a moment.) But this comes down to my faith that the Patriots—who got embarrassed to open the season a year ago this week—will, as usual, figure out their weaknesses and act on them. Bill Belichick always does. Tom Brady always does.
You might think of this as a lazy pick because I don’t see the future. You might say if Doug Marrone hadn’t lost his nerve inside of two minutes in the AFC Championship Game last January against a beatable Patriots team I wouldn’t be picking them now. Maybe. But this pick comes down to the fact I’ve got more questions about every other contender in the AFC than I do about the Patriots.
• Jacksonville’s formidable, but I still question Blake Bortles to take a team to the Super Bowl. And after last January, I question Marrone’s decision-making in the big game.
• Houston’s got Deshaun Watson back, but he’ll be running for his life behind a bad offensive line. Plus, what sort of J.J. Watt returns?
• Pittsburgh … The eternal search for a secondary continues, as does the search for an interior boss like Ryan Shazier to lead the defense; when Shazier was lost with his spinal injury, the Steelers responded in their five games by allowing 28 points per game and fizzling out of the playoffs. It’s not impossible to fathom Cincinnati or Baltimore winning this division; both are better on defense than the Steelers.
• As for the West, I like the Chargers more than any other team, but don’t we all like the Chargers a ton every Labor Day weekend?
That leaves someone traveling to Foxboro on the third Sunday in January, again, praying they can find a way to dethrone the slightly dysfunctional but ridiculously legendary Patriots.
New England’s defense should be better, with Dont’a Hightower’s return, and Trey Flowers and Adrian Clayborn giving the Patriots a legitimate 1-2 pass-rush threat they haven’t had. The running game is good, the tackles iffy with the loss of Nate Solder and the injury to Isaiah Wynn knocking him out for the year. Amazing that 49er roster marginalia Trent Brown will play such a vital role, as least early, as the heir to Solder on Brady’s blind side.
If I were Brady, I’d be thinking more about the receiver situation than left tackle. The two most reliable recent wideouts, Danny Amendola (free agency, Miami) and Julian Edelman (suspended for four games) won’t be there in September, and Hogan and Dorsett are complementary pieces more than standard-bearers.
The Patriots claimed a couple of waiver-wire no-names, Amara Darboh (Seattle) and Chad Hanson (Jets) on Saturday to give them a five-receiver depth chart, but think of it: The Patriots were 31st in the waiver-wire claiming order, so 30 other teams passed on Darboh and Hanson.
In Bill They All Trust—I get that. But Bill left the offense in a bad place entering two tough defensive opponents to open the season. Belichick counted on Malcolm Mitchell or Kenny Britt or Jordan Matthews or Eric Decker becoming a trusted Brady partner from the opening day of camp, and none did. What now? There’s no way Belichick and personnel czar Nick Caserio didn’t try to deal for a receiver over the weekend; they’re too smart to ignore a position of great need.
Now they have to hope that looming free agents/cap casualties are available at the trade dealine. Maybe Denver is lousy the first half of the season and makes Demaryius Thomas available. Or maybe Detroit does the same with Golden Taint, or Green Bay (very unlikely) with Randall Cobb. Or maybe one of the waiver pickups find a chemistry with Brady. I just think the solving of the receiver problem is more likely than the other contenders finding solutions to their big issues.
The AFC playoff Picture
Division winners: New England, Jacksonville, Cincinnati, Los Angeles Chargers.
Wild-card teams: Pittsburgh, Houston.
Seeds: 1. New England, 2. Jacksonville, 3. Chargers, 4. Cincinnati, 5. Pittsburgh, 6. Houston
AFC title game: New England 30, Los Angeles 23.
How cool would that be? Each of the Los Angeles franchises making the conference championship games, and being four quarters from an L.A. versus L.A. Super Bowl?
Super Bowl 53, Atlanta, Feb. 3, 2019: Los Angeles Rams 29, New England 20.
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Khalil Mack
I was talking to Saints coach Asshole Face over the weekend, and the Khalil Mack trade to Chicago came up. “The last time we played Oakland [Week 1 2016], we put in a special protection for him,” Payton said. If Mack lined up outside the right tackle to rush, the Saints’ tight end would line up on the right side and chip him as he rushed. If Mack lined up opposite the left tackle, the tight end would shift left. The Saints called it “Mack Protection” in the gameplan that week.
You do that kind of thing for Khalil Mack, or Aaron Donald, or maybe Von Miller. They’re that good, and they can wreck games if foes try to block them consistently with one man.
But between late February and late August, I’m told, the Raiders didn’t aggressively try to resolve the Mack contract issue—not as aggressively as the Rams with Aaron Donald or the Packers with Aaron Rodgers. Mack was on the fifth-year option of his rookie deal but didn’t report to camp, and the Raiders seemed willing to hope Mack would report this week so he could begin collecting increments of his $13.846-million one-year salary.
But Mack was steadfast about staying away, feeling Oakland didn’t value his game sufficiently. He wasn’t coming. So last Friday the Raiders zoned in on trying to get two first-round draft picks in trade for him (the Jets, Niners and Browns pushed, but not hard enough) and Chicago put the two ones on the table. So the deal got done, with an asterisk: Oakland had to send a future second-round pick to Chicago, cheapening the return for Mack. By the end of the day Saturday, Mack had eclipsed Aaron Donald as football’s richest defender.
The most important part of this story is being mostly ignored. It’s best framed by asking this question:
If I told you that you could draft and develop one of the three best defensive players in football (and maybe the best), and then sign him to a contract that would take him all the way through his prime for an average of 10.7 percent of your salary cap annually, would you do it?
I bet the vast majority of the teams in the league would be happy to do so. If they knew anything about football they would.
But that’s the crux of this situation. Let me explain. Mack, over the next seven years, is scheduled to make $154.85 million on his new Bears contract. The salary cap this year is $177.2 million. Over the last five years, the cap has risen about $10 million a year. So let’s project that it continues to rise $10 million a year through the last year of the Mack deal, in 2024. The cap, then, would be $237.2 million in the last year of Mack’s deal.
Average salary cap per team over the next seven years, by my estimate: $207.2 million.
Mack’s average compensation over the next seven years: $22.12 million.
Average cap spending devoted to Mack annually: 10.67 percent.
When Jon Gruden spoke Sunday night in Oakland, he implied that the odds are against a team winning when it has two huge-salaried players. Those two players in Oakland were Derek Carr and Mack. Last year, Carr signed an extension that, adding in his scheduled 2017 salary, would pay him $126.7 million over six years, according to Over The Cap. Long-term, then, the combined Carr/Mack cap number, on average, would be $43 million, or 20.87 percent of the annual cap. That means two star players would make 21 percent of the Raiders’ cap.
I don’t think spending 21 percent of the cap on two big stars is excessive. Especially when the alternative is irrelevance.
That’s the most important thing here. Let’s dig into four tributaries:
1. There are times to make first-round picks untouchable. This was not one of them. There’s this impression out there that first-round picks are the Holy Grail of team development, absolutely irreplaceable pieces of a team’s future. Remember the Patriots’ furious comeback to beat Atlanta in the Super Bowl two years ago? On their game-tying drive that night, of the five offensive linemen and six skill-players who touched the ball, one (left tackle Nate Solder) was drafted in the top 75 of a draft.
Excepting Mack and the last two first-round Raider picks (who cannot be judged yet), look at the last 10 Raider first-round picks: Robert Gallery, Fabian Washington, Michael Huff, Jamarcus Russell, Darren McFadden, Darrius Heyward-Bey, Rolando McClain, D.J. Hayden, Amari Cooper, Karl Joseph.
Seven of those players were top 10 picks in the first round. But would you trade Mack for any two of them? I wouldn’t. Not even close. So what makes the Raiders think they’ll strike gold with another franchise player with either of the two picks after nearly a generation of not finding one (other than Mack) in the first round?
2. Oakland players can no-comment this or try to make it not so big a deal, but there’s no way they’re not ticked off. The early tweets from Derek Carr and Bruce Irvin (No f—ing way) are the real ones. This has Jon Gruden’s fingerprints all over it, and the team’s leaders—Carr included—should not sit idly by and say, Whatever you want to do, coach. Gruden had to make this call. And the locker room is thinking, “If Khalil Mack, probably our best player, isn’t worth 10 percent of the cap through his prime, then who are they going to pay around here other than the quarterback?”
3. The football world has to stop thinking of $22 million a year as absolutely outlandish and dumb to pay a non-quarterback. Folks, it’s all Monopoly money. The cap has more than doubled in 13 years. The way to think of players’ salaries is as a percentage of the cap—not in raw dollars. Five years ago, this Mack deal, on average, would have been 18 percent of the cap. Now, over the next seven years, it’s 10.67 percent. When the cap grows, you’re much better off thinking of the percentage of the cap, not that a defensive player shouldn’t make $20 million a year. It’s all relative.
4. As for the Bears … Bears fans—ask Michael Wilbon—have a love-hate relationship with GM Ryan Pace. This, though, was a brilliant trade by Pace, who smartly figured (I think he did; I could not reach him Sunday) that two first-round picks was extremely reasonable for a player of Mack’s caliber in an age when disrupting the quarterback’s rhythm is the most important thing a defense can do.
Per Pro Football Focus, Mack has 175 sacks/quarterback hits/quarterback hurries in the last two seasons, and that is 13 more than the next-most disruptive rusher, Von Miller. I love what defensive coordinator Vic Fangio must be thinking, particularly if Akiem Hicks continues to play in his disruptive way and if Leonard Floyd can become the consistent force on the edge that he’s shown flashes of being in his first two seasons (22 games, 11.5 sacks).
The Bears now have no picks in the first two rounds in 2019, and none in first and third rounds of 2020. But they were able to squeeze a 2020 second-rounder back from Oakland. So their earliest picks in the next two drafts are a third next year and two second-rounders in 2020. Imagine if the Raiders struggle in ’19, and the Bears have a pick near the top of the second round in ’20. That wouldn’t cancel out the Bears’ first-rounder in 2020, but it would ease the pain.
Think, too, of what Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson must be thinking this morning—Rodgers mostly. The Bears play the Packers and Seahawks in Weeks 1 and 2, and a rush with Mack, Hicks and Floyd is downright scary. If Mitch Trubisky is somewhere between competent and very good, the Bears will be a major factor in the NFC North much quicker than we thought.
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The Award Section
Picking the best players for the top awards this early is not advisable, but I’m always up for some preseason idiocy. Here goes:
MVP: Tom Brady, QB, New England.
If he gets the Patriots to the division crown at 41, with a makeshift left tackle situation and the worst receiver group, arguably, he’s ever had, this isn’t remotely surprising.
The contenders: 2. Philip Rivers, QB, Chargers. 3. Aaron Rodgers, QB, Green Bay. 4. Todd Gurley, RB, Rams. 5. Drew Brees, QB, New Orleans.
Coach: Doug Pederson, Philadelphia. The defending Super Bowl champ wouldn’t normally win this, but I’ve got the Eagles surviving the early questions at quarterback to go an NFL-best 13-3.
The contenders: 2. Bill Belichick, New England. 3. Anthony Lynn, Chargers. 4. Marvin Lewis, Cincinnati. 5. Doug Marrone, Jacksonville.
Offensive player: Alvin Kamara, RB, New Orleans. The unlikely rushing champion wins a very close race with some quarterbacks … because Kamara is going to have a ridiculously productive all-purpose yards season.
The contenders: 2. Philip Rivers, QB, Chargers. 3. Tom Brady, QB, New England. 4. David Johnson, RB, Arizona. 5. Todd Gurley, RB, Rams.
Defensive player: Geno Atkins, defensive tackle, Cincinnati. Surprising win over the two mega-money guys, Aaron Donald and Khalil Mack. But Atkins will get a huge hand from Carlos Dunlap and Andrew Billings on the defensive front. The Bengals will win the division with this front, and Atkins will lead the way.
The contenders: 2. Aaron Donald, DT, Rams. 3. Trey Flowers, DE, New England. 4. Chandler Jones, DE, Arizona. 5. Marcus Peters, CB, Rams.
Comeback player: Andrew Luck, QB, Indianapolis. After a shoulder injury and subsequent surgery marred his 2016 season and kept him out for 2017, Luck’s return to relevance wins him the award.
The contenders: 2. Joe Flacco, QB, Baltimore. 3. Travis Frederick, C, Dallas. 4. Richard Sherman, CB, San Francisco. 5. Dont’a Hightower, LB, New England.
Offensive rookie: Michael Dickson, P, Seattle. I don’t even know if a punter is an offensive or defensive player. But I’m giving Dickson this nod because he’ll lead the NFL in gross and net punting, and because punters are people too.
The contenders: 2. Saquon Barkley, RB, Giants. 3. Sam Darnold, QB, Jets. 4. Quenton Nelson, G, Indianapolis. 5. Michael Gallup, WR, Dallas.
Defensive rookie: Josh Jackson, CB, Green Bay. I don’t think he’ll start on fire, but as the season wears on, he’s going to be the most reliable cornerback on a strong playoff contender. He never was the fastest cornerback at Iowa, but he was smart and instinctive, and he’ll be among the league leaders in interceptions.
The contenders: 2. Bradley Chubb, DE, Denver. 3. Minkah Fitzpatrick, DB, Miami. 4. Derwin James, S, Chargers. 5. Arden Key, DE, Oakland.
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Things I Think I Think
1. I think I believe the Saints did the right thing in dealing a third-round pick to the Jets for Teddy Bridgewater and a sixth-round pick, even though Bridgewater is working on a one-year contract. This is why:
• Drew Brees turns 40 in January and though he has missed only two games in his 12-year Saints career, no one’s selling insurance for quarterbacks that old. Legitimate quarterback insurance costs something. The Saints like backup Taysom Hill, but would they have been willing to play Taysom Hall with a Super Bowl roster and still felt they could play deep into January without Brees?
• The Saints have always felt they can find a draft pick in trade if they need one. Jimmy Johnson used to be that way. And so GM Mickey Loomis was concerned but didn’t panic over not having a three next year. He had the full support of coach Asshole Face. Everyone Payton knew—particularly Bill Parcells (a mentor of Bridgewater’s when he was in high school)—told Payton to get him.
• Payton gets to have Bridgewater in the building and around him and Brees for a year. If the match is good, and if Bridgewater doesn’t have a better starting option somewhere else, Payton might be able to tempt him to stay even if he has to sit behind Brees one more year in 2019.
2. I think the reason you don’t ever look at the 53-man roster teams keep at the moment of the final cuts is this: Green Bay kept eight receivers on the initial 53-man roster; New England kept three. Now way either team would go into the season with a number that high or low.
3. I think the Name of the Weekend on the cut wire was Washington axing safety Fish Smithson. Fish suffered the same cruel fate as his brother, who was in Green Bay camp in 2011 but didn’t make the team. The brother: Shaky Smithson.
4. I think you’ll see quite a few of the NFL cuts sign in the next few weeks with the new eight-team Alliance of American Football, because more than 600 of those cut won’t be asked back by any of the 32 NFL teams, either on the active roster or practice squad. The AAF begins play Feb. 9, six days after the Super Bowl, in an attempt to fill the off-season void of football for fans—and likely of gambling too.
Hines Ward, the former Steeler and current Head of Football Development for the new league, said the other day the league will offer players three-year deals and hope to get a bedrock of developmental players who’ve never had the sustained chance to play pro football. The players will be able to leave the AAF to return to the NFL if offered NFL deals, Ward said. “We don’t want to stand in the way of their dreams,” he told me. There will be a league-wide training camp beginning the first week of 2019 in San Antonio, and 52-man regular-season rosters.
5. I think this got lost in the mayhem of Saturday, but Jon Gruden also cut loose his second and third quarterbacks, EJ Manuel and Connor Cook. Manuel was the 16th overall pick in 2013; Cook was picked before Dak Prescott in 2016. And so in comes A.J. McCarron, who played so well in camp this year he was third on the Bills’ mental depth chart after the preseason, after being imported in free agency to start at least one season while Josh Allen got seasoned for the long-term Buffalo job. Man, Gruden made so much news this weekend that his notable quarterback shuffling is in the 39th paragraph of a 40-graf story.
6. I think it’s stunning that Tom Coughlin, essentially, is Jalen Ramsey’s boss, and Jalen Ramsey keeps yapping. (Good for us, so I hope Ramsey keeps it up, but I cannot believe the Jaguars aren’t vomitous over his Hollywood Hendersonisms.)
7. I think sometimes I read things players say and just chortle. Such as Dante Fowler of the Jaguars, who said the other day: “Honestly my goal this year is really just to show people that I’m a franchise player. I’m an elite player. I’m one of the top defensive ends, linebackers, whatever you want to call me, in this league.” Hmmm.
Fowler has been a big talker in his three years in the NFL since being the third overall pick in 2015. He missed his first year with a knee injury. In the last two seasons, covering 32 games, he has 12 sacks, including 2.5 in the last nine games of the 2017 regular season. Fowler’s got a lot of showing to do.
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https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/09/03/khalil-mack-trade-super-bowl-prediction-peter-king/
FMIA: On The Mack Mistake And Why Super Bowl 53 Will Be Rams-Patriots
By Peter King
Getty Images
My Super Bowl Pick
Here we are, three days before the start of the NFL’s 99th season, and there is no team in recent history that has done a 180 like the Rams of the past year. I’m about to do something that is either insane, or an illustration of how quickly life changes in a league that churns so fast and so furious, or maybe it’s a sign that building a good football team really takes only four or five cutting-edge decisions. But after seeing 22 teams in five weeks on my camp trip, it was hard to come away from Rams camp thinking they shouldn’t be a Super Bowl favorite.
Labor Day 2017: The Rams were trying not to be a laughingstock anymore, with the youngest coach in modern NFL history, a quarterback desperate for a detour from bust-dom, a GM hanging on for dear life, and no one to put on a billboard in a sprawling market that demanded stars. Best two players on this team: a defensive tackle and a punter.
Labor Day 2018: The Rams, defending NFC West champs, are darlings. That chortled-at peach-fuzzy coach, Sean McVay, is the reigning coach of the year. Todd Gurley and Aaron Donald are returning offensive and defensive players of the year. That disastrous quarterback, Jared Goff, had a 100.5 rating, fifth in the league and higher than a few great QBs—Rodgers, Roethlisberger, Ryan, Rivers and Wilson.
And now I’m going all-in on a franchise that last won a playoff game in January 2005, when “Meet the Fockers” was the top movie at the box office.
I’m picking the Rams because they’ve done a good job playing down their worst-to-first offense last year, realizing if they were really the Warriors of the NFL they wouldn’t have stunk it up in the playoffs against Atlanta. They added the kind of versatile and durable deep threat that Sammy Watkins wasn’t in Brandin Cooks, who can play all over the offensive formation.
McVay told me in camp he realizes he has to stay progressive to remain ahead of the defenses that have spent an offseason studying his play-calling, his tempo, even his cadences. Early one morning, in his tape den on the campus of UC-Irvine, McVay told me what he’d spent the last few months working on.
“The basic thing for us is: What are we doing offensively in order to try and conflict defenses? Whether it’s their matchup responsibilities, or being able to learn our cadence, learn our formations and motion and tempo. We have to use those as weapons to apply pressure to the defense. Our offense is totally different now from this time a year ago. I think it’s all about adjusting and adapting to our players.”
Why would McVay want to make his offense “totally different” from the best offense in the game last fall? “I would say that in terms of some of the core ways of we run the football—some of the personnel groupings that we operate out of might be different. But the way we’ll do it, whether it be formationally, whether it be tempo-driven, at the line, in the huddle … In the span of a year, our players’ ability to process has enabled us to have a little bit more versatility.”
The Rams got better on defense too, if a pair of incendiary corners can stay on the field. They added cover corners Aqib Talib and Marcus Peters, who need the kind of gentle but smart hand of defensive coordinator Wade Phillips to make them each 16-game factors. The Aaron Donald signing was vital, not just for Donald’s peace of mind, but to know this great player is the center of a strong defense for the next seven years.
Of course, the continuing development of Jared Goff is vital. I trust McVay here. How can you not?
The NFC Playoff Picture
Division winners: Philadelphia, New Orleans, Minnesota, Los Angeles.
Wild-card teams: Atlanta, Green Bay.
Seeds: 1. Philadelphia, 2. Rams, 3. Minnesota, 4. New Orleans, 5. Green Bay, 6. Atlanta
NFC title game: Los Angeles 26, Philadelphia 24.
As for New England: Man, the receiver position is an abject disaster. How they’ll beat defensively stout Houston and Jacksonville in the first two weeks with Chris Hogan and Phillip Dorsett as the lone vet receivers on the roster is beyond me. (More about that in a moment.) But this comes down to my faith that the Patriots—who got embarrassed to open the season a year ago this week—will, as usual, figure out their weaknesses and act on them. Bill Belichick always does. Tom Brady always does.
You might think of this as a lazy pick because I don’t see the future. You might say if Doug Marrone hadn’t lost his nerve inside of two minutes in the AFC Championship Game last January against a beatable Patriots team I wouldn’t be picking them now. Maybe. But this pick comes down to the fact I’ve got more questions about every other contender in the AFC than I do about the Patriots.
• Jacksonville’s formidable, but I still question Blake Bortles to take a team to the Super Bowl. And after last January, I question Marrone’s decision-making in the big game.
• Houston’s got Deshaun Watson back, but he’ll be running for his life behind a bad offensive line. Plus, what sort of J.J. Watt returns?
• Pittsburgh … The eternal search for a secondary continues, as does the search for an interior boss like Ryan Shazier to lead the defense; when Shazier was lost with his spinal injury, the Steelers responded in their five games by allowing 28 points per game and fizzling out of the playoffs. It’s not impossible to fathom Cincinnati or Baltimore winning this division; both are better on defense than the Steelers.
• As for the West, I like the Chargers more than any other team, but don’t we all like the Chargers a ton every Labor Day weekend?
That leaves someone traveling to Foxboro on the third Sunday in January, again, praying they can find a way to dethrone the slightly dysfunctional but ridiculously legendary Patriots.
New England’s defense should be better, with Dont’a Hightower’s return, and Trey Flowers and Adrian Clayborn giving the Patriots a legitimate 1-2 pass-rush threat they haven’t had. The running game is good, the tackles iffy with the loss of Nate Solder and the injury to Isaiah Wynn knocking him out for the year. Amazing that 49er roster marginalia Trent Brown will play such a vital role, as least early, as the heir to Solder on Brady’s blind side.
If I were Brady, I’d be thinking more about the receiver situation than left tackle. The two most reliable recent wideouts, Danny Amendola (free agency, Miami) and Julian Edelman (suspended for four games) won’t be there in September, and Hogan and Dorsett are complementary pieces more than standard-bearers.
The Patriots claimed a couple of waiver-wire no-names, Amara Darboh (Seattle) and Chad Hanson (Jets) on Saturday to give them a five-receiver depth chart, but think of it: The Patriots were 31st in the waiver-wire claiming order, so 30 other teams passed on Darboh and Hanson.
In Bill They All Trust—I get that. But Bill left the offense in a bad place entering two tough defensive opponents to open the season. Belichick counted on Malcolm Mitchell or Kenny Britt or Jordan Matthews or Eric Decker becoming a trusted Brady partner from the opening day of camp, and none did. What now? There’s no way Belichick and personnel czar Nick Caserio didn’t try to deal for a receiver over the weekend; they’re too smart to ignore a position of great need.
Now they have to hope that looming free agents/cap casualties are available at the trade dealine. Maybe Denver is lousy the first half of the season and makes Demaryius Thomas available. Or maybe Detroit does the same with Golden Taint, or Green Bay (very unlikely) with Randall Cobb. Or maybe one of the waiver pickups find a chemistry with Brady. I just think the solving of the receiver problem is more likely than the other contenders finding solutions to their big issues.
The AFC playoff Picture
Division winners: New England, Jacksonville, Cincinnati, Los Angeles Chargers.
Wild-card teams: Pittsburgh, Houston.
Seeds: 1. New England, 2. Jacksonville, 3. Chargers, 4. Cincinnati, 5. Pittsburgh, 6. Houston
AFC title game: New England 30, Los Angeles 23.
How cool would that be? Each of the Los Angeles franchises making the conference championship games, and being four quarters from an L.A. versus L.A. Super Bowl?
Super Bowl 53, Atlanta, Feb. 3, 2019: Los Angeles Rams 29, New England 20.
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Khalil Mack
I was talking to Saints coach Asshole Face over the weekend, and the Khalil Mack trade to Chicago came up. “The last time we played Oakland [Week 1 2016], we put in a special protection for him,” Payton said. If Mack lined up outside the right tackle to rush, the Saints’ tight end would line up on the right side and chip him as he rushed. If Mack lined up opposite the left tackle, the tight end would shift left. The Saints called it “Mack Protection” in the gameplan that week.
You do that kind of thing for Khalil Mack, or Aaron Donald, or maybe Von Miller. They’re that good, and they can wreck games if foes try to block them consistently with one man.
But between late February and late August, I’m told, the Raiders didn’t aggressively try to resolve the Mack contract issue—not as aggressively as the Rams with Aaron Donald or the Packers with Aaron Rodgers. Mack was on the fifth-year option of his rookie deal but didn’t report to camp, and the Raiders seemed willing to hope Mack would report this week so he could begin collecting increments of his $13.846-million one-year salary.
But Mack was steadfast about staying away, feeling Oakland didn’t value his game sufficiently. He wasn’t coming. So last Friday the Raiders zoned in on trying to get two first-round draft picks in trade for him (the Jets, Niners and Browns pushed, but not hard enough) and Chicago put the two ones on the table. So the deal got done, with an asterisk: Oakland had to send a future second-round pick to Chicago, cheapening the return for Mack. By the end of the day Saturday, Mack had eclipsed Aaron Donald as football’s richest defender.
The most important part of this story is being mostly ignored. It’s best framed by asking this question:
If I told you that you could draft and develop one of the three best defensive players in football (and maybe the best), and then sign him to a contract that would take him all the way through his prime for an average of 10.7 percent of your salary cap annually, would you do it?
I bet the vast majority of the teams in the league would be happy to do so. If they knew anything about football they would.
But that’s the crux of this situation. Let me explain. Mack, over the next seven years, is scheduled to make $154.85 million on his new Bears contract. The salary cap this year is $177.2 million. Over the last five years, the cap has risen about $10 million a year. So let’s project that it continues to rise $10 million a year through the last year of the Mack deal, in 2024. The cap, then, would be $237.2 million in the last year of Mack’s deal.
Average salary cap per team over the next seven years, by my estimate: $207.2 million.
Mack’s average compensation over the next seven years: $22.12 million.
Average cap spending devoted to Mack annually: 10.67 percent.
When Jon Gruden spoke Sunday night in Oakland, he implied that the odds are against a team winning when it has two huge-salaried players. Those two players in Oakland were Derek Carr and Mack. Last year, Carr signed an extension that, adding in his scheduled 2017 salary, would pay him $126.7 million over six years, according to Over The Cap. Long-term, then, the combined Carr/Mack cap number, on average, would be $43 million, or 20.87 percent of the annual cap. That means two star players would make 21 percent of the Raiders’ cap.
I don’t think spending 21 percent of the cap on two big stars is excessive. Especially when the alternative is irrelevance.
That’s the most important thing here. Let’s dig into four tributaries:
1. There are times to make first-round picks untouchable. This was not one of them. There’s this impression out there that first-round picks are the Holy Grail of team development, absolutely irreplaceable pieces of a team’s future. Remember the Patriots’ furious comeback to beat Atlanta in the Super Bowl two years ago? On their game-tying drive that night, of the five offensive linemen and six skill-players who touched the ball, one (left tackle Nate Solder) was drafted in the top 75 of a draft.
Excepting Mack and the last two first-round Raider picks (who cannot be judged yet), look at the last 10 Raider first-round picks: Robert Gallery, Fabian Washington, Michael Huff, Jamarcus Russell, Darren McFadden, Darrius Heyward-Bey, Rolando McClain, D.J. Hayden, Amari Cooper, Karl Joseph.
Seven of those players were top 10 picks in the first round. But would you trade Mack for any two of them? I wouldn’t. Not even close. So what makes the Raiders think they’ll strike gold with another franchise player with either of the two picks after nearly a generation of not finding one (other than Mack) in the first round?
2. Oakland players can no-comment this or try to make it not so big a deal, but there’s no way they’re not ticked off. The early tweets from Derek Carr and Bruce Irvin (No f—ing way) are the real ones. This has Jon Gruden’s fingerprints all over it, and the team’s leaders—Carr included—should not sit idly by and say, Whatever you want to do, coach. Gruden had to make this call. And the locker room is thinking, “If Khalil Mack, probably our best player, isn’t worth 10 percent of the cap through his prime, then who are they going to pay around here other than the quarterback?”
3. The football world has to stop thinking of $22 million a year as absolutely outlandish and dumb to pay a non-quarterback. Folks, it’s all Monopoly money. The cap has more than doubled in 13 years. The way to think of players’ salaries is as a percentage of the cap—not in raw dollars. Five years ago, this Mack deal, on average, would have been 18 percent of the cap. Now, over the next seven years, it’s 10.67 percent. When the cap grows, you’re much better off thinking of the percentage of the cap, not that a defensive player shouldn’t make $20 million a year. It’s all relative.
4. As for the Bears … Bears fans—ask Michael Wilbon—have a love-hate relationship with GM Ryan Pace. This, though, was a brilliant trade by Pace, who smartly figured (I think he did; I could not reach him Sunday) that two first-round picks was extremely reasonable for a player of Mack’s caliber in an age when disrupting the quarterback’s rhythm is the most important thing a defense can do.
Per Pro Football Focus, Mack has 175 sacks/quarterback hits/quarterback hurries in the last two seasons, and that is 13 more than the next-most disruptive rusher, Von Miller. I love what defensive coordinator Vic Fangio must be thinking, particularly if Akiem Hicks continues to play in his disruptive way and if Leonard Floyd can become the consistent force on the edge that he’s shown flashes of being in his first two seasons (22 games, 11.5 sacks).
The Bears now have no picks in the first two rounds in 2019, and none in first and third rounds of 2020. But they were able to squeeze a 2020 second-rounder back from Oakland. So their earliest picks in the next two drafts are a third next year and two second-rounders in 2020. Imagine if the Raiders struggle in ’19, and the Bears have a pick near the top of the second round in ’20. That wouldn’t cancel out the Bears’ first-rounder in 2020, but it would ease the pain.
Think, too, of what Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson must be thinking this morning—Rodgers mostly. The Bears play the Packers and Seahawks in Weeks 1 and 2, and a rush with Mack, Hicks and Floyd is downright scary. If Mitch Trubisky is somewhere between competent and very good, the Bears will be a major factor in the NFC North much quicker than we thought.
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The Award Section
Picking the best players for the top awards this early is not advisable, but I’m always up for some preseason idiocy. Here goes:
MVP: Tom Brady, QB, New England.
If he gets the Patriots to the division crown at 41, with a makeshift left tackle situation and the worst receiver group, arguably, he’s ever had, this isn’t remotely surprising.
The contenders: 2. Philip Rivers, QB, Chargers. 3. Aaron Rodgers, QB, Green Bay. 4. Todd Gurley, RB, Rams. 5. Drew Brees, QB, New Orleans.
Coach: Doug Pederson, Philadelphia. The defending Super Bowl champ wouldn’t normally win this, but I’ve got the Eagles surviving the early questions at quarterback to go an NFL-best 13-3.
The contenders: 2. Bill Belichick, New England. 3. Anthony Lynn, Chargers. 4. Marvin Lewis, Cincinnati. 5. Doug Marrone, Jacksonville.
Offensive player: Alvin Kamara, RB, New Orleans. The unlikely rushing champion wins a very close race with some quarterbacks … because Kamara is going to have a ridiculously productive all-purpose yards season.
The contenders: 2. Philip Rivers, QB, Chargers. 3. Tom Brady, QB, New England. 4. David Johnson, RB, Arizona. 5. Todd Gurley, RB, Rams.
Defensive player: Geno Atkins, defensive tackle, Cincinnati. Surprising win over the two mega-money guys, Aaron Donald and Khalil Mack. But Atkins will get a huge hand from Carlos Dunlap and Andrew Billings on the defensive front. The Bengals will win the division with this front, and Atkins will lead the way.
The contenders: 2. Aaron Donald, DT, Rams. 3. Trey Flowers, DE, New England. 4. Chandler Jones, DE, Arizona. 5. Marcus Peters, CB, Rams.
Comeback player: Andrew Luck, QB, Indianapolis. After a shoulder injury and subsequent surgery marred his 2016 season and kept him out for 2017, Luck’s return to relevance wins him the award.
The contenders: 2. Joe Flacco, QB, Baltimore. 3. Travis Frederick, C, Dallas. 4. Richard Sherman, CB, San Francisco. 5. Dont’a Hightower, LB, New England.
Offensive rookie: Michael Dickson, P, Seattle. I don’t even know if a punter is an offensive or defensive player. But I’m giving Dickson this nod because he’ll lead the NFL in gross and net punting, and because punters are people too.
The contenders: 2. Saquon Barkley, RB, Giants. 3. Sam Darnold, QB, Jets. 4. Quenton Nelson, G, Indianapolis. 5. Michael Gallup, WR, Dallas.
Defensive rookie: Josh Jackson, CB, Green Bay. I don’t think he’ll start on fire, but as the season wears on, he’s going to be the most reliable cornerback on a strong playoff contender. He never was the fastest cornerback at Iowa, but he was smart and instinctive, and he’ll be among the league leaders in interceptions.
The contenders: 2. Bradley Chubb, DE, Denver. 3. Minkah Fitzpatrick, DB, Miami. 4. Derwin James, S, Chargers. 5. Arden Key, DE, Oakland.
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Things I Think I Think
1. I think I believe the Saints did the right thing in dealing a third-round pick to the Jets for Teddy Bridgewater and a sixth-round pick, even though Bridgewater is working on a one-year contract. This is why:
• Drew Brees turns 40 in January and though he has missed only two games in his 12-year Saints career, no one’s selling insurance for quarterbacks that old. Legitimate quarterback insurance costs something. The Saints like backup Taysom Hill, but would they have been willing to play Taysom Hall with a Super Bowl roster and still felt they could play deep into January without Brees?
• The Saints have always felt they can find a draft pick in trade if they need one. Jimmy Johnson used to be that way. And so GM Mickey Loomis was concerned but didn’t panic over not having a three next year. He had the full support of coach Asshole Face. Everyone Payton knew—particularly Bill Parcells (a mentor of Bridgewater’s when he was in high school)—told Payton to get him.
• Payton gets to have Bridgewater in the building and around him and Brees for a year. If the match is good, and if Bridgewater doesn’t have a better starting option somewhere else, Payton might be able to tempt him to stay even if he has to sit behind Brees one more year in 2019.
2. I think the reason you don’t ever look at the 53-man roster teams keep at the moment of the final cuts is this: Green Bay kept eight receivers on the initial 53-man roster; New England kept three. Now way either team would go into the season with a number that high or low.
3. I think the Name of the Weekend on the cut wire was Washington axing safety Fish Smithson. Fish suffered the same cruel fate as his brother, who was in Green Bay camp in 2011 but didn’t make the team. The brother: Shaky Smithson.
4. I think you’ll see quite a few of the NFL cuts sign in the next few weeks with the new eight-team Alliance of American Football, because more than 600 of those cut won’t be asked back by any of the 32 NFL teams, either on the active roster or practice squad. The AAF begins play Feb. 9, six days after the Super Bowl, in an attempt to fill the off-season void of football for fans—and likely of gambling too.
Hines Ward, the former Steeler and current Head of Football Development for the new league, said the other day the league will offer players three-year deals and hope to get a bedrock of developmental players who’ve never had the sustained chance to play pro football. The players will be able to leave the AAF to return to the NFL if offered NFL deals, Ward said. “We don’t want to stand in the way of their dreams,” he told me. There will be a league-wide training camp beginning the first week of 2019 in San Antonio, and 52-man regular-season rosters.
5. I think this got lost in the mayhem of Saturday, but Jon Gruden also cut loose his second and third quarterbacks, EJ Manuel and Connor Cook. Manuel was the 16th overall pick in 2013; Cook was picked before Dak Prescott in 2016. And so in comes A.J. McCarron, who played so well in camp this year he was third on the Bills’ mental depth chart after the preseason, after being imported in free agency to start at least one season while Josh Allen got seasoned for the long-term Buffalo job. Man, Gruden made so much news this weekend that his notable quarterback shuffling is in the 39th paragraph of a 40-graf story.
6. I think it’s stunning that Tom Coughlin, essentially, is Jalen Ramsey’s boss, and Jalen Ramsey keeps yapping. (Good for us, so I hope Ramsey keeps it up, but I cannot believe the Jaguars aren’t vomitous over his Hollywood Hendersonisms.)
7. I think sometimes I read things players say and just chortle. Such as Dante Fowler of the Jaguars, who said the other day: “Honestly my goal this year is really just to show people that I’m a franchise player. I’m an elite player. I’m one of the top defensive ends, linebackers, whatever you want to call me, in this league.” Hmmm.
Fowler has been a big talker in his three years in the NFL since being the third overall pick in 2015. He missed his first year with a knee injury. In the last two seasons, covering 32 games, he has 12 sacks, including 2.5 in the last nine games of the 2017 regular season. Fowler’s got a lot of showing to do.
