The Daily Briefing Saturday, February 12, 2022

First off, we are going with the Bengals as our pick.  We know the argument that the Rams will sack QB JOE BURROW into oblivion – but we think he is a special QB on a special mission and his opponent, MATTHEW STAFFORD, who we like and admire, is going to come up short.  We also think that Cincinnati has the superior placekicker.

We are 8-4 in our playoff picks so far, but only 2-4 after a 6-0 Super Wild Card Weekend.  We had the Bengals that week, but went against them to our regret twice since.

We are joined in our selection by Mattress Mack.  David Purdum of EPSN.com

Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale sold so much furniture in a week that he could afford to place another giant Super Bowl bet — $5 million on the Cincinnati Bengals to beat the Los Angeles Rams.

McIngvale, who owns Gallery Furniture in Houston, Texas, drove across the border to Louisiana early Friday morning, pulled over at a rest stop and placed the $5 million bet on Caesars Sportsbook’s mobile app at +170 odds. McIngvale is running a promotion at his store, offering to refund any purchases of $3,000 or more if the underdog Bengals win Super Bowl LVI. He’s using his giant bets to mitigate risk from the giveaway.

Last week, McIngvale placed a $4.5 million money-line bet on the Bengals with Caesars Sportsbook in Louisiana.

“Well, I sold through the profit on the first investment,” McIngvale told ESPN on Friday, his 71st birthday. “So I had to make another.”

McIngvale now has wagered $9.5 million for a chance to win a net $16.2 million if the Bengals win the Super Bowl on Sunday. Cincinnati is a consensus 4-point underdog to the Rams.

“I figure it’s more of a toss-up,” McIngvale said. “It could come down to a final field goal, like a lot of these exciting playoff games.”

Caesars Sportsbook says the $5 million Bengals bet is the largest single wager the company has taken, eclipsing a $4.9 million bet on the heavily favored St. Louis Rams to beat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVI.

“Caesar — at least for the moment — is a Rams fan,” Ken Fuchs, head of Caesars Sportsbook, said in a news release.

Even with McIngvale’s $9.5 million on the Bengals, Caesars had attracted slightly more money on the Rams to win the game straight up. As of Friday morning, 74% of the money-line bets were on the Bengals, while 52% of the total amount wagered was on the Rams.

Other seven-figure wagers have begun to show up on the Super Bowl as well. DraftKings on Thursday reported taking a $1 million two-leg parlay on the Bengals money line +170 and under 48.5. The parlay, which was placed at the Casino Queen in Illinois, has a potential net win of $4.15 million.

– – –

The NFL announced plans this week to play its first game in Germany this year.

The NFL will host a regular-season game in Munich, Germany, next season for the first time in its history, the league announced Wednesday.

There will be five NFL regular-season games played internationally next season, with three games played in London, one in Mexico and one in Germany.

The Jacksonville Jaguars said in a statement Wednesday they will return to London next season with a game at Wembley Stadium.

The league was previously weighing up three potential German host cities — Munich, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf — with a goal to host its first games in the country no later than 2023. However, the NFL have announced it will host its first-ever regular-season game in mainland Europe later this year.

The NFL plans to host the first game at the Allianz Arena in Munich next season, followed by Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt in 2023. The league would then return to Munich in 2024 and Frankfurt in 2025.

“We are very pleased to welcome Munich and Frankfurt to the NFL family and are excited to reward our fans in Germany for their passion by bringing them the spectacle of regular-season NFL football,” Goodell said in a statement ahead of Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles on Sunday.

“We look forward to staging our first game in Germany at Bayern Munich’s fantastic stadium later this year and to exploring areas of broader collaboration with the Bundesliga.”

Next season’s International Series will mark the first time that the NFL has returned to Germany since it hosted five preseason games between 1990 and 1994.

The country also had a number of host cities for teams in the NFL’s overseas competitions (the World League of American Football, NFL Europe and NFL Europa) between 1991 and 2007, though Munich was never involved in that period.

The league announced in December that 18 teams had been granted access for marketing, fan engagement and commercialization across eight countries.

A total of four teams — the Carolina Panthers, Kansas City Chiefs, New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers — were granted access to Germany, and the NFL said in a statement that it would ensure franchises play in their designated international markets “where possible.”

MINNESOTA

Publicly, the new management of the Vikings is all in on QB KIRK COUSINS.  But there are rumblings behind the scenes.  Heavy.com:

The Super Bowl is the golden opportunity for teams looking to sell hope for the next season.

And with many teams believing they’re a quarterback away from making their own appearance in the big game, this week may be an opportune time for the Minnesota Vikings to dangle Kirk Cousins in front of potential trade partners.

SKOR North’s Judd Zulgad recently speculated a likely chance that new general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah may be taking calls for Cousins despite several reports touting Cousins’ is secure in Minnesota.

Earlier this week, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported that soon-to-be head coach Jeremy Fowler has a “firm belief” in Cousins, signaling the veteran quarterback’s future with the Vikings is secure.

“Soon-to-be Vikings HC Kevin O’Connell conveyed a firm belief in Kirk Cousins during the interview process, I’m told. He’s high on him. The front office must decide on Cousins’ future due to his $45M cap hit, but many coaches interviewing for job liked Cousins, O’Connell included,” Fowler tweeted on February 7.

Fowler’s report echoed a similar sentiment that Adam Schefter reported during the Pro Bowl, saying that O’Connell’s relationship with Cousins (from one season together in Washington) was one of the reasons the Rams offensive coordinator wanted the job.

However, Zulgad is not sold the Vikings are locking up Cousins — rather, they’re polishing the quarterback for the showroom floor.

“It’s in the Vikings’ best interest to make potential trade partners believe that it will cost a substantial amount for new general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah to part with Cousins,” Zulgad wrote.

In recent years, many of the biggest quarterback trades have come in proxy of the Super Bowl, making this week an opportune time for the Vikings to reopen rumored trade talks that happened last season.

From Zulgad:

A year ago, the Vikings were believed to have quietly shopped Cousins before ownership objected to moving the guy they had been told was the key to a Super Bowl. But Adofo-Mensah is unlikely to be under any such restrictions as he hits the reset button on the roster. While the Vikings, or any other NFL team, can’t officially complete a trade until the NFL’s new year begins on March 16, Cousins’ future could be decided much sooner than that. It was just before Super Bowl week last year when the Rams and Lions agreed on a trade that sent quarterback Matthew Stafford to Los Angeles for QB Jared Goff, first-round picks in 2022 and 2023 and a third-rounder in 2021. In 2018, Washington acquired quarterback Alex Smith from Kansas City for a third-round pick and cornerback Kendall Fuller during Super Bowl week in Minneapolis. That trade opened the door for Cousins to leave Washington.”

The Stafford trade, meanwhile, has worked out extremely well for a Rams team that felt it needed an upgrade at quarterback for an all-in roster to reach the Super Bowl. That proved to be correct and in many ways is what the Vikings thought they were doing in 2018, when they signed Cousins but then missed the playoffs.

But continuing to maintain the appearance that the Vikings have no real intention of moving Cousins is one way to get the most in return. Even if Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell have decided that moving on from him is in everyone’s best interest.

Zulgad’s mention of the Matthew Stafford trade is timely. Patrick Peterson recently compared Cousins to the Rams signal caller that’s led Los Angeles back to the Super Bowl.

Stafford and Cousins are in the same tier of quarterback, posting similar statistics throughout their careers.

However, with the right game plan, the Rams have taken Stafford, who previously hadn’t won a single postseason game in his 11-year career, into a Super Bowl quarterback.

Stafford’s run this year has only raised Cousins’ value, showing that a team can make the Super Bowl without a top-tier quarterback. Cousins could draw similar prospects for a willing trade partner despite his contract being the most significant point of contention in a trade.

DALLAS

Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com on how Sean Payton looms over the Cowboys coaching position:

Mike McCarthy will coach the Cowboys in 2022. And Sean Payton will loom as a viable candidate to be given the job in 2023.

It’s such an open secret that NFL Honors host Keegan-Michael Key joked about it during Thursday’s ceremony, saying that, following Payton’s resignation from the Saints, “Sean will now return to his true passion: finding a way to take Mike McCarthy’s job.”

But it wouldn’t be Payton taking it as much as it would be Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who nearly hired Payton three years ago, giving it. (The story about the near-hiring of Payton by Jones comes from Playmakers, by the way.  Please buy it, by the way.)

Payton visited the set of PFT Live on Friday. Amid the swirling rumors that he’s a year away from becoming the Dallas coach, I asked Payton whether he has reached out or will reach out to McCarthy to tell him that he doesn’t have to look over his shoulder.

“I haven’t,” Payton said. “You know what, it’s a good idea because I felt like it took place for a while with Jason Garrett, a good friend of mine who I coached with at the Giants. Still a close friend to this day, and I consider Mike someone who’s a close friend. Mike’s done it long enough. We both entered the league as head coaches the same year in ’06. We’re of the same age and we’re of the same background. Look, our paths have been different. I’m his big fan and I think he’s one of those guys who’s a fantastic coach. I had this whole conversation with Saints’ ownership the week prior to the wildcard round and Mrs. Benson said, ‘Take a week, go on vacation to Mexico, and before you come back put that answer,’ because I knew then I wanted to step away. Sure enough, that first round game, Dallas loses. I’m like, ‘Ah, It would’ve been so much easier if I had the Tuesday before that.’”

That last part is telling. Payton knew that his departure from the Saints would spark immediate speculation that McCarthy will be out and Payton will be in, sooner or later. The fact that the Dallas season ended two days earlier served only to make it more likely.

Maybe there’s nothing Payton can say to McCarthy at this point. McCarthy is smart enough to know what’s going on. What could Payton or anyone else tell him at this point?

The story flows not from anything Payton has said or done but what Jones has wanted. He has wanted Payton. Now that Payton is available, the clock will begin to tick on Jones potentially getting him. McCarthy, Payton, and everyone else should realize that.

TAMPA BAY

Curious comments from TE ROB GRONKOWSKI.  Michael David Smith of ProFootballTalk.com:

Tom Brady may not be retired permanently.

Brady’s longtime friend and teammate Rob Gronkowski thinks Brady will return, although not this year. Gronk said he thinks Brady will take a couple years off, and then return.

 “The guy can play at any age,’’ Gronkowski told USA Today. “If he’s 50 years old he can still come back. I think he’s going to come back but in a couple of years. The guy’s a beast. He can play anytime.’’

Brady is 44 years old, which is ancient by NFL standards, but he has shown no signs of his play deteriorating. He has always taken his physical health very seriously, so he’s unlikely to get out of shape in retirement. It’s not unthinkable that he could decide to take a little time off and then come back when he’s 46 or 47.

Gronkowski himself has come back from retirement once, specifically to play with Brady in Tampa Bay. Gronk said he doesn’t know if he’s going to retire this offseason or not. If he does retire, perhaps he’ll un-retire with Brady in a couple of years.

Similar thoughts from former teammate Julian Edelman.  Darren Hartwell ofNBCSports.com:

“(The retirement) didn’t surprise me. It was gonna come sooner or later,” ex-Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman told our Tom E. Curran in an exclusive interview for the latest Patriots Talk Podcast. “He’s still good, but that’s what he likes, probably. He wants to be able to say, ‘I can still do it, and I went out on my terms.’

“Personally, it gets tough on an athlete, especially someone who’s played for (22) years. When you’re a kid, when you’re 22 years old, it’s easy. But then life happens. Now you have responsibilities. You have kids. He has a wife.

“So, that’s a completely different thing that I don’t even know about. I have a kid but I don’t have a wife that’s over here telling me, ‘Hey, what are we doing here?’ So, it didn’t surprise me. And I’m not saying it’s just his wife, but I’m just saying, there’s other things that you have pulling you from the game.”

A desire to spend more time with family — Brady and his wife, Gisele Bundchen, have two children together, while Brady has a son from his previous relationship with actress Bridget Moynihan — played a big role in Brady’s retirement decision. But the longtime quarterback doesn’t seem 100% committed to never playing again, telling Jim Gray, ‘You never say never’ when asked if he’d consider an NFL comeback one day.

Edelman, who just finished his first full season away from the game after retiring in April 2021, could see Brady wanting to lace them up again.

“My answer for, ‘Were you surprised (that) he retired?’ was, ‘No, I’m not.’ And that’s the same answer if he comes back,” Edelman told Curran. “You wouldn’t be surprised. I don’t know how he’s going to feel in six months when he’s sitting there.

“The first offseason when you retire, it’s different. You have a routine, you have a body clock that you’re so used to. I did it for 12 (years), he did it for 22. So like, it’ll hit him in some form or another. But it wouldn’t surprise me.

“… I mean, it’d make for a hell of a documentary that I’m sure he would make.”

EOnline.com found Brady in Costa Rica:

From hitting the field to now hitting the beach.

Tom Brady and his wife Giselle Bundchen were spotted on Friday, Feb. 11, walking on the beach with their dog in Costa Rica. The former football quarterback and Brazilian model were notably walking hand in hand with smiles from ear to ear. Tom sported a plain white t-shirt and grey shorts with sneakers, while Gisele wore a black tank dress with black sandals.

Heck, Brady said this:

Brady briefly explained what was behind his decision, expressed gratitude for the outpouring of emotion he received and ever so slightly left the door ajar for a possible return on Monday’s Let’s Go! With Tom Brady, Larry Fitzgerald and Jim Gray podcast.

“I’m just gonna take things as they come,” Brady said when asked if he would entertain thoughts of coming back. “I think that’s the best way to put it and I don’t think anything, you know, you never say never. At the same time I know that I’m very, I feel very good about my decision. I don’t know how I’ll feel six months from now.”

The DB heard scuttlebutt this week that all was not well at the end of the season between Brady and head coach Bruce Arians, leading the idea that returning to another season with Arians might have played some part, perhaps tiny, in the decision.

LOS ANGELES RAMS

John Madden, Jon Gruden, Tony Dungy, Bill Cowher – four coaches who did not grind it out to the bitter end in coaching.  Sean McVay is sending signals he could be next.  Nick Wagoner of ESPN.com:

As he enters the biggest game of his professional life followed by the biggest summer of his personal life, Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay spent time Friday pondering what all of that means for his future.

McVay doesn’t yet have the answer to the ideal work/life balance but he made it known during his team’s final media availability before Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI that it’s something that has been on his mind.

Moments after answering a question by saying he “won’t make it” if he’s coaching until he’s 60, McVay was asked why he didn’t think that would be the case. McVay, 36, started his response by saying he was joking but then gave a roughly 90-second answer on the other things he wants to pursue in life.

“I love this so much that it’s such a passion but I also know that what I’ve seen from some of my closest friends, whether it’s coaches or even some of our players, I’m gonna be married this summer, I want to have a family and I think being able to find that balance but also be able to give the time necessary,” McVay said. “I have always had a dream about being able to be a father and I can’t predict the future, you know? I jokingly say that.

“I don’t really know. I know I love football and I’m so invested in this thing and I’m in the moment right now. But at some point, too, if you said what do you want to be able to do? I want to be able to have a family and I want to be able to spend time with them.”

Those thoughts come against the backdrop of multiple sources telling ESPN’s Lindsey Thiry in the past and again recently that McVay has considered working as a television analyst as an alternative to coaching.

In January, multiple league executives suggested to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler that McVay could follow a similar coaching/broadcasting path to Jon Gruden, whom McVay coached under in Tampa Bay in 2008, and take a break from coaching for a lucrative TV job.

One NFC executive told Fowler, “I think he’s trying to get that Super Bowl ring quickly so then he can have options. … If he wants to do TV for a while, he’d be great at it and can always go back and coach any team he wants after that.”

The New York Post reported Thursday that television executives would have interest in McVay if that was something he wanted to pursue, noting “it is not clear yet if he would want to do it.”

The lure of starting a family is something McVay was clear about Friday. He and fiancée Veronika Khomyn were originally slated to get married in the south of France in 2020 and then in Southern California last year but have postponed their nuptials both times for pandemic-related reasons.

McVay’s thoughts on family run deep and he offered some perspective on that when talking about his own childhood experiences. He said Friday that his father Tim would have been “an unbelievable coach” but never pursued it seriously because he saw the time it meant he would be away after observing his father, John McVay, work as the head coach of the New York Giants and general manager of the San Francisco 49ers.

“I also know how much time is taken away during these months of the year and I saw that growing up,” McVay said. “He has such a special relationship with my grandpa who was a coach and in personnel but one of the things that prevented him from getting into coaching was, ‘Man, I had such a great relationship but my dad missed out on a lot of the things’ but didn’t want to do that with me and my little brother. So, I always remembered that and at some point, I want to be able to have a family. So, that’s why I say that. But, s—, you’ll probably be talking to me when I’m 61 doing this stuff.

“Who knows?”

McVay and general manager Les Snead signed extensions with the Rams in January 2019 that have them under contract through the 2023 season. Since taking over in 2017, McVay has led the Rams to a 61-29 record, including the playoffs, three NFC West division titles and a pair of NFC championships.

For now, McVay’s focus is on winning the Lombardi Trophy that has evaded him and the Rams since losing to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LIII. Atoning for that loss, a game in which McVay has admitted he was outcoached, has been another storyline surrounding the Rams coach this week.

“I think what you do to get over it is you look at yourself in the mirror, you take accountability and you keep it moving,” McVay said Monday. “I think as a competitor, you have to be able to handle those tough moments and I’ll never run away from the fact that I didn’t do a good enough job for our team within what I feel like my role and responsibility is to these guys.”

DENVER

The DB thinks there will be a lot of pressure on the current Broncos ownership to sell to a buyer of the type preferred by the media, and perhaps the league office.  Antonio Brown has his preferred owner.  Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com:

As Antonio Brown waits for next opportunity, he could have a built-in advantage if he gets his wish regarding the next owner of the Broncos.

Brown recently made a public plea on Twitter for Kanye West to buy the Denver Broncos.

The Broncos are for sale. Multiple parties will be bidding for the team. With the purchase price expected to be $4 billion, the primary owner will need to pony up 30 percent in cash, minimum. That’s $1.2 billion, cash.

Does Kayne have that much money? How many people really do at this point? And with franchise values going up and up and up, the price of admission will continue to climb, too, unless the NFL dramatically revises its rules for ownership.

There’s another angle to consider, for anyone who is thinking about buying the Broncos. A couple of other teams could end up being for sale, involuntarily, depending on the manner in which multiple pending controversies are resolved. So instead of buying the Broncos now, someone may want to consider buying the Dolphins or Commanders later, depending on how the dominoes fall in the coming weeks and months.

BALTIMORE

CINCINNATI

You would never know it, but a woman is the key football executive for one of the two teams in the Super Bowl.  Mike Sando of The Athletic profiles Katie Blackburn who we have tried to bring to your attention previously.

Among the many differences between the NFC champion Los Angeles Rams and AFC champion Cincinnati Bengals entering Super Bowl 56, there are the executive bios.

The Rams dedicated seven pages and 6,377 words of their 2021 media guide to bios for team owner Stan Kroenke and their top three execs. The Bengals dedicated eight lines and 18 words to theirs:

President

Mike Brown

Executive Vice President

Katie Blackburn

Vice President – Player Personnel

Paul Brown

Vice President

Troy Blackburn

That’s it. You’d never have any idea from the outside that Katie Blackburn has, over the past 35 years, evolved from Bengals founder Paul Brown’s granddaughter to owner Mike Brown‘s daughter to a highly regarded NFL executive, independent of her forebears.

Blackburn, 56, serves on five league committees, including the same competition committee her grandfather served on with luminaries Al Davis, Vince Lombardi, Tex Schramm, Don Shula and others. A lawyer by training, Blackburn has negotiated most of the Bengals’ player contracts over the past three decades. While her father, now 86, remains atop the organizational flow chart, he long ago ceded control of day-to-day operations.

Katie Blackburn is the Bengals as much as anyone is, but who is she, really?

“We were friends because we were in the same dorm, but she was always just so quiet,” said Nicki Demakis, who played hockey with Blackburn at Dartmouth in the mid-1980s. “We thought it was cool as freshmen because we knew her grandfather was a bigwig in the football arena. We had other kids that we went to Dartmouth with, like Willie Stargell’s daughter, so we had a lot of professional athletes that would come and see their kids. We just thought Katie was different because she was just so humble.”

Another former Dartmouth teammate, Karin Clough, couldn’t recall Blackburn ever mentioning she came from football royalty.

“I just remember her being super kind, super nice, very unassuming,” Clough said. “I think about it and I probably wouldn’t have followed football back then, but then I just read that she was like the daughter of the owner, the granddaughter of the founder — I had no idea. I think she does have that quiet, Midwestern demeanor of just kind of nothing showy, nothing braggy.”

“You would never imagine the football legacy family that she came from,” Demakis said.

Paul Brown coached Ohio State to its first national championship in 1942. He co-founded the Cleveland Browns in 1946 and won seven championships in his first 10 seasons as their coach, pioneering film study to prepare for opponents. He helped found the Bengals in 1967 and coached them for eight seasons, going 36-20 over his final four.

Shula, Bill Walsh, Chuck Noll, Weeb Ewbank and Blanton Collier coached under him. Brown and Walsh collaborated on what grew into the West Coast Offense, the NFL’s dominant system for three decades. Paul Brown invented the facemask and the draw play. He developed the first system for evaluating college players and was the first to use classroom instruction, the first to hire year-round coaches, the first to house players in hotels the night before games. In 1978, Brown and the competition committee recast the NFL as a passing league via revolutionary rules changes.

“I definitely remember my grandfather being on the competition committee because when I first started going to league meetings, he was on the committee at that time,” Blackburn said. “My dad was on the competition committee and I was fully aware of everything he was involved in when he was on it. And I’m honored to have a chance to follow in their footsteps.

“The one thing about my dad and my grandfather is, at heart, deep down, No. 1, they care first and foremost about the game of football on a league-wide level, not just what is best for the Bengals. It’s what they think will make the sport best for everyone in the long run.”

NFL executives Paraag Marathe of the San Francisco 49ers, Chris Ballard of the Indianapolis Colts and Rich McKay of the Atlanta Falcons independently said almost exactly the same thing about Blackburn, that she always has in mind what is best for the league. Each serves with her on a committee.

“Before I knew her even, a lot of agents would talk about her very positively, just about how she is a great negotiator, very understanding, empathizes both positions, has always been somebody who just has great perspective, having grown up in the business,” Marathe said. “That is a rare thing. A lot of people just see their side and only their side. As I got to know her a little more on this committee, same thing. The best way I can say it is, she is just very true north. She is always looking at what she thinks is best for the league and independent of whatever opinion is being put forward at the time, she is just always thinking about perspective.”

Cincinnati reached two Super Bowls in the 1980s with Paul Brown as general manager and Mike in the assistant GM role. Between those Super Bowls, Katie followed her father’s path by enrolling at Dartmouth and then pursuing law school. She was 15th in her class at the University of Cincinnati College of Law and spent most of two years at the firm Taft, Stettinius and Hollister before joining the Bengals.

“She is so doggone smart,” former Bengals coach Marvin Lewis said. “Once I joined the competition committee, they would start talking about different rules changes regarding the cap and how bonuses were counted and, shoot, Katie had explained it to me about two weeks before.”

Blackburn arrived at Dartmouth when women’s hockey had developed into a competitive sport, but at some programs, there were still a few roster spots available for adventurous souls willing to put in the work, despite not having the most refined skills. When one of Blackburn’s first friends at Dartmouth mentioned she was trying out for the team, Blackburn decided to join her.

“Katie, she tried out and I’ll always remember, she had a great attitude, she soaked up coaching like a sponge,” said former Dartmouth assistant coach Bob Ceplikas, who recently retired as deputy athletic director. “We thought, gosh, we’ve gotta put her on the roster, see what happens.”

Blackburn scored a goal for the first time as a sophomore and was earning more ice time, but with the team desperate for goalie help the next year, the coaches sought volunteers.

“God bless her, Katie was the one who was brave enough to strap on the pads,” Ceplikas said. “And I say brave because women’s hockey at that time had developed to the stage where the best players on most teams, including our own in practice, could really fire the puck. And she wasn’t the biggest kid in the world. And yet she was willing to get in there and face those shots, hundreds of them in practice.”

Final stats for the 1985-86 season show Blackburn with 199 saves, 24 goals against and a 4-4 record.

“The full story, I was a wing for the first two years and I finally scored a couple goals,” Blackburn said. “I was finally making some progress. Definitely still not great, but I was making some progress. Then the goalie graduated and I was like, ‘Hey, the goalie gets to be on the ice all the time, right?’ So they didn’t have a goalie, so I volunteered to be the goalie. I made it through probably two or three games before they went to the field hockey team to find other options.”

Dartmouth coaches found Demakis, who had enrolled as a tennis recruit, migrated to field hockey and wound up sharing time in goal with the future executive vice president of the Bengals.

“The coaches are like, ‘Here, put some goalie pads on, it will be fun — stand in the net, have 100 mph slapshots hit at you, but, oh, let me remind you where you don’t have pads, on the underside of your arm and on the insides of your thighs — yeah, that will be fun,’ ” Demakis said. “I had no idea Katie was a hockey player. I just thought, ‘Oh my god, there is that really quiet, shy girl Katie from my dorm who always kept to herself. She is a freaking goalie! How badass is that?’ ”

It was about as badass as Blackburn negotiating NFL player contracts in the early 1990s, on her way to overseeing much more, in a league that is still overwhelmingly male in the football operations realm.

“I think the world of her,” said agent Peter Schaffer, who first negotiated a player contract with Blackburn in 1991, when the Bengals drafted his client, Alfred Williams, in the first round. “She did such a great job and did her work so properly and professionally that no one even thought of her as a woman. She was a football person.”

Football people do more than negotiate contracts. They also study game tape, which is fitting in Blackburn’s case, since her grandfather invented the practice.

“She can be sitting in there looking at players with you in our scouting meetings, and then she can be over there managing the salary cap or weighing in on how to run the pep rally or whatever,” said Bengals player personnel director Duke Tobin, who has been with the team since 1999. “She is very versatile. And she is football, through and through. That is her life. That is the great thing about the organization. Everybody is football, through and through.”

Some owners fly into town on game days. The Bengals’ ownership — led by Mike, but also including Katie, her husband Troy and younger brother Paul — generally doesn’t miss a practice.

“They eat with the players,” said former Bengals defensive tackle John Thornton, who is now a Cincinnati-based agent for Roc Nation. “If the food was bad, they were eating bad food with us. I live in the same neighborhood with them. I see them walking around, in the coffee shops. My youngest goes to school with their granddaughter. Normal people. Katie is Dockers, polo shirt, very, ‘Hey, I am here to do my job, not here to look a certain way.’ ”

A 1991 Cincinnati Post profile on Blackburn noted that she owned two cars. One was a Buick Regal, the other a Chevy Lumina.

“You go to Indianapolis (for the combine), you are not going to see Katie and Troy and Mike at Morton’s,” said Schaffer, who represents current Bengals running back Joe Mixon. “If you want to meet them for dinner, it is going to be at Steak ‘n Shake. That is what makes them happy. Just regular, solid people.”

Lewis had worked for two other family-run organizations before coming to Cincinnati as head coach in 2003. The time he spent with the Art Modell-owned Baltimore Ravens and the Rooney-owned Pittsburgh Steelers prepped him for a decision-making process that can be more deliberate than what exists elsewhere.

Lewis would sometimes confer with Katie and Troy regarding decisions before approaching Mike for final approval. If Mike were outvoted 3-1, he might grin and remind the group that he had three additional votes, or however many were needed to sway the decision.

“I have so many stories, but my first year there, we were trying to get players signed in free agency and everybody basically had gone home except for me, Katie and Troy,” Lewis said. “And literally, we are on the phone, they are talking to agents, I’m talking to the players, and Katie was literally typing contracts. Troy and I were faxing contracts and I’m talking to players and it was just the best. And I think we signed two or three players that night — John Thornton, Kevin Hardy. Mike came in the next morning and he was like, ‘What the hell happened?’ Hey, we got better.”

The Bengals went to the playoffs seven times in 16 seasons under Lewis, but never won in the postseason, partly because of terrible luck with injuries. Carson Palmer’s blown knee against Pittsburgh after the 2005 season and Andy Dalton’s broken thumb late in the 2015 season derailed two of the Bengals’ best teams.

Luck fell the Bengals’ way more recently when they landed the first pick in the 2020 draft, just as LSU quarterback Joe Burrow was becoming available. Led by Burrow, receiver Ja’Marr Chase and an opportunistic defense, the Bengals are in the Super Bowl for the first time since the 1988 season.

“It’s just special,” Blackburn said. “I mean, you feel so much pride for the team, the players, the coaches. Obviously, since it’s a bit of a family thing, my dad. And just feeling like you have a little piece of making there be so much excitement in Cincinnati. It’s, it’s awesome. I don’t know what else to say.”

MIAMI

Mike McDaniel is the new coach – and he would seem to be the first coach to identify as bi-racial.  Marcel Louis-Jacques of ESPN.com:

Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel, clarifying comments this week in which he said he identified “as a human being,” affirmed that his racial background is not something he simply identifies as — it’s what he is.

“First and foremost, I’m biracial. My mom’s white, my dad’s Black. I’ve been extremely proud of that my whole life,” McDaniel told ESPN on Friday. “It is a unique experience, being a race and then fully acknowledging that most outside observers, when they perceive you, they identify you as something other than the race you are. When you’re younger and that is happening, it’s very, very confusing.”

The Dolphins introduced McDaniel as their 14th head coach this week. During a news conference Thursday in Miami, McDaniel was asked what his experience was growing up and whether his success can serve as an example for people with similar backgrounds.

He called the idea of identifying as something “odd” and added that he didn’t necessarily identify as anything but a human being.

“I think people identify me as something, but I identify as a human being,” McDaniel said Thursday. “It’s weird that it comes up because I’ve just tried to be a good person, and I think my background opens my eyes a little bit. I don’t have any real experience with racism. But I know my mom experienced it when she married my dad. I know my dad experienced it and that it’s in my family. I guess that makes me a human being that can identify with other people’s problems.”

McDaniel’s biracial background did subject him to bigotry as a child, however. On multiple occasions, his friends weren’t allowed to spend the night at his home. McDaniel initially had “no idea” why, but after a series of temper tantrums, his mother, Donna, finally told him. He and his mother were also ostracized by members of her family for her decision to marry and have a child with a Black man, which McDaniel called “eye-opening.”

McDaniel said a trip to his paternal grandmother’s home when he was 5 years old was the first time he realized he was different, when he noticed his skin was a far lighter shade than that of anyone else in his grandmother’s photographs. As he grew up with people not identifying him as biracial, he said he attempted to find a way to make sense of the confusion.

“I think what I was saying [Thursday] is that you have to come to a realization at some point, you have to have a comfort level, you have to have a resolution when you’re younger and you have these odd things happening to you,” he said. “And for me, it was, ‘OK, you’re a human.’ That was my resolution. For me in my experience, that’s how I resolved that. I think it’s something that helped me not feel so confused through the whole process.

“It shaped a very unique perspective for me because I am biracial and I know these things are wrong, but people are identifying me as something else, so it’s not happening to me. It’s a conflicting emotion.”

McDaniel joins the Dolphins after four seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, having served as the team’s offensive coordinator in 2021. The 49ers will receive a third-round pick in each of the next two drafts as part of the NFL’s diversity development and hiring incentive program.

McDaniel will retain the DC of Brian Flores.

The Dolphins will retain defensive coordinator Josh Boyer for the 2022 season, head coach Mike McDaniel confirmed Friday, clearing the way for his third season with the team.

Boyer first came to Miami in 2019 under then-head coach Brian Flores. Prior to his arrival in south Florida, Boyer spent 12 years with the New England Patriots as a defensive assistant, defensive backs coach and cornerbacks coach.

The Dolphins ranked eighth in defensive expected points added in 2021 but led the NFL in the same category over the final nine weeks of the season. Boyer’s defenses have also forced the fourth-most turnovers in the league over the past two seasons.

“You learn that when something’s not broke [you don’t fix it],” McDaniel told ESPN. “There’s also relationships with players that come into it, there’s the scheme itself, and then there’s the human relationships. There’s a good amount of time that I spent with Josh before I made that decision. All of those things contribute and then relying on the people that hired me that were in the building with him. This is not something that you just all of a sudden say, ‘Just keep him, I don’t feel like looking into stuff.’ It’s a calculated decision that’s very informed — and I think the proof is in the pudding. That’s a top-10 defense last year that I would not want to play against.

“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

The offensive-minded McDaniel is also piecing together his offensive staff. The Dolphins have not named an offensive coordinator, but joining McDaniel in the trek from San Francisco to Miami are 49ers tight ends coach Jon Embree and wide receivers coach Wes Welker.

“It was the individuals that we brought that I thought really would help me on staff as a head coach and a play caller,” McDaniel said. “But also they’re two coaches who I know exactly what they’re going to get. For me, the most important thing that we could get is the development of players and accountability.”

McDaniel cited Embree’s history as a head coach at the University of Colorado, noting that “almost every player he’s ever had has their career year under him.” McDaniel said Embree’s ability to hold players accountable gives him one less thing to worry about as a head coach. Welker, who played for the Dolphins from 2004 to 2006, will take on the same role he held with the 49ers along with the additional responsibility of developing the Dolphins’ passing game plan.

“I’m really excited about where he is in his career. When he first came to San Francisco, it was his first position job,” McDaniel said. “There’s a huge part of your whole process when you’re developing as a coach, of going to a place as a first-time position coach, learning how to own that. I thought Wes was ready to take another step.”