The Daily Briefing Thursday, December 16, 2021

NFL teams are tired of having perfectly healthy players (other than for a shadowy test result) sitting out games and collecting big checks. Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com with the data:

Most of the NFL’s COVID-19 surge this week has been driven by positive test results from asymptomatic players, an important data point as the league and NFL Players Association discuss ways to slow the spread through multiple teams.

More than 100 players have tested positive since Monday. Roughly two-thirds of them are asymptomatic, NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills told reporters Wednesday evening at the conclusion of a previously scheduled owners meeting. The rest, Sills said, have symptoms so mild that they might not have sought a test in ordinary circumstances.

So Judy Bautista of NFL.com hears that changes could be coming to the protocols:

The NFL had gotten through the first three months of its season with so few COVID-19 cases, and with so much normalcy — full stadiums, less Zooms, fewer masks — that it was easy to forget the pandemic was much of an issue at all.

But the virus has come roaring back, with around 100 players testing positive in the last three days. That is a record number of cases this season. Many of those players are fully vaccinated. According to the league, two-thirds of them are asymptomatic and the rest have very mild symptoms. That has forced a sudden reexamination at the NFL’s Winter League Meeting of the protocols that have governed the league, with just four games to go in the regular season before the playoffs begin.

“We’re entering a new phase of the pandemic, different than we’ve seen before,” said the NFL’s chief medical officer, Dr. Allen Sills. “We can’t apply 2020 solutions to the 2021 problems we’re having.”

Commissioner Roger Goodell said there had been no discussion about postponing any games, including the game this Saturday between the Las Vegas Raiders and the Cleveland Browns, even though the Browns have been beset by a wave of positive cases, including to quarterback Baker Mayfield and head coach Kevin Stefanski. The NFL has given greater roster flexibility and expanded practice squads as a way to mitigate the roster hits from COVID-19 cases.

But the face of the virus has clearly changed. Sills said that for the first time this season, the virus has begun spreading within buildings. That had not been the case earlier in the 2021 season, with genomic sequencing indicating that the positive cases had come from community spread, but were not being transmitted within team facilities.

— The new variant Omicron, which is highly transmissible, but also seems to produce a milder disease. Sills said the NFL had already isolated several cases of Omicron, and the advice from top epidemiologists is that Omicron is almost certainly driving the rapid spike in cases.

— Immunity among vaccinated players and coaches is waning. That is not a surprise. The NFL conducted its own antibody survey from 572 volunteers among NFL staff. The findings showed that, as expected, even fully vaccinated people showed fairly low levels of antibodies the further out from their initial vaccine they were. However, boosters restored and got volunteers to higher levels of antibodies.

— Seasonal variation means that all upper respiratory illnesses tend to be worse in the wintertime.

“At some point, you feel like you’re fighting a ghost,” Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank said as he arrived at the meeting. “You don’t know where to swing.”

Representatives of the league and the players association have spent recent days discussing changes to the protocols to get through the rest of the season. The league is encouraging booster shots — it is mandating them for coaches and staff and it was a point of emphasis in presentations to owners this week — as offering the best protection. That is not a foolproof plan. Stefanski had already received his booster when he tested positive.

Still, it was clear that league officials felt some urgency to take action quickly as the reserve/COVID-19 list ballooned and to perhaps approach the new strain of virus in a much different way than it had been addressed since the start of the pandemic.

— The possibility of allowing asymptomatic, fully vaccinated players who have tested positive to return to team activities with just one negative test. Currently, a vaccinated player needs two negative tests 24 hours apart in order to return before the end of the normal 10-day quarantine period. This would represent a step toward treating the virus as a less dangerous threat that the league must learn to live with. NFL officials were discussing the idea with public health officials, and it was unclear how quickly that change could take effect.

— The return of masking, social distancing and virtual meetings within team facilities. Those familiar measures are part of the enhanced protocols which, Sills said, five teams are already in and they could be imposed unilaterally by the league. With transmission within facilities, it seems likely these adjustments will be made soon. Most importantly, the NFL says those changes work. The league studied five teams that had been in enhanced protocols and in four of the five, there was no further transmission of the virus.

— Some members and officials from the players union are advocating for a return to daily testing for all players, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated. Right now, only unvaccinated players are tested every day. Vaccinated players are tested once a week. More testing for everyone would almost certainly reveal more asymptomatic cases.

League officials are resistant to the idea of daily testing.

“What testing doesn’t do is prevent transmission, and we’ve known that always,” Sills said. “That was true last year and it’s still true today. As we look at how to respond, what we’re trying to do is prevent spread within the facility and keep people from testing positive. Keeping people from testing positive takes us back to their immunity: getting the booster, getting their antibody levels up. Spread within the facility is more about these other measures. You have to rely on those other measures to make sure that we’re not creating spread within our facilities.”

With players and coaches continuing to test positive, and protocol changes still to be finalized, one thing was clear as the owners’ meeting ended: The NFL is, for the second year in a row, in a race with the virus to the end of the season.

Is Clay Travis right to be worried that the NFL’s premier event, the Super Bowl, is scheduled for a community that has never met a COVID restriction it wouldn’t implement?

Clay Travis

@ClayTravis

If the NFL were smart — which the league often isn’t — they would move the Super Bowl out of Los Angeles to Miami, Tampa, Dallas or Houston — four cities you know aren’t shutting down crowds at events. Because the LA & California Super Bowl restrictions are going to be a mess.

@ClayTravis

LA fans now have to wear masks at all times indoors other than when eating and drinking & need to have proof of the covid vaccine or a negative covid test in the past 24 hours. Move the Super Bowl now. LA restrictions are only going to get worse.

@ClayTravis

These covid restrictions are all going to be b.s. — and they’ll be totally ineffective — but they are highly likely to come, killing the Super Bowl crowd, festivities and experience in the process. The NFL should be proactive not reactive and move the game now.

We are on day 700 of 15 days to stop the spread. So I’m a tad bit pessimistic California and LA are stopping here.

@ClayTravis

If you felt comfortable about Arizona keeping everything normal you could flip the SB to Arizona this year and give Los Angeles next year’s game scheduled for Arizona. Also they should make me the next NFL commissioner because I’d be incredible at that job.

But says a commentator wise in the ways of the NFL:

@scottaxe

Replying to @ClayTravis

You have a better chance at seeing God than that happening.

NFC EAST

PHILADELPHIA

QB JALEN HURTS is good enough to split reps in practice, but he isn’t good enough (either healthwise or footballwise) to immediately re-claim his starting spot.  Tim McManus of ESPN.com:

With Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts’ availability for Sunday’s game against the Washington Football Team in question, he and Gardner Minshew are splitting first-team reps to start the week.

Hurts, who suffered a left ankle sprain on Nov. 28 against the New York Giants, is “trending upwards,” according to coach Nick Sirianni. However, Sirianni expressed uncertainty as to whether he would be available to play versus Washington.

“I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, just like I didn’t know last week exactly what was going to happen,” said Sirianni, explaining why he divvied up the snaps between Hurts and Minshew at Wednesday’s walkthrough. Hurts was officially listed as a limited participant on the team’s injury report. “You want to make sure that you’re covered if one guy can’t play. So that’s it.”

Hurts missed Philadelphia’s Week 13 matchup against the New York Jets. Minshew played well in his place, going 20-of-25 for 242 yards with a pair of touchdowns in a 33-18 win.

The Eagles are coming off their bye week. Asked after the Jets game whether Hurts would be available when they resumed play, Sirianni responded, “I would think so.”

But this week has started the same way as Week 13, with the two QBs splitting mental reps during Wednesday’s walkthrough. Minshew took the bulk of the reps during practice Thursday and Friday that week before eventually getting the start.

Hurts is dealing with a high-ankle sprain, according to the NFL Network, which can have a recovery time of up to four weeks. He was officially listed as limited on Wednesday’s practice report.

“It’s been a day-by-day thing,” Hurts said. “Coming in here every day, doing everything in my power to make myself available for my team. That’s been my mindset, that’s still my mindset. Trying to be available for the team.”

Hurts, 23, has started 12 games for the Eagles this season. He’s completed 60.1% of his passes for 2,435 yards with 13 touchdowns to eight interceptions while adding 695 yards and eight TDs on the ground.

Sunday’s game against Washington is pivotal, as both teams enter with a 6-7 record and are competing for the final NFC wild-card spot.

WASHINGTON

Commissioner Roger Goodell does not say that owner Daniel Snyder did not try to use an army of lawyers and private investigators to try to interfere with the NFL’s investigation of the toxic culture of the Washington Football Team.  He just says, if they did, they were not very good at it.  John Keim of ESPN.com:

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday from the league’s owners meetings in Irving, Texas, that Washington Football Team owner Dan Snyder did not hinder the investigation into his franchise last year.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Snyder tried to prevent attorney Beth Wilkinson from interviewing a woman who had accused the owner of sexual misconduct in 2009. The woman was ultimately paid a $1.6 million settlement.

“We went through a very lengthy period of investigation and discussions,” Goodell said. “The one thing I can say with 100% assurance is that it didn’t interfere with the work that our investigator did. We were able to access all the people that she wanted to access, have multiple conversations with … those people. There’s always a little bit of a tug and a pull with particularly lawyers and law firms.

“That’s something that I think we were able to overcome and make sure we came to the right conclusion.”

Members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform who have pushed the NFL to release documents related to the investigation now want more answers from the NFL regarding Snyder’s reported attempts.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Illinois), who serves on the committee, told ESPN that what was reported was “deeply disturbing and it continues to compel us to investigate the situation.” They want more from the NFL, he said.

Like the DB, Paul Mirengoff of Powerline wonders why these Democrat Congress People are so interested in probing Snyder.

Daniel Snyder owns the Washington Football Team. In response to allegations that he and others at the team indulged in sexual harassment of female employees, the NFL hired a prominent lawyer, Beth Wilkinson, to investigate. Based on the results of the investigation, the NFL fined the team $10 million and announced that Snyder’s wife, not Snyder, will run the day-to-day affairs of the team for an unspecified period of time.

Was this a fair resolution of the matter? I don’t know. It’s impossible to form an intelligent opinion without knowing what the investigation revealed, and the NFL has not made the results of the investigation public.

That’s fine with me. I’m not burning with desire to learn what the investigation revealed or to form an opinion about whether the punishment fits the crime. I would feel the same way about an investigation of any private entity whose product I consume. Allegations of sexual harassment against a government official or agency are a different story.

But congressional Democrats don’t see it this way. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform is desperate to learn whether and to what extent Dan Snyder harassed his female employees. On October 21, it sent a letter to the NFL commissioner requesting all documents and notes related to the nearly year-long investigation of the Washington Football team. The deadline for responding was November 4.

The NFL did not meet that deadline and has not yet produced the documents. Yesterday, reacting to allegations that Snyder sought to disrupt the investigation, Carolyn Maloney, who chairs the Oversight Committee, demanded production of the documents and expressed the Committee’s renewed resolve to investigate the matter.

Why? I understand the need for congressional oversight committees to oversee the executive branch of the federal government. But why do they need to oversee the National Football League?

The committee’s investigation of Dan Snyder and the NFL strikes me as a blatant waste of taxpayer dollars and an obvious instance of congressional overreach. I’m glad the League, for whatever reason, has not responded to the request of documents. Let Maloney’s staffers find something more worthwhile to do than pore over Dan Snyder’s emails and tens of thousands of other documents.

I hope the NFL stalls for another year. After that, there’s a good chance Republicans will control the House and, I’d like to believe, will let this senseless investigation die.

Will this Committee be demanding an investigation into recent office scandals at CNN?

NFC WEST

ARIZONA

WR DeANDRE HOPKINS is having surgery.  Michael David Smith ofProFootballTalk.com:

The Cardinals will need to make it deep into the postseason to get wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins back.

Hopkins is having knee surgery that will require about six weeks of recovery, according to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network.

The NFC Championship Game is six weeks and three days from now, so that would seem to be the soonest Hopkins could return to the field.

After missing only two games in his entire career before this year, Hopkins had already missed three games this season with a hamstring injury, and now he’ll miss four more games with the knee injury. Hopkins’ season ends with career-low numbers of 42 catches for 572 yards.

AFC SOUTH

JACKSONVILLE

The tale that he kicked a kicker seemed to be the last straw.  The Urban Meyer Era in JAX is over.  John Reid of the Florida Times-Union:

Jaguars owner Shad Khan fired Urban Meyer early Thursday morning, naming offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell as interim head coach.

”After deliberation over many weeks and a through analysis of the entirety of Urban’s tenure with our team, I am bitterly disappointed to arrive at the conclusion that an immediate change is imperative for everyone,” Khan said in a statement. ”As I stated in October, regaining our trust and respect was essential. Regrettably, it did not happen.”

Trent Baalke will continue as general manager to work with Bevell to ensure that the team will be inspired and competitive, Khan said. Bevell served as the Detroit Lions interim head coach last season for the final five games of the 2020 season after Matt Patricia was fired, going 1-4.

Meyer, who signed a five-year contract, couldn’t make it out of the first year with the Jaguars with four games left in the regular season with a 2-11 record. It was one embarrassing incident after the next with the last straw coming Wednesday when former Jaguars kicker Josh Lambo told the Tampa Bay Times that Meyer kicked him during a practice in August.

On Monday, Khan said he wanted to do the right thing for the franchise and city and promised he wouldn’t make a impulsive decision to determine Meyer’s fate, but admitted this season was different than any other because of the losses and drama. 

It went downhill for the Meyer, 57,  starting in October when two embarrassing videos surfaced on Twitter. One of the videos showed Meyer touching a woman’s backside in a restaurant bar in Columbus, Ohio. Another video showed Meyer sitting in a chair while a woman who is not his wife was seen dancing up to him.

If he’s getting four more years of Khan’s money after this level of performance…

It’s the first thing Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com wondered:

The issue first emerged in early October, in the days before Jon Gruden’s email scandal yanked the spotlight away from Urban Meyer’s Ohio misadventures. Will the Jaguars fire Urban Meyer “for cause,” cutting off his pay?

The fact that Meyer didn’t resign suggests that he didn’t want to waive his chance to get the balance of his contract. The fact that everything happened so fast after Josh Lambo created a fresh headline with an old story (from the team’s perspective) of being kicked at practice by Meyer suggests that (at best) the team had their “for cause” ducks in a row and that, at worst, they decided to pull the trigger now and worry about the money later.

A “for cause” firing can happen if a coach violates a material provision of his contract. The contracts typically used by all NFL teams include a  “Good Moral Character” clause. Here’s an example of one: “At all times during the term of this Agreement, whether in the performance of his duties and responsibilities under this Agreement or otherwise, Coach shall conduct himself in accordance with the NFL and Club Personal Conduct Policies, high standards of honesty, morality and good conduct and shall refrain from taking any actions which could be construed as detrimental to the best interests of Club or the NFL. This shall include, but not be limited to, insubordination, drunkenness, any personal conduct on or off the job which could bring disgrace on or discredit to Club, the NFL or both. Coach shall conduct himself with regard to public conventions and morals, and shall not gamble or bet illegally or excessively or gamble at all on any football game or team sport, shall not use intoxicants or stimulants to excess or frequent places or associate with persons of questionable character, shall abide by all standards set forth by Club regarding appearance and standards of workmanship, shall not participate in any activity in violation of the NFL rules, constitution or bylaws, and shall not do or commit any act or thing which would tend to bring him, Club or the NFL into public hatred, contempt, scorn or ridicule, or that could shock or offend the community or ridicule public morals or decency or prejudice the NFL or Club or professional football generally.”

The language is broad, sweeping, and just vague enough to strike the balance between not being enforceable and being sufficiently malleable to apply to a wide range of situations.

If Meyer chooses to fight a “for cause” firing, he likely will have his hands tied by another common provision of NFL coaching contracts — the requirement that any disputes be resolved not in a court of law but by the Commissioner. That stacks the deck firmly in favor of the oligarchs who have hired and compensated the Commissioner, making it very difficult for the team to lose.

Besides, the team really doesn’t lose anything by holding firm. If Meyer fights this and in the unlikely event he wins, he’ll get what he would have gotten if he hadn’t been fired “for cause.”

Then there’s the question of whether Meyer is truly up for a fight. There could be other things that the team knows, and that the team would leak, if/when Meyer essentially sues the Jaguars. Although the in-house arbitration process doesn’t play out publicly like a court proceeding, Meyer has learned the hard way the ease with which those motivated to talk and those inclined to repeat what they have to say can come together to create all sorts of difficulties and challenges for an NFL head coach.

So if he was fired “for cause” and if there’s other stuff that we don’t yet know about, maybe his best move is to cut his losses and move on. Or to accept whatever cents-on-the-dollar settlement the team may offer (there’s a sense his base pay was in the range of $6.5 million annually) to allow everyone to put this behind them, for good.

Charles Robinson of YahooSports.com also hears a discussion of “for cause”:

A league source told Yahoo Sports that Khan had a series of meetings with Meyer and general manager Trent Baalke following Sunday’s loss to the Tennessee Titans, discussing the direction of the team and the viability of continuing with Meyer at the helm. After weighing the results of the season through Sunday — and amid multiplereports suggesting discontent inside the franchise and locker room — Khan ultimately came to the conclusion that Meyer hadn’t been able to regain his footing as a leader following a less-than-flattering video of him was taken in a bar following a loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in October.

While it was believed Khan had the right to fire Meyer for cause after that incident, he ultimately chose to put him on what was effectively a “probationary period.” During that time, a league source said Khan monitored the team’s performance on the field and how the staff inside the building continued to interact with Meyer, as well as the players. According to the source, the NFL Network report, the trajectory of quarterback Trevor Lawrence and a handful of other issues ultimately led Khan to determine that Meyer had undermined his ability to pull the team together and gain momentum into the offseason.

The firing comes 336 days after Khan hired Meyer, promising that the coach would bring an elite level of culture-building and winning to the franchise.

Florio on the firing process:

Dysfunctional teams do dysfunctional things. And it’s the height of dysfunction for Khan to treat as the final straw an incident that happened nearly four months ago, and that was reported to the team’s legal counsel a day after it occurred.

Khan tolerated the claim that coach Urban Meyer had kicked kicker Josh Lambo until the moment Lambo told his story publicly, in comments to Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times. Of course, this assumes that Khan even knew about it; possibly, the contention never made its way up to the top of the ladder. If so, that’s another example of the dysfunction that has contributed to the team becoming one of the least successful in the NFL.

And so, at a time when plenty of in-house enemies had hoped to bring down Meyer, the bucket of water that melted the wicked witch came from someone who himself had been fired by Meyer weeks earlier. Someone who had a story that could have been told at any time.

If Lambo had told his story weeks ago, would that have brought Meyer down? If Khan knew about Lambo’s claim and accepted it as credible, the last straw should have been Meyer’s abandonment of his post in Week Four, after the Jaguars lost to the Bengals and Meyer decided to stay in Ohio for a couple of days when he should have accompanied his team back to Florida.

For a day or two after Urban’s Ohio misadventures, it seemed like Khan was considering making a move, perhaps laying the foundation for a for-cause termination that would have cut off Meyer’s right to ongoing payments. When things died down, there was a sense that the team was vetting Meyer’s version of the events for potential untruthfulness — and that it realized something else could happen later.

The later thing that forced Khan’s hand ended up being something that already had happened. This is precisely the kind of bass-ackward chain of events that proves that something is amiss at a higher level of the organization, that someone who managed to make billions in one industry has struggled to learn the nuances and niceties of managing a sports franchise that operates on an inherent high wire, with every move being studied and scrutinized in real time.

Then there’s the fact that Khan became smitten with the idea of hiring Meyer at a time when no other NFL team — not a single one — seriously pursued him. Perhaps Khan, after a string of failed head coaches who came from the world of pro football, decided that it made sense to roll the dice on an unconventional move, changing the usual order of tuna on toast to chicken salad on rye, untoasted, and a cup of tea.

The experimental nature of the move to hire Meyer provides further proof that those who thrive beyond their wildest dreams in some other line of business don’t automatically know how to run an NFL team, how to properly staff a front office from top to bottom with people who for example know which coaches should be pursued and which should be avoided.

The other 31 franchises knew to avoid Meyer; even at the height of his success, he was never at or near the top of the NFL’s A list. And so, as Khan embarks on his second decade as owner of an NFL team, he needs to take a step back and ask himself what he truly knows about this specific endeavor, what he still doesn’t know about it, and how he can go about the delicate and challenging process of finding someone who will routinely win more games than he loses while also not creating a sting of embarrassments and distractions because he probably never should have had the job in the first place.

It’s one of the most fascinating aspects of the NFL. The game has the uncanny ability to bring to their knees men who have created in some other place a degree of beyond-their-wildest-dreams success, the kind of success that fuels raw and naked hubris. Meyer, for all his achievements at Ohio State and Florida, didn’t belong in the NFL. Khan, like so many other NFL owners before and after him, is learning one day at a time that the only thing better than being really, really rich and sort of famous is being really, really rich.

Michael DiRocco of ESPN.com on what is next:

Shad Khan really did get it right.

It was just eight months later than he thought.

The Jacksonville Jaguars’ owner had to fire coach Urban Meyer less than a year after hiring him. Not because of too many losses — though that was definitely a problem — but rather a long list of missteps with players, coaches and, in one instance, a woman in a bar. They kept piling up and left Khan with no choice.

It had to be embarrassing for Khan as he was enamored with Meyer for years after watching his Ohio State teams rumble through the Big Ten.

He believed wholeheartedly Meyer was the coach that was going to lead — with help from the 2021 No. 1 overall pick, quarterback Trevor Lawrence — a franchise resurgence. That was evident at a news conference introducing Lawrence and running back Travis Etienne Jr. — who was also a first-round pick before suffering a season-ending injury to his left foot — when Khan proudly, and a little bit arrogantly, proclaimed: “This time I got it right.”

Except he didn’t.

The Jaguars have been the laughingstock of the league since making the playoffs in 2007. They have had just one winning season since and have lost 10 or more games in 10 of the last 11 seasons, including nine double-digit losing seasons in Khan’s 10 years as owner. Their lone winning season since 2007 came in 2017, when the Jaguars rode an elite defense to an AFC South title and made a surprising run to the AFC Championship game.

This year has been even worse because of Meyer.

He bungled things from the start, beginning with the hiring/resignation of director of sports performance Chris Doyle, who was accused of making racist remarks and bullying Black players while at Iowa.

The league fined Meyer and the Jaguars for having improper contact practices in OTAs … he signed Tim Tebow to play tight end … he had Lawrence and Gardner Minshew alternate first-team reps during training camp, only to trade Minshew … the viral videos of him in a bar with a woman that wasn’t his wife … the talking in circles about the benching of running back James Robinson … not knowing which players are on the field … the reports of tension with his assistant coaches … another report of receiver Marvin Jones Jr. walking out of the facility and yelling at Meyer because he was unhappy with something Meyer said about the receivers.

With one incident after another, compounded by the fact that the Jaguars were just 2-11, Khan really had no choice but to fire Meyer.

Now he’s faced with making the most important hire in franchise history. The Jaguars finally have the quarterback, the most important piece in any rebuild. Khan has to find a coach that will build around him, hire the right coordinator to bring in the offensive system that fits him best and create the culture in the building that Meyer promised but spectacularly failed to deliver.

And, most importantly, do it without any drama.

The problem is that Khan hasn’t gotten any of his football hires right. He retained general manager Gene Smith, who hired head coach Mike Mularkey. They lasted a year, and Khan hired GM Dave Caldwell, who hired Gus Bradley. Bradley won 14 games in four years before being fired.

Khan brought in Tom Coughlin as an executive, and he picked Doug Marrone to be the coach in 2017. That resulted in the lone successful season in Khan’s tenure, but Khan had to fire Coughlin in 2019 after the NFLPA warned players not to sign with the Jaguars because of the abundance of grievances filed by players that Coughlin fined.

Caldwell was fired in November 2020, and Marrone was fired after the 1-15 season ended, which led to Meyer.

Khan’s biggest flaw as an owner has been his inability to find the right people to lead his franchise. Hiring Meyer was a costly failure, and he can’t afford to make another mistake with his replacement.

If he does, he risks wasting a generational talent at quarterback and setting up the franchise for another lost decade.

This time, he has to get it right.

Actually non-interim coaches not making it to the end of their first season seems to be rarer than we thought.  The last may have been Lou Holtz in 1976 with the Jets.  He quit to go to Arkansas after the 13^th game of the 14-game season.

AFC EAST

BUFFALO

Donations are being made in Buffalo in the name of NFL officials.  Mike Florio ofProFootballTalk.com:

The real mafia collects envelopes. The Bills Mafia hands them out.

Via the Buffalo News, Bills fans unhappy with bad calls in Sunday’s loss to the Buccaneers have begun donating money to a local charity for the visually impaired, a slap at the alleged optical impairment of the officials assigned to the game.

Visually Impaired Advancement has collected more than $40,000, with $17 (Josh Allen’s number) once again being the typical amount of the donation. Another popular amount has become $14, reflecting the number worn by receiver Stefon Diggs. Diggs, on a key play late in the game, arguably was interfered with in the end zone.

VIA welcomes the donations.

“While we recognize that NFL referees are not visually impaired, $17 makes an impact on VIA to help individuals who are visually impaired,” VIA tweeted.

If officials were visually impaired, they’d have a better excuse for their repeated and consistent mistakes. We delved into the questionable calls from Bills-Bucs and other Week 14 games in the latest edition of After Further Review on PFT Live.

THIS AND THAT

THE GREAT QB RIVALRIES

Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady?  Troy Aikman vs. Brett Favre?

On the eve of a 4th match-up of PATRICK MAHOMES and JUSTIN HERBERT, what were the NFL’s greatest QB rivalries is the question asked and answered by Bill Barnwell of ESPN.com.  And its an answer we didn’t see coming:

On Thursday night, we’ll see the fourth game of a burgeoning rivalry between two of the most talented young quarterbacks in football. Justin Herbert made an unexpected debut in Week 2 against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs last season, taking over the Chargers’ starting job with no advance notice after Tyrod Taylor’s lung was punctured by the team doctor before the game. Herbert gave a good accounting of himself in a narrow 23-20 loss, but while the Chiefs swept the Chargers last season, Herbert & Co. roared back with a 30-24 victory in Week 3 this season.

More than any other combination of young quarterbacks in the league at the moment, this feels like it has the chance to turn into a classic rivalry in the years to come. All of the criteria you would look for are there. These are two of the best signal-callers, playing for successful teams, in a division in which they’ll get to face off twice per season. Mahomes might end up getting pitted against guys such as Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, but until the Broncos and Raiders land on someone as good as Herbert, this is going to be his closest rivalry.

Of course, what seems like a classic rivalry early in a pair of young careers doesn’t always go that way. It looked like Carson Wentz and Dak Prescott were going to play each other for a decade, but that ended when Wentz was dealt to the Colts earlier this season. Andrew Luck and Marcus Mariota were No. 1 overall picks playing each other in the AFC South, but neither is there any longer. Jay Cutler and Philip Rivers seemed like a perfect match of antagonists, but Cutler was traded away by former Broncos coach Josh McDaniels after three seasons. The Brett Favre-Steve Young-Troy Aikman triangle match in the early 1990s didn’t see one another often enough. You get the idea.

As I thought about it more, I realized that I needed to take a step backward. What actually qualifies as a significant, long-term rivalry in the NFL? How many times do two quarterbacks have to play each other before it stands out as historically significant? And is there a rivalry from history that might look like what we’ll hope to see from Mahomes and Herbert in the years to come?

To answer these questions, I looked at every quarterback matchup since 1970 in which the starter threw at least two passes. I tracked each passer’s record against every other starter he faced over the course of their respective careers. There have been a total of 12 quarterback rivalries over that timeframe in which two passers matched up against each other at least 16 times. Let’s run through those 12 matchups and what happened over the course of their rivalries. There are two quarterbacks who appear more than once on the list, and I would be surprised if you could guess either of them without cheating. I certainly couldn’t.

And one final thing before we start: Let’s not be pedantic. Saying one quarterback won a game over the other is recounting history. It’s not a stat measuring the quality of their play. Mahomes and Herbert will happily trade an impressive performance for a victory on Thursday night. Let’s see how the most substantial rivalries in modern league history went down:

12. Cam Newton vs. Matt Ryan

Ryan 10, Newton 6

We start with a rivalry that just qualified for this list last week. These two had plenty of opportunities to play each other in the NFC South, and while a matchup between two bad teams on the fringes of the playoff race last week didn’t exactly attract national attention, Ryan and Newton have had plenty to battle for in years past. These guys won consecutive MVP awards in 2015 and 2016, and you could argue that the Newton-Ryan rivalry played a key role in the former’s campaign.

In 2015, Newton’s best performance of the season by passer rating came in a 38-0 win over the Falcons, as he went 15-of-21 for 265 yards and three touchdowns before coming out in garbage time. Ryan and the Falcons responded two weeks later in Atlanta by ending 14-0 Carolina’s bid for a perfect season, as Ryan threw for 306 yards and a touchdown in a 20-13 game.

While the Falcons pulled out the upset victory that day, the Panthers made a habit of sealing their postseason bids in Atlanta. In Week 17 of the 2013 season, Carolina clinched its first NFC South title in the Newton era with a 21-20 overtime victory over the Falcons, sacking Ryan nine times in the process. The following year, in a winner-take-all game for the NFC South, a 6-8-1 Panthers team blew out the Falcons at the Georgia Dome. The 34-3 defeat led the Falcons to fire Mike Smith.

Ryan holds the overall lead in this rivalry, but Carolina’s victories have been more memorable.

11. Roger Staubach vs. Jim Hart

Staubach 11, Hart 5

In a battle of two quarterbacks who competed in the NFC East despite playing their home games west of the Mississippi, Hart’s Cardinals were some of the stiffest competition Staubach typically faced from year to year. Going 5-11 (.313) against Staubach might not sound impressive, but consider that the rest of the league went a combined 24-74 (.245) against the future Hall of Famer and his Cowboys.

The best years of the rivalry started in 1974, when Hart managed his first significant victory over Staubach. (He beat the Cowboys in 1970 in a game in which Staubach threw only six pass attempts.) Staubach’s Cowboys managed a split in ’74 and again the following year, but the Cardinals won the division both times, marking their first division titles since 1947, when they were the Chicago Cardinals. Hart & Co. faded after three competitive seasons, with Staubach winning five of the final six matchups before retiring.

10. Boomer Esiason vs. Warren Moon

Moon 10, Esiason 6

It’s incredible that Moon managed to start 16 NFL games against anyone, given that the CFL star didn’t make his NFL debut until he turned 28 in 1984. Esiason was five years younger than the Oilers star, but he took his NFL bow that same year. With the Oilers and Bengals competing twice a year in the AFC Central, 15 of their 16 matchups took place on those two teams. The one exception came in 1994, when a 38-year-old Moon threw for 400 yards and four interceptions as a member of the Vikings in a loss to Esiason’s Jets. The 400-4 club has only 12 members, but Moon and Esiason are both in it.

I can’t speak to the relationship between Esiason and Moon, but their two teams certainly did not like each other. Things came to a head in 1989, when the Bengals blew out the Oilers 61-7. Esiason was bloodied early in the game by a hit, and Cincinnati spent the rest of the game trying to run up the score and embarrass its rivals. Bengals coach Sam Wyche gave the sort of news conference that would break Twitter today. “We don’t like their team. We don’t like their people,” Wyche said after the game. “They’ve got their tails tucked between their legs and they’re going home, which is just the way it should be. They’re the dumbest, most undisciplined, stupid football team we’ve ever played.”

For a dumb, undisciplined football team, the Oilers still managed to go 10-5 against the Bengals with Moon facing Esiason.

9. Ken Anderson vs. Terry Bradshaw

Anderson 8, Bradshaw 8

Another classic rivalry from the Central, this is the only even matchup on our list. As you might suspect given their dynasty, Bradshaw and the Steelers dominated this game in the ’70s, with the Steel Curtain defense leading Pittsburgh to seven division titles in eight years. The Bengals broke up that streak with a title in 1973, and they played the Steelers closer than the rest of the league, but Pittsburgh won six of the first eight matchups between these two quarterbacks.

Things changed around the turn of the decade into the 1980s. Anderson looked like he might have been on his way out of the league, but the arrival of coach Forrest Gregg turned around the Bengals. Anderson swept the Steelers in 1980 and then blew out Bradshaw in 1981 in a season in which Anderson won MVP and the Bengals made it to the Super Bowl. Bradshaw got his revenge during the strike-shortened 1982 season and then played one more game before retiring.

8. Tom Brady vs. Peyton Manning

Brady 11, Manning 6

It’s only the most storied rivalry between two quarterbacks in league history. What I do find at least a little ironic, though, is that the original story between these two ended up flipped on its head. In the early debates comparing Brady and Manning, the arguments revolved around the idea that Manning posted better numbers, while Brady was the one who came up big in the postseason and kept blocking Manning’s path toward a Super Bowl. In the long run, while Brady posted the better overall record, Manning was the one who actually won the postseason battle, beating Brady in three of their five playoff matchups.

While there are several legendary games between these two, the game that stands out is the one that seemed to put this rivalry on equal footing. Brady won six straight games to start this rivalry, including two postseason contests. Manning and the Colts won back-to-back regular-season games in 2005 and 2006 to finally break their schneid, but in the way that we move the goalposts back for quarterbacks who struggle to win in the postseason, it didn’t count until Manning beat Brady in the playoffs.

Later in the 2006 season, Manning got his revenge in spectacular fashion. In the AFC Championship Game, a Manning pick-six put the Colts down 21-3 halfway through the second quarter. He brought the Colts back to tie the game at 21-21 in the third quarter, at which point the two teams traded touchdowns. The Patriots kicked a field goal to go up 34-31 with 3:53 to go and stopped Manning, but Brady couldn’t seal the game on the ensuing possession and went three-and-out, nearly throwing a pick-six in the process. Manning drove the Colts 80 yards in just over a minute for a winning touchdown. Brady drove the Pats to midfield and then threw an interception, sealing the game up for the Colts. Two weeks later, Manning had his first Super Bowl win. Brady didn’t win another Super Bowl until 2014.

Of course, Brady has done just fine. He holds flawless, undefeated records over Ryan (8-0), Philip Rivers (8-0) and Andrew Luck (6-0). The only signal-callers who have played Brady more than three times and posted a winning record against him are Drew Brees (against whom Brady is 3-5) and the guy in our next pairing, whose 3-2 record against Brady includes a pair of Super Bowl wins.

7. Eli Manning vs. Tony Romo

Romo 10, Manning 7

The other Manning brother had his own rivalry, and while the games between the Giants and Cowboys aren’t quite as legendary, they did not lack for drama. Romo started this rivalry by winning the first three matchups and ended it by winning his final five against Manning’s Giants. In just over a full season of work, Romo threw for 4,613 yards and 40 touchdowns against his division rivals.

As a microcosm of both their careers, while Romo won more frequently and posted better numbers, Manning won the games that were most consequential. The Cowboys swept the Giants during the regular season in 2007, scoring a combined 76 points across two games. The Cowboys won the East and hosted the Giants in the postseason, but Romo was battered by a dominant Giants pass rush and went just 18-of-36 for 201 yards in a 21-17 loss. The Giants would eventually follow their upset win over Dallas with a slightly more famous upset in the Super Bowl.

That was the only playoff game between these two, but they would hook up for a de facto playoff game in 2011. The final game of the regular season was a prime-time matchup between the Cowboys and Giants in which the winner would take the NFC East. Romo played well, but he turned the ball over twice. Manning had one of the best games of his career, throwing a 74-yard touchdown to Victor Cruz while going 24-of-33 for 346 yards and three touchdowns. A Giants team that had lost five out of six games weeks earlier won the East at 9-7 and ran off four straight playoff wins to claim the other Super Bowl of the Manning era.

6. Aaron Rodgers vs. Matthew Stafford

Rodgers 13, Stafford 4

Well, this is slightly more one-sided. Rodgers went 12-4 against Stafford’s Lions, and one of those losses was a Week 17 game in which Rodgers started and threw only five passes before leaving a 31-0 Lions rout. This doesn’t even include the more famous Week 17 game against the Lions that Matt Flynn started and threw for 480 yards and six touchdowns. Stafford threw for 520 yards and still lost, coming within 1 yard of the NFL record for most passing yards in a defeat.

Rodgers also holds a victory over Stafford in his new digs, with the Packers beating the Rams 36-28 in Week 12 this season. While Rodgers could get traded out of the NFC before the 2022 season begins, there’s still a chance of Stafford getting one final shot to overcome his tormentor on a significant stage. The Rams are huge favorites to finish with the No. 5 seed in the NFC by ESPN’s Football Power Index, while the Packers are in close to a dead heat with the Bucs for the No. 1 seed. If Green Bay finishes with the top seed and the Rams pull an upset in the wild-card round, there’s a decent chance these two would get one final shot against each other at Lambeau Field in the divisional round.

5. Terry Bradshaw vs. Dan Pastorini

Bradshaw 13, Pastorini 5

Well, this was one-sided. The Steelers weren’t exactly throwing the ball around the field all day, as Bradshaw threw 20 passes or fewer in nine of these 18 matchups, but they didn’t really give Pastorini’s Oilers much of a chance in the Central. The Steelers won these games by an average of more than 10 points. The Oilers didn’t win the division once in Pastorini’s nine years with the organization. Unlike the rivalry between Romo and Eli Manning, Bradshaw won most of the regular-season games and then cleaned up in the postseason, too.

The Oilers made playoff runs in 1978 and 1979, with the combo of Pastorini and running back Earl Campbell beating the Dolphins, Patriots and Broncos. Guess who ended their run both times? In 1978, the Oilers lost 34-5 to the Steelers in the AFC Championship Game, with Pastorini throwing five interceptions. The following year, Campbell could muster only 15 yards on 17 carries, while Pastorini posted a 74.0 passer rating in a controversial 27-13 loss. It was his last game with the organization, as the Oilers traded him to the Raiders for Ken Stabler the following offseason.

4. John Elway vs. Dave Krieg

Elway 10, Krieg 8

While the first 14 matchups between these teams came in the AFC West rivalry between the Broncos and Seahawks, Krieg actually ended up starting for four different teams against the future Hall of Famer. After leaving Seattle, he took up the fight for the Chiefs in 1992, the Cardinals in 1995 and the Bears in 1996. Elway finished with a winning record and is certainly the more notable quarterback, but Krieg battled Elway to a 7-7 draw in 14 games as the starter in Seattle.

These two never met in the playoffs, but they had a habit of meeting at the end of regular seasons. Six of their matchups in the AFC West took place during the final three weeks of the season. There, Krieg also held the upper hand, as his Chiefs and Seahawks went 4-2. Elway beat Krieg in the final week of the 1984 season to earn the Broncos a division title, but Krieg responded by winning four straight late-season matchups, including one that helped push the Seahawks ahead of the Broncos for a wild-card spot in 1988. This was a fairer, closer fight than you might have guessed from the names involved.

3. Joe Flacco vs. Ben Roethlisberger

Roethlisberger 12, Flacco 7

While there’s a slim chance we could get a 20th matchup between these two quarterbacks in 2022, the rumors surrounding Roethlisberger’s potential retirement and Flacco’s diminished level of play suggest this might be the final season for both. The Ravens-Steelers matchups of the past decade weren’t exactly the most stylish passing battles of their generation, but they were often dramatic in their own way. Surviving might have qualified as winning against some of those defenses.

This was another series that started as a one-sided streak. Roethlisberger won the first six matchups between these two, including an AFC Championship Game victory in 2008 and a dramatic comeback win in the divisional round two years later. The Steelers made it to the Super Bowl both seasons. Flacco responded by sweeping the Steelers in 2011 and beating Roethlisberger in the 2014 playoffs. They even had a bizarre shootout in 2017, with Roethlisberger throwing the ball 66 times for 506 yards as the Steelers clinched the AFC North title with a 39-38 win.

2. Jim Kelly vs. Dan Marino

Kelly 14, Marino 7

When I think about the possibility of a Herbert-Mahomes rivalry stretching a decade, this is the best-case scenario that comes to mind. Marino was the Mahomes of his generation, a quarterback who immediately emerged in his first full season as league MVP while molding the sport into something different and new with his arm. Herbert isn’t as obvious of a parallel for Kelly, who excelled in the USFL before making the move to the NFL, but the Bills were one of the most modern, pass-friendly schemes in the league running the “K-Gun” at their peak. Herbert’s Chargers are more creative on the defensive side and with their fourth-down decision-making, but just as modern football looks more like those Bills, football teams 20 years from now might look and play more like these Chargers.

As good as Marino and the Dolphins were at times, they just weren’t much of a match for the Bills. Marino swept Kelly and Buffalo in 1986, but after Marv Levy took over as the permanent coach the following year, Kelly won 12 of these next 15 matchups. The Bills proceeded to run off six division titles in eight years, with the Dolphins claiming the other two.

Crucially, Kelly’s Bills knocked the Dolphins out of the playoffs three times. The most heartbreaking of those losses for Miami came in 1992, when the Dolphins won the division and advanced into the AFC Championship Game. Marino threw two interceptions, and the Dolphins turned the ball over five times in a 29-10 home loss; the Dolphins haven’t made it back to the AFC Championship Game since.

1. Drew Brees vs. Matt Ryan

Brees 14, Ryan 9

I have to admit that I didn’t know the most frequent matchup of two quarterbacks in the post-merger history was between Brees and Ryan. We should have made a bigger deal about this last year! Of course, think about it for a minute and it makes a little more sense. Brees and Ryan were in the same division for more than a decade. Neither player has a track record of missing much time due to injuries before Brees went down over the past couple of seasons, with injuries costing him two more matchups against Ryan in 2020. If anything, it’s a surprise that these two never matched up in the playoffs.

Given how often they played, though, it’s hard to compare this rivalry to what we saw between, say, Brady and Peyton Manning. Those two were almost always quarterbacking very good football teams. In this matchup, as heated as Falcons and Saints fans can be, one or both of the teams were often bad. There weren’t many games late in the season in which both Ryan’s Falcons and Brees’ Saints had everything to play for in the NFC South.

There are a few late-season games that are close. In 2010, the 11-4 Saints beat the 12-3 Falcons, although Atlanta still went on to finish as the top seed in the NFC. A 45-16 blowout win over the Falcons the following season clinched the division for the Saints, although they lost in the playoffs at San Francisco in one of the greatest games in league history. In 2017, with a shot to take the division lead in Week 16 after beating the Saints two weeks earlier, the Falcons were manhandled in a 23-13 loss.

Of course, as frustrating as their teams could be at times, Falcons and Saints fans got to see a Hall of Fame quarterback and a borderline Hall of Famer duke it out 23 times over the course of 12 seasons. Given how bad quarterback situations can get around the NFL, that’s a victory in its own right. We can hope that Herbert and Mahomes end up having a spectacular, Brady-Manning-esque rivalry, but we’ll be lucky if they end up playing each other twice a year for the next decade, too.

Oh, his rankings are merely by the number of games played, not of impact or greatness.