The Daily Briefing Tuesday, September 6, 2022

AROUND THE NFL

DETROIT

Dan Campbell claims to be torn about who will call the Lions plays on Sunday.  Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press:

Whether he’s doing it to gain a competitive advantage ahead of Sunday’s season opener against the Philadelphia Eagles or because he really is torn on his decision, Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell still is not ready to name an offensive play-caller.

Campbell said Monday he feels like offensive coordinator Ben Johnson is ready to handle play-calling duties after doing so all preseason.

“But I think I am, too,” Campbell said at his weekly Monday news conference. “So this is going to be good. This’ll be fun. And he’s done a great job.”

Campbell called offensive plays for the final nine games of last season, after stripping those responsibilities from then-offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn following the Lions’ 0-8 start.

The Lions went 3-5-1 in the second half of last season and got substantially more production from their offense. Jared Goff saw his passer rating rise by nearly 20 points and the Lions averaged 4.5 points more per game.

Johnson doubled as pass game coordinator during that stretch, was promoted to offensive coordinator this winter and has drawn rave reviews in his new position.

He called plays in practice all spring and throughout training camp and manned the Lions’ offensive communication system in all three preseason games.

Asked who will call plays Sunday against the Eagles, Campbell said, “Well, this is going to be interesting. We’ll find out. I’m excited to know, too.”

Johnson, who has meshed his own coaching philosophies with Campbell’s ties to Sean Payton and Goff’s experience with the Los Angeles Rams in the Lions’ new playbook, kept the offense deliberately vanilla this preseason, and Campbell said there may be an edge in waiting to name a play-caller, too.

“I mean, maybe, maybe not, I don’t know,” Campbell said. “I’ll be honest with you, I’m just not quite there yet. I mean, I still have this eagerness to want to call it myself and so I’m just – man, it’s going to be. I don’t know. Pretty good.”

GREEN BAY

The DB has been through two Fantasy drafts, and the guy mentioned here by John Breech of CBSSports.com went undrafted.

NFC North

1. *Packers: 12-5

2. *Vikings: 10-7

3. Lions: 6-11

4. Bears: 4-13

NFC North bold prediction: Romeo Doubs wins Offensive Rookie of the Year

During his MVP season last year, Aaron Rodgers targeted Davante Adams 169 times and with Adams no longer on the roster, those targets have to go somewhere else and I’m guessing that a lot of them will be going to Doubs. The rookie receiver had an impressive training camp and although he’s struggled slightly with drops, I’m not too concerned about that. I mean, there was a concern about drops with Ja’Marr Chase during the preseason last year and everything seemed to work out just fine for him. This is a bold prediction because Doubs is currently somewhat of a long shot to win the award. At 14-to-1, there are four players with better odds.

WASHINGTON

QB CARSON WENTZ hasn’t played a snap – and last year’s backup QB TYLER HEINICKE is perceived as the number two.  But behind the scenes, some are gushing about the third quarterback.  Jason Burgos of Sportsnaut:

The 2022 NFL draft was seen as one of the weaker QB drafts in recent years. Only one was taken in the first round, and it wasn’t even the player many saw as the best in the class. While QB wasn’t high on the priority list for the Commanders after trading for Wentz before the draft, the team still took a flyer on North Carolina star Howell with their pick in the fifth round. In his opportunities during training camp and the preseason the 21-year-old has looked good, and there is a belief that the Commanders may have actually found a rare late-round gem.

On Thursday, Fox Sports NFL contributor Ralph Vacchiano reported on one NFL scout who considers Sam Howell “one of the steals of the draft.” While the same scout admitted there were some questions about Howell’s readiness for professional football, they were still stunned the Commanders were able to land such a skilled player so late in the draft.

“With his talent, he should have never lasted that long in the draft. That happens with quarterbacks. You don’t take them high if you don’t need them. But he was also inconsistent [in his final year at North Carolina]. There wasn’t a lot [of talent] around him, but the knock on him was that the tools were there, but he just didn’t look ready.”

Thus far, Howell has looked more ready than originally thought. In the preseason he put up very solid numbers going 43-of-69 on his passes, with 547 yards in the air, one touchdown, one interception and ran 13 times for 94 yards. He has also earned rave reviews during Commanders camp this summer. While he is not expected to play in 2022 with both Wentz and Heinicke in front of him on the depth chart, he is certainly giving the organization, and some in the NFL, reason to believe there may be a future QB star in Washington.

NEW ORLEANS

The Saints with semi-good news on rookie T TAYLOR PENNING.  Nick Shook of NFL.com:

In a surprise twist, Trevor Penning’s rookie season might not be finished after all.

The Saints received good news following Penning’s foot surgery: The rookie tackle has a chance to be ready to return by early November, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported on Monday. At the least, Penning should be able to practice by that point. At the most, he could end up being able to contribute in game action in a potentially valuable role.

Penning’s injury has already caused a roller coaster ride of emotions for Saints fans. What was initially deemed as turf toe ended up being more severe than initially anticipated, requiring a surgery that carried the potential to wipe out Penning’s entire rookie season. New Orleans’ hand-picked replacement for Terron Armstead was suddenly looking at missing a full campaign all because of an injury suffered in a 10-snap outing in the final game of the preseason.

Monday’s news brightens the outlook for New Orleans, which will still be forced to spend the first couple of months of the 2022 season (if not longer) without Penning, but can look forward to the possibility the rookie returns before Christmas.

In the meantime, the Saints will rely on veteran James Hurst, who appeared to have a slight edge over Penning in the battle for the left tackle job before Penning’s injury.

– – –

Tyler Greenawalt of YahooSports.com on the non-re-build of the Saints:

This is not a rebuild

I repeat: This is not a rebuild.

That’s effectively what New Orleans Saints general manager Mickey Loomis has said for the past two offseasons despite losing Drew Brees to retirement after the 2020 season and then losing head coach Sean Payton after the 2021 season.

“I think our team feels confident in our ability, but there’s so many variables that go into a season,” Loomis said at the start of training camp this year. “But we’re not a rebuild. This isn’t a rebuild, I guess is the best way to describe it. Yeah, we think we can win now.”

He proved that this offseason by circumventing the traditional teardown roster strategy.

Instead of trading away key assets to bolster draft capital, Loomis traded up twice in the 2022 draft to select Ohio State receiver Chris Olave with the 11th overall pick and then grab Northern Iowa offensive tackle Trevor Penning with the 19th overall pick. Instead of pinching pennies in free agency, Loomis paid for veteran players like receiver Jarvis Landry and safeties Tyrann Mathieu and Marcus Maye, all while clearing $110 million in cap space primarily by pushing big cap hits to future years.

And finally, Loomis didn’t go out and mortgage the future by acquiring a new quarterback — even though there were many available this offseason. He re-signed Jameis Winston to give the position some semblance of continuity with the majority of the offensive coaching staff returning under new head coach Dennis Allen, who was promoted from defensive coordinator.

With all of these moves, Loomis and the Saints are trying to pull off one of the hardest things in the NFL: a soft reboot of the roster without a succession plan at quarterback.

And it just might work.

One of the tenets of Loomis’ roster-building strategy, according to his former boss, colleague and ex-Saints GM Randy Mueller, is to never get rid of good players. The idea is simple enough because it guarantees some level of consistency across your roster and keeps the team at least as competitive as in years past, barring injury or decline in production.

“He’s seen the work that they’ve done to get these players. Why would we change course now?” Mueller told Yahoo Sports. “He just wants to add to it that, that’s why you see some of these signings. … And that’s always been our philosophy.”

Take a look at what the Saints will look like in 2022. They return most of the key contributors to their 2021 defense, which finished third in Football Outsiders’ defensive DVOA but replaced safety Marcus Williams with Mathieu and Maye. Running back Alvin Kamara is back. Receiver Michael Thomas is back and healthy. The offensive line is mostly intact save for Terron Armstead, who earned a lucrative deal with the Miami Dolphins in free agency. And Winston is recovered from his Week 8 ACL tear.

Loomis then added a good possession receiver in Landry and injected the dynamic Olave to supercharge Winston’s receiving corps.

“I think they’re gonna be one of the better teams in the league, in my opinion,” Mueller said, “if they get some consistent play from the quarterback. I think they’re better this year than they were last year.”

Loomis has done the complete teardown before. When he replaced Mueller in 2002, Loomis traded star running back Ricky Williams to the Miami Dolphins for four picks, including two first-rounders, sent Pro Bowl tackle Willie Roaf to the Kansas City Chiefs, and let defensive tackle La’Roi Glover walk in free agency. All in one offseason.

And It didn’t work.

The Saints toiled in mediocrity for years before Loomis hired Payton and traded for Brees in 2006. That year, the Saints immediately won the division and made it to the divisional round of the playoffs. Loomis’ previous team, the Seattle Seahawks, went to the postseason just four times during his 15-year tenure before he followed Mueller to New Orleans in 2000.

So forgive Loomis if he doesn’t want to go back to being a bottom-half NFL franchise again.

Jameis Winston is the key

The Saints didn’t have a firm quarterback plan in place for a post-Brees world (despite Payton’s Taysom Hill experience), so Loomis is once again banking on the former No. 1 overall pick in Winston to play well enough to keep the Saints afloat in 2022.

That’s a risky decision when you consider the successful succession strategies with the Green Bay Packers (from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers) and Kansas City Chiefs (from Alex Smith to Patrick Mahomes), but Winston proved to be a more-than-serviceable quarterback for the Saints before his season-ending ACL tear in Week 8.

He had the highest touchdown percentage of any quarterback through the first seven weeks of the season and only threw three interceptions up to that point. His 102.4 passer rating ranked 11th and his yards per competition ranked eighth. Winston’s completion percentage and passing yards were below average, but the Saints still held a 5-2 record before his injury.

“I don’t think they’re expecting Jameis to elevate everybody else,” Mueller said. “They just want him to be functional and understand the system and make the plays that come his way. They don’t need a hero.”

TAMPA BAY

For some reason, the media seem to think that QB TOM BRADY might no longer be “all in” after 2+ decades of intensity.  Mike Florio:

The Buccaneers sit six days away from their first game of the 2022 regular season. With the fumes of quarterback Tom Brady‘s 11-day training-camp hiatus still lingering, it’s inevitable that questions about Brady’s status will emerge, from time to time.

On Monday, coach Todd Bowles was asked whether Brady continues to be “all-in” for the season.

 “He’s been all-in since we got him,” Bowles said, ignoring the nearly two weeks when Brady was literally all-out.

“He’s all-in now,” Bowles immediately added, perhaps remembering the still-unexplained (other than to say “I’ve got a lot of shit going on”) absence. “I don’t follow the off-the-field stuff. I listen to XM The Groove and Soul Town. My off-the-field activities are honestly not even football-related.”

By mentioning that he doesn’t follow “the off-the-field stuff,” Bowles acknowledged the existence of it, whatever it may be. The New York Post, owned by the same family that owns Brady’s eventual broadcasting employer, has been pushing the link between his absence and marital discord. That’s the only real “off-the-field stuff” that has secured any type of actual traction, as it relates to potential explanations for Brady’s unprecedented departure from camp.

(Then there’ the “off-the-field stuff” about him wanting to be on-the-field with the Dolphins. If we believe the NFL’s findings regarding persistent tampering by Miami, it’s hard to conclude that Brady has constantly been “all-in since we got him.” And he retired for 40 days, too. So, not “all-in.”)

Regardless, it would be far more difficult for Brady to up and leave during the season, which seems to be what the question was getting at. The fact that he was gone for 11 days in camp makes it something other than completely impossible.

The Bucs have a Week 11 bye. That’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It’s hard not to look at the schedule and wonder whether Brady will exit from the end of the Seahawks game in Germany on November 13 and return as late as possible while still being ready to go for a trip to face a Browns team that could be limping into its last contest without Deshaun Watson.

We know Florio needs clicks, but Brady’s absence was scripted early (not sudden and unexplained).  The fact that we don’t know what he was up to, doesn’t mean it wasn’t important and understood by the Buccaneers.  We know for a fact that Brady was in contact with the team, monitoring developments and practice throughout his absence.

If Brady had been compelled to leave the team for 11 days due to Covid policy, no one would be doubting his commitment.  We feel his reasons, whatever they might be, were significant and understandable.

John Breech of CBSSports.com thinks Brady is so into 2022 that he will set, with the help of a 17^th game, one of the few records he does not hold:

NFC South

1. *Buccaneers: 10-7

2. *Saints: 9-8

3. Panthers: 7-10

4. Falcons: 4-13

NFC South bold prediction: Tom Brady sets single-season record for most passing yards

Tom Brady already holds nearly every NFL passing record, so why not add one more? The Buccaneers quarterback threw for 5,316 yards last season, which was the third-highest single-season total in NFL history. Although Brady was impressive last year, apparently he might be even better this year.

Bruce Arians says that Tom Brady is ‘throwing the better than I’ve ever seen him throw it’

— NFL on Scoreboard Page (@NFLonSP) September 1, 2022

Not even an 11-day vacation can slow him down.

If Brady is throwing it better than ever, then the NFL should just cancel the season because there’s no way he’s going to let Tampa Bay lose a single game. The only concern with this prediction is that Brady might not survive the season playing behind Tampa Bay’s battered offensive line. If he does survive, I won’t be surprised if he tops Peyton Manning’s record of 5,477 passing yards that was set in 2013.

ARIZONA

Will the Cardinals with a hugely-compensated QB be worse than the Seahawks who are scraping along from the bargain basement?  John Breech of CBSSports.com thinks so:

NFC West

1. *Rams: 11-6

2. *49ers: 10-7

3. Seahawks: 6-11

4. Cardinals: 6-11

NFC West bold prediction: Cardinals finish in last place

After watching the Cardinals make the playoffs last season, I’m predicting that they totally collapse this year. The two things that worry me the most are the loss of DeAndre Hopkins (who’s suspended for the first six games) and their depth at corner. On the Hopkins end, since acquiring him in March 2020, the Cardinals offense has struggled whenever he’s not on the field, which means they might struggle to score points early in the season. Also, they’re going to be short-handed at corner with Antonio Hamilton missing at least the first four games of the season. Not being able to score and not being able to stop the pass could mean trouble early in the season since the Cards open the year with consecutive games against three high-powered offenses in the Chiefs, Raiders and Rams. If the Cardinals start 0-3, I could see them fully imploding from there.

Kliff Kingsbury has never opened a season slowly, not at Texas Tech nor Arizona.  That said he has imploded late in the season every year.

SAN FRANCISCO

Albert Breer of SI.com on why QB JIMMY GAROPPOLO ended up back in Santa Clara.

I think, to close the book on it, the Niners’ decision to renew (temporary) vows with Jimmy Garoppolo is an attempt to make chicken salad out of the chicken you-know-what. I can also say with confidence that, when the team went to its 30-year-old now-backup quarterback, it did so knowing that it was working with an idea that really was not what anyone wanted.

Garoppolo wanted to start. The Niners wanted picks for him.

Garoppolo had shoulder surgery in March, which made it tough for any team to grant his wish, especially since this happens to be a contract year for him. And because it was hard for quarterback-needy teams to reckon with the idea of trading for a quarterback with a balky throwing shoulder, it became impossible for the Niners to get fair value for him.

Which is why we’re here with a compromise that has Garoppolo back as the backup—with Kyle Shanahan having declared Trey Lance the starter—on a deal worth, purposefully, less than the rookie deal Lance is playing on. Doing the deal, which has a $6.5 million base, $500,000 in per-game roster bonuses, and $8.45 million in incentives, buys both sides time to see if, either through injury or poor play, another opportunity arises for a trade.

In the meantime, and if one doesn’t, if Garoppolo does get a chance to play, because of injury or whatever else, between now and the end of the year, there’d be no better place for him to showcase himself for 2023 than with a team and in a scheme he knows inside and out.

So as we said in the mailbag last week, this is in no way ideal. But I understand why the Niners would do it. There’s too much on the line with the roster to worry about hurt feelings. And while I’d heard the news was, as you’d expect, a little complicated for Lance to take at first, he’s a smart, mature kid who I believe can handle it. Truth is, if he couldn’t, you might have bigger questions about where the Niners are at the position.

LOS ANGELES RAMS

WR VAN JEFFERSON is the only player on the Rams injury report.  Charean Williams of ProFootballTalk.com:

The Rams’ first injury report brought good news for the defending Super Bowl champions. They listed only one player on it.

Receiver Van Jefferson did not practice with a knee injury.

Jefferson underwent “minor” surgery Aug. 2 after an earlier surgery on the same knee in the offseason.

He caught 50 passes for 802 yards and six touchdowns last season after making 19 receptions for 220 yards and one touchdown as a rookie in 2020.

While Jefferson appears to be trending toward not playing in Thursday’s season opener, quarterback Matthew Stafford, running backs Cam Akers and Darrell Henderson Jr. and cornerback Jalen Ramsey were not on the report. All are healthy and ready to play after missing time in camp.

LOS ANGELES CHARGERS

The Chargers are featured in a bold prediction from John Breech of CBSSports.com:

AFC West

1. *Chargers: 12-5

2. *Chiefs: 11-6

3. Broncos: 10-7

4. Raiders: 9-8

AFC West bold prediction: Every team in the division finishes above .500

The AFC West is so loaded this year that the entire division could end up making NFL history. Since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970, there has NEVER been a season where every single team in a division finished with a winning record. There have been several seasons where the last place team finished 8-8 (most recently in 2008 NFC East), but there’s never been an instance where every team finished ABOVE .500. With Patrick Mahomes, Russell Wilson, Justin Herbert and Derek Carr at quarterback, it’s hard to imagine any team in this division finishing the year with a losing record.

BALTIMORE

John Breech of CBSSports.com is among a considerable number of folks who see the Ravens going worst-to-first in the AFC North:

1. *Ravens: 12-5

2. *Bengals: 11-6

3. Steelers: 8-9

4. Browns: 6-11

AFC North bold prediction: Ravens go from worst-to-first

Every year, the NFL seems to produce at least one team that goes from worst-to-first. Last year, it was the Bengals, and this year, I think that team is once again going to come from the AFC North with Baltimore. Although the Ravens finished at the bottom of the division last year, their 8-9 record was arguably kind of impressive when you consider how many players they lost to injury. I could try and list them all here, but my keyboard might explode if I tried to list that many names (There were a lot of them). Not only did they lose Lamar Jackson for five games, but they also lost key starters like cornerbacks Marcus Peters and Marlon Humphrey, along with running backs J.K. Dobbins and Gus Edwards. As long as they can stay healthy, I think they can win the division.

PITTSBURGH

It’s Captain Mitchell Trubisky!  And likely QB1 for Sunday with the Bengals.  Myles Simmons of ProFootballTalk.com:

Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin has not yet publicly named a starting quarterback.

But Pittsburgh may have given a clue as to who will line up behind center when the team takes on Cincinnati to open the season on Sunday.

Quarterback Mitchell Trubisky has been named one of the Steelers five captains for 2022, the team announced on Monday.

Trubisky, who signed with Pittsburgh in March, put together a strong preseason, completing 70.6 percent of his passes for 283 yards with a pair of touchdowns and no interceptions. He also rushed for 14 yards.

Even if Trubisky begins the season as Pittsburgh’s starter, it’s likely only a matter of time before the team turns to first-round selection Kenny Pickett. But if Trubisky and the Steelers start winning and keep winning, Trubisky could hold Pickett off.

Pittsburgh also named running back Najee Harris, defensive tackle Cam Heyward, edge rusher T.J. Watt, and safety Miles Killebrew as captains.

Heyward is a defensive captain for the eighth straight season. Watt is a second-time defensive captain. Harris and Killebrew are first-time captains on offense and special teams, respectively.

Last year, Pittsburgh had only three captains: Heyward, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, and fullback Derek Watt on special teams.

Harris is a captain in only his second season, playing a position that is not usually a hotbed of captaincy.

Thoughts from former QB Ben Roethlisberger as monitored by Bryan DeArdo of CBSSports.com:

“In my opinion, I think Mitchell Trubisky is the starter,” Roethlisberger said on his new podcast. “He should start. He’s a veteran, he’s been around for a while, he gives you, in my opinion, the best chance to win right now.”

While he feels Trubisky should be the starter, Roethlisberger was impressed with Kenny Pickett’s performance during the preseason. The third quarterback on the depth chart at the start of training camp, Pickett gradually saw his reps with the Steelers’ first-team offense grow throughout the summer. He threw three touchdowns and no interceptions while completing over 80% of his passes during the preseason.

“Kenny has done a great job,” Roethlisberger said. “From what I’ve seen in the preseason, you wouldn’t be like, ‘Oh man, he’s a rookie. He’s got some learning curves.’ … I think he’s done a great job.”

Roethlisberger feels that Pickett should mimic what Big Ben did at the start of his rookie season, when he started the 2004 season behind veteran Tommy Maddox. Maddox started the Steelers’ first two games before an injury thrust Roethlisberger into the starting lineup. Roethlisberger went on a tear while setting a rookie record by winning his first 15 regular season starts.

“I would say this about almost all rookie quarterbacks, it benefits you to sit behind a veteran for a little bit of time,” Roethlisberger said. “And I think Mitch is a great leader, a great football player, he’s a great athlete, he’s a good quarterback. The brought him in here for a reason, and I think he’s going to mentor Kenny and I think he’ll really help Kenny a lot. But in my opinion, it should be Mitch’s job for the time being. If Mitch plays well, keep him in there. And even if Mitch has a bad game or something, it doesn’t mean [to] just yank him.”

Roethlisberger, who has spoken with both Trubisky and Pickett since joining the Steelers, wants Steelers fans to give Trubisky a fair shake should Tomlin anoint him as Pittsburgh’s starting quarterback to start the 2022 season.

“People are so excited for Kenny, which they should be. He played at Pitt, they’re super excited for him,” Roethlisberger said. “I just hope the fans, the first time Mitch doesn’t play well, they don’t start booing him or yank him or do something like that. … It will be interesting to see, but I do, in my opinion, feel that it’s Mitch’s job. He hasn’t done anything to lose the job. He’s played well enough to be the starter. But ultimately it’s going to be Coach T’s decision.”

INDIANAPOLIS

John Breech of CBSSports.com with an intriguing thought on the great rushers of the AFC South:

AFC South

1. *Colts: 10-7

2. Titans 8-9

3. Jaguars: 6-11

4. Texans: 5-12

AFC South bold prediction: Derrick Henry and Jonathan Taylor both top 1,900 rushing yards

The AFC South has arguably the two best running backs in the NFL in Henry and Taylor, so I’m putting them in a prediction together. The reason this qualifies as a bold prediction is because it’s NEVER happened in NFL history. There’s never been a season where two running backs both rushed for more than 1,900 yards. The closest it came to happening was in 2003 when Baltimore’s Jamal Lewis (2,066 yards) and Green Bay’s Ahman Green (1,883) both ran for more than 1,880 yards. Although Henry has been one of the NFL’s best running backs throughout his six-year career, he’s only topped 1,900 yards once. As for Taylor, his career-high came last season when he led the NFL with 1,811 yards. This year, I’ll predict they both top 1,900.

– – –

Zac Keefer of The Athletic looks at QB MATT RYAN on the cusp of his first season with the Colts:

“We need to get this shit right!” the new quarterback snapped, stopping everyone cold.

It was mid-May, and Matt Ryan was livid. He was six snaps into one of his first workouts with his new team, starting over for the first time in 14 years, a veteran QB toeing that delicate line of being too pushy too soon with not wanting — or in Ryan’s mind, not allowing — lazy habits to seep into spring practices.

To hell with it, he decided. Ryan screamed. The field fell silent. Heads turned. Eyes shot up. Feet froze.

The man had their attention.

“If we’re gonna play like pros,” he continued, “then we need to practice like pros!”

The Colts had reconvened for offseason work and were starting to run through offensive sets in the team’s indoor facility. The mood was casual, the load light, the play sloppy. The start of practice had been littered with what the coaching staff call M.E.s — missed errors — and with each mistake, Ryan grew hotter, his fury simmering beneath his helmet.

 “To be honest, guys were going through the motions,” lineman Danny Pinter remembered.

“It was bad,” running back Nyheim Hines said.

Finally, the QB lost it. Ryan stopped the practice, then lit into them.

“We need to be fucking better than this!” he shouted.

Back to the first scripted play, Ryan ordered. He had the entire offense start the practice over.

It was one of those little moments that gets lost in a long season, but for a franchise perpetually starting over at the most critical position in the sport — Ryan is the Colts’ fifth different Week 1 starting quarterback in as many years — it was a telling one. The QB hadn’t been in town for a month, but his new teammates could feel it: Ryan wasn’t here for the nonsense.

“He knows when it’s not right,” head coach Frank Reich said.

“Some quarterbacks, you have a few M.E.s and they’re like, ‘We’ll just fix it later,’” added veteran tight end Mo Alie-Cox. “Matt literally stopped practice and made us go back to the first play.

“This wasn’t even training camp. This was OTAs. That’s when you’re like, ‘Oh, he is that dude.’”

After the Falcons decided to chase Deshaun Watson, Ryan decided to pick up the phone. Publicly, he stayed silent through it all, sitting back while his employer of 14 years — the franchise he’d lifted after the Michael Vick saga, then carried for a decade and a half, winning an MVP and damn near a Super Bowl along the way — chased his potential successor, a quarterback who’d been accused by 24 different women of sexual assault and misconduct.

Privately, he knew it was time.

What few knew during that first week of free agency: While Atlanta was openly courting Watson, they were quietly shopping Ryan. Kyle Smith, the Falcons’ assistant general manager, had reached out to his counterpart in Indianapolis, Ed Dodds, wanting to gauge the Colts’ interest in the 36-year-old. For the majority of their pursuit, most within the Falcons’ building assumed Watson was theirs. Smith was looking for a way to move the franchise’s all-time leading passer.

The Colts weren’t the only team interested, but Atlanta wanted to do right by him. Ryan, they felt, deserved it.

“I’m not saying yes or no right now,” Dodds told Smith during that initial call. “I need to check him out. I’ll call you back in the next day or so.”

The Falcons let Ryan know the Colts were thinking on it. So while Dodds, general manager Chris Ballard and Reich dug in on the QB — Reich and his offensive staff watched every throw he made the last two seasons — the QB dug in on the Colts. Ryan’s first call was an easy one, his first question a crucial one.

“What’s the owner like?” he asked Peyton Manning. “Is he really about winning?”

Ryan knew if he was going to make a move at this stage of his career, it’d be with one aim in mind: to make a run at a championship. He wasn’t changing teams to go 7-10 and limp into retirement. He’d been around the league long enough to know how it really works; how everything, no matter the organization, starts at the top. When it comes to winning, plenty of owners talk a big game. Few actually live it.

Ryan had to know if Jim Irsay — the eclectic, outspoken, oft-polarizing czar in Indianapolis — was for real.

“The type of stuff,” Ryan said, “that you don’t know unless you’re there, inside the building, every day.”

So he reached out to Manning, the greatest player in franchise history, the QB Ryan had idolized as a teenager and gotten to know since he entered the league in 2008. “Growing up,” Ryan admitted, “he was exactly who I wanted to be.”

Manning’s counsel, then, would carry considerable weight as Ryan processed playing somewhere besides Atlanta for the first time as a pro. Manning had changed teams late in his own career, pushed out the door by the franchise with whom he’d always expected to retire. The man behind that gutting decision 10 years ago — Irsay — was the very person Ryan wanted to know more about.

“Jim’s all about winning,” Manning told Ryan when they spoke. “It’s about championships. That’s the mindset.”

Ryan needed to hear it from someone he trusted.

“If you’re going to make that move at that point of your career,” he explained, “then you wanna make sure the building’s wired that way. One hundred percent, I had to hear that.”

His next call was to another retired quarterback, Philip Rivers, who’d spent the last of his 17 NFL seasons with the Colts in 2020. Specifically, Ryan needed Rivers’ intel on Reich — Ryan had no previous relationship with the Colts’ coach whatsoever — and the staff. He also wanted a read on the playbook, the offensive philosophy, the locker room.

What about the city?

The schools?

“His family situation is a bit different than mine,” Ryan said of Rivers, who has nine kids at home (Ryan and his wife, Sarah, have twin 4-year-old boys). “But when it comes to football, I respect his opinion. With Phil, he’s pure. It’s honest.

“There are only so many guys who understand what it’s like to play this position as a starter, and even fewer who are in the same place 10, 12, 15 years,” Ryan continued. “He loved San Diego. He got out of bed every day and was wired to do it for them. But when you leave that, whatever the circumstances, and ours were a little bit different, there’s a lot of unknown. He loved it here. His family loved it here. He loved the building. I had a lot of boxes I needed to check, and he answered a lot of my questions.”

Over that week, Ryan kept making calls, kept digging, kept jotting down notes, not unlike a quarterback surveying the field before deciding where he wants to go with the football. He reached out to a few former Falcons front-office staffers, wanting the skinny on Ballard and how he operates.

Then, on that Friday, five days into free agency, Watson stunned those around the league, choosing to sign a five-year, $230 million fully guaranteed contract with the Browns. The Falcons, meanwhile, had already given Ryan permission to meet virtually with the Colts. So a day later, while Sarah put the boys to bed, the QB retreated to the upstairs office of his suburban Atlanta home, and for two hours spoke with Reich, Ballard, offensive coordinator Marcus Brady and assistant QB coach Parks Frazier via Zoom.

It was the first time Ryan had spoken with another team since the draft process in 2008.

He laughed, thinking of the memory.

“Back then, I was answering questions,” he said. “I wasn’t asking them.”

This time he was, pushing Reich on strategy and scheme and Ballard on personnel. He wanted to know how much he could bring over from Atlanta, how collaborative Reich would be when it came to game planning each week.

“I’d done my homework before and had a pretty good feeling going into it,” Ryan said. “But you just don’t know. I remember thinking, ‘This is the actual game.’ It had to feel right. And it did.”

Late that night, after the call had wrapped, Ryan walked downstairs, his mind racing forward. His wife met him in the kitchen, anxious for details.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“I’m in,” he told her.

Ryan started showing up at the Colts’ facility for crack-of-dawn workouts in April, a few weeks after the trade from Atlanta was finalized. Most of his new teammates weren’t in town yet, but the personnel staff was, logging long hours ahead of the draft. Morocco Brown, one of the Colts’ top execs, likes to show up early, and one morning he was strolling through the locker room on his way to a meeting when he caught Ryan, dripping in sweat, sitting alone at his locker.

It was just past 6 a.m.

“Why such an early start?” Brown asked.

“Man, when you’ve been doing this 14 years,” Ryan told him, “it’s just part of your DNA.”

That was Ryan’s spring, for nine long weeks: Every Sunday night, he’d fly to Indianapolis while Sarah and the boys stayed back in Atlanta and finished the school year. He’d spend five days at the team facility, diving into Reich’s playbook, meeting his new teammates and coaches, starting over, in a sense, for the first time since he was a rookie. He’d fly back on Friday nights, just in time to coach T-ball on Saturday mornings.

“From that Monday to Friday, it was all-in,” Ryan said. “And I needed it. It wasn’t just X’s and O’s. I’ve had new coaches before, but I’ve never had this many new teammates. You have to get to know these guys. It takes time.”

Listen closely to those on the inside, to those in the building every day, and it’s obvious: There’s a sense of calm within the organization that wasn’t there a year ago. Ryan’s arrival has settled the franchise, and so far, has offered the type of stability this team sorely craved after a tumultuous year with Carson Wentz.

For all the talent he brought to Indianapolis, for all the big-play potential he flashed, Wentz grew wildly erratic late in the season, furthering an unease among the team’s top decision-makers that he wasn’t the answer to their years-long quarterback riddle. The Colts didn’t know what they were getting week to week, let alone snap to snap, and that’s a hard way to live in the NFL.

Reich tried his best to coach around it. In the end, he failed.

An irate Irsay laid down his demands hours after the Week 18 debacle in January, the “ass-chewing” — those are Ballard’s words — that would shape the bold and ambitious offseason that followed. Under no circumstances, Irsay told his coach and GM that night, would Wentz return in 2022.

In the months that followed, the owner has repeatedly made his feelings known, often in blunt fashion.

“I think the worst thing you can do is have a mistake and try to keep living with it going forward,” Irsay said at the league meetings in March. “For us, it was something we had to move away from as a franchise. It was very obvious.”

So they did. On a late night call with Irsay 24 hours after the meeting with Ryan, Ballard bristled over trade terms. His boss pushed him over the line.

“Get it done, Chris,” Irsay instructed.

The Colts sent a third-round pick — they had an extra one after shipping Wentz to Washington a few weeks prior — to Atlanta to cement the deal. In turn, they landed the quarterback they hope will be the first to start successive seasons for the team in seven long years.

Ryan doesn’t have the same physical gifts as his predecessor, but there is less unpredictability to his game, less imagination. His camp was consistent in a way the Colts needed after the ups and downs of 2021. His demeanor — cool and confident off the field, unshakeable on it — has given the Colts a conviction they’ve lacked at the position since Rivers retired.

“His presence settles everybody,” Reich said of his new QB. “Listen, every guy is focused, every guy is all business, but Matt is just at another level. He’s out here to work.”

“He’s like gravity,” added third-string QB Sam Ehlinger. “He’s the centerpiece that holds everything together.”

Ballard said it took him all of an hour to know Ryan was for real, the right fit at the right time for a team that finds itself looking for a new QB every offseason.

“You can feel it,” the GM said. “He’s got an urgency and he’s got an expectation, not only from himself, but for others. It’s hard to demand much of others if you’re not putting it out there yourself — which he does.”

– – –

Before Ryan arrived, Hines — who like some Colts is playing with his fifth QB in five seasons — had never heard of the acronym D.T.A. It stands for decision-making, timing and accuracy — the three tenets of Ryan’s approach. “I’ve never heard a quarterback talk about accuracy like Matt,” Hines explained. “If you’re running a route that calls for him to hit you on the outside shoulder, he’s gonna hit you on the outside shoulder. Because if he doesn’t — let’s say he hits you in the numbers — he’s gonna call himself out in a meeting and tell everyone, ‘I’ve gotta throw a better ball. I told you outside shoulder, I gotta hit the outside shoulder.’”

Pierce spent camp trying to break some of the bad habits he entered the league with from college. Among them: how he runs his slant routes. At Cincinnati, Pierce would run them flat, near the line of scrimmage. “Do that in this league,” Ryan warned him early, “and you’ll run straight into a linebacker.” Pierce has been running them higher ever since.

Ryan is demanding, but chat with his teammates long enough and they’ll offer a peek at his other side. The moment that meant the most to Campbell came before the preseason opener in Buffalo, as the Colts jogged onto the field for the first time. After seeing just 15 games of a possible 40 his first three years, Campbell knows this is his last shot in Indianapolis to prove he can stay healthy.

“You ready?” Ryan asked him that afternoon.

“Yes, sir,” Campbell shot back.

“Good,” the QB said, “because this is going to be the best year of your career.”

MIAMI

Albert Breer of SI.com delves into the mind of Coach Mike McDaniel:

I’ve known the skinny, 5’9″ former Yale receiver for quite some time, and while I can say it’s accurate that he’s faced a lot of arched eyebrows over his nonfootball-coach-ish appearance and presentation, I did wonder whether we’d get to it when we sat down and talked.

That he took me there, and not the other way around, I think, is proof positive he has and will continue to take those sorts of questions head-on.

At least for now, it seems to be working. On the steamy, triple-digit-heat-index day I stopped by to watch practice, the quarterback that McDaniel’s been charged with advancing was asked in his press conference what’s been different about this year vs. the past two, under Brian Flores, and Tua Tagovailoa answered simply “everything.” He then added that McDaniel is perhaps the most optimistic person he knows, and that the team’s confidence has soared as a result over the past few months.

That, by the way, is because of who McDaniel is, which if you can’t tell, is unapologetically himself. And to sort out how to pull the idea of that altogether, Miami PR chief Anne Noland asked him how he’d explain what leadership means to him. The two workshopped it down to five words—Leadership is sacrifice and service.

“I really looked at what, on the day-to-day, that I view leadership as, and one part of it is service,” he said. “So you’re serving all these people. I mean, you’re doing the whole situation injustice if you’re not looking at how it’s that person’s dream to work here—the people in the lunchroom, the weight staff, the coaches, the players. So on a daily basis, I don’t have to give myself a pep talk. I’m organically motivated to serve them because I’m acknowledging that is my role.

“So I have to do everything in my power to make sure that time that they’re with me, which is a very large piece of the pie of their dream, that I max that out. That service is something that’s in the forefront of my mind all the time. In doing that, there’s a great deal of sacrifice if you’re gonna do it the right way, where I have to sacrifice feelings. It doesn’t matter if I feel like just shutting my door and having people leave me alone. I don’t feel like that’s right, because people need that role in one way, shape or form.”

And that part of the job is, well, different, too, than where McDaniel was working with Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco, where he’d be given carte blanche to disappear on Monday and resurface Wednesday with that week’s run game plan—which is a big reason why the 49ers were such a nightmare to deal with on the ground the past five years.

All the same, by making himself available and setting an optimistic tone, McDaniel isn’t avoiding the harsh realities that a head coach has to deal with, even if those realities are packaged, again, differently than you might see them with another head coach. McDaniel’s been effusive in his praise of Tyreek Hill but isn’t afraid to call him out in a team meeting, the way he’ll criticize anyone who doesn’t have something down the way they need to.

McDaniel’s message to his players: Everyone is accountable, including the player they pay the most.

“Who should be the most secure person in the building?” McDaniel said. “Probably the guy we pay the most. So what happens when you start meetings off every time and you praise him for stuff but immediately you explain, Hey, do this better; Or Yeah, it’s good, but this could be that much better?”

So when McDaniel puts GPS speed-tracking numbers from practice for every player up on the projector in a meeting, no one blinks. If Hill can be held accountable, everyone else can be, too.

And the message gets sent on a team-wide basis, too. For example, the Dolphins came out sluggish in their first practice, a nonpadded session, after a preseason win over the Buccaneers. As a result, McDaniel put the team in full pads the day before their joint sessions with the Eagles, for their first practice after their second preseason game.

“Why do you have to be an a–hole about it? Why can’t you just say, Hey, look, this is not good enough?” McDaniel continued. “I’ve always thought it was funny how there’s a misconception with players, that as a coach, people want to be liked. They’ll like you if you can help them. And if they know that you’re 100%, without an agenda, just flat-out trying to make them better.”

So in exchange for pushing them in these ways—McDaniel said a lot of players told him this spring’s OTAs were the most challenging set they’ve been through as pros—there’s a lot of other things that he’ll let go.

If Hill wants to go on a podcasting tour, so be it. On the day I was there, McDaniel joked that “Jaelan Phillips was wearing three-inch pants today, they were the highest things I’ve ever seen.” Other than maybe taking some crap from the guys over it, Phillips was going to get zero pushback on his choice of attire.

And in that particular case, McDaniel did have a more serious point to make. “I think it’s super important for him not to give a s— if I care,” he said. “Like, What are we talking about?” Even better, as McDaniel sees it, if he lets everyone be themselves, he’ll have a better shot that they’ll buy into the coach being himself.

“Nowhere in the building do people ever think that I’m worried about how I’m coming off,” he said. “That’s not what it’s about. It’s about the meat and potatoes of what we’re doing. That whole comfort in the skin, there’s probably times I willed myself to be comfortable in that weird, steep auditorium that’s gigantic in there, as team rooms are, because I know that it’s my job to make people feel comfortable. If I am just … whoever myself is, then eventually they’ll realize that I’m not judging them for stupid, trivial stuff.”

So sure, there was a time when McDaniel let perception get to him, but one thing he never did was allow doubt about his fitness for a head coaching job creep in. In fact, he thinks it’s something he’s had in him since he was a kid, and the light bulb came on for him in making the correlation in his first year as NFL assistant under Mike Shanahan in Denver in 2005.

That team lost its first game, and fell behind 10–0 in its second game, before coming back to win that one, finishing 13–3 and making it to the AFC title game. What impressed McDaniel the most, looking back, was how the elder Shanahan—“this is a freaking football God to me”—drew belief out of the group, and a certain young assistant, too, to the point where by the end of the year, they didn’t think that team could be beaten (and they were shocked when it was).

And that belief shone brightest at the darkest time, which is where the leader-of-men questions loom largest. This is where some of the doubt on McDaniel has lived, and he’s not afraid to address that one, either. Because even if some keep harboring that doubt, he’s always known, even when he couldn’t show it, how prepared he is for those situations.

“I’ve been preparing for my whole life,” he said. “I’ve seen the world in a certain way from when I was super young. And I’ve always been able to see from a broader scope how things in the moment that seem terrible end up being the best thing that ever happened to you. Case in point: Pretty dark time when I stopped drinking. O.K., well, if I just observed life, that’s one of the better things that’s ever happened to me.

“I’ve always been able to look at things from that perspective, whether I was in high school, talking with teammates, college, friends, I’ve always been able to help motivate people in times of distress. I think what you’re talking about, that’s the part that no one’s been able to ever see, that I’ve always known was there. I mean, s—, I was the only child, single mom. No one had gone to college. I’m from nothing, but I’ve known that type of perseverance.”

McDaniel then told the story of how his wife looked into “some type of Eastern medicine” and it led them to a therapist of some sort. The woman met with the coach, to assess him, and called him an empath, meaning he had a strength in his ability to relate to other people’s experiences. “I’ve always known I can reach people,” he explained. “I think I’m pretty tough. I’ve overcome a lot. I’m already playing with house money in life in general.”

And that’s why, when the Dolphins aren’t undefeated anymore, a feeling every team over the past 50 seasons has had to reckon with, and more serious issues come up, he doesn’t have an inch of the uneasiness some on the outside might of his ability to manage that.

“That’s how I see the job, in the hardest moments where people are gonna be most uncertain about themselves or the team or really everything, that is my moment that I’m supposed to lead,” McDaniel said. “That is the moment that gives you purpose to be in the position if you’re trying to be in. … Why are you the person for the job? Well, that’s defined in those types of moments, and that’s what’s cool about the position.”

In those moments, McDaniel might surprise other people. But he won’t surprise himself.

NEW YORK JETS

Coach Robert Saleh is saying there’s a chance that QB ZACH WILSON could start Sunday’s opener.  Myles Simmons of ProFootballTalk.com:

Jets head coach Robert Saleh told reporters during his Monday press conference that Wilson went through a workout on Monday. Now New York will see how the quarterback’s knee responds over the next day before making a decision on whether Wilson or Joe Flacco will start against the Ravens for Week One.

Saleh explicitly called it “possible” Wilson starts on Sunday, adding that he wasn’t really surprised that’s on the table.

“Everyone heals differently,” Saleh said in his press conference. “Like I said, we’ll see what happens tomorrow and all that stuff. But everyone has a different — I almost feel like some of the guidelines that are put on are guidelines. But everyone responds differently.”

Wilson suffered a bone bruise and a meniscus tear during New York’s preseason matchup against the Eagles. He underwent surgery to trim the meniscus on Aug. 16. His timetable for a return was two-to-four weeks.

– – –

In his predictions, John Breech of CBSSports.com is high on CB SAUCE GARDNER, if not the Jets:

AFC East

1. *Bills: 13-4

2. Dolphins: 9-8

3. Patriots: 7-10

4. Jets: 5-12

AFC East bold prediction: Sauce Gardner wins Defensive Rookie of the Year 

I don’t have high expectations for the Jets this year, but I do have high expectations for Sauce Gardner, their rookie corner who was selected with the fourth overall pick in the NFL Draft. Gardner plays in a division where a cornerback can thrive and that’s because the starting quarterbacks he’ll be facing in the AFC East all love throwing interceptions. Josh Allen, Mac Jones and Tua Tagovailoa all finished with double-digit picks last season (Allen tied for the third-most interceptions in the NFL with 15 while Jones threw 13 and Tua threw 10). Of course, even if he doesn’t win rookie of the year, I do fully expect him to win coolest endorsement of the year because no one is going to top “Sauce sauce.”

Buffalo Wild Wings is introducing a brand new sauce to its depth chart: ‘Sauce Sauce’

Named after @nyjets rookie CB Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner

📸: @BWWings pic.twitter.com/aQSW91s5Au

— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) August 29, 2022

A Jets player doing business with a company that has “Buffalo” in the title can only mean that Gardner is going to torture the Bills this season…. or Buffalo is going to torture him. One or the other.