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TAMPA BAY
QB TOM BRADY is the rare two-time SI Sportsman (Sportsperson) of the Year. Jon Wertham has the story:
Age is just a number. But that number is on the move, and longevity is on its way to running up the score. According to the United Nations, in 1990 there were 95,000 people on the planet who made it to 100. Today there are more than 500,000 centenarians, and, by 2100, it’s projected there will be more than 25 million. In 1980, around 382 million people were 60 and older. By 2050, that number will exceed 2 billion. There are some gerontologists who believe the first person to live to age 150 has already been born. Others ask: Are we so sure there are age limitations on human life?
What are fun facts and dinner-party conversation starters for us are foundational to the School of Aging Studies at the University of South Florida. It’s the largest—and, appropriately, one of the oldest—school of its kind in the country. Its mission statement cites a commitment to “understanding the biological, psychological, social and public policy aspects of aging.” But talk to faculty casually and it’s clear that one of the core principles of the curriculum is this: to teach life hacks that help human beings get older with grace.
Located as it is in Tampa—the U.S. metro area with the densest concentration of senior citizens—the school has always had plenty of subject matter and data points nearby. But now, the campus is also within a golf-cart drive of the archetype for aging gracefully. Want to conduct a field study to see what longevity looks like in practice (not to mention in games)? Well, Tom Brady lives and works just a few miles away.
For all his manifold football gifts, Brady’s true superpower is his ability to take time, stretch it out like the resistance bands he uses and then double it back. For the 44-year-old, time is a construct, measurable by ways other than revolutions around the sun.
“I’d say there are parts of me that are 55, and I think there’s parts of me that are 25,” says Brady. “What parts? I think I’m wise beyond my years. I think I’ve had a lot of life experience packed into 44 years. When I go through the tunnel and onto the field? Probably mid-30s—and I’ve got to work really hard to feel good. It’s a demolition derby every Sunday. I feel 25 when I’m in the locker room with the guys. Which is probably why I still do it.”
He explains this theory of time on a warm Tuesday in November. He’s seated inside a Tampa yacht club—he’s not a member, he’s quick to point out—that looks out over Hillsborough Bay and is convenient to Brady’s home. He has risen early this morning (of course). Walking with energy and purpose he enters the main dining room carrying a water bottle the size of a fire extinguisher. He is wearing designer sweats and a big, warm smile that makes his teeth look like a row of white iPod Nanos—kids, ask your parents—aligned perfectly inside his square jaw.
Back to time: How the hell is he still doing this, volunteering for those weekly car crashes for months and months, well into his 40s? It’s complicated. “It’s not like I wake up every day, like, Hey, man, it’s another sunny day!” says Brady. “No, it’s like, All right, let’s grind and move on.” Then he quickly adds, “There’s still joy. The competition’s fun and, uh, you know, I’m still pretty good at it, too.”
There’s also the specter of the alternative: “I imagine not playing. And I imagine watching football on Sundays going, These guys suck. I could do way better than that. And then still knowing in my heart that I actually could still do it. If I stopped, I think I’d have to find something else that I’m pretty good at. And I don’t think that, you know, I’m going to be able to jump into something that has the same amount of excitement.”
So long as that’s the case, so long as he can continue finding fulfillment, Brady will play on, thanks. He’s fond of a phrase that suggests continuity, one that befits someone so committed to hydration: Why not keep drinking?
If, in the manner of Brady’s career, we want to extend that analogy: It’s not just that he is still drinking; he is chugging. And there’s no indication he’s near the bottom of the glass. He is at an age when even the finest of his peers are beyond their prime. Roger Federer (40), Serena Williams (40), Albert Pujols (41), Tiger Woods (45). Titans all, but not acclaimed for their athletic achievements in 2021.
Then there is Brady. Still pretty good at it warrants a 15-yard penalty for flagrant understatement. He continues to discharge his duties with his customary, clinical excellence. He still throws with precision and maneuvers deftly in the pocket. Maybe more than ever, he maintains command of himself, and by extension his team, projecting comfort, evincing poise when it matters most. And he is still winning.
Brady started the year by piloting his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to five straight wins, one to end the 2020 regular season and four in the playoffs. The culmination came on Feb. 7, when Brady started his 10th Super Bowl. He walked away with his seventh ring and was named Super Bowl MVP for the fifth time, leaving his heel print on yet another NFL season.
Early in the offseason Brady flew to Los Angeles and “cleaned up” (his phrase) his left knee. In this season, his 22nd, he has turned in some of the most brilliant shifts of his career. Brady leads the league in touchdown passes (34), the unprecedented 600th of his career coming in October, and the Bucs lead the league in scoring (31.4 points per game). His team is 9–3, and Brady is among the favorites to be named MVP. And he has already, officially, taken this honor: Tom Brady is the 2021 Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year.
Brady, this year, is the recipient of the 68th annual SOTY. He also—mind the gap—won the honor in its 52nd year. That was for his excellence in 2005, a time when cars ran only on gasoline, squarely in the flip-phone era. How long ago was this? In the SI article celebrating Brady there is a reference to his posing once while holding a goat. And it’s describing a bizarre photo shoot—not nodding to the GOAT, the honorific that now, of course, accompanies most mentions of Brady.
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Here, in 2021, Brady’s coach, Bruce Arians, takes inventory of his quarterback, reeling off a string of superlatives but landing on a familiar turn of phrase: “He is the ultimate team player.” To a man, the Buccaneers describe Brady being “down to earth.”
Brady is, you might say, committed to the role. His organizing football principles are largely unchanged. Same for his leadership traits and his character. And yet in other ways Brady is a much different man than that 28-year-old bachelor. Handed the cover from 2005, he smiles. “I think I recognize that person,” he says. “But there’s so much more to me now.”
He is the best-ever practitioner of the most important position in his sport—perhaps in all sports. But let’s be clear: This award is not for lifetime achievement but based on Brady’s body of work over the last 12 months. This is not an aging athlete admirably hanging on. This is an athlete who may never have performed better.
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On March 16, 2020, as COVID-19 was just ramping up in the U.S., Brady drove to the home of Patriots owner Robert Kraft to make official what he had decided privately months before. As Brady recalled to Howard Stern, “I was crying. I’m a very emotional person.” After 20 unbroken years with New England, “Brady to Become Free Agent.”
Brady didn’t arrive at the decision easily. He knew well that this stay-or-go athlete dilemma tends to yield mixed results. The player with whom he always will be bracketed, Peyton Manning, left Indianapolis for Denver, won a Super Bowl and never played another NFL down. That was nearly six years ago. The day Brady won his first Super Bowl, in 2002, Michael Jordan was playing, unmemorably, for the Washington Wizards. And Brady still winces when he recalls when, as a teenage 49ers fan in San Mateo, Calif., he learned that his idol, Joe Montana, was decamping late in his career to Kansas City.
Two days after Brady met with Kraft, Arians sat in his home with Bucs general manager Jason Licht. For months they had been running point on a recruiting mission they called Operation Shoeless Joe Jackson. (Field of Dreams . . . get it?) That afternoon Brady called Arians, who passed the phone to Licht, who recalls that when Brady began the conversation, “Hey, babe,” it was safe to assume the Buccaneers had their man. “It was a phone call, and it was during COVID,” says Licht. “But it was one of the biggest moments in franchise history.”
First came the yuks. Brady was going to Florida, because . . . Florida. Where else do well-preserved Northeasterners go when it’s time to throttle back? Then came the cynicism. Brady was availing himself either of the state’s lack of personal income tax or the congenial weather or the Buccaneers’ soft expectations. Here was a franchise that, pre-Brady, had an all-time winning percentage of .386 (267-424-1), the worst of any major men’s U.S. pro team.
Brady, though, is nothing if not a pragmatist. Tampa was a market with low-intensity lighting, and still a short flight away from his son Jack, who lives in New York City. Brady is also a football pragmatist. He saw a team with a loaded defense, exceptional skill-position players and sturdy offensive line. He also saw the opportunity for an invigorating culture change. Arians, 69, was born within six months of Bill Belichick but cuts a different figure—enjoying, as he does, laughter, self-deprecation, motorcycle rides and a reputation as perhaps the least autocratic coach in the NFL.
But that was only the start. Brady laughs as he plays the compare-and-contrast game: “different conference, different division, different coaches, different offense, different terminology, different players, different drive to the stadium.” Determined that the divorce remains amicable, Brady gently reroutes conversation about the Pats. But this he will say: “Our team here, I think there are more voices. And it’s fine. There’s different ways to be successful.”
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Licht laughs when Brady introduces himself warmly to rookies and new teammates by saying, “I’m Tom Brady.” No s—, you’re Tom Brady. But the message is clear, as is the effect. “Tom is known as the greatest player of all time, and I get the sense they were expecting him to come in and want preferential treatment and have an ego—which would be well deserved,” says Licht. “But he just wants to be one of the guys. He wants to earn their respect. And they think, I don’t want to let this guy down. We all think that.”
Early on Brady issued a request to his new center, Ryan Jensen. Could he apply baby powder to his backside to keep the football free of sweat? Jensen complied, then walked around the field trailed by chalky plumes, as if he were announcing the new pope. Before it could be a source of embarrassment or teasing in the locker room, Brady spoke to teammates to make sure it was taken as instructional: These are precisely the kind of small sacrifices and adjustments you make when you are fully committed to winning.
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It’s hard to exaggerate just how statistically outlying Brady’s longevity is. The NFL’s next-oldest player is Rams offensive tackle Andrew Whitworth, who will be 40 on Dec. 12. Brady is closer in age to Dan Marino, who played his last game in 1999, than he is to Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Nearly half the NFL’s coaches—13 of 32—are younger than he is. (Though Brady’s own coach, pointedly, is the league’s third-oldest.)
Keep going? Brady is older than 59 members of Congress. On that fateful day in 2000, when 198 other players were summoned into the NFL workplace ahead of Brady? Bill Clinton was president. There have been six presidential elections since. Remember, too: Brady’s longevity-to-the-point-of-absurdity is coming in pro football, a sport in which careers are notoriously nasty, brutish and short. And there hasn’t been any sign of falloff.
That’s not just the eye test; advanced statistics bear it out too. Arians’s offense attacks deeper than most—no risk it, no biscuit being the operative phrase. In 2020, Brady’s air yards per intended pass, a measure of how far downfield a quarterback throws on average, jumped to 9.3 yards, a 22% increase from his last season in New England. Yet, despite the higher degree of difficulty, his completion rate also rose, from 60.8% to 65.7%.
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Retirement has its appeal—golf, time with the family, business opportunities—but it is outstripped by the lure of continuing to work. And so it is that Al Michaels, 77, the voice of NBC’s Sunday Night Football, has consulted with and confided in Brady. Their pregame broadcast production meetings, once filled with football shop talk, now veer toward weightier topics and shared experiences. Says Michaels, “When I see Tom, I think, Damn, you can go at that level no matter what you’re doing, and I feel like I can. It’s just a cool thing, the kind of symmetry.”
Michaels isn’t alone in finding inspiration in Brady’s longevity. UFC fighters, European soccer players, pro golfers, athletes of a certain maturity—they all try to see some version of themselves in Brady and come seeking his counsel and inspiration. Comb social media and you’ll find teachers crediting Brady with their decision to get back in the classroom, pilots referencing him when they decided to stave off retirement.
Even though serving as a standard-bearer for manipulating time only adds to his pressures, Brady welcomes the opportunity. “If people want what I want, then I’m there to help them,” Brady says. “If they don’t? All right, let them do their own thing. No problem. But if you come to me and you say, ‘Hey, how can I have a career like yours?’ I’d be very happy to help anybody.”
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At the same time Brady readily admits that he holds no secrets; he, too, looks to others. His wife. His parents. Towering athletes—Montana, Jordan, Steve Young—who came before him. But he also turns to a sort of council of elders, who’ve lived well and lived long. Ageless Tom Brady might work alongside teammates half his age, but he often socializes with men twice as old, many of them successful entrepreneurs or titans of industry. They neither want nor need a selfie or comp tickets or the nimbus of Brady’s celebrity. These friendships come without the whiff of transaction.
The tribal elder in this circle might be Sam Reeves. Armed with a wealth of stories he tells in a slow Southern drawl, Reeves made his fortune as a cotton merchant. He recently gave up bodysurfing but still plays 150 rounds of golf a year. He’s 87, but he puts his functional age in the early 60s. “I’m not really paying attention to the chronological,” he says.
Reeves recalls meeting Brady while playing golf at Pebble Beach “maybe 20 years ago,” and the two have been close friends ever since. “I didn’t know much about him,” says Reeves, “but he was so gracious.” Through Reeves, Brady has met various other wise men, including Jimmy Dunne, 65, vice chairman and senior managing principal of Piper Sandler investment bank.
When Brady is in the company of these wise men, decades older, he spends a lot of time listening. “Learning from those people is really important to me,” says Brady. “I don’t think you can go through life and be fixed. I was listening to someone the other day, and they said, ‘The words I don’t know are the most powerful words because they’re limitless. It’s limitless potential.’ And as soon as you think you know something, you’re fixed.”
Reeves has given great thought to what makes Brady special and has come up with three bullet points:
• He makes people feel valued. “That could mean really listening—he’s an extraordinary listener—to someone he’s meeting for the first time.”
• He thrives on excellence, for himself and those around him. “He wants you to have what he has. He wants people to be the best they can—but he’ll help you get there.”
• He is a person of joy. “Pain is inevitable—certainly in football—but misery is optional, and Tom does not accept misery. Tom runs the opposite way. He runs to joy.”
Then Reeves absently adds a fourth. “Tom keeps his routines, but he is open to adventures.” And . . . wait . . . catch that? It sounds like a throwaway line, but aha. That, as much as anything, might unlock the secret to Brady’s—and, for that matter, our—longevity.
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Ross Andel, director of the School of Aging Studies at USF, notes that routines and good habits are essential for optimal aging. A Bucs fan, Andel sees Brady and his defiance of time and is unsurprised. “His ability to stay disciplined is second to none,” says Andel. “Other people look for a quick fix or go to extremes. He doesn’t mind hard work. He holds onto his schedule. There’s such a resilience.”
Yet when discussing keys to graceful aging, Andel also references an opposite, even contradictory, instinct: a willingness to adapt—“I never want to be fixed” . . . “he is open to adventures”—to stimulate new parts of the brain and pleasure centers. In short, to evolve.
Andel points to a German study in which volunteers were taught to juggle. As the subjects picked up a new skill, brain imaging revealed changes in gray matter. As the subjects became capable jugglers and the skill was no longer novel, the gray matter reverted to its levels before the study. “The brain had nothing to adapt to, so it put the neurons elsewhere,” says Andel. “It’s the stimulation, the change of environment that challenges the brain and redistributes our bodily resources.” That, says Andel, encapsulates Brady. “He’s unbelievably adaptable.”
So credit Brady for his rigidity. But his relentless success owes just as much to the opposite trait, his flexibility. Does he contradict himself? Very well then, he contradicts himself. He is large. He contains multitudes. Moving to a different franchise in a different state with a different corporate culture? That example of his adaptability is just one of many.
Brady might, rightly, be depicted as the exponent of clean living. But there he was in February, giving new zest to the phrase drunken fling as he hurled the Lombardi Trophy Frisbee-like from one boat to another during Tampa Bay’s Super Bowl celebration. He then put to rest any questions about his sobriety with the unforgettable tweet, “Noting to see her . . . just litTle avoCado tequila.”
Brady is an unapologetic capitalist. His NFL salary of $25 million is dwarfed by his various businesses and investments, from the TB12 health and wellness brand he co-founded with Alex Guerrero to his clothing line BRADY, to his 199 Productions content studio, to his stake and promotion of a cryptocurrency firm. His NFT company, Autograph, is widely considered an industry leader in digital collectibles. He’s arrowing toward billionaire status, if not there already. And he’s not simply slapping his name on products. He is poring over balance sheets and Zooming into board meetings, glimpsing his post-NFL life while still playing.
On the other hand, Brady doesn’t always show fidelity to the market. His NFL salary, which does not consign him to eating ramen, still ranks ninth in average annual value among QBs. “He’s never wanted to be the highest-paid quarterback,” says Arians, “because [doing so] would mean not getting maybe two other good players.”
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Whatever the case, lately we’re hearing from Brady more often than ever before. There he is on late-night couches. There he is in a self-effacing Subway commercial. And calling into Howard Stern. The podcast medium suits him especially well—not just his own, but others (“What did [I] major in? F—— football, man,” Brady said on actor Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert). He’s also jacked up his activity on social media, often hilariously. After a tweet surfaced comparing the TB12 Method with Terry Bradshaw’s “TB 12 beers a day methods,” @TomBrady issued the A-plus retweet last month, “Tomato, tomahto.”
Brady accepts the premise that lately he has put himself out there. “I’m rediscovering my voice,” he says, “and I’m having fun with it.” The obvious correlation: Brady feels he is able to reveal himself and have this fun now that he is liberated from his coach in New England and from the tight organizational controls. He doesn’t deny that.
But there’s another correlation. His age. “I think there’s more comfort just as an older guy, too. My give-a-s— levels are probably a lot less. I’m kind of like, O.K., what’s it gonna be like in 10 years? I’m really not going to give a s— then.”
It is, of course, irresistible to hear Brady talk about his future and not indulge in speculation about how many more times the odometer can turn over. Licht has already stoked fires (and social media accounts) when he predicted Brady would play until age 50. He doubles down with SI: “I don’t see any signs of decline whatsoever.”
Brady predicts that the source of his decline—whenever that may be—will be spiritual, not physical: “Regressing would be a very difficult thing for me to see. As soon as I see myself regress, I’ll be like, I’m out. I don’t really want to see myself get bad. So it’s just a constant pursuit of trying not to be bad.”
Trying not to be bad? Really?
“I think if anything, the most challenging part is the emotional aspect of football for me,” Brady says. “When we lose, it’s depressing. When we win, it’s a relief. It’s not like the joy, the happiness—it’s a relief. Because when we win, sometimes just winning isn’t good enough for you, because you expect perfection, and when you expect perfection and it’s less than perfect, you feel like there’s a down part to that.”
Then again, this drive, this internal combustion engine, is what keeps Brady playing at this exalted level. Winning a seventh Super Bowl doesn’t dull his ambition for an eighth. Throwing a pass into a window the size of a playing card only increases his desire to deliver another one.
“It’s like hitting the perfect 7-iron,” he says. “You go, ‘How was that?’ And I go, ‘That was pretty great! I want to do it again!’ You just constantly keep chasing it.”
It was recently put to Brady: Is there anything specific he has yet to achieve in his unrivaled career? His first answer: not really. But he did note that, in all his years and for all that success, he has never won a game on a last-second Hail Mary.
The temptation is to tell Brady that he’s completed football’s ultimate Hail Mary. The backup at Michigan whose 40-yard dash time could be clocked with a sundial going from the sixth round to the GOAT pasture, with seven Super Bowl rings? Whose excellence remains unabated at 44? Except that a Hail Mary implies a level of luck. The Legend of Brady is predicated on anything but fluke or chance. It’s deliberate and smart and rational.
So here is a man—and a sportsperson—for all of time. And for this time. And as aging does its thing, as mitochondria begin to deteriorate, as the mortal coil unwinds, Tom Brady comes bearing lessons for us all about contorting and distorting time, if not stopping it altogether. Balance routine with new adventure. Even more than anatomy, it’s attitude and character that shape destiny. Head off into the sun, not the sunset.
And if we hydrate and eat right, so much the better.
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UPCOMING COACHING CHANGES
Jason LaCanfora of CBSSports.com thinks the end is near for up to 7 coaches:
There was a prevailing narrative making the rounds in NFL circles last month that perhaps this would be a tranquil firing/hiring cycle in the league. Profits were soaring again, the expanded schedule and expanded postseason were keeping more teams viable deeper into the season, and keeping owners relatively content to stand pat, so the theory went.
There wasn’t the most robust list of candidates to choose from, the crazy coaching carousel in the college ranks had taken some coaches who NFL teams have been at least monitoring off the board, and most of the really putrid clubs were only a year or two into their current coaching regime, which might keep those decision-makers inclined to ride it out.
Only now I’m not so sure.
In fact, talking at length to several people who will be intimately involved in this process – either hiring coaches or representing coaches likely to be hired or fired – I am convinced that this year will be like almost all of the others. A good half dozen teams will make changes, as is the norm. There is the possibility for a surprise or two beyond that, and the idea long floating around the industry that only three or four teams will shake things up will prove to be naïve.
As a disclaimer, I’m not rooting for any of this. I merely chronicle it, and I have definitely detected a shift in the prevailing thought of those who do this for a living about just how many organizations will be seeking new coaches and/or general managers a few weeks from now. There remains debate as to how many franchises will tap into the new hiring rules, allowing for virtual interviews to take place with current NFL assistants during the final two weeks of the regular season, but ultimately these things tend to come in waves, in a copycat league, and once four or five teams are looking for new leadership, the odds suggest a few more will follow suit.
Certain situations are starting to generate more heat than others, and time is starting to run out for some in positions of power. Certainly, there are a few situations that have changed dramatically from where things stood at the midpoint of the season – take the surging Dolphins, for instance – but there are also several other coaches who were already in peril at the start of last month and are under even more fire now.
Here are some that are being monitored closely:
Las Vegas Raiders
Interim coach Rich Bisaccia always faced a difficult task holding that thing together after all the adversity the Raiders have faced. And GM Mike Mayock’s draft record had put him under intense scrutiny as well. Derek Carr isn’t looking like a franchise QB, and Mark Davis is going to have a very busy 2022 reshaping his organization perhaps across the board, needing to fill top positions on the business side of his operation too.
Chicago Bears
There is a strong consensus among those in the industry, and many close to Bears ownership, that Matt Nagy will be out and, depending on which organizational hierarchy and flow chart they decide on, GM Ryan Pace as well. It’s at a boiling point with the fans, and expectations are not being met. It would be shocking if this duo was kept in place.
Minnesota Vikings
Mike Zimmer had a mandate to make noise in the playoffs this season, with ownership doubling down on his roster and spending big again to keep pricey veterans in place. His defense continues to slide, Zimmer continues to wear out players and coaches with his caustic manner, and losing to the winless Lions – allowing a long TD drive in the waning seconds – is going to be nearly impossible to overcome. At 5-7, it’s statistically possible to get to the postseason in a weak NFC and make something happen in January … but it’s also possible a loss Thursday night prompts an in-season change. If I was Minnesota and I went that route, I’d throw a Hail Mary to Gary Kubiak, who technically retired but is assisting his son, Klint, the Vikings’ offensive coordinator, to be interim head coach and see what happens. He has oodles of head coaching experience and was with the Vikings the past two years. They’re running his offense for goodness sake. Maybe he could salvage something.
Denver Broncos
Anytime a team has been poised for sale, for a long time, at any particular offseason, it’s going to create a climate of change. How quickly a sale can be finalized remains to be seen, but early 2022 has long been circled at the league office and among those who oversee and finance franchise sales as a critical juncture for the Broncos. Vic Fangio’s performance has been under review at points in the past, and while 6-6 isn’t failure by any stretch, Fangio has never exactly put a stranglehold on this job for the long-term. It would surprise many in the coaching industry if a change is not made.
Jacksonville Jaguars
If there is one true positive that Urban Meyer has brought to the Jaguars, please point it out. It’s been a disaster since the spring, nothing is trending in the right direction, and, most importantly, first overall pick Trevor Lawrence is not developing. Any hopes Meyer would be a cash grab and keep fans engaged through another rebuild is long out the window; he has been a source of controversy and the stands are empty – again – and this franchise looks as lost as ever. Which is saying something. Meyer is going to want to whack a bunch of assistants at the end of the season, and I hear things are thorny between him and GM Trent Baalke and this has been a total disaster. Whether that’s enough to convince Shad Khan to blow it up after a year remains to be seen; many would have fired Meyer for his bye week stunt alone.
Houston Texans
GM Nick Caserio opted not to give rookie coach David Culley a vote of confidence this week for 2022. This was always an odd hire following one of the oddest coaching searches in recent history. Culley’s continued discipline issues – suspending a new player every week, it seems – is unusual, and some in the locker room would say way over the top. The product is unwatchable – as was always going to be the case by design in this rebuild; that’s hardly all on Culley – and the team probably peaked in a Week 1 win over lowly Jacksonville. The real question is – how set is Caserio on punting entirely on 2022 as well? The team is nowhere close to competing, wants to horde top picks, and some in the industry believe Culley could survive to navigate them through another lost season while they stack assets – and sort out of the messy Deshaun Watson situation – to make the job more attractive to the top candidates in 2023.
New York Giants
The word is out that Joe Judge is safe. It’s being whispered to all who inquire … but there is still a lot of (ugly) football to be played. And this thing is totally sideways. First-round QB is hurt. First-round RB looks like a bust. Offense actually getting worse, somehow, after firing OC Jason Garrett (ownership’s guy) in place of Freddie Kitchens (second-year coach’s guy). In-game management has become a source of scorn for fans, and few individual players are developing at a fast rate. GM Dave Gettleman is very likely to retire/move on. At the very least more staff changes would be in the offing – because this young coach has been firing them since his first few months on the job – and if they can’t compete with other NFC East teams in a divisional-heavy schedule down the stretch, you won’t convince me that ownership doesn’t think long and hard about a change. They haven’t won two in a row since Dec. 2 of 2020.
Throw in the possibility for something breaking down over money or power, or over an extension, or a coach stepping aside for age or health reasons, and a team or two that might totally fall apart down the stretch, and the field could expand. Regardless, I have a harder time seeing there only being three or four changes than I would have thought a month ago.
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