Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens will start the postseason as the hottest team in the NFL. Jackson, a likely contender for league MVP, and the Ravens are closing the season on top of the final AP Pro32 poll of 2019, too. For the fifth consecutive week, the Ravens earned all 12 first-place votes
Given how the Browns' season has played out, Todd Monken wasn't exactly wrong.
Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy is a busy man. Not only is he getting ready for a divisional-round playoff game, but he is interviewing for head coaching jobs. He will meet with the Panthers first, with that interview scheduled for Thursday, Ian Rapoport of the NFL reports. Bieniemy then will
Kawhi Leonard and Paul George lead the Clippers to a sound victory over Sacramento on New Year's Eve.
Whatever bad memories Bills quarterback Josh Allen had of his first and only game NFL game at Houston have been pushed aside some 14 months later. ''I don't have to be the best quarterback out there,'' Allen said.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Paul George had 21 points with season highs of 11 rebounds and nine assists to shake off a slow start, and the short-handed Los Angeles Clippers thumped the Sacramento Kings 105-87 on Tuesday.
He had meniscus surgery in October.
Ryan Tannehill does not hide his emotions on the football field, celebrating big plays with a fist pump or punctuating his own touchdown run by raising the ball up into the air. Now the No. 8 pick in the 2012 draft has gone from being traded in March to preparing for his postseason debut with his second
The Patriots had no surprises on their Tuesday practice report, with every play on the roster on the practice field. Receiver Julian Edelman remained limited with knee and shoulder issues. Edelman played all 16 games despite his nagging injuries this season, making 100 catches for 1,117 yards and six
Golden State guard D’Angelo Russell will not play against San Antonio on Tuesday night due to a right shoulder injury. Russell injured the shoulder in a collision with Dallas’ Luka Doncic during the third quarter of the Warriors' loss Saturday night. A stretcher was brought out as Russell remained
The Pelicans rookie could return to practice as early as New Year's Day.
A cellphone went off during Doug Marrone's news conference Tuesday, and the Jacksonville Jaguars coach quickly responded that it would be a $500 fine for the reporter whose phone rang. ''We reduced it,'' Marrone quipped. Marrone's response was a clear shot at former Jaguars
The Titans' practice report was more notable for who wasn't on it than who was. Running back Derrick Henry was conspicuously absent, fully healthy heading into Saturday's wild-card game. Henry was on the practice report for more than a month with a hamstring injury, which kept him out of
NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport explains what led to the Cleveland Browns and general manager John Dorsey parting ways.
Although Todd Gurley's dismal season will loom over the Los Angeles Rams all winter, general manager Les Snead believes his franchise running back can return to greatness. Snead expressed confidence Tuesday in the player he signed to a $60 million contract extension through 2023, even while acknowledging
As he went back through the final plays and how it all transpired, it still seemed shocking to Pete Carroll that the Seattle Seahawks didn’t find the end zone. “It’s amazing it didn’t happen,” Carroll said on Monday after Seattle’s 26-21 loss to San Francisco. While Carroll was trying to spin Seattle
With the future of coach Jason Garrett in limbo, the Dallas Cowboys have other reasons to believe there will be plenty of change in 2020 - 23 of them, to be exact. The Cowboys have 23 unrestricted free agents-to-be, headlined by quarterback Dak Prescott and No. 1 receiver Amari Cooper, after finishing
Watch new angles of top plays from the Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots Week 17 match up courtesy of Intel True View.
Watch new angles of top plays from the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings Week 17 match up courtesy of Intel True View.
Watch new angles of top plays from the Tennessee Titans Week 17 victory courtesy of Intel True View.
Jameis Winston says he wants to remain with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but that decision is not his to make. Coach Bruce Arians reiterated Monday he'll conduct a ''full evaluation'' before deciding the fate of the 25-year-old quarterback, who led the NFL in passing yards while also
Linebacker Rolando McClain announced after training camp he was returning to football after the NFL conditionally reinstated him. It prompted the Cowboys to release him Sept. 2. His name hadn't been mentioned again in almost four months until Monday. Field Yates of ESPN reports the NFL again has
Guard Richie Incognito will be staying with the Raiders after their move to Las Vegas. Incognito signed a two-year, $14 million contract extension with the Raiders on Monday that includes $6.35 million in guaranteed money. The Raiders signed Incognito last offseason to a one-year prove-it deal to bring
For the second time since 2011, a Saints team coached by Sean Payton and quarterbacked by Drew Brees has finished a regular season 13-3, only to learn that was not good enough to secure a top-two playoff seed in the NFC and a first-round bye. In both cases, remarkably, New Orleans was edged out by the
We'll track all the 2020 NFL draft underclassmen who declare — or return to school — right up until the deadline of Jan. 20.
NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reports the latest on head coach Doug Marrone's future with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The Bounce
If you were a potential NFL head coach looking for your next place of employment, how would you pick between the situations that are currently vacant?
For the third time since 2016, Giants owner John Mara has stepped to the lectern and answered questions about the future of the franchise at a major decision point.
The team’s divorce with Tom Coughlin was followed by the
in-season dismissal of Ben McAdoo and long-time general manager Jerry Reese. Then came Monday, when Mara announced that he would be letting head coach Pat Shurmur go and retaining general manager Dave Gettleman.It has been a turbulent finale to a decade that began with such promise (and a stunning victory over the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI that seemed to breathe new life into the Coughlin regime). At each turn, there seems to be a special kind of animus reserved for Mara, as if he has willed the team to this moment. On Monday especially, he continued to combat the negative effects of his notorious loyalty to the bones of the staff he inherited years ago.
But after taking a quick look around the NFL at the other job openings, it’s hard not to wonder if we’re all not suffering from a lack of perspective. Assuming that Dallas tests the coaching market, joining Washington, Carolina, the Giants and Cleveland, how many situations actually seem better than what the Giants have to offer right now?
How bad—again, in perspective—is Mara’s desire to keep the franchise somewhat tethered to its glory years compared to the pitfalls that accompany the other openings?
Here’s an unofficial ranking of the best jobs of 2019, including Dallas. We’ll update the list should any surprise vacancies surface. The goal is to explore what a coach interviewing for a job might be thinking and how they might compare one landscape to the next…
A coach’s biggest issue with coming to the Giants will be working with a general manager that seems proudly dated in his thinking, who isn’t necessarily fleet of foot on draft day and who allows some aged scouting tropes to impact his decision-making in free agency.
The counter to that? The Giants have typically been a forward-thinking franchise despite the dusty perception. While Tom Coughlin had the reputation as a temperamental old boomer, the Giants were one of the first teams publicly tied with the analytics produced by Pro Fotball Focus in the early 2010s. Coughlin was one of the first coaches to test GPS monitoring at practice. The team revamped their diet, nutrition and exercise programs several times in that span. All of those people did not disappear organizationally and could potentially counterweight Gettleman’s instinctual style.
I also wonder whether a coach could make something of the roster in their first season and, given that Gettleman will soon turn 69, slowly earn a slice of the pie in terms of the roster building process. Mara said on Monday that he was open to various non-traditional power structures depending on the coach (which, again, he may have to promise at the outset anyway). Adam Schefter also reported Monday that if a new head coach was that passionate about front office changes, they don’t seem entirely out of the realm of possibility.
Here are the pros: A stable franchise with a young, ascending player at quarterback. A star at running back. A few cost-controlled assets that can produce at skill positions on offense. And … about $70 million to spend in free agency next year.
The obvious detractor to taking this job is uncertainty at the quarterback position and a very, very competitive division with three other established head coaches. Will Cam Newton be back and healthy? Otherwise, Carolina returns a decent supporting cast and will have a navigable amount of cap space (while it’s in the bottom third of the league, it’s theoretically enough to chase one or two free agents that could be central to a coach’s scheme).
The benefits? A new owner who wants to empower and legitimize his first hire, which tends to lead to more patience. The Carolina market isn’t daunting for a first-time football coach and an in-house push for a more fundamental understanding and implementation of analytics will only help the kind of coach who is willing to delegate.
I’m slightly less bullish on this job than others but could be talked into moving them up a spot. Here’s the fear: if Jerry Jones is this smitten with Jason Garrett, will that impact the lens with which he views his next head coach? It could go one of two ways: Either Jones’s compassion for Garrett is a draw, signaling that the Cowboys simply treat all of their coaches this way … or it’s akin to being the dreaded rebound prospect for someone who just got out of a very serious long-term relationship.
From a roster standpoint, the Cowboys were built to win in 2019. A new head coach might find that the Ezekiel Elliott contract becomes more difficult to grapple with by the season. A resurgent Robert Quinn, Amari Cooper, Sean Lee and Byron Jones will all hit the open market and, theoretically, most of the team’s cap space will either be tied up on the franchise tag with Dak Prescott or a long-term deal to secure the quarterback.
With that in mind, there is immediate pressure on a new coach to win for an owner who will grow increasingly impatient with each season that passes.
They would be in last place in almost any other circumstance, though the one thing saving the Browns is a less-recent example of ownership meddling in draft decisions.
Cleveland has not had a coach for longer than two-and-a-half seasons since the Haslam family arrived in 2012. They have a top-heavy roster full of in-prime veterans who carry with them the expectation of winning right away (or, they’ll make it known their preference to play elsewhere). The offensive line needs serious repair. The success or failure of the franchise quarterback going into his pivotal third year will have a serious impact on job security.
I’ll be careful here not to label Baker Mayfield, Odell Beckham and Jarvis Landry with a broad brush, but this is a nucleolus of extremely talented people who will require someone with cachet and the ability to have immediate success. Someone who can get them the ball. Someone who can wrangle them during difficult times in a way that Tom Coughlin, Adam Gase, Ben McAdoo, Pat Shurmur and Hue Jackson were not in the past.
There have also been reported instances of opinion clashes between the team’s director of strategy and director of personnel as to the direction of the franchise. The job will be unattractive until someone makes it as much, which could be a draw for a big-name head coach with Super Bowl credentials who believes they can spearhead a legendary turnaround.
While all indications are that Daniel Snyder is doing the right things this time around, there is no track record of sustained harmony that he can point to. He was reportedly involved in the drafting of Dwayne Haskins. He recently told him not to play after an injury. Any candidate is going to need to possess a certain amount of trust that Snyder will ultimately recede into the owner’s box and let he or she run the team as they see fit.
But again, there is really no sustained track record of this.
Question or comment? Email us at talkback@themmqb.com.
Don't mess with the future.
"It’s easy to be the greatest teammate when you’re winning. How about when you’re losing? How about when you’re down 20?"
Jacksonville's Gardner Minshew says he considers his own results this year to be the best of any rookie quarterback, a point of pride for him as a sixth-round pick. When a reporter said to Minshew that he had "better or similar numbers" to first-round quarterbacks Kyler Murray and Daniel
The San Francisco 49ers have gone from the No. 2 draft pick to the No. 1 seed in the span of a year. After four straight losing seasons, including only 10 wins in coach Kyle Shanahan's first two seasons, the 49ers (13-3) emerged as the top team in the NFC thanks a big-play offense and a vastly improved
The Seahawks signed running backs Marshawn Lynch and Robert Turbin last week after losing two more running backs to injured reserve. Rookie Travis Homer played 50 of 75 snaps in Sunday's loss to the 49ers. Lynch played 23 offensive snaps and Turbin eight special teams snaps. The Seahawks remain on
The Los Angeles Rams have learned all about the minuscule differences between a Super Bowl run and an early offseason. Despite finishing 9-7, coach Sean McVay's team missed the playoffs for the first time in his three seasons in charge. One year after winning the NFC title and then betting heavily
The Browns entered the 2019 season considered to be potential Super Bowl contenders, but will instead be looking for a new head coach after Freddie Kitchens' dismissal.
The Browns entered the 2019 season considered to be
among potential Super Bowl contenders. But after a 6-10 season, littered with inconsistent play and plenty of bad press, head coach Freddie Kitchens has been fired, the team announced Sunday."I would like to thank Freddie for his dedication and efforts this past season," general manager John Dorsey said in a statement. "We are disappointed in our results and feel a change is necessary. Freddie is a good man and good football coach. We wish he and his family nothing but success."
Kitchens was in his first full season as the Browns' head coach after being promoted this past offseason.
On the field this year, the Browns' offense was in the bottom third of the league and second-year QB Baker Mayfield failed to develop the way that many expected.
Kitchens and his team also found themselves in the news throughout the year, for all the wrong reasons. Under the rookie head coach's watch, DE Myles Garrett was suspended indefinitely for striking Steelers QB Mason Rudolph with Rudolph's helmet. The coach was later spotted wearing a "Pittsburgh Started It" in the weeks following the incident. Safety Tahir Whitehead was released after directing death threats at fans on Twitter following a loss, reports surfaced that Odell Beckham Jr. was dealing with a "painful sports hernia injury since training camp and Mayfield got into a spat with a local reporter, among other notable moments.
After the team's Week 16 loss to the Ravens which eliminated Cleveland from playoff contention, Kitchens insisted that the Browns were on their way to becoming consistent winners.
"We’re really close, and sometimes that gets lost in the shuffle," he said. "But we know how close we are. Our players understand how close we are. Our players understand how they could do better. Coaches understand how they could do better, and whenever we get those things flipped, it will change."
But that change will not occur under Kitchens' watch.
After falling 33-23 to the Bengals in Week 17, the Browns will now look to hire their eighth full-time coach since 2008.
This much seems certain for the Jacksonville Jaguars: Minshew Mania will continue into 2020. Gardner Minshew turned in his best performance in two months, throwing for 295 yards and three touchdowns and leading the Jaguars to a 38-20 victory over Indianapolis on Sunday. The rookie closed out Jacksonville
When Sunday opened, the Steelers had hopes of making it to the playoffs but those hopes were contingent on beating the Ravens while the Titans lost to the Texans. The Steelers went 0-for-2 on Sunday. The Titans thrashed the Texans while the Ravens were moving past the Steelers despite playing without
Both the Jaguars and the Colts had disappointing seasons this year, and the disappointing 2019 came to an end when the Jaguars beat the Colts today. As has been the case for every game the Jaguars have won this season, Gardner Minshew was the starting quarterback: The Jaguars finished 6-6 in games started
SEATTLE (AP) -- Both the Seahawks and 49ers will be without their starting safeties after Seattle's Quandre Diggs and San Francisco's Jaquiski Tartt were inactive for Sunday night's game to decide the NFC West title.
The Titans are headed to the playoffs. Ryan Tannehill threw two touchdowns in the first half, Derrick Henry ran for three in the second half and the Titans knocked off the Texans 35-14 on Sunday afternoon. That makes them an AFC Wild Card team and they'll be the No. 6 seed in the conference. That
James Harden has been scratched from the Houston Rockets' lineup Sunday night against the recently surging New Orleans Pelicans. Harden had been listed as questionable with a right toe sprain after scoring 44 points in Houston's 108-98 home victory over the Brooklyn Nets on Saturday night.
The Phoenix Suns surely must be glad they broke an eight-game losing streak prior to arriving in Portland. Now, they will attempt to break an 11-game losing streak against the Trail Blazers when the teams square off on Monday night. The Suns haven't defeated Portland since posting a 118-115 overtime
Chris Paul beats the buzzer from deep vs. the Raptors.
The Titans are going to the playoffs, and they'll face the New England Patriots.
The best social media reactions from week 17 in the NFL. Including the Dolphins huge upset of the Patriots, forcing the Pats to play on Wild Card Weekend. The Packers last second win over Detroit to earn a first-round bye. Jameis Winston throws a game-ending pick 6, becoming the first player ever with
The Kansas City Chiefs will hope for good news about their depleted secondary during their first-round playoff bye week. Safety Juan Thornhill suffered a knee injury in Kansas City's victory Sunday over the Los Angeles Chargers, which coupled with New England's loss to Miami gave the Chiefs
The 49ers can clinch home-field advantage in the NFC playoffs with a win tonight, but they'll have to do it without some key defensive players. Safety Jaquiski Tartt (ribs) and defensive end Dee Ford (hamstring) are out with injuries, heading into tonight's finale against the Seahawks. Also inactive
If the New England Patriots want to defend their Super Bowl title, they'll have to follow a path they've yet to navigate successfully. New England let the No. 2 seed in the AFC and a first-round bye slip away with a shocking 27-24 loss to the Miami Dolphins on Sunday. The Patriots won their
The Eagles' resiliency is something to behold. They began the game without several key players, including tight end Zach Ertz, receiver Nelson Agholor and right tackle Lane Johnson. They lost Pro Bowl guard Brandon Brooks (shoulder) and running back Miles Sanders (ankle) in the first half. They have
Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid addresses the media after a Week 17 win against the Los Angeles Chargers.
