Republicans grapple with Trump’s vise grip on their base

KATIE GLUECK

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article217869125.html

His approval numbers are underwater and his polarizing presidency is endangering dozens of House Republicans. But when it comes to motivating GOP voters, nobody is more effective than President Donald Trump.

After watching him successfully intercede in primary after primary this summer, Republican candidates now face an agonizing general-election dilemma: They need Trump’s help mobilizing conservative voters but worry that embracing the president might destroy their standing with independents in the process.

“His support among the Republican base brings a level of intensity that is unrivaled, at least in recent history,” said Ken Spain, a former top official at the National Republican Congressional Committee. “That’s the conundrum that many Republican candidates are facing across the country: how do you captivate and mobilize the Republican base while trying to win over independent voters? So far, that has been a very difficult balancing act.”

Trump’s ability to move GOP votes when his name isn’t on the ballot was once in doubt. But this summer changed that, according to strategists, pollsters and donors who watched Trump endorse in a host of recent primaries, going on a winning streak in places as diverse as a congressional primary on New York’s blue-collar Staten Island and a gubernatorial primary in culturally conservative Kansas.

Citing internal polling, strategists involved in many of those races say Trump’s endorsements played a critical role in shaping the outcome — evidence of just how potent his support is with rank-and-file Republicans, even as it also risks galvanizing the other side.

“The ability to totally, single-handedly swing an election is kind of terrifying, but it’s reality,” said one GOP strategist who has been involved in several gubernatorial contests across the country, and who like many sources interviewed for this story declined to discuss internal polling and strategy on the record. “It’s the president’s party, at least for the foreseeable future, and we’re all just attending.”

The final vote count took days, and the Colyer campaign said at the time that it had “consistently led in mail-in ballots statewide in this election.” But ultimately, Kobach eked out a victory—and political operatives who watched the race closely think Trump’s endorsement had something to do with it.

“If you look at Election Day voting versus early voting, it obviously was profoundly different,” said the GOP source involved in governors’ races. “I don’t know what else to chalk that up to but the Trump endorsement.”

On Staten Island earlier this summer, some public polls showed former Rep. Michael Grimm ahead of incumbent Rep. Dan Donovan as each competed to be the most pro-Trump candidate. Trump sided with Donovan.

“Where it really had an impact was with those who said…‘At the end of the day, the president says Donovan’s the guy,’” said a Donovan adviser who said the congressman ended up overperforming internal polling estimates. “That was the difference between a close race and what turned out to be a pretty commanding victory.”

The numbers were even more stark in gubernatorial contests in Florida and Georgia.

The day that Trump endorsed Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp in a primary runoff, his opponent, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, plummeted, according to internal numbers from the pro-Cagle camp. He never recovered, dropping from a lead to a nearly 40-percentage point loss in a matter of days.

And in Florida, Rep. Ron DeSantis trailed Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam in the gubernatorial primary earlier this summer, according to some data. But after Trump reiterated his support for DeSantis on Twitter—and the congressman played up the endorsement in ads—he pulled ahead, polls showed, and he defeated Putnam by 20 percentage points last week.

Certainly, Trump has also endorsed candidates who appeared to be ahead anyway. And in other races where he has intervened—a special election in Ohio’s heavily suburban 12th district, for example—the contests have sometimes been competitive largely because Trump has dragged down GOP candidates in the first place, and has motivated the Democratic base to turn out in anger.

Indeed, outside of primaries, Trump has endorsed in a host of special elections in traditionally conservative territory that his party has gone on to lose, from Alabama to western Pennsylvania, a warning for the general election that firing up the base, even with Trump’s help, might not be enough in a tough environment for Republicans.

“We’re going to learn a hard lesson,” said the GOP strategist involved in governors’ races. “I hope I’m wrong, but I think it’s possible we learn the hard lesson that a base is not enough to win a general election.”

But for the many candidates Trump has boosted in primary season, their fates are now intertwined with his approval ratings as general election season arrives and they seek to court independents, said a major GOP donor who has been involved in races in which Trump has endorsed. After benefiting from Trump’s support in the primary, there is no avoiding that branding in the general.

“Republican candidates are tied to Trump’s agenda and personality,” the donor said. “There’s no use for a Ron DeSantis or a John James [the Trump-backed Michigan GOP Senate nominee] to run from Trump. They need to embrace him and hope that he’s at a high enough general election number, which probably means around 50 percent, that they can then win on a localized race. But there’s no way they escape from him.”

And they shouldn’t try, argued John McLaughlin, whose firm is involved in House races and who did polling for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He noted that the Republican-held Congress hasn’t followed through on core campaign promises such as repealing Obamacare, disappointing many conservative voters. To keep the Republican base engaged, candidates across the board need to tap into Trump, he said.

“The Republican majority in Congress has not passed a lot of things that are popular,” he said. “That’s where the trouble is with reelecting House [members], getting more Senate seats. The president is picking them up, they’re standing on his shoulders.”

https://www.therams.com/news/daily-dose-rams-named-true-contender

MONDAY NIGHT PREDICTION

Elliot Harrison of NFL.com has made is Week 1 picks for all 16 games across the league. According to the website, Harrison went 171-96 in his selections in 2017. Here’s what he had to say about the Rams’ Monday night matchup in Oakland:
Los Angeles Rams quarterback, Jared Goff (16) Left, and Todd Gurley (30) Right, stand on the sidelines before a preseason NFL football game against the Dallas Cowboys, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2016, in Los Angeles. (Rams/Hiro Ueno)
Los Angeles Rams 30, Oakland Raiders 16
“We will see if the Rams’ offense comes out slow, given that Sean McVay would’ve called Marc Bulger and Trung Canidate out of retirement to avoid playing Jared Goff or Todd Gurley in the preseason. Those guys should find their footing against this defense, though. Poor Derek Carr will have to throw for 360 and three scores, ultimately morphing into a one-man gang. His brother, David, used to tell me he had to do the same thing when playing the Hoth level on “Star Wars Battlefront.” Totally serious stuff. In not-related news, Monday night would be a great time for Marshawn Lynch to pull a 2014 Marshawn Lynch and rack up 125 yards on the ground.”

TRUE CONTENDERS

ESPN’s Dan Graziano landed on 12 teams that he believes are “true contenders” to win Super Bowl LIII. Graziano divided his contenders into three main categories: ‘The Heavy Favorites’, ‘The Hungry Upstarts’, and the ‘The Dangerous Wild Cards’.
Graziano tabbed the Rams as ‘Hungry Upstarts’, with their new cast of stars entering McVay’s second year in-charge in L.A.
Here’s how the groups shake out:
The Heavy Favorites: Eagles, Patriots, Saints, Steelers
The Hungry Upstarts: Chargers, Jaguars, Rams, Vikings
The Dangerous Wild Cards: Chiefs, Cowboys, Falcons, Packers

GOFF EXCELS UNDER CENTER

ESPN’s Mike Sando used Rams QB Jared Goff as an example on Friday in his article titled ‘NFL Trends that will define the 2018 season’. Sando mentions the shotgun formation as a major trend to watch on offense across the league in 2018 — but raises a counterpoint, saying QB’s playing under center works well, especially if the back of your jersey says “Goff”.
“Rams quarterback Jared Goff finished last season with 1,205 yards, eight touchdowns, no interceptions and a 10.4-yard average per attempt from 11 personnel on early downs while under center. No other quarterback had more than 428 yards (Jameis Winston) or three touchdowns (Tom Brady, Derek Carr) in these situations.”
Goff will make his first in-game appearance since last season’s playoff loss on Monday night in Oakland.

Zooey wrote:

a story published Friday on SI.com by Greg Bishop and Robert Klemko offers previously unknown details of coach Pete Carroll’s attempt to protect Russell Wilson from his teammates and how it slowly tore the Seahawks apart.

The Dynasty That Never Was: Inside the Unraveling of the Seattle Seahawks

As they grew into Super Bowl contenders, the Seahawks—especially the Legion of Boom defense—prided themselves on a ruthless internal competitiveness that lifted everyone and was the foundation of an NFL championship. But some former and current Seattle players say a growing rift developed, based largely on the special treatment some felt was afforded quarterback Russell Wilson. Now the team they believed was set up for a long run of success has been torn up and rebuilt around Wilson. Did it have to go down like this?

Greg Bishop and Robert Klemko

https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/09/07/seattle-seahawks-dismantling-rift-russell-wilson-pete-carroll?utm_campaign=themmqb&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social

Back in March, three weeks after the Seahawks released him and he signed with their division rival, All-Pro cornerback Richard Sherman married his longtime girlfriend Ashley Moss in the Dominican Republic. The soirée doubled as a reunion for the best defense in recent history, a unit that allowed the fewest points annually from 2012 to ’15, that won one Super Bowl and nearly won another, that gave the NFL the Legion of Boom.

Sherman invited his closest friends and family to the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Punta Cana. The ceremony took place on the beach, the happy couple encased in a glass frame, the structure adorned with white roses. A turquoise ocean sparkled behind them. Waves lapped onto the beach.

Members of those mighty Seahawks defenses spent that weekend drinking and gambling and celebrating Sherman’s good fortune, which cut two ways. Because they weren’t simply toasting his nuptials in paradise; some were also saluting his escape to San Francisco, away from the Seattle organization a handful of players had referred to in private as “the Titanic” for the better part of a year. Even on the happiest weekend of Sherman’s life, inside his sprawling suite at the Hard Rock or at one of the resort’s blackjack tables, the conversations inevitably turned back in the same direction, to what one Seahawk describes as the “dynasty that never was” and some players’ lingering disdain for quarterback Russell Wilson.

The complaints current and former players bandied about spoke to the way an era had ended this offseason, with the Seahawks removed from their once dynastic ambitions, restarting, trying to reclaim what had been lost. Seattle had ascended to the precipice of becoming the NFL’s latest dynasty, behind arguably one of the greatest defenses of all time and a quarterback who was young and sometimes great but also inconsistent. And it was an ethos that held them all together—the notion that ruthless, unsparing competition would prevail above all else.

These wedding discussions usually started in a good place, with players reminiscing about the glory days, the way the Seahawks had battered Peyton Manning and the Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII. “I was telling the guys I never thought of us as being that elite,” says Cliff Avril, a defensive end on those teams. “It was just a bunch of bad dudes having fun and playing for each other. I was like, we were pretty awesome.”

All that was over now. The Seahawks had released Sherman, traded Pro Bowl defensive end Michael Bennett (and a seventh-round pick) for a fifth-rounder and an unknown receiver, and refused to meet safety Earl Thomas’s demands for a contract extension. Avril and hard-hitting safety Kam Chancellor were forced into retirement from spine and neck injuries. Cornerback DeShawn Shead and defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson departed in free agency. Corner Jeremy Lane was also released.

The final tally: six Pro Bowl-caliber players and eight contributors who departed, could not return or did not report to camp. (Thomas did report, on Wednesday of this week.) As a new season kicks off this Sunday when the Seahawks play the Broncos, only five players remain from their championship team—Wilson, Thomas, receiver Doug Baldwin, and linebackers Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright. “I would never have thought this would unravel the way it has unraveled,” Avril says. “Pretty much everyone who left was a Pro Bowler, if you think about it.”

What kept coming back up at Sherman’s wedding wasn’t the massive overhaul the Seahawks had made. What kept coming back up was why. The less disgruntled members of the audience acknowledged that age and injuries played a role, that change in the NFL is inevitable, that teams, even great ones, eventually come undone in one way or another.

But a dozen sources with direct knowledge of the Seahawks’ internal dynamics who spoke to Sports Illustrated this summer also pointed to a locker room they contend had fractured last season, with private spats spilling into public view and a rift deepening between those who supported Wilson and those who felt the coaches held him to a different standard. The overhaul, those sources maintain, was a direct result of that dissension. It was the management in Seattle deciding to “take the power back,” according to two departed Seahawks, with that notion confirmed by three other current or former players. If everything that happened after their loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX was done in attempt to rebuild faith and trust in one another, this summer marked a pivot toward something else. The Seahawks rebuilt around Wilson, their most prolific and polarizing remaining player, for at least the next two seasons, when he’s under contract—and they’re hoping to capture lightning with their roster, the way they did in 2012.

Several current and former Seahawks say that coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider can “feel the pressure mounting.” Rather than wait for further erosion, for the divide to deepen, for the defense to get older, they acted decisively this spring, after that defense fell from third in points allowed in 2016 to 13th (tied) last year. But those who left, and even some who remain, wonder if the changes ignore what they see as the more fundamental issue: that what made Seattle great—the highest of expectations, the unrelenting competition—is over, too.

“This is a crucial year, marking a new era of Seahawks football,” Baldwin says. “The jury is still out on what’s to come.”

The dismantling of a great defense dates back to one random 2014 practice, which ESPN first reported last summer as a catalyst for the Seahawks’ rift. That afternoon, Sherman intercepted Wilson, the two traded words and Sherman yelled “you f—— suck” as he flipped the ball back at the quarterback.

The pick itself wasn’t as important as what happened afterward, when several players who spoke to SI said Carroll gathered his offensive and defensive leaders and told them they needed to protect Wilson, to treat him more gently than they would their other teammates. Those same players had been indoctrinated into the NFL the exact way they were trying to teach Wilson, with merciless competition as the way to bring out the best in each other, by never letting a lapse slide, by talking s— after interceptions, even in practice. In the meeting, they told Carroll exactly that. “This is making him one of our own,” one player said, while several others nodded, according to two who were in the room. “He’s got to go through the process.”

No, Carroll told them. Not Wilson. “He protected him,” one Seahawk says. “And we hated that. Any time he f—– up, Pete would never say anything. Not in a team meeting, not publicly, never. If Russ had a terrible game, he would always talk about how resilient he was. We’re like, what the f— are you talking about?”

That Seahawk uses a pack of wolves as an analogy to explain his thinking. It’s as if Carroll sent his pack out to hunt but kept one wolf back, and that wolf still ate when the others returned with food. “We talked about that,” says Tony McDaniel, a defensive tackle with Seattle in 2013, ’14 and ’16. “Russell had his f—-ups; he never got called out. If I was Pete Carroll, I’d tell Russell, I have to call you out in front of the team so there won’t be any problems.”

One former Seahawk says he and a handful of teammates speculated that Carroll judged Wilson too emotionally fragile to handle the criticism, be it from them or his coaches. That presented Carroll with a difficult choice: between the environment he’d fostered and the franchise quarterback he’d found in the third round. He chose the quarterback, the former player says—a choice many coaches would have made—adding “[Carroll] realized Russ couldn’t handle being part of the dynamic we had.”

Not every teammate felt that way. Some noted that it’s in Carroll’s nature to stress the positive, quarterback or not. But roughly half the locker room had issues, according to its inhabitants. Some complaints were pettier than others: that Wilson had his own space for treatment in the facility, which some thought was off-limits to his teammates and others insist was not; or that he didn’t interact with other players at the team’s annual Christmas party.

All these accusations, though, spoke to the same theme: that Wilson was both treated differently than his teammates and, in some instances, willingly stood apart from them. When McDaniel arrived in Seattle in ’13, he went to dinner with several defensive players and asked them why things seemed off between the defense and the quarterback. He was told by those players to be careful speaking frankly when Wilson was around, because they believed what they said could wind up on Carroll’s desk. The players said that had already happened—subjects that had been discussed in the QB’s presence had come to the attention of Carroll, an assertion four other players who spoke to SI also made. “When guys would talk candidly in front of Russell, somehow all that stuff got up to Pete,” one player said. “And after a while, after a few instances, everyone started noticing that, and everyone made sure not to talk about anything that could be misconstrued near Russell.”

Some also dispute that Wilson puts in the work necessary to earn his status with the team and in NFL at large, believing he has prioritized his business interests over football. Others at Seahawks headquarters disavow that characterization. Their opposition speaks to the sort of polarizing presence Wilson had become in Renton.

(Asked to comment on all specific incidents in this story, Wilson declined through the team and his representatives. The Seahawks also declined to comment.)

The same players also cite much larger, more pertinent issues. Such as after the 2014 NFC Championship Game against the Packers, when Wilson was invited to the podium at the 50-yard-line after having thrown four interceptions in the game. The Seahawks had just pulled off a miracle comeback, with the defense limiting Aaron Rodgers to 178 passing yards and intercepting him twice. Multiple defensive players had gutted through injuries, and yet it was Wilson who received the most praise, and Wilson whom Carroll saluted in team meetings that next week as having saved the season. “That’s when guys really started to notice the lack of accountability,” says one former player. “Before that, if guys made mistakes or we lost games, guys took responsibility for it, for good or for bad. We started losing that.”

All of this came, remarkably, before the crushing Super Bowl defeat, before Wilson drove the Seahawks to the 1-yard-line in the game’s final minute against the Patriots, giving Seattle a chance to win. That Wilson threw an interception mattered less than the fact that the Seahawks had called a pass play on second down. Many who lamented how Wilson was treated differently now believed, truly believed, that Carroll had called a pass play to give Wilson a better chance to win the Super Bowl MVP award and decrease Marshawn Lynch’s chances, perhaps conveniently ignoring that offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell might have actually called the play. Regardless, the players say, that call contradicted what Carroll always said publicly: that he wanted to run the ball and play great defense, that that’s how he built the Seahawks—to be tough and stop foes and let Lynch bulldoze Seattle to victory after victory. Again, several players felt that Carroll said one thing and did another, and this time it had cost them a repeat Super Bowl title. (Such a view disregards the fact that the Seahawks defense missed 18 tackles and allowed the Patriots 196 yards-after-catch in the game.)

“That’s when some guys started to openly question whether [Carroll] believed in his philosophy,” says Avril, who says he still trusted the coach at that point. “Guys started to be like, do you even believe what you’re saying?”

Some Seahawks still remember every detail from that night. Sherman pacing back and forth, wearing his frustration into the carpet in that locker room in Arizona. Lynch, fully dressed, downing a bottle of cognac, saying “These motherf—— robbed me,” and “f— this,” over and over. “If we gave the ball to the soul of our team and we lose, f— it, we lose,” one Seahawk says. “Point-blank, period. You lost doing what you do best. But he gave it to Russ. I didn’t believe the MVP thing at first. But now I wonder. It’s at least plausible.”

“That one play changed the whole locker room,” McDaniel says. “When Pete would give a speech or try for a heart-to-heart, people just stopped responding. They didn’t know who to trust anymore.”

Rather than acknowledge the rift, though, these Seahawks say Carroll doubled down on Wilson in 2015. The quarterback took members of the offense and defense to Hawaii for a retreat before that season, to, according to sources, repair any lingering issues. But some lingered. “A lot of people felt like he was doing that to save face,” says one player who was there. “We were like, What is this? Why are we here? He was disingenuous.”

It wasn’t just Seattle’s handling of Wilson that irked the locker room. The Seahawks had previously made difficult decisions around the likes of Bruce Irvin, Red Bryant, Brandon Mebane and Malcolm Smith, among other key contributors. Many of those moves were accepted as part of routine NFL business—the team did have to pay Sherman, Thomas, Baldwin, Wilson and many others, after all —but over time, after the Seahawks released or dealt several of their top leaders, the sense that competition would prevail over all else began to fade. What had felt so unique to Seattle for players who had spent time elsewhere—a true sense of meritocracy, absent favoritism for high-priced free agents or high draft picks—was eroding.

An early move that bothered some was the release of McDaniel, a favorite of the defensive vets, after the 2014 season. “Tony did all this dirty work,” says one former Seahawks defensive starter. “I don’t think people on the outside really recognized how valuable he was. Nobody in that locker room understood why we cut him.”

McDaniel was eventually brought back, in 2016, finding himself in a time-share with other players whom he argues he was outperforming. “I was one of the guys who came in, put my hat on and went to work. Didn’t complain, didn’t say much,” he says. “The eye in the sky don’t lie. They started letting guys in front of me who I knew clearly weren’t better than me play. It frustrated me that they were favoring guys they drafted. I came off an eight-tackle game and they would bench me.”

Players who spoke to Sports Illustrated said the preference for younger, underperforming players over quality veterans was most apparent in the career arc of one lineman: Germain Ifedi, the Texas A&M offensive tackle whom Schneider and Carroll drafted 31st overall in 2016. The opportunities Ifedi has enjoyed while consistently grading out poorly have irked veterans who wonder why the Seahawks won’t bring in free-agent competition or promote other players to challenge him. Retaining wide receiver Tanner McEvoy at the expense of Kasen Williams in 2017 angered the defensive backs and some receivers who were intimately familiar with the abilities of both. Three leaders even went to Seahawks management in protest. “Like, what the f— are y’all doing?” says one. “Because you’re not building a winning team when you’re making those decisions.” (The Seahawks cut McEvoy this summer; he signed with the Dolphins. Williams is currently a free agent.)

It’s not unusual, of course, for players to take issue when their favorite teammates are released. It’s possible, too, that Carroll figured Wilson would be at his best when protected, that he needed more protection than the brash members of his defense, who could reasonably be expected to perform no matter what. Also possible: that Seattle looked at its roster, saw an aging defense, and decided to build around a young, in-his-prime QB. But even then, that’s not how the moves went over to those critical of Wilson in the locker room. Stitched together, they became something else, something bigger: a broken system.

“Everything they preached about competition stopped being true,” says one former Seahawk. “It wasn’t like that anymore. The Kasen Williams move was one. The way they treated the running back situation for years, the offensive line. They would draft offensive lineman high and tell them, You’re a leader now. No, you earn that. It all became artificial.”

Those decisions, on top of Carroll’s refusal to publicly check Wilson in any setting, public or private, chipped away at the coach’s once-renowned ability to motivate a wide range of personalities, according to the players who spoke to SI. Carroll’s mantras, which consistently buttressed his motivational talks—“Always Compete,” “Practice is Everything”—began to ring hollow.

Players who lamented the shift focused on Wilson, which other Seahawks believed was unfounded and unfair. Did Thomas still have to earn his spot? they ask. Did Sherman? The week following a December 2016 loss to the Packers, Sherman and Bennett nearly came to blows over Wilson. The quarterback threw five interceptions against a defense that finished 31st in passing yards allowed that season, and Sherman, a member of the unofficial player leadership huddle of which Wilson was not a part, proposed confronting Wilson in a private setting to ask what the issue was, as they’d routinely do with other players when performance dipped. “That was a common thing to do, because often it was some outside factor affecting guys, family stuff, and you’d work through that,” one former player says. But Bennett took issue, reminding Sherman that they only had one quarterback. The confrontation escalated to the point where the two needed to be separated. Toward the end of that ’16 season, Sherman’s complaints became louder and more public, and they clearly dated back to what had happened in the Super Bowl defeat. In private, what he said was even worse.

The notion that quarterbacks will be treated differently, even should be, is not new. But Aaron Rodgers goes out of his way to include teammates in promotional spots, and Bill Belichick regularly shoots verbal barbs at Tom Brady during film sessions. Incidentally, neither of those teams fielded defenses with as many stars as the Seahawks once boasted, and that’s why the dynamic in Seattle was different than in New England or Green Bay. “You’re not going to talk crazy to Tom Brady at practice,” Avril says. “You’re not going to talk crazy to Aaron Rodgers at practice. You might get kicked out of practice if you do that. To me it’s absurd to think a quarterback will be treated the same all the time. There’s a hierarchy in every thing. So why wouldn’t they expect the same for this guy?

“The problem is,” Avril continues, “at one point we were allowed, people were allowed to talk trash to him.” Then, after 2014, they weren’t.

For years, Avril says, he warned his teammates, friends and acquaintances alike. All the public and private complaints, the sideline antics, the defensive players calling out the offensive coordinator—the personalities that Carroll sometimes referred to as the Seahawks’ “celebration of uniqueness”—all that would only be tolerated to a point.

“When you start losing, people feel like they’re losing control of the team,” Avril says. “Or they feel like they’re losing control of people on the team. You get away with that when you’re winning.” If not, change. Hence the 2018 offseason.

Of course, the Seahawks dropped five of their last nine games in 2017, as the young Rams ascended to the top of an NFC West division that had long been controlled by Seattle and its mighty defense. Players who had grown accustomed to the old way admittedly started to check out. Bennett took to reading books in some team meetings. Sherman’s sideline exclamations became increasingly animated. “Too many people with opinions,” says one former defensive starter. That’s when some players took to referring to the Seahawks as the Titanic. Then, as predicted, ship hit iceberg.

Sherman strained his Achilles in practice before a Thursday night game in November against Arizona, then tore it in the third quarter while accelerating out of a break. That night would mark both Sherman’s and Chancellor’s last game in a Seahawks uniform; for Chancellor, his last in any uniform. That the injuries happened on the same field where the Seahawks had lost to the Patriots in the Super Bowl was not lost on some players; not only had a potential dynasty died on a football field in Glendale, Ariz., now the Legion of Boom had, too. “I just remember feeling so demoralized, like f—,” one Seahawk says.

On that night in Arizona, an era ended. “It was like, it’s over,” that Seahawk says. Change came, as predicted. After the Sherman injury, veteran players even began preparing for their exits. Bennett repeatedly told his best friend, Avril, that he expected to be traded or released. In December, during what he thought was a private moment with Cowboys coach Jason Garrett after a game against Dallas, Thomas was caught on camera telling the coach, “If y’all got the chance to come get me, come get me.”

To his credit, Wilson played well down the stretch, without much help from his offensive line. His 34 touchdown passes matched his career high from 2015, and he threw for 3,983 yards and ran for 575 more, the second-highest total of his career. In his first six seasons, he’d thrown for more touchdowns (161) than Matt Ryan (153) or Cam Newton (136) had in that same timeframe. As teammates complained, Wilson received MVP consideration. They’d argue that they weren’t complaining about Wilson’s statistics or production, but rather how Carroll handled him and how that changed the locker room dynamic, making the Seahawks less competitive and leading several prominent players to question their head coach. “All good things come to an end,” Bennett told Avril more than once last fall.

He was right. The season finished, and the playoffs started without the Seahawks for the first time since the 2011 season. Carroll fired his offensive coordinator, longtime fan non-favorite Bevell, and his defensive coordinator, Legion of Boom favorite Kris Richard, along with several other coaches. Many in the locker room wondered if Brian Schottenheimer had been named offensive coordinator specifically to better align Wilson with his teammates. Then, the purge. One Seahawk felt it necessary to tell Duane Brown, the left tackle Seattle traded for last season and signed to an extension this spring, “It’s not usually like this.”

Ultimately, the Seahawks made the same bet as Carroll. They bet on Wilson, at least for the next two years, when he’s under contract, then built around him, hoping to gain by what they subtracted from their locker room, to get younger, more cohesive, to recapture the magic they found in 2012. Some of Wilson’s greatest critics, and even some of his defenders, are gone now, and these Seahawks are clearly his team moving forward. Remaining Seahawks argue that keeping the core of the defense intact this season would have been impossible, regardless, with Bennett turning 32 and Sherman turning 30 and Avril and Chancellor forced into retirement. All players think they can play five years longer than they actually can, they argue, citing the longer prime that Wilson has left. But that doesn’t make the end of an era any less sudden—or lessen the pain of what could have been.

“Hell, no,” Wright says, when asked if he expected the defense would be dismantled as quickly as it came apart. “I thought we were going to ride off into the sunset together. I definitely didn’t see it falling apart that fast. I thought it would last another three or four years.”

Publicly, the principals remaining in Seattle—Schneider, Carroll and Wilson—have maintained that there’s been no shift in philosophy, no effort to empower and insulate the quarterback, and that their current roster is a group on the rise, much like the 2012 Seahawks. Asked by SI in general terms about the upcoming season and all the turnover back in August, all sounded optimistic. The expectation for excellence, Wilson said then, hasn’t waned as the veterans who helped establish it have departed. “The standard was set a long time ago,” Wilson told SI, “and it’s still there from Day 1 when we started practicing this year. The standard is super high. The standard is to practice at the highest level, and do everything we can to win.”

Asked in training camp whether 2018 feels different at team headquarters, Wilson said then that not much had changed. “There are definitely some different faces out there, but it really doesn’t [feel different]. Coach Carroll does a tremendous job of being consistent every day. He does a tremendous job of making sure the culture is the way that we want it to be—a culture of excellence, a culture of love, a culture of guys who love the game.”

Carroll told SI as part of those earlier August interviews he believes the Seahawks can build a champion with the guys in the locker room right now, and that some are destined to become household names, and that Wilson is “the best he’s ever been,” on and off the field. “Nobody knew who Richard was or who Kam was back in the day,” Carroll said then, “and there are guys in that room right now that they’re going to know about in time. It’s thrilling. … We’ve got extraordinary performance and leadership ability from the QB spot. I don’t know what [the critics] are thinking.”

“It’s a dope opportunity, in my opinion,” Wagner said then, echoing his coach.

The answers will come in 2018. Winning, as Avril says, masks deficiencies in the process. If Carroll deliberately shifted the power from a locker room full of outspoken Pro Bowlers to the talented passer who didn’t have the full respect of that locker room—as many current and former players believe he has done—the one and only thing that will justify that transition is to win. “Now you’re tied to him,” one Seahawk told management this spring.

Just four years removed from reaching the pinnacle of the sport, this the state of Seattle’s NFL team, on the verge of another season. Blame the salary cap. Blame ego. Blame age and injury. Blame success. Just know that many of the principals, especially those who remain, don’t think this version of the Titanic is foundering just yet.

“Wait and see,” the ever-optimistic Carroll told SI. “I ain’t worried one bit.”

Grading every position on the Rams roster in 2018

Cameron DaSilva

Grading every position on the Rams roster in 2018

The Los Angeles Rams have one of the best rosters in the NFL heading into 2018, particularly after re-tooling and revamping many parts of the depth chart.

With the regular season upon us, we’ve decided to grade every position on the 53-man roster, from quarterback to special teams.

Quarterback: B
Even though he made the Pro Bowl last season, and even though he posted a passer rating above 100, Goff hasn’t yet cemented his spot among the NFL’s elite – among the “A” class quarterbacks. He’s well on his way to reaching that plateau after throwing 28 touchdown passes and seven interceptions, but he’s just not there yet. This season could be the one where he takes a massive step forward and becomes one of the best passers in the NFL.

This group’s grade takes a hit because of the lack of talent behind Goff, too. Sean Mannion and Brandon Allen offer very little as backups, giving fans and the coaching staff very little confidence if Goff were to go down.

Running back: A+
Gurley proved any remaining doubters wrong last season after a rough 2016 campaign, leading the league in yards from scrimmage and touchdowns. He’s established as one of the three or four best backs in the NFL, which earns the Rams’ backfield an A+ grade on its own. Gurley can catch passes out of the backfield, line up as a wide receiver, carry the ball 25 times a game. Oh, and he didn’t miss a single block in pass protection last year.

Behind Gurley are Malcolm Brown, John Kelly and Justin Davis. They each offer their own skill sets, but Kelly is the best of the bunch. He should be RB2 by season’s end and could have a significant impact this year.

Wide receiver: A-
The Rams may not have a dominant No. 1 receiver like DeAndre Hopkins, Antonio Brown or Julio Jones, but the group as a whole is one of the best in the NFL. Brandin Cooks will be a big upgrade over Sammy Watkins, while Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp will both be good for 60-plus catches and 700 yards each.

Few teams are as set at the top of their wide receiver depth chart the way the Rams are, but they also have good backups in Josh Reynolds, Mike Thomas and Pharoh Cooper. Cooks still has to show he’s worth the big contract he just signed, but even if he doesn’t produce at an elite level, the Rams’ other receivers will step up.

Tight end: C+
The only weak link on offense is at tight end. Tyler Higbee could be poised for a breakout season, as might Gerald Everett, but neither has established himself as a true No. 1 tight end. Everett’s shoulder injury set him back quite a bit this offseason, putting a hold on his potential breakout season.

With Watkins gone, Higbee and Everett could both become go-to red zone weapons for Goff. They’re the only big-bodied receivers not named Josh Reynolds and Goff could take advantage of their size in the tight quarters around the end zone.

Offensive line: A-
Andrew Whitworth isn’t as good as he once was, but he still plays at a very high level given his age. Rodger Saffold might be the Rams’ best offensive lineman despite not getting much credit as such, proving to be an outstanding run blocker last season.

At center, John Sullivan continues to plug along as a veteran leader in the middle of the offense, helping Goff with pre-snap signals and reads at the line. Jamon Brown is the weakest lineman on the team, but he’ll be swapped out for Austin Blythe the first two weeks of the season and isn’t guaranteed to get his job back when he returns from suspension.

Rob Havenstein is freshly signed to an extension, earning the trust of the front office and coaching staff as a quality right tackle.

As for the backups, they’re filled with rookies Joseph Noteboom will be the swing tackle, Jamil Demby can play just about any position and Brian Allen will back up Sullivan at center. This is a deep group with long-term potential.

Defensive line: A+
Good luck finding a better defensive line than the Rams’. Aaron Donald and Ndamukong Suh will come together at each tackle spot to generate pressure from the interior, giving the Rams arguably the best tandem in the league. At defensive end, Michael Brockers often goes overlooked but is consistently a force against the run and pass.

The Rams probably don’t have as much depth as they would like, but John Franklin-Myers and Sebastian Joseph-Day are both rookies, while Ethan Westbrooks had a standout preseason. Their starters alone make this one of the best defensive lines in the league, be it a 3-4 or 4-3 scheme.

Inside linebacker: C+
As good as Los Angeles is in the middle of its front, the second level isn’t quite as strong. Mark Barron and Cory Littleton will be the staring inside linebackers, which should concern some fans given Barron’s durability questions and Littleton’s inexperience. If they can both progress and step up, the Rams’ defense will be substantially better against the run than it was in 2017.

Micah Kiser, Ramik Wilson and Bryce Hager are solid insurance policies as backups and could find themselves starting at some point this season. There are a lot of just average players in this group, but at least the Rams have solid depth to work with.

Outside linebacker: C
Few people outside of Los Angeles even know who Samson Ebukam and Matt Longacre are, but they’ll be the Rams’ starting outside linebackers. Ebukam has a boatload of potential with his athleticism and speed on the edge, but he didn’t record a single sack in the preseason despite being used heavily.

Longacre battled a biceps injury during camp and the preseason and has had durability issues in the past, so there’s a good chance he won’t be able to start all 16 games. The Rams’ backups don’t offer much, either. Ogbonnia Okoronkwo is on the PUP list, Trevon Young and Justin Lawler are unproven rookies and Dominique Easley is just now trying to transition to outside linebacker from defensive tackle.

Cornerback: A
The cornerback group has a similar feel to the defensive line in the way that it’s loaded with talent. Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib join forces after offseason trades, while Nickell Robey-Coleman will continue to man the slot. That’s as good as a trio gets at cornerback, assuming everyone stays healthy and plays up to standards.

Sam Shields and Troy Hill will be the primary backups despite being capable of starting for a bunch of other teams in the NFL. That’s how stacked the Rams’ secondary is.

Safety: A-
Even though some may not know the names of Lamarcus Joyner and John Johnson, don’t let their lack of star power lead you to believe the Rams are weak at safety. Joyner and Johnson can hold up against any safety tandem in the league right now despite them only having one season together in the secondary.

They can each play free or strong safety, cover receivers in the slot and lay the wood on ball carriers. Really, there’s nothing they can’t do, which is why they were both graded as top-15 safeties by PFF last season.

Marqui Christian is a hybrid safety-linebacker while Blake Countess can also play safety, but neither are players you want starting on defense.

Special teams: A+
From kicker to long snapper, the Rams are loaded on special teams. All four players on this unit made the Pro Bowl last season – Johnny Hekker, Greg Zuerlein, Pharoh Cooper and Jake McQuaide – proving to be arguably the best special teams group in the league. This unit remains completely intact for 2018.

Agamemnon wrote:

zn said this was a good article and it is.

I posted it a long ways back, buried in a general Donald thread, but it really is good enough (IMO) to earn its own thread in the Post-Extension Era.

Here is something that was said about it when it was first published:

Louis Riddick@LRiddickESPN
A very detailed, well reasoned, well organized explanation by @cfrelund as to why @AaronDonald97 needs to get paid. NOW! Read it for yourself…

The Defining Traits of the Coaching Trees Taking Over the NFL

As the offenses in Los Angeles, Kansas City, and Philadelphia have taken flight, teams across the league have scrambled to replicate them. What are the secrets to coaching lineages that include Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan, and Andy Reid and Doug Pederson?

https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2018/8/30/17799474/sean-mcvay-kyle-shanahan-andy-reid-coaching-trees

Take a cursory look at the NFL’s most thrilling offenses last year, and a few common themes emerge. In their first seasons under new head coaches, both the Rams and 49ers shredded opponents with savvy play designs fueled by deception. Los Angeles coach Sean McVay and San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan thrive behind play-action fakes, intricate motions, and subtle-but-devastating tweaks to receiver splits and alignments.

Other teams throttled defenses via ingenuity and collaboration. In Kansas City and Philadelphia, the coaching staffs studied college tendencies and developed in-house football laboratories that pushed them to the forefront of innovation. Doug Pederson’s embrace of an RPO-heavy offense lifted the Eagles all the way to a Super Bowl title, and his relentless effort to stay one step ahead turned him into a hero for risk takers everywhere. “Stay on the attack, without a doubt,” Vikings offensive coordinator and former Eagles quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo says of the no. 1 lesson he learned from Pederson. “And a willingness to be open to new things and change.”

The NFL has long been a league of mimics. Teams are quick to bottle up the latest buzzworthy ideas and parrot them as their own. And after watching from afar as the Eagles, Rams, and Chiefs became the league’s cool kids in 2017, franchises spent this offseason scrambling to replicate their results. In 2018, 13 teams will have new offensive play-callers. Nearly a third of those—DeFilippo, Bears head coach Matt Nagy, Colts head coach Frank Reich, and Titans coordinator Matt LaFleur—were members of 2017 staffs in Philly, Los Angeles, or Kansas City. Upon recognizing the traits that make for brutally efficient offenses, teams have elected to pull from the places that cultivate them best.

As organizations mine the same staffs in pursuit of a breakthrough, a certain level of offensive cross-pollination is inevitable. “It’s neat to watch, [but] sometimes it’s annoying,” Shanahan jokes about seeing his schemes on film throughout the league. “Sometimes I don’t like watching the exact same stuff on other peoples’ tapes.” That annoyance becomes even more complicated considering where many of these coaches originated. Pederson was a coordinator under Reid in Kansas City, meaning that both Reich and DeFilippo are branches on the Reid coaching tree. McVay was an assistant for Shanahan with the Redskins eight years ago; LaFleur was also on that staff, making him a member of the McVay and Shanahan trees.

The knotty, intertwined nature of the league speaks to just how motivated teams are to capture the magic of a few savants. “The main thing is it’s a copycat league, and lots of times, people don’t notice stuff until you have success,” Shanahan says. “And when you do have success, everybody watches it. That’s why it becomes bigger and bigger.”

When people link McVay and Shanahan, they usually point to the time the pair spent together in Washington. Shanahan was hired to coordinate the offense when his father was brought on as the head coach in 2010, and McVay joined the team’s staff as a quality control assistant that year. The connection, though, dates back even further. McVay and Shanahan started their careers at the lowest level of Jon Gruden’s Tampa Bay staff in the 2000s. “The foundation of everything I know about offensive football comes from Jon Gruden,” McVay says.

Gruden’s West Coast principles formed the basis of both coaches’ systems, and the offenses they now run only grew from there. As coaches climb the ladder in their respective careers, they pick up lessons from the mentors they work with along the way. Each stop presents a new set of football ideals, even if the basics of a scheme are fairly similar. “The foundation of how you want to operate, what your identity is offensively, it’s been an accumulation of the people that I’ve learned from and what we feel is the best way to accentuate our players’ skill sets,” McVay says.

In the time since Shanahan and McVay worked for Gruden, each has studied under bosses who emphasized the use of play-action. Shanahan’s experience in Houston with Gary Kubiak, a former assistant for his father in Denver and a disciple of the zone-running play-action game, was Kyle’s first foray into that type of scheme. And when McVay arrived in Washington, he was introduced to an offense devoted to that approach. “I got a chance to learn from Kyle and Mike Shanahan about really having an identity, creating a marriage between the run and the pass game,” McVay says.

Dedication to play-action—and the endless pursuit of deception—has emerged as the defining characteristic of the offenses in this lineage of coaches. And their recent success with that strategy goes a long way in explaining this coaching tree’s recent proliferation. In his debut season as Rams head coach, McVay oversaw the biggest jump in play-action usage of any offense from 2016. The Rams used play-action on 29 percent of their dropbacks last season, the second-highest rate in the league; they used it on just 16 percent of dropbacks the year before, a clip that ranked 26th. Jared Goff averaged 3.7 more yards per attempt with play-action than without, the second-biggest difference in the NFL behind Marcus Mariota (5.2 YPA). Given Mariota’s play-action proficiency, it should be no surprise that the Titans’ brass saw a McVay assistant as a logical option to run their offense.

As McVay explains why the Rams favor play-action, he points to factors that compound a defense’s problems. “Especially in early down-and-distances when [defenses are] a little more regulated with what you’re getting, that’s definitely something we want to do,” he says. Using play-action on early downs when the threat of a run is more believable makes sense, and as McVay spells out, the benefits go beyond bolstering the legitimacy of the run fake. First-down coverages in the NFL aren’t tangled, complex webs in the way that third-down schemes often are. Astute play-callers understand the benefits of slinging the ball on first-and-10, and McVay and Shanahan are two of the best in the business.

Of Goff’s 477 pass attempts last season, 175 came on first down, and his 8.3 yards per attempt on those ranked seventh among players with at least 70 first-down attempts. While Goff’s numbers are impressive, they don’t hold a candle to the figures Jimmy Garoppolo put up in his late-season stint as the 49ers starter. In his five games under center in San Francisco, Garoppolo averaged a ridiculous 9.9 yards per attempt—the best mark in the league by far among QBs with at least 70 first-down attempts. Jimmy G’s mark stems from a small sample size, but illustrates how dangerous Shanahan can be when toying with convention with a high-caliber QB at the controls.

Shanahan folds in an additional layer of deceit by way of myriad heavy formations. The 49ers used 21 personnel (two backs, two receivers, and one tight end) on 28 percent of their offensive snaps last season, the highest rate in the league, according to Warren Sharp’s data. Some of that is driven by the investment the front office made in fullback/Swiss army knife Kyle Juszczyk; some of it is driven by Shanahan’s propensity for deploying larger sets to create traffic and fool defenses into believing they have to stop a play they’ve never seen. “You look at Atlanta when they went to the Super Bowl, they’re mixing in 13 [personnel],” McVay says. “They’re mixing in 12 or 21 looks, depending on how you want to look at that second tight end.”

With so many different personnel groupings on the field, Shanahan is able to dress up play concepts in varied ways, even if the schematic details of those concepts remain the same. McVay has witnessed the benefits of that approach firsthand, only last season in Los Angeles it wasn’t a luxury that he could afford. “We went into L.A., and I don’t think the idea was to be almost exclusively an 11-personnel team,” LaFleur says. “But it’s a credit to Sean understanding who our best players were.”

In a drastic departure from his offenses in Washington, McVay’s Rams used 11 personnel (three receivers, one back, and one tight end) on a league-high 81 percent of their offensive snaps. After identifying the three-receiver set as his go-to method for getting his premier talent on the field, McVay faced the challenge of being creative enough within a single personnel package to keep defenses guessing. During the past few years, teams that have trotted out three receivers and a single back on most of their plays have been rightfully mocked. Ben McAdoo’s Giants and Jason Garrett’s Cowboys have become punch lines about stale offensive game-planning, and the latter hasn’t been helped by Dez Bryant’s Twitter zingers about the Dallas receivers regularly aligning in the same spots.

Last season, McVay went as far as any coach could go in the opposite direction while still using a similar frequency of 11 personnel. In some scenarios, that meant motioning receivers in tight to mimic H-backs and second tight ends. In others, running back Todd Gurley and a tight end would align as receivers to create empty formations. The Rams’ alignment mirrored formations and play designs that typically happen with drastically different packages.

“I think the beauty within our scheme is that you have flexibility. You’re gonna run the same stuff out of multiple personnel groupings, so it creates an illusion of complexity. It’s harder for the defense to pick up than it is for our guys.” —Matt LaFleur
The discrepancies between McVay’s offense in L.A. and Shanahan’s in San Francisco makes projecting LaFleur’s scheme in Tennessee complex. On one hand, LaFleur is a year removed from coordinating an offense that led the league in 11-personnel usage. On the other, he was raised in a system predicated on confusion for confusion’s sake. “I think the beauty within our scheme is that you have flexibility,” LaFleur says. “You’re gonna run the same stuff out of multiple personnel groupings, so it creates an illusion of complexity. It’s harder for the defense to pick up than it is for our guys.”

While coaches who aren’t from this tree may attempt to strike the perfect balance of play-action and trickery, one of McVay’s main takeaways from his experience with the Shanahans is that this type of offense can’t be done halfway. The marriage between run and pass, the interwoven elements to every call, the way that one play inherently affects another—all of them are built into the offense’s DNA. Identity is impossible to fake. “When you have an identity, I think the players feel a comfort level in it,” McVay says. “You get a lot of repetitions at it. Repetition is the mother of learning.”

NFL franchises may seek out masters of deception like McVay more than ever before, but as the Reid coaching tree makes plain, it’s not the only quality that’s taken the league by storm in recent years. During Reid’s time as Kansas City’s head coach, the Chiefs’ offensive staff has maintained a dry-erase board affectionately known as the “Beautiful Mind” board. Every Monday throughout the season, the board is blank in Reid’s office, waiting for members of the staff to fill it in with their most outlandish concepts. Some are play designs drawn on napkins or pulled straight from a coach’s mind, never before seen. Others are familiar concepts dressed up in new formations. “We know where the bones are buried [on those plays],” Nagy says, “but we just do it from a different look.”

On Mondays and Tuesdays, assistants dip in and out, sketching plays in different markers and filling the board until it becomes a multi-colored spider web of lines, X’s, and O’s. “It almost indirectly became a competition of who was going to come up with the most creative play that was going to be successful,” Nagy says. On Saturday, a photo is snapped of the board for safekeeping just before it’s erased, wiped clean for the following week. “You never lose it,” Nagy says. “It’s always there somewhere. But you get a nice, clean slate on Monday morning.”

Nagy entered Reid’s orbit a decade ago as an offensive assistant for the 2008 Eagles. A former college quarterback at Delaware, Nagy has long enjoyed living outside the box as a football thinker, and came to realize that he found the perfect teacher to nourish that desire. By the time Nagy came to Philly, Reid had ceded a good portion of day-to-day offensive operations to entrenched coordinator Marty Mornhinweg. But when a young, relatively inexperienced staff (one that included Pederson as a first-year offensive coordinator and Nagy as the QBs coach) followed Reid to Kansas City in 2013, the veteran coach felt it was time to once again take control. Just before the start of that year’s OTAs, during one of the staff’s opening meetings of the season, Reid busted in the door with a new-look up-tempo approach ready to go out of the gate. “It was out of nowhere,” Nagy says. “And we ended up doing it. It ended up being successful. That just goes to show that his mind is always thinking one step ahead of everybody.”

For a young coach thirsting to innovate, getting to see Reid pilot the offense was a dream come true. “That was so awesome,” Nagy says. “For the first time, being a young guy coming up, I got to hear the installs, play-by-play, detail-by-detail, from coach Reid. For me to hear that, and to understand how he works and how he thinks, it allowed me as a quarterbacks coach to say, ‘Wow, he likes to be creative. I like to be creative. Let’s start throwing some ideas with each other—along with Doug and the rest of these guys.’”

The crucible of creativity that Reid has fostered with the Chiefs has seeped into the rest of the league, and much of that influence has manifested itself in the explosion of the run-pass option. RPO concepts came to Kansas City with quarterback Alex Smith; Smith used RPOs as a college QB at Utah and during his tenure with the 49ers, and as Pederson, Nagy, and the Chiefs staff watched college quarterbacks entering the draft each year, they began recognizing different designs that might be compatible with their offense. That’s one reason Kansas City’s use of RPOs skyrocketed in 2017: The Chiefs had just spent that spring drilling down on college QBs before selecting Patrick Mahomes 10th overall. The staff was flush was new play designs that might apply. “We really value evaluating these college quarterbacks,” Nagy says. “When you’re going through that, you’re seeing so much tape, and you’re seeing these guys that are out there at the quarterback position, and you see so many different plays and concepts in the college world. When you watch it, you almost instantly say, ‘Well does that fit with our guys?’”

Talk to the coaches with ties to Reid and Pederson, and they stress how valuable this trial-and-error segment is to the offensive process. During practices in Philadelphia last spring, the Eagles tried plenty of RPO concepts that failed spectacularly. Through the years, Nagy has learned that not every design idea translates to three dimensions. “Sometimes you get in the lab and your experiments work,” Reich says. “But they don’t always.”

“We kind of all feel like we’re in this thing together. We all learned together, going through this stuff, talking through it. You spend so many hours with one another just talking about ideas, and thoughts, and concepts to see it come to fruition.” —Matt Nagy
So far this season, there’s been plenty of feeling out for Nagy, Reich, and DeFilippo in their new homes. In DeFilippo’s case, the challenge is melding some of his own ideas with an offense that’s remained largely intact. The Vikings’ protections, motions, and formations will all be nearly identical to what they were a season ago. Even with the carryover, DeFilippo doesn’t feel restricted. He says Minnesota coach Mike Zimmer has given him plenty of leeway to make the offense his own, and there’s never a gray area about where the limits exist. “Coach communicates exactly what he wants and exactly what he expects,” DeFilippo says. “There’s no beating around the bush with Coach. If he wants something, he’s going to tell you. As an assistant coach, you can really appreciate that.”

In Indianapolis and Chicago, Reich and Nagy have different hurdles. Initially, Reich was encouraged by how many of the Eagles’ concepts seemed applicable with Andrew Luck at quarterback. “I really felt from where I just came from, there were a lot of connection points,” Reich says. “Carson [Wentz] is big and strong and athletic and smart. Andrew is big and strong and athletic and smart.” Yet even for players with similar profiles, it’s key to note that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. These coaches get hired because of their prior successes, but Reich says he’s been conscious of compartmentalizing his time in Philly and his job now. “It’s always an interesting dynamic,” Reich says. “You go somewhere and you want to take all your experiences with you, but when you go to a new place, it’s just the nature of this business that you’re all in where you’re at. You don’t like to talk too much about previous places and previous players because you’re trying to create something special where you’re at.”

When Nagy talks about his former boss, the reverence in his voice is obvious. He refers to Reid simply as “coach,” in the same tone someone would use when alluding to a mentor he’s had since high school. Nagy’s football worldview has been imbued with the values Reid fostered during his days as a young coach, and his task is to instill that same overarching approach with the franchise he now oversees. How he fares, along with Reich, DeFilippo, and LaFleur, will determine how far these emerging trees grow. “We kind of all feel like we’re in this thing together,” Nagy says of his former Kansas City colleagues. “We all learned together, going through this stuff, talking through it. You spend so many hours with one another just talking about ideas, and thoughts, and concepts to see it come to fruition.

“For me, I was fortunate to be around those guys and work with them. Those were special times.”

Agamemnon wrote:

I know Suh didn’t get $60M at signing. He got $60 million total from Miami. What are you referring to?
Yeah, it is Brandt.

Brandt believes that Donald’s agents based their demands on Suh’s contract, but that Suh’s money was simply a result of being a free agent. I disagree, I don’t think the Donald camp based anything on just one contract. Therefore everything the Donald group was asking was base on a fallacy.

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