Aaron Rodgers Explains Why He’s Now at Peace

The four-time MVP on what he’s learned the past two years and why he’s excited for 2022. Plus, Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase on their bet, a rebuild in Chicago and much more.

Aaron Rodgers pointed at the tables, with four chairs around each one, a screen pass away from his locker. He smiled thinking about where he was sitting.

It’s 2022 now, and Rodgers will tell you: This is different.

“One of the things that’s been really special is these tables are back in the locker room,” Rodgers said an hour after a brisk practice. “They don’t mean anything to many people, but they were gone last year [as a measure to contain COVID-19]. And when the media leaves, to see guys playing cards again in the locker room, spending time with each other? It used to be, with no tables in here, anytime we had a break, everybody’s just in their locker; no one’s talking to each other, everybody’s looking at their phone.

“The whole energy has shifted with something as small as that. Guys are hanging out, guys are BSing, guys are playing cards. That’s a really cool thing. We got the media back in the locker room, which is fun because now more guys get opportunities to speak, and you see their personalities. And there are a lot of fun things coming.”

Rodgers is 38 now, turning 39 in December, precisely the same age Brett Favre was when he first retired, then came back, only to be traded to the Jets to clear the way for Rodgers to become the Packers’ starter in 2008. And anyone paying attention over the last 18 months knows that the idea he could find a fate similar to his predecessor, playing out the string elsewhere, wasn’t considered far-fetched a relatively short time ago.

Instead, Rodgers is still in Green Bay, and we know it’ll almost certainly be for good. That’s another change heading into his 18th NFL season.

What’s more, the long-haired, bearded, newly tatted and heavily scrutinized reigning back-to-back NFL MVP is not just at peace with that—he’s happy about it. Since throwing his own career stability in a blender by openly questioning his future in Green Bay following the Packers’ loss to the Buccaneers in the NFC title game in January 2021, Rodgers has been through a lot, some of it self-generated. There was the awkward offseason to follow. The vaccine situation. Another painful playoff loss. The Davante Adams trade.

With all that now in the rearview mirror, Rodgers isn’t just happy: He’s thankful.

“Going through it really made it clear who’s an ally and who’s not an ally,” he said. “It’s more the mindset of the last couple years of trying to live with a little more gratitude and perspective as an older player that the years are coming to an end. And the end is near. Who knows how many years that is? But it’s definitely closer every single year. So I’m living my life with a little more perspective about how special the journey has been and less about what you don’t have, what you couldn’t accomplish, what could’ve been.

“Because that’s a never-ending loop of stuff that takes you away from living with far more gratitude.”

With that perspective, Rodgers is now looking forward to, like he said, the fun stuff that’s ahead. And maybe a different result than the Packers have gotten of late, too.

We’ve hit the California leg of the training camp tour, and we’ve got a whole lot to cover—both on the news of the week and where I’ve been the last 14 or so days. Inside a packed MMQB column this week, you’ll find …

• How college teammates are evolving into, perhaps, the NFL’s two best receivers.

• The afternoon that still haunts the Colts.

• The Bears’ baby steps, which might wind up being big steps.

• More on the news of the week, with nuggets on Deshaun Watson, the Dolphins and more.

But we’re starting with the best player in the NFL the last two years running, and how he’s mapping out what, even now he concedes, is the twilight of his Hall of Fame career.

Those tables in the middle of the locker room were the perfect metaphor, too, for how Rodgers got to where he is now, content in and appreciative of this place he’s called home for almost two decades. Because those tables, as he pointed out, are where relationships are formed and strengthened, and relationships tell the story of his last couple of years.

We’re going to start with the one that many in the Packers’ building would maintain carried him through everything, the one he’s cultivated with his coach, Matt LaFleur. It’s a relationship that was questioned plenty through 2019 and proved to be solid as an oak thereafter.

To remember where this all started, for LaFleur, means going back to those doubts about whether the coach would bend his quarterback-friendly offense to fit a signal-caller who liked the idea of having more on his plate, not less, at the line of scrimmage. They were doubts that, LaFleur will say now, he always found absurd.

“We have a great mutual respect for each other,” LaFleur said. “The communication’s great. We’re on the same page. Certainly he knows that I trust the hell out of him, and he’s got the keys to the car when he’s out there in terms of doing what he feels like is necessary for us to win. We’re always in constant communication to make sure we are on the same page, and he’s not the type of guy to go off the script.

“But he also sees a lot of stuff. … It’s hard to argue with his success and what he’s been able to accomplish. I’d be foolish not to listen to a guy like that. That would be crazy.”

That said, it didn’t just take willingness for LaFleur and Rodgers to get to where they were last year, when their bond was able to withstand and carry the quarterback through a time when he and the front office weren’t seeing eye-to-eye. It also took work.

So it was after their first season together, and during the pandemic, that a lot of the hours they needed to get it done were spent. The two were on Zoom together a lot. They had a season’s worth of tape to rifle through, to try to retrofit the offense, again, to what Rodgers does best. Doing it together made a huge difference, and not just on the field.

“That time we spent on Zoom, that was very meaningful to me,” Rodgers said. “To feel more like a collaborator was really important, and I did some things off the field as well to help with our relationship. And the more time we spent together, the better that our connection was. It was never bad. It just went from coach-player to friend.”

From that work, just as LaFleur would trust Rodgers to change a play, Rodgers would trust LaFleur’s instincts and strategy so he wouldn’t feel the need to as often.

“When you get to know somebody off the field, you know how they tick and what makes them go. You see everything from a different perspective,” Rodgers said. “I know Matt’s a grinder. Matt’s a very creative person. He’s very driven, very hard on himself. I also know off the field how much he cares. And it’s because of how much he cares that he spends so much time in here, grinding through the week of game planning, film watching and preparation.

“So when there comes a situation where he might call something and I’m like, Eh … I don’t know, I just go back to, You know what, this dude’s been grinding all week, and I bet you he has a specific reason he likes this as a No. 1 play. And I might have thought it was down the list a little bit, but we just trust him and lean into it and vice versa.”

“I’ve probably learned more from him than he has from me,” LaFleur added. “I think we’re both competitive, and although we’re different in a lot of ways, there’s a lot of similarities between us in terms of just how much we care about winning and trying to do the right thing and just working together to try to put the best product out there as possible.”

The two have, without question, at least approached matching that level of expectation. The last three years, all 13-win seasons, are the winningest multiyear stretch of Rodgers’s career, and he won as many league MVPs over that run as he had in his 11 seasons before LaFleur arrived.

And while some have looked at that and seen LaFleur simply being in the fortunate position of getting to coach Rodgers at a time when there seems to be very little he can’t do, Rodgers doesn’t see it that way at all. He sees a true partnership, with his own way of showing gratitude for it.

“I find celebration so interesting,” Rodgers said. “A lot of times you can tell by my initial celebration after a touchdown pass what kind of play it was. If he dials up something special and I throw a gimme touchdown, I’m always gonna give him the credit first, because he does that a lot. You’ll see me pointing over to him sometimes, and the majority of the time it’s because he just called a great freaking play and all I had to do literally was throw the ball to a wide-open guy.

“I have so much appreciation for that aspect he’s brought to this offense and this team.”

Add that up, and it’s pretty simple to see how, even when things were at their most strained over the first half of 2021 (from the open-ended comments in January to the newsbreak of the trade request on draft day to tense will-he-show-up-or-not days leading up to training camp), LaFleur’s line of communication to his quarterback was never closed down. That was huge in keeping the team’s shot at a full reconciliation alive.

But making that happen meant fixing another relationship that was more complicated.

When Rodgers discusses his relationship with GM Brian Gutekunst now, he pretty openly concedes that the positions the two men hold are, in some ways, naturally in conflict.

“My role is to play quarterback, and I’ve been playing a long time, seen a lot of football. I feel like in 18 years you become a pretty good judge of talent,” Rodgers said. “Players, I think, they see the talent, see the ability, see the character. Coaches see the performance, that’s how they kind of view things. Personnel people would see the potential. So in a win-now situation as you get to be an older player, and you feel like the window is getting smaller, you want to win now and the GM’s gotta build his team for the future.

“It’s a fine line balancing those things. I hadn’t spent a lot of time with Brian off the field. And through the conversations we had, it allowed me to see the character of the man a little better.”

It also helped Rodgers to see his vision for the Packers, which, over time, the quarterback found himself in alignment with.

Through their talks, Gutekunst explained how, ideally, the Packers wanted to draft and develop their own, and spent their cap space on such players who’d come up through their system. Rodgers countered that there was more that could be done. Gutekunst, for his part, understood his win-now urgency, and agreed that Rodgers’s desire for more aggression was reasonable—the Randall Cobb trade, in some ways, was a good-faith sign of that.

“We’re still a draft-and-develop team,” Rodgers said. “I know we say that a lot; that’s most of the league, they’d like to be like that. There are less teams like the old Washington [teams] when they were trying to buy a team in free agency in many years. You’d like to draft guys and develop them and give them second contracts in-house. But there are needs and there are opportunities. I’ve always felt like adding one or two veteran guys at or around the minimum can really pay huge dividends in important spots.

“We’ve relied on young guys for much of my career. There are pros and cons to both those things. But I like Brian and his staff, and I think everybody in the building, myself included, has tried to focus on growing a little bit more and communicating a little bit more.”

That communication led to a bevy of moves in season last fall. The Packers pounced on players cut from other places—bringing in Texans pass rusher Whitney Mercilus and Cowboys linebacker Jaylon Smith. They made a run, too, at Odell Beckham Jr., when the Browns cut the star-crossed receiver.

And as much as anything, Gutekunst and the front office tried to go to another level in soliciting Rodgers’s opinion on potential moves. It didn’t mean they’d agree on everything, nor did it mean the quarterback would even have a take on each potential transaction. It was just that the simple act of involving him would ensure that everyone would stay on the same page.

“It was just frank conversations and just being really, really honest with where everyone was at,” Gutekunst said. “I’m super appreciative of it. I don’t know if every player could do that and then have the ability to see it from different people’s views, like he was talking about. So yeah, I think from that point on, it’s just kind of been: Keep moving forward. It seems like forever ago, even though it really wasn’t that long ago.

“But to be where we’re at right now, I think is really a credit to him, quite frankly.”

Gutekunst then added that players like Rodgers have information nobody else is going to know. The GM says his department can pretty easily integrate that information into what they do.

What’s really fascinating, then, is where it led the Packers this offseason.

Why didn’t Rodgers have a big issue with the trade that sent Adams—perhaps the best receiver he’s ever played with and perhaps the best receiver in the league—to the Raiders? Mostly because he was kept up to date throughout. There weren’t any surprises that hit him the way the drafting of Jordan Love did in 2020. So by the time the deal went down, Rodgers knew all the whys and hows on the transaction, as well as the different perspectives.

The Packers then drafted two receivers whom Rodgers has already taken to—North Dakota State’s Christian Watson and Nevada’s Romeo Doubs—to try to make up the difference, and they’re still open to adding more to the receiver room. In the meantime, Rodgers likes how they enhanced another part of the team, one that isn’t connected directly to his personal performance.

“The one thing that’s most encouraging is the emphasis on special teams that’s there this year that hasn’t been there,” Rodgers said. “That’s not entirely on [Gutekunst], but we haven’t had a lot of straight teamers on our roster in a while. And there are a couple guys with opportunities to make the squad who would maybe fit that role a little bit more.”

I then mentioned to Rodgers how that statement, coming from a quarterback, might surprise some people.

“Well, you can see it in some of the playoff games over my time—it’s three phases to win the game,” he responded. “Like last year, when the offense is playing terrible and the defense is playing incredible, we just need to break even on teams. Same thing in some of the other playoff games that we’ve had around here.”

Rodgers, to be sure, wouldn’t have re-signed with the Packers, after having a year voided from his contract as part of his agreement to return to Green Bay in the summer of 2021, then re-signed again in March, if he thought LaFleur wasn’t the right coach or Gutekunst wasn’t the right GM. He wound up getting there with both, if faster with the former than the latter.

He’s felt that way for a while about the locker room he’s in.

There was the hint of an edge in Rodgers’s voice when I asked who he meant when he said that last year clarified for him who his allies were—and who was on the outside looking in.

“Everyone in this locker room is in my corner,” Rodgers said. “I’m talking about outside the locker room.”

The time he was referencing, implicitly, was when his decision not to get vaccinated for COVID-19 became public. Those in the building knew and kept it quiet for months. He broke rules—deciding to publicly appear at press conferences without a mask—to keep his secret. Eventually, when he tested positive for COVID-19, the truth got out.

Regardless of where you stand on Rodgers, and his decision, there’s little debating that he took a beating in the court of public opinion in November when his status became public, and again when he went on The Pat McAfee Show and defiantly doubled down on his decision, citing advice he’d taken from prominent podcaster Joe Rogan.

He heard all of it and, even if he tried not to listen, it led him to look critically at how he lived his own life, and what was important versus what wasn’t.

“It’s allowed me to sit with feelings of sadness and frustration and disappointment, and feel deeply in my heart what those specific emotions are, and to be able to disassociate with any need to try desperately to be liked,” Rodgers said. “It’s not about caring less. It’s about choosing what to care more about. And it’s not truly leaning into what does it feel like to live a life where you’re not impacted or affected by outside opinions of yourself. It’s more how can that attitude affect the way that I look at other people.

“I can’t let my heart get penetrated by outside criticism and judgment and projection, and I have to balance that by making sure I’m not doing the same thing to other people. So it’s been a great learning process for me on being able to look in the mirror first as these comments have come, sit with them, and then check myself, and say, In what areas of my life am I doing that to other people? So I’m really, really thankful for the experiences that I went through and for the lessons that I’ve learned through.”

He then paused and added, “It’s been difficult, but extremely, extremely gratifying, too.”

It’s something Rodgers has thought about a lot, as he’s gotten more famous and the spotlight on him has gotten hotter, going back to well before any of this happened. He used to have TVs on the walls all over his house, like a lot of people do. He took a bunch of them down a while ago and filled his time by reading books, spending more time with friends and even cooking.

So discussion over his vaccination status, as he explained it, didn’t really make him withdraw any more than he had, so much as helped organize how he approaches his life: “There’s much less clutter. It’s simplifying things.”

Packers public relations man Tom Fanning, who’s assigned to Rodgers, still gives him clips, and Rodgers will thumb through headlines and read what he needs to, which is proof that he’s not trying to cut himself off from the normal orbit of an NFL player. The difference, now, is where he’s investing his time outside of it.

“I read a book last year by Mark Manson that talks a lot about that,” Rodgers said. “I truly believe indifference and apathy only rots yourself, because it’s so hard to truly take your ego out of indifference and apathy. What I’m striving towards is the things that I care about, to dive into those things, and the things that I don’t really care about, to find a way to eliminate the emotions associated with them. You’re never gonna eliminate them, and you can’t just turn it off. They’re out there and there’s benefit to some of them.”

Manson, by the way, is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life.

Considering all this, the title of the book is pretty funny. But the key, for Rodgers, is the second part of it. He does feel like, now more than ever, he’s finding a way to live as good a life as he possibly can. And he’s doing it, at least at this time of year, in Green Bay, just as he has the last 17 summers.

So if we add this together, a key question emerges: Will all of it come together to make Rodgers an even better player?

“I think it has to. I was laughing. I find myself much gentler,” he said before pointing over to Cobb’s locker. “I bet if you ask 18, he’d say I’m a much kinder, gentler quarterback now.”

I then asked him whether he picked out Cobb because he knew Rodgers 1.0, and so he has perspective on Rodgers 2.0. Rodgers smiled and responded, “I hope it’s more than 2.0. More like 22.0.”

Then the conversation turned to how much Rodgers is looking forward to the season. That’s when the comment came about the tables in the middle of the locker room—which was his way of explaining that as much as he wants a second championship, he’s looking forward as much to the group he’s pursuing it with as he is the pursuit itself.

Part of the pursuit this year will involve a little more responsibility, because of the departures of Adams, offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett (replaced by Adam Stenavich), passing-game coordinator Luke Getsy (replaced by receivers coach Jason Vrable) and tight ends coach Justin Outten. It’s responsibility that Rodgers welcomes, which he’s adamant he’ll handle organically and not with force.

“I gotta rely on side conversations with Coach Vrable or Steno, conversations with Randall and Allen [Lazard], the leaders in that room,” Rodgers said. “And then when there’s opportunities, it’s about getting to know guys in training camp, figuring out what buttons you can push on them to get the most out of them. Some guys respond to very direct, straight-line coaching. Some guys need affirmation. Some guys need kid gloves sometimes and a lot of gentleness. This is the time when you figure out what their personalities are.

“You got a bunch of young guys in the receiver room. I got my spidey senses on alert at all times with those guys; I know what conversations are going on, and I’m popping in there and giving them some specific things. Like I told Christian, When I talk in a meeting, it’s probably for a reason, and I’d appreciate if you wrote it down, because it might not come up that day or that week, but at some point that little point is gonna come up, and I need you to have that recall.”

And this is all why, when I brought up how Rodgers might be perceived as aloof or disconnected at times, LaFleur smirked and responded, “He’s always been [invested]. And I don’t know why that perception, if it is out there, would exist. Maybe because he’s not here during OTAs. I’m sure that’s probably why. But he’s totally invested. He loves doing it.”

Which, if you really think about it, makes all the sense in the world.

Because if Rodgers didn’t love doing it, there’d be no reason for him to have worked through all these relationships, reconciled them and decided to stay in Green Bay in the first place. So in a way, his simple presence in the Packers’ locker room was the ultimate confirmation of everything he’d said.

“If I didn’t have the passion to be out there, I would’ve said, I’m done,” he said. “There was a time where I wanted to be a full-time contributor in the offseason. But as my year-long plan has kind of adjusted. I’ve found what works best for me. Spending time in the offseason in Southern California with my workout group and my trainers and my body-work people and my massage therapists is what gets me ready to play. But when I get back here it’s all about focus on this season.

“I’d never say this is my last year or I’m gonna play two more or three more. I’m never gonna hold the team hostage and drag anything out. But I need to focus on this season, and then get away from it and see how I’m feeling and then make a decision. And then once I make a decision like I did this year, then I’m full-go, 100% committed. And until I’m not willing to do that, I’m gonna keep playing.”

He’d later add to that, “I really enjoy the guys.”

That has always been the case, of course.

Now, though, he’s got a great appreciation for more in Green Bay than just his teammates. And the hope is, six months from now, all these relationships he’s worked on, and all the intangible things he’s prioritized since things went haywire two Januarys ago, will come together to bring the Packers very real results.

LSU TEAMMATES PUSHING EACH OTHER

It’s been just 30 months since they won a national title together, and Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson have, between the two of them, played three NFL seasons since.

Their numbers work out to this per-season average: 92 catches, 1,490 yards, 10 TDs.

So before last September, the bet they made might’ve seemed outrageous, or even a little arrogant, to anyone outside their circle. Jefferson had just broken Randy Moss’s 22-year-old record for receiving yards as a rookie with 1,400. Chase swore he was going to, essentially, make lightning strike twice and break Jefferson’s mark the following year. Jefferson told him to put his money where his mouth was. Chase won the bet, with 1,455.

You know the rest. While Jefferson managed to catch more balls for more yards and more touchdowns than he had in 2020 (a 108/1,616/10 season), Chase teamed up with their college quarterback, Joe Burrow, to fuel one of the NFL’s most-feared passing attacks and help lead a Bengals revival that ended perhaps one missed block away from a Lombardi Trophy.

And this September? Well, going into the 2022 season, you could argue that the NFL’s two best receivers could soon be two guys who shared a meeting room in Baton Rouge. Both would arguably already be among the top five, and that quarterback of theirs is entering the same sort of rarified air at his position.

“I mean, we knew it,” Chase said, with a smirk, a little over a week ago in the Cincinnati locker room. “It’s not surprising to us, because we knew it at the beginning of the year we won the championship. We said it to each other, we could see it: Either our defense was that bad or we were really that good. That’s how we knew.”

So I got the chance through my Midwest tour to talk to both guys, and after doing that, what was obvious to me was how this all happened between two people who have the same sort of bond that an older LSU receiver tandem (Beckham and Jarvis Landry) had. “It’s the exact same,” Jefferson said.

Both have talent, at a baseline. You can’t become a first-round pick, or look so dominant physically so early in an NFL career, without a whole lot of it. But beyond that, they’re both sort of like Burrow, driven by much more than just making it here in the first place. That much was obvious in how each guy explained where he is in his development and even in how they described themselves.

I asked Jefferson, off to the best two-year start for a receiver in NFL history, what he sees when he flips on his own tape from the 2020 and ’21 seasons. “I just see myself as a younger player,” he answered. “I see myself being a little lazy on some routes, being knocked off-balance coming out of breaks.”

Compare that, then, with what his coaches say about him.

“He’s long and rangy, full strides off the ball, explosive and attacks the defenders,” said Vikings OC Wes Phillips via text. “Wins at all levels—deep, intermediate and underneath. Can go from full speed to snapping down and doubling a guy up, playing underneath himself. Great bend and balance. Hard worker. There are not enough superlatives!”

“Justin is special because of his ability to play fast and be in attack mode while also playing with great balance and route ability to win multiple ways,” Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell added. “He has so many subtle natural route-running traits, but also really works at it. He wants to be great.”

Which is where the harsh assessment of his own game comes into play, and how his own offseason came into focus. Working at House of Athlete in Florida, Jefferson wanted to get his playing strength closer to where his old buddy Chase has his, so he drilled down on building power in his calves and hamstrings, and did a lot of back squats to get there. The idea is that he’ll become faster and more explosive off the ball, out of breaks and after the catch.

And just like Jefferson was critical on an area of his own game where Chase is proficient, Chase took a similar eye to his own tape and found that places where he needed work were areas where Jefferson is really, really good.

“I felt like I could improve all around on everything—not just catching, not just routes: It was all of the above for a receiver,” he told me. “But the thing I worked on most was trying to drop my weight. That was something I always heard coming out of college; that was something I’d always been trying to work on.”

Chase spent some time at House of Athlete, but most of his time away from Cincinnati was with his trainers in Austin. They went through the details to make the Bengals star more seamless in how he dropped his hips as he changed direction, which in turn should make him a smoother route runner. It meant drilling it slowly at first and building up speed in time so the motion would be natural.

And there was one other thing, a little later in the offseason, that Chase went to work on. He’d avoided watching the Super Bowl for a while. Finally, at the beginning of May, at the start of the Bengals’ offseason program, he flipped it on to watch it by himself. Yes, on the Bengals’ last offensive snap, Burrow had checked to Chase (“He definitely checked to me”), and, sure, had Aaron Donald not wreaked havoc on the play, the ball was going to him, wide open in the end zone.

He says now, “I can’t dwell on that play. … If I was to drop a pass, I have to move on from it. So I’m treating that play the same way.” There’s another play, though, just before it, that he actually has dwelled on. Burrow checked to him on that one, too. The ball didn’t go his way, and, he explained, that was his own fault: “I wasn’t ready, because I was tired.”

So on top of the technical work he’d done, he also focused on getting his conditioning level where it needed to be, working with track coach Mo Wells in Austin. That included a ladder workout he couldn’t quite get through, where he did a 300, a 250, a 150, a 100, a 150, a 100 and a 50. “That right there told me,” he said, “that I could get in better shape.”

That illustrates the drive he’s got and why his coaches describe him like they do.

“Yeah, it’s not fake,” Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan said. “I mean, he really truly wants to be the best receiver to play football. And he believes that he’s capable of it. ... He’s not coming to just be a good player. He wants to be known as one of the best to ever do it. And maybe the best. He’s driven like that, and I think that’s what drew Joe and Ja’Marr together at LSU. I think that’s where they started. They’re like-minded people.”

You can throw Burrow in with them, too, of course.

Maybe they’re a little reserved about what they’ve already accomplished. But they’re not bashful on where they want to go.

“Yeah, I mean, that’s what I hope to be. That’s my goal,” Chase said. “And not just to be the best, but I’m saying to hopefully one day just be one of the greats. A Hall of Famer is something I want to be. It’s not just be great, but just be overall one of the best ever.”

Jefferson, a few days later and some 700 miles away echoed the sentiment: “I wanna be a Hall of Famer. And, of course, I wanna be a Super Bowl champion. That’s the main goal. I feel like if I don’t get that in my career, I’ve fallen short. It’s what I want. Of course, I want that gold jacket at the end of my career.”

Maybe it’s a little early for that kind of talk.

Then again, you’d have said the same thing about how these guys were talking a year ago.

COLTS FEEL CLOSE

Jaguars 26, Colts 11.

The score might as well be painted onto the field at Frank Reich’s fifth training camp as coach in Indianapolis. He addressed it directly with the team in April, as the Colts opened their offseason program. Owner Jim Irsay and GM Chris Ballard then discussed it with the players en masse as the team arrived at camp a short drive north of their practice facility at the end of August.

Get over it? Looking around here, that really hasn’t been the message. In fact, Ballard and Irsay told the players to own it and grow from it in moving forward. So with reminders of it still there (and everywhere) for the players, the honest truth is that Reich, Ballard and Irsay are O.K. with the wound still being open.

“So we gotta move on from it at some point,” Reich told me after an evening practice at Grand Park. “Mr. Irsay, he spoke to the team. He mentioned it. Chris, he spoke to the team. He mentioned it. I mentioned it back in April. Use it and turn how hard it was into something. I think we’re all at the point right now, because, yes, O.K., we’re moving on. But the analogy I used: Last year, it’s a scar. It’ll never go away.

“So every time I look down, yup, there it is, that 2021 season. Won’t ever forget. You look down at that scar and it reminds me of what you learned from it. It reminds me to not let that define us.”

A loss like that, with the playoffs on the line, would hurt any team. The Colts had their worst offensive output, 233 yards, in more than two years. Their vaunted running game, keyed by league rushing champion Jonathan Taylor, was held under 100 yards. Carson Wentz was ineffective, and Indy was affected by two crucial turnovers, while not being able to generate a single takeaway of its own.

But to really know how deep this one dug, and understand the dark place it put Irsay, Reich and Ballard in, more context is needed. The team blew out the Bills four days before Thanksgiving; lost, but went toe-to-toe with the defending champion Buccaneers the week after that; and cold-cocked the Patriots a week before Christmas. Going into January, with two games left, it looked like Indy was a lock to make the playoffs. And even after a close loss to the Raiders in Week 17, the fact that they had the Jags in Week 18 provided a safety net.

Falling right through it was painful at the time. But, months later, there’s hope that it’s the springboard to something bigger. At the very least, Reich can say now it already has led to some tangible things—the most prominent, of course, being the quarterback switch.

“When we came back in April, I used the phrase, Can’t change it, wouldn’t change it,” Reich said. “Learned from it, we’ll get hardened, and the reality is it’s made me a better coach. It’s made us a better team. We probably made some moves on both sides of the ball that might not have been made if we would’ve gotten into the playoffs. When you have the failure that you did at the end of last season? We know this team is built, we know we’re close, that’s what made the ending of last year unacceptable.

“And I think it just gave us more resolve, Chris and I and Mr. Irsay. As we talked through it, We’re not going backwards. we’re not gonna go backwards. We’re not gonna allow that to happen. More resolve. Mr. Irsay, hey, do you want to go get Matt Ryan? Let’s go get Matt Ryan. Stephon Gilmore? Let’s go get Stephon Gilmore. Yannick [Ngakoue]? Let’s get Yannick. I’m not sure we make all those moves if it ended smoothly last year.”

Reich then added, “So we’re a better team. We’re ready.”

And yes, the change at quarterback plays into Reich’s confidence big time—we did a story back in June with him and Matt Ryan on why the coach is so excited to see where the offense will go next.

But for Reich it’s not just the change at quarterback; it’s also the broken road the Colts took to land on Ryan for 2022. Given his druthers, of course, it would have helped to have Andrew Luck the last three years and for this year, too. And yet, there’s a lot to be taken, for the group, from a process that pinballed the team from Jacoby Brissett to Philip Rivers to Wentz and now Ryan.

In some ways, it reminds Reich of how it was for him as a player in Buffalo. The buildup to what the early-1990s Bills became was turbulent quickly.

“When I was drafted in Buffalo in ’85, 2–14. And then we got Jim Kelly, and you think, O.K., we’re all good,” he said. “We went 4–12 the next year, and then we went 7–8, and then we went 12–4. And we had a good team, then we got the quarterback we needed, but it still took a couple years. This doesn’t happen overnight. When Chris and I first got here, we were rebuilding. And there’s a lot of lasts-to-firsts all the time in this league.

“We made some good steps. We had the thing happen with Andrew. That was a little bit of a setback. But I think we handled that as well as we could handle it. I think our team handled it, our organization handled it the right way. I’m proud of the way we handled it, I’m proud of the way Andrew handled it, and we’ve been fighting and scratching and clawing to get it right. And every year we’ve made what we’ve thought are the best moves for our team to get there. …. I think this is gonna be a good thing for us.”

We’ll find out soon enough if it will be. But there’s no question that these Colts feel a little overlooked. If anyone needed affirmation of that, the moves Indy made on Ryan, Ngakoue and Gilmore are, as Reich said, an indication of how close the brass thinks it is.

Of course, they thought they were close last year, too. And they don’t want to forget it.

BUILD-THE-BEARS

New Bears coach Matt Eberflus and GM Ryan Poles were sitting side-by-side at a conference table inside newly renovated Halas Hall, and the first question I had for the two of them was whether they felt like they had to fight perception that their offseason was, essentially, a teardown.

Eberflus smiled and said, “If that perception is out there, we can’t control that. You’re gonna fight this perception now. When we have success, we’re gonna fight a different perception.”

Then he explained where the Bears are and said something interesting.

“The way we go about our business here is not for everybody,” he said. “It’s not easy. So the way we work, the way we strain on the field, the way our coaches ask our guys to retain information, it’s not for everybody. And we’ll find out, that’s what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to find out who the Chicago Bears are, in terms of the players, in terms of the people in the building. And if you’re a guy that likes to work hard, that’s respectful, that has the right winning attitude, guess what? You’ll stick.

“And if you’re not, we’re going to move to a different direction. And we have great guys. When I say great, these guys have bought in 100%.”

Can you see the thing I thought was interesting? He used the word respectful.

I doubled back on it.

“It’s important for me, just from my perspective. We hired all these guys, and Ryan and I have the same vision for that about being respectful to players and being respectful to everybody in the building,” he said. “But we’re also going to have standards. We’re also going to have high expectations. And that’s why we brought you here, because you’re that talented player and you’re a hard worker. It’s all the guys we drafted, [Jaquan] Brisker, [Kyler] Gordon, Velus [Jones Jr.], all the guys that we signed … they have that makeup.”

Poles, for his part, also pushed back on the idea that the Bears are conducting a down-to-the-studs job here: “I don’t see it as that. I think there is a core of players here that can help us win. I think what gets lost a lot is almost accepting being a subpar team. This quote-unquote ‘teardown’ idea? The winning culture piece is important. … You see teams that get stuck in that losing rut, and they can’t get out of it.”

But there is a reason why people think that’s what’s going on.

The Bears either jettisoned or let walk Khalil Mack, Akiem Hicks, Allen Robinson and Eddie Goldman, among others. They’re carrying about $57 million in dead-cap charges for players who are no longer on the roster. They’ve got, again, a new coach and GM. And in a lot of ways, that all that happened at once is very understandable—it was simply time (and maybe even a year late) to turn the page on the group that made the playoffs in 2018 and ’20.

Also understandable is why, as Poles said, they can’t allow for that idea to seep into the locker room. Which is where we can circle back to the “respect” part of the equation.

I think, deep down, Poles and Eberflus know there are going to be a lot of bumps this year. I also think they know it’ll be important to have the right environment in the locker room to get through it, which is why they have to push back on that perception, and even more so why it’s important that they got the right kinds of people into the locker room for this season.

It’s also why, as Eberflus alluded to, the little victories that the new bosses are seeing along the way stand to become big ones in time. It’s the coaches’ seeing Justin Fields coming to the building during a week off for the players and gathering trainers to go out on the field so he’d have some to throw to as he tried to get his work in. It’s Brisker, Gordon and Jones coming as advertised. It’s the secondary quickly looking better than most people would expect because rookies like Brisker and Gordon were ready to go.

“We had to have the right types of people,” Poles said. “And we believe that the more that we add that think the same way, that work the same way, that have passion for the game, that are really good teammates on top of the skill and the physical traits, we can create a culture that just continues to grow, and grow with the more guys that we add. And we’ve already started to see it a little bit, where you don’t have to say much anymore.”

Poles then told a story of one time a coach put what the Bears call an “accountability tape” up on the screen. He was showing his players a snap from practice and one in the back of the room asked him to stop the video.

“Hey,” the player said, “what about the corner on the other side? Did you see him in pursuit?”

The tape showed the corner, away from the play, hustling to the ball. The coach then looked at the corner: “Nice job.”

Now, of course, where Poles and Eberflus can take this from here will rest largely on how quickly they can turn over a roster that was aging last year and is much younger now. But the hope is that they’re already starting to check one box.

“Because when you have a talented team that plays hard …” Poles started.

“That’s a winning formula,” Eberflus continued. “You’ve got good schemes. Our schemes are good. The scheme we run on special teams and defense and offense, they’re good schemes. So you add that piece to it, and then the effort piece, talent and then there you have it.”

What they’ve had so far is moments like when they took Jones out of Tennessee in the third round. The scouts liked him. Then it went to the coaches. Getsy (the former Packers QB coach and now Bears OC) and the offensive staff were all in on how his ability to get down the field would take pressure off receiver Darnell Mooney and tight end Cole Kmet. Special teams coach Richard Hightower explained the value he could bring in the return game. So Poles and Eberflus pulled the trigger on a guy they valued right.

“And how we know that’s true,” Eberflus said, “we must’ve gotten 10 calls right after we drafted him.”

Poles smiled and said, “That’s the best feeling in the world.”

Of course, Poles won a Super Bowl in Kansas City, so he knows of a few better ones. That said, if things go according to plan? He’s hoping these moments can lead to those.

TEN TAKEAWAYS

Don’t oversell the nuance of Roger Goodell’s passing the baton on the Deshaun Watson appeal to former New Jersey attorney general Peter C. Harvey. I think the first reason he did, bluntly, is because it’s a little truer to the spirit of the compromise the league and union struck on discipline during the 2020 CBA talks. The NFLPA, of course, wanted a more neutral process. Some owners, for their part (the Cowboys’ Jerry Jones among them), wanted to outsource some of that process anyway, if for nothing else than to spare the league more of the kind of embarrassing situations it stumbled into over the last decade. And if on the first case Goodell stepped in and rolled the clock back to ’19 by dropping his own hammer, it’d probably make it much harder for any player going forward to trust that the first phase of the new process was relevant at all. So there’s that. But I also think Harvey’s background with the league, and in general, matters. Here’s a look at his résumé.

• He’s a board member at Futures Without Violence, a nonprofit “with the goal of ending domestic and sexual violence.”

• He was selected for the league’s Diversity Advisory Committee in March.

• He spearheaded a committee that took a hard look at the NFL’s critical crisis team, which, among other things, is charged with helping to protect women in these kinds of cases.

• He was one of four people to handle the Ezekiel Elliott case for the league.

• He was the hearing officer for the case of Washington vs. former GM Scot McCloughan.

• He helped enhance and write the NFL’s personal conduct policy after Ray Rice’s suspension.

• He also consults for other sports leagues.

Now, to Sue L. Robinson’s decision last week, my read on that was this: She found Watson guilty of three counts within the four cases presented by the NFL, called it sexual assault but also “non-violent” (which matters in NFL policy), and then said precedent dictated that she couldn’t go further than six games on a suspension. Or, to simplify it, it was basically, You proved your case, but if you’re going to be tougher on this than you have been in the past, it’s going to be you, not me, doing it.

So now, the NFL surely would hope to thread the needle in being tough enough on Watson, while also avoiding landing back in federal court. I think going to, say, 10 games might do that. But either way, it won’t be the league office doing it. It’ll be a guy who helped write its policy and has a deep background with these kinds of cases. Which should make it harder for Watson, or the union, to argue the process was unfair (even when considering that Harvey, unlike Robinson, is solely working for the league on this one).

The Dolphins’ case, to me, is still about tanking. Look, were Miami’s flirtations with Tom Brady and Sean Payton above board? Absolutely not. And they do merit penalties. But first- and third-round picks, a two-month suspension for the owner and a $1.5 million fine, in addition to both Stephen Ross and minority owner Bruce Beal being banned from NFL events for the rest of the year? Yeah, I’d say that’s a little over the top.

So, no, I don’t think it’s out of line to consider the penalties, at the very least, a catchall for all of Miami’s transgressions, the tanking and tampering combined. The league can’t have anyone think games aren’t on the up and up, and I’m sure other owners don’t want to set precedents here that could lead to those in their clubs losing their teams over … ahem … creative rebuilds. So unearthing the tampering with Brady and Payton (remember, we reported back in June that Miami’s offer for Payton was $100 million over four years) allowed the league to say, Hey, look over here!! while still getting Ross for some guilt in what Brian Flores accused him of. That Flores wouldn’t let tanking happen, of course, doesn’t excuse Ross of what he was accused of, just the same as saying he was joking doesn’t.

Remember, this isn’t something that came out of nowhere. We all knew what the Dolphins were doing in 2019, when they stripped the roster down—at the time, rumors were floating around in NFL circles that Ross had become captivated by the plan the Sixers executed (“The Process” in the NBA). So we know what happened. It’s not a capital crime, of course. But the NFL can’t let it happen. And maybe even more so, they can’t let the public think it’s happening. Which, I think, is how we got to where we were when the penalties were announced Tuesday.

Speaking of the Dolphins, they’re one of the few teams that already seem to be involved in the pre–Week 1 trade market. Things should heat up once injuries start to occur and preseason games start to be played. But Miami’s already at work here with a surplus at a prominent position. They’ve talked to other teams about potentially moving veteran receivers Preston Williams and Lynn Bowden Jr. Williams showed a ton of promise as a rookie, with 32 catches for 428 yards and three touchdowns, but has leveled off since. Bowden came out of Kentucky as a sort-of Swiss Army knife offensive weapon, having worked as a receiver, quarterback and return man in college. He was taken in the third round by the Raiders and traded to Miami before Week 1 of his rookie year, and he has struggled to find a niche and battled injuries since. So maybe someone out there will see something in one of these two and take a swing. Either way, it’s probably smart of the Dolphins to get out in front of the glut of names likely to hit the trade market later in the month.

Here’s an amazing accomplishment that I hadn’t thought of until this trip: This year Andy Reid will become the first coach to make it to at least a decade in charge of two franchises. This season is his 10th in Kansas City following a 14-year run in Philadelphia. I don’t know what made me think of it, but I did so watching Chiefs practice on Wednesday, before looking it up and finding that, yup, he’s the only guy to do it. When I raised it to Reid himself, he sheepishly smiled and said, “Come on, man …” before, with a little reluctance, acknowledging the run he’s had. “First of all, I’ve been lucky enough to work for two great organizations,” he said. “And then had great people as owners and front-office folks. And then the general managers and the players have worked out great for me, so I’ve been very fortunate that way. I haven’t thought about the rest of it. But I’ve enjoyed going to work at both places.”

In making it this far, I think Reid’s become something else as well. Without being too dramatic, he really is a sort of de facto Godfather of NFL coaches. When John Madden died earlier this year, I talked to a number of coaches who knew him, and they told me what a great sounding board he was for all those who came after him. A couple of them then added how close Reid was with Madden and how, in a very organic way, Reid was in great position to take the torch from Madden as that guy. “You try to [help others],” Reid said. “It’s such a great game. We go through these experiences. I wanna give them to the players. I want to be able to give it to coaches—without boring them. There’s nothing worse than the old guy that says, Hey, I got a story on this! I try not to do that. But if somebody asks, I’ll give them whatever I’ve got.” And I know for that reason, he’s an appreciated member of his fraternity.

Kareem Hunt’s trade request is understandable. I’ll never ding a running back for trying to get every penny he can while the wheels are still on—because they can come off abruptly at that position. I’m just not sure where this will go from here, and not just because the Browns have already said no. Hunt was cut by the Chiefs in 2018, after video of his assault incident surfaced. He signed with the Browns that February, served an eight-game suspension, played well down the stretch and was hit with a second-round tender as a restricted free agent in March ’20. He then signed a two-year extension off that tender, which put him at a little over $15 million on a three-year deal. Good, not great money.

Two years later, at 27 years old, and coming off an injury-marred 2022, I totally get why he’d want one more bite at the apple. I, too, would be worried that this year, when he’s due $6.25 million in cash, might be the last one in which I’d be making money at the rate I did the two years previous. And to me the foundation of that worry is probably why the Browns said no. To enumerate the reasons within that:

1) A team trading for him would either have to be comfortable giving him the money he wants or forking over a draft pick for a single year. That in itself would limit the sort of return Cleveland can get.

2) The Browns have already paid out $1.5 million of the aforementioned $6.25 million, in the form of an April roster bonus.

3) Cleveland’s likely going to have to lean on its running game early for however long Watson is out.

4) There are a lot of miles on Nick Chubb’s legs, and having depth behind him is important to managing him correctly.

In the end, if you look at all that, the positives in a trade (a Day 3 pick?) probably won’t outweigh the negatives. So while I fully understand why Hunt would do this, I also see where it makes no sense for the Browns to move him under the current circumstances.

One contract always affects the next. The Christian Kirk deal in Jacksonville went over like the Hindenburg with other teams back in March—that a receiver who hadn’t so much as posted a single 1,000-yard season would land a four-year, $72 million contract surely was going to create unrest with other good-but-not-great players at the position across the league. Five months later, would you believe it actually helped a team? That’s how I look at the Diontae Johnson contract. But before we get into the details of why Kirk’s deal was good for the Steelers, here’s a look at the number from those two last year …

• Johnson: 107 catches, 1,161 yards, 8 TDs.

• Kirk: 77 catches, 982 yards, 5 TDs.

So Johnson was better. But Kirk was also a free agent; Johnson wasn’t. And Johnson didn’t give the team the term length that Kirk did—Johnson can hit free agency looking for a third contract after his sixth year, while Kirk can’t until after his eighth year. All of that evens things out a bit. The important thing is where the market was set. Kirk gave the Steelers a number they could work with that wasn’t presupposing that Johnson was in the tier with Terry McLaurin, DK Metcalf, Deebo Samuel and A.J. Brown. And Johnson was willing to accept that, with a chance to prove maybe he can get to that level and, if he does, command a bigger payday very soon. So the two-year, $36.71 million extension to me, is a nice one all the way around.

After talking to Pete Carroll on Friday, I’m not sure the Seahawks are close to making a call on their starting quarterback. To this point, Geno Smith has taken close to all the first-team reps, and Drew Lock has been mostly with the second team. Both have a lot left to prove. Smith that the game has slowed down for him. Lock that he’s got the mental aspect where it needs to be, after playing through a lot of tumult in Denver, and his footwork fixed. That’s why when I asked Carroll whether he feels like he needs to declare a starter by a certain date, to let the team know who its quarterback will be, he balked at the question.

“It’s an exciting thing to watch. These guys are really talented, and they’re doing stuff every day. I know everyone’s watching them, and they know that, too, which … everyone’s gonna watch them anyway. That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” he said. “We’ve been there before. I’ve done it a bunch of times. This is not a new thing to be involved in, but there’s a patience that’s necessary. You gotta take a look at the reps and the opportunities and weigh all that out when it’s this close, because all three of our guys [including Jacob Eason] can throw the football. And they all can understand the offense. They all can take charge of it. All of that, that’s not even an issue with the guys. So it’s who’s gonna finish on top, who’s gonna make the plays, who’s gonna come through when we need it the most? It’s gonna take a while to figure that out.”

So, to me, the next question naturally was whether he’d need to see Lock with the first team more in the coming weeks. “That’s always been part of the plan, to make sure we have an even look at what’s going on,” he said. “Geno’s been on top of it. He’s been here the longest. He’s got the background. He can make all the throws, and he’s done a great job so far. But I’ve gotta do a really good job of making sure we’ve got good information, so we have to balance it out.” Which, again, will probably take some time, given the disparity in first-team reps thus far.

As for the other NFC West quarterback in limbo, I don’t sense great urgency on the part of the 49ers to move Jimmy Garoppolo. I do think part of holding onto him, at this point, would be concern that cutting him would take him straight into the aforementioned Seattle quarterback derby, which wouldn’t be great for San Francisco. And my sense is the 49ers still think they can get something, even if it’s just a late-round pick, for him while dictating his destination. Meanwhile, all of this isn’t great for Garoppolo. The longer he sits on the Niners’ roster—and they can hold him until the Monday of Week 1, when his “Paragraph 5 salary” (base salary) of $24.2 million becomes fully guaranteed—the less time he’ll have to acclimate and win playing time with a new team. Of course, there’s the chance an injury could shake things up elsewhere. But situations such as the Vikings’ in 2016 don’t happen every year. So, for now, he’ll keep rehabbing in Santa Clara and wait for the news on his fate like the rest of us. I can say that the Niners still think he’s a really good player, which is part of the equation in not letting him walk away for nothing.

While we’re there, I hope everyone’s careful about reacting too much to what’s happening at training camp practices. And I say that as someone who’s filed observations from 13 training camp stops now. Garoppolo happens to be a great case study of it. Before the 2019 season, he went through bad practice after bad practice, and was piling up alarming interception totals that were picked apart on social media as if they were October stats.

So what was really happening there? Garoppolo was coming back off a torn ACL, and the team was throwing the kitchen sink at him in practice to try to accelerate his reintegration into real, live football. And the Niners wound up going to the Super Bowl. That, by the way, doesn’t mean all training camp observations are worthless. There are tons of great beat writers who do an awesome job with them, having the context of being there every day. They just shouldn’t be taken as some sort of premonition for how the season will play out, mostly because different coaches have different goals with how they handle any given practice.

Want some quick-hitters from the camp trail? We got your quick-hitters right here.

• The workload Josh Jacobs got in the Hall of Fame game definitely got my attention. Josh McDaniels wasn’t lying when he said it helps running backs to play in the preseason, to get them ready to see the game as fast as it moves in the regular season. Still, that game, as an extra one on a team’s preseason schedule, is almost always the exclusive domain of backups.

• I loved what I saw from No. 1 pick Travon Walker in that game. To me, I’m starting to think Khalil Mack is the right comp for him. And one thing to keep in mind—what you hear on the Georgia players, particularly on defense, is that they come out of Athens almost as “survivors” of that program. It’s a tough place to play, and, as a result, the guys who make it to the NFL are ready for the demands of being a pro football player. Walker looks like he is.

• Duane Brown’s visiting the Jets got my attention, because I can’t imagine that the five-time Pro Bowl left tackle would go there to be a backup. Mekhi Becton was drafted over Tristan Wirfs in 2020 to play left tackle, and that really hasn’t worked out. So he’s at right tackle, George Fant’s at left tackle, and now the tires are being kicked on other options. That colors why the Jets considered taking NC State’s Ickey Ekwonu with the fourth pick back in April.

• I’m at Rams camp on Monday, and I’m interested to see Matthew Stafford. I have no reason not to believe that the brass there is genuinely optimistic that the soreness in his elbow will pass. But I’ve also seen enough to know that any sort of damage to a quarterback’s throwing shoulder or arm shouldn’t be dismissed until, well, it’s appropriate to dismiss it.

• Good to hear Michael Thomas is back to being Michael Thomas in New Orleans. And adding that to the positive returns coming back on Chris Olave, it’s enough to make you think that if Jameis Winston’s knee is right, he’s got a chance to have a big year. Along those lines, how rookie tackle Trevor Penning, he of the training camp fights last week, develops is pretty important to that happening, too.

• One thing I forgot to mention from Green Bay: Doubs could legitimately win the punt returner job. Why should you care about that? Well, we told you how impressive the fourth-round receiver has been. And that he’d be positioned to win that specific assignment on special teams, which requires moving quickly in tight spaces, should give you an idea of the movement skills he’s got for a guy who stands 6'2" and tops 200 pounds.

• Dareke Young is a fun camp dark horse for you. The Seahawks’ seventh-round pick, until last year, was a wingback in Division II Lenoir-Rhyne’s Delaware wing T, and he finished his college career with 88 rushes to just 73 catches. But if you go back to his last full season (COVID-19 wiped out 2020, and he was hurt for most of last year), he had 12 touchdowns on 74 offensive touches. Pretty good percentage. And his height-weight-speed ratio (he’s 6'2", 224 pounds) has gotten the attention of teammates in camp. Keep an eye on that one.

• I’d say Matt Rhule declaring now that he won’t name a starter for another two weeks is a pretty sure sign that the Panthers want to give Baker Mayfield every chance to win the job.

• If this is Calais Campbell’s last year, it’s been one hell of a run. Good player, better guy is a cliché. But as to what we know of Campbell, it definitely applies in this case.

• Happy belated birthday to Tom Brady, who made it all the way to his stated goal of playing at 45. Fun fact: That number is not arbitrary. It’s one that Brady’s throwing coach, Tom House, came up with years ago, and is based off the career of House’s former Rangers pitcher Nolan Ryan (House pitched eight years in the majors, then became Texas’s pitching coach).

Forty-five, House will tell you, is the age when the body’s ability to recover slows to the point where it gets really difficult to perform consistently like a pro athlete has to. So … maybe Brady wants to challenge that idea next year?

SIX FROM THE SIDELINE

1) It’s still weird to me that a 23-year-old as good as Juan Soto needed to be traded because he’s not getting the right contract from a team that plays in … Washington, D.C. And now San Diego’s the big-market team?

2) It seems to me like this probably isn’t a great time to give LeBron James a two-year extension worth almost $100 million, if you’re the Lakers. He turns 38 in December. He’s got 19 seasons on his legs. And I just don’t know how you’d build a real contender around him at that number if he starts slipping. Maybe he’s like Brady and he won’t. That just doesn’t seem as likely for a small forward as it would be for a quarterback.

3) From a draft standpoint, the next couple of weeks are really important for NFL teams. It’s when scouts, out on school calls, get the best information from coaches (who are all undefeated and have more time) and see real football in practice (which isn’t always the case in season).

4) While we’re there, as we all start talking about next year’s quarterbacks, the story of Spencer Rattler is one to keep in mind. In August, some thought he’d be a first-round pick. By October, he was benched. And two months after that, he was transferring from Oklahoma to South Carolina. So are there promising guys who’ll be draft eligible next spring? Yes. But I’m not sure there are any sure things.

5) Denver seems like such a healthy place to live. And El Five is an awesome place to eat.

6) If I paddleboarded 630 miles from North Carolina to Nantucket, I don’t think I’d turn back around and paddle 250 miles back to Long Island. Maybe that’s just me!

BEST OF THE NFL INTERNET

The Panthers practiced with Gaffney (S.C.) High last week. And what an awesome idea it was.

Really cool that the Hall of Fame did this—with former Canton McKinley quarterback Josh McDaniels prowling the sideline his dad, Thom, used to in his first game as Raiders coach.

Taking shotgun in an Uber is definitely a veteran move.

Yup.

Me, too. Fergie needs to explain her role in the tampering.

I just love that this is Mike Davis’s pinned tweet.

Garrett Wilson’s definitely better at football than he is at golf.

Lategate offenders Randy Moss, Adalius Thomas, Gary Guyton and Derrick Burgess would understand what Rich was saying.

I have no idea how Bryant Young kept it together through this.

Best line I’ve seen from the speeches (I was actually out at 49ers practice when they were going on … so … shhhhh … I haven’t seen them yet).

This was a stunt. But the Bills do need to break out some 1990s throwbacks, now that the helmet rules have changed.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

I’ve got four more stops left—Rams, Cowboys, Cardinals, Raiders—on the first swing of my camp trip. That’ll bring me to 17 teams. And we’ve got information on each of them up on the site every day, so be sure to check those out, and I’ll keep them coming.

(I’m at the point of the trip where I don’t remember what city I’m in when I wake up. Home soon, though!)

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