Nathaniel Hackett Is Ready to Build Something New With Russell Wilson and the Broncos

The new coach in Denver discusses what he learned from working with Aaron Rodgers, and how he knows he won’t get a honeymoon phase.

I was through about 20 minutes with new Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett, and that’s where he stopped me in my tracks. It was Saturday afternoon—he was fresh out of draft meetings, less than 72 hours away from the start of his first offseason program in Denver—and he might as well have been shot out of a cannon as he digested the point I’d been waiting to make with him.

Specifically, I asked if the challenge he’s facing is a little different than it is for most first-year coaches, since the great majority come into situations broken by definition—the job wouldn’t have been open otherwise—and, as such, might be afforded some semblance of a honeymoon phase.

“First and foremost I want to clarify something when you talk about from the ground up,” he said. “I don’t think that exists anymore. I think in this profession, because of the way that society is, everybody wants to win now. Look at what happened in Jacksonville [where he coached from 2015 to ’18]. We jumped in, we win, the next year we’re supposed to win the Super Bowl and I’m losing my job. So it’s like wherever you enter in, you gotta win, or you at least have to show signs of getting better and showing improvement to be able to win.

“You can’t be getting blown out. You can’t look like a fool. You gotta have people in sync, working together. And as a leader, you have to point that out. Even through adversity, there are things that are very good that come from that. For us, when we went into Green Bay, it was the same pressure to win that I had at Jacksonville. Nothing was going to, ‘Hey, Blake Bortles played so great, he got a contract …’ No. S—, you gotta win.”

A new era is underway in Denver, and it hits another checkpoint this week.

On Tuesday morning, new quarterback Russell Wilson and most (if not all) of the players making up the roster that helped lure him to Colorado a couple months ago will spill through the doors in Dove Valley to kick off the 42-year-old Hackett’s first offseason program as a head coach. What they find when they get there will be, to be sure, a little bit different than what most are used to.

And really, getting the guys to feel that is where Hackett’s going to start this week.

“You want them to feel an environment that they want to come into, and they’re excited to come into,” he continued. “That’s all you can do, that’s what you’re trying to create. My philosophy is I want everything we’re doing now—it’s voluntary, it’s all voluntary, so I want them to be excited to come into the building. That’s my job; my job is to make it so that they’re like, Hey, I’m really excited to come, and say hi, and ask questions and learn a new system, and get ready to win some football games.”

From there, everyone, including Hackett, knows the score. The Broncos went into the offseason believing, after GM George Paton’s first year, they were close to contention. Wilson’s decision to weaponize his no-trade clause and steer himself to them was only more affirmation of that, and Hackett, you can be certain, isn’t running from it.

So, no, he won’t ask for a honeymoon. As he said, he hasn’t gotten them in the past, and he doesn’t want one now.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a very deliberate plan that’s playing out.

We’re back and, just a little over two weeks away from the draft, we have a lot to cover this week—with some serious news and some tragic news mixed in with everything we normally get to. Inside this week’s MMQB column, you’ll find …

• A look at who the late Dwanye Haskins was.

• More on the latest developments in Brian Flores’s lawsuit against the NFL.

• A trend that’s affecting the way draft prospects are assessed by teams.

And a lot more. But we’re starting with the Broncos, as the players prepare for their first steps in the new program that Hackett’s establishing in Denver.

This World According to Nathaniel look at where the Broncos are going, and where they’ll take their new quarterback, starts with how he plans to start with his players this week, in giving them a window into what they’re in for. And that begins with this fact: He’s got no script for Tuesday morning.

It’s not that he’s going to go up there and wing it. He knows the points he wants to make. It’s just that the idea of standing in front of the room doesn’t exactly scare him.

He saw his dad do it as a kid, as the head coach at Pitt and then USC, sure. But more than just that, it’s Hackett’s unique background that’s led him to know how to present himself to a crowd. Hackett lettered in forensics (which is competitive acting, and something I didn’t know you could letter in) all four years of high school—“I made it on the varsity team my freshman year and I did it all four years”—and taught hip-hop dance on a whim his last year in college, when he needed just a 10-hour lab to finish his neurobiology degree.

Hackett applied that experience over the last 12 years, more than 10 of which were spent as a coordinator, in addressing his offenses. He’s seen what works and what doesn’t with other coaches. “There are people that get nervous going in front of a group,” he says. “I think my [emotion] has always been excitement.” And he projects that excitement, because what he’s seen fail, fails because “they couldn’t keep the attention of the audience.”

“Even when I went back to the teachers I had growing up with, through college and high school, it was the class you loved the most where the teachers were the most exciting and the most fun,” he said. “I just wanted to bring that once I got my opportunity in 2010 [at Syracuse], and I think that was a big part of how all the places I’ve been are; we’ve kind of unified people together. The ability to get up and just talk and communicate and be strong and exciting and fun is, that’s just something I’ve always had.

“So when people say, ‘What are you going to do in that first meeting?’ It’s like, ‘I don’t know, s---, I’m going to have a PowerPoint and I’m going to be me.’ And half the time, I never know what’s going to happen up there. Because you gotta feel the room. You can’t say it’s going to be like this, you can’t say it’s going to be that. It’s them understanding who I am and understanding this is how it’s going to be now.”

And to get them to buy into that, he knows he’ll have to be two things in front of them—captivating and interactive. The former, because that’s the baseline in holding their attention. The latter, because he wants them to work toward owning the information he’s giving them.

“At the same time that you’re captivating, you also have to make sure that everybody’s integrated,” he continued. “You don’t want to speak to people, you want to have it be an open forum, always. The guys that I’ve heard that are the best speakers are guys like Bill Clinton. The reason why, I can be in a room, you’re dealing with football, you’re dealing with every personality, we’re talking alpha males, we’re talking from every different background, and you have to be able to get up and speak to every single one of them.

“I think that that’s something that people have always said that Bill Clinton was so great at. He could go into a room, and he could talk to so many people. [Barack] Obama, when he looks at you and he talks to you, it’s like he’s talking to you individually, even though you’re surrounded by people that might not be like you.”

And Hackett knows it can't just be him. All of his coaches have to connect with the players that way. “That was why I think we had such an unbelievable time at Green Bay. I really do,” he said. “Our Green Bay stuff went to another f------ level. I think every place is different, I don’t know what level it’s going to get to here.”

What he does know is to find out, he’ll have to empower his staff to make that connection like Matt LaFleur did in Green Bay. Which sets the stage for where they’ll take it after that.

Hackett initially went to Green Bay in 2019 after being fired in Jacksonville, looking to learn as much as he could about the Shanahan scheme, knowing that in joining up with LaFleur he’d get to work with a guy who was raised in that system. And he got that, for sure, over the last three years, while giving back his own background in the West Coast offense, which synced up with what Aaron Rodgers came up with under Mike McCarthy.

But maybe more important were lessons he learned on how a staff can push its own limits.

“What we did in Green Bay is incredible,” he said. “Really, I don’t think anybody could ever put it into perspective, at least from my opinion, how amazing it was. And it started with Matt building an offensive staff that was young, that wanted to do it the right way, that was humble, wanted to soak up as much knowledge as possible, and was just dying to teach it the way Matt wanted it taught.

“And then you had me, who was a veteran, and hungry to learn the system, incorporate the stuff that I had done to help the system, and then at the same time, teach the coaches how to teach. That kind of was my role, guiding them in that.”

The big thing he and all the position coaches who’ve become coordinators (Justin Outten with him in Denver, Luke Getsy in Chicago and now Adam Stenavich replacing him in Green Bay) came to emphasize, was making sure the players understood the “why” of what was being taught, which required those assistants knowing the offense like LaFleur did, to the point where they could continue to evolve it.

That’s why, over our hour-long conversation, Hackett kept going back to how what he saw in his ex-college teammate (and now defensive coordinator) Ejiro Evero, his old staffmate from the bottom rungs in Tampa under Jon Gruden (and special teams coordinator) Dwayne Stukes and his Packer import (and offensive coordinator) Outten was that each knew how to teach. And that’s why over the last two months, as they built up the systems collectively, it’s been done with the knowledge that part of teaching is getting the most out of students.

So that ability to evolve and adjust a scheme? That comes into play, starting this week.

“I haven’t been with the players at all. I don’t know the players,” Hackett said. “I don’t know Russell. I don’t know what Russell likes. And truly, you don’t know. You try your hardest [to project] but even Russell is probably going to like different stuff. We don’t have DK Metcalf now, so he’s gotta find stuff for Cortland [Sutton] and Tim [Patrick] and [Jerry] Jeudy and Javonte [Williams] and all these guys. That’s a process.

“Look at basketball, look when LeBron goes somewhere new. I mean, it’s not like they jump right in and win it. People have to mold together. The idea is to get that mold to happen as fast as you possibly can. We did a great job finding ways to win games that first year [in Green Bay]. And then that second year is where I felt like it was the best offense I’ve ever been a part of.”

Hackett still calls his 2019 debut as Packers offensive coordinator on a Thursday night against Chicago a “s---show.” He cited a one-point win over the Lions in Week 6 that year as another night to forget. But because LaFleur’s staff had given the players the reasoning for doing what they were doing, and simply asked for faith that it’d work, the guys kept working, trusting that the breakthrough was coming.

“Aaron started buying in,” Hackett said. “He started realizing, hey, we’re here to help him. We want him to be great. We want the team to be great with him. We want to take advantage of Davante [Adams]. We want to take advantage of Bobby Tonyan, MVS [Marques Valdez-Scantling], G-Mo [Geronimo Allison], all those guys. I don’t know how much different it was from the regime before us, I just know that those guys bought into us.

“And then of course, when you start winning a couple games, it helps.”

Week 7 wound up being the turning point for those Packers, Rodgers completed 25-of-31 throws for 429 yards and five touchdowns in a 42–24 rout of the Raiders. Hackett refers to it as a “perfect game,” and the quarterback’s passer rating (158.3) reflected that. There were still bumps from there. But Green Bay wound up 13–3 and then made it to the NFC title game.

The next offseason, Hackett said, with full knowledge of the players, and having seen the offense against a full season's worth of defensive looks, the staff went back in and truly created what would become the Packers’ version of the Shanahan offense. Rodgers has been league MVP in both years since.

Which is a pretty good blueprint for Hackett and his staff to work off of with Wilson.

Obviously, there are reasons, lots of them, why Hackett wanted Wilson in Denver.

“You look at a guy who throws an absolutely amazing deep ball, so anytime a defense knows you have a chance to throw the ball deep—anytime—that’s exciting,” he said. “That was the fun thing about being with Aaron, too, when they know you can make plays in the vertical passing game, that’s exciting. And you’ve seen him play, he throws one of the best deep balls in the game. The next thing is watching his escapability, it’s not always going to be perfect, so having a guy that can create, that makes coaches look good. …

“And then finally, he just f------ loves the game. You want to be around a guy that is as hungry as you are as a coach, because coaches don’t get to play. When players aren’t as into it as we are, it’s hard. So when you get a quarterback that’s as into it as we are as coaches, I mean, that’s a dream come true.”

Add that up, and you’ve got a heck of a baseline to work off of.

But, for now, Hackett knows that’s all it is—a baseline. So he’ll take the lessons he learned from coaching Rodgers—and also guys like Ryan Nassib, E.J. Manuel, Kyle Orton and Bortles, lessons that taught Hackett that every quarterback is different—with him as he gets going with another Super Bowl champion.

And then there are the things he learned specifically from working with the two-time reigning MVP the last couple of years that, really, he couldn’t have gotten anywhere else, outside of maybe Tampa, to prepare him for what’s ahead with Wilson.

“What my dad has always talked about, it’s a ‘can’t stop me’ mentality; you have to find that and give it to the quarterback,” Hackett said. “Aaron taught me that you have to respect and listen to what he has to say, because of how much he’s accomplished in what he’s done before he was with me. Whether I believed in it or not, you have to be sure, what a great quarterback does, that you respect that. You have to understand that they see things, they’re out there, and you have to find out what they see, you have to learn what they see.

“I think the fun thing about working with Aaron, and our relationship was really strong early, was that I was able to talk with him and hear from him and learn about him. That’s the thing I’m so excited about with Russell now. Russell, I want him to open up. I want to understand what he’s looking at, I want to understand what he’s thinking, I want to know why he’s doing something.”

Which is to say that, with a player of that level, while the coach is still teaching, he’s also learning, and the player is more partner than pupil.

“One-hundred percent,” Hackett said. “I would say that my relationship with Aaron, especially during game days and the preparation process to get to game day, was a pure partnership. And it was like that with Matt too. It was Matt, me and Aaron, and with Getsy, it was all about, ‘Hey, let’s put this thing together—together.’ And that’s what I need to do, that’s the process with Russell now. It’s, Look, I have tons of different things we can do.”

And so will begin the process of paring down, and adjusting, and tweaking everything that Hackett and his staff worked to build up the last couple months. It’ll take time, like it did in Green Bay, and trial-and-error against different defenses, and with different guys in different spots. It’ll take trust, too, for the guys on the field to ride out the kinds of bumps that are inevitable with any new staff putting in a new system with new players.

But Hackett’s betting on his own experience that the Broncos will get there.

Hackett understands, too, that trust he and his staff are looking for will have to be earned, starting on Tuesday. That’s another reason why, when he stands at the front of the room, he’s going to be himself, and not reading off a script.

He needs the players to buy into him—and into Outten, Evero and Stukes—and he knows that’ll only happen if he’s himself. He also doesn’t want to make the biggest deal of this week—Hackett joked he needs to save his best material for December and the playoff push—but he does want the players to know what they’re signing up for.

And if the Wilson trade didn’t make the goals here clear enough, he’s happy to spell it out.

“I mean in the end, all I care about is winning football games,” he said. “So it’s more about, I’m very excited that they’re going to be in the building and we get to start working towards that goal—and I’m glad that I’m the one that gets to address them.”

Fair to say, with a long road ahead, he’s at least got that part covered.

HASKINS’S IMPACT GOES BEYOND NFL

Ohio State’s coaches had been trying to get Dwayne Haskins back to Columbus for a big recruiting weekend at the start of April and were hopeful that he’d make it back for the spring game on April 16. But there was this lingering feeling there that Haskins—holder of most of the blue-blooded program’s single-season passing records—really hadn’t been back to campus much for a reason.

Simply put, some believed he didn’t want to return until he got his pro career right, and that he’d be back, and playing a more prominent role, whenever that happened.

That, of course, isn’t to say his impact wasn’t being felt in the program. Through quarterback trainer Quincy Avery, he’d built a relationship, and had been in touch, with the current Buckeyes quarterback, and another Heisman finalist, C.J. Stroud. He’d maintained close relationships he had with guys on staff, like Ryan Day, who was the offensive coordinator for his supernova season of 2018. And he was there when he was needed—just a couple of weeks back, he drove two hours to see a struggling former OSU teammate of his.

But as far as being more visible at Ohio State, it seemed to those at the school as if it was important to him that he restore his name as a football player before he came back to take any bows for what he’d accomplished as a collegian. And there was a genuine feeling that, over the last year, Haskins was finally turning a corner as a professional, and that the day was coming when he’d be able to proudly return.

Tragically, no one will ever know where all of that was going.

Haskins died Saturday morning after being hit by a dump truck, crossing lanes on foot on I-595 near Fort Lauderdale. He’d been in South Florida to work out with new Steelers QB Mitch Trubisky and a host of his offensive teammates. He was 24 years old.

Details surrounding his death, and why he was on foot on the highway, remain murky. Those will be sorted out in the coming days.

What’s been made obvious, on the other hand, over the last 48 hours is the sort of affection those who knew Haskins through football had for him. And for as many stories as I heard about Haskins as a player over the weekend, I heard as many about things he’d quietly done for someone, or how proud he was of his little sister or the way he used to stay behind on family nights on Thursdays back at Ohio State to play with the coaches’ kids.

In more ways than one, Haskins still was a big kid, genuine and kind, and also having a lot of growing up to do. And again, those close to him were hopeful over the last year that that growth was happening, and that Haskins would get another swing at becoming the franchise quarterback Washington thought it was drafting in 2019.

So his NFL legacy will remain where it is: Haskins didn’t make it with his hometown team, was benched during his second year and eventually released late that season before signing with Pittsburgh in hopes of turning his career around.

His impact on the college game, on the other hand, ran deeper. It’s easy to argue that he changed the face of quarterbacking at Ohio State forever, after annihilating the Big Ten record books in 2018 (his 50 TD passes broke Drew Brees’s single-season conference record of 39 while his 4,939 yards of total offense shattered Denard Robinson’s previous mark of 4,272). He was the first Buckeye QB taken in the first round in 37 years, and his breakout season helped attract Justin Fields to the program, which opened a pipeline of blue-chip quarterbacking talent to Columbus.

It’s also fair to look at how his success in that single season raised the ante on how offense is played in the Big Ten as a whole. And why it happened was because Haskins was as pure a thrower of the football as the conference’s most successful program had ever seen.

But over the weekend, the stories I heard about Haskins kept coming back to who he was as a person, more than who he’d been as a player.

“I wouldn’t even say it was a different side of him away from the field, because he truly was the most genuine person all the time,” said one of his close confidants in Columbus on Sunday. “He was always happy; he had this infectious, contagious smile. Anytime he’d walk into a room, he just seemed like the happiest guy there. And even if he did have a bad day, you’d never know it in how he carried himself.”

And at the same time, he was acutely aware of his successes and failures, and their impact.

So it was that I heard the story on Sunday of the Illinois game in 2017. The Buckeyes blew out the Illini, 52–14, on what was a rainy, ugly day at Ohio Stadium. In the fourth quarter, with the game in hand, Haskins came on to replace J.T. Barrett and almost right away missed an easy check, where he was supposed to flip the protection, and took a snap. Soon thereafter, he ran the ball and fumbled. As bad as a backup could play in garbage time, that was Haskins that day, and he knew it and reacted accordingly.

The coaches saw a light turn on for him the following week, with Ohio State headed to Ann Arbor to play archrival Michigan. Haskins buried himself in his work, even with little chance he’d see the field. And sure enough, Barrett got hurt during the game that Saturday, and Haskins made big play after big play to lead a come-from-behind win over the Wolverines.

Joe Burrow was sidelined with a hand injury at the time, and some believe that Haskins winning the job from Burrow the following spring started with the egg Haskins laid against Illinois—and how he’d responded as so many things seemed to blow up in his face.

The hope was, years later, that his work with the Steelers after his time in Washington would play out the same way, with a bad result opening the door for better days to come. Haskins, at least on the surface, seemed optimistic to everyone around him that it’d play out that way, and that maybe, just maybe, he could make a run at the starting job in Pittsburgh, with Ben Roethlisberger gone, in 2022.

It’s terrible that Haskins never got to see that through, and a whole lot worse that a father and mother are left without a son, and a sister is left without a brother.

And in the end, if you want a picture of who Haskins was as a person, looking at his relationship with that sister, Tamia, is a good place to start. I mentioned this on Twitter the other day, and I’ll link it here too: The Big Ten Network did a nice job detailing the bond the two had during that wild fall of 2018 and, in doing so, giving insight into the sort of person the young quarterback was.

RIP, Dwayne.

TEN TAKEAWAYS

To me, the most damning piece of evidence in the additions to Brian Flores’s lawsuit came from ex-Titans coach Mike Mularkey. You may have read what he said, and how he took the Steelers Realm podcast through what he called a “fake hiring process” as Tennessee was preparing to remove the interim tag and make him the team’s full-time head coach: “The GM, Jon Robinson, he was in on the interview with me; he had no idea why he was interviewing me, because I had the job already.” Here’s the audio, if you missed it (it’s definitely worth a listen).

This, of course, more or less lays bare what minority coaches have complained about for years—that the Rooney Rule requirements, for some, have become nothing more than a box-checking exercise—because here you have a white coach basically volunteering the information without specifically being asked for it, and doing that because he saw even in the moment how screwed up the whole thing was. And while there might not be a great way to police this sort of thing (teams are going to hire who they want to hire), it certainly should ramp up the scrutiny on hires that might be preordained, like Mularkey’s was.

Then, there’s the fact that Steve Wilks and Ray Horton felt empowered to speak up in the first place, joining Flores on the island he’s inhabited since filing the lawsuit. What Flores first, and the other two since, have done is provide cover for others who might see wrongdoing but would hesitate to call it out, something that’s particularly meaningful in the case of Wilks, who was gainfully employed by a team (the Panthers) as he did it.

We’ll see what happens long-term in the lawsuit. What I do think we can say for now, though, is that the events of this week should have an impact in creating a more transparent process going forward—both in how the league legislates the interview process and how those involved in it speak about it publicly—which is something plenty of folks have been calling for the last couple of years.

The way teams are looking at players is changing. This one’s rooted in my conversation for Friday’s GamePlan column with ex-Vikings GM Rick Spielman—who brought up on his own as we were discussing the absolute explosion of receiver talent into the draft through the last four or so cycles.

“I think it’s a product of the way college football is now,” he said. “Everything from the college level, you see it trickle up to our league, because our league is adapting to the athletes that are coming out at the college level. People are adjusting a little bit. The biggest adjustment I’ve ever seen was in Baltimore, with [John] Harbaugh and Greg Roman, they adjusted everything to fit [Lamar] Jackson’s traits as a quarterback.

“So I think, as these guys come up into our league, teams are looking more and more at how we can adjust and tweak things, and make sure that we’re doing things that are to these kids’ strengths, not to these guys’ weaknesses.”

Which, Spielman argued, has made it easier for receivers to make an instant impact—the first receiver taken last year, Ja’Marr Chase, had 81 catches for 1,455 yards and 13 touchdowns; and the second one to go, Jaylen Waddle, finished with 104 catches for 1,015 yards and six scores. And that’s even though Chase opted out of the 2020 college season, and Waddle, due to injury, barely played in it.

Now, obviously, as Spielman said, the position where we’re seeing it most is at quarterback, with Jackson and the Ravens providing a prime example. But there’s flexibility elsewhere, too, that didn’t exist before. And that makes this period critical for teams, in talking to players at all positions to see how the team might be able to meet a guy with premium talent in the middle from a scheme standpoint.

“That’s why the meetings with the coaches are so important,” Spielman said. “It’s not scouts scout, and coaches, we’ll bring them in and you coach them anymore. It has to be a very collaborative effort, because the scouts can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the player, but the coaches, when they come in and they start doing the evaluation, they have to give the direction on it—this guy’s gonna fit our scheme or we can potentially adjust something to fit this guy’s skill set. That’s why it’s so important.

“It has to be such a collaborative effort between the personnel and coaching sides. … Andy Reid, he’s adjusted to what [Patrick] Mahomes can do. You’re seeing a lot of coaches adjust, and have some flexibility. They have their base in what their system is, but how can we tweak it to help this guy come in and play at his best level?”

It’s a question that’s logical, of course. And it’s good for the game in general that it’s being asked a lot more at this time of year. Because it’s giving some pretty exciting talents a great springboard into their pro careers—which is good for everyone.

The timing of games is becoming a factor in injury spillover from one season to the next. The college football national title game was played on January 10. The Super Bowl was staged on February 13. Both dates are later than they used to be in the calendar, and that fact is not without consequence in both free agency and the draft. Nearly a month after he hit the market, Rams WR Odell Beckham Jr. remains unsigned. And Alabama’s Jameson Williams, who was projected back in December and early January to be the first receiver taken in the 2022 draft because of his rare score-from-anywhere type of explosiveness, may now have a much longer than expected wait on the first night of the draft. Both tore ACLs in their final games. And for teams kicking tires on them, it’s a very real thing to consider.

• In Beckham’s case, if you take the standard nine-month recovery timetable (to be actually playing full-speed) as the marker, you’re talking about signing him to start playing in mid-November, and even that would be trusting the health of a knee that’s undergone two reconstructive surgeries in a 16-month span (the ACL Beckham tore is the same one he tore in October 2020). Beckham, by the way, happens to turn 30 in November, and last had a 1,000-yard year in ’19. So if you sign him to a one-year, make-good deal, you may be counting on something short-term that’s no sure thing; and if you do a two- or three-year deal, you’re counting on him rebounding in what’ll be his 10th season, at 31 years old.

• Williams’s case is, obviously, a lot different. But because of the learning curve a rookie faces coming into the NFL, even though his injury happened a month before Beckham’s, you’re looking at a similarly steep climb to productivity in 2022. And if the thought is that this year might be a de facto redshirt year, then you have to take the status of the people picking into account—and specifically ask, Are their jobs on the line? If they are, it might not make sense to draft Williams. And as you might imagine, there are more GMs and coaches in that position toward the top of the draft.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see what happens with these two. I asked a scout the other day if he views Williams and Michigan pass rusher David Ojabo, who tore his Achilles last month at his pro day, differently, and he said he did: “I’d rather draft an ACL than an Achilles.” Which, of course, illustrates the fact that, sure, ACL injuries aren’t viewed the way they were years ago. But in these cases, because of timing, they most certainly are a factor, and they’d be less so if those injuries happened even a few weeks earlier.

Contracts always tell you the story—and they most certainly do in the case of Trubisky. I will start here by saying that I do think the Steelers want to give the former first-round pick a very real look. But the nitty gritty of the contract he signed in Pittsburgh shows that there’s zero reason to believe the team will hesitate to take a quarterback in the first round, if one that outgoing GM Kevin Colbert and coach Mike Tomlin like falls to them. Here are the details on Trubisky’s deal …

• Base value: Two years, $14.285 million.

• Signing bonus: $5.25 million.

• $8.5 million total in incentives (so value up to $22.785 million over two years).

• $4 million each year in play-time incentives (triggers start at 60% of the snaps).

• $250,000 Pro Bowl incentive in each year.

So that means if Trubisky doesn’t hit any of his incentives (unlikely, unless he fails to win the starting job), then his APY (average per year) cost, $7.14 million, will be less than what Kyler Murray, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson and Trey Lance are making on their rookie deals. And if he hits all those incentives (also unlikely, because he’d have to be a first-ballot Pro Bowler in the loaded AFC), his APY number would be $11.39 million, which is solidly between what Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota make. So it’s a bargain if Trubisky hits, while it allows for the possibility that the Steelers take a swing on someone like Malik Willis in a few weeks, if that appeals to them. Good business by the Steelers.

A lot of people are waiting for a second-order move by the Saints, after last week’s trade with the Eagles. Maybe it’ll happen. But I just don’t see the logic in it, at least at this point. For those who missed the ins and outs, a week ago, New Orleans sent first-, third- and seventh-round picks (18, 101, 237), its 2023 first-rounder and 2024 second-rounder to Philly for the 16th and 19th picks, plus a sixth-rounder (194) this year. In the MAQB, we broke down how if you split the whole thing into two trades, it looks pretty ugly for the Saints. And that sort of logic had some deducing that this might be part of a plan from Saints GM Mickey Loomis to make a bigger move into the top 10.

Maybe it is. My question then would be … why did the Saints need the Eagles to play middleman? The draft value chart shows that the Saints could spin the 16th and 19th picks to get up into the top four. But this year, with perception (and maybe reality) that the top 10 lacks real blue-chippers, more teams up there are looking to move picks to next year—so my guess is if the real plan here was to get into the upper reaches of the draft, then packaging the 18th pick with next year’s first-rounder alone might’ve gotten it done (and you’d have saved yourself moving this year’s third-rounder and the 2024 second-rounder). Again, maybe Loomis will do what some think he will and spin the capital he just got to move up. But it seems to me it’s more likely that the Saints did this to get to three picks inside the top 50 (16, 19, 49), allowing them to lean on Jeff Ireland and his staff to find three starters to come in on rookie contracts and help alleviate the team’s cap strain now and in the future, and bolster a team that’s still got a roster that’s very much in a win-now type of place. (And for what it’s worth, Loomis, entering his 21st season as Saints GM, hasn’t shown much inclination, publicly or privately, to rip the Band-Aid off cap-wise and undergo a post–Drew Brees and Sean Payton rebuild).

Eagles GM Howie Roseman isn’t perfect, but man is he good with these sorts of trades. And as we go ahead and tally up all of his draft capital, remember that Philly was in the playoffs last year. So it’s not like they’re on the front end of a rebuild (though the roster does most certainly need to get younger).

• 2022: Two top-20 picks, one from Miami, the other from the Colts, as a result of the Jaylen Waddle and Carson Wentz trades. And five picks in the top 101, with the final one coming as a result of the Saints trade.

• 2023: Two first-round picks, with the second one coming from New Orleans (which landed the Eagles’ slotted first-rounder from this year in the trade).

• 2024: Three picks in the first two rounds, with the second second-rounder coming from the Saints.

And really, if you look at the nine top-64 picks they have, the Eagles generated all of that out of Wentz (who bombed in his only year in Indy) and a move down six spots in last year’s draft (where they wound up with DeVonta Smith, after a short trade up, from 12 to 10, to follow). Now, obviously, Wentz coming undone was central to all of this, and that absolutely wasn’t an ideal result. But knowing when to pull the plug on Wentz was important, and Roseman did, and now Philly’s in a really nice spot, thanks to all this asset management, to infuse real youth into its aging roster. And if the Eagles need to make a move at quarterback in the next year or two, the capital’s there to do that, too.

The Panthers have an important three-day stretch ahead. Six quarterbacks—Pitt’s Kenny Pickett, Liberty’s Malik Willis, Ole Miss’s Matt Corral, North Carolina’s Sam Howell, Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder and Western Kentucky’s Bailey Zappe—are scheduled to come in on a staggered schedule between Monday morning and Wednesday to meet with coach Matt Rhule, GM Scott Fitterer and the rest of the Carolina braintrust in Charlotte. And by just about any account you’ll get, taking one of them sixth, where the Panthers are picking, sets up to be a little bit of a reach. Which is just the first part of the predicament that Carolina finds itself in …

• The decision after last year’s draft to execute Sam Darnold’s $18.858 million option for this year has hung over the Panthers’ brass this offseason. It makes it, without question, more difficult to take on a Baker Mayfield (trading for him would be similar to trading for Darnold, and the financial cost is the same) or a Jimmy Garoppolo (at $24.6 million).

• The Darnold trade itself, in addition to the trade for C.J. Henderson, left the Panthers with a gap in picks that runs from the top of the first round (No. 6) to the late stages of the fourth (137). So using the sixth pick on a nonquarterback would likely mean, absent a major trade, punting on the top five QBs all together.

• The draft-pick deficit also makes trading for someone like Garoppolo even more difficult.

• The Panthers last made the playoffs in 2017, and are 22–43 since, which was enough to drive away two available franchise quarterbacks, Deshaun Watson and Russell Wilson, who grew up within a four-hour drive of Charlotte.

• Their still relatively new owner, David Tepper, has been completely silent on football matters this offseason, leaving the status of those leading the football operation up to the imagination of big-name veteran players and their agents—creating at least an appearance of instability that has hurt their standing in the eyes of those people.

Add together then the financial complications of Darnold, the inability to attract a proven star at the position and the hot-seat element, and you have a team that’s been driven into a corner where, outside of a swallow-hard trade for Garoppolo (and his injury timetable is relevant, given that the Panthers have Ben McAdoo introducing a new offense), it feels like using the sixth pick on a quarterback is the only way out, which isn’t where you want to be. Do I think Rhule and Fitterer are married to the idea? No, I do not, especially when you consider the history of those guys. And to be clear, I still think those two absolutely can be the right guys for the organization. But if they’re going to prove it, how they manage draft weekend, and the quarterback position as part of it, will be important.

The four star receivers from Day 2 of the 2019 draft bear watching. The news this week was on Deebo Samuel scrubbing the Niners from his Instagram—because that’s how players make a point in 2022. But the reality is that Samuel’s situation is a microcosm of the challenges facing not just the Niners, but also the Titans, Seahawks and Commanders. And those challenges are real thanks to deals signed by Tyreek Hill, Davante Adams and Stefon Diggs over the last months. Back-end funny money aside, here’s what those three are getting from the Dolphins, Raiders and Bills in base pay over the next three years …

• Hill: $72.41 million

• Diggs: $68 million

• Adams: $67.51 million

That makes the APY range for those three, over the most relevant period, $22.5 million to $24.2 million. To be sure, Samuel, A.J. Brown, DK Metcalf and Terry McLaurin are really good players. Are they worth going well past $20 million per year to keep? Is any receiver, in an era where it’s easier to find one than ever before, worth that much? It’s a question that the Bills, Packers and Chiefs had to contemplate, and two of those three teams wound up trading their star playmakers away. So I don’t know if things in the negotiations for the four guys from the 2019 draft will get to the point where a trade might happen. I think all four teams are hopeful they can just extend those guys instead. But until they do, my guess would be the phone will keep ringing in those four places.

With the biggest part of free agency done, it’s time for a salary cap update. And it actually could matter this year, with a glut of accomplished 30-somethings still out there on the market, waiting for the right time to find a new home.

So here are the 10 teams with the most cap space (as of Sunday) in the league …

1. Panthers: $30.02 million
2. Texans: $22.00 million
3. Colts: $21.70 million
4. Saints: $20.82 million
5. Browns: $20.49 million
6. Dolphins: $19.87 million
7. Chargers: $18.89 million
8. Lions: $18.39 million
9. Bengals: $18.31 million
10. Chiefs: $18.12 million

And the 10 teams with the least cap space …

1. Patriots: $999K
2. 49ers: $1.49 million
3. Titans: $2.12 million
4. Falcons: $2.76 million
5. Buccaneers: $4.24 million
6. Raiders: $4.88 million
7. Giants: $5.52 million
8. Cardinals: $5.80 million
9. Rams: $6.89 million
10. Jaguars: $6.91 million

To me, I think the numbers here make the Colts, Saints and Browns interesting suitors for some of the older free agents out there (and in Cleveland’s case, there’s certainly plenty of room left over to bring back guys like Jarvis Landry and Jadeveon Clowney).

I have my quick takeaways from what was (thankfully) a slower week in the NFL. And those, as always, are right here for you at the end of the takeaways section.

• Corral has scheduled a Wednesday visit with the Eagles, and that one at least interests me, maybe because it’s the only quarterback whom I’ve heard Philly is bringing in.

• There isn’t a better pro out there than Calais Campbell, which is why his decision to spend the late stages of his career in Baltimore makes so much sense. Great fit of team and player, and good to see the big man back there on a new two-year deal.

• We mentioned this Friday—but it was also good to see Brandin Cooks rewarded, after going through so much with concussion issues the last few years. He’s exactly the kind of guy who can be a locker-room conduit/messenger for a new head coach coming in. I’m sure Lovie Smith would agree that he’s lucky to have him back and locked in with a new contract.

• Keep an eye on Georgia safety Lewis Cine. He’s one player who could sneak in the back end of the first round and be perhaps the second guy taken at his position, maybe in front of Michigan’s Daxton Hill.

• I was talking to a scout the other day about Aidan Hutchinson, and how maybe he’ll get stereotyped a little bit, and he asked a great question: “When did being an overachiever become a bad thing?” In these cases, I understand that it relates to whether a player has maxed out his potential. Still, it’s a really good thing to think about.

• As you saw above, the Rams aren’t flush with cap space, now or going forward. (They have $205.58 million committed to 40 players for 2023 and $193.2 million committed to 18 guys in ’24, per Spotrac.) Sure, they’re really good at working around these constraints. Still, it’ll make looming contract adjustments for Cooper Kupp and Aaron Donald pretty interesting.

• What’s fascinating to me about the position the Bucs are in now is how, for the first time, they’ll be leaning on players they’ve drafted since acquiring Tom Brady to take on elevated roles as a result of natural attrition. Among that smattering of guys: RT Tristan Wirfs, S Antoine Winfield, WRs Tyler Johnson and Jaelon Darden, and OLB Joe Tryon-Shoyinka.

• Years ago, the Eagles became the first team to assign one of their college scouts to monitor college basketball as part of his job. And there’s no doubt it’s brought an under-every-rock ethos to the scouting department that leads them to guys like left tackle Jordan Mailata. The latest? Two-time Olympic hurdler Devon Allen, who signed there last week.

• Good on Darnold for projecting confidence during his appearance this week on the Barstool podcast Bussin’ with the Boys. But did anyone catch this line from him? “I know there’s a team that, if something happened, would want me,” he told Will Compton and Taylor Lewan. That’s interesting … and Seattle was the first team I thought of.

• If you missed what Spielman said in my Friday column on the draft about Oregon DE Kayvon Thibodeaux, check it out. This could change, but I have a hard time, and I know people in the league do, too, seeing the personality match between him and the Lions’ new brass. And I doubt Houston will take him. So he could slide, at least a little, from where he was perceived to be a few months back (some presumed in the fall he was destined to go No. 1).

SIX FROM THE SIDELINE

1) I’ve got another TV recommendation for you—WeCrashed on Apple TV+. I’m through four episodes, and I’ll venture to say it’s as good as the last show I recommended for all of you (The Dropout on Hulu).

2) Really cool seeing our old colleague Robert Klemko doing such meaningful work for The Washington Post in war-torn Ukraine. Keep going, Bob!

3) I could declare the Red Sox’ season over now, but enough of you know where that got me last year. So I’ll withhold judgment … for now.

4) It’s bananas seeing a LeBron James team missing the playoffs. Also wild that it’s happened twice in four years since he became a Laker, after he made it in each of the 13 seasons (and getting to the Finals in nine of those years) before his arrival in Los Angeles. I know he has business interests out there, and it’s obviously a good place to live, but is it fair to ask if … a separation would be best for everyone now?

5) What a great competitor Tiger Woods is. He clearly wasn’t 100%, and had some tough moments out there, but he just kept coming. And while things did unravel over the weekend, the fact that he could make the cut at the Masters at 46 years old, 14 months after a catastrophic car accident, and without having played much competitive golf since, is astounding.

6) Scottie Scheffler seems like a nice enough guy. And I guess it’s a fun story line that he went to the same high school Matthew Stafford and Clayton Kershaw did (not an accident it keeps happening, Google can help you there). But that final round was enough to make the annual Sunday Masters nap last all day.

BEST OF THE NFL INTERNET

“I shouldn’t have said that.” Priceless.

Both sides of the equation—this was a really cool move by Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

Between Trevon Diggs’s kid and this, the next generation of that family has a lot of personality.

Always important to have goals.

That’s Cincinnati CB Sauce Gardner, and this tweet is from last April …

… And that’s a since-deleted tweet with him doubling down the other day.

In the end, I agree with Ramsey and wish Sauce never took his tweet down. To play at that level, and especially at that position, having a borderline-cocky level of confidence isn’t optional.

So I guess they’re excited in Colorado.

I’m all for using technology to make the game better.

I really hope this age of quarterbacks doesn’t fade just how good Joe Montana was.

Good way for one of the NFL’s best players to describe Haskins.

This video was the first thing I thought of when I heard the news on Saturday morning; a little kid who’d fulfilled his dream is gone way too soon.

I’ll just leave this one here.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

It’s just as I file the column that I’m learning about another tragedy in the NFL world from the weekend—my buddy Clarence Hill of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Sunday night that former Cowboys RBs coach Gary Brown passed away after spending the last few weeks in hospice in his hometown of Williamsport, Pa.

People my age will remember Brown as a bruising lead back for the high-flying Warren Moon–led run-and-shoot Oilers of the 1990s. But he’d carved out a nice career for himself as a coach, coaching the position he played for 11 seasons with the Browns and in Dallas, before taking his last coaching job at Wisconsin in 2021, where he spent last season working under Paul Chryst. He’d recently been moved to an off-field analyst role, and had been away from the team since its bowl game in December.

Best to Brown’s family during a very sad time.

More NFL Coverage:

• MAQB: Veteran QBs Helped By Weak Draft Class
• Brian Flores’s Claims Against NFL Are Growing More Powerful
• Dwayne Haskins’s Promising Life Was Cut Far Too Short
• NFL Mock Draft: Eagles-Saints Trade Blows Up the Order