Todd Bowles’s Chance to Redeem Himself as a Head Coach

This is his chance to reestablish what he’s capable of becoming as a coach. Plus, more on punter Matt Araiza, expectations for Kyler Murray, another visit to Las Vegas and much more.

TAMPA—Bruce Arians saw the practice with his own eyes and he’s known the new Buccaneers coach, his successor, since the guy was a teenager. So adding a team that was dragging for a couple hours to the Todd Bowles he knows, and the 69-year-old had a pretty good idea of what was coming..

But the coworker standing next to Arians as Bowles called the team up sure didn’t. A few minutes later, she was stunned, and even a little amused.

“I didn’t think I’d hear that much cussing anymore since you left,” she joked to Arians.

“Oh, yeah, he’s got it in him,” Arians responded. “I promise.”

These are now Bowles’s Buccaneers—and the people who are a part of it think the timing of his arrival, contrary to popular belief, couldn’t be better.

For Arians, things playing out this way allowed for him to hand a championship-ready team to a man he says is “like a second son to me.” For Bowles’ coaches, it’s a chance to keep building on what they’ve already established, knowing the plan is for the head man to be around a while. For the players, it’s a new voice, and one that can give them a different

perspective than Arians did, while maintaining all the good the old man established.

And for Bowles himself? This is the chance to reestablish what he’s always thought he was capable of being as a head coach after a short-circuited stint with the Jets ended three-and-a-half years ago. It’s also an opportunity to show who he is, which has forever been a little different than the stoic, stern-looking guy you’ve seen on your TV screen.

Who he is was on display in that scene Arians described from earlier in camp, all the same as it was the day I showed up, which happened to be another one carrying triple-digit heat indexes into a two-hour practice window. The difference, on this day, was that rather than beat his team down again, he chose to pulled back the reins, and pulled them into the fieldhouse for a brisk, climate-controlled 90 minutes of work..

“Common sense is important, because I know how much we need these guys during the year,” Bowles said in a quiet moment after practice under the shield of a tent. “And that subtle part of it, just being an ex-player, you can see who does what, when they’re tired, when they’re not. I’m a very good observational guy—Bruce has told me that. My thing is, what can we do better? Not to take away the things we were doing great, but to add on to it, to tweak some things to what we can do better, because we didn’t win the whole thing.”

That’s the other thing. Few first-year coaches come out of the gate talking about winning “the whole thing.” Bowles isn’t afraid to. He knows where his team is, what it’s capable of and what he’s capable of, too.

Which is another reason to think he might just be the right guy at the right time for the Buccaneers.

We’re back with just 10 days left until the kickoff game in Inglewood, and 13 days to the season’s first Sunday, and we’ve got plenty to get to. Inside this week’s MMQB, you’ll find …

• A thorough look at the Matt Araiza situation, as it pertains to the Bills and the NFL.

• What all that money has added up to for Kyler Murray in Arizona.

• Where Josh McDaniels stands three months after we first visited him in Vegas.

And so much more. But we’re starting with Tom Brady’s team, and why the Buccaneers seem (at least to me) to have gotten the right guy to get him his eighth ring, and the Bucs a second Lombardi in three years.

Bowles’s new beginning in Tampa really starts with Arians’s endpoint. It’s falling behind 27–3 at home against the Rams in the divisional round. It’s battling back tooth-and-nail to tie the score at 27. But it’s how the game ended—a miscommunication leading to a coverage bust that sprung Cooper Kupp free for a 44-yard Matthew Stafford bomb to the post that put the Rams in position for a game-winning field goal—that’s still on the mind of the new man in charge.

“It comes down to execution and doing the little things,” Bowles said. “We lacked on the little things in the game we lost to the Rams. Now, they have a good team and they beat us, and I give them all the credit. But we lacked the little things. Even before that game, we lacked some little things. We were good enough to win because we were more talented. And the work ethic is there.

“We just gotta make sure we’re hitting on all cylinders. The culture has been great. And if we don’t play together, it doesn’t mean anything.”

This is also who Bowles is—detail-oriented and driven—and the kind of guy who spent an offseason not comforting himself with the 13 wins the Bucs finished the regular season with, or the Super Bowl they won the year before. He was picking apart why the season ended like it did. And that part is apparent in camp, and even in the action he took the day I was there in moving the team indoors.

The communication could’ve been better on Kupp’s big play, and that’s been addressed, for sure. But there was also the state the team was in when Rams center Brian Allen snapped the ball to Stafford on that one. Bluntly, as Bowles saw it, they weren’t quite where they needed to be. The team was tired. The team was beat up. Its age showed up in spots. That guys were in and out of the lineup did, too.

“Our whole thing is how we finished the season,” he continued. “And when you don’t go as far as you went the season before, where we won the Super Bowl, you try to tweak some things. We were run down at the end of the year. After [playing through] the Super Bowl [the year before], we got a lot of people hurt during the year, so even though we won 13 games, we were mixing and matching all year. Health was a big thing.”

So Bowles has been super conscious of his players being where they need to be, both mentally and physically, when the season starts, and that his roster has 15 guys on it on the wrong side of 30.

That might mean Julio Jones—who, at 33, has been one of the stars of camp—being on a two-days-on, one-day-off practice cadence. It might mean moving a practice in the dead of August in Central Florida into air conditioning. It might even be giving a certain legendary

quarterback all the time he needs to be in the right place when the calendar turns to Sept. 11 and the Bucs are in Dallas for the Sunday-night opener.

And none of it’s arbitrary or willy-nilly, either. It’s all calculated, and reasoned.

“Bruce did it as well, but we did more of it because we didn’t go as far last year,” Bowles said. “[The players] took care of their bodies better. I was giving guys assigned days even more so than we were in the past and making sure when the heat index went to a certain amount, certain guys got to be able to cut back on certain reps. I was really monitoring that from a health standpoint.”

The other end of that bargain is where that tongue-lashing of a few weeks ago came from—if he’s going to give a little to the players, he’s expecting everything from them when he asks for it. And in giving a lot to him, the players are trusting that, as a guy with a rare combination of eight years of NFL playing experience and 22 years on NFL sidelines, Bowles knows when to push which buttons.

The key being, says second-year safety Antoine Winfield, that the players know “Coach Bowles wants what’s best for us.” And that it’s important for Bowles to find the right answers for those guys was apparent, quite literally, from the moment he took the job in March, more than two months after the season came to a close.

“We have a really good sports science team, and he’s embraced them from Day 1—first day, he was named head coach, he was talking already about how we were gonna do our London trip,” Bucs GM Jason Licht said. “He wanted to know the science behind when we should leave, when’s the best time. He thinks through these things. He’s very detailed.”

Which, really, shows up all over the place.

In trying to describe Bowles the tactician, Licht, who spent years with the Eagles, called back a story centered on Philly’s late, legendary defensive coordinator Jim Johnson. One day, Licht remembered, Johnson lingered in the shower for more than 20 minutes, to the point where people were concerned. So Licht went to check on him.

“I was like, ‘You O.K. in there?’ ” Licht said, laughing, knowing it sounds a little absurd. “And he was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I just got caught up scheming up a new blitz.’ And he said with that stuff he’d wake up in the middle of the night and write it on napkins. He was addicted, obsessed with coming up with new, creative things. And Todd’s got that bug in him.”

As such, at his first team meeting back in April, Bowles let his players know that his door would be open, and the results of that offer, and the players’ response to it, shows the resource he’s become for them. Licht says that, more often than not, if he strolls down to the head coach’s office now, there’ll be a player in there.

In fact, he's established office hours, like a college professor, to make himself available. It can be, as you’d expect, there for players to discuss something personal, if need be. But normally, that time’s used for players to come in and tie up details football-wise, in whatever area a guy needs it.

“It can be just whatever, really whatever,” Winfield said. “For me, personally, just going to ask him questions, seeing who we got coming up, what he sees, offenses we’re gonna face, really anything.”

It’s an extension of what Arians used to see in his old defensive coordinator’s office when the sun wasn’t up yet.

“If you were in there at 5 in the morning, someone would be in there watching film with him,” Arians said. “He’d have [Jamel] Dean in there, [Sean Murphy-] Bunting, Winfield, teaching them all the nuances, down to how to watch film. That’s something he’s always done, and now that he’s the head coach, he’s not changing.”

The difference now is he can offer it to guys on the other side of the ball, too, and give everyone a more global perspective. And whether it’s for someone as experienced Brady, or as green as rookie Luke Goedeke, who is projected to start at guard, Bowles usually has something to give.

“Everything I try to do, and make sure that I talk to them about is football-related,” Bowles said. “Why we win, why we lose, every situation, show them on tape, bring them in, make them see it as a team, put them back in those situations, we’ve been doing a lot of that. I’ve just tried to expand it a little bit, as to what they can see, I think I help the offense by giving them perspective on how the defense thinks.

“I don’t try to be on the offense, but I can tell you what they’re trying to do to you, and where the weaknesses are, and what can hurt and what can help. I do that much more. We try to make sure everyone is accountable and include everybody. If we’ve had one thing, we are trust, loyalty and respect. And we still are. And I’d add accountability. So it’s the same thing, I’m not trying to say this is my way. This is our way.”

Bowles’s way also isn’t just an extension of Arians’s way.

The marks of what has been in Tampa the past three years are clearly still there. But when Bowles mentioned his emphasis on accountability and details, I asked him whether some of that connects back to the times he worked for Bill Parcells.

“There are a lot of marks of Parcells,” said Bowles, smiling. “But I’ve got 12 or 13 guys I’ve probably learned from. Bruce being one, Parcells another one, majorly. Richie Petitbon and Emmitt Thomas, Andy Reid, Wade Phillips, Mike Zimmer, I looked at Dick LeBeau’s tape a lot, learned a lot from [Tony] Dungy, watching him and knowing him. You learn a lot of things from a lot of different guys. And they don’t even know they’re teaching you.

“You take certain things. I’m always looking to learn something and incorporate it into being myself, but not them. I will never be them, never try to be them, but if I can add something that can help me coach better and hope us win, I’ll take advice from the bagger at Publix. It doesn’t matter. I try to keep my mind open.”

That much is clear in the day-to-day, too, and how he’s establishing his way.

On one hand, earlier this year, when linebacker Devin White, who’s a little bit (or a lot) of a free spirit, went to his coach asking whether the team could play music during warmups at practice, Bowles quickly yielded. And when the team needs the coach to ease the pedal, he’s got a way of sensing that.

“Everything is very thoughtful,” Licht said. “I think it comes from coaching for a long time, but also from being a former player, of when the team’s maybe dragging a little bit and not because they’re lazy. It’s just the workload.”

On the other hand, he’s not afraid to step on someone’s throat when the day’s objective isn’t accomplished, or skittish about keeping his team out in the heat to get that work done.

And on a lot of days this summer, getting the message on across has gone back to that game with the Rams, one lost on the margins. Arians was always serious about drilling down on such situations—two-minute, red zone, third down, whatever—in practice. Parcells, going back to Bowles’ time in Dallas and Miami, was maniacal about it.

Bowles, now as a head coach again is too, and the way 2021 ended has made it easy for him to illustrate for his players why.

“We’re out here pretty much doing situations the whole time—two-minute, end of half, things like that,” Winfield said. “But I know we’re getting ourselves in position, knowing what we’re going to see in two-minute, third down. I feel like it’s really gonna take us a long way.”

And around here, with Tom Brady as the quarterback, everyone knows going a long way really only means one thing.

To be sure, the bar here couldn’t be higher.

This might be Brady’s last year. The clock’s ticking on Julio Jones, Kyle Rudolph, Cam Brate, Lavonte David, Akiem Hicks and Leonard Fournette—and Ryan Jensen, too, if he can beat the odds and get back from his knee injury. They aren’t all here to find the same fate the Buccaneers did last year.

“Our bar is always high,” Bowles said, before repeating himself. “Our bar is always high.”

Which brings him back, one more time, to that loss to the Rams.

“Communication. Assignments. We just didn’t win,” he said. “They made more plays than we did. You got two good teams, and somebody made a mistake and that was us. And they capitalized and won fair and square, hats off to them. They’re a well-coached team. We blew some things we don’t normally blow. That cost us, and we gotta learn from it.”

So Bowles is here, again, as the guy the Bucs see as the right guy at the right time for a roster with an expiration date. And that doesn’t mean, by the way, that he’s trying to win the Super Bowl in August—if it did, he may not have let them have that practice inside.

Moreso, for the 58-year-old, it means keeping the team where it needs to be, and to do that he first needs to know where it should be..

“I know how the team should look,” he said. “I know when we are hitting on all cylinders and when we’re not. So it’s good that I know the team already. The coaches do a great job of helping out. We’ve got a lot of good people. You can’t just run a team without guys running with you, and those guys do a great job—Byron [Leftwich], Goody [Harold Goodwin], Kacy [Rodgers], Clyde [Christensen], all the guys do a great job. The chemistry’s been outstanding. We just gotta do the little things to help us win.”

And just as he knows what the Buccaneers will need to look like in January and February, he knows “how it should look in practice, through this stretch of August, the progression you make and if you’re going in the right direction or not. And we’re getting better. I believe that.”

So, I asked, how should it look right now?

“It was a good practice today,” he answered. “Today was what it should look like.”

As such, he spared the players the rod, calmly breaking the team and letting them go at the end of practice.

The next day, they knew he might show a different side of himself. Which could surprise some people. But not the people here.

THE BILLS AND MATT ARAIZA

Let’s start here—the accounts about former Bills punter Matt Araiza are awful and disturbing. The rookie punter was released Saturday amid allegations of his participation in a gang rape of a 17-year-old girl while at San Diego State last year.

If true, Araiza and the three other men involved, two of whom were teammates, should be put in jail for a long time. The L.A. Times did a thorough story on the allegations, one that reported detectives submitted findings to the San Diego County D.A.’s office to determine whether charges will be filed.

Araiza’s attorney denied wrongdoing by his client after the lawsuit was filed on Thursday in California. Araiza was released Saturday night before the Bills played the Panthers, fewer than 72 hours after the suit was filed.

So obviously there’s plenty to sort through here. Let’s go through some of that:

• Bills GM Brandon Beane gave a detailed timeline during a press conference on Saturday night to announce Araiza’s release. Beane said the team first learned of the accusations against Araiza in late July when the woman’s lawyer, Dan Gilleon, called Bills assistant general counsel Kathryn D’Angelo. The GM added that the team didn’t move on then because Araiza’s “version [of the events] was different, and you want to give everyone as much due process as you can. … We’re not a judge and jury.”

• So as far as releasing Araiza after the allegations became public, Beane seemed to concede that the rising (and understandable) sentiment against the punter, and outside awareness of the case, were factors, saying, “This is bigger than football. Let’s just step back and [let Araiza] go handle this. That’s what we thought was most important.”

• If we’re taking the Bills at their word, that they didn’t know about this specific allegations, then it’s worth trying to figure out which other teams did know. A quick check with 12 teams on Sunday morning turned up interesting results. Nine didn’t have anything on the allegations about Araiza during the pre-draft process. Three other teams said they had “something” but didn’t have specifics. In the case of one of those three teams, they’d heard there was an investigation into an incident involving SDSU players, but nothing that pointed to Araiza specifically. Another of the three teams had information that pointed to him, but in more of a “nothing criminal, probably not a big deal” sort of way.

• For what it’s worth, the league, which does background reports on draft-eligible players, didn’t have this case on Araiza, either. Beane said the same Saturday during his press conference, and a league source confirmed it for me Sunday.

• Araiza was, indeed, the third punter taken in the draft—behind Penn State’s Jordan Stout (Ravens) and NC State’s Jake Camarda (Buccaneers). But I feel confident saying the reason he was the third punter off the board is because that’s basically where teams had him ranked. Beyond many people not knowing about Araiza’s situation, there were also questions about him as a player that didn’t match up with the “Punt God” rep. Araiza was known for having a strong leg, and that’s why the Bills drafted him, knowing that they needed a punter who could combat the strong winds in Buffalo (check out last year’s game between the Bills and Patriots), which made sense. But from a technical standpoint, he had a long approach (he’d punt at 9 yards after catching it at 14; most punt at 10, which better prevents blocks), which was an issue, as was his hangtime and directional punting. One special teams coach told me he couldn’t find a punt with a hangtime at or above 4.5 seconds on Araiza, where Stout, for example, was consistently over that mark. Along those lines, one personnel exec told me he’d be surprised if any team had someone other than Stout as the draft’s best punter. And I got three teams to tell me, specifically, where they had him ranked—two had him third, another had him fourth (Trenton Gill, now with the Bears, was higher than Ariaza on some teams’ boards).

Now I think you can say it’s not wild that the Bills didn’t know about the situation with Araiza based on the pre-draft process.

My bigger question: Why in the world would the Bills cut Matt Haack, their punter last year, having known about the allegations against Araiza since late July? It seems, at best, that was a pretty serious miscalculation because the Bills had another full week to go before the roster cutdown to 53.

At the press conference, veteran Buffalo scribe Tim Graham asked Beane whether cutting Haack last Monday signaled that the Bills were satisfied with where their own investigation into the incident had gone.

“That’s a tough one, Tim,” Beane answered. “You can second-guess whether that was the right move. And we’ll definitely look at that going forward if a similar situation happens.”

As for the NFL’s place in this, because it happened before Araiza was in the league, the former Bills punter is not subject to league discipline. But over the past few weeks in discussing the Deshaun Watson case, we’ve mentioned how it seems the NFL can’t get out of its own way when it comes to violence and other transgressions against women.

Because Araiza is not in the league right now, there’s probably nothing the NFL can do about the situation. And to put it bluntly, because he’s a punter, and one without any résumé at the pro level, it’s a fair bet that he won’t be back in the league unless and until the details become completely clear.

But it’s obviously not the sort of look the NFL is looking for, and only underscores how vigilant the league, and its teams as forward-facing businesses, have to be with their background checks—and why all the vetting that goes on in February and March and April, which people habitually poke fun at, really does matter. And that, I’d say, goes whether or not you think there was a way for the Bills to know what they didn’t in the first place.

IT’S KYLER MURRAY’S “BABY” IN ARIZONA

The same way it’s been a lucrative offseason for Kyler Murray, it’s been a weird one. It kicked off with the tail-kicking in Inglewood in January. Then, came the statement from his agent on his contract. Then, quiet, and plenty speculation on how hard he’d drive for a new deal. And then, after that agent, Erik Burkhardt, and the team pushed a five-year, $230.5 million over the goal, the revelation of the infamous homework clause.

How’d Murray come out of it? Under different circumstances, for sure.

“With that type of financial investment, there’s definitely responsibility,” said Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury, with the field empty before a practice earlier this month. “And you feel it from him. You feel it in the way he carries himself and the way he talks, and the way he’s out here working. You definitely see him taking ownership of that position. … No doubt, he’s the face of the franchise and he’s expected to carry that weight.”

It's not every day that a young quarterback—remember, Murray turned 25 just this month—will have the gantlet laid down so bluntly for him, but again, that’s the kind of offseason it’s been for the Cards’ fourth-year star. And what Kingsbury’s saying here, really, is just a continuation of what we’ve heard and seen from the franchise since the deal was agreed to just before Arizona opened camp.

It's not that the team isn’t happy with him as a player. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t have done the deal in the first place.

More so, it’s that now the Cardinals are going to want more and more, specifically, off the field.

“This is my fourth year, and I’ve said it many times, initially being here, being a young guy, wanting to prove myself before I tell anybody what to do and speak out of turn,” Murray told me a little later that morning. “Everybody around here knows I’m a serious guy. They know when I say things, how much I mean them. I’m not gonna waste your time. So with this being in Year 4 now, of course, I think it’s mandatory that I let guys know and speak up to my guys. It’s necessary. I consider myself a veteran. I’ve played a lot of games here.

“Obviously with the extension and the belief that goes along with it, being able to be free and speak your mind, regardless. The guys understand that, and they want that from me.”

On the day I was there, Murray was given the day to watch most of the work from the sideline. But rather than just have the mental reps as an abstract benefit while he gave Murray’s arm the day, Kingsbury wanted to give the quarterback something tangible and get something tangible from him. So when the team went into 11-on-11, Murray strapped a belt pack around his waist with a transmitter on it, pulled on a headset and carried a playsheet.

He smirked when I asked him about it.

“I feel like my IQ for the game is very high. Calling plays? They just asked me to do it, and I did it.” He half-jokingly added that the toughest part of it, for him, is “the mechanics of pressing the button. You got the radar back there—if you’re too far away from it, you get the beeping. As far as the football goes? I feel like I could call plays on the field.” And then he came clean, saying calling the two-minute offense from the sideline was, indeed, a challenge.

“Just because you have to have the next one in mind, you don’t really have time, everything’s on a time crunch, obviously,” he said. “But if anything, I’ve got respect for the coaches—the players execute it, but with time running down, that’s a lot of pressure. … I feel like it’s easier on the field. You just feel it, and as a quarterback you know what you wanna run.”

And therein lies the idea of all this—the implicit message being that growth is expected of Murray in every aspect of his game. He, for example, has always taken care of his body. On the practice field, he competes. Now, the expectation is that it’ll happen even when he’s not on his feet wearing a helmet or lifting a dumbbell.

Which, he insists, was his intention all along, anyway, and why he swears that he’s not holding on to all the criticism he caught when the independent-study clause became public.

“I’ve been through a lot,” he said. “Honestly, me being who I am, I was kind of born on that, don’t let outside noise affect me. And I feel like I’ve done a pretty damn good job of that my whole career, my whole life. That was nothing new. Nothing new. I’m a 5'10" quarterback, I get s--- for my size. But, no, I’m not fazed by it one bit. I’m gonna continue to do my thing.”

His thing, to be fair, has progressively gotten better over the past three years. His passer rating jumped from 87.4 to 94.3 to 100.6 over his first three years. The jumps in completion percentage (64.4 to 67.2 to 69.2) and TD-INT ratio (20–12 to 26–12 to 24–10) have improved, too, and the Cardinals have gone from five wins to eight wins to 11 last year.

The trouble has come at the end of each season, with the team coming undone a bit, and its quarterback has been powerless to stop it. And the way it happened last year, culminating in an embarrassing playoff loss to the Rams, was especially painful.

“We got our a-- beat,” Murray said. “There’s no sugar-coating it. The next week, I’m sitting in bed, sulking and watching the Rams do the same thing to Tom Brady.”

Then, he saw Brady come to life, and the Bucs come to life, and nearly come back from a 27–3 deficit and, in the moment, some reflection for Murray. While Murray says he “didn’t expect Tom to just lay down,” there was a lesson in just how much fight the Bucs showed that day. And as much as he wanted to forget the week before, there was something to be gained in the comparison. “Like I said, we learned from that a---beating, and you gotta come back. I hope everyone on the team learns from it. Will I learn from it? Of course. I felt it.”

So right there is one area where he thinks he can take his place as a leader—in showing what he learned from it and then helping everyone learn like he has.

What did he learn? Well, a big part of the Cardinals’ collapse, which took Arizona from the league’s best record (10–2) in December, to finishing 11–6, to having to travel in the wild-card round, to the shellacking at SoFi, was the rash of injuries the roster incurred. There’s not a ton, of course, that can be done about that in retrospect. But what Murray can help the Cardinals control is their attitude in the face of something like that.

It was the negativity, with all that happened,” he said. “S---’s contagious. It can kind of take over, and you can’t let it. I think as a team, it was kind of, Oh, can we win at home? And at the end of the season, we kind of made it a theme, you let that fester and then it takes over. … You just have to stay positive and continue to fight back through the adversity.”

We’ll see whether Murray can help prevent that from happening again—Kingsbury and his staff have certainly taken steps (in managing veteran players and pacing the team through camp) to keep the injury bug at bay. Maybe he can. Maybe he can’t.

But he knows what’ll be expected whenever the team does reach such a crossroads in 2022, because the team’s been clear on it, and it’s more than was expected before.

“If I don’t like something, now I’ll let everybody know, and we’ll get it corrected,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of young guys and I’ve got a lot of experience, and I can voice my opinion and give them the game that I’ve been put in. That’s the fun part, for real—just being able to give back to the rookies and build the relationship with the guys that have been here.”

That’ll mean better attendance in the offseason, too. It’ll mean, yes, doing more work in the building than before and more classroom work than he has. Which, really, with the money he’s making, means he’s responsible for people other than just himself.

“I’ve seen him on his own, offense makes a mistake, he’s calling them up—Hey, now we gotta do that again,” Kingsbury said. “He’s taking more control and not waiting for the coaches to get it right. Or he’s grabbing a receiver and he’s talking to them, saying, ‘This is how I want it.’ He’s taking ownership of the whole system, the whole deal. He knows his name’s on it now, and this is his baby.”

We’ll see what he makes of it, now that he’s being paid accordingly.

ANOTHER VISIT TO LAS VEGAS

I ended the first leg (the 17-stop one) of camp travels here, in the Las Vegas suburbs, where I spent a couple of days back in May. And as I sat in the same office, with Josh McDaniels, that I described in the story I wrote off that first trip to Nevada, the Raiders’ coach pointed out the same window he had three months earlier to describe the progress he personally, and his program in totality, had made in ingraining his message.

“You can see, there’s Bo out there,” he said, pointing to quarterbacks coach Bo Hardegree, who came with McDaniels from New England, working with Derek Carr out on the practice fields about 15 minutes before the Raiders’ early morning session kicked off.

“They have to have space—it’s what I had when I was younger,” McDaniels said. “And in order to grow, sometimes you gotta make some mistakes. I think that’s a very healthy thing for them, it’s a healthy thing for me. I do what I feel like is the right amount. And then I let them have their autonomy and their space to coach their players and to coach the group the way they need to do it themselves. I think the players respond well to the flow of that. When I come in, I talk through it, ‘Hey, here’s what we’re gonna do, points of emphasis, great.’

“And when [offensive coordinator] Mick [Lombardi] is up there doing it, he’s the guy in charge, they know that. And then when Bo has the quarterbacks, he’s prepared every day and he nails them on A, B, C, D, E, F and G, and then we just play off each other. And the good thing is, we’ve worked together, so it’s an easier way for us to flow. It’d be different if the three of us had never been together. Like if I’m coming in and they’re going, ‘O.K., well, he’s in charge.’ And I don’t surprise them.”

Those who read the story back in the spring will remember the general theme—McDaniels wanted to delegate, build relationships and create the right environment. And he prioritized those things, in large part, because of his failings in Denver, where a much younger coach was spread too thin and unable to give enough of himself to anyone.

So when our new NFL editor, John Pluym, suggested when I was mapping out my trip that I tie a bow on it by visiting the Raiders again to wrap up the big training-camp swing, I loved the idea.

What did I see? Well, the one thing that’s pretty clear is the efficiency with which everyone is working. The practice I attended kicked off at around 8:30 a.m. and moved fast. And through the early parts of the session, before 11-on-11 (when McDaniels slipped a headset on), the coach spent plenty of time with the defense, letting Lombardi and the offensive coaches run their side, and lending Patrick Graham a hand with the defense.

And, yes, there were some markings of McDaniels’s Patriots roots.

At one point, a lineman ran a penalty lap under the searing Vegas sun. At another, assistant GM Champ Kelly threw bags in a rugby-tackling drill for the linebackers. (“The more you can do,” he joked, as the players cycled through the work.) There was a ton of situational work. Then, later, in an 11-on-11 red-zone period, center Andre James missed the snap count and got the ball to Carr a beat early, and he was pulled out of the lineup for a few plays as a result.

But what struck me was how, at every point, there seemed to be a coach or someone giving someone else an explanation for these things—the why, so to speak, to ensure the message that was being delivered got driven home. And it’s not McDaniels micromanaging the place; it didn’t have to be him doing it (when McDaniels called James off the field, line coach Carmen Bricillo was the one to approach him).

The result, I think, came back to that efficiency. At the point I was there, Carr still hadn’t thrown a pick. Davante Adams looked exceedingly comfortable in his surroundings. Star edge rusher Maxx Crosby had clearly taken a level of ownership on defense, too, in working with individual younger guys as they needed him.

Which, I’d think, is the buy-in McDaniels wanted coming alive.

“The staff, again, they have a lot of responsibility, and I’ve become more of a resource in some ways, which is a good thing, in trying to give them space and the ability to make good decisions and go with them,” he continued. “If they want to try something, they try it. The team, I think it’s explaining the why. And they feel pretty comfortable, I would assume now, in understanding that this isn’t all that they heard about where I came from.

“And again, none of that’s negative. But there’s always this nervous anxiety. We’re gonna try to do it the way that’s best for us, and I think our players have respected that. I think we have a lot of camaraderie. We work really hard. I think the group really likes one another and is creating the bond you’d hope we’d create. I think that’s happening. I think all those things, we were pouring into it in the spring, and now we’re continuing to do it every day.”

He then smiled and said, “Like I said, when we go, we go. And when we don’t, we don’t.”

McDaniels had a specific example to show how the relationship- and team-building part of it is baked into everyday life in his second act as an NFL coach.

“Like last night, we had Mat Franco from the Strip over here, and he did the magic show for an hour,” he said. “And the guys loved it. So it’s like, when we go, we go. And when it’s time to team-build and pull back and do something else, we do that. We have a chance to just keep working and try to improve and see what happens. But the general feeling is very positive.”

And now we’ll all get to see for ourselves whether McDaniels, 11 years removed from the last time around, can take the opportunity that’s in front of him.

TEN TAKEAWAYS

The Bears are quietly pretty optimistic about the progress Justin Fields has made. Some of that comes from his performance in Saturday night’s preseason finale, a win over the Browns. The second-year pro finished 14-of-16 for 156 yards, three touchdowns, no picks and a 146.9 rating, and Chicago was up 21–0 when he exited the game late in the second quarter. But what the coaches liked went well past the numbers. The first two touchdown passes, in particular, highlighted it.

• On the first one, Fields took a three-step drop out of the shotgun, stood in with rushers coming behind him, hitched and put a bullet on Ryan Griffin between two defenders for a 22-yard touchdown. On that particular play call, Griffin was only part of the progression against one coverage—cover-3. And Fields quickly identified that coverage, came off his primary read and decisively made the tight-window throw to Griffin.

• On the second one, Fields took a five-step drop out of the shotgun, diagnosed the coverage and unloaded the ball to Dante Pettis by the pylon. Because the Bears were in the red zone, things were a little sped up, and Fields quickened his footwork accordingly, identified the one-on-one he had with Pettis and unloaded the ball in rhythm and on time.

Now the Chicago coaches have tried to take a brick-by-brick approach to build Fields up this offseason after a tumultuous rookie year during which he was in and out of the lineup and playing with different play-callers. A calmer player, they figured, would lead to improvements in his footwork and timing. Both were apparent in the above two examples. And in doing so, and really throughout the night, he showed he’s improved at leading the operation of the offense and commanding it at the line. That, of course, doesn’t mean that he’s automatically going to have a second year such as Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson or Joe Burrow did in recent years. But he should be significantly better and able to harness his physical gifts.

Seattle going with Geno Smith shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Yes, Seahawks GM John Schneider and his scouts really liked Drew Lock coming out of college in 2019 and, largely because of that, he became a significant part of the return for Russell Wilson in March. But the writing was on the wall here going back to the start of camp. Lock had nine weeks with the team in the spring. Pete Carroll, now in his 13th year in charge in Seattle, has never been shy about flipping his depth chart on a dime—in fact, his “Always Compete” mantra sort of demands that he act with that type of flexibility. So once the Seahawks got to camp and the staff was loading Smith’s plate with first-team reps, and barely giving Lock any, it was clear how the quarterback competition had gone in the spring. The coaches were prioritizing getting Smith ready for the season while allowing for the chance that Lock would close the gap. In the end, as I understand it, Smith was consistently steadier, showed an ability to take care of the ball better and is still able to make all the throws. Also, in the preseason games, Smith put the ball where it needed to be over and over again (something that was reflected in his PFF grade). And now? Well, with rookies likely to be key contributors at both tackle spots (Charles Cross, Abraham Lucas) and running back (Kenneth Walker III) having a veteran voice leading the huddle would make sense for more reasons than just what Smith brings to the table as a player. And, sure, if an opportunity to get another such quarterback comes along, I do think the Seahawks would be open to that.

I think Matthew Stafford is probably going to be all right. When I was talking with noted quarterback trainer Adam Dedeaux last week about Trey Lance and his return from a mangled finger, he used Stafford as a point of reference to explain why Lance pushed through his own injury the way he did. "Stafford won a Super Bowl and his elbow was bothering him a ton last year. We talked about it throughout the year, we just managed it and did what we could not to put extra stress on it. But he knew what he was getting into every game.” And that, to me, is the context that most people are missing with the Rams’ quarterback. No, it’s not great that Stafford’s elbow is bothering him. That said, he did deal with it last year. And he was nails when it mattered most, at the end of playoff games against the Buccaneers and Bengals. To me, pacing Stafford now is an acknowledgment of what they went through last year. If he’s not practicing in the fall, I’d say that’d be different. But he’s certainly not the first quarterback to get veteran days in the summer. Essentially, this year, Stafford’s getting ahead of it rather than chasing, and everyone seems hopeful that’ll bring better results.

The trade market this week? Probably will be about what it normally is like. That means the most significant names you see will, in all likelihood, be the result of regime changes where new GMs and coaches are coming in and are less invested in certain players than their predecessors. One such example is Raiders right tackle Alex Leatherwood, who’s got ability but has lost confidence and could use a change of scenery. Another might be Giants WR Kenny Golladay, who was playing in the team’s final preseason game Sunday at a point when there weren’t a lot of starters out there. The issue in moving both is the money. Golladay is due $17.75 million this year and $18 million in both 2023 and ’24. Of that, $17.5 million of this year’s money is fully guaranteed (the remaining $250,000 is in per-game roster bonuses), and $4.5 million of next year’s money is fully guaranteed, meaning … yeah, good luck finding a taker. In Leatherwood’s case, the deal is affordable, but all his money for the next three years (about $6 million) is fully guaranteed, which basically means you probably have to view him as a starter if you trade for him (if he is one, it will obviously become a really good deal).

I have thoughts on the preseason-game-vs.-joint-practice debate. Since having kids, I’ve started to look at the former a little differently—when my boys were a little younger than they are now, they went to a couple of games. Those were great, probably better than regular season games would be, for a couple of reasons. One, it was a more family-friendly environment (and a lot less intense) than in the regular season. Two, it wasn’t packed, so the kids could roam a little more. And for parents, if the kids want to leave in the second quarter (we’ve all been there)? A lot less of a big deal than it would be in the regular season, when you don’t want to leave. So for those reasons, and to attract those who can’t go to regular-season games for whatever reason, too, I think there is more value in the preseason than I used to. Still … I really do believe that the joint practices are a better take for fans in general. It’s a unique environment, where you get elements such as this one that you aren’t going to get anywhere else:

Beyond just the football stuff, there are autographs after. The setting is more intimate. Which is why I think these sessions are one of the few things that the NFL really hasn’t done enough to capitalize on. I can remember covering high school sports, and some areas would have these preseason football jamborees where there might be eight teams scrimmaging halves against one another—and there'd be ice cream trucks and bouncy houses for the kids and all that. It was almost a celebration that football season was finally here. Why wouldn’t the NFL turn these into that? I don’t really understand it.

There was a quote from Bill Belichick that got my attention this week, and I know it got the attention of other people in the league, too. Here’s what the Patriots’ coach said after a loss in Las Vegas that, for Raiders’ starters, was a bit of a trainwreck: “We didn’t have a really good night tonight in any phase of the game. That’s obvious. Might have left it on the practice field on Tuesday and Wednesday. Certainly, practiced a lot better than we played out there tonight. Obviously, I need to clean up a lot of things here. We just didn’t play well in any phase of the game. We didn’t play with any kind of consistency. A couple of touchdowns called back, turned the ball over, didn’t play good defense, didn’t play well in the kicking game. I’ve obviously got to do a better job and so, it starts with me. We’ll get back to work this week and work on what kind of things we need to work on. Like I said, it’s disappointing because we did things a lot better in practice against the Raiders than we did tonight. Hopefully, we can regain that level of execution and performance.” And that matched up with media reports from the ground that said the Patriots really struggled Tuesday before bouncing back Wednesday during the teams’ joint practices. The only issue with that? I know the Raiders’ perception was that they sleep-walked a bit Tuesday and gave the Patriots a licking Wednesday. Which, when you match up the takeaways, is pretty alarming. But what really got me was, uncharacteristically, Belichick seemed to excuse a really, really poor performance in a preseason game by essentially saying, “Well, you should’ve seen us the other day.” I can never really remember him playing off a really bad day that way. And on the premise that Belichick is never really talking to the media, he’s always talking through the media to someone—the only real explanation I can come up with is that he thinks his team needs to be built up with its opener 13 days away. The whole summer has been weird in Foxborough, and I can say that I can’t remember ever being less certain about what a Patriots team will look like in Week 1 than I am right now. Maybe Belichick knows better, and there’s a method to all this and they’re gangbusters from the jump. Or maybe everything we’ve seen and heard the past six months really is an indicator of what’s to come. Neither result would stun me.

Tyron Smith’s injury is probably the preseason’s most significant. The Cowboys’ left tackle won’t be back for months after tearing his hamstring, and this really is a worst-case scenario for Dallas. And since Smith hasn’t played a full season without injury since 2015, and has played in a total of just 13 games over the past two years, it’s fair to point the finger at the team for its readiness situation with its 31-year-old, eight-time Pro Bowler. First-rounder Tyler Smith would be the logical candidate to kick out to left tackle after competing through camp at guard—even though he was seen as raw and, by some, as a tackle/guard tweener before the draft. If not him, then flipping Terence Steele from right tackle would make some sense, too. Either way, the Cowboys are now perilously thin along the line and have to be crossing their fingers that Smith’s longtime linemate Zack Martin can stay healthy. It’s also an issue that compounds the team’s questions at receiver, where they’ll likely be without Michael Gallup and James Washington for the opener. The best case here is that Dallas can lean on its defense to tread water early as the offense gets healthier. But that won’t be easy with the Buccaneers, Bengals, Eagles and Rams on the schedule over the season’s first six weeks. The stretch between now and Halloween’s going to be interesting for Jerry’s crew.

It's getting down to the wire for the Ravens and Lamar Jackson. And it’s not over, to be sure. Deshaun Watson got his first big deal, in Houston, two years ago, five days before his fourth season as a pro kicked off. Likewise, T.J. Watt got a massive extension in Pittsburgh last year on the day before the Steelers’ season began. So there’s still almost two weeks, and the Week 1 deadline has spurred deals in the past. My biggest question then would be whether the holdout is a demand for the fully guaranteed structure that Watson got in Cleveland, because it sure has seemed over the past few months like that might be a bridge too far for Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti. Remember, he was the one owner who publicly spoke out against Browns owner Jimmy Haslam’s deal for Watson. And I’ve heard reliably that the Ravens made an offer at some point in 2021 that matched the $43 million per that Josh Allen got in Buffalo, so I don’t think raw dollars are the problem. Is it the guarantee structure? The Ravens have kept the circle tight on the negotiation, so it’s tough to tell anything for sure, and there are ways to work around the funding rules to prevent having to put so much money in escrow, so there is room for creativity. But until this one is done, it isn’t done. And it certainly would be strange to have a 25-year-old former MVP quarterback, one around whom an entire system has been built, playing out a contract year.

My condolences are with the Dolphins today. Their SVP of communications and community affairs, Jason Jenkins, died Saturday before the team’s home game against the Eagles. And the outpouring of support you’ve heard since isn’t empty—it’s because Jenkins, in his wide-ranging role, touched a lot of people, from all facets of the Dolphins’ organization, to the media, to the South Florida community and beyond. I thought new Miami coach Mike McDaniel did a nice job of pulling that all together after the Dolphins’ win over Philly. “As consistent as I have ever seen, from his wardrobe to his spirit,” he said. “He was the nines. That’s why it makes it so tough. This is a healthy, healthy guy that just brought it every day. He worked at the stadium [where the team’s business operations are headquartered, separate from the practice facility]. I’m not sure how many people that I feel like I know from the stadium. I would love to know more, but on a day-to-day basis, I don't get to interact with all the people as much as I would like. For him to make such an impact, it was obvious. You can’t make that impression. You get to talk to them maybe once a week, but the impression that he made, there’s no fooling that. You could see the relationships, the eye contact, how people looked at him, how he embraced others. He was the consummate professional. I know for guys that have been around here for a while, they knew him like a family member, and I think it’s incredibly impressive, and it just speaks to the human being and his impact on all of us where I could see that in my brief time around him. I mean, he was a force of positivity. The organization has been through some stuff, and it was very impactful to me just how many people in the organization were passionate about doing their jobs well and about the Dolphins, and he was at the top of the list. He was just full of life. That’s the hardest part. There’s no words to describe. He had a great family. His wife is awesome and his children, and it’s just tough. It’s a tough one to swallow, and he will be missed, but he will not be forgotten.” From my perspective, I can just say there were few PR people who were easier to get along with than Jenkins. You were always happy to see him. RIP, Jason, and here’s praying for peace for your wife and three kids.

The opener is approaching fast, and that’s given us plenty to chew on. So here are some leftovers for you in this week’s quick-hitters …

• Not for nothing, I’ve heard Saints backup QB Andy Dalton has had a really nice summer, and the team feels much better about its depth at the position this year. That could be important with Jameis Winston coming back off ACL surgery.

• While we’re there, the injury to first-round pick Trevor Penning at left tackle makes James Hurst a sneaky pivotal player in the NFC South race. Hurst has 62 starts over his eight-year career, which was mostly spent in Baltimore.

• Injuries suffered by backup QBs this weekend—Sam Darnold with the Panthers and Tyrod Taylor with the Giants—could lead to some midweek intrigue on the waiver wire. They also show the wisdom in Carolina keeping P.J. Walker around, with Darnold joining rookie Matt Corral on the shelf.

• Trey Flowers could wind up being a nice signing for the Dolphins. He’s familiar with Josh Boyer’s scheme (the two were together in New England), and even if injuries get him again, his presence should be really good for Jaelan Phillips, who’s got star potential.

• I don’t think we’re really seeing what the Niners are planning for Trey Lance. So I’d be careful about making any judgments on him based on preseason games. (Go look up what Kyle Shanahan did in the 2012 opener vs. that year’s preseason and you’ll see what I mean.)

• It’s interesting that Aaron Donald has been right in the middle of fights the past two years (in 2021, it was fights, plural, with then-Cowboys G Connor Williams). Why? Well, Donald is intense. But my guess is, as much as anything, it probably has to do with guys wanting to take their shot at the baddest dude on the field. Which has to get exhausting for Donald.

• I saw a “Denzel Mims Landing Spots” post on a national site this week and, well, I think that might be a sign that we’ve gotten a little too granular covering the NFL. Mims has 31 catches in three NFL seasons. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t think this is gonna quite be the Kevin Durant sweepstakes here.

• Happy to see Jay Gruden back in the league and with his old OC, Sean McVay, at the Rams as a consultant. Also think that this could be the next phase for the coaching tree out there, à la Nick Saban at Alabama, where you bring in experienced voices like Gruden’s to help backstop the operation (and, in turn, get those guys’ names back in the NFL mix).

• I think JC Tretter’s assertion that his position as NFLPA president might’ve cost him an extra year or two of playing isn’t that far-fetched. Go back and look at the NFLPA executive committee from the lockout, and see how many of those guys were done playing after the league and union landed a new CBA in July 2011. (I don’t really believe in coincidences when it comes to pro football.)

• Best to the Chiefs family, and Len Dawson’s family. It’s incredible to consider his impact on the game, when you think about how, for my dad’s generation, he was one of the faces of the AFL, a league that changed pro football business-wise and from a scheme standpoint, and gave the NFL the Bengals, Bills, Broncos, Chargers, Chiefs, Dolphins, Jets, Oilers (now Titans), Patriots and Raiders. For my generation, he was an old legend on TV (for NBC and HBO), and for the current generation, he somehow became a meme for pulling on a Lucky Strike at halftime of the Super Bowl. Just a legendary figure who will be missed.

SIX FROM THE SIDELINES

Just as a note … this section will revert to being Six from Saturday starting next week with the college football season underway. Can’t wait!

1. The end of the Durant saga (for now, at least) is fascinating to me. The NBA’s player-empowerment era has been ongoing for years, but you had to figure that, in time, there had to be a limit to how easy it became for a player to get out of a contractual commitment, sometimes seemingly on a whim. Was this situation where we found that limit, with Nets owner Joe Tsai the one willing to draw a real line in the sand? Only time will tell.

2. The more I’ve thought about the Manti Te’o documentary, the stronger I feel about a couple of new takes I have on it. One, I think it let Naya Tuiasosopo completely off the hook for wrecking someone’s life’s work—and potentially costing Te’o tens of millions of dollars. Two, it absolutely let Deadspin off the hook for reckless reporting that made the situation considerably worse. Good for Deadspin for getting the story in the first place. But in that story, it strongly insinuated that Te’o was behind the whole thing without real verification, which changed the complexion of the whole thing and the perception of Te’o for a decade. Only now is Te’o seen as a sympathetic figure, and Deadspin’s reporting was the reason for that.

3. The end of Northwestern-Nebraska was no good for Scott Frost. The onside kick. The eight-play, eight-run drive from the Wildcats that took four minutes off the clock and bled the Huskers of all their timeouts. The pick to seal it. It’s hard for a school like Nebraska to fire one of its icons, of course. But it feels like it’s almost that time.

4. While we’re there, great to see Northwestern QB Ryan Hilinski, brother of Tyler, starting and playing well. Have to be happy that his family gets to enjoy it.

5. Does this mean my mom keeping all my old baseball cards for me is finally going to pay off?

6. Had the pleasure of introducing my sons to Monopoly this weekend. And it was awesome … for a little bit. Then I remembered how long it takes to actually play, and how we rarely actually finished games when I was a kid and, yeah, we didn’t make it through all the way (Still fun, though!).

BEST OF THE NFL INTERNET

This reminded me of one of my frat brothers who said he was going to get an exotic animals permit, buy a cougar and name him Justice. And I told him that in one of our text groups. His response: “A fish tank you can swim in sounds real solid. That might be a goal of mine too!”

And don’t let the easy-going demeanor fool you—Ken actually is a lunatic competitor.

Bill’s actually in pretty good fighting shape for 70!

See? Wasn’t all bad.

I can appreciate a rivalry like this one.

Great tribute by Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs with the choir huddle (we actually did choir huddles in high school, where the line goes out first, before the skill guys; we just never called it that).

This isn’t an NFL post, and I don’t know why I think it’s so funny … But, whatever, it gets a spot in this week’s Best Of.

One of many well-deserved tributes to Jason Jenkins from the last. 36 hours on social-media, this one from prominent South Florida-based NFL agent David Canter.

The ’80s were the best.

He sure is.

So do NFL teams try to get Blooper to switch over to an NFL sideline?

Maybe Blooper is Next Man Up in Baltimore?

Really cool gesture from a town to one of its own.

Everyone’s parents are this way, right?

So it’s probably worth noting, in regards to my Fields note, that Myles Garrett and Jadeveon Clowney didn’t play on Saturday night.

Really cool initiative that Logan Ryan’s working on (he brought a rescue to the practice I was at on Tuesday).

As iconic an NFL photo as there is. RIP, Len.

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