Sean Payton steps down as head coach plus a preview of this weekend's conference championships
This week’s news that Sean Payton would be stepping down as coach of the Saints came with a fair amount of shockwaves. Conor (the man who predicted it) and Gary break down what it all means for the Saints, for Payton and for a handful of coaches who will likely enter 2022 on the hot seat (sorry Mike McCarthy, but we’re looking in your direction).
Then, a preview of conference championship Sunday. Can Ja’Marr Chase go off again—and do the Bengals need him to if they’re going to pull off the upset? Does it matter that the Bengals can’t protect Joe Burrow? And how many snaps will Blake Bell take?
On the NFC side, do the 49ers continue with their magical run? Does Kyle Shanahan continue to have Sean McVay’s number? And is the Rams’ offense ready to fire on all cylinders again?
Have a comment, critique or question for a future mailbag? Email themmqb@gmail.com or tweet at @GGramling_SI or @ConorOrr.
The following is an automatically generated transcript from The MMQB NFL podcast. Listen to the full episode on podcast players everywhere or on SI.com.
Gary Gramling: Hello and welcome to the MMQB NFL podcast I'm Gary Gramling.
Conor Orr: I'm Conor Orr
Gary Gramling: And Conor, your Oracle powers a few weeks ago, they were going off. A shining type of thing, is how I like to picture it. But you were getting some vibes from, however you do it, from the universe that maybe Sean Payton would not be long for that Saint's job and here we are, a couple of weeks later and Sean Payton has indeed stepped down.
Conor Orr: It's a pretty fun stuff. I don't know if you remember, I was talking to somebody about this show yesterday. Did you ever watch "Crossing Over" with John Edward?
Gary Gramling: Yeah, I believe I've accused you of being John Edwards.
Conor Orr: Oh, okay. Perfect. Yeah. So this was good. Cause I imagine that John Edward goes out some days and he's just like, 'I'm hearing from a Peter' and then nobody in the audience brings anything up. And then he's like, 'oh shit, I'm in a lot of trouble today.' That's most days in the prediction business I would say. But every now and then a blind squirrel finds a nut. And that was our Sean Payton column that we wrote a couple of weeks ago.
Gary Gramling: All right, so let's talk about the Saints first, and then we'll talk about the larger impact, because certainly we haven't seen the last of Sean Payton on an NFL sideline at this point. But the saints are in, boy, just a rough spot right now. Because if you go back to last season, I would argue they were probably – probably not definitely, but probably a Jared Cook fumble away from hanging on against the Bucks and going on to the NFC title game. And then let's see what happens out in Lambeau. But, that team was super bowl ready. Obviously they had Drew Brees under center. It was a very similar team except for the quarterback situation. And then you fast forward to this year and Jameis Winston was not really working, even before the torn ACL, and then after the torn ACL there's just nothing there. Whether it was Trevor Siemian, whether it was Ian Book or whether it was Taysom Hill. So I'm not really sure how much anyone wants to go to New Orleans, despite the fact that you have a veteran team that is kind of a win-now roster from two to 53, cap problems, it looks like a rebuild.
Conor Orr: Yeah, which is probably why he left, right? And again, I wrote this yesterday. I don't think he owes anybody anything. I mean, Sean Payton Won them a Super Bowl, he played competitive football there for 15 years or whatever. But it is amazing that nobody's pointing at it and kind of calling it what it is, which is; of course he thought it was a good time to go! This team's going to suck for like three years. And you don't feel like doing that, you'd rather do something else. And I don't blame him. It's the same thing as Tom Brady in Tampa bay, like you're retiring now because you're losing half the roster. *You might be retiring now.* I don't know. Cause you're losing half the roster.
Gary Gramling: The Oracle going off again.
Conor Orr: Because half the rosters gone and half the coaching staff is gone. And so whatever happens, happens there, but it is a little bit of an abandonment, right? And this is the trouble with teams that put everything into the idea that one guy's always going to be there. So the Saints mortgage their future, like over and over and over and over and over again. And their cap is just like the one guy at the national debt relief hotline now, that's just trying to figure everything out and piece it together. And you can do that when Sean Payton is calling plays. But when he's not all of a sudden, it's like, whoa, like we're going to need an exterminator to come in here and figure this out. And their cap is not as bad as everyone's making out to be. Yes, they are are $70 million over for next year. But of that is like extensions and restructures and stuff like that. And then I think there'll be fine. It's not like they're going to fail to produce a team or like only have eight guys to put on the field next year.
Gary Gramling: Show up with 21 guys, here we are!
Conor Orr: That happened to me on Madden by the way. I kept taking undrafted free agent quarterbacks, and then I would make them really famous and have them throw for like 9,000 yards in the season. And then I would franchise tag them and then trade them for the first pick in the draft. And I kept doing that over and over and over again. And then like season four came and I had like 24 players on the roster. And they were like you don't have any more money. You can't make this work. And I was like, then we're going to play with 24! But that's not what the saints are going to do. They're going to have enough, they're going to have all the players they're suppose to have.
Gary Gramling: All right, so the quarterback situation is up in the air in new Orleans, the head coach situation is up in the air. As we tape this on a beautiful Wednesday evening, it's kind of up in the air everywhere. We don't have any, hirings to this point. But, Sean Payton, so he says he's not going to coach in 2022. If we take him at his word for that, and there's no reason not to. He is going to be basically THE candidate in 2023. How does that sort of change things? Like if I'm Mark Davis right now, and I know he kind of has a thing for Jim Harbaugh, we'll see if that can work out, but does that tip you over into one more year with Rich Bisaccia and then backup a dump truck full of, JFK 50 cent pieces for Sean Payton should it come to that till next offseason?
Conor Orr: I keep a jFK 50 cent piece in my wallet. I don't know if you knew that. I wish I could find a way to use it. But I think you're right. I think if I'm the coach who is the most scared right now, it's obviously Mike McCarthy, right? Jerry Jones probably isn't gonna make any staff changes at this point, but boy, he's probably thinking of it , he's probably mad about it and isn't psyched about the way that the season ended. And he's long had an affinity for Sean Payton, that's home for him in Texas there. So I think that makes a great deal of sense if Sean Payton ends up working for like Sunday night football or Thursday night football or something, and they have like a game in Dallas, I would just not let him in the building if I were Mike McCarthy I'd be like no, you can't come in this week. But yeah, I think it definitely changes the equation for a couple of these teams. If you're Las Vegas, you're right, just stick with Bisaccia now, because if you're not going to bring in Harbaugh, this is a very underwhelming –relatively speaking, coaching class. Now a lot of times do those end up producing some of the best coaches? Yes, no doubt about that, but, I think if you're waiting for that star to ripein and season, ,just stick with Bisaccia for a year, or you get Sean Payton, but I can't remember, and maybe you would have a slightly broader scope of memory than I, but I can't remember a coach coming back on the market and being a bigger free agent than Sean Payton would be a year from now. Like I think that he would be the biggest free agent coach in history. And even though he's not a free agent, you have to trade for him still. But, I think that would be gigantic.
Gary Gramling: Bill Cowher... he's still coming back any day now, still waiting for that one.
Conor Orr: He did kind of get through his tributaries that he wanted that Jets job when it looked like Trevor Lawrence was going to be the quarterback. So you never know.
[00:06:53] Gary Gramling: Yeah, I guess you can't completely rule it out. But I mean the Cowher thing is just so funny looking back on it, because like every off-season it was like, ah, he's coming back, someone's got to get him back, and just, Nope, he's just fine at CBS and doing his thing. So good for him.
Conor Orr: You live in the greater New York city area too, so you have access to WFAN and it was like... I moved here in 2010 but started living in the greater New York city area in 2009. And so I've been listening to WFAN for that long. And every third call was about Bill Cowher from 2009 until 2018. I mean, it was nine straight years of what we should do to get rid of this Todd Bowles guy? Get a Bill Cowher! But yeah, outside of Bill Cowher, I don't remember... like when Joe Gibbs came back? I don't know. I mean he's the only person I can think of.
Gary Gramling: Yeah, Sean Payton, boy, what a feeling it's going to be for him when he starts shopping around for a job next year.
Conor Orr: It's going to be fun.
Gary Gramling: All right, we have actual football this weekend. Conference championship games. Let's go in regular chronological order because we usually go in reverse chronic logical order, and I feel like this is, I dunno, just respecting the way that time moves forward, when it's all said and done. So we're going to start with the AFC game, Bengals and Chiefs obviously, over in Arrowhead, a rematch of their matchup earlier this year. We'll start with the Bengals offense against the chiefs defense, because if you go back to the first matchup, obviously Joe Burrow sort of had his way with the chief secondary. We will see what Tyron Matthew's situation ends up being, because that was not a very good performance after he went down last week for the Chiefs. So, you have that going on, you also have a game last week where the Bengals offense did not function at the kind of level where you'd want it to function in a game like this. So I don't know if the Chiefs necessarily can find more answers. I didn't think they necessarily had an issue getting to Joe Burrow last I checked. Just, it's that thing where it's like, Joe Burrow knows his right side of the line can't block, and he's ready for it, and he ducks and he escapes and then they do it that way.
Conor Orr: Yeah, again, I just don't know how often you can continue to live that way. I mean, nine sacks after a season high, 59 sacks. And we seem to forget because he's a spectacular player that tore his ACL, PCL and MCL last year. And so again, I mean, yes, it's recovered, it's healed. Uh he's he's been traditionally a quick healer and a strong guy, but at some point this is gonna come back to bite you. And, I don't know what they're going to do because they stayed in 11 personnel against the Titans. They didn't bring a lot of guys in to help. I don't know if they have the guys to help and I don't know who on that interior is going to all of a sudden learn how to win match-ups cause that's the problem. It's like, defenses can kind of isolate one or two guys and can win with regularity. So what do you do in that situation? I don't know. Zac Taylor didn't really transition to the quick game against the Titans .Didn't need to because Joe Burrow's fantastic. But I don't know if you come in this week more hell bent on doing that?
Gary Gramling: Yeah, it just kinda ends up being like, well, we didn't protect them all year, so why is it going to be different now? And he'll figure it out when it's all said and done. So you have that. And if you go back to that first matchup, Ja'marr Chase was completely unguardable in that game. A lot of one-on-one match-ups a couple of busted coverages. But can you have that happen again, if you're the bangles? You don't necessarily count on a bunch of coverage busts. But if Tyron, Matthew was to be out, I feel like you can kind of be like, all right, well we can go out and throw it for 400 yards in this game.
Conor Orr: Yeah I mean, I think if there was ever a projected shootout in conference title game history. I mean, I think this is probably it. But here's what's interesting. I thought I was going to write something on Ja'Marr Chase in the divisional round game. And so I was tracking him through the first few quarters and he had that gigantic play on that quick out, that was like a 60 or 70 yard thing down field. But that was one of the four or five times that the Titans actually did blitz. So they didn't have anybody on the back end. It was a perfect combination of events. The guy missed the tackle, everything happens like that. But otherwise they had a beat on Ja'Marr Chase for a while. I mean at least like the first two quarters there, I think they were able to cover him pretty well. And it's not like they had overwhelming personnel, it's just that they kind of bracketed them in a way that, that made that effective and made Joe maybe a little bit uncomfortable throwing his direction. So it was a lot of Tee Higgins early on in that game, and a couple of things like that. So I don't know, like could you conjure up something similar to that, and at least force them to beat you with some of the other guys? And then know that Patrick Mahomes is going to throw for 800 yards and eight touchdowns.
Gary Gramling: Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong. I feel like the only catch Chase made downfield in that divisional round game in Tennessee was the last one to set up the field goal.
Conor Orr: I think so.
Gary Gramling: Everything else was a lot of quick stuff and that's it. I mean, he is incredible with the ball in his hands, like at a level where, I always thought he was good with the ball in his hands at LSU. I didn't think he was going to be able to do what he's doing. I mean, there was one throw to the flat where it's like two guys were pursuing him, and it's like, all right, this is gonna be like a four yard gain. And all of a sudden, he just hits another level here and turns the corner and doesn't lose any speed when he's turning the corner, and then he's 25 yards down field. So he created a bunch of stuff out of kind of nothing in that game. And then they had the one big throw to him and that was kind of it. But I would expect, especially after last time, I mean they have to bracket him at all times. There's no more options for the chiefs. There's no more single coverage on a Ja'Marr Chase in any scenario.
Conor Orr: Yeah. I went back and I was looking at their first matchup and this is interesting. What the Titans did to Joe Burrow, I thought was worth noting because they traditionally are one of the least blitz happy teams in the NFL. And what they did early was they kind of emptied ammo on their blitz stuff. Which was only like four or five times that they blitz. And they also emptied their ammo on all the stunt stuff where they were kind of switching stuff for the defensive line and have one guy crash, one guy loop, all that kind of stuff. But then for the rest of the game, once the bangles were tired, it was. Four on five and it was just like an ass kicking. And Jeffrey Simmons was just dominating. And the chiefs didn't even need to do that in their first matchup. Like if you look at that opening drive, and I don't know how many times this has happened to the Bengals this year. They basically had three guys trying to block Chris Jones, and then you somehow get Frank Clark like isolated on the tight end. And this happened time and time and time again for them. And of course, Joe burrow just gets crushed on that. And you don't need Jeffrey Simmons to be able to create that kind of pressure. And if you have Chris Jones, plus Frank Clark, like you're going to be able to really kind of screw his day up.
Gary Gramling: So other side of the ball here, last time they met it was a bit of a dink and dunk game for Mahomes and this chiefs offense here, and they were out to a lead. They, maybe ran a little bit more than you'd get in a normal game script. And then the Bengals came back and retook the lead. But when they played last time Tyreek Hill did not seem to be in it. , it looked like he was playing about 75%. He was not his usual self. Whereas, as we saw last week, he was his usual self. But when they met the first time he had 40 yards on six catches and 10 targets. So four yards per target is not a formula that the Chiefs want for Tyreek Hill.
Conor Orr: Yeah, and I mean, having him at full speed makes all the difference. That's not a hot take there, but I think what will be interesting and what I want the Chiefs to do, because I think that was the game that they unveiled that really cool... so it was like my home's in the shotgun and then Bell taking the snap and plowing ahead. Do what I'm talking about?
Gary Gramling: Oh yeah.
Conor Orr: Yeah, that's what I would do. It's like that scene in the water boy where he neil's down instead of playing offense so that the Mud Dogs can't score. That's what I would do. I would just be like, okay, I'm gonna ride the 'Belldozer' to the Super Bowl this year. You can stop Mahomes, you can stop Tyreek Hill, but can you stop the Belldozer?
Gary Gramling: With a nickname like that, probably not. Definitely not.
I guess we'll move on to prediction time. To me, if you play 10 times, the Chiefs win nine of them type a scenario to me unless Matthew is out. And in that case, Burrow can probably go shot for shot with the chiefs. But, if Matthew's in the lineup, I just, I don't see a scenario where the Bengals come within a touchdown of the Chiefs.
Conor Orr: Oh, I don't know, it's interesting. Like when I watched that game again, there was the Bengals first touchdown to Chase, back to your point about him being just other worldly with movement skills after the catch, I would say outside of like rookie year, Odell, Beckham, I don't remember seeing a player that adept at finding little niches in the defense and just completely exploiting them. And he caught that touchdown pass, like, and there was like 11 players in front of him, but there was just one little lane, obviously 11 players. But, there was just one little lane and he cut and took that and like almost like surfed it all the way to the end zone. It was incredible. You had one of those last week against the Titans, but the Titans did a nice job of shutting him down. Bengals score less than 20 points. What if you don't get one of those this week? That's like my big thing and it's not, I don't think Joe Burrow is going to play bad. I think he's going to be pressured. But if you don't get Ja'Marr Chase going, and the chiefs figure out a way to slow him down, what do you have left? Especially if Chris Jones is going to dominate in the interior. I don't know if it's like seven out of 10 or six out of 10 I would say the Chiefs win.
Gary Gramling: The Bengals need to be like, plus two in those big plays, those, , 50 plus yard plays. And I'm not, I mean, like no one should get more of those in the chiefs in any given match up. So, it's tough. I mean, that's the formula. It's just not a likely path to victory.
Conor Orr: But, If you're the Bangles, like... this is going to get clipped now and put on like Cincinnati area radio when they make the Superbowl. so to go back, I pick every single game of the year, back in July. And then that week you predict every team's record cause you pick every game and that week is always flooded with, calls from every radio station wanting you to come on and defend your pics. I think Ray Ratto from San Francisco, the legendary Ray Ratto, said it best when he's like, who are you and why you doing this? Doesn't make any sense. But in Cincinnati, like it was at the end of the week and I was like frustrated and I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. And then the Bengals like whoever was doing like local radio in Cincinnati called they're like three games are you kidding? And then I lost it. And I was like, this team is bad! They suck. Like they're not going to win a lot of games. So like stop calling me. And then of course they're in the Super Bowl, I already look like a jerk there, but, , it's funny, it's like, you've had so much progress with Joe Burrow and everything looks so awesome. It's like, you should just like, make some deal with the devil, with the Chiefs and just be like, , just get us out of this healthy, , like if you don't, if you don't sack him, And we can play with a fully healthy Joe burrow next year. Like we'll just run like the wing T and then blame it on Zac Taylor or something like that.
Gary Gramling: All right., Let's let's go on to the NFC game. Round three here with the Rams and the 49ers. I still say there's just not a whole lot I draw from that second matchup in LA, but I'm certainly thinking you go back to earlier in the season, the Monday up, now while I would argue that the Rams offense was, , kind of a mess at that point, they had just lost Robert Woods. They had a really weird pick six at the beginning of that game that just threw everything off schedule there for them. The story, that game was just the overwhelming, performance by the 49ers run game. And that was one of the games where it started with like one of their 11 minute drives or whatever it was, where the Rams just couldn't get off the field. They just couldn't. Like Eli Mitchell and Deebo Samuel on the ground. And that, that seems like it would be the, the most likely formula in a 49ers win.
Conor Orr: There's a lot of weird stuff, right? I mean, there was the pick-six in that game. Am I mistaken? Was that Odell Beckham's first or second game with the Rams? Yeah, I think it was his first game. And then it was that weird moment where they were kind of trying to dial him in and things just weren't working necessarily. They had that one cool thing that Matt Stafford did where I think he looked at him in the backfield and then that created a little soft spot for Cooper Kupp and that was like a 30 yard gain in that game. That was neat. Odell is a different player now. I mean, he is a major factor in this offense. And so I think you have to take that into account. But you're right. I mean, both situations were kind of fluky. You wonder if they can do that again and, , Does Jimmy Garappolo, does he have another one of those in him where he can really come back and rescue you like that?
Gary Gramling: Boy I don't know. On one hand, Jimmy Garappolo, like, boy, you're your horrific second reaction interceptions. You kind of got them all out of your system early in the post-season here. You have one of each in the first two games, surely there is not another one coming. But it's dicey when he drops back there. And obviously they're going to pressure him, although the 49ers have had a pretty good track record against Aaron Donald, even though they don't have... I don't think those guys are overwhelming talents they have on the interior there. But, yeah, I don't know if you factor in a lack of a sort of Jimmy Garappolo disastrous mistake. It really, for me, it just comes down to the Rams. This is the vaguest worst analysis you could possibly give, but like, you just have to, you have to tackle Eli Mitchell. Like you have to put Jimmy Garappolo in a series of third and six plus type of situations. And if you make him convert three of those on every drive it's not going to work.
Conor Orr: Yeah, what's interesting about Aaron Donald against that offense. I was doing a story on 49ers offense and how it works and, a good friend, Jeff Schwartz, long time, NFL offensive lineman said, watch what they do, and here's the best part about playing offensive line in San Francisco when they're running game is working, they have it designed so that every block is a down block, right? And that's the most comfortable block you can make as an offensive lineman because you're going back against somebody's leverage. So Aaron, Donald is coming up and you're down blocking, you're pushing him back down. And so you have all the momentum and you have the high leverage. And that's why Kyle Juszczyk and George Kittle are so important because you can then create the front that you want to then create the down blocks. And so that's why someone like Aaron Donald is awesome and theoretically really good against outside zone because he can penetrate so well. But in Kyle's version of it, like he's able to kind of not neutralize because you're never going to neutralize a player like that, but you're going to put your offensive linemen in more advantageous positions more often than not. And then you're taking him out of the fold, and then what do you have left in terms of run defenders on that defense? It gets a little sparse after that.
Gary Gramling: The other matchup to kind of watch in this one, obviously this 49er front four has been dominant through two playoff games at this point. Joseph Noteboom got hurt last week in Tampa. So Andrew Whitworth, it looks like it's going to make it back for this game. If Whitworth is not 100%, I mean, that sort changed the equation a little bit here for the Rams, but they also, they're just kind of in a spot where they're all comfortable with what they do offensively, , OBJ is up to speed with this, they, know what they want to do and it's just a matter of, , coming up with the answers. And it seems like more often than not Sean McVay over the years has come up with the answer.
Conor Orr: Another matchup you're going to have to watch out for is Deebo Samuel at quarterback because he threw a beautiful touchdown, I believe in that week 18 game. And probably not going to do that again, right? So do you have another, Jimmy Garappolo come back left in you? Do you have some trick still locked down? Do you have the sort of sustained physical drives that helped you in that first game? I just think a lot of things have to go really right... more things have to go right for the 49ers than they do for the Rams. That's like my overall takeaway here.
Gary Gramling: All right, predictions?
Conor Orr: That said, do you have a weird feeling about this or do you think it's pretty straightforward? You seem to think it's pretty straightforward.
Gary Gramling: Logically I think the Rams should win. But Kyle Shanahan has sort of had the number of all these coaching tree type of guys.
Conor Orr: Like I said, more things have to go right for the Rams than the 49ers, but I have a weird feeling about this one. They're just on this like weird run of like fortunate circumstances, strange things are happening. And you could argue that that's going to run out and then they're just going to get throttled by good team who beat the Bucks fairly soundly before that Brady come back. Or weird things keep happening. So I don't know, I kind of have like a 49ers. 21 Rams, 20 vibe almost. , like just a really weird like a blocked extra point, or something's going to like screw this game up early and then all of a sudden we're all like what happened?
Gary Gramling: Yeah, if you're the Rams, you got to take the ball if you win the toss. I'm gonna go 28, 20, Rams. I am a man of science and objectivity, and so I don't believe the 49ers can continue to get, blocked punts and things like that going in their direction.
Conor Orr: That's fair you know what's gonna suck about that? Cause you're right. I think you're right. And it's going to be a Rams, Chiefs Superbowl, which if I'm not mistaken, was that our mag prediction?
Gary Gramling: It was
Conor Orr: and I just railed against that, on this podcast a ton of times, first of all, because the Browns weren't in it. And second of all, because the Packers weren't in it. And like, I just remember being like, this is so dumb and unoriginal, like who picks the chiefs and the Rams, because it's just like the two best teams and like, whatever, and this is dumb. And this is what it's going to be,
Gary Gramling: I've been tasked with picking the Sports Illustrated Super Bowl, the last like three years or whatever it is. And I usually just say, I go to photo and I say, who do we have? Like a great photo of like, what matchup do we just have an amazing photo of? And as long as it's not like Jaguars, Panthers, like we'll go with that. If it's two really good teams, whatever give me the, Bills and the 49ers or whatever. This was the first year I was like, let's just do Chiefs, Rams. Cause that's what it's going to be.
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