Remains one week in the NFL off-season programs …
• This is something I have been planning to write for some time – a market correction can be and should come for NFL head coaches.
I will take the example of Sean Peyton to provide context here. IN Florida Sun Sentinel announced Monday that the former Saints coach has been offered a five-year deal worth $ 100 million to take over Miami earlier this year. I was told that the offer itself was actually over $ 100 million four years. And before that, in New Orleans, I think Peyton was on a five-year deal worth $ 80 million when it all came together.
So he moved away from $ 16 million and could get $ 25 million each. Sounds like a lot? But is that so? Take a look at the economy of the NFL and here you can go in another direction. The league is cutting approximately $ 18 billion a year. There are 15 (!) Quarterbacks who earn $ 25 million or more, and one makes twice as much. Aaron Donald, Tyrick Hill, Davante Adams, DeAndre Hopkins, Joey Boza, Cooper Coop, AJ Brown and Miles Garrett are also there. Roger Goodell makes $ 63.9 million a year.
Do you still think Peyton’s numbers aren’t right there?
After all, most NFL people would tell you that the quarterback is the most important person on the football side of the team, and the head coach is second. So I would argue that the idea that a really good or elite coach would cost closer to what a starting quarterback costs, with so many head coaches still under $ 10 million a year, is pretty reasonable, given how each team should cut their pie from the riches of professional football.
As I see it, the payoff is coming. Peyton has leverage because he already has money and there will be many suitors if and when he decides to return to the sidelines. Sean McVeigh has an influence with rams because if he leaves, a TV network will probably give him a raise for what he’s already doing. And if you want to get Ryan Day or Lincoln Riley out of college, you’re going to have to go beyond the eight-digit annual numbers these guys are throwing down (See what Carolina did to lure Baylor’s Matt Ruhl).
Now, what I’m less sure about is how fast the market correction is coming – in the past, owners were determined to keep the numbers manageable, and head coaches for the first time are rarely able to say no, even if the market is below market. . But what if a few big names make deals or even just shed some weight? It could happen soon.
• So, what is the biggest difference between Kyler Murray and Lamar Jackson (who chose not to miss the mini-champion with veterans) and DK Metcalfe and Terry McClorin (who decided to endure)? Except for Murray and Jackson, as former first-round players who made more money (which should give them more financial flexibility to make ends meet)? These two are quarterbacks, and the other two are not.
This means that the decision to resist Murray and Jackson affects everyone in attack – and would absolutely harm the quality of work that the team can do this week. This does not mean that Metcalfe and McClorin are not important for their teams. They are. But it’s much easier to make sure the receiver is there to install than to simulate your initial quarterback running the show.
So for now, I would not take action on these four this week, which means that each player is more serious about getting paid than the next.
• Speaking of Metcalfe, it is at least interesting that, per Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll, Genoe Smith seems ready to receive the first photo of the training camp. The fact is that the Seahawks and the league know who Smith is as a player. He is 31. This will be his ninth season and fourth in Seattle. If there was a revelation about Smith, it would have happened. And that’s remarkable is the fact that Drew Locke hasn’t missed it yet.
Now Seattle certainly saw Lock as a priority in the Russell Wilson trade – GM John Schneider loved Lock leaving Missouri in 2019, and Lock’s best tape came from the end of his new year when he ruled a violation very similar to what Shane Waldron does for Carol. However, the Seahawks have never been ashamed to let a young man who shines compete for playing time. In fact, all it took was a new mini-camp for the team to get Wilson starting in 2012.
So it will be interesting to see if things that go this way in the spring tempt Carol or Schneider to look at Baker Mayfield or Jimmy Garopolo again this summer.
• It will be harder to get such a reading Panthers have been leaving their mini-camp this week ever since, although Sam Darnold has been there for a year, he and Matt Coral are starting over with coordinator Ben Macadou. However, at least internally, Carolina will have a better idea of where they are after this week, with plans to meet afterwards to chart the quarterback’s course – whether the photo includes Mayfield or Garopolo or not.
Scroll to Continue
• One remnant of my conversation with Matt Ryan last week – I really asked what, during his extensive research on tape over the last three months, he had left for Colt as he watched and learned about his new team. He laughed because he thought his answer was obvious.
“The game of running,” he said. And he confirmed that he saw some familiar things in it, derived from the work of five coordinators and Dirk Koeter twice, over 14 years in Atlanta.
“The running game is a little different from some of what I did with Kyle Shanahan,” he said. “But there are times when we played the ball with Mike Mularky at the beginning of my career or for the first time at Dirk Kotter, where there were some similar schemes. These are all things I’ve done, just how they teach him and how they emphasize things that are a little different. “
With that established, one thing, Ryan right I know what a great running game can do after Michael Turner helped ease his transition to the league early in his career and played in the acclaimed Shanahan game to the 2016 Super Bowl.
“No doubt,” Ryan said. “I’m like, OK let’s go. Obviously, you still have to go out and do it, don’t just roll out of bed and drop the ball the way they did. You have to win it, you have to work on it. But the potential is there. And the video evidence is there. This is part of it, I know it’s a full football team. And the balance for me is being able to drop the ball when you want to drop the ball, and throwing the ball when you want to throw the ball without dealing with numbers and then playing good defense.
“And all these things excite me in this organization. I’m excited to be here. “
Karim Elgazar / USA Today Network
• Jeric McKinnon is a better story than he imagines. A converted college quarterback who became a master of all trades in Minnesota, he played well to earn a free agent salary in San Francisco, then ruined the ACL in successive years, missed every game in 2018 and ’19 and returned to find a place with the chiefs.
McKinnon is not a superstar and never was. But he had to find his way back to Kansas City last year on special teams, eventually touching on the attack and then becoming an important figure for the Chiefs in the playoffs. It’s still fun to watch and it will be interesting to see what Andy Reed does with it once he learns well how to deploy it in 2021.
However, no matter how it develops, it’s good to see McKinnon there.
• A native piece that I collected from the mini-camps last week – new vikings Coaches Kevin O’Connell and GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah were pleasantly surprised by the depth of the team in a number of positions. One is tailback, where the responsible boys believe they have some real talent beyond Dalwin Cook and Alexander Mathison. (I’ve heard that second-year speed racer Kenne Nwangwu and fifth-round pick Ty Chandler are two to watch).
This, of course, speaks well of the work that the old regime has done, built the list. And where we’ve written several times in the last few weeks that the new Raiders felt they had something to build on with what they inherited in Vegas, the same goes for O’Connell and Adofo-Mensa in the twin cities.
• So there is a dispute over money owned by Chargers? Very surprisingly, this will happen in the ranks of the NFL.
• It’s good to see that Trey Lance will get extra work – and the hope is that he can make the same leap between spring camps and training camp as he did last year when the team spent 40 days in Atlanta. North Dakota and Orange County to try to accelerate its development.
Work ethic, aspiration and character, of course, have never been a problem with Lance. We’ll see if Niners will look at a more natural pitcher in the summer than they saw last year.
• The answers to mine tweet about Derrick Mason Monday was interesting – some people could not believe that he would be considered a better successor than AJ Brown. And I guess I’d just get out of the argument by saying that while Brown has a lot of potential, he has ways to pursue a career like Mason’s.
Mason was absolutely as good, and this whole thing looks like people claiming that Randy Moss is better than Jerry Rice (he absolutely wasn’t) just because Rice wasn’t as physically imposing as Moss was. Which, of course, is to be an old man and tell you where to stick your measurable and accent rollers. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for a nap.
More NFL coverage:
• The NFL must take Deshon Watson
• The Aaron Donald Deal: How Aries Do It
• How the NFL should feel about selling the Broncos
• 100 bold forecasts for the 2022 season