Mark Your Calendars, Commanders Fans, It’s Time to Celebrate

Filing from vacation, and I’ll see you guys in three weeks …

Commanders fans can take the champagne off ice. NFL owners have been told to set aside July 20 as the date to fly to Minneapolis and vote Josh Harris through as Washington’s new principal owner. The expectation is the sale will close by mid-July, setting up the vote, which would allow the new owners to be introduced (locally and to the media) just before training camp opens July 26 in Virginia.

Because it’s been covered like the moon landing, it may seem like there have been a lot of fits and starts, but compared to other sales, this one’s actually been pretty fast and fluid.

And honestly, I can’t imagine how exciting it must be for the team’s passionate, knocked-down fan base. To bring real perspective to this, just consider that in the 20 years prior to Snyder’s arrival, Washington was .500 or better 14 times, went to the playoffs eight times, won the NFC East five times and won Super Bowl titles with three different quarterbacks. In the 24 seasons since …

• Washington has been .500 or worse 18 times.

• The Commanders have made the playoffs six times, with just two playoff wins.

• Washington has won the NFC East four times (that one is actually comparable).

• The franchise has employed eight full-time head coaches.

Even better, at least on paper, Harris shouldn’t have the learning curve most NFL owners do, because he had to learn the ropes, and stub his toe a bunch, in his stewardship of the NBA’s Sixers and NHL’s Devils. He’s also got an intimate understanding of the psyche of the fan base since he was a part of it growing up in the D.C. suburbs.

So if you’re from there, too, and want to celebrate early, I’d say go ahead.

The Jets’ loss of Chuck Clark underscores how much the team is in for 2023. That’s not to say that New York won’t have young pieces to build around post–Aaron Rodgers: Quinnen Williams, Garrett Wilson, Sauce Gardner, Alijah Vera-Tucker and Breece Hall are all young and good enough to be cornerstones for years to come, with a handful of others (Jermaine Johnson, Will McDonald IV, etc.) having the potential to get there, too.

It’s just that when you acquire a quarterback of Rodgers’s ilk, and bring in vets such as Clark, who is coming to chase a ring, the current year becomes paramount in a different way.

It’s where the Buccaneers were the past three years after signing Tom Brady in 2020. They mortgaged contracts, built aggressively and wound up with plenty to show for it, of course. They also provided the perfect example of how fickle the NFL can be, with injuries such a huge factor for everyone, and especially a team going all-in. Check this out …

• In 2020, the Buccaneers were remarkably healthy—ranking as the league’s healthiest team in Football Outsiders’s Adjusted Games Lost statistics. (They were also first in a similar stat that FO put together to account for COVID-19 absences.) That was Brady’s first year in Tampa, and the Bucs won the Super Bowl.

• In 2021, the Buccaneers sunk to 16th in AGL. Tampa Bay still won the NFC South, and advanced a round in the playoffs. But in the end, a cluster of injuries to the Bucs’ offensive line group really cost the team, showing up in both its playoff games.

• In 2022, the Bucs were 28th in AGL. They still won the division, but they did it with an 8–9 record and lost in the first round of the playoffs. It was Brady’s first losing season since his rookie year (when he was the Patriots’ fourth-string quarterback and barely played).

So, yes, the Jets have potential, and, yes, building as they have raises the stakes on keeping the team healthy. Robert Saleh knows it or, at least, it seemed that way when he explained his logic to me earlier in the month in canceling the team’s mandatory minicamp.

“The season is grueling,” Saleh told me. “That window, there’s a science behind the whole thing where you give guys a week off. So they’re gonna take this week off, where if you work another week and then take a week off, that’s not enough time to get back in shape for training camp. So if you do it properly and give them the week off, there’s actually science behind the whole thing. It’s not just, hey, let them go have this week off. It’s so they can pick back up and use these next 40 days to get in shape, so we can have a healthy training camp.

“So there’s a theory behind it, and right now, for us, what was more important, the extra reps or the health in training camp—we chose health in training camp.”

And for good reason.

There comes a point when NFL players have to be responsible for themselves. I think this goes for both the gun issue, and the gambling issue, that the league has with players.

First off, I want to say that if the gambling rules on non-NFL sports betting weren’t clearly communicated to the players, then I get there being a very real beef there, with suspensions such as Jameson Williams’s and others that are coming down the pike. The league’s aggressive work (which we mentioned in last week’s column) in detailing its gambling rules last week was taken, by many across the league, as a reaction to that complaint.

It means the league is listening, and trying to make sure everyone hears the message it wants to get across, to eliminate as much gray area as possible with the rules.

But part of this stuff does fall on the players, whether it’s a case such as Williams’s or one like Jack Jones’s. (Jones is the Patriots second-year corner who was arrested Friday at Boston’s Logan Airport on two sets of four gun charges.) And I think in this area, it’s good to see what teams are doing to make sure players don’t mess up like this—even if some of it, like not bringing loaded weapons to the airport, should be common sense.

To try to illustrate those efforts, I got ahold of one team’s cheat sheet for players, which is a single page that outlines the yellow lines players have to stay between on cannabis, firearms, social media-online identity and gambling-sports betting.

This team’s sheet informs players that gambling is permissible on “personal time,” not in work settings, and in these specific areas: non-NFL sports wagering through licensed sports books only, gambling at legal casinos or horse-dog tracks, and season-long fantasy football so long as the prize money offered is less than $250. It also explains that players are only allowed to accept comps up to $250 at a casino and can’t play daily fantasy football if prizes of any value are offered.

There’s also this note: Simply logging on to a sports or gambling app/web site will flag you … DO NOT long in anytime you are with the team.

As for the rules on firearms, there are explicit reminders on the fact that out-of-state gun permits/licenses won’t suffice, and that open-carry is illegal (in this team’s state), with instructions to check rules on high-capacity magazines and semi-automatic weapons, and to secure firearms at home to keep them from children.

So the league is trying, and teams have been trying. And as the rules become clearer, and the lines drawn become brighter, gone are the excuses players have for tripping up in these areas.

The league knows the gambling discussion is going nowhere. That’s why you saw the continued aggression in the NFL getting the word out there this week on its policies, with a significant number of players being reviewed for violations.

As we mentioned last week, part of this has got to be a reaction to player and agent complaints that the rules weren’t made clear last year, and the assertion that a lack of education on the rules is what led to the NFL finding a rash of violations across player ranks. We’ll see where the ongoing investigations go, and if where they land has any effect on the players who have already been sanctioned.

What we know is the NFL is doing plenty to remove the I didn’t know defense going forward.

Maxx Crosby’s quote about Tom Brady coming back was fun and all, but I’m not seeing it at this point. If you missed it, the Raiders star pass rusher, appearing on Von Miller’s podcast, was asked about the team’s prospective minority owner coming down from the C-suite to play a few snaps in the fall.

“Obviously we got Jimmy G,” Crosby told Miller. “[Garoppolo] is coming back. He’s going to be healthy. But you never know what’s going to happen. Tom Brady’s a competitor, the greatest of all-time. At the absolute worst, if everything doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to and we need him, I would not be surprised if Tom Brady shows up in a Raiders jersey.”

So why am I skeptical? Because logistically, with all his family commitments (and to follow the terms of his divorce), my sense is it’d be hard for Brady to play for a team located anywhere but in Florida. And I do think Brady’s being genuine when he says he’s done.

Where I’ll leave the margin for error here is in that I don’t know—and I’m not even sure he does, either—how Brady will feel on the first day of training camp, or when Week 1 rolls around. Could that urge to play and compete be so insatiable that he works something out where he can make, say, a three- or four-month commitment (different than the 10-month commitment he would have had to make in March)? And if Garoppolo got hurt, wouldn’t Brady make sense for a team whose head coach (Josh McDaniels) worked with him for runs of nine (2000–08) and 10 (2012–21) seasons?

I don’t know. I don’t think it happens. But Brady being who he is, it’s just hard to completely shut the door. Which is probably why we still all pay attention to things like this.

T.J. Watt’s honesty on his pec injury this week was another sign that pro football players aren’t like, really, anyone else. Here’s how the 2021 Defensive Player of the Year detailed what he was going through after tearing the pec in Week 1, and somehow coming back to play the last nine games of the season with it.

“Obviously, the pec this past year was tough,” Watt told Ben Roethlisberger on the quarterback’s podcast. (Lots of new player pods out there!) “Just having a great offseason, feeling really good going into the season. I felt like I was playing really well in Cincinnati [in Week 1]. But that’s just like one of those things. Even on the play I got hurt, the clock was running, they were out of timeouts. Fourth quarter. It was like 20 seconds left. I got a hand in the face penalty.

“But I had Joe Burrow locked up, and like my arm got stuck behind me. And that’s how I tore my pec. The amount of times I’ve replayed that play in my mind—like if I just kept my hands low, there’s no hands to the face, (a). Then, (b), if I just stay on my feet and wrap him up and take him down, like, game’s over, pec is fine. The amount of times that I’ve drove myself nuts thinking like that.”

So Watt wasn’t himself over the season’s last nine weeks. But still, somehow, he had at least a share of a sack in five of those nine games. Pretty nuts.

One name to watch headed into training camp: new Browns slot WR Elijah Moore. By all accounts, he had a really strong spring, and he contributed to the comfort level that Cleveland had with its receiver room, which is a reason why the team hasn’t dipped its toe into the DeAndre Hopkins sweepstakes quite yet (and probably won’t, barring some sort of material change).

Moore’s case is interesting because of the juxtaposition between how he was viewed before the 2021 draft and how the Jets saw him last year. Three springs ago, prior to Moore being taken in the second round by New York, the receiver (infamous for the dog-peeing celebration at Ole Miss) was seen as squeaky clean from a character standpoint, and the kind of player that could grow to be a pillar of your locker room. And, yet, there the Jets were a year and a half later with a player who’d left the team, unhappy with his usage and deployment in the offense.

That’s how a guy who was drafted high, and flashed potential—he’d been compared to Santana Moss as a prospect—wound up on the block, and how the Browns got him just by moving a Day-2 pick down 32 spots.

Anyway, he built some good momentum in the spring, Anthony Schwartz did, too, and Cleveland’s pretty excited to see where its passing game will be once camp gets rolling.

I’m encouraged about the joint effort from the NFL and NFLPA in following through on promises to fund research into alternative pain management methods. On Thursday, the league and union announced two grants, totaling over a half-million dollars, for the American Society of Pain and Neuroscience and Emory University to investigate different ways players can manage the damage the game puts on their bodies.

A big part of this, of course, is trying to steer the game away from the more-dangerous painkillers that are commonplace in pro football, and have been for a long time.

The APSN is researching methods for treating post-traumatic headaches (PTH), which have been both “poorly treated” and “highly debilitating,” according to the organization’s statement in the league’s press release. Cannabinoids are among the alternative treatments they’re looking at. Meanwhile, Emory is looking at the difference training and using pain coaches could make as athletes go through orthopedic surgeries.

Both seem like worthwhile studies to undertake. Good on the NFL and NFLPA for backing them.

Josh Allen is planning to have his receivers come out to California for a pre-training-camp passing camp, and count me as one who thinks that time could be important. There’s plenty of pressure on the Bills to deliver in 2023, and the drama surrounding Stefon Diggs a couple weeks ago will only amp that up.

So any time that the players have together, and Diggs has with his teammates (presuming he makes the trip), will be important in building toward camp and the season—as it was last year with the mountain of adversity that hit the Bills franchise.

Remember, Allen cited communication as an issue. In that area, he and his teammates don’t have to wait for camp to get started on improving.

Despite all the noise, the Bills’ decisions to extend Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane through 2027 was a smart one. Yeah, the pressure’s on everyone in Buffalo this year coming off a tumultuous ’22 and with a core of players now squarely in their respective primes. And, no, the drama at minicamp wasn’t ideal.

But if we’re taking the 30,000-foot view here, remembering what the Bills were before those two got there—and looking across the street from their stadium, where the new venue some thought would never come is under construction—this one seems a lot simpler.

There really wasn’t much reason for the Pegula family not to extend the stability they’ve created for a few more years, given the opportunity. McDermott is ranked 21st all-time among qualifying coaches (four or more seasons) in win percentage, and behind only Matt LaFleur, Bill Belichick, and Andy Reid among active coaches in that same category. Beane has built a front office so envied across the NFL that, in six short years, it has spawned Beane’s own GM tree. And the roster they’ve built is strong and sustainable.

Now, I wouldn’t blame any Buffalo fan for being a little antsy about the window the current crew of players is in, worried that these guys could end up like the 1990s teams that got so close without ever capturing a Lombardi Trophy. But that understandable unease should be balanced off by the remarkable work that’s been done over the past six years.

And the pretty feasible idea that the best could be yet to come.

Source link