Less than a week after interviewing Urban Meyer on his yacht, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan landed the big fish.
Meyer will soon agree to an agreement with the Jacksonville Jaguars to bring them back to relevance with the future quarterback of the Trevor Lawrence franchise. He has arguably become the college coach for the highest profile professionals in NFL history since Barry Switzer, bringing with him three national championships and a reputation for being able to build powerful programs.
Meyer’s imminent hiring gives immediate legitimacy and relevance to a dying Jags franchise that not even the appearance of the 2017 AFC title game could deserve. Undoubtedly, Meyer will earn a salary among the top five coaches in the NFL, but billionaire Khan said that as an investment, he would immediately get a return on ticket sales.
Make no mistake: Meyer will have full control of the operation. He has been assembling his technical team in recent weeks, as reported by Jason La Canfora. And it is believed that he will not change the bowels of the team much from the start.
Meyer will not try to bite off more than he can chew in Year 1, and that includes picking a GM by hand. As of now, the expectation is that Trent Baalke, who has been the interim GM since Dave Caldwell’s resignation and has been working every day since Doug Marrone’s resignation, remains as GM. Baalke has more than 20 years of experience in the NFL as a scout and chief of staff. He ran the 2011-2016 49ers, where he and Jim Harbaugh took San Francisco for three consecutive NFC title games and a Super Bowl appearance.
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In addition to interviewing Baalke, the Jags also interviewed Jerry Reese, Louis Riddick, Rick Smith, Ray Farmer and Terry Fontenot.
If the first year is not as successful as those in Jacksonville wish, Meyer can shut down Baalke. So, with a year of experience in the NFL, he can go after the GM of his choice.
But one thing Meyer must demand – or, rather, what the severity of Meyer’s hiring must demand – is more resources invested in football operations. Sources around the league told me in December that the Jags are cheap when it comes to wages and benefits for members of the football operations team. Jags’ longtime striker Arby Jones filed a petition on Thursday to improve the facilities for the entire operation.
Again, the money being spent on Meyer and football updates pales in comparison to the money Khan can earn from Meyer simply by being there, let alone becoming a consistent playoff candidate at AFC South.
For years, Khan has been working with the Jacksonville local government to obtain taxpayer funds for ventures across the city. Just this week, the city council rejected a proposal for an entertainment district that Khan is trying to build on Lot J outside TIAA Bank Field. The deal would have made the city give private developers $ 208 million in cash, and city council auditors believed that the return on investment would not come close to a dollar-for-dollar deal.
No matter what you think about public-private partnerships when it comes to local governments and sports franchises, there are few arguments that it is easier for a winning franchise to get tax money than one that is about to enter the top 10. of the NFL draft for the 13th time in 14 years.
Haskins’ next stop
When the Washington football team launched Dwayne Haskins less than three weeks ago, I prepared for a cascade of anonymous stories destroying the 23-year-old defender. But they never came.
As I was told, Haskins is not a bad person. He is simply immature and does not take his job duties as seriously as he should. Staying close to home probably didn’t help, and his father, Dwayne Haskins Sr., was a thorn in Washington from the start. I also think it speaks well to the new culture at the Washington facility under Ron Rivera. The team, with its previous name and previous regimes, would have been quick to bury someone like Haskins.
So I was not shocked when the Panthers kicked Haskins’ tires earlier this week, especially as that team is expected to evaluate all options as a defender in the next four months. If he fits into Matt Rhule’s “culture”, it’s something Rhule needs to find out.
A league source said he would not be surprised if Haskins ended the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2021. Along with Pittsburgh’s obvious need to reinforce his QB room, Haskins feels an affinity with coach Mike Tomlin and hired Tomlin’s agent after separate with his own agent after his release in Washington.
Someone will catch Haskins before the start of the 2021 season, and his future will depend entirely on his preparation to be an NFL defender and everything that comes with it.
The numbers are in … sort of
From the start of week 1 of the 2020 NFL regular season to the day of the final game, the NFL saw 240 players test positive for COVID-19 and another 408 staff members tested positive.
These figures come from joint statements released by the league and the NFLPA weekly, starting on September 6 and ending on January 2. But contextualizing this completely can get complicated.
The league started its testing program on August 1 during the training camp, and since then, they have administered more than 900,000 tests. If you include the camp’s positive cases and the total 25 positives from the players and staff during the wild card weekend, you will get a positivity rate of 0.075% when looking at the total positives against the tests.
If you want to simply see how many players and staff have tested positive for COVID-19 compared to how many are in the league, that percentage comes close to double digits.
Each week, about 2,400 players and 4,600 employees were tested daily. The staff group would have remained largely unchanged, except for a few changes of coach throughout the season and random layoffs and hiring of lower-level positions. The group of 2,400 players has changed a lot, however. The teams that select the end of their list and the practice squads make it very difficult to find out exactly who was tested every day of the week. Ultimately, 3,000 people were tested in the player pool, with a few hundred coming and going from team to team or being eliminated? More? Any less?
In addition, we do not know how many players and officials contracted the virus from March until the camp began. We are not sure how long the antibodies last, so we cannot safely assume that someone catching the virus in June could not catch it at the end of the year.
But just considering the round (and probably low) number of 7,000 players and staff tested daily from the beginning of week 1 to the end of the season, the 648 positives represent 9.2% of the league catching the virus. The 240 positive players of 2,400 players would be 10% and the 408 employees of 4,600 employees would be 8.9%. But again, these percentages are likely to be slightly lower.
Offal
- Did you also have to stifle laughter when Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie spoke on Monday about his recent involvement in football decisions? “I would say that my involvement has been the same for about 25 years. I think what I usually do is ask a lot of questions and understand where we are coming from strategically and in terms of performance.” Ask former offensive coordinator Mike Groh and former wide receiver coach Carson Walch, both fired last season after Doug Pederson met Lurie at the end of the season, if Lurie just asks too many questions.
- The Washington Football Team made requests to interview 49ers, VP of players, Martin Mayhew, and Titans, VP of players, Ryan Cowden. Along with internal candidates Eric Stokes and Kyle Smith, the WFT will likely also interview former Texas GM, Rick Smith, if he is still available. Former GM Panthers Marty Hurney would be the leader for the job today.
- In normal years, the NFLPA releases the projected salary cap numbers for the upcoming Super Bowl season. This will likely take a few weeks, as both sides are trying to discover the financial consequences of the pandemic. We know that the minimum cap is $ 175 million, and the union will soon release the rollover numbers for the cap. For planning purposes, a prudent team should expect nothing more than $ 175 million, plus shipping to 2021.
Choice of division round
Rams at Packers
4:35 pm ET, Saturday, FOX
I am salivating in this confrontation between the Packers attack and the defense of Rams. The QBs have a pass rating of 61.9 when launching at Jalen Ramsey this season, so Aaron Rodgers beware. But the Pack was playing incredible football in December, had a week off and managed to play at home against a team with an injured quarterback and an injured defensive tackle.
The choice: Packers
Ravens at Bills
8:15 pm Saturday NBC
I want to choose the accounts so badly. In fact, I think they are the best team, and if they win, I’ll hardly be surprised, especially if they manage to play in a wintry climate. Josh Allen is a much more accurate defender than he was in 2019, when he completed just 43.6% of his passes against a suffocating Ravens defense, and he has Stefon Diggs now to help make the Baltimore D play more zone. But I was disappointed by Buffalo’s quick defense in the fourth quarter against the Colts, where they dropped out of three races of 20 or more yards. This will not work against the best quick attack in the league.
The choice: Ravens
Browns at Chiefs
3:05 pm, Sunday, CBS
Spoiler alert: I will not choose against Patrick Mahomes in this postseason. What the Browns did last week was surprising, but Pittsburgh was waiting to be eliminated from the playoffs. The Chiefs are built for January and, as long as they take care of football (which they did not do so well in the last weeks of the season), they will win it by 11 more points.
The choice: Bosses
Buccaneers at Saints
6:40 PM, Sunday, FOX
This is the 33rd time that a team of 2-0 faces the loser for the third time in the playoffs, and the winner has been 20 to 12 in previous matches. That would bode well for the Saints if they were the same Bucs team from weeks 1 and 9. But Tom Brady has the ball in the back now. Tampa has to be better on second runs to avoid impossible third and long situations against the Saints defense, but I think they can turn the Superdome around.
The choice: Privateers