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Back home in Georgia, he has a 4-year-old daughter who loves playing soccer, doing little flips and pretending to be a ballerina. Glover predicts that she’ll be very tall. He apologizes in advance.

Here in Green Bay, he has virtually gone through all necessary paperwork to adopt another child at his day job. Country to the bone with a bushy beard, warm eyes and mellow accent that hints at a tender heart, Glover views his profession as another form of fatherhood. When Love relays a play inside the huddle, linemen smack their hands together, trot up to the line of scrimmage and — at this precise moment? — the same paternal instincts kick in.

Glover imagines No. 10 in green is kin.

“I’ve got to protect J-Love,” Glover says. “It’s all in my head: Do my job, reset, refocus each play. Protect the quarterback. Don’t take no BS from nobody.
“Don’t be touching him. Why are y’all getting close? Get away from him!”

Refreshing rhetoric. This team’s soul needed a thorough cleansing after last season.

For too long, players stood idly by when their QB took a cheap shot. No more.

“It’s time to be who we are. We ain’t taking it from nobody. Stay away from J-Love.”

He shakes his head. He’s growing quite fed up with defenders who think they can sneak in extra shoves after the whistle.

“Stay away.”

Go Long

This same mastodon of a man offering a stern warning to the entire NFL should’ve disappeared from the sport. Twice. Glover, a 202^nd overall pick, entered this league as the most disposable of employees and then endured two breaking points that expel players of his rank to 9-to-5 jobs all the time. It’s hard to imagine a worse start to an offensive lineman’s pro career.

First, after playing all of 13 snaps during the regular season, the rookie was vaulted into the team’s wild-card game at Philadelphia when Elgton Jenkins suffered a stinger. In a span of three plays, he both hooked 336-pound Jordan Davis and tackled Moro Ojomo for a pair of penalties. On the Fox broadcast, Tom Brady and Kevin Burkhardt go from utterly speechless — “wow,” one mutters, “geesh,” the other echoes — to full-fledged pity. Gnawing on his mouthguard, face covered in sweat, Glover is immediately benched.

The Packers lost, 22-10, and fans naturally took fanatical action.

Glover estimates there were 15 DMs in all. Some were laced with more vitriol than others.

Mostly? These team owners admonished Glover for failing to do his job.

Jokes Glover: “I’m like, ‘Yeah, you’re right, sir. You’re right. Why didn’t I just do that?”

Public humiliation to this extreme often vaporizes the confidence of linemen to dust. Over the years, I’ve seen the pale look of horror in their eyes before. Part of the problem is the fragile nature of this profession. Nobody gives a damn if an offensive lineman is perfect on 59 of 60 snaps. One bad rep can make any guard, any tackle Public Enemy No. 1.

And here was a kid from a small school flailing for his life on 28 playoff snaps. This Philly nightmare easily could’ve banished him for good. Into the offseason, however, Glover did not go into a shell. He repeated a few words to himself — “don’t nobody care, don’t nobody care” — and remembered what Towns told him. There were zero benefits to toiling in the past or fast-forwarding into the future.

Of course, he didn’t need to wait until January for the NFL to club him upside the head again.

The drill during training camp was innocent enough. During individuals, Glover simply moved off a “B block” and felt something minor in his back. Like straining his pec. He figured the muscle simply needed to “calm down” and continued to practice.

The next drill, the pain was sharper.

A scan revealed that he had torn his latissimus dorsi (lat) muscle completely off the bone.

Packers medics told him they had never seen this in the NFL.

“A crazy freak accident,” Glover says. “I’m like, ‘OK. So this crazy stuff happened to me for no reason? It wasn’t even anything powerful.”

His 2025 season was over. No games, no snaps, no sensible hope for the future. Briefly, Glover even wondered if this was career-ending. Mom remembers her son posting an apology on Facebook — he thought he let everyone in Dooly County down. She told him he’ll come back better than ever. “You’ve got to believe,” she said. Still, another offseason guaranteed another opportunity for the Packers to sign and draft people to take his job. By July? He’d be one of 90. On the roster bubble. Damaged goods in their subconscious.

All mental strain that could’ve killed off his NFL career.

Lay this out in such blunt terms and Glover hardly blinks.

“Those things — if you think about that? — it’ll drive you crazy,” Glover says. “Because you could think of a million negative things. You’ve got to say something positive. Because it’s easy to think of something negative. It’ll lean on you and sit there. You’ve got to feed the positivity.”

This was one maxim imparted by a man described as an unsung hero in Green Bay: team psychologist Dr. Chris Carr.

Glover’s been seeing Carr since his rookie year. There are classes each Thursday, an interactive app and — through his injury recovery — the young lineman met with Carr 1 on 1 repeatedly. He describes each session as “a mental meal.”

All in all, Glover didn’t view the long wait as a burden, rather a 365-day blank canvas. A chance to evolve.

Day to day, Glover felt himself get stronger. Glover actively chose to conduct himself as a leader, showing up to lift weights before most teammates even woke up. If there was one benefit to this torn lat, it’s that it happened in July. He refined his technique, matured as a pro and made the 53-man roster. By Week 4, Glover got the call to start… and knew exactly what fans were thinking. “From the DMs I got,” he says, “they probably weren’t too excited.” This time, he felt wholly prepared for anything on gameday.

Upon taking the field in Tampa Bay, Glover repeatedly told himself: Protect the quarterback. Protect the quarterback.

“I was ready,” Glover says. “I don’t know what my grandmother and my mama instilled in me, but I feel it in everything I do.”

With that, he looks inward. He tries to pinpoint and articulate those characteristics.

An exercise that requires emotional bandwidth. And a napkin, or two.

He reaches for the cell phone in his pocket and taps open Instagram.

Not to find those nasty DMs. He deleted all those. No, Glover wants to show us his proudest block as a member of the Georgia State Panthers. It’s the third reel in an archived collection. As the left tackle on a wide receiver screen, it was Glover’s job to pull wide and seal off the cornerback. A difficult trek for any lineman. But if you make contact, the result is glorious devastation.

This cornerback — Reddy Steward — weighed about 175. In other words, nearly half of Glover.

The video begins. No. 73 in blue chops his feet, fans out, manages to launch Steward airborne and… he’s not finished. Glover feels the need to douse this pancake in maple syrup by then dive-bombing on top of his victim.

It’s funny. Throughout this two-hour chat, Travis Glover’s voice is exceptionally soft. Compassionate. Then you listen closely to his actual words and realize this southern gentleman is coldblooded. Glover admits he belly-flopped this poor wretch for a reason. Steward made the All-Sun Belt first team in both ’22 and ’23. Today, he plays for the Dallas Cowboys.

“I was like, ‘Oh yeah, if I hit him hard enough, he ain’t going to want to keep playing,’” Glover recalls. “That’s why I jumped on him. He was pretty good. So if we get him a little weak, a little tired, it was good.”

Props to Steward for managing to stay in the game.

On his way back to the huddle, Glover did hear a Troy coach screaming that this was a dirty play. Whatever.

There were many moments like this one through his 57 starts with Georgia State.

Which begs two questions: How did he land at a Sun Belt program created in 2010? and Why did he stay there?

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For starters, he picked up the sport late. After one fall of youth ball at age 9, he didn’t play again until 11^th grade. Mom wouldn’t allow out. Coaches stayed on Sandra — even visiting her at work — but she wanted her boy focused on academics. Oddly enough, Travis wasn’t exactly begging to play. So once Mom said yes, she wasn’t sure how this whole football thing would even go. Travis was so quiet, so cognizant of the fact that he was the largest human being in every conceivable social setting by 6+ inches and 75+ pounds. “Everybody’s expecting aggression or bullying — the stereotypical stuff,” Sandra says. “But he was never like that.”

Once games began, Sandra implored him to bring it and Travis admitted he didn’t want to hurt anybody.

He also didn’t know what in the hell he was doing. Glover simply ran into people.

But the more he hit, the more comfortable he got, the more he transformed into a “totally different person,” Mom says.

Western Kentucky was his lone FBS offer for a while. On the eve of Signing Day, a scholarship opened up at Georgia State and he decided to attend the Atlanta school two hours from home.

Stayed loyal, too. As NIL warped college football, Glover heard from power schools and was never blinded by their lavish offers. Instead? He was annoyed. Ticked that all they wanted to discuss was money. In his mind, transferring would’ve been nothing but a temporary sugar high because there was a good chance he’d spend the entire season standing on the sideline. “I didn’t want to chase money,” he adds, “I didn’t want to chase the lights.” He believed his only shot at making the NFL was by staying on the field.

A high-stakes bet. It’s not easy for any 21- or 22-year-old kid to decline life-changing money.

Let alone one who had just become a father.

Amari, his daughter, was born in the thick of it all.

Travis was forced to grow up — fast.

“I can’t be childish anymore,” Glover recalls thinking. “I’ve got to lead the way.”

In-between practice… and class… and lifts… and diaper changes, Glover took on a job at a place called “Hot Dog Pete’s” right by the football stadium. Nor was he on autopilot. Glover kicked ass grilling hot dogs, making fries, scooping ice cream and worked his way up to a manager position. How good was he at his job? After he left, Hot Dog Pete’s ceased to exist. It is permanently shut down. (“I was running the spot.”)

Through his agent, Marshall Rosenbach, he soon linked up with longtime NFL pro Lee Smith at the former tight end’s training facility. With Triple F, in Knoxville, Tenn., Smith created an O-Line-, Tight End-specific training ground for prospects. He was cut his first camp with the New England Patriots. He knows from firsthand experience that most rookies are not prepared for the crucible of pro football, calling the business of pre-combine training a “racket” and a “hoax.” Yes, Smith can also shave a lineman’s 40-yard dash time from 5.3 to 5.2 seconds. But there’s so much more to the sport. And unless you’re a high draft pick, your margin for error in training camp is microscopic.

Smith bounced back and lasted 11 bruising seasons as one of the NFL’s best blocking tight ends. Along with fellow ex-pros Jon Feliciano and Rodney Hudson — and the trio’s 440 career games — he believes he’s built a more realistic NFL launching pad. Glover was one of his first clients.

“He’s like a son to me,” says Smith, who played for the Bills, Raiders and Falcons. “He’s the kind of guy you’d let take your daughter on a date and go into a bar fight with. There are very few humans on earth that check those two boxes. That’s what I always say about Josh Allen and Travis Glover’s another one of those. He has a special place in my heart.”

Glover was invited to the Hula Bowl and, later, the Senior Bowl.

The NFL dream neared.

But first, trauma. That December, he watched the life leave his grandmother.

Martha Towns was a force of nature. The “fabric,” the “glue,” the bedrock for the entire family, her daughter Sandra says. She had 10 children and 28 grandchildren. If anyone was going through anything, they called her. Not that a call was required. Towns made a point to spontaneously reach out to as many family members as possible daily. She’d know exactly what to say to completely turn your day around. And with Sandra working all week as a prison warden’s secretary to keep food on the table, Travis spent endless days with his grandmother. Never a daycare. The result was a very special, very deep relationship. When Towns yelled Travis’ name those final hours, Sandra remembers her son — in a state of shock — nearly picking her up out of the bed. “Baby,” she said to him, “where are you going to take her?”

A week later, Travis and Mom boarded a plane to meet with his agent.

Transitioning back into NFL mode felt impossible.

“I could tell that my son’s heart was in the same place as mine — wanting to go back and just be with family,” Sandra recalls. “She always encouraged him, always told him that he could be anything that he wanted to be. He held onto that.”

So when he started throwing around dumbbells again at Triple F, he did his best to press on. He was all business. Smith and Glover never discussed the episode in the weight room, and the ex-tight end is a man who’s dealt with his own share of trauma en route to becoming the voice of reason in every locker room he occupied.

At this fragile moment, all Smith saw was determination.

“He knows that’s what his grandma would’ve wanted,” Smith says. “So he came in, didn’t skip a beat and handled everything like a grown man and did what he needed to do. It was really impressive to watch. He is literally one of my favorite human beings on the planet.”

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Clearly, this loss is still affecting Glover.

That day, he lost part of himself.

But he also believes her fight lives on in him. Glover calls Towns “one of the most amazing women” he’ll ever meet in his life. A world-class cook. A fountain of wisdom. A devout Christian who’d quote verses from the Bible verbatim at the top of her head. Family DNA is strong. Back when he was in eighth grade, Glover and his little brother settled into the living room with their Chinese takeout to watch the BET Awards when, approximately two bites in, Mom flew in to say her mother’s house was on fire. Lightning struck the breaker box. Thankfully, an uncle smelled the smoke, noticed the fire inside the kitchen and everyone inside managed to escape in time.

The house was destroyed. Grandma and Grandpa Towns moved into Glover’s home.

To this day, Glover refuses to watch the BET Awards.

Or take Mom. She’s also tough as nails. Sandra still works Monday through Friday, and has witnessed it all on those surveillance cameras inside the prison.

Or take Dad. Travis Sr. was an excellent football player himself and even played for the same coach as his son. Jimmy Hughes told Travis Jr. stories of Travis Sr. tackling the quarterback and running back at the same time because he didn’t know who had the ball. He stood 6 foot 3 inches tall and was naturally strong. “The way he grew up,” Travis Jr. says, “lifting refrigerators and stuff, he built that strength.” That is, until the accident. Until a terrible car accident his senior year left him paralyzed on the left side of his body. Travis Jr. says Dad cannot use his left hand, walks with a limp and has a scar on his head.

Driving down a hill, his vehicle slid underneath a truck and he was lucky to survive. Travis Sr. needed to learn how to walk again through intensive therapy. With his one functional hand, Travis Sr. now runs his own lawnmower business in Cordele, Ga.

All genes, all experiences equipped Glover for everything he’d face in a league that spits out players annually. When he became a new father — and the NFL closed in — he refused to stress at all. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no reason to expend such negative energy. So now whenever anyone in the family is stressing out, they don’t call Towns.

They call Travis.

He calms them down.

“Ain’t no need to kill yourself from stress,” Glover says. “Let’s get through it.”

After weathering two years of turbulence with the Packers, he’s here. The kid serving literal hot dogs and figurative pancakes has a chance to be the missing piece on a championship contender. And he’s not overwhelmed.

“No challenge,” Glover says, “feels too big or too tough.”

During practice, he refuses to walk off the field. Even if the distance is 2 ½ yards, he’ll gallop to the sideline. It’s all mental, all a reminder to remain the same person he’s always been.

“Don’t get lazy,” Glover tells himself. “Jog off the field.”

Once practice concludes, he doesn’t care if it’s raining, snowing or if the wind chill dips into the negatives. Glover refuses to hitch a ride across Oneida St. back to the locker room. He’s got to travel on his own two feet and recruited a handful of rookies to do the same. When Jager Burton and Dillon Wade missed a day, Glover was not pleased inside the locker room. He gave both the cold shoulder. “You good, Glov?” they asked. “Yeah,” he said, “Just a little lonely. I had to walk back by myself.” They haven’t missed a day since.

Again, it’s more mental than physical.

“I don’t think it’s as big to other people,” Glover says. “But it’s a big deal to me.”

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When it’s time to play on gameday, there’s nothing highfalutin to his play style.

“I try to maul people,” he says. “Protect the quarterback, protect the guy on my right, guy on my left. Hit people, hit them hard, have fun.”

As this 2026 Packers season enters a critical stretch, Glover isn’t worrying about who’ll be playing where from left tackle to right tackle. He jokes that he’ll line up at wide receiver if called upon. (“I might not be very effective, but I’ll go do it.”) With or without Zeitler, odds are the Packers will be counting on him. That’s life on an NFL offensive line. Right when everything seems settled, lightning can strike that electrical unit.

The No. 1 objective for everyone is the same.

Keep Love clean and Green Bay can beat anyone in the league.

Glover spontaneously laughs thinking of throws his QB has made this season. He calls him a “fierce competitor” who’s also strikingly… chill.

“I love everything about him,” he says.

Every football player repeats the same trope of never getting too high, never getting too low, stayed even-keeled. But few live it. Few manage to maintain a steely disposition when 22 moving objects are colliding at dangerous speeds for three hours. Such laser-beam focus is Love’s greatest weapon, and it’s infectious inside the huddle. Back to ’24, Glover was blown away by his quarterback’s command. As the play clock ticks, Love has answers for everything.

There’s no guesswork. He speaks with conviction.

His calm becomes yours.

Heart rates settle down.

“You feel it,” Glover says. “That’s literally what I said one time. He got in the huddle. He was talking. I was like, ‘OK, he’s good. We’re good too.’ He’s chill, so we’re chill. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. You just feel it. It’s kind of crazy. It almost feels like not real. It’s this feeling you get in your body — ‘OK, bring it back down.’ The way he’s talking, he commands the whole thing.”

The ball’s snapped and Love’s brand of quarterbacking is an extension of such tranquility. He’s unbothered by all chaos around him. Even amid that Minneapolis hellfire, hit 15 times in all, he threw for 387 yards.

“No flinch. No flinch.”

Glover’s ascent from nowhere helps.

When he’s not busy protecting his quarterback, he finds ways to pass the time in football’s smallest market.

He’s gotten into reading… sort of. If a book is awful, he refuses to waste his time slogging through the pages. That was the case after picking up 2Chainz’s new memoir at the airport. He read two chapters and couldn’t last any longer. It was horrendous. Glover is finishing up “Chop Wood Carry Water” and has enjoyed “The Warrior Ethos” by Steven Pressfield. The part that stunned him? Mothers in ancient Sparta disowned their kids if they returned home from war. It’s an intense read. He’s learned to shut off the outside world when he reads this book gifted by director of player engagement Grey Ruegamer.

He’ll hop on Madden, 2K and Siege to connect with his uncles, cousins and brothers back home.

He’s gone full Wisconsin, from bowfishing with teammates in Suamico to developing a damn good shot from 40 yards with his compound bow at a 3D archery range in De Pere. Glover hasn’t put the latter to use yet in the woods. If anyone wants to go deer hunting, let him know.

Glover isn’t with his daughter’s mother, but the two have maintained a healthy relationship. It pains him to be so far away during the season. Glover wants to instill all of his grandmother’s lessons into Amari. At age 4, he’s already seeing the “fierceness” and “toughness” that defined Towns. Nodding toward a nearby coat rack, he says Amari would leap off that ledge with zero fear.

He’d love to get his entire family up to a game at Lambeau before the arctic freeze sets in.

For now, videos must suffice. Glover returns to his locker after games and, voila, there’s one from Mom waiting for him on his phone. She’s leaping up and down. She’s screaming “Go Pack Go!” one moment, then telling him exactly what he did wrong the next — “tighten that up!”

“I’m going to be forever in his corner,” Sandra says. “He has always been an exceptional young man and he could have chose any path, but chose not to get in trouble. I’m proud of him for having a mindset that he wanted a better life for himself. I’m 10 toes down behind him. Regardless of what anybody else has to say about him. Rome wasn’t built in a day. He won’t be stopped.”

Smith, an NFL survivor, fully expects Glover to last in the pros for several years.

“Travis is not going to take his foot off the gas because he’s getting playing time, he’s getting loved on,” Smith says. “His character and his natural physical ability and traits that he has to be able to play guard and tackle and all the things that he’s able to do, barring injury, the young man’s going to play pro football for a long time.

“I cannot talk about how much I love him.”

As Plae Bistro’s lunch crowd clears out, our conversation winds down.

This was a perfectly fine meal. He enjoyed it. Nothing, however, will ever compare to his grandmother’s home cooking. His mind races back in time once more.

“Collard greens, dressing, fried chicken, black eyed peas, really anything,” Glover says. “I don’t think I ever told anybody about this…”

Glover pauses. His eyes close. His voice cracks.

Without warning, he’s losing his voice again. His emotions are hijacked by another memory.

“She… she… three years before she passed, she told me she was going to make me a cheesecake. I didn’t want to bug her about it, but I wanted to ask her about this cheesecake.

“She never made it. So, I don’t eat cheesecake no more.”

More tears pour. He repeats this line — I don’t eat cheesecake no more — four times in a whimpered hush.

Simply, he didn’t want to bother her. Towns passed away and he vowed to never eat cheesecake again.

Glover stares ahead as the melancholic, yet soothing “How Good It Is” by Morningsiders plays overhead.

“I feel her willpower within me,” Glover says. “I know she didn’t live for no reason. I feel everything that she stood for, and I know that it’s in me. I know she had her purpose and I get the benefit from it and hopefully I can live on like that. She’s a great, great woman…”

His voice tremors, then fades. There’s no way to punctuate this thought, no closure. Travis Glover is still struggling with the loss of a loved one. Who knows what his future entails on or off the field — hardship is a guarantee.

This time, though, he wipes his tears away.

He won’t look backward. He won’t look too far ahead.

All he can do is take grandma’s advice, lift himself up and exit through the front door.

‘He reminds me of my journey:’ Tiki Barber on James Cook’s fumblitis

Tyler Dunne — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:15:07 GMT

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At this point, James Cook may be wondering if he’s been sucked into the vortex of a paranormal horror movie this Halloween season. Another game, another fumble. And this overtime giveaway vs. the Los Angeles Rams nearly cost his Buffalo Bills the game.

He’s the reigning NFL rushing champ. He’s an exceptional talent. It’s hard to keep this player on the sideline. Yet even first-year head coach Joe Brady — a man who’s made his pro-player stance abundantly clear — said this week there will be “consequences” for further turnovers.

A conundrum that got me thinking of another running back this week.

Tiki Barber.

He, too, was one of the best in the NFL.

He, too, struggled with fumbles. (Thirty-five in a four-year span to be exact.)

Tom Coughlin was then hired in 2004 and was quite blunt with arguably his most talented player. Unless Barber fixed this issue, he was finished.

With that, Barber spent the offseason changing the way he carried the football.

Making such fixes on the fly may be difficult for Cook, but the New York Giants’ all-time leading rusher has answers. We discussed in full.

Also, Barber offers his analysis of these 3-1-1 Jameis Winston-led Giants and the running back he loves watching above all else: Bijan Robinson. Be sure to catch Barber today on WFAN Sports Radio in New York. We’ve caught up with Barber before. First, in ‘23, to detail his own unique rise in the sport. Then again in ‘25.

Here’s our Q&A below.

Let’s start with your Giants. First place, lost their quarterback. Myself, most people are thinking, “Oh, they’re done. There’s no reason to really care about the New York Giants.” Why should we? What’s still in front of this team this season?

Barber: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is Jameis Winston is playing unbelievably when he has to. He’s not challenging for the MVP. He’s not going to lead the league in passing. None of that stuff. But when he’s been put behind the eight ball — some of it his own doing — he doesn’t flinch. He’s like a really good golfer who duffs a tee shot and then hits a three wood five inches from the hole. These second halves these last two games, against Arizona and Washington, it’s been elite football. Last weekend, every drive, he put them in scoring position and the only reason they didn’t win it in overtime is because we missed a kick or Cam Skattebo fumbled. So I think we all panicked. I didn’t. Because it was too early in the season. But most Giant fans panicked when Jaxson Dart tore his MCL and meniscus against the Rams thinking, “What do we have to look forward to?” But I think Jameis can be a bridge. It’s what he was brought here to do. Not play this many games, but he’s a good bridge for you. That’s why they signed him to an extension and he’s a fantastic leader. Everybody loves him.

That game had all the highs and lows where — at one point — you’re thinking, “Holy hell, how can they start this guy. It’s the same old shit.” And then lo and behold, you look up and Jameis Winston has thrown for 300 yards and three touchdowns and you’re in position to win.

Barber: I know. It’s the Jameis Winston Experience and, as crazy as it is, he’s been this way his entire career. His entire professional career, this is who he is. Sometimes you’re like, “This is the best quarterback on the field.” Other times you’re like, “Dude, who’s the backup?” So you’ve got to live with it. And this is where coaching matters. I think it’s been one of the narratives of this Giant season. Coaching has been unbelievably good, both from time management decisions, playcalling. Defensively, Denard Wilson has been so variable. Sometimes he’ll sit back and play a lot of zone. Other times he’ll bring the house over and over and over again and force you into mistakes like we saw against Arizona when ‘Te Banks took the pick-six to the house. So they have a really well-coached team and some players that are stepping up and becoming playmakers.

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Coaching does matter. We’ve talked so much about Brian Daboll and all the good that came with him and teaching the quarterback position, his offensive mind, all of that. But they’re swinging toward somebody who’s done it for 18 years and has a Super Bowl ring and is bringing stability and knows how he wants things done.

Barber: We always cliche how a team “takes on the personality of their coach.” So now think about Dabes. He was super emotional. He wore it on his sleeve. He was screaming and yelling. That was his M.O. and the team was up and down with that emotion. John Harbaugh is perfectly cerebral the whole time. Yeah, maybe he’ll express facially some displeasure, but he’s always calm. So no matter what the circumstances are, he’s thinking rationally. And similarly, the team plays that way. When things go really bad, they don’t panic. They don’t get pissed off. They just say: “Let’s get back to doing our job.”

That’s a real thing too, isn’t it? Players are a direct reflection of their coach and all that, but you played at the highest level, you’re one of the best to ever do. How else does it manifest itself for good and for bad?

Barber: The good is that these guys always know what to do. And the perfect example is a guy like Arvell Reese, who early in the season as a rookie, he was struggling in zone coverage. He knew where he was kind of supposed to be, but he was cheating with his eyes and so he’s reading the quarterback. And quarterbacks are going to manipulate you. So if you’re trying to follow what the quarterback’s going to do, you’re going to get taken advantage of. And a couple of running back swings out of the backfield resulted in touchdowns in those first couple of games. Since then, he hasn’t made that mistake. And so I think this growth and learning and cerebral nature while still playing with aggression is who he is.

I think the bad is that (Harbaugh) also wants to be forgiving. Like, “I got you. I got your back.” And so the biggest damning stat for the Giants in the first five games of the season is that the running backs have fumbled six times. Now, Tyrone Tracy, he fumbled and then he basically has had five touches since then. Najee Harris, he’s not a fumbler. That was just a good defensive play. But Cam Skattebo’s getting the majority of the carries and he’s had a fumble in each of the last four games. And so they’re going to keep riding him because they want him to be that grinding, “I want to get every extra yard I can,” but sometimes it could be detrimental.

I wanted to get into James Cook here in Buffalo because you lived it. Where is that line? You don’t want to immediately throw a talented player into the doghouse, keep him stuffed in there for an eternity and kill his confidence. You’ve got to trust a talent like James Cook. But at the same time, he’s fumbling too much. It is a problem.

Barber: It’s interesting with the Giants because they’re doing it by committee. There are options. If Cam Skattebo has another fumble, you know what? Tyrone, it’s now your opportunity. Or “Motor” Singletary, you’ve been inactive for the last three games. It’s your turn. They’re doing it by committee. The Bills have paid James Cook. James Cook is The Man. He is a top-five running back in the league. And in some ways, he reminds me of my journey with Jim Fassel because when I was going through my fumbling issues, I was one of the best players, one of the best offensive players on the team, and there wasn’t an option. So Jim Fassel was like, “All right, you got us where we’re going. I’m going to depend on you. I’m going to trust you to figure it out.” And I think James is going to get that leeway with Buffalo.

But what he needs to do is mechanical. It’s how he carries the football. Because that second fumble in overtime last weekend, he had the ball wrapped up. He just had it wrapped up incorrectly. Nate Landman punched it out. It was the same play basically as the first fumble. Nate Landman — getting blocked — just sticks his hand in there and knocks the ball out. And it’s the challenge as a runner when you’re going through traffic. Because look at Nate. He is blocked by a lineman, right? He’s blocked. You’re not worried about him tackling you, but you know that he’s going to contact you. And so when you start to go through those contact points, the ball’s got to be vertical to your body, so high and tight with your elbows in and your off ball hand across your on-ball wrist. And even if he punches it, it’s not going to go anywhere.

So it’s a mechanical, physical learning thing that he needs to spend time on. It’s just hard to do it in-season.

How can you really fix this on the fly and what was your fundamental change? Was that really what you were able to switch up?

Barber: Think about when you were a kid and you played football. Remember how they taught you how to carry the ball? You get the handoff in a pocket and the ball is perpendicular to your body, parallel to the ground, and you wrap one hand underneath and one hand on top and go through contact like that and it’ll protect you. But the problem is when you’re moving at such high paces, that bottom hand often slides to the front of the ball as opposed to underneath the ball. And as soon as someone hits it, it’s going to go straight to the ground because you don’t have firm control over it — even though it feels and looks like it’s safe.

So you need to have the ball perpendicular to the ground. Straight up and down, across your body, centered to your chest with your elbows tucked in so that protects the ball from going down. And most of those fumbles happen when you’re getting tackled because you start to lean and your body naturally wants to brace itself. So if you fell without a football — you just fell walking down the street — you’re putting your hands out. The same thing happens when you start to get tackled. You want to put your arms down and away from yourself and it’s getting used to falling with your arms at your body and not bracing yourself. So it takes reps. It takes a lot of mental reminding of yourself: “I’ve got to go to the ground with the ball centered and protected. Centered and protected. Centered and protected.” And if you don’t do it enough, you’re still going to just naturally react how your body wants to.

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What’s interesting, too, is I’m watching this game and I’m like, “Man, that’s a hell of a punch-out. Nate Landman is basically someone getting into a fist fight. The guy throwing the punches is going to hurt his hand, too. He’s punching and punching all game.

Barber: No doubt. But you know what? The reason he can do that is because he can see the ball. When you center the ball and you put your elbows down to your sides, he can’t really hit the ball. And so if you give him somewhere to hit? He’s going to hit it. He’s going to strike it. It’s like he’s a boxer.

So, there is a skill there for the oppposition. What I’m getting at with James Cook, there’s a tendency to think it could be mental. Does he have the yips?

Barber: It’s not mental at all. It’s all physical. It’s all mechanical. It’s physics. It’s basic physics. So he needs to figure that out. And as soon as he does, it won’t be a problem anymore.

Your fumbles never really got to your head? You’re not worrying about the next one… and the next one… and the next one?

Barber: No, I didn’t know how to carry the ball correctly. You have to be taught. Coaching is teaching and the best coaches are great teachers. And I had a really great teacher in (RBs coach) Jerald Ingram. The X’s and O’s of the game are notwithstanding because I became such a good player understanding what was happening in front of me. But he taught me how to carry the ball correctly. And I had my best three years because of it.

When did you make these fixes exactly?

Barber: It was ’04. Tom Coughlin’s first year. And the other thing was Coach Coughlin challenged me. He basically said to me, “I don’t care how good of a player you are for us. If you’re going to be a liability, you’re not playing.” I was a consistent 1,000-yard rusher. I was doing what I needed to do to help the team win — at least I thought. He said, “It doesn’t matter. If you’re a liability, you’re not playing.” And so I was forced to fix it because I was told by a new head coach that my past didn’t matter. My past actions were inaccessible to him and he only knew that I needed to be better in the future.

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I’ve sat down with Joe Brady at length and his big thing is empowering players, believing in players, speaking positivity. And all of that…

Barber: But you also got to teach it. Because if you don’t teach it, it’s not going to happen. Rutgers isn’t really worth watching because they stink, but Coach Schiano has been teaching this since he left Rutgers the first time. So everywhere he goes — if you watch a Rutgers game — every ball-carrier has the ball awkwardly high and tight like I used to carry it. So it’s taught.

Seeing you carrying it, it did look radically different when you made the changes.

Barber: But I didn’t fumble anymore.

And you didn’t lose any of your athleticism, agility, speed, none of that?

Barber: No, no. It made me actually tighter, more compact, so that I was more explosive because I was never extended. Sometimes if you’re running and you get your legs too far spread apart or your arms are away from your body, it’s hard to get yourself back on track. I actually became more powerful and more explosive by being more compact.

Before Coughlin got there, Fassel never pulled you into the office and said, “Hey, one more and your ass is on the bench?”

Barber: No, no. In fact, against the Eagles in ’02 or so, we had to win the game to make the playoffs, and I fumbled three times in the regular time. Three fumbles! I rushed for 200 yards in the game, but I fumbled three times in the game. And it was the only reason the Eagles had a chance to win it. And it goes into overtime because their kicker misses a field goal. And in overtime, I got the ball five out of six plays. And Coach Fassel was asked afterwards, “Why’d you keep going to Tiki?” He was like, “He’s our best player. He got us to where we’re going. I had to give it to him.”

Adrian Peterson had fumbling issues, too. Think of the NFC Championship Game. He kept putting it down.

Barber: 100%. It’s hard not to go to your best player.

And Joe Brady is trying to straddle that line. He has emphasized how important it is to believe in his guys many times. Then, yesterday, he said there will be “consequences.” So he’s threatening to bench him. But he also knows they won that game because of James Cook. The difference here is you worked on your stuff during the offseason. He can’t make these changes right now, can he?

Barber: You still got to teach it. You’ve got to constantly teach it. Teach it, drill it, drill it, drill it, drill it, drill it.

Is there another running back you’ve watched this first month of the season that has you hitting rewind repeatedly?

Barber: Oh, Bijan. Bijan Robinson is fucking unbelievable. One of those primetime games, they were running an outside zone and the safety had him dead to rights at the line of scrimmage. Basically about to kiss him. And he just shit on him so badly. And I was like, “Oh my God!” He didn’t even touch him. I’m like, “How the hell did he make that guy miss?” So watching his explosiveness? There’s no dead play. He’s the new-vogue Barry Sanders because of how shifty he is and how quickly he accelerates. His acceleration is so much superior to Barry Sanders. Barry, you just couldn’t touch him ever. But he has this shiftiness and acceleration. He’s a marvel.

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He gets 0-to-60 faster than anybody and it’s not even close.

Barber: No doubt.

How does a running back get to that point? What’s the key?

Barber: I think it’s training. I think it’s his build, his physical structure, his musculature. And he’s not afraid of contact. He goes into contact expecting you to bounce off of him: “You’re not going to wrap me up enough that you’re going to stalemate me. So I’m going to see the contact. I’m going to acknowledge it, but I know I’m running through it.” He’s just so good. And he’s a great receiver out of the backfield. He’s my favorite back in the league right now.

So do you just catch yourself going back and watching his highlights, watching his games?

Barber: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. They’re not doing anything special. The first year that I had a breakout season with Sean Payton as offensive coordinator in 2000, we were doing special shit. It was like bunch right, Y motion, Y rewind, toss right scissors. So we’re tossing the ball out, but the guard is actually pulling back the other side. Coach Pope used to call him “dick ‘em plays.”

He’s like, “We’re going to fuck with their heads thinking this is going here, but the ball is going somewhere completely different.” Every indication is going to go one way, but we’re going someplace else. And so I was able to make hay by just popping out of nowhere and they’re like, “Dude, what the hell? How’d he get over here?” That’s not what Atlanta’s doing. Atlanta’s just running straight outside zone, inside zone, a couple of gap plays here, and he’s just really patient and explosive.

There’s really no defense for it then. If they stay healthy with that offensive line and obviously you want Penix to stay in there.

Barber: They need Penix because Tua is Tua.

ICYMI:

‘Monster:’ The Impossible Deone Walker

Tyler Dunne — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:47:39 GMT

Illustration by Brave Buffalo

ORCHARD PARK, NY — He is a goliath of a human. Officially listed at 6 feet, 7 3/8 inches tall and 330 pounds, he plays triple his size, engulfing players whole. His ankles are skinny — like those of an Olympic sprinter — and his cleats are designed for players at skill positions.

Every so often, a physical specimen appears to reside from a different planet in this sport.

A cheat code we all created back on Madden 64 as kids. Fictitious.

That’s Deone Walker.

Yet, there’s always been one unknown: What’s burning inside? People in Kentucky questioned his desire. Even people here with the Buffalo Bills weren’t quite sure initially if Walker possessed the required Hulk-smash switch in such a violent profession. He’s a “bumbling giant” through these hallways at One Bills Drive, one coach begins. “Smile on his face, daps you up,” senior defensive assistant Jason Rebrovich continues. “He doesn’t have that visual like, ‘I’m going to break your damn jaw!’ But when he plays and you see it?”

Rebrovich pauses.

“I feel it every day because I’m usually his blocking dummy.”

One day last season, Rebrovich had a “heart-to-heart” conversation with Walker. Coachspeak for blunt rhetoric required with most rookies. He was on him. Into practice, players dispersed into individual drills. Rebrovich lined up to absorb Walker’s blow.

“And he let me know,” Rebrovich says, “that ‘If I want to break your damn neck, I’m going to break your damn neck.’ I went airborne.”

Indeed, Walker quite literally uprooted his coach, launching him skyward.

The father of three crashed… hard.

To this day, his shoulder aches.

“All part of worker’s comp,” he jokes.

Walker? Bring this story up and he only smiles. The perpetrator doesn’t remember exactly what his coach said. Only that it pissed him off. Only that he can be moody and let anger course through his veins. Rebrovich is certain there’s video footage of the incident hidden in an office somewhere. He’s lucky. NFL offensive linemen have their posterization plastered across social media weekly. One by one, they’re humiliated.

These highlight reels have become football crack. Walker makes a mockery of grown men.

Take this mash-up with north of a million views. He karate-chops a helpless Alijah Vera-Tucker right into Drake Maye’s face on one rep and head-fakes past him on another. He trashes 330-pound Aireontae Ersery into a dumpster and slams a Houston running back into the turf. He rips past Detroit’s Juice Scruggs to two-hand launch Jared Goff. Swallows poor TreVeyon Henderson. Swim-moves multiple linemen with such ease you’d think they’re stationary blocking pads. Punks arguably the best lineman in the sport: Penei Sewell.

Through four weeks, his 19 pressures ranked second amongst defensive tackles and his 15 hurries were first. He has four batted balls, a sack and three TFLs.

His performance leaves viewers a combination of aghast, bewildered and, perhaps, a little scared because nothing about this 22-year-old makes any sense.

Everyone tries. Back when he was the associate head coach at Kentucky, Vince Marrow recruited Walker out of Cass Tech in Detroit, Mich. The kid already had an 84-inch wingspan. The word he used then is the same word he uses now: “Deone is a monster,” Marrow says. “I’m telling you — he’s a monster. He hasn’t even been all the way unleashed yet.”

Bills general manager Brandon Beane is understandably excited about this ceiling.

“Very few guys walking on the planet look like him,” Beane says. “The sky’s the limit.”

Up front — on this Bills D-Line — teammates witness stunts they’ve never seen before. Mention Deone Walker and their eyes widen.

From DeWayne Carter…

“The unicorn. In this sport, a lot of things add up. That one does not. One plus one equals five. The dude’s a beast.”

To Greg Rousseau…

“It’s like watching a Hall of Famer. This is an All Pro, Hall of Fame level. It’s crazy.”

None of this is bluster. Walker has the attention of the entire football world.

One month into this season, he is one of the league’s greatest mysteries.

So, let’s catch a unicorn. How is this possible? Where is this going? If we are to believe our eyes, four games in, Buffalo has a supernatural talent blooming on defense. Granted, this reconfigured unit is off to a rocky start. Slowing down the Los Angeles Rams on Monday Night Football is a steep task for this struggling secondary. Walker, however, may be the wrecking ball Buffalo has been missing to finally close its championship gap.

Fresh off a lively game of cornhole in the locker room, Walker takes a seat.

Initially, the unicorn cannot explain unicorn. Genetics are not much of a factor. Both of his parents are short. Walker has an uncle who’s 6-5, but that’s about it. Nor is Walker ever stricken with an overwhelming desire to personally take over.

“I just play football,” Walker says. “That’s literally it. I feel like basketball helped me a lot with me being nimble, being able to move, but I don’t really think I’m doing anything too crazy until we get into the film room. It’s just football in the moment.

“It’s ‘we need to stop.’ The Bills do such a great job shifting our mentality to where I don’t care about what I do. I’m only doing what I’ve got to do on the field because I don’t want to mess things up for you, mess things up for my brother. That camaraderie, that brotherhood. It’s not even about me no more. It’s about us.”

Walker distills the mystery to its simplest explanation.

He’s long. He can move. He’s dumbfounded himself.

Walker admits he laughs at the destruction during Monday film sessions.

He most certainly was not laughing on April 24-26, 2025.

To solve this mystery, the best place to start is with his nonsensical fall in the NFL Draft.

After first claiming that he doesn’t think about falling into the fourth round, Walker alerts our attention to a tattoo on his shoulder. Right there in ink is one number.

109.

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Question No. 1: How did this guy fall to Pick No. 109?

He left a trail of aching bodies in his wake. When Deone Walker thinks back to his 2023 season in Lexington, two plays from two contours of the field spring to mind. First, the play vs. Florida when he dropped into zone coverage. Walker demolished tight end Arlis Boardingham and the ball popped into the sky for an interception. Next, the play vs. Louisville. As Jack Plummer released the ball, Walker drilled the quarterback into the turf.

Plummer reacted as if he was hit by a bus.

Says Walker: “I had them rolling around.”

This is what’s most perplexing.

Discovering Walker did not require an ATV trip into seasonal logging trails or ferry rides to remote islands. His dominance was broadcast at the highest level of college football. He owned SEC linemen with regularity throughout this sophomore season, totaling 55 tackles (12.5 for loss) with 7.5 sacks in all. Once that season was complete, Marrow viewed his D-Tackle as a surefire top-5 pick. “The dude,” he adds, “was a terror.”

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He was firmly on the Bills’ radar, too. On the cusp of each college season, Beane asks his scouts to rank the top players in their area. Walker’s name was near the top of the list. And when he took a look at Walker’s film for the first time, he couldn’t help but utter: “Holy shit.” The Bills gave him a first-round grade into the fall of 2024. Beane saw Walker play in-person for the first time when the Wildcats faced Ole Miss on Sept. 28.

His size, again, was stunning. Holy cow, Beane told himself, that dude’s fucking huge.

Between the whistles, however, all disruption waned. He wasn’t nearly as productive as a junior.

His sack total plummeted to 1.5. All GMs and scouts had no choice but to question everything that drew them to Walker in the first place.

“Is he coasting? Is he taking a year off?” Beane recalls asking. “Is he just trying to get to the NFL without hurting himself? All that stuff. And then you find out at the end of the season he was playing with a back injury. So it was like, ‘All right, we’ll give him some credit.’ But then it’s still like: ‘Was somebody covering for him?’”

Teams closely examined Walker’s medical testing at the NFL Combine and his story checked out.

So, something’s still fishy. The demand for giants half as quick is immense. Back or no back, it’s bonkers that Walker would free-fall into the fourth round. Look closer and it’s clear this scouting process was a bit more convoluted. In truth, you can’t even blame NFL GMs, scouts and college directors. Too many jobs are at stake. It’s the duty of scouts to investigate, to relentlessly uncover the good, bad and ugly. Not easy when many college coaches go full Dabo Swinney and wax poetic about every player going pro.

Marrow, now at Louisville, served as an NFL liaison in Kentucky. He doesn’t want to throw specific coaches under the bus but notes that many of the visiting personnel men told him that people inside Kentucky’s building were ripping Walker as “lazy.”

He bites his tongue.

“Deone knows the truth,” Marrow says. “I know the truth. His family knows the truth. It’s just a bunch of bullshit, to be quite honest.”

Walker doesn’t flinch. Head coach Mark Stoops was a strong advocate and the defensive tackle was cool with the entire ’23 staff. Liam Coen, the current Jaguars head coach, was the Wildcats’ OC that season. They had a strong bond.

The ’24 offensive staff, coordinated by Bush Hamdan, was a different story.

“Some people on our staff didn’t really like me,” Walker says. “They didn’t like me because of my back problem. It hurt to see me not play to what I could be. So they were mad. ‘Oh, why?’ They don’t know. What offensive coach asks trainers about a defensive player?”

Of note: Hamdan is now the Miami Dolphins quarterbacks coach. Walker gets to see him twice this season.

Nor was this some nebulous back issue. Walker suffered a pars defect, a crack in the thin strip of bone connecting lower and upper joints of a vertebrae. It’s most common in teens and heals on its own. Walker simply experienced his fracture at the worst time.

“People didn’t really know,” Walker adds. “It was hard, but I still wanted to go out and do what I could for the team at UK. Will I take anything back? No.”

Marrow tried to spread the gospel. Told everyone who’d listen that Walker was going to be a star.

Once this kid could focus on football — and football only — there was hell to pay, he’d say.

These Bills heard all opinions from all sides and decided to investigate further by bringing Walker in as one of their 30 in-person visits ahead of the draft. The medical staff told Beane they wouldn’t clear him until training camp to be safe. He’d need a lot of physical therapy. And on this visit, the Bills were extremely impressed with Walker’s football IQ. He was more soft-spoken than expected. “He doesn’t come across as a gritty guy,” Beane says. “And so sometimes you go: ‘Is this guy gritty enough to play? This is a grown man’s game.’”

Point blank, the Bills grilled him: Do you love ball? What does this mean to you? What do you want to do this for?

“We challenged him,” Beane says. “You want to see how he’s going to respond. And it’s not just sitting in a room for 20 minutes. It’s in different ways all day and watching film and pressing him: ‘What do you want to be?’”

The Bills talked to the ex-Kentucky running back on their roster. Ray Davis, a man who knows grit, offered a strong vote of support. They also liked that Walker actively chose to play in the Senior Bowl down in Mobile, Ala. Prospects hunt for excuses all the time to skip all-star games. If Walker was willing to compete when an NFL doctor would not have cleared him, he must love the sport.

Coaches did their own research. Rebrovich started with the ’24 tape, wondered “What does he do well?” and reverse-engineered back to that ’23 tape. It was like watching a completely different player. Right then, he knew the talent was inside of Walker. The fight. The hunger. He looked forward to somehow pulling it back out of him.

As late April closed in, Walker earned a prime spot on the team’s board.

Buffalo selected South Carolina defensive tackle TJ Sanders 41st overall in the second round and Marrow texted one Bills scout: “Deone’s better than him. This kid will be a monster.” Day 2 of the draft ended and, upon seeing that Walker was still available, the Bills phoned the Chicago Bears to climb from No. 132 to No. 109.

All weekend, Walker held a draft party in Lexington with plenty of family in from Detroit. The mood was a blend of confusion and excitement. Everyone expected Walker to go earlier. Hearing 108 names called before his own absolutely stung.

But as his name finally flashed across the screen, Walker tried to keep perspective.

“It doesn’t define who you are,” Walker says. “It doesn’t define what you’ve got to do.”

Shortly after, Marrow pulled him aside. “The knock on you was, ‘You were lazy,’” he told Walker. “Enjoy this. But get your ass in shape and prove everybody wrong.’” When Walker reported to work with the Bills, coaches did not detect any animosity over his plunge. Rather, they saw a player determined to do exactly what Marrow instructed.

There’s no massive chip on his shoulder — only that tattoo.

Question No. 2: How does a man standing 6-foot 7 3/8 inches, 330 pounds move like this?

The simplest explanation is basketball. He played his junior and senior years of high school.

Basketball, not football, was his first love.

As a fan, Walker was into Kevin Durant and LeBron James and especially “Prime D-Rose.” He was drawn to the ridiculous explosion of this Chicago Bulls point guard before all his knee issues. And as a player, Walker grew up on the post before evolving into more of a Jokic-like “facilitator” at the top of the key.

Quick feet were a necessity.

Quick feet stood out to everyone when Walker first took the practice field as a rookie for the Bills at St. John Fisher University. During 1 on 1’s, Beane watched his footwork. The largest player on the field was also one of the nimblest. This was no stiff. “He’s got basketball feet,” Beane adds. As that first camp wound down, two vets on the Bills’ offensive line — David Edwards and Connor McGovern — made a point to tell the GM that when “96” figures it out, he’s going to be a major problem.

“And that’s where you’re just like, ‘All right, he’s got it. Now we just got to keep him motivated, keep him going, get him some confidence,’” Beane says. “I think he lost some confidence in being pumped up (in college) and then the next year didn’t go well and you fall. You see all these guys picked ahead of you.”

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Rousseau, a physical marvel in his own right, was immediately entranced by Walker’s stature. “The way he moves? It’s crazy,” he says. “Somebody his size shouldn’t move like that.” Carter can’t get over one freaky blend of gifts. “Skinny ankles, he says, “but strong as an ox.” Marrow, after calling Walker “twitchy like a damn linebacker,” directs our attention to his 10 5/8-inch hands. (“He strikes you. He can maneuver you. He can bull rush you. He can give you a 1-2 punch and go around you.”) Those hands are the reason why he believes Walker could’ve excelled at tight end or offensive tackle, too.

During this first pro season, Rebrovich conducted those blunt conversations with Walker.

Walker assured his coach he wanted to chase greatness. OK, great. Are you OK being coached hard? Walker nodded and proceeded to change both his body and mentality. Buffalo’s strength and conditioning staff crafted a detailed regimen that first year together.

“We just had to have a heart-to-heart and say, ‘Hey, what are your goals? What do you want to do? Let me help you to help us,’” Rebrovich says. “And he really took that to heart.”

Year 1 was full of ups and downs. This dancing bear leapt into a big play occasionally.

Then, came the test: the offseason.

When the Bills reported back to work in April, Walker had clearly utilized the previous 2 ½ months.

“He didn’t just go to an island and chill out,” Beane says. “You could tell he worked.”

When OTAs/minicamp wrapped up, Walker didn’t lag. He kept the intensity cranked to a 10. Specifically, he targeted his kryptonite: a tendency to play too high. When Go Long sat down with Aaron Brewer last summer, the Miami Dolphins All-Pro said at one point that he enjoys blocking players like Walker who stand straight up. An extension of how scouts described him to our Bob McGinn in his draft series. Too often, Walker allowed offensive linemen to get underneath him.

Here, Walker doesn’t disagree. He admits he played too high.

While a low center of gravity is literally impossible for the 6-7 Walker, he’s now playing to his advantage. Rebrovich likes to use a visual analogy. Imagine a “big brother” keeping a “little brother” at bay with his arms down and away, he’ll say. Walker can keep linemen away with his inherent length.

“The most sacred thing is your jersey number,” Rebrovich says. “You don’t want anybody to impede it. Some of these guys have these big, huge chains with their numbers on it. So why do you have it? It’s obviously sacred to you. When you’re on the field, you’ve got to protect it. He does a great job of making sure people are not impeding his inner circle.”

He’s not losing his joy for the sport, either.

This fuels all on-field carnage as much as anything.

Walker cites a recent conversation with Bills rookie TJ Parker. The two agreed that they must pour everything into football for as long as they possibly can. Walker doesn’t want to live with any regrets down the road. To this end, it’s crucial to maintain a genuine zest for the sport. Never will he treat this as a 9-to-5 obligation. Morphing from good to great, to him, is rooted in preserving this passion.

“I just love football. It’s weird. I love playing football,” Walker says. “The main thing that gives rookies the Rookie Wall is thinking, ‘Football is my job. Ugh. It’s Year 1, but I’m a rookie. It’s my job. It’s not a game no more.’ Football is still fun!”

Sneaking in an hour of video games can help. A quick escape.

He’ll veer his mind away from the sport and — by the time he returns? — he feels totally re-energized.

“Because football takes a lot out of you,” Walker adds. It takes everything out of you.”

A voice in the background of the locker room echoes: “I agree with that!”

Year 2 has been quite a payoff.

He’s huge. He’s disruptive. But it’s everything we don’t see that triggers this all into action.

Question No. 3: What is his superpower?

Home opener. Detroit Lions in town. Bruce Smith offering the hey-ey-ey prayer into a mic.

The Buffalo Bills’ first game at new Highmark Stadium offered three hours’ worth of wild sights and sounds.

Nothing, however, was crazier than seeing what Deone Walker did to Penei Sewell.

The same Samoan nightmare who once concussed a teammate so badly as a youth that the poor sap transferred to another school, the same 6-5, 335-pounder who told us he’d die on the field for his teammates was whisked away by No. 96 on Thursday Night Football. This was a “pull-slide” technique sharpened with Rebrovich. Walker got the left tackle to redistribute his weight and rocked him to sleep.

It can seem as if Walker operates as more of a deranged crocodile, if that croc crushed two cans of the original Four Loko. No plan, all terror. But as Walker details, none of this is an accident. He’s not guessing. Heading into Week 2, Walker knew the Lions did not communicate well on the offensive line.

“They’ve never really played together,” he explains. “They were all newly announced starters, so there were a lot of miscommunication problems. Their center — whenever it was a pass — he likes to point out the ‘Mike’ before he gets in the stance. So just trying to pick on that. It’s a little quick thing to see: ‘OK, he pointed that way. He pointed toward the three.’ Now, I can backdoor the guard because I’m thinking it’s a pass.

“Little stuff like that. Things you can only get by watching him.”

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Rebrovich’s description of effective defensive line play is dead-on.

He likens the job to deer leaping in front of you down a country road.

Am I hitting it? Am I swerving? Or am I slamming on the brakes?

“And you have to make that decision now,” Rebrovich explains. “He’s very, very reactive. When things flash, he’s got a great vision and a great feel for blocking schemes and protections within that scheme of what we’re trying to accomplish. You can see the product is growing and it’s going to continue to grow.”

Walker and Rebrovich are on a 24/7 hunt for solutions, engaging in lively discussion during meetings, talking/texting afterhours and, of course, communicating nonstop on gamedays. Walker’s ability to adapt belies his age.

Adds Walker: “Football isn’t about thinking about what you’ve got to do. It’s about reacting to what somebody did to you. That’s 95 percent of defense. The extra five percent is hard work.”

Walker could be eight feet tall, 500 pounds with the lightest feet imaginable. Nothing physical about him would mean a damn thing if he hesitated — if he was confused at all — when that proverbial 12-point buck jolts out of the brush. The defensive tackles who own this millisecond forever own the edge.

That’s why Walker cites another analogy.

Walker views his 50 snaps a game as a heavyweight boxing fight. Round to round, he gains a feel for his adversary. He’ll throw a jab… then a hook… then a cross… and catalog how a lineman blocks him, essentially setting the bait for those viral haymakers. He knows precisely when to shift a lineman’s weight the wrong direction.

“The mental part, for me, is what really helped me take off,” Walker says. “Within the film room, being able to break down players and break down teams, formations and being able to see what the offense is trying to do. Our coaches do a great job of making cut-ups for us to be able to jot down notes while we’re watching: ‘OK, 65, he’s a leaner, a two-hand puncher. OK, 90, he’s a wider puncher, low hands.’ It may seem so little — but fourth quarter, at the end of the game — people are going to go to their tendencies.”

And there’s our best answer to this Deone Walker mystery.

We’re all enamored by what freaks of nature can do physically.

“But” Walker adds, “it’s about who can think the clearest while going through physical pain.”

That’s why Rebrovich doesn’t hesitate when asked for a comparable in the NFL.

He points to the ageless Calais Campbell. The assistant coach had him in Jacksonville for four seasons. Campbell is also a mountain of a man at 6-8, 307 pounds, but Rebrovich cites the ultra-cerebral nature of both players. They win with their minds. He’s also starting to see Walker demand more out of teammates, too. Like Campbell.

All of the plays that don’t make the social-media rounds are equally impressive to Rebrovich.

Take his ability to sniff out screen plays. In Week 1, on second and 10 from the Texans’ 40-yard line, Walker had a notion. He told defensive tackle Ed Oliver in the huddle that he’d cover the screen pass so Oliver could rush freely. On cue, the Texans attempted a screen to running back Woody Marks and Walker blew it up. The fact that center Evan Brown was hanging all over him? Minor detail. Irrelevant.

Rousseau laughs out loud thinking of Brown hanging on for dear life.

“Treats the guy like a little kid. Deone’s just like, ‘Excuse me,’” Rousseau says. “Usually people call out like, ‘Watch the screen here!’ and nothing happens. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard somebody say, ‘Watch the screen here,’ and they make the play in the screen. Because you’ve got to think. Just because you know the screen’s coming, they’re still going to try to block you. It doesn’t mean you’re going to make the play. He said it. He made the play. We’re like, ‘Bro, you’re insane.’”

This was no outlier. His tape’s full of high-effort, high-energy footage.

The man whose job is to challenge Walker daily cannot help but dream of everything still to come.

“It’s fun to watch,” Rebrovich says, “believe me.”

Even when this same player’s delivering shoulder pain for life.

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Question No. 4: Is he nasty enough?

On the hunt for trained killers along the line of scrimmage, all teams must straddle a fine line. A clean rap sheet is ideal, but scouts are not recruiting librarians and veterinarians.

GMs need rabid competitors with bad intentions.

No team should realize this more than the Buffalo Bills. After each playoff loss since 2019, Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott were asked variations of the same question: How can you affect the quarterback in January?

After an AFC Championship defeat in Kansas City to close the 2024 season, Beane lamented the reality that it’s extremely hard to find A-level talents on the defensive line while picking at the end of the first round each year. “We’re not ever picking in the top five, 10,” said Beane, vowing to turn over every stone. In the same breath, the GM admitted the Shaq-like Chris Jones was a second-round pick. Thus, it was possible. It takes a special scouting eye and a touch of risk to find a player capable of destroying a playoff game.

In Walker, the Bills might’ve finally found their Patrick Mahomes antidote.

Of course, the best at his position morph into goblins. Aaron Donald’s career is littered with cheap shots. Jones trash-talks with the best of ‘em. Jalen Carter smacked Mahomes upside the head in the Super Bowl. To the extreme, of course, is Ndamukong Suh stomping a cleat into an opponent’s leg.

Good luck extracting any malice out of Walker whatsoever. We tried.

He’s downright friendly.

Those around Walker every day assure there’s venom to his game. Marrow calls him a “gentle giant” and a “gentleman” who transforms into that “monster.”

Rebrovich agrees.

“He does have that,” says Rebrovich, who’s been around some of A-level defensive linemen from the Bills’ 2014 unit that totaled 54 sacks to the Jaguars’ “Sacksonville” 2017 front that had 55 (and was robbed of a Super Bowl appearance). “He just might not personality-wise be like that around people because he’s a very people-oriented person. Confidence goes a long way in everything we do. He’s one of those players that you can coach him hard, be on him, but he understands where it’s coming from.”

Adds Rousseau: “He’s a normal dude. Kind of like me. You don’t have to be a mean person to be a baller. You just have to know how to play football. He knows how to play ball.”

Question No. 5: What is Deone Walker’s ceiling?

He’s got a “Deone shoulder” and he also has a “Marcell shoulder.”

As in, Marcell Dareus.

Jason Rebrovich coached the latter in both Buffalo and Jacksonville and, yes, suffered the painful consequences. The last defensive lineman to ragdoll opponents ‘round here with such silly dominance was Dareus. Size. Speed. Explosion. The NFL world was abuzz over this D-Tackle, too. Unfortunately, the fourth overall pick in the 2011 draft was never able to fully maximize his potential.

A rapid rise was followed with an equally rapid fall after inking a $96 million contract.

What should not get lost in time, however, is everything Dareus endured in his personal life. Football players are not humanoids, as Walker alluded to earlier. You need an escape. You also need structure. An emotional Dareus once opened up to me about his tumultuous life off the field — everyone close to him kept dying. He lacked the off-field foundation required to thrive in this cutthroat profession.

Rebrovich still talks to Dareus all the time. He’s doing well.

Rebrovich also cites Walker’s foundation as a strength.

To be sure, Walker does not sound the least bit complacent, insisting multiple times the only thing he cares about is Buffalo going 1-0 each week. Teammates may be talking Canton. As his star rises, Walker is making a conscious effort to avoid all hype around his name.

“I don’t care,” Walker says. “That’s all politics anyway. The same people that praise you on the Internet — when you get too engulfed in it and you have a bad game — now they’re the ones bashing you. So why would I put any energy into it?”

Sage life advice for all.

He doesn’t want to change anything that’d detour his current trajectory. The more mayhem he creates, the better this Bills defense will be when it matters most. It’s a unit working through growing pains. A defense that has embraced a bend-don’t-break life since 2017 now wants to attack offenses. Rousseau loves defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard’s scheme. No longer will the Bills sit back and invite 15-play drives. He calls it “boom or bust,” adding that it’s their job to supply the boom in the form of sacks and turnovers. Buffalo (correctly) wants the ball back in Josh Allen’s hands as much as possible.

The pressure’s on this defensive front to collapse the pocket.

Especially against elite quarterbacks like the reigning MVP they’ll face tonight.

Especially come playoff time.

From afar, Marrow is still telling everyone who’ll listen that Walker is on the cusp of greatness. He sees a 10+ year career, $200 million in earnings, endless big plays. He stayed in close contact with sharp Bills personnel man Pete Harris throughout the entire process, sending text after text after text. A few weeks ago, Harris offered a token of gratitude for his insistence — he was right. And, hey, Marrow himself was selected by the Bills in the 11^th round of the 1992 draft. The longtime coach knows the city’s dying for a championship.

“This,” Marrow promises, “is just the tip of the iceberg.”

True, as Beane notes, Walker is not even fully grown as a man yet.

They view him as an “arrow up” player with a limitless future at a premium position.

Era to era, Beane believes one NFL fact holds true: hell-raising pass rushers up front win games. Philadelphia emasculated Mahomes. Seattle harassed Maye. Neither game was a revelation. With the Carolina Panthers, Beane saw what a dangerous pass rush can do to offenses en route to Super Bowl appearances in 2003 and 2015. This summer, he was able to catch up with Julius Peppers in Canton. The GM took a picture with Peppers and joked that nobody can take him out of the Hall of Fame if he still had some snaps in him.

Peppers the freakiest athlete Beane has ever seen in this sport.

Walker is extraterrestrial in his own right.

“He has answered the bell,” the GM says. “He’s so football smart and understands how people are trying to block him. But he’s still young. There’s still a lot of room to grow. You don’t want to get overexcited because you want to take one day at a time and keep pushing him and see where we can go.”

Buffalo hopes this is only the beginning.

RIP, Mike Ditka

Tyler Dunne — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:19:46 GMT

Football isn’t football as we know it without “Iron Mike.”

Very sad news today. Mike Ditka — the Chicago Bears icon — has passed away at the age 86.

Through the 60s, he essentially created the tight end position and defined the sport.

My goodness, what a pleasure it was traveling to Naples, Fla., to hang out with Ditka for “Blood and Guts: How Tight Ends Save Football” five years ago. Everyone throws around the word legend far too often. Ditka, in every sense, truly was a legend.

Here’s that chapter from my book for those who’d like to get to know Ditka the player and the man. He was exceptionally candid on some very raw subjects.

Thanks, all.

The Blueprint

Mike Ditka is exactly where he should be. A living legend in the heaven on earth he deserves. Enter the clubhouse of Olde Florida Golf Club in Naples, veer left, and of course Ditka’s relaxing with a cigar in his hand. He stares off at his course through the window. Back when he cofounded it in 1992, Ditka had one simple request: “No bullshit.” That is, no golfers can dillydally. Everyone must keep moving, hole to hole, because you’re here to golf, dammit. Not screw around. Fast greens on rolling terrain reflect this vision.

He sets the cigar in an ashtray, and his friends migrate to a nearby table for another game of gin.

The patriarch of pain in football is obviously hurting at age eighty- two. There’s a walker within arm’s reach and, when he tries to scoot in his chair over to chat, it’s a struggle. Forged in the steel town of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, “Iron Mike” has been one of the sport’s most indestructible forces from player to coach to commentator, and now this room serves as the twilight of his extraordinary life. Ditka brushes off help from others, notes that he’s had “four or five” hip replacements and leaves it at that. “I can’t complain,” he says. No use listing all the permanent wounds this sport inflicted when these wounds, to him, were always part of the deal. Those legendary hands that caught 427 passes and mauled linebackers for twelve bruising pro seasons are weathered. Mounds have swollen over the knuckles on the index and middle fingers of his right hand.

This day, there’s a Band- Aid about six inches above his left knee. His voice crackles. His thoughts occasionally flicker.

Yet look closely and it’s abundantly clear Ditka is still Ditka. The intimidating jowls. The brow that weighs heavy over soft blue eyes. The wavy hair slicked back. The iconic mustache that’s so tightly groomed. This is still a man who can make a visitor sit up straight and half expect a whistle to be blown for a dozen up-downs. There’s no Rob Gronkowski, no George Kittle — no modern NFL tight end, period — without the man sitting here. Before Ditka, the tight end was a blocker attached to the hip of the offensive tackle. He changed that forever. Most important, this position taught Ditka about life. So, no, don’t interpret his tendency to repeat himself as a fading mind. It’s a default. His tendency to heap praise upon everyone else, over and over, is more so an everlasting effect of the turning point in his life a half century ago.

So many memories remain preserved in the corners of his mind, and he brings them to life here. The NFL existed for forty-one years before Ditka was drafted with the fifth overall pick by the Chicago Bears in 1961, but the league was more of a footnote then. A regional attraction your milkmen and shoemakers mentioned on occasion. Ditka drove the sport directly into America’s living room. It’s no coincidence that over the course of his career, 1961 to 1972, the number of Americans who cited pro football as their favorite sport increased by 15 percent while baseball slid from 34 to 21 percent. The sport’s inherent violence was intoxicating — ruthless, yet aesthetically beautiful. There was something special about football’s attrition, the fact that this game is not for everyone. Swinging a baseball bat was quite different than bashing into another human being at full speed. Football weeded out the mentally and physically weak.

No one grasped this reality better than Ditka through the ’60s. At tight end, he injected the sport with an unprecedented dose of toughness.

His sanctuary these days often resembles a nature exhibit. Deer tend to prance over those Olde Florida greens. Raccoons aren’t nocturnal around here, either. They’ll zigzag through the palm trees in the daytime. And watch out for the alligators strutting onto the fair-ways during mating season. They’re particularly bold. Maybe because they’re the ones lucky enough to be alive. As one employee here points out, birds love to swoop in and eat the babies. Which all makes this a fitting environment to relive Ditka’s rise. He operated at the very top of the food chain in his kingdom.

“You have to understand,” Ditka begins, “where I came from.” There isn’t a cloud in the sky this eighty-one degree day or one critter on the course as Ditka leans back.

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He starts in Aliquippa, the town that made him. More specifically, he starts with the man who made him: Mike Sr.

One of his dad’s beatings certainly stands out above the rest. Eyes fixated forward at nothing in particular, Mike Jr. relives that day. He was in third grade and wanted to give smoking a try, so he swiped a pack of his dad’s Lucky Strike cigarettes and headed off into a wooded area outside their home. Mike Jr. found a nice spot to relax, lit the cigarette, and took a puff. The inhalation made him extremely dizzy and he dropped the cigarette. Here, Ditka turns to make eye contact.

“I burned the goddamn woods down.”

When Dad came home from work, he looked out the back window, saw the damage, and asked his wife what happened. She said he should ask his son and, moments later, Mike Sr. retrieved his thick leather belt, which he’d kept from his time in the Marines.

“I got my ass beat so bad it was unbelievable. That’s OK. I learned. And, listen, he was old-school. He was raised that way. He raised me that way. His other kids didn’t get any hits. But I got ’em. I was the old-est, I was supposed to be the example, so I got them. When I got out of line, I got my ass whipped. I thank God I was raised the way I was.”

Ditka holds his thumb and index finger a half inch apart. That’s how thick his dad’s belt was, and it made contact with his ass more times than he can count. As the oldest of four kids, he was made out to be that example.

He was perfectly fine with it all, too. The relationship was based on “respect,” he adds. “Not fear. Respect.”

This was how Mike Sr. was raised by his father, who emigrated to the States from Ukraine, so Mike Jr. received the same upbringing. Simple as that. The family’s last name was actually “Dyczko,” and Mike Sr. changed it to what he thought the name sounded like: “Ditka.” He was in the Marines until Mike Jr. was four years old. Never overseas, he spent a good amount of time across the country at a base in San Diego. In Aliquippa, the family lived in a housing project. “It wasn’t a special life,” Ditka says, “but it was a good life.” When Dad came home for dinner, Mike knew to sit down immediately and wasn’t allowed to leave until he washed and dried the dishes. At age nine, he had a paper route and, initially, didn’t own a bike. That meant walking up and down the hills by foot. All money earned was given to his parents, who then gave him an allowance.

“We didn’t have anything,” Ditka says, “but we earned everything we had.”

Aliquippa was a booming steel town through those ’40s and ’50s. America was at war with communism and refineries like J&L Steel manufactured steel for battleships and planes. J&L employed about half of the entire town. The richest families lived up on the hill in mansions while most families, like the Ditkas, lived down in the valley. Mike Jr. never saw color. To him, fathers of Black kids in his school worked at the mill just like his, so what was the difference? His family didn’t own anything they lacked. Still, as Ditka wrote in his autobiography: “It was a very ethnic area, which was also very prejudiced. Whether you were a Polack or a Hunky or a Jew or a Dago or a Wop or a Cake-eater or Colored — we didn’t use the other slang word for Blacks — it was prejudiced.”

His dad worked on the railroad that serviced J&L Steel. He was also a welder and the president of a local union where, his son says, “he didn’t take any shit from the workers or the management.” When Mike Sr. returned home for dinner, his clothes were burnt and blackened, a daily reminder to all four kids of what a true work ethic entailed. Especially his oldest. “When he said, ‘Jump,’ I said, ‘How high?’ ” All the way to eighth grade, Mike Jr. needed to be home by 7 p.m. He was close to his younger brother, Ashton, and the two fought constantly. During one youth baseball game, Mike was the losing pitcher because Ash-ton dropped a fly ball. Mike chased him home and beat him up. Dad promptly whipped them both.

“There was no sparing the rod. If you did something wrong, you got your ass whipped. But I don’t regret it one bit. He raised me the right way, and because of that, I had a value system. I knew what was right and I knew what was wrong. And I tried to stay away from doing what was wrong.”

He’d occasionally take a BB gun into the woods to shoot frogs, but Ditka quickly realized it was best to play sports as much as possible. His youth was a nonstop loop of football, baseball, basketball. The weather never mattered much. He and his buddies would shoot hoops until their fingers cracked in the cold. His temper would still get him in trouble. Even if his dad missed a baseball game, he’d hear about a tantrum his son threw and make sure there were consequences. Press Maravich, the father of future NBA star Pete Maravich, was his high school basketball coach, while the hard- driving Carl Aschman was his football coach. Ditka played fullback, linebacker, end, pretty much any-where that allowed him to kick somebody’s ass. As a junior, he even caught a touchdown in the state championship game.

What Ditka remembers most this day is Aschman teaching him how to block. For a good twenty minutes after practice, he’d have Ditka at the blocking sled.

“I was a better baseball player. I thought I’d be a baseball player and ended up being a football player. It was all because of Carl Aschman. It wasn’t because of me. He took the time. He taught me how to block. He taught me how to receive. He took the time. He cared. I don’t know what he saw, but he saw something.”

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Colleges passed through and Aschman told them about Ditka. That was the extent of football scouting in the ’50s. With his choices down to the University of Pittsburgh or Penn State, Ditka chose Pitt . . . not that he envisioned pro football as a career. The thought never crossed his mind. Nor did Ditka have any desire to work in the steel mill.

His plan was to be a dentist. There was only one problem. “I had a little problem with chemistry,” he says, smiling. It’s not that Ditka didn’t like the class. The class, he points out, didn’t like him.

As it turned out, neither did anyone who got into his way on a foot-ball field. At Pitt, Ditka played end on both sides of the ball and didn’t merely enjoy contact. This tree trunk in a crew cut demanded it. One teammate, Foge Fazio, later recalled Ditka looking “like a prizefighter in the ring” between plays because he couldn’t wait to fight again. Ernie Hefferle, who coached the team’s ends, said Ditka would plead for the team to hit more in practice. “All he wanted to do was hit, hit, hit.” Teammates were on high alert in the locker room, too. After miss-ing a tackle on Michigan State’s Herb Adderley, Pitt’s Chuck Reinhold was a tick too upbeat for Ditka’s liking in saying, “We’re only down 7-0.” Ditka told Reinhold that he was the reason they were losing, then bounced him off a locker. Ditka always backed up his bark. In his last college game, he dislocated his shoulder trying to block a punt and still played the rest of the game.

Pitt hardly threw the ball — Ditka caught all of eleven passes for 229 yards as a senior— but his brutality on both sides of the ball was rare.

Opponents saw it. Future Pro Football Hall of Famer Dave Robinson faced Ditka in college (at Penn State) and the pros (with Green Bay) and remembers Ditka most as a menace of a defensive end. On film, Penn State noticed that every time a team tried to run a sweep to the left, Ditka sprinted right down the line to catch their halfback. Since the Penn State power sweep called for both guards to lead the way, they changed it up vs. Ditka. They had Robinson, the right guard, spin around to peel back on Ditka. Unfortunately, the left guard got confused and both guards blocked Ditka, thus nuking the play. Scouts saw it, too. As the Dallas Cowboys’ VP of personnel, Gil Brandt remembers watching Ditka catch balls in a workout and sprinting right into a cement mixer that was the size of an oversized barbecue pit. The mixer wasn’t even on the field of play, but when Ditka ran routes, he had a tendency to continue running. “If he caught the ball at the 20-yard line, he ran it into the end zone,” Brandt says. “If he caught the ball at the 40-yard line, he ran it into the end zone.” Ditka blasted into the mixer at the end of the field, put a large dent into it, yet hardly flinched. He acted like he casually bumped into a stranger at the grocery store.

A consensus All-American, Ditka was selected fifth overall by the Chicago Bears in the 1961 NFL Draft and given a deal worth $12,000 with a $6,000 signing bonus. Off to the big time he went. Mike Jr. showed the contract to Mike Sr., and his dad only grunted.

Most people, he told his son, work a long time to earn this amount of money.

To this day, Mike Ditka is dumbfounded. Pitt ran the ball nearly four times more than they passed it. He cannot fathom how his two hands would go on to catch 427 passes in professional football.

“I have no idea,” says Ditka, pausing.

“Luke Johnsos. Without him. I wouldn’t be talking to you today.” This isn’t a name celebrated alongside the greatest innovators in the sport’s history, but it should be. Johnsos played for the Bears from 1929 to 1936 before then coaching under founder- owner–head coach George Halas the next thirty-three seasons. As the team’s offensive coordinator in ’61, he recognized that Ditka owned a set of soft hands for his size and knew it’d be difficult for defensive backs to tackle him in open space. The birth of the tight end was rooted in simple strategy. Detached from the trenches, a large human could do serious damage against much smaller humans.

One vivid memory resurfaces. When Ditka was struggling to get off the line of scrimmage, Johnsos asked why and the rookie told him that the linebacker kept jamming him into the tackle. Johnsos instructed Ditka to line up about three yards wider at the line of scrimmage and, voila, the tight end now had a “two-way release.” He could go inside. He could go outside. The kid who lit the woods on fire then did the same thing to pro football with 56 receptions for 1,076 yards and 12 touchdowns as a rookie. Ditka credits Johnsos (“he revolutionized the position”) and quarterback Bill Wade (“he loved to throw the football to me— thank God”) and claims all he did was catch the ball and run (“I became an offensive weapon”), all while remaining baffled by his coach’s vision.

“He used the tight end how no one else had ever thought about using him. He was the reason I had success. What made him have the vision to throw me the football that much? I don’t know.”

There were clobbering fullbacks before, like Marion Motley. There were prolific receivers, like Raymond Berry. Yet never were these skills blended into one package. The closest comparison was Pete Pihos, whom Brandt describes as a tight end playing wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1947 to 1955. Running eight- and nine- yard routes, Pihos was awkward to defend and could box out linebackers with a broad- shouldered frame. He caught sixty- plus passes in three straight seasons. Pihos, however, was also twenty- five pounds lighter than Ditka, a man with bad intentions. A man who ushered in a level of cruelty foreign to offensive football.

Mike Ditka treated the field as primitive, eat-or-be-eaten terrain that 1961 season.

In his first game ever, a 37–13 loss, the rookie told guard Ted Karras to get the lead out of his ass and Karras threw a punch at him. “Was I right?” Ditka asks here. “Probably not. But I wasn’t wrong, either.” Ahead of a game against the Baltimore Colts, the Bears were well aware that their linebacker, Bill Pellington, had knocked out Detroit Lions tight end Jim Gibbons. Halas even alerted the commissioner of Pellington’s dirty play and, the first play of the game, Pellington punched Ditka in the mouth. The next play, Ditka cocked an arm back and returned the favor. And that was that. Pellington didn’t bother him the rest of the game. When San Francisco 49ers defensive back David Baker hit one of his teammates with a cheap shot later that season, Ditka teed off on him.

His code wasn’t complicated. Accept getting bullied, you will be bullied. Stand up for yourself, you’ll command respect. Instantly, the NFL knew where Mike Ditka stood. When the ball was in his hands, his mentality was to simply do everything in his power to prevent people from tackling him. If that meant lowering his shoulder? Fine. A stiff arm? Perfect. Linebackers started to clothesline Ditka before he had a chance to get a head of steam but they soon learned that this came with a consequence.

“If they clotheslined me and I had a chance to blindside him,” Ditka says, “I was going to get him.”

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Most opponents retreated, never to test Ditka again. One, however, always came back for more.

Nobody pushed Ditka to his edge quite like linebacker Ray Nitschke. Ditka doesn’t even consider clotheslines from the snarling, balding, savage heartbeat of the Green Bay Packers’ defense dirty. Rather, Ditka insists Nitschke was “physically tough” and that he needed to match his toughness. The rivalry between the Packers and the Bears defined foot-ball through the 1960s, and central to it all were these two apex preda-tors fighting for dominion. After Nitschke knocked him unconscious in a preseason game, Ditka got revenge in a regular- season game. His crackback block sent the linebacker to the locker room and Nitschke, he says, never forgot. That point forward, Nitschke took a run at Ditka every chance he could. “He tried to knock the shit out of me,” says Ditka, “but I’d get him back.” Nitschke even confronted Ditka outside of a Milwaukee restaurant once. The two didn’t fight . . . but it was close. “I’m going to get you,” Nitschke promised. To which Ditka replied, “If you’re going to get me, you better get me good.”

Then, they continued to face each other three games a season. Ditka runs the math in his head and estimates they broke even.

“Nitschke tried to kill me. He didn’t take any prisoners. When you played the Packers, it was survival of the fittest. You had to play them a certain way if you wanted to survive. I played with the Cow-boys. I played with the Eagles. There was never a rivalry like the Bears and the Packers. That was the epitome of what a rivalry was in the National Football League. I mean, we kicked the hell out of each other.”

The Bears could lose every game, but beat Green Bay? Halas considered that a successful season. Robinson started alongside Nitschke for most of those battles. Whenever the two Hall of Famers shed other tight ends to the grass, he says, that’s where they stayed. Ditka pounced to his feet and drilled them in the back while making a tackle.

“You knew he was going to knock you off the ball,” Robinson says. “He was tougher than nails.”

Ditka and Nitschke gained a mutual respect, of course. The two became friends and kept in touch up to Nitschke’s death in 1998.

Football, to Ditka, was always a Me vs. You test of will. “You want to go head-to-head?” he says. “Fine. OK.” No play epitomized this mentality more than when he returned for his first pro game back in Western Pennsylvania. On November 24, 1963, two days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the NFL decided to play on and the Bears visited the Steelers in Pittsburgh. Dad, Mom, and so many rela-tives made the short twenty- mile trip to see Mike Jr. play. Trailing 17–14 with five minutes left, the Bears faced a second- and-thirty-six and Wade told his tight end to run a corner route. Exhausted, Ditka asked if he could run a short hook route instead. The NFL would label what happened next the sixty- ninth- best play ever. Ditka caught the short pass, Clendon Thomas whisked by him, and Ditka stormed upfield into a trio of Steelers defenders. First, he flattened Glenn Glass with the crown of his helmet. Myron Pottios dove and could only grasp his right foot for a split second. And poor Willie Daniel. All Daniel could do was helplessly lunge for any cloth possible in embarrassing fashion before being flicked away like a fly.

Ditka rumbled ahead for sixty-three yards to set up a game-tying field goal that helped catapult Chicago into the NFL Championship, where they’d beat the New York Giants, 14– 10.

“He was the meanest, toughest rascal in the league, and I’ve got the dent in my head to prove it,” Thomas told the Pittsburgh Press. “Anytime you came near Ditka, you had to expect forearms and fists. You came away bruised. He was mean, but he was also as talented as anyone I ever lined up against.”

Practicing against an all-time defense helped, too. He shouldn’t only be associated with the “85 Bears.” The unit that won a title in 1963 was historic, too, in allowing a meager ten points per game. The best player Ditka ever faced might’ve been on his own team in the six-foot-eight, 285-pound Doug Atkins. Nobody — ever — gave Atkins shit in practice. He was big. He was mean. He was the nicest fella on the team until you pissed him off. As Ditka explains, Atkins was both lean and muscular, “so he just threw people around like rag dolls.”

This was one player Ditka would never piss off.

“No! I’m not dumb.”

Playing this violently meant doing serious damage to his own body, of course. Not that Ditka sat out. He couldn’t shake the thought of how much money his dad made at the mill. That was real work. This was a game. He injected his body with novocaine and cortisone all the time to play on. In 1964, Ditka even played all season with a dislocated shoulder. He initially separated it in an exhibition game against the College All- Stars, which seemed innocent enough. When the darn thing kept popping out, Ditka strapped it into place with a harness and didn’t miss a game. “Hey,” he says, “you learn to play with pain.” Here, he demonstrates how. His left arm was fine. He could stretch that all the way up, like so. His right arm? He couldn’t even bend it to shoulder height. That season, he figured out a way to knock a pass with his good arm down into his chest to catch seventy- five passes, the most in his career, for 897 yards with five touchdowns.

Decades later, it still hurts to lift that arm.

The worst injury of them all struck the following season. In 1965, the arch in his foot “cracked” and he then felt it pop once more in its cast while fooling around at practice. Ditka played that entire season with a dislocated foot by numbing it up once before the game, then again at halftime. Life sure was good for Mike Ditka . . . until it wasn’t. In 1966, he caught only 32 passes on a 5-7-2 Bears team, and his most memorable moment was decking a drunken fan on the field. The more he challenged authority and flirted with the AFL’s Houston Oilers, the more he agitated Halas. Finally, in 1967, the Bears boss traded his star tight end to the Philadelphia Eagles and Ditka’s life unraveled. He has since described his two seasons with the Eagles as “purgatory on earth.”

He was depressed. He hated football. He’d later admit he almost killed himself drinking. Toiling at rock bottom is burnt into Mike Ditka’s memory as much as any touchdown. That second year in Philly, he nearly self-destructed.

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Living by himself, in a downtown apartment, Ditka would go out every single night, and the alcohol had a way of whipping him into a strange haze. He’d often wake up in “strange places” with zero recollection how he got there or who he was with. The next day, his hangover would be more of a severe fog in which Ditka was unable to comprehend what was real and what wasn’t. He drank so much that the complexion of his skin started to change. His playing time decreased. The Eagles went 2-12. It all spiraled the five-time Pro Bowler deeper and deeper and deeper into depression. At work, he’d spar often with new head coach Joe Kuharich and, late in a 47– 13 loss in Cleveland, the mess Ditka created for himself clubbed him harder than any Nitschke clothesline. With his parents sitting in the stands— when he explicitly told them not to come — Ditka sat on the bench and wept.

Three weeks later, after a season- finale loss to the Vikings, he didn’t say goodbye to anyone. Ditka got into his car and drove straight through a blizzard back to his home in Chicago. He did not care that there was still one year left on his contract.

“I was going to quit,” Ditka says. “I lost my love of the game, but what else was I going to do? I wasn’t a rocket scientist.”

As the decades pass, this low point of Ditka’s life only vanishes from the minds of football fans but, here, it’s clear that Ditka has not forgotten.

“It seemed to be the thing to do. You think you’re a big-t ime foot-ball player—‘ I’m going to go get drunk.’ It could’ve been the end of it, really.”

He stares at the ground. “I was a mess.”

Ditka was the first tight end to lose himself, to enter such a dark-ness, and he wouldn’t be the last. This position tends to attract the wildest personalities in football, and those personalities tend to push themselves to the brink. It’s a fine line. When all hell- raising is funneled into stiff- arms and crackbacks, the tight end is one of the most entertaining athletes in all of sports. Yet it’s not easy to confine all belligerence to three hours on a Sunday. Years later, Tony Gonzalez would face the same moment of truth.

Tight ends find a way of digging themselves out of the abyss, too. Starting with Ditka.

Three days after deciding he was finished with football— devoid of any Plan B in life— Ditka received a phone call from Tom Landry. The Dallas Cowboys head coach told Ditka he had traded for him and, while he had no clue if Ditka could still play, he wanted to give this a try. Ditka had no clue why any team would want him. His best guess is that one of his only good games that wretched season came against Dallas.

That phone call, however, saved his career. And, honestly, his life. “The best thing that happened to me was when I met Tom Landry. He really made me. He made me understand what it was to be a team player. He was fantastic. He was just absolutely the best. I went there and cleaned up my act and became a pretty good football player. A team player.”

Granted, Ditka got off to a rocky start. After a night out, he got into a car accident with Walt Garrison that sent him through the wind-shield and knocked his teeth out. As Garrison later recalled, the dentist gave Ditka two options. He could wire his teeth shut (and not play the next day) or pull his teeth. Ditka told him to “pull the son of a bitches,” but soon learned he didn’t have a choice because, it turned out, his jaw was also broken. Said Garrison: “You could hear him out on the field breathing through his teeth. ‘Hiss- haw, hiss- haw, hiss- haw,’ ” Garrison recalled in Cowboys Have Always Been My Heroes. “Sounded like a rabid hound. And you could hear that mad dog Ditka cussin’ even with his mouth wired shut.” As legend has it, he didn’t even use an anesthetic.

Ditka soon cleaned up his act and supplied the Cowboys exactly what they needed: toughness. As a receiver, he couldn’t get separation anymore. But he was crafty enough to get open, he could still catch with his hands and, Brandt adds, he was still a competitor. In Dallas, Ditka worked out more than he ever did in Chicago, trimming down to 215 pounds.

“What happens is people get down on people too quickly,” Brandt says. “A guy might have a bad year. Mike played when he could hardly walk. You always hear that Mike played when other people would’ve sat. He played when other people did sit. He was tougher than heck.”

As a twenty- two- year- old rookie, Cliff Harris had no problems covering Ditka in practice. The tight end’s speed was obviously shot. But right when you’d be up on him as a DB, ready to break where he broke at the top of a route, he’d blast you with a forearm. “Boom!” Harris says. “I learned to stay a forearm distance away.” That’s how Ditka still man-aged to catch 72 balls for 924 yards with 5 touchdowns through four seasons as a Cowboy. Four seasons that helped define the tight end position as much as anything because Ditka overcame his demons. Ditka embraced the altruism of the profession. Landry was a man of faith who pulled no punches, and he loved it. Landry made it clear that Ditka was here to block and lead, a responsibility he took to heart.

At the time, the Cowboys were known as chokers. This was the team that lost two NFL Championships to the Green Bay Packers, including the “Ice Bowl” in 1967, and then Super Bowl V to the Baltimore Colts, 16– 13. Expectations were high into 1971. After a sluggish 4-3 start, Ditka was the one who spoke up. He told the team that when everyone works together “miracles happen.”

“All of a sudden,” quarterback Roger Staubach later said, “these same human beings won ten games in a row.”

In Super Bowl VI, Dallas romped the Miami Dolphins, 24–3. Ditka caught a touchdown pass for old time’s sake, too.

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The Cowboys would go on to make the playoffs in eleven of their next twelve seasons with one more Super Bowl title, and Staubach credited Ditka as the player who made this a team that refused to back down. To anybody. Of course, the long-t erm effect was greater for Ditka. He retired after the 1972 season and seamlessly transitioned into coach-ing on Landry’s staff as the special teams coordinator. Harris returned kicks then and, every week, Ditka coached like he played. His face was red. His voice was hoarse. He stormed around the practice field like a man ten coffees deep and warned everyone that this was the best special teams unit the Cowboys had faced yet, so “You guys really gotta get after ’em!” Harris would never object, lest he piss Ditka off, but he could not help but ask himself, “Didn’t he say that last week?” Either way, the enthusiasm was contagious.

In 1981, Ditka buried the hatchet with Halas by writing the Bears’ founder a letter. He said he wanted to renew their friendship and asked if Halas would one day consider him for the head coaching job.

Halas asked Landry if Ditka was ready. He was. And, in 1982, Ditka shuffled back to Chicago, where his name became synonymous with football itself. On a team loaded with characters, Ditka was larger than life in winning six division titles over ten years. The ’85 Bears remain one of the greatest teams of all time. All along, one principle guided Ditka. He played as hard as he could for as long as he could so, as a coach, demanded the same thing from every player.

Ron Rivera lived it. He spent his entire nine- year career as a line-backer playing for Ditka and, as the team’s union rep, says the two developed a “unique relationship.” They’d meet one-on-one every two weeks. Training camps under Ditka were as ruthless as one could imagine from a disciple of both Halas and Landry. The Bears were in pads twice a day for a good eight weeks.

After one merciless practice, Rivera felt compelled to speak up.

“He just ripped our ass,” Rivera says. “It was a hot, tough day and we were dragging ass. He had this thing: ‘Fatigue makes cowards out of all of us.’ That’s one of the things he’d always grind on us about. So afterwards, it was one of those days I had to go in and talk to him about some general stuff and I said to him, ‘Coach, I’ve got to ask you something. Why are you so hard on us? I mean goddamn. What the fuck, Coach? What’s that all about?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Ronnie, I would never ask you guys to do anything I couldn’t do as a player because I believe you guys can do it.’ ”

The words hit home. This was two years after Ditka was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Bears were playing an exhibition game in Canton. On the team bus, Ditka made a point to sign and hand one of his Hall of Fame portrait cards to Rivera. Three decades later, as an NFL coach himself, Rivera still hung onto that card, too.

“The whole point was the dude had a standard and he believed that if he could do it, we could do it.”

Ditka coached the New Orleans Saints for three disappointing sea-sons (1997–1 999), wearing a dreadlock wig in his press conference after trading his entire draft for Texas running back Ricky Williams. And, hey, why not pose in a bride- and- groom photoshoot with the Heisman Trophy winner for a magazine cover? Ditka was himself. Always. It didn’t matter if a reporter asked him why he was in a bad mood after a loss. “What do you care?” he once sniped back. “If you were 2-7, you’d be in a bad mood, too.” Or if he was starring in the 2005 movie Kicking and Screaming with Will Ferrell. Or if he was dishing unfiltered takes as an unofficial narrator of the sport for various TV networks.

This raw authenticity endeared the man to people of all ages from all backgrounds. If the NFL ever did create a silhouette logo for its league, like the NBA did with Jerry West, it’d sure be hard to top Ditka. Two syllables that ooze grit. And the tipping point for this all was ’68. Only by looking himself in the mirror— and admitting he had a problem— was Ditka able to rediscover his true self. Landry threw him a life raft, and Ditka was once again that yes- sir, no-sir kid from Aliquippa.

Those principles instilled by his father years ago would serve as the compass for the rest of his life.

“Hard work. Effort. Don’t be a complainer,” Ditka says. “Don’t be a whiner. That’s the way I tried to play the game and coach the game. If you were willing to work your ass off and do the right thing — even if you didn’t — then I would care about you. It was a great run. You don’t know why things happen. If I had to change something, I don’t know what I’d change. You have setbacks, so you can move forward again.

“It’s been a hell of a run. I have no complaints.”

His wife, Diana, leans in with a quick story to share. Back when they first started dating, in the early ’70s, she’d tell people her new boy-friend played football and when they asked what position he played, she was stumped. “I think he’s a ‘tight ass’ or something,” she’d reply. In fairness to her, a tight end really wasn’t a tight end until Ditka made it so. Not surprisingly, when he flips on the TV today, Ditka sees a sport that’s getting softer. All this showboating irritates him, too. “I think you respect your opponent. If you beat him, fine. Don’t try to make him look bad.” Even the coverage of the sport, the talk show fodder, can be too much to stomach. “All bullshit.”

Ditka does enjoy watching modern tight ends. All are a heck of a lot more athletic than he was at his peak.

“But,” he adds, “it doesn’t mean they were tougher or smarter or hit harder. They do things I could never do. But I know one thing: They couldn’t play any harder than I played.”

Good luck finding any tight ends post- Ditka that’d ever argue this. Now, Ditka is perfectly content watching the sun slowly set surrounded by the people he loves. At one point, his daughter arrives from out of town, gives her dad a kiss on the cheek and shows him a football card one of her coworkers’ husbands recently dug up. Right there, is the iconic mean mug — the cheeks, the crew cut, the eyes. “Handsome man!” she says. Ditka can credit Mike Sr. and Aschman and Johnsos and Landry all he wants, but he is the true godfather of the tight end position.

And, if history is any guide, there’s no need for Ditka to worry. The position he created will protect this sport’s bludgeoning violence forever.

Inside look at the Green Bay Packers’ 2025 wild-card collapse... how did this happen?

Tyler Dunne — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 15:01:18 GMT

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Welcome to Packers-Bears Week.

This may be the most important regular-season game of the Matt LaFleur Era in Green Bay.

No, it wasn’t easy for this team down in Tampa, Fla., against an UDFA rookie quarterback but the Packers managed to win, 17-14, to even their record to 2-2.

Meanwhile, it hasn’t mattered who Ben Johnson has at quarterback. He was handpicked to save this franchise and has managed to keep this Bears offense rollin’ with Case Keenum and Tyson Bagent as Caleb Williams recovers from a hamstring injury.

Over the weekend, we published a two-parter on LaFleur. Subscribers can read in full.

Part I: The Boss
Part II: Identity Crisis
Subscribe now

A few days after the Packers inexplicably lost to the Chicago Bears in the 2025 Wild Card round — wounds still fresh, memories still sharp — I chatted with sources inside the building. One coach in particular broke everything down in painstaking detail.

Looking back, this game truly did pan a magnifying glass over LaFleur himself. This night highlighted everything that makes him a great coach and, of course, those shortcomings. Green Bay built a 21-3 lead and could not finish.

Thirteen Seconds ultimately doomed Sean McDermott in Western New York. This game, “21-3,” is currently hovering over LaFleur like a dark cloud. All parties involved will remember all moments for a very long time.

There are plays you know. But, as you’ll read below, there’s a few moments you probably missed.

LaFleur and the Packers have a chance to exact a measure of revenge Sunday at Lambeau Field.

The best way to understand the ludicrous nature of this playoff loss at Soldier Field is by gauging how comfortable coaches felt about Matt LaFleur’s job status before this 31-27 defeat versus after.

Up to kickoff? This felt like a done deal. Of course president Ed Policy would stick with both his head coach and GM. Continuity reigns supreme in Wisconsin. Upheaval is for everyone else. On the team website, Policy offered both individuals a strong vote of confidence by stating how “proud” he was of this team for persevering “through a litany of injuries and a very challenging schedule.”

But then the Packers suffered a heartbreaker nobody will ever forget.

Playoff losses this grisly get people fired all the time.

“Doubt,” one assistant admits, “obviously crept in.”

What happened on the shores of Lake Michigan? Let’s dive deep.

There are essentially three prisms in which you can view this disaster and we’ll take ‘em one by one: Player Error, Coaching Malpractice & No Killer Instinct.

Player Error.

The simplest fix.

If one of a dozen or so plays go their way, the Packers likely win.

So many forgotten moments will be lost in time.

Andrew Brandt on power of ‘serendipity,’ his rise, Barcelona, Packers life, Favre-to-Rodgers

Tyler Dunne — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 14:21:52 GMT

Villanova University

There’s an NFL presented at podiums and proliferated on social media.

Then, there’s the real NFL behind the scenes.

We’re always trying to bring the latter to life. So what a good time it was chatting with a former Green Bay Packers vice president who enjoys lifting up that curtain to educate the masses. You can watch the full Go Long Podcast episode with Andrew Brandt right here.

For those who prefer to read, our chat is transcribed below.

Be sure to read his new book — “Smarter About Sports: My Life Navigating Athletes, Agents, Media, and the Business of the NFL.” The Amazon link to hardcover, Kindle and Audible is here.

We get into Andrew’s rise in sports, orchestrating all contracts in Green Bay from 1999- ‘08, the Favre-to-Rodgers transition to his mission today.

New here? Go Long is fueled 100 percent by our readers. We’d love to have you as a subscriber today.

What a pleasure to welcome on a familiar face for not just us here at Go Long, but the entire sports world. Andrew, you’ve definitely been so generous with your time and sharing your experiences and your knowledge with everybody. It’s made everybody smarter about sports, which is why I love the title of your new book. “Smarter About Sports:” Andrew Brandt, of course, VP with the Green Bay Packers from 1999 to 2008. All of your amazing work at ESPN. And I love what you’re doing today. Now, you’re helping the next generation at Villanova as the executive director of the Sports Law Center.

Brandt: Great to be with you, Tyler. I’ve known you for a long time. I’ve enjoyed working with you. And it’s been, I think really since I left the Packers some 16 years ago, I’ve just tried to do this. And this meaning, make people smarter about sports through TV, radio, podcasts, all my writing first for National Football Post, then for ESPN, then for Sports Illustrated. Now I do the Sunday Seven newsletter and the podcast and all the appearances I do. And, of course, students. I’ve probably taught 1,000 students over the years. And when I started thinking about a title for the book, I’m like, yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to do that in 20 different ways in my life now. Let’s just sum it up there with “Smarter About Sports.”

And I’ll get right to it, Tyler. The one thing I thought I could do is (write a book) through stories that only I can tell. These are stories that only I can tell and there are hundreds of them, literally. There’s more than 100 stories in the book. That’s the way I teach in front of my classes. That’s the way I lecture when I talk to corporations. It’s stories. I’ve found in life that what resonates more than anything in terms of learning is a story. Not just standing up there and telling theory. Not just saying this is the way you should do something. It’s through stories. So that’s what the book is. Through my entire life. And as you’ve seen so many chapters — I know a lot of people want to talk about the Packers. That’s just part of it in the way I’ve sort of lived my life through these different angles in sports. And I hope it’s instructive and informative and certainly entertaining for anyone interested in the business of sports, the law of sports, the sociology of sports, sports policy, and of course working in sports. I hope it’s great for everyone.

I love that approach, Andrew, because it’s visual. We can picture you in these situations. It’s easy today when a contract goes down or somebody gets suspended or anything happens in pro football and you got ChatGPT, you have Google, AI and badabing, badadboom, we think we know everything in that 1.2 seconds it takes for something to get spit out. That’s not going to tell you anything. You lived it. You were at the negotiating table literally with some of the biggest names in sports. You had to roll up your sleeves at times. That’s where you learn how this stuff really goes down, isn’t it? It’s not just being a self-anointed expert on the subject, which there are plenty of those in NFL media today.

Brandt: When I started tweeting when I first left the Packers, all of a sudden people are like, “Wow.” And I’m thinking, “Everyone knows this.” And I’m finding out, no. No one knows this. And this is hard to explain right now, but things that really go on in the inner-workings of sports that I would decide to tweet about or write about when I first started doing media. And people are like, “I didn’t know that. I had no idea.” And I’m like, “You didn’t? You didn’t know that these NFL contracts aren’t guaranteed. You didn’t know that you can cut a player and never owe them any money, even a veteran after three years of a contract?” So these are little things.

And when I put this book out, I think I was talking to Trey Wingo or Jim Rome or somebody and they go, “Andrew, do you know that the magnitude of people you’ve been around your whole life, no one gets to be around this sort of panoply of football, basketball, all this and people in the business and Gary Vee. Spending two years with him. I’m like, “Yeah, I mean, I just do it.” And my editor’s like, “What are you thinking when you’re with David Falk and Michael Jordan? What are you thinking when you’re hanging out with Gary Vaynerchuk? What are you thinking with Brett and Aaron?” I’m like, “I’m not thinking. I’m just doing.” And my life advice at the end of the book is, just do. Don’t talk about it. Don’t ruminate about it. Just do. Mood follows action. And the people that get stuck end up in whatever — low levels of depression — because they just can’t move. So everything to me is onward and I talk about that throughout the book.

Where do you want to start, Andrew? What really inspired you to dive into this world? I know you’ve been all over the place. We got into it on the Happy Hour. Across the Atlantic as well. But where would you point to as Point A — “OK, I love sports. I want to be involved with sports and I want to go this different route?”

Brandt: Early on. I was a big sports fan growing up in DC, two teams that have different names right now. One was the Redskins in football and one was the Bullets in basketball. Season tickets. A huge sports fan. Went to Stanford, came back to law school in my hometown of Washington DC. And luckily for me, there was this firm down the road called ProServ. It’s no longer, but they represented athletes. And I always sort of went through life like — as a young kid even— would there be a way to sort of marry this love of sports, I’m never going to be a pro athlete, with a law degree or business, anything? And the agent world was not that established then. There were some agents, but it was like, maybe. So I go over to this firm and I was a tennis player and they ran tennis tournaments. And more importantly, I was a ball boy for the big Washington DC tennis tournament every summer that they ran and they’re like, “Yeah, OK kid. Come on in, do some stuff for us.” And that led to sort of an unpaid internship and here I go.

After law school, finally got the job. And I tell people that I chose a sports agent life over being a “real lawyer.” And even as a young kid, I’m like, “I’ve got to think about this.” Because everyone’s like, “Yeah, you want to hang out with athletes, not stuffy lawyers.” But for anyone thinking about it, I gave up a tremendous amount of money and a tremendous amount of security and a life that would be stable in a law firm. And I went the sports route and I did because of this passion for sports. But I learned quickly, as I tell throughout the book, the glamor of working with high-profile athletes, that wears off in about two weeks. And now you’re just working for clients and you’re being an agent, and that’s a theme of the book, first sort of chapters of my career beyond Barcelona, are all being agent work.

You think it’s the player, but it’s often the wife, the girlfriend, the wife and girlfriend, the father, the cousin, the AAU coach, the friend, the half-brother, the half-sister, the half-stepbrother. And you take on what I call “the herd.” Being an agent is a tough life because you’re not just beholden to the client. You’re beholden to all these people that are around him and want you to answer the questions. And many times I had to be the “no” guy. Usually, it’s about money. But sometimes about other things. And that’s what the client is paying you to do. So I learned working at the foot of David Falk, the NBA superagent with Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, all these great clients. And that was a learning experience for me. And I learned I’ve got to be my own person. I can’t do the style of David who was a very relentless negotiator and used the leverage of Michael in ways that I could never do. I don’t have the ego for that. But I learned what not to do and also what to do. Sort of the beginning of my career as an agent, I was very blessed to be around superstars in that world.

You glossed over two pivotal moments in your life, too, where you truly did bet on yourself. An unpaid internship. I imagine that was a pivotal moment to pour yourself into something and know you’re investing in yourself. And then get into that decision to go the sports route where, yeah, you can have a cushy job and make God knows how much money and see in the future clearly where you’re going to be, how much you’re going to make, a sense of security. But you bet on yourself at that point, too.

Brandt: And then you look for opportunity. I have this phrase in the book. A Stanford professor said it to me: “Allow in your life for serendipity.” And David Falk was so invested in the NBA and I was representing NBA players, including the first client I had — the only client I could ever look down upon — named Muggsy Bogues. He was 5 foot 3. He was my first client in basketball. Twelve pick overall with the Washington Bullets.

I saw these football players. I saw NFL players no one had ever heard of, but I’m like, “No one’s paying attention to them. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.” Look at me. I never played football, but I’m like, “I love football. I’ll do it.” And that began my career as a football agent. Only because I saw opportunity at a young age. I’m like, “I could be in this NBA and learn from David, of course. But no one’s taking care of those guys.” So I went over there and in seven years I went from three to five to 10 to 15 NFL players. So there is a little serendipity.

Then I’m doing a contract with the Minnesota Vikings and the general manager at the time named Mike Lynn kind of looks me up and down after the negotiations says, “Hey Andrew, you speak Barcelonan?” I said, “What is that?” He said, “Spanish.” That led to him offering me the first general manager job of the Barcelona Dragons of the NFL World League. And I, again, young, single, allow for serendipity. I said, “Yeah.” And I left the agent side, the player side for the first time in my career. There would be another time going to the Packers. But I’m like, “Why not? Why not?” And now I’m in Barcelona where they’re cheering at the wrong times and they’re doing the wave the entire game long and they have no understanding. It’s the hardest thing I ever did, Ty. So at age 29, I’m a GM trying to sell tickets where no one understands the game. They do the Olé song the whole game long. Our first touchdown, they have polite golf applause. And then our kicker kicks the extra point and they go nuts. I’m like, “Where are we?” That steeled me for a life that was never as hard as that.

Working for the Green Bay Packers compared to that? That was a great experience. Then I’m back to the agent business. I’ve got a guy named Ricky Williams, the best client I ever had, Heisman Trophy. Three months later, he fires me for Master P and I’m like, “Who’s Master P?” He says, “A rapper.” I said, “What’s going on?” He goes, “I don’t like the company you’re with. I like you. You want to work for Master P?” I’m like, “P? Me?” He said, “Yeah.” And again, serendipity. The exact same time, Ty, the exact week — like a day later — the Green Bay Packers are calling me. I had some Packers over the years. No one great. I had third-string quarterback at the time: Matt Hasselbeck. And they’re like, “How’d you like to switch sides?” And I said, “What? You talked to 100 agents. Why me?” And you know what? Ron Wolf said, “Listen, Hasselbeck and these guys really like you. You have a nice way of dealing with people. You know your way around these contracts and we want to get more agent-friendly. What better way than to hire an agent?” And then it’s talking to my wife. We’re both east coast people. I decided to leave the agent business. Ricky was obviously a determining factor. But I think it was time. I had a young family. It was time to get off that train and it’s a little more secure life, albeit in a place we’d never, ever considered living. We moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin. And obviously of my 16 chapters in the book, I have four on my life in Green Bay. Which again, as I call it in the first words I talk about Green Bay, the best story in sports — 100,000 people, a city thriving, not just competing, but thriving in the NFL. If anyone out there can think about a city near them with 100,000 people. Can’t imagine having an NFL team, and I talk all about that.

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Like you said, it’s truly one of the best stories in sports. To live that up close, what does that look like? Because you hear how they’re publicly owned and there’s no owner to report to. But day to day, month to month. I was out there at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for five years and I’m seeing it to an extent, but I’m still on the outside. What makes it different than any professional sports team to you, Andrew?

Brandt: Well, I didn’t grow up with a history of it. So I get out there and, first of all, it was just the bowl before our renovation. It was like a high school stadium. I’m like, “This is where the Ice Bowl was? What?” And then everyone can talk about this where you’re driving down a residential neighborhood and there’s Lambeau Field out of nowhere. You realize, “Oh, this is a little different.” And then I’m looking out my window the first weeks and I’m like, wait a minute, these people are driving up and actually genuflecting to the building. There’s something different here. Like our GM, like our coach, I had tremendous autonomy. And if I did a $5 million contract or a $50 million contract, there’s no one up there somewhere saying, “Hey, great job. Bad job, Andrew.” I was trusted to do that, just like our personnel was trusted on the player side or coaching on the coaching side. No owner.

Now we had a board of directors, we had an executive committee, but they were pretty rubber-stamping most of what went on over on the football side. They got involved on the business side, pro shop, concessions, parking, et cetera. So I wasn’t awed by it. I appreciated the magnitude of it, the vast Packer Nation. I tried to operate: “What would the shareholders want?” I think working for the Packers is like working for a public trust. It really is. This is important to people and I never lost sight of that.

And then, of course, the unique things about living in Green Bay where I’m pumping gas and someone says: “Hey, how’s that Donald Driver contract going?” Or, I tell the story of trying to make a trade and my phone went out and I go to this ranger station. I’m in the middle of the park and I said, “Hey, I’ve got to make a trade. I’m with the Green Bay Packers.” He looks at me like, “Who the F are you?” So I finally go right up to him. I’m actually in my swim shorts and I look at him and I say, “Listen, we’re trading David Bowens to the Buffalo Bills, but I’ve got to do it right now.” And then I knew I had him, when he looks at me, he goes, “We’re trading Bowens?” And I said, “Yes, if you let me use your phone.” “Why are we trading Bowens? He’s good.” I said, “Listen, let me do it.” And then I come back the next day, he’s got the paper and I sign it about the trade, but this is Green Bay. It was truly unique. And what I detail in the book, I’m trying to be very vulnerable too, because I think the things that we sort of loved in our early time in Green Bay kind of pushed us out.

I couldn’t go out of my house after a while and not be asked about the Packers. Just socially. It’s so insular with that team. I’ve never seen a community wrap itself around a team — pro, college, high school, and nothing’s wrong with that. People are nice, but I want a little more diversity for my family, but also for my life. For my life. I wanted to do more. I had done all the contracts. I had done all the cap management. I’d done Brett’s $100-plus million dollar contract. I had done A.J. Hawk’s, one of the biggest rookie contracts. I’d done all the small contracts. The cap’s in good shape. I’m like, “Yeah, this is enough.” A lot of people I know in the NFL are lifers and then that’s fine. That’s for them. This was never going to be a life for me. It was a chapter, and actually four chapters of the book. But a special place. And obviously I talk about the highlights everyone wants to talk about with Brett and Aaron and everything else as well.

Win or lose, you can feel the community take on the result. I still remember when they lost to San Francisco — the 2013 season. It was frigid at Lambeau Field, the wild card game. And the next day it was even colder. I don’t know how they would’ve played a football game. It was negative-30, no wind chill. Negative-50 something with the wind chill. And a depression sets in when they lose in the playoffs and it’s cold and there’s nothing to distract you from that result. It can be extreme both ways. But like you alluded to, you were around for Brett Favre and some magical moments there. Then transitioning to Aaron Rodgers — and you write about this in the book — you were close to both. You’re in a really tough position there as they’re making this move to Aaron Rodgers. Start with Favre, what was that relationship like? How did you get to know him?

Brandt: This may disappoint readers, but I am extremely positive about both those men. I mean, Brett was the biggest thing in sports. Obviously this is pre-social media. But he was Mahomes, he was Brady, he was Michael Jordan when I got there. The lines when we pulled into hotels just to get a glimpse of him. And just a couple things to note that you never read about. Brett was a prisoner of the hotel when we traveled. He couldn’t go out. He was too big. But he loved the production meetings. So for people who don’t know, it’s CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN, the day before the game, they sit with the visiting team and they request the head coach, they request another player, and they always requested Brett. And Brett always wanted to go last because he just loved talking ball with Troy Aikman, with Cris Collinsworth, with Matt Millen, and especially John Madden.

And I remember so many times we’d get together for a 7:30 or 8 p.m. meeting on a Saturday night or a Sunday night and everyone’s like, “Where’s Brett? Where’s Brett?” And he’s still talking ball with Madden or Collinsworth or Phil Simms. He loved it. He was a coach’s kid. And speaking of coach’s kid, I’ll never forget that day. I’m in Oakland where, on Sunday, we get the day off. We have a Monday night game and his agent Bus, who I talk to all the time, he’s like, “Where’s Brett?” Bus is usually a jovial guy. He called in a panic, “Where’s Brett?” “I don’t know. It’s his day off.” He says, “Irv died.” And Irv was not only Brett’s dad, but well known around the team. Kind of a fixture in the locker room. And I’m like, “Oh.” So anyway, long story short, we finally found him. Where else? On the golf course. He doesn’t have his phone. He never had his phone, but we got Doug Pederson on the phone and Deanna told Doug. Doug passed the phone to Brett and he came back and, Ty, I’ll never forget it. We caught him right in the lobby and he said, “Listen” — he’s in tears — but he said, “Before you go on, I’m going to play. I’m going to play tomorrow night.” Those was his first words. Then we bring him in front of the team. He said that about his Dad. How his Dad wanted him to play and there wasn’t a dry eye in that house. And then of course, as everyone knows, the magical game against Oakland, that Monday night where the balls fell out of the sky.

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And then I went to Mississippi for the funeral, a few of us, and that was a different Brett. This was no superstar. He didn’t speak, but he was a friend. He was a neighbor. He was a son. He was a community member. He was just Brett in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. That taught me a lot. And then sort of getting to know him as things were going late in his career about, “I know it’s going to end,” and then being with him as he was retiring, but then he wanted to come back. I’ll say this. One thing I try to point out in the book is that these are people. Sometimes in sports, we just think they’re automatons. They’re people. Forget about drafting, I’ve told this story many times about drafting Aaron, and he was the only one on the board that we had a first-round grade on. And combustion in the room. Should we take him? Should we go to our second-round grades, et cetera. But everyone turned away.

And then it’s three years. Three years where it’s myself and John Schneider, Reggie McKenzie, we’re managing this. And this is Brett and Aaron. Nowhere in life would you put a country Mississippi guy in a room with Northern California cool for five hours a day. Nowhere. And Brett’s calling me and his agent’s calling me all the time like, “Hey, Andrew, do you know what it’s like sit in a room and sit with your replacement every day? It’s no fun.” And Aaron’s camp is calling: “Andrew. He’s never going to retire. What are we doing?”

And I just tried to be professional and patient and tactful and like, “Yes, I get it. This is hard, but listen, there’s going to be a change. We just don’t know when.” And that was the hardest part. See, again, the world turns away. Oh yeah, Brett’s got a backup and Aaron. And then all these people like, “Aaron’s never going to play.” Aren’t you going to get a Kerry Collins kind of a stopgap” Jeff Garcia? I said, “No, no, no. We’re going to Aaron.” And people couldn’t believe us. You’re going to a rookie? Or he wasn’t a rookie by then, but “Yes! Yes!” This was not like all the other Packer quarterbacks, including my former client, Matt Hasselbeck, where they were picked to be traded. This was a real guy. And the transition, of course, the messy divorce. Like you said, I was close to both sides and it was tough.

Back to Brett. Bus called me that June 20th, 2008. He had just gotten out of Mike McCarthy’s office and he was crying. And I said, “What’s up, Bus?” I was hiking on the mountain somewhere. And he said, “McCarthy just told us three words: ‘We’ve moved on.’” Imagine the face of a franchise for 16 years hearing that. So this is what you learn working in sports.

That’s phenomenal. I remember being an intern that summer in ‘08 for the Shawano Leader and the Packer Report as a sophomore in college just living out of a hotel. What a baptism by fire to cover the NFL. It was madness. And my naivety, I’m thinking how Brett was thinking. He wants to play, he should play. Look at the accomplishments. You were one throw from the Super Bowl. You’ve got a team that went 13-3. The conviction that the Packers showed in that moment…

Brandt: And we heard it. You should’ve heard my voicemail. It was nothing like Ted Thompson’s. It was 95 percent Brett. Everybody couldn’t believe it. And I told Aaron, to just keep his head down. Aaron became a favorite of ours pretty soon after he came in. He had a wry sense of humor, smart off the charts, physical skills, amazingly spinning the ball. We loved Brett and we loved Aaron. And that’s what happens in sports sometimes. It’s not an either-or. It’s how do we make this transition as gracefully as we can? And then they’re trying to get Brett to be an ambassador, but he wanted to play. So obviously we traded him to the Jets. And then again, I am positive about both those because I saw their impact. This is what sports can do. I called it the “afterglow.” When Brett or Aaron were brought over to children, especially developmentally disabled children or people who were disabled, it wasn’t perfunctory for either of them. Either of them. They spent time. I always called it the afterglow. So when Brett walked away or Aaron walked away, my eyes would focus on the family and that beaming — that beaming — I don’t know what else can do that. A sports superstar like those two, and they were both great at it, like great, never feeling like it was something they had to do. And you appreciate those things when you’re around people like that.

Both unbelievably charismatic in their own ways too, and both very demonstrative on the field in their own ways where Brett’s going to tackle you in the end zone and Aaron will let you know if you screw up. But they wear their emotions on their sleeves.

Brandt: A lot of people are like, “Well, see what they’re spewing out of their mouth this part of their careers and lives.” And I’m like, “Listen, I don’t know them the way I knew them then.” Yeah, I’ve stayed in touch with Brett. I’ve stayed in touch with Aaron, but I’m not here to talk about what they’re talking about politically or anything else. I’m here to talk about what I knew and saw in this developmental time in both my career, Aaron’s career, at the end of Brett’s career. And again, no one really can talk about that in the way that I can, and I try to be very honest.

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That’s what’s so great about your book, too. You do bring it full circle to where Aaron — toward the end of those Packer years — didn’t understand how good he had it. The grass isn’t always greener. He’s definitely living that reality. Lo and behold, he’s come full circle with Mike McCarthy in Pittsburgh, which I never would’ve foreseen.

Brandt: It’s great to see them back together.

But it is interesting the way he broke into the NFL is exactly how Jordan Love broke into the NFL. Waiting three years, developing. I don’t think it should have been a surprise when Brian Gutekunst was ready to move on, but he was surprised. He kind of wanted something on the other side where he’s more appreciated. Can you glean anything on what it’s like behind the scenes in Green Bay?

Brandt: Brian is a disciple of Ted and Ted is disciple of Ron. I think the one thing that people have to understand about the Packers, it’s football. And this is what makes it so different than any other team. And I detail why my job was so different than my colleagues at every other team. It’s all football. The money’s not going to some yacht. The money’s not going to some vacation spot, the kids’ houses. It’s all back into the team. And having said that, you get guys like Ted or Brian Gutekunst — it’s all scouting. They’re in their element in a dark room looking at players on the screen. And maybe they’re not the most warm and fuzzy. I mean, Ted relied on John Schneider, myself. Massage things with agents, massage things with players. That wasn’t his forte. And I think Brian’s a little more personable than Ted was, but yeah, I guess Aaron could say, “Hey, these guys aren’t warm and fuzzy.” Yes, they’re scouts. That’s what they do.

You’ve got to make those hard decisions. At his airing of grievances, that press conference, he’s rattling off those players that they let go. Tom Silverstein pointed it out to Aaron in the moment he’s like, “Aaron, Ted was right in a lot of those cases.” You’ve got to make the hard decision.

Brandt: What’s so amazing is obviously I was long gone by then, but I think it was 15 years to the day they chose Jordan Love. And I’ve said this. There’s no team in the NFL except the Packers that even has a quarterback sit for one year. I think Pat Mahomes sat one year behind, but he played at the end of the year. Three years! Imagine that. Three years is just an amazing stat. I put a stake in the ground. That’s never going to happen again — unless it’s the Packers.

When you don’t have an owner breathing down your neck forcing this to happen — that’s a real thing — you can make these prudent patient decisions.

Brandt: Yes, exactly. And I’m so proud to have been part of one of those because we were patient. Ted was in the face of all the things I talked about: How dare you do this? He just stood forthright. And of course, Aaron turned out pretty good. And Jordan, too.

Ted Thompson, Brian Gutekunst both to make that decision. It wasn’t easy. I remember the shareholders meeting that summer, too. Fans going right up to Ted with the petitions. Booing him relentlessly. It had to have taken such a toll on him. He’s so stoic and he would never bleed in public. You’d never know. And then just a few years ago, Aaron Rodgers puts it out there, I want the GM fired to return. But that’s why GMs are GMs, coaches are coaches, players play. And there’s all these variables and all these moving parts to put together a winning football team.

Brandt: Yeah. And since I’ve left, I’ve never really wanted to be back with a team. I talk about a couple when Al Davis called me. For me, it was a chapter of my life and it was enjoyable and unique. Especially working for the Packers. But I was on to other things. It was time for me to move on to other things. And when I went back to Green Bay for the first time, I remember seeing all my friends on the team and they’re like, “Yeah, we’re surprised you stayed as long as you did.”

Even Ron Wolf — my mentor — people think he was there a long time. He was there nine years. Nine. Mike Holmgren, seven years. All these great people have come through Green Bay, but they don’t stay that long because people are moving around. And as I said, truly unique. All of us were in this fishbowl. All of us came from somewhere else. And it was a truly unique place to live where I talk about being a fish out of water and my first banquet. I go to a team banquet — a supper club, not a restaurant. And there’s a huge glass in front of me of whole milk. And I’m like, milk? I take a sip. Here comes a guy filling up the milk. I’m like, “that’s different.” I’ve never been used to something like that. Ron takes me out to lunch at some sandwich place, puts down $5. I’m like, “Yeah, that’s nice. A decent tip.” She comes back with change for two sandwiches and a Coke. I’m like, OK, this is a little different, this place. But I have nothing but warm feelings about the people, the team, the city and the region. So great.

Can’t thank you enough for taking some time. Everybody out there listen and watching — “Smarter About Sports,” Andrew Brandt. I’m reading it now. It’s phenomenal. We are just scratching the surface on your stories. The Ricky Williams stuff, Master P, all of that, I could listen to those stories forever. So do yourself a favor out there and make sure you buy a copy today. Amazon, Barnes & Noble. Do you want send folks anywhere?

Brandt: Well, obviously Amazon’s the easiest. There is a website, smarteraboutsports.com. And I know a lot of people listen to me on your pod that are in and around the Green Bay area. So I’m coming out. So I just did a couple signings. I’m coming out to do it Cowboys weekend. So the game is Sunday night. Saturday in Appleton (Oct. 17) at Barnes & Noble. Saturday afternoon in Green Bay — Lion’s Mouth Bookstore. And then Sunday (Oct. 18), Barnes & Noble Green Bay. So you’re going to have three chances if you’re around the Packers area on Cowboys weekend, October 16, 17, 18. So I want to get that out there. I’ll be there within a month for three signings.

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Matt LaFleur Show, Part II: Identity Crisis

Tyler Dunne — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 17:42:04 GMT

Illustrated by Brave Buffalo

Read Part I here

Our entire two-part series on Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur is available to paid subscribers.

He saw red.

That’s all.

An intrinsic need to seek and destroy.

No, T.J. Lang did not carefully calculate the permutations of his predicament in real time. His 2014 Green Bay Packers were down, 14-10, to the Dallas Cowboys in the third quarter of an NFC divisional round showdown at Lambeau Field. The ball was at the Dallas 12-yard line. Second and 6. If there was ever a time to exemplify restraint, this was it. Instead, the team’s resident enforcer saw wide receiver Davante Adams fighting for extra yardage — eyed defenders vulture’ing around his teammate — and flew in to throw a vicious block.

Mayhem ensued. Suddenly, Lang was Jon Snow taking on a Cowboy militia.

The Lambeau faithful loved it. The officials, however, did not. Lang was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct and Green Bay was forced to settle for a field goal. Green Bay gritted out a 26-21 victory to advance to the conference championship, but part of Lang still felt “like shit” inside the locker room. His split-second decision could’ve ended the season.

Naturally, he dreaded what came next.

The morning after games, head coach Mike McCarthy would replay about five good plays and five bad plays in front of everyone to drive home his final points. On the sideline, defensive players loved his hostility. They slapped him on the back and assured, “We got your back.” Adams appreciated it considering one of those defenders could’ve lit him up. Nor did the logic from officials make any sense. Lang wasn’t flagged for his block. Rather, officials told him he “instigated” the brawl. All minor details. Lang hadn’t spoken to any coaches, so he feared McCarthy would tear him apart.

Sure enough, McCarthy wasted no time plastering this play up on the video screen. Lang got nervous. Shit, he told himself. I’m going to get my ass ripped. McCarthy hit play and let the melee play in full.

“TJ,” McCarthy began, “if you get a chance to do this again…”

Lang’s blood pressure rose. The room went silent for 2.5 seconds that felt like 2.5 hours.

Then came the hammer.

“…do the same fucking thing! You protect your fucking guys. You play to the whistle!”

Relief. Joy. Acknowledgment that his God-given instincts in this sport were allowed.

Players told Lang this was the loudest they had ever heard Lambeau.

Green Bay lost four points on the drive, but gained something far greater.

“It was Cowboys-Packers,” Lang says. “Two very historic teams that don’t like each other. And even during that brawl, you black out because it’s like, ‘Holy shit.’ Adrenaline’s pumping. You don’t really hear anything, but you could tell it took everybody to the next level. It woke everybody up a little bit like, ‘Oh shit, fuck this. We ain’t letting them come in here and punk us.’”

One split-second decision that contrasts sharply with the indecision that nuked a Packers season 11 years later.

The 2025 Packers were riding high at 9-3-1 into a date with the Denver Broncos. On fourth and 1 in the first quarter, Jordan Love scrambled for the required yard and his head was promptly two-hand shoved into the grass by Broncos safety Talanoa Hufanga. Nobody rushed to Love’s defense. Instead, those in the vicinity simply pointed a finger at the bully as if on an elementary playground… and the teacher didn’t even see the cheap shot. Hufanga was later fined $11,533, but never drew a flag.

So, what is a Matt LaFleur Football Team? Last season, it was a group that refused to stand up when punked. Green Bay lost its final five games in agonizing fashion, and the same issues have trickled into this 2026 season.

LaFleur possesses many excellent qualities. His offensive acumen is considered elite. Those who witnessed the LaFleur-Rodgers-Love dynamic firsthand praise the Packers head coach. He helped mold an ultra-raw passer out of Utah State into one of the best in the game. Entire franchises wander aimlessly for years when a Hall of Famer exits the building. Green Bay contends in perpetuity. This ability to develop a quarterback and scheme receivers open gets waves of coaches hired each cycle.

X’s and O’s alone, however, do not constitute a team identity.

Into Year 8, LaFleur is a man still searching for his… and that’s a problem.

When bad turns to worse, something’s missing in the hearts and minds of these Packers… and that’s an indictment of coaching.

Collapses rage on into 2026: The Packers surrendered 29 unanswered points to Minnesota, barely escaped the New York Jets and were then humiliated by the Atlanta Falcons. Despite LaFleur’s efforts to ban all “Super Bowl” talk and despite his emphasis on finishing, it does not appear much has changed. Not yet. Angst could soon reach extremes president Ed Policy cannot ignore.

One team exec articulated last season’s demise perfectly.

“It’s organizationally being really prepared for those moments,” this source says. “Understanding the moments we’re in. Bad things are going to happen in games. You’re going to take some shots. That’s the NFL and you have to understand how to respond. I don’t like to use the word, ‘front-runner,’ but that was going on. We overwhelmed people with talent, speed and physicality and the game was over before it got started. But then when you get into December, January football, you’ve got to be polished as a team to handle all the moments.”

In Part II of our series, we examine the soul of this team, relive the wild-card disaster in Chicago and try to forecast where this all goes for LaFleur and the Packers. Go Long spoke to people in all corners of the building for answers concerning the NFL’s most perplexing team in September.

The personnel’s imperfect.

What’s lacking most is that ever-elusive intangible.

Adversity strikes and there’s panic. Not calm.

Teammates are punked and there’s restraint. Not pride.

Momentum shifts, opposing fans roar and the Packers collectively submerge into quick sand. All damning evidence of a front-running team.

There was one glimmer of hope. In Week 2, Love took a vicious shot to the head and, this time, players had his back. “That’s what it should look like,” LaFleur said. “Right there.” Music to the ears of everyone in Wisconsin. Then again, this comment comes after LaFleur spent his first seven years harping on the need to avoid personal fouls. One assistant on the Packers staff admits that Mile High paralysis in ‘25 was a case of players simply doing what they’re coached.

“You’ve got to flirt that line as a coach,” this assistant says. “You’ve got to be careful with what you’re saying to the team. You make a big deal about not getting penalties and then shit like that happens. You aren’t going to have a guy go fight the dude, but then you’re a ‘soft’ team. That’s the line we as coaches need to figure out. I don’t think the guys aren’t tough.”

Agreed. The roster’s full of badasses.

But coaching can be soft and perception can become reality in the NFL.

Much of the NFL likely view the Packers in a damning light. Throw a punch — literal or figurative — and, odds are, they’ll fold. Heading into Week 4 at Tampa Bay, the team’s reputation is at an all-time low under this head coach.

Those clocks at 1265 Lombardi are ticking.

Go Long is your forever home for longform.

Transitioning from Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love, the spring of 2023, the vision of this head coach never wavered. Assistants were wildly impressed with Matt LaFleur’s leadership through one of the most turbulent offseasons in franchise history. Rodgers slipped into a darkness retreat. Go Long first reported that the Packers were finished with the Hall of Famer. Rodgers was traded to the Jets.

LaFleur never flinched.

Internally, he refused to dull expectations into the great unknown.

“Matt was the same as far as ‘We’re going to go win a fucking Super Bowl with Jordan, and it’s our job to do whatever we need to do,’” one coach on staff recalls. “There was no blink. It was, ‘Hey, this is what it is, let’s fucking go.’”

LaFleur, rejuvenated, was ecstatic to get back to what he cherishes most: teaching.

The games began and… yikes. Green Bay started 2-5, Love ranked dead-last in completion percentage (57.7), and the general manager who put his career on the line by selecting this quarterback offered a public challenge during his midseason press conference. Brian Gutekunst said the team would use these final 10 games to determine whether Love was their franchise quarterback.

A precarious juncture for the Green Bay Packers’ entire organization.

Externally, locals feared those dreaded pre-1992 Dark Ages.

Internally, sources recall LaFleur stressing out. He poured endless hours into trying to find the perfect plays for his young QB. Remember, he’s a perfectionist. But this was precisely when LaFleur made the conscious decision to quit holding Love’s hand and let him fail.

When the Packers lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers to fall to 3-6, LaFleur flew back to Wisconsin feeling very, very encouraged about Love’s future. Because that day, he took the reins off and loved what he saw. Resiliency in the pocket to deliver one clutch heave to Jayden Reed. Deep touch. Guts. No, Love was not perfect — he threw a pair of picks — but this was the first time the raw passer out of Utah State truly gunned the ball downfield with zero fear. Then, all Love did from Nov. 19, 2023 riiiight up to an ill-advised, cross-body interception vs. San Francisco in the playoffs on Jan. 20, 2024 was play better than any quarterback in the NFL. Legend Brett Favre gushed over the quarterback’s ability here and here at Go Long. “I think they hit a home run,” the gunslinger told us.

The Packers rewarded Love with a contract worth $55 million per year.

No relationship in sports matters more than the one between Head Coach and Quarterback.

Multiple sources insist the bond is strong.

“And I think they’ve obviously grown together through a lot of ups and downs,” one personnel man says. “So those guys are locked into each other. Jordan is such an unselfish team guy that’s probably the way he’d be with most coaches.”

Whereas LaFleur seemed frazzled talking to the offensive linemen, he was always remarkably relaxed around Love. He’d mirror the quarterback’s flat-line demeanor.

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Those who believe LaFleur is the man to lead this team believe it’s important to make one distinction.

True, it’s Year 8 overall and coaches almost never win a Super Bowl beyond this point with a club. But it’s also only Year 4 with Love as QB1 and, each season, the coach has been putting more on his quarterback’s plate. There’s immense value in these two growing together within an intellectually demanding scheme. This was the central point made by retired quarterback Matt Hasselbeck in our offseason Q&A. The 18-year-vet cited the fact that 21 new playcallers were taking over units this season. He’s lived in the eye of the storm himself. He’s survived countless turnover. It is not fun. Year-to-year-to-year synergy is a gift.

Look around the NFL. What can seem hunky-dory on TV is often a completely different story.

In Buffalo, those ESPN snow angels were a red herring. Josh Allen and Sean McDermott were never fully aligned. The latter never understood that the franchise should funnel through the former. One high-ranking source told me that some members of the organization were frustrated McDermott fixated so much on his infamous 9-11 speech going public and not our reported issues with Allen in Part III of that series. McDermott, this source adds, viewed Allen as “a burden.” So, the Bills gave Allen a literal seat at the table through their nine head-coach interviews and hired a new head coach, Joe Brady, who gets it.

In Green Bay, no way is LaFleur bitching to other coaches about his quarterback building a house as McDermott did. No way is he ever going to hold him back. The keys to the offense have been handed to Love. Source in personnel and coaching laud LaFleur’s eye for “space” with how he attacks defenses. Going all the way to back to Mike McCarthy, Mike Sherman and Mike Holmgren, he adds, the Packers have treasured schematic stability on offense.

Yet, here’s another timeline worth considering.

It’s also been 15 years since this team’s last championship appearance. Everyone is starting to feel the pressure to win a title.

“All that matters here is winning championships, so Matt is going to feel that pressure,” this personnel source says. “That’s not a bad thing. We all do. There’s not a day goes by that you don’t think about it.”

Fresh off three straight wins over NFC North foes last season — at 9-3-1, into mid-December — it appeared LaFleur and Love were speeding toward the sport’s apex. One day after a stirring 28-21 win over the Chicago Bears, I caught up again with Steve Calhoun. A man who knows Love better than anyone on earth. The longtime mentor/private coach wasn’t pleased that Love threw an early ball off his back foot in an otherwise sterling performance. “Are we trying to be great or do we want to be average?” Calhoun asked. “We want to be the best that’s ever done it and we want to win a Super Bowl.”

Then, the Packers headed to Denver. Already down tight end Tucker Kraft, they lost edge rusher Micah Parsons to a torn ACL.

Worst of all was the non-reaction to Hufanga’s dirty play.

From afar, Lang could only grit his teeth. He did not like what he saw one bit.

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The Dallas game wasn’t the only time Lang transformed into a Spanish Fighting Bull. Into 2015, the very next season, he did the same thing to KJ Wright when the Seattle Seahawks linebacker slammed tight end Richard Rodgers’ head into the ground. “Fucking dove in there,” Lang adds, “and went ballistic. Started mauling guys.” And if anyone touched Aaron Rodgers, they knew there was hell to pay. A diehard Detroit Red Wings fan, Lang relished being this team’s Bob Probert/Darren McCarty/Joe Kocur rolled into one.

To him, today’s Packers appear to be a team that’d rather let the opposition throw a punch and do nothing in the name of 15 precious yards.

Logic that disgusts him.

Logic that fails to understand the big picture.

An NFL locker room is unlike any ecosystem in the country.

“I don’t want to be out there, get cheap-shotted and then watch all of my boys do nothing because it’s like, ‘Coach doesn’t want us to get a penalty,’” Lang says. “Fuck that shit. And that’s the thing I loved about McCarthy. He was no bullshit: ‘You don’t fucking let anybody fucking bend you over. You don’t let anybody take a shot at you. You don’t let anybody take a shot at your teammates. You stick up for yourself. You stick up for your teammates.’ That’s the most important thing — especially being an offensive lineman. You’re the big guys on the field, dude. You’ve got to stand up for your boys.
“And if you don’t do anything about it, other teams see that on film and they’re going to be like, ‘OK, they’re soft. They’re not going to do anything about it. Let’s give this guy a little extra shove after the play.’”

Watch any Packers game closely. Love has taken his share of love taps through the echo of the whistle.

OK, if the game is on the line with one minute left, Lang was not going to submarine through a man’s chest. There are rare exceptions. But he cannot stress it enough — football demands a “deeper connection.” LaFleur may dominate spreadsheets and whiteboards and forever serve as the apple of the All-22 Expert’s eyes.

Until the suits on Park Avenue ban tackling, this remains a primitive game.

Me vs. You.

Lang wanted his teammates to know that nobody in their right mind would screw with them as long as he was on the field. Josh Sitton, too. The Packers certainly felt the absence of both players in 2017. With this element of fear removed from the field, Bears linebacker Danny Trevathan knocked out Davante Adams with one dirty helmet-to-helmet hit. Nobody responded. Seventeen days later, Vikings linebacker Anthony Barr broke Rodgers’ collarbone. Again, nobody responded.

It didn’t matter if it was the all-galaxy quarterback or, as Lang eloquently puts, a “slapdick rookie.” He prided himself on an immediate response.

“Teams watch it on film,” Lang says. “Teams say: ‘Oh, look, they didn’t do anything about that. That’s embarrassing!’ Especially when it’s your quarterback. If that Denver play would’ve happened to Aaron Rodgers, all five of us offensive linemen would’ve beat the shit out of that guy and got kicked out of the game, Mike McCarthy would’ve been like, ‘Whatever. It sucks, but you don’t do that to our fucking guy.’”

Biting your tongue — “being the bigger man” — poisons a locker room. There are larger implications here. No different than hockey. If your captain takes an elbow to the head and linemates do nothing, those linemates lose credibility and never get it back.

“A perception of softness that comes with that,” Lang says. “It doesn’t really matter if you do something the next time. Because then it seems fake. There’s a brotherhood-teammate bond that you have in those moments. I’m not calling their players soft, but from what I’ve seen? It looks like it’s coached: ‘We’ll take 15 yards.’”

It’s not only a Packers thing. Lang gets pissed watching all linemen who refuse to retaliate. Granted, this comes with a cost to your bank account. Lang estimates he was fined about $100K in his career protecting teammates.

This offseason, LaFleur stressed the need to “finish.”

Well, settling scores on the field is a true act of finishing. Someone starts a fight — you end it. And on Monday morning, the play is applauded on the big screen. Not criticized.

“We ain’t going to let this shit happen,” Lang adds. “You ain’t fucking with us today. You ain’t taking liberties with any of our players. You let the other team feel you every single play.”

Instead, post-Denver, the book was out.

One debilitating loss bled to the next. You better believe Ben Johnson had a lot to say to his Chicago Bears players in those days that followed. First, Green Bay blew a 16-6 lead with two minutes left at Chicago, bungling an onside kick. Next, they surrendered 307 humiliating rushing yards to Baltimore. Derrick Henry’s total (216) was the most-ever for an individual opponent at Lambeau Field. LaFleur opted to rest starters in a Week 18 finale vs. Minnesota.

Then came the playoff game back in Chicago.

All of LaFleur’s finest qualities were on display through the first half.

All of Love’s talent, too. If a quarterback throws for 323 yards and four touchdowns with no turnovers in a road playoff game, you should win.

Alas, the Packers did not.

Thirteen Seconds ultimately doomed McDermott.

21-3 may ultimately doom LaFleur.

But then the Packers suffered a heartbreaker nobody will ever forget.

Playoff losses this grisly get people fired all the time.

“Doubt,” one assistant admits, “obviously crept in.”

What happened on the shores of Lake Michigan? Let’s dive deep.

There are essentially three prisms in which you can view this disaster.

Player Error.

The simplest fix.

If one of a dozen or so plays go their way, the Packers likely win.

So many forgotten moments will be lost in time.

21-3 with :25 left in the first half. At the Chicago 47-yard line, Love drops deep, glances left, resets and heaves a bomb up the right sideline to Christian Watson. It’s overthrown. Take a little heat off this ball, and the 6-foot-4 Watson has an enviable 1-on-1 opportunity vs. the 6-foot Tyrique Stevenson. On the broadcast, color commentator Kirk Herbstreit claims Jayden Reed was open over the middle — and he is — but one Packers coach directs our attention to rookie Matthew Golden up the left sideline. He doesn’t blame Love for choosing the proven Watson. “But MG,” he adds, “cooked his guy on the other side.” Perhaps a 28-3 halftime lead would’ve been insurmountable.

21-9, at the Packers 6, with 10:12 left in the game. D’Andre Swift, on third down, darts through the Green Bay defense to make this a one-score game. Chances are, the Bears running back scores anyways, but Keisean Nixon’s actions at the goal line symbolize this team’s late-season swoon — he completely leaps out of the way. Punch at the ball. Fight. Try. “I don’t think we were a soft team,” one coach says, “but there were examples where we weren’t physical enough.”

27-16, fourth and 8, with 5:37 left. If Rashan Gary simply holds the edge vs. left tackle Ozzy Trapilo to keep Caleb Williams inside the pocket, linebacker Isaiah McDuffie likely sacks the Bears QB. There’s no escape route. Gary, instead, washes himself into no man’s land and Williams scrambles left to twist-a-flex his body in mid-air for an improbable completion to Rome Odunze. The Bears QB later files trademarks for both the silhouette logo of this pass and the nickname, “Iceman.”

27-24 with 3:07 left. Tight end Luke Musgrave motions wide left to draw a juicy matchup vs. linebacker Tremaine Edmunds. Love knows where he’s going with this ball. If he doesn’t drift backward, if he stands firm in the pocket to loft this go ball, it’s a touchdown. At worst, a defensive pass interference to place the ball at the 1. But he gets sloppy with his mechanics, and his ball is both underthrown and uncatchable. Precisely what Calhoun pointed out a month prior. Brandon McManus misses the ensuing field-goal attempt. The Packers kicker left seven points on the board in all.

Funky bounces that went Green Bay’s way in the first half flipped Chicago’s way in the second. One snap before Williams’ fourth-and-8 heroics, center Drew Dalman sailed a snap over the quarterback’s head… but saved himself with a false start. “I don’t think the first half was as good as it seemed and the second half probably wasn’t as bad as it seemed,” one coach on staff says, before pausing. “But it was a shit show. That’s for sure.” Particularly on the O-Line. Into the second half, Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen lived like there was no tomorrow and the Packers couldn’t handle his blitzkrieg. Each play, a lineman either missed an assignment or got his ass kicked. The Packers generated zero movement up front in the run game.

“Then, when we were dropping back,” a coach continues, “someone had a catastrophic fuck-up on each play. It was the same plays we were calling. It was just someone freaking out in the moment and making a mistake and it started snowballing. I don’t think we overcame that. We just needed to put together a drive. As soon as we did (to go up 27-16), the defense gave up a drive.”

Despite it all, the Packers had a chance to win on the final drive and came so, so close to their own trademark-worthy moment.

First, Jayden Reed dropped a high-cross that would’ve placed the ball around Chicago’s 20-yard line with :50 left. “J-Reed catches that 90 out of 100 times,” one coach says. “It was a perfect call in that situation for that coverage.” Reed atoned with a 20-yard reception. An injury to center Sean Rhyan triggered a costly 10-second runoff.

Then came the throw that could’ve lived forever in Packers lore.

Down 31-27, ball at the Bears 23, with :19 left. As time ticks, Love feverishly smacks his palms together to get the attention of new center Lecitus Smith. Upon corralling the shotgun snap, Love hangs… hangs… and hangs in the pocket — knowing damn well that 6-foot-6, 326-pound defensive tackle Gervon Dexter will devour him — to deliver a hole shot at the goal line to Watson. In a sea of four Bears bodies, the ball is essentially dropped from the heavens by Lombardi himself.

It’s not an easy catch. All receivers from all eras get smacked in this situation.

But Watson extends with one arm, gets drilled and the pass falls incomplete.

“If he extended — he would’ve gotten fucked up — but he would’ve caught that and gotten hit into the end zone,” says one coach. “It was close. You’re probably talking a foot, maybe, on a 30-yard throw over the middle. Less than a foot. It was such an unbelievable throw.”

On this particular concept — vs. Cover 2 — it helps to have more space in the secondary.

Call this play from the 50-yard line and Reed is bookin’ it. Reed smokes linebacker D’Marco Jackson (No. 48) out of the action and Watson may not feel the need to pull up in front of those two safeties. From the 23, the design of play is condensed. That being said, Reed could’ve angled his route higher, over the top, and cleared Jackson. Instead, Reed crossed his face and crowded the space. Watson’s brief hesitation was costly.

This play was eerily similar to “The Catch II,” Steve Young’s 25-yard TD strike to Terrell Owens in the ’98 wild card game, one of the most famous plays in NFL playoff history.

If Love and Watson connect, one coach contests, the narrative around this entire team changes. He’s not wrong.

“No one’s saying ‘Fire Matt!’ Matt and Jordan are clutch and they came through with an unbelievable fourth quarter, two-minute drive to knock out the Bears,” he adds. “But it’s this business. That’s your guys’ job is to write what happened, not what could have happened.”

I point out that his Packers have suffered several loses of the same ilk.

In five of their nine losses, they led by 9+ points.

“All very fair,” he continues. “We’ve got to figure out how to not be in that position. But it is funny how it’s so close to being completely flipped.”

Coaching Malpractice

Surf through other areas of the building and you’ll find a different interpretation of this collapse. One source in personnel points to the third quarter. Every time the Packers had a chance to choke teams out last season, they’d instead offer a little breathing room. “Those are the moments,” this source adds, “where you can’t let teams feel like they actually have an opportunity to come at you.”

The best teams play at different tempos.

At times, they speed it up. At times, they slow it down.

Up 21-3, the Packers missed an opportunity to throttle down and bleed the Bears dry.

“Depress them that way,” this source continues. “You have to execute in all those moments. You could talk about it, but if you go three-and-out, it doesn’t fucking matter.”

The best way to inflict a slow death is to run the ball. Sprinkle in play-action. Drain the clock through marathon drives that end in points. Green Bay’s rushing attack, however, deteriorated down the stretch. Bell-cow RB1 Josh Jacobs mustered six yards on seven carries in the second half. It’s not wise to repeatedly bash your head against the wall if something’s not working. LaFleur didn’t want to waste downs in the name of the clock. And by now, Love had Rodgers-like freedom to change a run to a pass if the defense loaded the box. When he tried to exploit such 1-on-1’s outside, protection caved.

One coach on staff — one who’s unafraid to critique his boss — strongly defends LaFleur’s playcalling.

“To me, there was so much time left,” this coach says. “The game was crazy enough where I think we would’ve been killing ourselves if we handed the ball off to Josh and said, ‘Hey, let’s go.’ I wouldn’t have wanted to go out like that. But what we did didn’t work, so fuck it. Doesn’t matter.”

Fair enough. LaFleur’s offense also can be too all-or-nothing. There weren’t easy chunks available in the run or pass game. A more efficient short-to-intermediate air attack could’ve helped Green Bay bury the Bears late. This is where the absence of Kraft stung most.

Part of this is on Love. Headset communication shuts off at :15 on the play clock.

“He’s mentally as good as we’ve had,” says one longtime personnel man. “So it’s just a matter of getting all 11 on the same page, getting into the right stuff and executing.”

Part of this is on LaFleur. A very large part. In retrospect, the 2025 Packers were destined for such a tragic conclusion because LaFleur never set forth a vision for how this team wins games. We’re the first to mock all coachspeak as useless, insipid gobbledegook but one Packers coach on staff argues that complementary football — or, the lack thereof — was a massive problem last season. The way LaFleur calls offense (“explosive”) clashed directly with how coordinator Jeff Hafley calls defense (“bend, don’t break”). At its best, Green Bay was a quick-strike operation. Five plays, 80 yards, TD in a blink. So when those three-and-outs start piling up, a defense designed to force opponents to go 12-plus plays per drive gets gassed.

Everything snowballs.

Finding a rhythm felt impossible down the stretch.

Some games, it would’ve been smart for LaFleur and Hafley to agree they’ve got to win a “13-10” slugfest. Control the ball. Limit shot plays. Grind it out. Some games, it would’ve been smart for LaFleur to tell Hafley to blitz. Take chances. Embrace a shootout. If they’re going to score, let ‘em score quickly.

When LaFleur scripted gameplans, there was no overarching thesis that accounted for both units.

“It doesn’t necessarily need to be told to the players,” one coach adds, “but as a staff, we’re on the same page with how we want to win a game. And I don’t think that was talked about enough. Their philosophies were different. Which is tough. It was two separate units trying to play their ball. And that’s not the best answer.”

Per Sharp Football, the Packers averaged only 8.9 possessions per game in 2025, the lowest rate for any team in any season since at least 1999. This made life hard on a defense giving up 10-minute drives. (“You’re going to be dead by the end of the season.”)

There was zero animosity. LaFleur and Hafley, this coach adds, were “super tight.” Simply, the two were trying to win two different types of games.

Rare is the offensive wiz who relinquishes playcalling duties. It takes a suppression of ego. Many times, this is Step 1 toward firing yourself. Nonetheless, taking a more CEO-like approach could’ve opened up LaFleur’s eyes to this discrepancy. With his face buried in a tablet between offensive series — talking to Love, plotting his next sequence of plays — he never saw the forest from the trees. Perhaps a step back helps him realize if a game is trending toward 13-10 or 38-35, and he can offer real-time input to the DC.

Suggest this as an option and multiple assistants cite playcalling as one of LaFleur’s strengths.

The No. 1 problem with the Packers in this wild card defeat is even more holistic.

No killer instinct

Back in the gritty town that made him — Milledgeville, Ga. — Javon Bullard unloaded.

Zero words were minced over dinner with Go Long. The Packers’ headhunter was still fuming over his loss to the Bears because “Bull” could still picture the look of pale dread in the eyes of those Bears players when Green Bay was dominating.

Earmuffs, kids.

“We’re on y’all ass and you’re acting like you motherfuckers don’t even want to play no more,” Bullard told us. “But we need that instinct to kill motherfuckers’ hope. Like, ‘No. Not today. Not tomorrow. Y’all through. We finna beat y’all ass.’ I don’t think we’ve got that as a team yet. But we’ve got another year to prove it.”

This intangible — which is more difficult to put a finger on — is where Matt LaFleur has failed most.

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With a chance to stick a dagger directly into the chest of a hated rival and storm into a divisional round game at Seattle, his Packers puckered up. Here in Western New York, countless Buffalo Bills players felt the same exact effect in their playoff losses under McDermott. As one veteran on those teams explained, “You make a good batch, but then he just adds a drop of poison in there and it makes the whole thing bad.”

The same defect is evident in LaFleur’s teams.

One silver lining? Through all interviews for this story, injuries were never used as an excuse. Those in both coaching and personnel maintain the team should’ve adapted and evolved the way they play after losing Micah Parsons, Zach Tom, Tucker Kraft, Devonte Wyatt and Elgton Jenkins. One high-ranking source insists injuries did not kill the Packers’ season. Rather, “situational football.” Third down. Red zone. Controlling the game with short passes when the run’s shut down.

All of which leads us to an age-old, chicken-or-egg debate.

This 1-2 start to the 2026 NFL season is a bad look for Gutekunst’s build on the offensive line. Less than one month after expressing full confidence in the young linemen on the roster, the Packers GM was scrambling for three vets to save the season: Laken Tomlinson, Mekhi Becton and Kevin Zeitler. He’s hoping a player like Zeitler proves to be what Bruce Wilkerson was for ex-GM Ron Wolf’s Packers in 1996. With Jacobs suspended, the team’s also been S.O.L. at running back. Criticism is warranted.

Still, most head coaches in this league would kill for this quarterback, this Canton-tier edge rusher, this collection of weapons and, as examined in our piece on Bullard, the GM has infused the roster with malice. Gutekunst has taken risks his predecessor would not in nasty temperaments like Rhyan, linebacker Edgerrin Cooper, “Bull.”

Bullard is a man who hates everything about Chicago (except their food) and doesn’t care who hears him. Multiple times in our conversation, the nickel back implored his head coach to stand up. He didn’t like Ben Johnson’s antics. “Don’t let him try to shit on you like that,” Bullard said.

Asked publicly about this feud, LaFleur has been coy. Downplays it. One person close to the coach assures bad blood is now mutual.

Green Bay and Chicago will meet again on Oct. 11.

Bullard promised revenge.

“They got two little wins last year,” Bullard said. “But don’t forget who the big brother is. We’re still big brother. They got a long way to go before they can try to shit on us. But we got to show them, too. We can’t just talk that shit. We’ve got to be about it. So it’s going to be hell next year, man. It’s going to be hell.”

Unfortunately, it’s been a different kind of hell thus far.

The boss man’s reaction to the Atlanta Falcons desecrating Lambeau Field was actually quite encouraging. In the wake of his team’s blowout loss, Matt LaFleur didn’t seek the nearest chair and go full Bobby Knight behind the scenes. Hardly. Less than 24 hours later, sources inside 1265 Lombardi Ave. describe the Packers coach as steady.

LaFleur acknowledged that Green Bay got its ass thoroughly kicked, but those around him didn’t sense any panic.

Calm that was appreciated by those who’ve absorbed so many tongue-lashings over the years. LaFleur made it clear the Packers would not be blowing anything up. There was no need to sleep at the office until they solve X for Y. He held an informal open forum with coaches on Friday and then gave everyone the weekend off to clear their minds.

“But yeah,” admits one person who works daily with LaFleur, “it was a fucking ass-whooping.”

It’s a new season. Allegedly. The same haunting scene is set on repeat. These Packers are something like those three college kids in the Blair Witch Project hiking all day through the wilderness only to discover they’re right back where they started. Infuriating for all parties involved.

Bad breaks are a guarantee in pro football. It’s how you respond.

Far too often, LaFleur’s team spirals.

In Week 1, a fourth-and-1 sneak from the Vikings’ 17-yard line failed in the fourth quarter and the U.S. Bank Stadium roof caved in. A flurry of blitzes ate this line alive. Instead of taking a double-digit lead, Green Bay lost, 39-22. In Week 3, a fourth-and-1 pass from the Falcons’ 8-yard-line failed. Instead of cutting the deficit to a field goal, the Falcons pieced together a demoralizing 92-yard drive. One coach also points to an early third-and-11 roughing the passer penalty that kept Atlanta’s first TD drive alive.

Coaches emphasize strike zone… repeatedly. It’s not LaFleur’s fault that end Brenton Cox Jr. went high. Plus, he let up. It’s a ticky-tack call.

Point is, the Packers could not mentally recover.

Here-we-go-again dread is often written across faces.

“You’re going to get penalties,” one coach says, “but why can’t you overcome that? I don’t know.”

LaFleur is still trying to figure out why his team’s spirit breaks every time a play goes awry. He’s dangerously close to becoming comedian Tim Robinson in the hot dog suit, muttering “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this.” His answer may be in the mirror.

Policy must weigh all pros, all cons as this Packers season diverts left or right.

There are virtues worth repeating. Assistants know exactly where they stand with LaFleur. He’s completely devoid of passive-aggressiveness that can linger in other buildings. Nor will LaFleur publicly throw anyone under the bus. At the mic, he points the finger at himself and it’s no act. He’s not afraid to tell the entire team that he F’d up a play call.

He demands a ton out of you, but also himself. He’s no hypocrite.

One by one, sources praise his intellect. His tirades are rooted in wanting you at his level.

He made adjustments to his messaging. He tried to foster camaraderie with coaches last offseason with more golf outings.

But nobody’s kidding themselves. What you see in Matt LaFleur is, indeed, what you get.

He’s not changing. He’ll go out this way.

There’s plenty of time for Green Bay to right the ship. Parsons is one of the best players in the sport, period. Love’s ceiling remains extremely high. The division, hell, the conference is wide open. Mastering this intangible is the hardest part of coaching. Ask Kyle Shanahan. The 49ers head coach who laid the blueprint for LaFleur in Houston, Washington and Atlanta — and changed football as we all know it — has no rings to show for it.

Something’s amiss in the subconscious of these Packers. A belief.

Nobody’s discussing titles in “Titletown” this season. LaFleur’s calculation was that players let that Super Bowl pressure mount, but what if all external pressure was always a great thing for this team? A daily reminder of why the Green Bay Packers are forever different? With each loss, the organization inches closer to a danger zone of being like any other franchise.

Those legendary names perched on the Lambeau façade — Wolf, Holmgren, Favre, Butler and, soon, Harlan — changed the psychology of everyone associated with the team. The Super Bowl unapologetically became the end-all, be-all. Zoom out and you’ll see that Favre’s epic “Super Bowl or Bust” press conference in 1996 was an extension of what Vince Lombardi told his team in his first meeting as Packers head coach in 1959. Back when Lombardi famously said these Packers would “relentlessly chase perfection knowing full well we will not catch it because nothing is perfect.” He added: “In the process we will catch excellence.”

A standard’s been engrained into every fiber of Lambeau. Favre won one title, Rodgers won one and these Packers have made the playoffs 75 percent of the time since ’92. This team is almost never an abject embarrassment. Those boos through a 35-14 loss to Atlanta hinted at a chilling alternate universe that may be closer than anyone realizes.

Details of the extensions handed out to the men who lead these Packers have been kept under wraps. Other coaches on staff have no clue how many years LaFleur signed up for.

At this point, all anyone can care about is the here and now.

Because if they keep losing, if the same grotesque symptoms linger on, millions of dollars will prove inconsequential.

The people — the owners — will speak. Loudly.

At which point, Ed Policy will have no choice but to listen.

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Go Long into Season No. 7…

Matt LaFleur Show, Part I: The Boss

Tyler Dunne — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 17:37:32 GMT

Illustration by Brave Buffalo

Our entire two-part series on Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur is available to paid subscribers.

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Four words define this franchise.

Four words have served as a north star for everyone at 1265 Lombardi Avenue for exactly three decades.

To understand the troubling state of these 2026 Green Bay Packers, first slip into a time machine and punch in July 17, 1996. Travel back to the day the team’s quarterback, Brett Favre, made a very clear, very bold statement fresh out of rehab in Topeka, Kansas for his addiction to Vicodin.

“This year,” Favre declared, it’s Super Bowl or Bust. If we don’t go to the Super Bowl, then it was a disappointing year for me and my teammates.”

Favre stated that every single teammate he had spoken to was also talking Super Bowl.

He wasn’t done.

“I’m going to the Super Bowl,” he said. “All I can tell people is if they don’t believe me, just bet against me.”

Right on cue, those ‘96 Packers delivered. The offense, defense and special teams units all finished No. 1 in the NFL. They went 16-3, walloping the New England Patriots inside the Superdome to bring the Lombardi Trophy home after 29 years. Titletown was reborn. In engineering one of the greatest turnarounds in sports history, Favre and Bob Harlan and Ron Wolf and Mike Holmgren and Reggie White psychologically rewired how everyone associated with this team thinks. It’s different here. Ever since those words, “Super Bowl or Bust,” the fans of this team — sorry, the owners — fully expect the Packers to compete for a championship every season.

Expectations never dim.

This pressure is constant. This pressure is a privilege embraced by every coach that occupies Vince’s chair because, frankly, most coaches would kill for such relevance, such quarterback bliss. Green Bay transitioned from one Hall of Fame quarterback to the next and has won more regular-season games than any team this side of the New England Patriots from 1992 to 2025. Of course, these Packers have also suffered their share of numbing playoff defeats along the way. The latest was an all-time choke. Yes, Green Bay led Chicago 21-3 at halftime of the NFC wild card. Yes, Green Bay’s odds of winning spiked to 96 percent at one point. And, yes, head coach Matt LaFleur again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory as Bears head coach Ben Johnson danced all over this team’s grave. “Fuck the Packers!” he screamed in the locker room. “Fuck them!”

All of which left the team’s newly minted president, Ed Policy, with a seismic decision.

Listen to his angry constituents and fire someone. Losses this heinous get coaches canned all the time.

Or, take a deep breath. Stick with the status quo.

Policy inked both LaFleur and GM Brian Gutekunst to extensions and told reporters he was “shocked” anyone would even suggest the coach be fired. Fair enough. When all coaches, all players returned to work in the spring, LaFleur’s message to everyone promised to be consequential. For better, for worse. Here at Go Long, we previously examined another coach who could only take a team so far. Sean McDermott suffered his share of egregious playoff losses. None more disturbing than “13 Seconds” at Arrowhead Stadium to cap the 2021 season. The only thing worse than how the game went down — the touchback, the lax coverage, etc. — was the coach’s finger-pointing toward his assistants. He never recovered. Buffalo never recovered. All issues were detailed in our three-part series. When McDermott was finally fired four years later, high-ranking sources in the building pointed back to that haunting night in Kansas City as the loss that ultimately broke the team.

Back to LaFleur.

If he meets the same fate as McDermott, there’s a very good chance he regrets his own response to such a surreal playoff defeat.

True, LaFleur addressed X’s and O’s. One coach says they watched the 31-27 loss to Chicago at least “20 times” as a staff. Every what-if was scrutinized. All horror relived. The Packers immersed themselves in all minutiae. And when it was time to zoom out — time to drive home a global mission for all — Matt LaFleur defied everything these Packers have stood for since their great awakening.

All talk of Super Bowl, LaFleur decreed, must cease.

These words would be promptly removed from the team’s everyday lexicon.

“In his opinion,” one coach on staff explains, “we spent too much time talking about the end goal, talking about Super Bowls, talking about championship: ‘We’re the Green Bay Packers, championship, championship, championship.’ And not enough time just talking about daily improvements and getting better.
“So his message was, ‘Let’s not talk about Super Bowls. Let’s not talk about championships.’”

A 180-degree turn for an organization that has proudly announced itself as 12- and then 13-Time World Champions at every conceivable opportunity. This mentality’s been forever drilled into all minds. Across the street, ex-president Mark Murphy built up a 45-acre football heaven dubbed “Titletown.” Each year, he’d also inform all new rookies that the No. 1 objective is to win championships. Both Mike McCarthy and LaFleur declared the Super Bowl is in “X” number of days, repeatedly, to get all coaches, all scouts, all players on the same page. An expectation that synchronizes beautifully with all sights, all sounds inside Lambeau Field. It’s impossible to walk anywhere without seeing an image from the team’s storied past.

Yet into 2026, LaFleur instead wanted the Packers hyper-focused on the present, on “finishing” each drill, each meeting, each practice to prevent another meltdown.

His logic: Green Bay’s obsession with the end goal has become detrimental.

So what a scene it was for the Packers’ home opener. Legends past returned for the 30-year reunion of those ’96 revolutionaries. Wolf, LeRoy Butler, Desmond Howard and others were greeted to roaring applause as LaFleur’s 2026 edition honored them all with one of the most horrific efforts this stadium’s ever seen. The Packers couldn’t block, couldn’t run and were utterly steamrolled.

All pageantry soon gave way to a different sound: deafening boos.

It’d behoove Policy to open a window and listen.

Because, in truth, axing all “Super Bowl” talk is akin to fighting gravity with this fan base. The expectations of the team’s 538,000-plus owners will never change. Frustration is palpable. How on earth did the Packers reach such a low? Go Long spent several months talking to people around LaFleur: former and current coaches, players and people in personnel. As angst grows, it’s time to share our findings.

There’s a damning glitch to the Packers’ hardwiring.

DeWayne Carter’s total transformation

Tyler Dunne — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:28:17 GMT

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ORCHARD PARK, NY — No injury triggers dread quite like a torn Achilles. First, there’s the bizarre sensation. This feels like getting kicked in the back of the leg. Once you see nobody’s there, once you realize the tendon has recoiled up your leg like a window shade, the mind immediately races to all strenuous work ahead.

Factor in the cutthroat stakes of pro football and this injury is enough to spiral any pro into a sewage of self-pity.

DeWayne Carter, selected 95th overall in the 2024 draft, missed five games as a rookie with a wrist injury. There were ups, downs, glimpses… now this? An Achilles tear in late August 2025 completely wiped out his second season. Into a pivotal Year 3, it was fair to wonder how he’d fit into Jim Leonhard’s new scheme. The sight of Carter playing 34 snaps in the exhibition finale against Pittsburgh hinted that he was on the chopping block. Most armchair GMs declared him good as gone.

But not only did Carter make the Bills’ 53-man roster — he’s been a force. He ranks second league-wide in Run-Stop Win Rate per ESPN Analytics with 11 “wins” on 21 snaps. He’s wasting offensive guards with filthy spin moves.

So… uh… how?

Well, when the rest of the football world completely forgot about Carter, he transformed into somebody else.

Here, inside the Bills locker room, the igloo-built 25-year-old taps open his cell phone to bring one daily scene to life. Carter’s favorite power lift, easily, is squats. During OTAs, his crew would rep out 450 pounds four to six times — and the room is electric. When he taps play on one video, the barbell atop his shoulders is loaded with eight 45-pound plates and a handful of others. Teammate Javon Solomon screams as Carter crouches lower, and lower, and lower before blasting back upward. Rep to rep, not one centimeter is cheated.

Nobody outside of these walls at the Kaleida Health Performance Center gave a damn.

This was his gameday.

“It’s time to go,” Carter says. “There is no, ‘Ugh.’ No, we come into the weight room? We’re lifting weights.”

Right here, is an element of pro football that gets lost amid our obsession over offseason transactions. Players do not stay stagnant from January to September. When a serious injury inevitably strikes, there are many who treat the long road back as a nuisance. The monotony is miserable. They check boxes, go home, wait for those lights to turn on. Others find the silver lining. And a team full of the latter is bound to compete for championships, the sort of “character” owner Terry Pegula told us he sees in the current Bills locker room.

Go Long is your home for independent pro football journalism.

The first time Carter stepped on a scale after his offseason of hurling weights around, he was 333 pounds — 30+ more than he weighed at the NFL Combine.

Eighteen of those pounds gained, he says, is pure muscle.

Carter half-jokes that all of this was “an accident.” He was hurt. He had surgery. He couldn’t walk. But one thing he could do was toss dumbbells and barbells around nonstop. Another thing he could do was eat clean. The last time he slipped into the Bod Pod, Carter’s body fat was as low as its been in his entire life. And by Practice No. 4 and No. 5 in training camp, pads on, he mentally moved past the injury.

“It was like, ‘Alright, let’s just go. Forget everything else,’” Carter says. “That’s how we got to here now.”

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He never left Orchard Park. Carter rehabbed and trained in town with head strength coach Will Greenberg and the crew’s seasonal intern Anthony Saro “every single day.” With his foot in a massive boot, he’d hammer upper body with heavy weights. That didn’t mean he completely ignored legs, either. Carter was still able to do sets of 100 leg extensions, in addition to 100 pushups and 100 situps. Not 98 or 99. One-hundred, each set.

Carter became addicted to the work, and he was not alone. Defensive end Landon Jackson’s first season lasted all of 30 defensive snaps. He suffered a torn MCL and PCL. The 72nd overall pick in the ‘25 draft joined Carter for these daily sessions. So did defensive backs Dorian Strong and Wande Owens.

They called their group, “The Yard.”

As in, treating these like prison-yard workouts.

“That’s what we modeled them off of,” Carter says. “Because when you don’t have your outlet — which is football for a lot of us — it’s like, ‘Alright, where does all of that go?’ Whether it’s the frustration, the stress, the anger, and you just put in your work.
“Obviously everybody at this level is very talented. It’s the best of the best — wherever you came from. So the mentality is where you separate.”

None of this is acknowledged, let alone celebrated, by an adoring public. But that’s the point. Carter wanted to completely transform himself in the dark to reintroduce himself in September.

Far back as he remembers, the Pickerington, Ohio native lived in a sweaty weight room.

He calls his strength coach at Duke, Dave Feeley “a maniac” and “literally nuts.”

When it was time to max out at the squat rack, the bench press, wherever, Feeley would tell everyone to stop lifting and shut off the lights. A whistle’s blown. A boxing bell dings. All eyes are fixated on you to complete the rep. There’s pressure to deliver. This is fourth and goal from the 1-yard line. “That’s where you compete,” Carter adds. “So it’s you vs. you, but also you’ve got all your guys behind you. It helped build that mentality for the turnaround we had at Duke.”

Carter was a multi-year captain for a Blue Devils team that improved from 3-9 to 9-4.

GM Brandon Beane drafted him with these leadership traits in mind. That ‘24 offseason was a transition for the Bills. Several mainstays departed on both sides of the ball.

Into the pros, Carter admits he veered away from this weightlifting lifestyle. Mainly because he feared over-doing it.

The Achilles tear forced him to get back to his roots. He stopped caring if he’d feel sore the next day and ramped up the intensity to simulate gameday. Carter knows it’s hard to breathe in full pads with a mouthpiece in during those 90+ degree camp days. So he makes all training sessions hard on himself. No AC. No music. No water. (Or, at least as minimal water as possible.)

“A mentality thing,” he adds.
“Dedicate yourself to the process and then see what happens. Give yourself a chance.”

When he wasn’t lifting, sprinting, preparing himself for this 2026 season, Carter ate a boring diet of ground beef and rice with a vegetable on the side.

The result is a third-year pro with more muscle than you typically see at the defensive tackle position. This is no pot-bellied space-eater. Carter plans to shoot gaps and be a playmaker with these 18 pounds of new muscle.

“It’s not normal,” he adds, “and it’s funny because it’s kind of a shock.”

Of course, this Bills defense is also working through the growing pains of a new scheme.

They’ve allowed 31 points in back-to-back weeks and now face a desperate Los Angeles Chargers team Sunday afternoon at Highmark Stadium. Buffalo’s secondary is struggling. It’s on the defensive line to consistently shut down the run and cave the pocket. And if there’s an early sign of optimism, it’s the flurry of different body types up front.

Deone Walker is a “unicorn,” and we’ll get to him in due time. Two games in, he has already put the NFL on notice. Michael Hoecht is back from an Achilles tear of his own.

Carter’s last 12 months hint at what’s working inside this building.

He relished the grime.

He believes this is only the beginning.

“It’s how I built my whole career,” Carter says, “whether it’s here or at Duke. It was just be the team guy, whatever team needs to win and I’m just loving the game.”

Keep an eye our for our new postgame show.

I’ll talk Bills with the team’s former director of personnel, Jim Monos, right here at Go Long after the Chargers game.

ICYMI:

‘Living the American Dream:’ How Packers great Jermichael Finley found purpose

Tyler Dunne — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 15:34:21 GMT

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One split-second changed his life forever.

Jermichael Finley went from Canton dreams to worrying if he’ll be paralyzed for life. A “vegetable.”

Here at Go Long, the former Green Bay Packers tight end reflects on it all…

Raising five boys. His oldest, Kaydon, is a wide receiver at Notre Dame and there are more avengers coming for that gold jacket.
Post-NFL darkness was real. He struggled for a period.
Day-to-day life. The Finley of 2026 is quite different than the one in Green Bay, Wisc., from 2008- ‘13.
Grandma’s influence. She raised him.
His relationship with Mike McCarthy. (Good!)
His relationship with Aaron Rodgers. (Not good!) And, yes, we get his response to Rodgers saying he’s not a smart person.
When doctors told him there was a chance he could never walk again. Finley takes us inside his mind.
Was there any hesitation in letting his boys play football?
If he doesn’t suffer that injury, where does his career go?
Son’s football career began exactly where Dad’s ended: Lambeau Field.

Full video and audio is here, icymi:

For those who’d rather read, our conversation is transcribed below.

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Thank you for fueling independent journalism.

This is long overdue. Thrilled to be sitting here talking with a go-to guy out in those Packer days, covering the team at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Jermichael Finley, one of the greats in Green Bay. We all remember watching you. There weren’t many guys playing the position like you, dropped into the middle of one of the best offenses in NFL history when you look at the numbers and what you guys were able to do together. It’s been 13 years since you played. I can’t believe it.

Finley: Yeah, time flies. They say time flies when you’re having fun, too. So yeah, it’s been 13 years, man. A lot has changed. A lot has went on in a positive way in an upward trajectory. And I’m enjoying life, enjoying the fruits of my labor. Raising five kids, loving all my family here in the great state of Texas. It’s been a hell of a ride. A great ride.

We haven’t caught up in forever and it was so great to just shoot the bull with you on the phone a couple weeks ago ahead of this podcast. You can hear in Jermichael Finley’s voice how much you love being a Dad. It is your whole world. You’ve got Kaydon out there with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish — who just played at Lambeau Field — which was surreal for you. But five kids being a dad, what is life like for you day-in and day-out?

Finley: Man, life is enjoyable. It’s a great time. Right when I open my eyes up at 6:30 in the morning, I’m rolling and getting it going. Getting lunches going, getting kids into the carpool line, getting them out the door, running to the Montessori school down the road for my 4-year-old, and then running back to the middle school for my 14-year old. And then going to get my coffee at my little coffee shop. I’m a creature of habit, so I do the same thing in and out every day. Then I run up here to one of my homeboys’ house at H5 barn and get my workout in. And after that, we’re back onto getting the kids from school, getting to practices and doing all of the logistics that helps me be a great Dad.

How old are your kids? Let’s hear it, and their names.

Finley: I’ll start from the youngest to the oldest. So I’ve got a 4-year old, little Zepplon. I got a nine-year old in Brooklon. I’ve got an 11-year old — just turned 11 a couple days ago — in Hilton. And I’ve got a 14-year old in London and I’ve got my 18-year old out at Notre Dame in Kaydon. It’s a fun ride. All boys, too. So you couldn’t ask for better where we can go out and hit the backyard, hit the football field. It’s one of those things where my career ended and so happened God just gave me five boys and he was like, “Your career’s not done. On the gridiron, it’s done. But in life, you’re just starting.” So he gave me five boys and it’s just been a hell of a ride. I’m enjoying being a father, man.

Kaydon Finley’s Instagram

That’s where my mind goes when I think of you, Jermichael — October 20, 2013 against the Cleveland Browns. You’re having a hell of a game and a bruised spinal cord ends your career right there. It’s always hard for all players to move on when they don’t have a career-ending injury — let alone somebody whose arrow is doing this. Gronk, Jimmy Graham, revolutionizing the position with a future Hall of Fame quarterback. How long was that period to adjust? I know you probably went through some dark times, some depression, trying to find a purpose.

Finley: Yeah, no doubt. It took a minute. I talk to former guys now whose careers not only ended, but ended off, one, not getting picked up. Two, they retired. Or three, if it’s a career-ending injury. And every one of them, all the stories matched up. Everyone leaves the game discombobulated. Because if you think about it, your whole life, me playing in junior high, me playing in high school, me playing in college and going to the National Football League, you always had a time to be somewhere. If it was practice in the morning in junior high and high school, you had to be at morning practice or morning lifts. Then I got to college, you had to be at some sort of lift in our classroom at the time. And then you jump and go to your dream. And my dream was playing professional sports of any sort because I started out playing basketball, baseball, football. I told my grandmother, “Hey, I’m going to play some sort of professional ball.”

It so happened it was football. You always looked at a screen. It says 6:30 be here, 7:30 be here, 8:30 go to special teams. Then you’ve got 10:30 position meetings. So it was kind of like a machine-robot type. And then in a blink of an eye, my career ended and guess what? You have no structure. So it was hard to adjust. I did go into some sort of depression — trying to find my niche, trying to find what I’m doing next. It was tough. I went into that downward spiral. And in my opinion now, it was helping me grow into the man I am today. Me and Courtney are still together. My kids are healthy and blessed and have all the things that they need and the father at his full potential. So it grew me into who I am today.

And financially you were in a good place?

Finley: I’m in the best shape of my life. God gave me more than I was supposed to get. And now Kaydon’s in Notre Dame. I’ve got a 14-year old who’ll probably be better than Kaydon. Sorry, Kaydon but he’s just a beast. And I’ve got an 11-year old who’s an animal. Then I’ve got another kid that’s a little Reggie Bush and then I’ve got my little baby 4-year old who’ll be in the house his whole life. He’s my baby. It’s a life any man would love.

There’s nothing like being a Dad. I can see you from afar pouring yourselves in to all these boys. You’re ripping them through NFL-style workouts. Kaydon looked like a mini J-Mike at 12, 13 years old.

Finley: And it’s one of those things that as a parent — with me and Courtney parenting these boys — at some time of the day we’re like, “Geez, we are tired!” Because we’ve got such a rhythm and a routine that it wear downs on us because we want our kids to be a certain type of kid. Not only sports, but academically also. We want them to be very physically and mentally educated around what’s going on in this world. I have my boys in a really, really strict routine and how we run things and how we do things and it’s very mapped out. And so, everyone sees the glitz and glamor in where my kids are at now with Kaydon. But the structure and the things he had to do to get there with being at school, being at practice, doing treatment — which you have to do treatment at such a young age — doing the personal training that he’s done day-in and day-out. It’s the things that no one sees and no one really gets. Those are the things that you’ve got to do to be a really, really good student athlete nowadays.

We should probably take it back. Go all the way back to your own upbringing, your own childhood, because you didn’t have that father figure in your life. You didn’t have that example to look to. What was your childhood like?

Finley: Yeah, my childhood was very, very different. I grew up in Diboll, Texas, a little small town in East Texas, population of 4K. You’ve got two stop lights, you’ve got your Dairy Queen, Dollar General, you’ve got your little Sonic, Jack in the Box maybe. And I grew up with my grandmother, who was a really, really hardworking lady. I grew up in a hunting lodge that probably no one in this world… “You grew up in a hunting lodge?!” My grandma worked in a hunting lodge. She was a chef. So the guys that go out there and shoot the deer, shoot the hogs or go doe hunting and do all of them things, bring all the meat back and she’s in the kitchen just scrapping it all up, getting it all ready to go. So I grew up a country boy. And grew up very tough. A strict household where you had to — before you get your butt ready for school — take out the trash, make up your bed. And if there’s some dishes on the stove or if the dish is dirty, I need you to wash some dishes before you hit that bed because if you didn’t, your butt would be blistered. That was back in the old days.

You took a few whoopings?

Finley: I took a few. You get me once, but that next one, I’m going to think about it. I’m going to make sure them dishes are out the dishwasher. But I grew up very disciplined and I grew up in a structured household where my grandmother was a hardworking lady, worked 40 years at Temple-Inland. It’s a little wood factory out in East Texas. And she took very, very good care of me, got me the things that I needed. Not wanted. And that’s what made me work so hard to get what I got today. I was a Section 8 baby. I was a kid that grew up in poverty. She’ll tell you today — she’s 81 years old — she’s like, “This boy right here, he always wanted to be great and he always wanted to get his own things, the nice things in life.” And so it happened.

I was supposed to play basketball. Lute Olson came and recruited me in a small town in Diboll and I was going to go to Arizona to play with the Wildcats. I went down there and visited him and went to a couple games in Arizona. Then he was like, “Oh, you play football, too. So we’re going to give you a football scholarship.” So I was going to be a dual-sport athlete.

Then, good ol’ Mack Brown came to Diboll, Texas and put on that little political talk. And so my grandma, she didn’t want me to go play so far away. I was a grandma’s baby. Mack Brown came and said, “Here at the University of Texas, we want to offer you a scholarship.” And I was like, “Wow, so you’re going to let me play basketball and football?” He said, “Yeah, we’ll let you be a dual-sport athlete.” I got the scholarship, went out to the University of Texas, signed my letter of intent. And he said, “Here at the University of Texas, we play football.” I was like, “Oh, I thought you were going to give me a basketball scholarship, too.” He said, “Well, this is the great state of Texas and football is the sport to play here.” So I was like, “OK, well, I’ll go play football.” And so that’s how that happened. Here I am today.

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So your relationship with your Mom and Dad, why were you raised by your grandmother all these years?

Finley: Me and my Mom, she’s awesome, man. She’s in my life. She was in my life when I was a kid also. She had me at a very, very young age (16) where she didn’t have the means and the funds to be able to maintain a little young kid. So my grandmother took me over. But me and my mom are very tight-knit today. More like brother and sister, but she’ll still get on my butt. She’s awesome. My father wasn’t around, but he’s come into my life now and has taught me a lot of things. And now I’ve got my boys. They’re getting a relationship with them now. But he came back into my life and it’s been awesome.

So you get to little old Green Bay, Wisconsin. Did you even hear of Green Bay, Wisconsin before they drafted you?

Finley: I got that call from Ted Thompson, Mike McCarthy. My family saw it before I did because I was back in my hometown where I lived at and we were outside having a little country barbecue. I was paying attention, but I wasn’t and then everybody saw the name. I got the phone call. And it was like “Jermichael Finley, third round, Green Bay.” I was like, “Green Bay? Out of all the 32 teams, Green Bay drafted me?” Next thing I know, I was like, “I’m coming from Austin, Texas, headed to Green Bay, Wisconsin.” I’m like, “Those are two totally different worlds there.” You get what I’m saying? And so I get a call from a couple Texas boys (who played in Green Bay): Johnny Jolly and Mike Montgomery. They were like, “You better bring every Nintendo, every kind of TV you got, everything possible because there’s nothing to do here, my guy.” I was like, “Oh God.” And he said, “When I say it’s freezing here, sir, it’s freezing.” I was like, “Man! Out of all the teams… Green Bay?” But it was probably the best situation for me. It was all about the fans. It was all about going to work. It was all about being a family man, and that was really good for me because I was raised in a small town starting off anyway. So going to Green Bay was a shock after three years from Austin, but it all panned out in the right, right way. It really did.

Yeah, J-Mike in the big city could have gone a different route, I’d imagine, at that point in your life.

Finley: It could have, man, because coming from where I came from — coming into the money that you come into — it can distract some people. It can really fog your mind to thinking that you’re invincible and you’re really not. A lot of guys didn’t get over that hump of being fortunate enough to get by with not going bankrupt, with not getting in trouble in the streets or getting that DUI. I was fortunate enough to never have a rap sheet. Never having to worry about finances. I had some kind of angel looking right over me because I did make some hiccups where it just didn’t just punish me to a certain degree. Green Bay was awesome to me, man. The fan base was amazing. The town was amazing. Great food there. Great little honeycomb, little spots that you can go to and get some good gourmet food. I’m a foodie.

That’s the beauty of Green Bay. I loved living there and you would run into everybody. I remember being out as a 21-, 22-year old and seeing you guys. When I sat down with you for that feature, I want to say it was 2012, we went to Plae Bistro.

Finley: I remember that. That’s the spot every time I go back for appearance or I go back to Green Bay and do some things there, I’m a creature of habit. So I’m like, “Let’s go to Plae Bistro. I want that Fettuccini Alfredo with some chicken. Cut it up.” And so it is just one of those things where you know the spots you’re going to hit. You see the same people there. It’s one of those towns where nobody ever moves there. Everybody soaks in and stays there, raises their kids there. It was a dream come true for me.

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So rookie year, you didn’t play much, you’re getting acclimated to the pros. And then ’09, you break out: 676 yards and five touchdowns (in 13 games). Big plays in big moments. I’m thinking of that Viking game facing Brett Favre in the old Metrodome. That stadium was rocking.

Finley: Rocking. It was a Monday night game. It was rocking, man. And my thing was, I love to play indoors. If you’ve ever been to Green Bay, I know you have. I’m talking to our audience here. If you ever been to Green Bay, it’s cold. It’s brutal. And everybody’s like, “Oh, we’ve got homefield advantage.” It’s really not homefield advantage. We’re cold, too.

Brett Favre used to say that. His record in the cold was incredible. He’s like, “I don’t like playing in this shit, either. It’s freezing.”

Finley: Freezing. So when we got to the domes — the Detroits of the world, Minnesotas of the world, it was heaven. It’s like, “Oh, I’m on a fast track. Indoors. I don’t have to worry about switching my hands up 1,000 times to catch a ball. Chest passes or whatnot.” It was a place that I loved to play. Minnesota, the fans were just outrageous. Fans were loud. It was a hostile environment. I loved to play in hostile environments where you can shut the fans up. So that’s why I love to go torture them guys.

In 2010, you guys win the Super Bowl, but your season ends after five games. You’ve got the ring. You’re a part of this team that will go down in history. Anybody from that team can go back as a conquering hero to Green Bay and the larger Brown County area. But it must’ve been bittersweet, too, to not be out there. What were the emotions through that season?

Finley: The emotions, man. It was bittersweet. Sweet, we won the Super Bowl. Bitter, was that I wasn’t on the field. I gave 25 percent of that championship, of course, playing five games of the season. In the NFL, it’s not if you’re going to get hurt, it’s when you’re going to get hurt. The game is moving so fast. So, it was heartbreaking. There were a couple of us out that year. Nick Barnett, I think Brandon Chillar.

Morgan Burnett. Ryan Grant.

Finley: See, the list goes on. What’s the sweet part about this is that these guys still pushed through. Still figured it out. Still made things happen. And you can’t downfall that. You can’t look down on that because they found a way and made things happen. They went on a run in the playoffs there — all away games — and got the job done. Kudos to those guys. It was an experience just being there, being a part of that team. It went down in history. You can go back there and be a rockstar, superstar now because no championships have been there since. And Green Bay is due for one. It’s about that time.

Your head coach, Mike McCarthy. You two had a special relationship. And really over time, you gain such a respect for Mike McCarthy because he did value those 1-on-1’s. And it seemed like you were somebody he’d want right in his office talking face-to-face through all the ups, all the downs. Take us into that office. What was that relationship really like at 1265 Lombardi Ave?

Finley: Oh man, it was very special. His nickname for me was “Man of War.” It was like, “Boy, you can do anything. You can come out and play football and then you go out there and do what you want, do that. You can do anything.” And man, it was very special. He was like, “You know what? I need to see you once a day in my office. Every morning you come through them damn doors, I need to see your face. And bring me some coffee upstairs.” I was like, “Alright, I got you.” At the time, if you knew me, I was like, “Bring me some coffee?” And then at the time, he said: “And you know what? You and 12, you two need to get your asses on-board together. We need you guys seeing eye-to-eye at all times.” And so we had that special bond where I can talk to him and he can talk to me, and we knew the lingo. We knew it wasn’t any disrespect. It was all about winning and making his team better. And that was one of the things that we did. Every time I came in the building, he said, “I just want to know what your ass is thinking all the time. We just need to know what 88’s thinking because if 88’s thinking right, this team can go here.” And every morning I ran upstairs, “What’s up, McCarthy? How are you? I’m good. I’m ready to go today. My mind’s right.” He said, “This is what I need from you. I need you and 12, every Saturday, I need your asses in one of your rooms. If it’s his room or your room, I need you guys to get this gameplan right because if the middle of the field is open, we can get Jordy and Greg Jennings — all them guys — we can get them going.”

So we got it going for a good two years. And if you know the offense at the time, it was in an upward trajectory and things were rolling. Offense, we probably had the best offense at the time.

The cover of Sports Illustrated, we can all picture it, right? All the weapons around Aaron Rogers on that cover.

Finley: It was rolling. And me and 12 met in each other’s room for two years straight. If you were a fly on the wall, it’d be a very interesting conversation because really, we really didn’t talk about… We talked about football probably 10 minutes, went over the gameplan, went over logistics, where he wanted me to be. If he’s taking three steps, he wants me to go five on a couple routes, break it off. But at the end of it, we talked about family. And that’s why when I see him talking on little podcasts, I’m like, “Alright, whatever.” It was really a relationship. No ill will, no hate, no nothing. And I was just one of those guys who was just going to shoot you straight. That’s it. There wasn’t going to be no sugarcoating. There wasn’t going to be, “Oh, I said this, I said that.” It was just going to be straight down the line.

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No doubt, Jermichael. I’m thinking about 2012 when we sat down for that feature I mentioned earlier and you stressed wanting to freestyle and not have to overthink and play your ball. He probably felt a certain way, Aaron Rodgers, about that. Because he wants his receivers in a certain spot and an offense run a certain way. He is a mad scientist. There’s a reason he’ll be a first-ballot Hall of Fame, four-time MVP, all of that. When I wrote those stories that he referenced on that most recent podcast, Cam Heyward’s “Not Just Football,” which you know what? I watched the whole thing and I’m like, “This is awesome. Aaron Rodgers just letting loose on every topic. This is great.” We only ask for transparency when we’re talking to all these players, all these coaches. It’s what he thinks. And then he dropped that line. He doesn’t mention you and Greg Jennings by name. But it’s the “two teammates.” And he called you not a smart person.

Finley: Hey, that’s his own opinion. I have my opinion. He has his. And we do live in a country where you can say it’s freedom of speech. It really threw me off. I didn’t see it live. Someone sent it to me and was like, “This guy doesn’t know you.” I was like, “I don’t think he does either.” I can’t be too dumb. Like I said, I’m raising a family. I’ve got a kid here at Notre Dame. Living really good. Really don’t even think or have anything to say bad about him, but I just think, like I said, he’s on a rampage of, I guess, making himself feel good or making himself feel worthy. But his job right now is to go win football games. And that’s what he’s supposed to do. He’s not supposed to worry about the past or anything that’s going on now. So I don’t know what that was all about. I wish him nothing but the best. But at the end of the day, he knows nothing about me. I haven’t heard his voice. He hasn’t heard my voice. He hasn’t seen my face. I haven’t seen his face. But I’m a phone call away and he can always hit my line and really see what I’m up to and really see the intelligence and the smarts I got because obviously what he said was dumb.

Anybody who has five boys, embraces fatherhood and keeps that at the top of the priority list is the smartest, most intelligent person in my book and a lot of people’s books. When is the last time you even talked to Aaron Rodgers?

Finley: Realistically, probably when I left. When I was in the hospital.

Really? That’s the last time you talked to him?

Finley: Hospital. Never really contacted each other outside of that. Never reached out. That’s about the last time. But like I said, me and McCarthy, we talked. The last time we talked was right before he took the Steelers job. I embraced his relationship. We were in Green Bay together last year for a game. He was in a box. It was a reunite of all great energy. I’m a big McCarthy fan and McCarthy is my guy. I hope he does really well here with the Steelers. But at the end of the day, man, it’s a game of “What have you done for me lately?” And that’s what I know.

And just to defend you and Greg Jennings, because you guys are taking those bullets. Look, I wrote a story at Bleacher Report in 2016 and then another one a couple years later looking at what in the hell happened in Green Bay after Mike McCarthy was fired. And it was after that one when Aaron responded by calling you and Greg “irrelevant” and “bitter.” Which, you guys caught a lot of passes from Aaron Rodgers. Greg, some of the most famous passes he’s ever thrown in that Super Bowl. You’re laying your body on the line and your career ends in that 2013 season as we referenced. All I say is this, I’m calling as many people as I can, talking to as many people as I can. You two were willing to put your name on it. You’re not alone, by the way. There are some names that would probably surprise people that agree with you two in the way that you described his leadership and him as a teammate. Not taking anything away from him as a player — obviously one of the best ever. But I feel like your opinions matter. You’re there firsthand. And here you are taking the high road. At the end of the day, that matters for people to know I’m reaching out to you. You’re picking up the phone and simply answering questions.

Finley: That’s it. And like I said, from here on out, I take the high road. I have kids and people and other places looking up to me. So it’s no ill will. I’ve got bigger fish to fry. I’ve got a lot of things going on in my life that’s positive and I want all my blessings. I want things to pan out right for me and for the pieces to move in the right direction for me. So everything I do from here on out will be strategic. It’ll be in a smart way. Like I said, Aaron Rodgers is one of the best quarterbacks to ever touch the pigskin. I really believe that. And if he ever needs me, wants me, I’m here and I’m always going to be straight down the line.

Let’s bring him on next week. Aaron, come on if you’re watching this. It’s been 13 years, so there you go. What a great reunion. So you are spending those Saturdays together in the hotel. That was before every game, just going over football stuff, talking life because he referenced those as well.

Finley: Going over life, going over plays. If we had Cover 2, we had Cover 3, we had cloud, where he wanted me to be, how he wanted it to look. Because he is the quarterback. So I had to listen. And it wasn’t that I didn’t know and things like that. It was just — if I got going in the middle of the field — it helps the other guys get open. So I didn’t get what he was saying that he had to “help” me. It wasn’t no help. It was just two guys obviously that didn’t see eye-to-eye on things and they wanted us to come together. And it wasn’t nothing like, “Oh, Finley didn’t know it. He didn’t know this play. He didn’t know that play.” It was just if Finley got the ball and got the game going in the right way, guess what it does? It gets the running game going. We can get the play-action going to get the middle of the field open. Or we can get the shot players on the outside to get Jordy and Greg, James Jones, Driver. And at the time, Cobb was coming in as our second-year guy. So it was just really to get the relationship going. So I guess he lost his thought process of what it really was.

I remember in the moment, in real time, that was what you would stress repeatedly — you really wanted a relationship off the field. You really knew how important that was for it to bleed onto the field.

Finley: Because if you look at today’s game, if you have no relationship with the quarterback, it’s nothing. Now they’re handing out tons of money — tons of money to all the players at this point. So the quarterback is the head of the offense. So you’ve got to be on the same page as him. You’ve got to be seeing eye to eye with him because if not? You’re just not really maximizing the opportunity of what y’all can do in the offense. I dropped my pride, I dropped everything I had and I was like, “Let’s get it going. Because if we can get it going, then everybody else in the offense will bloom,” and it did bloom at the time.

A lot of mouths to feed. You’re producing still. So 2011, statistically your best season, 767 yards, eight touchdowns. But I remember we talked about it then into 2012, there’s still this element of — there aren’t many human beings sculpted like Jermichael Finley. There’s another tier here that everybody can feel, everybody can see. There’s the ups and downs of 2012. But then it really did feel like in 2013 that you were turning a corner and figuring out who you could be as a player. Take me through ‘12 to ’13, up to that game against the Browns and where you thought your career was going. Where was that arrow really pointing for you?

Finley: The arrow was just unbelievable, just big as day, biggest. Man, it was going up. I looked at myself as going down as one of the greatest tight ends to ever play the position. Because of, one, the quarterback I had. I had a lot of respect for him and his ability to throw the ball. Two, the sort of offense McCarthy had created around the tight end and in the play-action game to get me open and to create mismatches, which he did very, very well. And three, just the speed and the size. It was unequal to the linebackers, safeties even when you want to split me out on the corner. At the time I got injured, it was devastating because I was really coming into my own at that time — literally at that time. And like I said, I was supposed to have a yellow jacket on today. What I always tell people, if I don’t have it on, one of my kids will have a yellow jacket because I will implement all the things that I know and all the physical tools that I know how to get to that point into my kids. And that’s what I believe, man. I was coming into my own at that time.

The Five ‘Finlet’ Avengers. They’re coming for you.

Finley: You’re going to hear it over and over and over. It’s going to be Finley boys. Even if it’s Major League Baseball, it’s going to be something. You’re going to hear them. That’s most definitely.

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What do you remember about that play where you got hurt? Do you remember it blow-by-blow or does it vanish from your memory?

Finley: I remember bits and pieces. I remember, of course, the slant route. It was a quick read from Aaron Rodgers. Quick release, caught the ball. Then when I looked up, that’s when everything shut off. But other than that, man, it was a bang-bang play. It was football. It wasn’t anything he did wrong or right. Nothing I did wrong or right. It was just such a quick bang-bang play that no one had time to think or no one had time to adjust to get my head up or anything like that. So it’s part of the game and I live by it and I die by it that my career ended off of such a play where no one had time to adjust. So like it’s part of the game.

It’s the most terrifying part of the game, though. That’s every player’s worst fear. It always blows my mind to watch a game when — it just happened last week to the Packers. Jayden Reed against the Jets, first drive. To see a player not moving. Motionless. Get peeled off of a turf, loaded onto an ambulance, driven off, and for those 10 other players on the field to then have to throw themselves right back into it. It’s so different when you’re standing on the sideline and you hear these collisions. You feel them up close. These are the best athletes in the world, the fastest, strongest, colliding at angles that human beings were never meant to collide at. To then transition into that next play, I don’t know how you do it. And so you’ve seen that same scene as a player, right? You’re going through those mental computations. You can’t slow down.

Finley: Because it’ll be you next. In practice, if you’ve seen that happen, it’s called “five yards up.” You move five yards up and the training staff is back there handling that person. You’re like, “Damn, the game is vicious. This game is a cold-blooded game.” But at the end of the day, guess what? We signed up for it. And they are paying you a good amount of money to go out there and be a gladiator. And it’s part of your job at the end of the day. So that’s what I tell my kids today. If you don’t want to get hit, we might as well start really focusing on academics and let’s get a good degree and let’s go do something else or let’s go to band or something. Because if you don’t like getting hit, we need to find something else for you to do.

Or if you don’t like going to get that grit, that work. My 11-year-old now, he’s like, “Dad, I don’t want to go to lessons today.” I was like, “Well, let’s go over here and get this book and read this book real fast because if you don’t like the grind, if you don’t like the dirty work of it, there’s so many kids that need the sports world and need the financial part of it. There’s some kids out here that are hungry as hell that’ll really work for this shit. Really work for this and really want this. “So if you don’t really want this, bro” — that’s how I talk to them — “let’s go do something else.” And then I’ll get in their heads. They’re like, “Dad, I’m ready to go to lessons, Dad. Let’s go.”

So that’s the one thing. I play mind games with my kids: “If you don’t want this, let’s do something else.” And then next thing I know, I leave him alone, but I’ll be in the room getting ready for lessons because I know he’s about to come in and say, “Let’s go. I’m ready now. I’m ready.” So I was like, “That’s what I’m saying. That’s what it’s going to take. But we’ve got to get to where daddy’s not going to give you this pep talk to get your butt up to go do this.” So it’s just part of the game. I even have a field in back in my yard with a football field where we train day-in and day-out. It’s hard ass work. And you’ve seen some of my training on Instagram. It’s tough. And the kids that I used to train, they’ll tell you — “Mr. Finley’s workouts are no game. It’s not a game.” It’s 30 minutes and it’s up-tempo and it’s got a sense of urgency to it. It’s how I played and how I train kids. They’re going to need it because nobody really gives it. Nobody cares. They want to see what can you do for me now? And that’s what I’m trying to teach these kids because when they get into collegiate sports, these coaches are going to say, “What can you do for me?” And it’s just part of it. They might not tell you that, but that’s what it is.

As a player, you went one speed to turn your body into this well-oiled machine on Sundays. So your kids are going to live that. But I guess this is a two-parter for you. Because of the way football ended for you, was there any hesitation for you as a Dad to introduce football to your boys? And then is there any hesitation in their mind — as they’re deciding whether to play or not— when they see the play on YouTube. Have they seen it? It’s all out there. They can see their Dad motionless.

Finley: We’re in a world of kids getting phones early. We’re in a world of TikToking and YouTube TV, and all that. So they’ve seen it. But my two oldest ones, they stuck in the game and loved the game. Kaydon’s already into collegiate sports, so he’s in it. My 14-year-old, if you see him, he’s just different. He’s bigger than all the kids, faster than all the kids, so he’s in it. Now my 11-year-old, he’s like the lawyer, doctor. He’s like, “So Dad, I don’t think I want to get hit, Dad.” I was like, “Alright then, bro, we’ll put you at quarterback. You going to have to be our pitcher or first baseman.” He was like, “Yeah, I think baseball’s going to be it, Dad.” I was like, “Alright, we’re going to quit football.” And now I got him straight baseball. But my 9-year-old, you would think he was born in Diboll, Texas. He’s a dog. He’s different. He’s like a Reggie Bush type, so he’s going to be in the game, too. It’s in ‘em. It’s in their blood. So there’s nothing I can do at this point.

That “Man of War,” like McCarthy said. It’s in the blood.

Finley: (He’d say), “Finley, we need to teach you how to practice because you’ve got one speed and we’ve got to figure out how to adjust and tempo your speed in practice.” I was like, “Coach, I’m sorry. I go one speed and that’s what I’m going to do here.” He said, “We need to teach you how to practice.” I was like, “I didn’t know you had to learn how to practice.”

In terms of tempo’ing down?

Finley: Yeah, tempo’ing down. He said, “Finley,” he’s like, “Crazy 8s, you’ve got one damn speed and we’ve got to slow your ass down in practice, man.” I was like, “All right, I don’t know what to do, coach.” And I never adjusted, never figured out how to practice for him. I just had one speed and one speed only.

When did you come to in the hospital? Knowing where in the hell you are?

Finley: It was probably the next day, but still had the tingling, the feeling in my body. I had a lot going on. And it was tough to grasp because everything was just shut off. It was hard to even connect fingers and turn my neck and had a little tingling sensation in my left arm and my legs were dead. It took me two weeks or so to really just come to feeling some of my body. It was a hell of an ordeal, man. It was tough. It was tough.

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When you were taken off the field, you went right to the hospital and you can’t move at that point. Do you know what’s happening?

Finley: That was my first time ever being in the ambulance. You would think, growing up in Section 8, you’d have been in the ambulance because we used to play a game called “Kill-a-Man.” You throw the ball in there and whoever touched this damn ball first gets hurt. So you would think I’d have been hurt at some point, but that was my first time ever being on a stretcher, being in an ambulance. Next thing I know, the media’s there. I was just hearing a couple little things: “We’ve got to take you down through the basement of the hospital.” I’m like, “OK.” I’m just sitting there on this thing just shocked. A whirlwind. Because everything’s moving so fast, but really slow. And life is moving fast, but in my world, I’m still trying to gather all my senses. Next thing I know, they get me there, put me in the CAT scan and do all these things. I hear, “Zzzzzz!” I’m like, “What the hell is going on?” They’re cutting my helmet off, cutting my pants off. Everybody’s moving fast. I’m like, “OK, what’s going on?” They said, “You’re paralyzed.” I was like, “What?” I said, “Will I be able to play football again.” They said, “That is the least of your worries. You need to figure out how you’re going to be able to live without sucking out a straw.” I was like, “What? Sucking out a damn straw? Now, we’ve got a freaking problem.” They said it’s 90-10. Ninety percent of people don’t come back. Ten percent of people do. I just poured down in tears. I’m like, “What the living hell?”

That was in the hospital. You’re hearing all this from the doctor.

Finley: I’m hearing a shitload because I’m asking them, “Will I be playing again?” Because you know me. I love the game. Shit, I need to be back on that field.

Meanwhile, what can you move at that point? Anything?

Finley: Because once you get a spinal cord injury, they can’t move you. You can’t move. Well, I couldn’t move just from my senses, but they can’t even move you. They can’t torque you and do all of that because you’re sensitive at the time. Things can break. And so I’m asking them, “I need to be back on that field next week.” They’re like, “You need to simmer down.”

Because at that point, they’re thinking you could be paralyzed.

Finley: For life.

From the neck down. That’s a possibility?

Finley: For life. So after that, man, I was so messed up in the head from the upward trajectory I was going on and just figuring out the game. Now, I’m laying paralyzed on the hospital bed and having Courtney steer me around with the belt, learning how to walk again at some point down the road. I’m like, “What?” She helped me use the restroom. I’m like, “What the hell is going on here?” I was just a superstar in the National Football League, and now it’s a possibility I can be a vegetable. And so that didn’t sit with me right.

What’s going through your mind? When you go from ascending — you’re thinking gold jacket, one of the best to ever do it — to “I might be a vegetable?”

Finley: A lot is at the time. A lot as far as, “Screw all of this. Forget it.” After that, coming back, little senses are coming back here and there. Then, I’m really grasping. I came back and my limbs are coming back after a couple months. I’m back lifting weights and getting back strong to try to push back to the NFL. And then I get to the Steelers because the Steelers doctor, Dr. Maroon did my surgery.

This was the C3-C4 fusion that you had done?

Finley: Yep, I get that surgery, come back stronger, start lifting again, get back out to Scottsdale lifting with Ian Danney, the trainer. And then I pushed back, got back swole, got back ready to go. Went out to Seahawks, visited John Schneider down with the Seahawks (in March 2014). Went to the Steelers to visit the Steelers. And then Steelers were ready to go. They were like, “You’re ready. You’re ready to go.” We were doing a contract also with Schneider and the Seahawks at the time, and he came back and was like, “No, I wouldn’t do this if I was you.” I was ready to go to. At the facility. Getting back to the NFL. Schneider was like, “Oh bro, you’ve got a bruise on your spinal cord.” Our neurology doctor said, “I wouldn’t let this kid come back.” Next thing I know, I went out to Mayo Clinic, and they said the same exact thing.

A couple people said that. I had to listen at some point. It was like, “If you get even tapped one more time with your head?” That’s when sucking that straw came back. Courtney was like, “You’ll be a dumb MF’er if you come back.” I was like, “Yeah, I would be.” Then I had the insurance policy at the time on my body. She was like, “If you do the math, you get several million dollars and you’ve got to play in the NFL another five years to get this equaled up to. Let’s just take this insurance policy, sir.”

Blake Baratz at the Institute for Athletes for the win there, right?

Finley: He’s still my brother today. We did that, man. What a time it’s been. It’s been a miracle. I’m in the best shape of my life now. Living the American Dream.

That’s why we have to listen to our wives, right? Because the competitor in you, that “Man of War,” that dog, that kid from the country of Texas is dying to play. Killed those workouts. Seattle, Pittsburgh, you’re close, you’re on the cusp, but these doctors are telling you, really, if you take a head-to-head, if you’re hit wrong awkwardly in a certain way…

Finley: You could really be back to sucking out that straw, seriously. And so listen to that. Went to the best hospital in America in the Mayo Clinic down there in Minnesota, and they told me the same thing. So I was like, “Kudos to y’all. Thank y’all. I’m going to go live my life.” And I did that. And like I said, now I can just implement into all my kids that hard work does pay off, but you got to be smart, too.

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Let’s allow you to dream for a second. If this collision never happens, what would you have done with the rest of your career?

Finley: If it would’ve never happened, for sure, probably would’ve been the best. It would’ve been hell on the NFL. They would’ve seen something that probably they haven’t seen at that time. For sure, would have outdid the numbers of what they predicted for me. Would’ve beat all odds for sure, which I already have beat all odds. But really just smacked the stats in the face and would’ve been getting prepared to have put that yellow jacket on. That’s most definitely.

I mean, we’re probably talking more Super Bowls too, because you look at those playoff losses that came in ‘13 and ‘14 and ‘15 and ‘16, you would’ve made a difference in those games.

Finley: No doubt. And it would’ve been at least two more Super Bowls there in Green Bay, Wisconsin. That’s 100 percent.

But to be able to pour into your boys, I’ve got to think it’s the most fulfilling sensation anybody could have. As a human being, it’s got to be so gratifying to see them loving football, loving sports, loving life.

Finley: It is one of the most fulfilling things on earth, man, to see my boys just pan out to where they’re going and who they are today. It’s one of the most fulfilling things that I’ve encountered here in life as we speak.

You were in Lambeau. (For Notre Dame’s opener vs. Wisconsin) How was that return for Kaydon’s game stepping out of that field?

Finley: Yeah, it was surreal. The crazy part is my kid started his career when my career ended. So it was one of them divine moments where this is what’s supposed to happen. He came over, usually he’s on the other side of the rope. I’m the player. He was the kid. Now, he was the player and I’m over there like a fan. He came over. I’m like, “Damn, it’s a role switch over here.” When I say it was an experience that I never imagined, it was bone-chilling. Green Bay, it was rocking, that stadium was going, and he was jacked up and juiced up, ready to go. It was just very exciting to see him so excited. Man, he was jacked.

It had to have been a good feeling for you because as a player and then even since you’ve been done playing, fans have kind of been all over the place. … To be out there at Lambeau, I imagine they’re yelling your name, they’re cheering for you.

Finley: A very cool feeling. A very cool feeling for my family. All the boys were there and had the 18 jerseys on, had Kaydon’s jersey on. They were hanging over the rails, just jacked up, had them on the sideline. We got to see him in pre-game warmup, running out the tunnel.

Man, it was a feeling that I won’t be feeling for a long time.

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‘Dangerous:’ Say hello to the new Buffalo Bills juggernaut offense

Tyler Dunne — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 15:53:31 GMT

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ORCHARD PARK, NY — A single smelling salt dangled from his lips like a cig. Cameras captured the sideline scene. It was only a one-score game at this point. Merely eight minutes in. But honestly? The Detroit Lions could’ve packed up their bags at this point. Josh Allen was in full desperado mode and this Buffalo Bills offense would do whatever it damn well pleased this monumental evening.

Since he first bloomed as the face of this franchise — hurdling, stiff-arming, trash-talking — Allen has clearly been at his best in full sicko mode.

Relay this viral image to tight end Jackson Hawes and his eyes get big. He’s still getting to know his quarterback.

“In his mouth?!” he says, concerned. “He’s crazy for that. That stuff can’t be good for you.”

Elsewhere, center Connor McGovern is equally stupefied.

Well, for about 0.5 seconds anyways. Such stunts are quite common.

“He’s a lunatic,” McGovern says. “But a great lunatic. … Who knows what the fuck he does. He’s one of a kind.”

Owner Terry Pegula himself could not have scripted a better housewarming party.

Game No. 1 inside of new Highmark Stadium across Abbott Road resembled a preordained spectacle. Somehow, reality surpassed the weeks/months/years of ridiculous hype. The Joe Brady effect is already obvious. Players repeatedly sing the virtues of an offensive-minded coach, a 36-year-old who sets the tone for everything. Left tackle Dion Dawkins said this offense feels “like Madden.” The Bills were correct to give Allen a seat in all nine head-coach interviews. Synergy at the top was missing. Synergy at the top has now been found. One week after dismantling the No. 1 defense in the sport, the Bills’ offense humiliated a proud team with a proud coach that also fancies itself a Super Bowl contender.

Game No. 1 at new Highmark Stadium was a 41-31 vertiginous blend of hooks… jabs… crosses… uppercuts… haymakers. All punches synchronized into a sweet science we haven’t seen in this Bills offense.

They’ve got issues to sort out on defense. Expected in a new scheme.

The level of precision on offense, however, is staggering.

When the Bills had a chance for a quick strike, Allen went for the jugular with a deep strike to wide receiver Joshua Palmer. Stick around for more, friends. This play was quarterback sorcery.

When the Bills wanted to melt clock, they bled the Lions out with a crushing 15-play, 75-yard drive that ate up 8:22 of clock. Defensive linemen, hands on hips, huffed and puffed and Allen’s two-yard plunge upped the lead to 34-17.

The gulf between Allen and the rest of the quarterbacks in the NFL gets wider.

The offensive line’s chemistry gets stronger.

The team’s WR1 (DJ Moore) went down and this train kept on moving at the same speed.

Go Long is your home for independent journalism.

This was always the upside in moving from a defensive-minded Sean McDermott to a coach who places the quarterback, instead of himself, as the center of this team’s universe. The Bills can now slam the accelerator in ways they never did before.

Veterans have not been shy in hinting that Brady’s predecessor had his thumb on the offense. All contours of the field are now open for business.

On Thursday night — with all of America watching the unveiling of a new home — the Bills put the rest of the NFL on notice.

Afterward, I asked Palmer what makes this offense most dangerous to him.

“Most dangerous?” he asked aloud. “Every position is dangerous. We have a dangerous running back room. We have a dangerous tight end room. We have a dangerous wide receiver room. We have an absolutely dangerous quarterback with a dangerous O-line. So don’t ask about dangerous.”

Fair enough.

But moments later — asked about something entirely different — Palmer returned to the subject.

“We have great position rooms on this offense and I don’t think there’s any… actually, I know there’s no weak spot in the offense, on the depth chart.”

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The Lions wouldn’t argue with Palmer’s assessment, no. Brady’s unit gained first downs on 52 percent of its non-kneeldown plays (34-of-66). Allen (248 yards passing, 69 rushing, five touchdowns) and running back James Cook (135 yards on 21 attempts, one TD) took turns battering Detroit’s defense. It’s hard to imagine the injured Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph making a substantial difference in this one. Brady’s dizzying sequencing kept the Lions on their collective heels from the jump. Calling plays, he stayed two moves ahead. One play constantly set up the next.

There’s no governor on Allen.

When he spotted open acreage, he hit the gas.

When he wants to throw across his body, he doesn’t think twice.

Two of GM Brandon Beane’s maligned back-to-back top picks — tight end Dalton Kincaid (25^th overall in 2023) and wide receiver Keon Coleman (33^rd overall in 2024) — knifed through the Detroit secondary with ease. One’s finally healthy, one’s finally locked in. Kincaid’s 225 receiving yards are the most by the tight end through the first two games of a season since George Kittle in 2020.

Everything appeared to be such a breezy skip through the park. But there’s a reason those rushing lanes are so wide and those receivers are so wide open.

One is the synergy on the offensive line up front.

Last week, the Bills handled Will Anderson Jr., Danielle Hunter and the ravenous Texans front on the road.

Five days later, in their new home, the group dominated. There were pancakes, like this one from Alec Anderson. The team’s new starter up front who declared this group the best O-Line in football spotted linebacker Jack Campbell in his periphery and lit him up. Most impressive is how easily the Bills muted Detroit’s pressure package. Second-year defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard, an ex-Bill linebacker, blitzed more than he ever has — 55.3 percent — and it all only served as a kiss of death. Per Next Gen Stats, Allen went 12 of 17 for 137 yards with two TDs, scrambled five times for 49 yards and a TD and went 4 for 4 with a TD on QB sneaks vs. the pressure.

There were a slew of exotic looks. Sheppard tried to funk everything up.

But this is why the Bills made a point to re-sign center Connor McGovern in the spring.

Center and quarterback decoded everything in real time.

“So many guys know this offense in and out,” McGovern says. “It allows us to be so well communicated. They were giving us so many exotic blitzes and so many different looks and we’re talking on the sideline — or even in the middle of the game — and I’m able to turn around and talk to him and get into random stuff. This is the best communication we’ve had in years because so many guys know this offense and how everything clicks.”

McGovern makes a ton of protection calls on the line, which allows Allen to focus on what’s cookin’ outside. Right up to the snap, they communicate.

In other words? The exact opposite of how the Green Bay Packers’ makeshift offensive line operated inside US Bank last week. Coordinator Brian Flores put this unit in a blender inside ear-splitting US Bank Stadium.

It helps to have the noise on your side, too. Quarterback Jared Goff admitted the raucous atmosphere inside Highmark Stadium led to multiple pre-snap mistakes. On the bench, between series, it was so loud that O-Line coach Pat Meyer needed to crouch low and all but press his face into McGovern’s face to have a conversation.

Even then, McGovern couldn’t hear him.

This stadium is much louder than the last one, he adds. Brought him back to all of his “whiteout” games at Penn State in front of 100K fans.

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At one point, Hawes said the Bills spammed the same exact running play to Cook three times in a row. “Finding the defense’s weaknesses,” he says, “and just going from there. It’s really simple. If we’re kicking ass? I think we ran the same run play three times and got like 60 yards out of it.”

Another reason everything’s so crisp? Multiple players went out of their way to single out unsung heroes on Brady’s staff.

The Bills lost Aaron Kromer to retirement, but McGovern sites assistant offensive line coach Austin Gund as the mastermind behind Buffalo’s pass-protection plans. In fact, he’s fairly certain that Gund sleeps at the Bills facility five nights a week. He watches a borderline unhealthy amount of film to hunt for tendencies in defenses and prepare all linemen for all possible scenarios. “I don’t know how much he goes home,” McGovern says. “These coaches put in so many fucking hours here it’s insane.”

Coupled with Meyer, a Kromer disciple, nobody has felt a dropoff.

“Our philosophy is the same,” McGovern adds. “Those two are elevating us further.”

Hawes calls tight ends coach Rob Boras “a psycho.” To get the Bills ready on this short week, the 55-year-old assistant got to the office at 5 a.m. one day and stuck around until 1 a.m.

Players notice. Players want to attack their work day with the same fervor.

Coffee helps.

Fast Twitch energy drinks, too. This is Brady’s go-to beverage.

But Allen’s presence is the ultimate source of caffeination for everyone at One Bills Drive. He’s forever the reason to believe this season can end in championship immortality. Nobody makes the hard stuff look easy quite like the former MVP. Take his touchdown pass to Palmer. Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner supplied an exceptional breakdown worth your time.

On this particular play, the Lions actually do get to the QB. He has defenders in his face — immediately — and appears ready to dump the ball off to Cook on a sneak route in the flat. Yet in this same split-second? Allen somehow spots Palmer streaking free. Palmer simultaneously noticed the safety playing low and changed the angle of his route.

Allen computed everything in a fraction of a second.

Pump-faked. Released.

Touchdown.

So, yeah. Kincaid puts the state of the Bills offense best.

“It all starts with Josh back there and when he’s on, it’s awesome,” Kincaid says. “It’s kind of throughout the league, you see teams that don’t have as much success and it’s normally due to quarterback play. Having Josh makes all the difference.”

This new home is technically called “Highmark Stadium.” They’re the sponsor paying for the naming rights.

At this rate, however, those hoarse fans filling the bowl will start calling this the House that Allen Built.

Smelling salts, included.

The Bills hope this is only the beginning.

Miss our exclusive with owner Terry Pegula? Here is how the Bills stayed in Buffalo:

‘Legacy:’ Terry Pegula opens up on his mission to keep the Bills in Buffalo

Tyler Dunne — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:58:20 GMT

Illustration by Brave Buffalo

ORCHARD PARK, NY — Enter the office of Terry Pegula and a football-sized dog named Lucy barks and leaps and barks and spins in a choreographed swoop of hyperactivity. She’s clearly his official bouncer vetting all visitors. One firm “Lucille!” is all it takes for the Buffalo Bills owner to calm her down and he takes a seat at his desk. Behind him, there’s a picture of his daughter, Jessica, on the cover of US Open Daily and five Bills game balls amongst other mementos.

Outside, the stadium he inherited as this team’s owner is reduced to rubble. All open air and old memories.

Across Abbott Road is where his team will play for the next 30+ years.

What a night it’ll be inside new Highmark Stadium against the Detroit Lions for Home Game No. 1. There will be goosebumps, damaged vocal chords, ceaseless rounds of Labatt Blue Lights as 60,108 attendees create something new. Together. And sitting here, I cannot help but remember when such a scene was accepted by those in the crowd as an impossibility.

The team’s original founder aged. There wasn’t an estate plan in place. Frustration with Ralph Wilson turned into anger. Then, anger worsened into something much darker: doom. Ask any diehard in your life. They likely remember exactly where they were when a rumor circulated that Wilson had passed away because — at that exact moment? — a nightmare became a reality. The Bills would be sold off to the highest bidder and Buffalo, NY would be discarded like small markets past.

Driving down Abbott, you’d see empty lots to your left, a dilapidated stadium to the right and this entire area would slip into an unimaginable depression.

Of course, this rumor proved to be false. A temporary sigh of relief.

Three years later, in 2011, a petroleum engineer named Terry Pegula bought the Buffalo Sabres with his wife, Kim.

Wilson’s health — for real this time — started to deteriorate late in 2013 and the Pegulas were well aware of this great unknown, this cloud, hovering over the football team.

“It was: ‘Where are the Bills going? Where are they going?’” Pegula recalls. “That’s all we heard.”

He was no distant suit. A lifelong Buffalo Sabres fan, Pegula could relate to the anxieties, the fears of locals.

When he looked around Western New York, he didn’t see others with pockets deep enough to bid on an NFL team.

So it was right around then that Terry asked his wife a blunt question: “Do we want to own the only sports team in Buffalo? Or do we want to own two sports teams in Buffalo?”

They decided to go for it.

Wilson passed away from natural causes on March 25, 2014 at the age of 95. The Pegulas sold off some oil and gas assets and positioned themselves financially to make a competitive offer. Here, Pegula recalls the night they submitted a bid. Steve Greenberg of Allen & Company told him there was a 95 percent chance he’d get the Bills at $1.3 billion, but a 98 percent chance if he upped the bid to $1.4 billion. “I like 98 percent better than 95,” Pegula told him.

Done.

The Bills were his.

Now, this franchise comes full circle. New Highmark Stadium’s grand opening serves as 1.35 million square foot proof that the Buffalo Bills are here to stay. If anyone else would’ve purchased the team, odds are, they would’ve eventually transported them to Los Angeles. Or Toronto. Or Austin. Or San Antonio. So on the cusp of the Bills’ monumental 2026 home opener, Go Long sat down with Pegula to get his thoughts on the stadium.

Until now, nobody’s heard much from the person who saved football in this city.

The only team in a smaller market than the Bills, of course, is the one that’s been a publicly held, nonprofit corporation since 1923: the outlier Green Bay Packers. Football staying in Buffalo is a minor miracle as the NFL inches closer and closer to becoming a trillion-dollar enterprise. History is littered with tales of rich businessmen buying sports teams and moving them in the interest of the bottom line. Building a new stadium, arena, rink elsewhere is more lucrative and, hey, they don’t necessarily mind leaving tears and scars and sadness in their dust.

“Do you remember when Cleveland left? Are you kidding me?” Pegula says. “And they were like fifth in the league in attendance with a great fan base. I’m thinking the same thing here. Why should these people be suffering thinking they’re going to lose their team year-in and year-out for years? I don’t hear that talk anymore.”

Stripping away this team from this market is akin to cutting off their oxygen supply. Pegula understood this. He nods in the direction of the stadium.

“There’s the anchor right there.”

If this owner’s No. 1 objective was to make more money, the Bills would be elsewhere.

“I’m not all about money,” Pegula says. “I’m about what legacy you leave in your life. So I never looked at it that way. It was always: ‘What’s the best thing we can do?’ I’ve been coming to hockey games up here for years. So it was all about doing what we thought was the best thing for the area.”

So, I ask, what does Terry Pegula want his legacy to be?

“The Bills are here. The Sabres are here. And they’re going to stay here.”

Go Long is your forever home for longform.

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Football first

On Oct. 8, 2014, NFL owners unanimously approved Terry Pegula’s purchase of the Buffalo Bills.

On March 28, 2022, the Bills reached an agreement with the New York State and Erie County on a 30-year lease for a new $1.4 billion stadium in Orchard Park. It was declared a “private-public” partnership. (More number-crunching on this later.)

On June 5, 2023, shovels pierced the ground.

On June 23, 2026, ribbon was cut to declare Highmark Stadium open.

Tonight — Sept. 17, 2026 — the Bills will host their first regular season game in this stadium.

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Of course, the road from Point A to Point B was not so neat and tidy. Never is. Ask the Chicago Bears, a team with it sights now set on Hammond, Indiana. Ask any franchise for that matter. Pegula was a novice when it came to this whole stadium thing, so inquiring how in the hell he first launched into this world seems like the best place to start our conversation. Planning began in 2018. After having studies done on Ralph Wilson Stadium, he quickly realized this abode would soon be unsafe. The premium seating was outdated, too. Pegula himself always thought the viewing experience was far better in the bowl than the actual clubs. Inside of his own suite, from the first row, Pegula would need to bend down simply to view the scoreboard.

Around since 1973, this building was on its last legs.

Pegula began by selecting an architecture firm and touring the world. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London was particularly mesmerizing. Pegula asked the guide to take him to the three worst seats in the house and then nestled into each one. “These aren’t bad,” he told them aloud. With that, Pegula instructed the architects of his new stadium — Scott Radecic and Jonathan Mallie — to use this one as inspiration.

Of course, there was one not-so-minor difference.

“In England,” says Pegula, “you can’t have alcohol exposed to the stadium while they’re playing.”

Due to a history of hooliganism, UK football law prohibits drinking alcohol while in view of the field. You’ve got to stay in the concourse.

This is not a problem in the states, no.

And, as noted, Pegula was motivated to keep the team here.

He would’ve had suitors elsewhere. To the north, Toronto has always been a looming threat. To the south, Austin and San Antonio have a voracious appetite for an NFL team. The politicians in the state of Texas are very eager to play ball with prospective sports owners.

“We wanted to stay in Buffalo,” Pegula adds. “We’ve got a great fan base. Why not treat them to something they deserve?”

Building a stadium downtown wasn’t realistic given how much it’d cost to build up the necessary roadway in and out. It’s hard enough traveling to Buffalo Sabres games — inviting 20,000 more people would create gridlock the city’s never seen. Further complicating matters? A lack of communication from the office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. That’s why Pegula is always quick to praise his replacement. When Kathy Hochul took over on August 24, 2021, everything changed.

Perspective matters.

Imagine being Hochul, a Hamburg native. If the Bills herded to Austin under her watch, it’d be impossible for her to buy groceries in her hometown again. Clearly, she felt an emotional attachment to the area and the team. Hochul valued the brand, the market and was motivated to sit down with Pegula.

Now, imagine being Cuomo. His approach was more politically driven. In-person, he was friendly with Pegula, with everyone associated with the Bills. Then, he’d return to Albany and go dark. He was not interested in anything that would require public funding. There’s a good chance he was worried that political opponents downstate would use a new Bills stadium against him. His chief loyalties veered toward NYC. Not Buffalo. To him, this all seemed like a nuisance.

One other question on the minds of those constituents filling up a prospective stadium was much simpler: Dome or no dome? When I bring this up to Pegula, he shares a funny story from the aftermath of his team’s 47-17 “perfect game” obliteration of the New England Patriots in the 2021 postseason. Quarterback Josh Allen and the Bills offense scored touchdowns on all seven of their possessions… all in 7-degree arctic conditions. Amid the elation inside the locker room, Allen quipped to offensive coordinator Brian Daboll that they probably just F’d up getting a dome. To which, Daboll smiled and said: “Look behind you.”

It was Pegula. “Yep,” the owner joked back. “You’re right.”

In constructing a new home, Pegula wanted the Bills to follow one north star: Make this stadium authentically Buffalo. And the team’s inherent advantage, of course, is location. Winters are a merciless blend of whiteouts and freezing temps on the shores of Lake Erie. Everyone has a white-knuckle war story from driving on Route 219. Players forced to live in these conditions, daily, naturally handle gamedays better than any visitor ever could.

A dome in Buffalo defies the laws of nature. Does not compute.

“I can tell you this for a fact,” Pegula says. “When I listen to other teams bitch about, ‘I’ve got to go to Buffalo to play in December, even November,’ I love it. Because that’s an advantage. So that’s Buffalo. The outdoor part of it. And we’ve done a pretty good job with extra heating and — even if you get cold in your seat — you can go up in the concourse and it’s heated.”

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Seats are colored in a sleek red-and-blue pattern. And structurally, these seats shoot vertically to ensure this stadium’s even louder than the last one. Snow and cold are a distinct advantage, yes, but it’s also true that 50 to 55 MPH winds are fun for no one this side of Bill Belichick. (Remember this 2021 mess vs. the Patriots?) The perpendicular positioning of the Bills’ old home led to ungodly winds off the lake. The open western end zone directly faced Lake Erie, creating a wind tunnel. Conversely, the team’s new “wind confusion system” consists of a perforated exterior design to break up and slow down gusts. When the Bills tracked wind speeds at Old Highmark vs. New Highmark last season, speeds were cut in half.

The stadium’s 360-degree canopy will also cover 64 percent of fans from precipitation.

Pegula’s mission was to make the experience comfortable for fans without losing what makes Buffalo Buffalo. Too many new stadiums and arenas around the country are insipid, lifeless.

“I’ve been in sporting venues,” Pegula says, “where I look around and I don’t know whose stadium or whose arena it is. You walk in that stadium and just look at it and you’ll go: ‘This is where the Bills play.’ You look at the seats, it’s all Buffalo Bills. It shouts at you: ‘This is the Bills’ Stadium.’”

On his tour of arenas and stadiums, Pegula visited one that completely lacked any character whatsoever. When he asked why this team’s home was so bland, he was told it was built with music concerts in mind.

Here, Pegula wanted football to stay at the forefront of everyone’s mind.

By popular demand, a family of three stainless-steel bison greet fans on their way into the game. The bull stands 27 feet tall, stretches 29 feet long and weighs 23,000 pounds. The cow is 22 feet tall and 23 feet long, while the calf is 12 feet by 13 feet. Inside, there’s a large-scale model of the Peace Bridge, the world’s largest broken folding table on the 100 level and a full-size camper bus in the 300s. Throughout the stadium you’ll find artwork from 45+ creators to further give the stadium a WNY flair.

As for complaints over obstructive viewing, all stadiums require some sort of safety requirement. The team has been meeting with any fans who believe their in-game experience is not reflective of what they saw virtually upon purchase.

Open concourses. Infrastructure to bring fans closer to the action. A clear view of downtown Buffalo from the sky deck. Pegula’s aim was to create a stadium that fans would proudly call home.

Equally important was making this all player-friendly.

President of football operations Pete Guelli describes the amenities for the players as “best in class.” The locker room, training room, hot tubs, cold tubs, everything players need is on this side of Abbott Road as well. There’s also an indoor practice field adjacent to the game field.

Obviously, players in the NFL prefer playing on grass over turf. That was an easy call.

With a string of three straight home games on tap, the Bills decided to re-sod this Kentucky bluegrass from Tuckahoe Turf Farms. Two games and two practices created enough divots for the team to take this preventative measure. The life cycle of the grass is between six and nine events so, rather than roll the dice, the Bills swapped in new grass. Of course, there’s no guarantee it’ll perform until the ball is kicked. Time will tell. They’re hopeful this edition knits together better than the first installment.

Overall, chief administrative officer Josh Dziurlikowski meets with the assistant to head coach Joe Brady frequently to discuss anything that’d help the team on gameday. “This goes back to what Terry said,” Guelli adds. “It’s football first. This has to work for the football team.” Everything is discussed: communications, technology, the scoreboard, the locker room.

Peering through the window, Pegula points toward the remains of the old stadium. At their old home, coaches hitched a golf cart at halftime to motor around the stadium — through snow, rain, sleet — toward the locker room. They’d meet with players and then need to hustle back out to those golf carts to trek back to the booth. Now, they’ll simply push a button and take an elevator down to the locker room.

“A little thing like that, who knows?” Pegula says. “In the past, that might have cost us a game for all I know.”

Pegula exited the stadium in a golf cart, too.

Driving past the fans, he’d hear a little bit of everything.

All passion was welcomed.

After all, he probably relates to those emotions more than they know.

Legacy

When I ask what he’s most proud of about this stadium, Terry Pegula first goes back in time.

His father was a truck driver. And when Myron “Rip” Pegula drove young Terry around, he’d point to a dam. “See that dam? I hauled a lot of that concrete in there.” They’d drive some more, and he’d point to something else. “I hauled that gravel.” Then again. “I hauled the steel in there.” So when he started the largest construction project in Western New York history himself, Son thought about Dad and the fact that nobody else had a clue what he did.

Underneath the words “We Built This House,” per Pegula’s instruction, the names of every single worker who had a hand in building Highmark Stadium are listed — 5,369 and counting.

“I don’t care if they drove from Georgia delivering steel, their name is on the wall when you go into the stadium,” Pegula says. “Twenty years from now, some man or woman’s grandchild can walk up to that wall and say, ‘That’s my grandfather. He worked here.’ We think about our football team and ownership and coaches and whatnot. But if it wasn’t for all those people, it doesn’t happen.”

There were stressful moments. It was a new world out of COVID and winters lingered. Pegula admits there were a few times he told himself there’s no way this stadium will be finished by 2026.

“And I’ll be darned if we didn’t,” he says. “It goes back to those names on the wall. The people. Our staff. We got it done and it wasn’t easy.”

Guelli, nearby, cites the fact that the Bills are now tethered to this market for decades — “basically forever.” All of which is a direct result of Terry and Kim’s vision to keep an NFL team in this market, he adds. When Pegula hears his wife’s name, he jumps in to note that Kim’s fingerprints are all over the stadium. Stuff people might not even notice. All detail in the suites — “freakin’ five-star hotel” quality, Terry says — were her idea.

For a moment, he’s quiet and emotional. Kim suffered a cardiac arrest in June 2022 and has been recovering ever since.

Guelli wants this point known, too.

“The more you go through that building,” the president says, “you realize that stadium’s not there without Kim. She was a catalyst behind the whole thing initially.”

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Timing was difficult post-pandemic. Inflation rose. Overages added up. One governor replaced another. Oddly enough, timing on the field was perfect. The Bills have been Super Bowl contenders for the entire 2020s and are armed with arguably the best player in the sport. The presence of Josh Allen surely burgeoned public fervor. “He helps,” Pegula says. “He helps.” The owner rattles off several names of people who made Highmark possible, including the VP of stadium development who had his eyes on everything: John Polka. “I hate to tell you that,” he says, “because somebody will try to steal him. He was really the all-star in this.”

A drive through Buffalo isn’t the same as the other metropolitan cities in the big business of pro football. M&T Bank is the only Fortune 500 company in the city. It’s more difficult to bankroll luxury boxes here than, say, those rival Patriots. There are seven such companies in Boston. The only city smaller than Buffalo (pop: 275,000) that hosts two pro teams is the one that just got a second in hockey: Salt Lake City (pop: 218,000).

Yet, it’s impossible to imagine what’d become of Buffalo if the Bills ever departed.

This fact stayed at the forefront of Pegula’s mind.

“Professional sports is so important in society,” he says. “Sometimes, some people think too important. But just look at the NFL’s ratings. I think one year of the top 100 shows, 96 were football games. It’s the pulse of America.

“This started with being a fan of the Sabres and buying the Sabres. Now, we’re anchored.”

He continues.

He pinpoints what makes this fan base unlike any other.

“The Buffalo fan base is sort of like… have you heard the saying ‘death by a thousand bee stings?’ That’s how we compete with the L.A.s and the New Yorks of the world. There’s a lot of us and we’re passionate.’”

Not that it’s easy keeping up with the modern NFL. New stadiums mean new PSLs (personal seat licenses), a concept widely (and correctly) skewered as evil genius. Fans today must purchase the right to purchase season tickets. New builds for Washington, Cleveland, Chicago and Kansas City will undoubtedly soar PSLs into a new galaxy. One source that attended the recent NFL owners meetings heard grumblings that one of these teams was hoping to earn $1 billion in PSL sales.

In a dream world, yes, all owners for all teams fund their stadiums without asking locals for a penny and when somebody says “PSL” the only image that comes to mind is a $7 Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks. Alas, the Bills raised $263 million in PSL money. And in exchange for the 30-year commitment to Orchard Park, NY, the Bills received a record $850 million in total public money ($600M from the state, $250M from the county). What many Bills fans probably don’t realize is how much of Pegula’s own money was poured into the new stadium after overage costs.

That initial $1.4 billion ticket price for a new stadium finished at a tick less than 2.2 billion.

The stadium deal was also negotiated in a way that made the Bills fully responsible for any overages.

Thus, Pegula ended up paying more than a billion dollars.

New York State and Erie County are responsible for 38.6 percent of the final bill. After settling a dispute with the Seneca Nation, Hochul directed $418 million to fund the stadium. That leaves $182 million in state taxes and $250 million in county taxes. So while it’s true the individual price of season tickets, game tickets, parking, burgers, beer, etc. will soar with the rest of the NFL — and price out some locals — the burden on taxpayers isn’t as excessive here as other markets. Especially if you napkin-math’d the taxable households in NYS (4M+) and Erie County (350K+) over the 30-year commitment. Highmark Stadium essentially accounts for 0.0657% of the $277 billion state budget.

Talk to anyone at any bar, any cafe. Public support has been strong.

Buffalonians remember that haunting fear from the early 2000s.

The Bills managed to get their steel ordered before the tariffs hit. Which helped. Pegula shrugs off the extra costs, saying all construction projects cost more than you anticipate.

“We got it done,” he says, “and we were committed.”

One source close to the stadium deal, and its aftermath, says Pegula never deviated as costs soared.

“This team could have been somewhere else,” this source adds. “And then even when this process unfolded — and he’s getting crushed with overages — he never wavered for a second that he was going to make sure that this was everything that he said it would be.”

Because of legacy. Because part of Pegula is still the guy who’d drive 50 miles north of Pittsburgh — to the top of a mountain — to catch the radio frequency of Sabres broadcasts. “He considers himself a Buffalo guy,” this source adds. “To do anything that would contradict that, that’d be painful. It’s not who he is.”

Here’s an alternate reality: Who else would invest close to $4 billion in the Buffalo market?

A new arena for the Buffalo Sabres will be next, despite the reality that the Sabres — like many NHL teams — operate in the red.

The NHL is on the hunt for a 33^rd franchise, following the addition of Las Vegas (2017), Seattle (2021) and relocation of the Arizona Coyotes to Salt Lake City (2024). Austin, Houston and Atlanta have been discussed and here are the Sabres operating on a lease that expires in 2031. Point being: If Pegula moved the Sabres, he’d make bank. KeyBank Arena is a county-run facility, but the Sabres are responsible for all operating costs and capital expenses.

Solidifying the Sabres’ future in Western New York is next.

So will further development around the Bills’ stadium.

There are 242 acres to work with where the old stadium once resided. The Bills have spoken to former Packers president Mark Murphy, a WNY native, about the area he developed west of Lambeau Field. Murphy’s lasting off-field legacy is the “Titletown District.” What was once nothing but a desolate Kmart and Citgo gas station kitty-cornering Lambeau has blossomed into a go-to tourist attraction. There’s action for the whole family. Hinterland Brewery, Lodge Kohler hotel, a football field, a sledding hill, Bellin Health clinic and apartments have transformed the area.

Says Guelli: “We haven’t scratched the surface of what we can do. If the Highmark Trail and the bisons and the store are any indications, people will come.”

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Pegula has now owned the Sabres for 15 ½ years and the Bills for 12 years.

He is still chasing a championship in both sports. His hockey team slipped into a 14-year playoff drought before escaping in 2026. They’ll enter this upcoming season as legitimate Stanley Cup contenders. His football team ended a 17-year playoff drought in 2017 and is now — with Allen — positioned to compete for championships year-in, year-out.

If money were his top priority, the Bills wouldn’t be here. But suggest that other owners are more concerned with the bottom line, and Pegula pushes back. He believes his colleagues do prioritize championships.

“Maybe they don’t know how to do it,” Pegula says. “I think everybody wants to win, all the owners. But maybe some have a better handle on how to do it than others.”

Fair enough. So what has Pegula learned through all ups, all downs?

“I’ll go to two sports now,” he begins. “We had the issue with Jack Eichel’s neck and we couldn’t resolve it. Jack was our building block for the Sabres, but that threw us into a six-year detour because we had to trade Jack. We couldn’t resolve that. And to me, I was always embarrassed about it because of our playoff drought, with the Sabres, that we ended last year. Here, McDermott was big. He changed the culture. Beane came in. We turned that playoff drought around with a lot of luck, if you remember how it happened.”

True, it took a fourth-and-12 connection between Andy Dalton and Tyler Boyd with 44 seconds left.

“Quite a day,” Pegula adds, “to get that albatross off the franchise’s neck.”

Both organizations, to him, are well-oiled machines.

Early on, Pegula was more involved with the draft but he’s taken a step back through his wife’s health issues and his daughter’s meteoric rise in the tennis world. Jessie currently ranks third in the world. Soon after this chat, Dad is traveling to the US Open. He wishes he could find more time to watch her play — his hands have been full. He’s thankful the Bills and Sabres have both emerged from their respective dark ages and expresses deep confidence in Brandon Beane running the football department, Jarmo Kekäläinen handling the hockey department and Guelli running the business operations of both clubs.

By God, he’s ecstatic for Game No. 1.

Most of all for the collective roar of the fans.

The house was packed for Buffalo’s exhibition game vs. Pittsburgh even though fans knew full well that Allen and most starters were not playing. “Did you hear how loud it was?!” Pegula says, astonished. Tonight should be special. Perhaps even a title preview. The Detroit Lions are also starving for their first Super Bowl.

Pegula’s spirits are high this 2026 NFL season.

He sees a ton of leadership and character throughout the locker room. His perspective is unique amongst all owners in sports. One of the world’s best athletes grew up under his roof.

“I like to say that Jessie was my chemistry lab in life,” he says. “I watched her since she was 6 years old, and I wish you could be in every football player’s house and watch them grow up because I never saw Jessie one day say, ‘Do I have to do this? Do I have to do that?’ It was always, ‘Are we late? Are we late? Are we going today? Am I practicing?’ Never one time did she ever complain about anything she had to do. I think we have a lot of guys like that in our locker room.
“A lot of character. And that goes a long way. One of them is our quarterback. He’s dedicated.”

As the century turned, that cloud hovering over the Buffalo Bills only got darker. These Bills were universally considered the team bound for the NFL’s next frontier… wherever that’d be. This league’s driven by modern manifest destiny, trampling over the average joes that made it great in the first place. No country is too far. This season, the 49ers and Rams played a damn game in Australia. Commissioner Roger Goodell is on record saying there’s “no doubt” the NFL will one day have a permanent team outside of the United States. An 18^th game feels inevitable. Everything only gets bigger… and bigger… and bigger… and you cannot help but wonder when the league’s greed makes this bubble bursts.

Tonight represents the purity of the sport.

Professional football needs to stay in Western New York.

“As we sit here today,” Pegula says, “when I bought the team, all I heard is, ‘Are the Bills going to stay in Buffalo? Are the Bills going to stay in Buffalo?’ We’re here for 30 more years. At least. And that’s a pretty good run.”

The Lombardi Trophy is on his mind. These Bills have reached the divisional round of the playoffs six seasons in a row. A few doors down this hallway you’ll find new head coach Joe Brady, the 36-year-old Pegula hired in place of the fired Sean McDermott to shatter that proverbial playoff wall. The expectation for all players, all coaches, all fans who’ll call Highmark Stadium home is obvious.

Lucille, curled up next to the desk, isn’t barking anymore. The room goes silent.

Only Pegula’s words fill the room.

He allows himself to dream.

“I hope that we’re playing in February,” Pegula says. “You can’t predict the future, but that’s the goal.

“It’d be nice, wouldn’t it? For the fans.”

Go Long will be at Highmark Stadium tonight for Bills-Lions.

Let’s hang out inside the chat on Substack:

Our 2026 NFL Season Preview Features: All links

Tyler Dunne — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 13:16:32 GMT

Good morning!

We made it.

NFL Sunday is HERE.

I will see you all inside the Substack app for our first Gameday Chat. Will share all sights ‘n sounds from U.S. Bank Stadium where the Green Bay Packers visit the Minnesota Vikings. As always, we’ll riff on all games around the league. Keep an eye out for the link in your email inbox closer to the 1 o’clock slate.

Figured we’d pass along all links to all season-preview features the past month and a half in case you missed anything. From Jordyn Brooks and the total makeover in Miami to Kyler Murray’s new world to why Tate Ratledge reflects the cutthroat nature of the sport, we explored many themes.

Here’s a reminder of our why, too.

Thank you for fueling our independent journalism.

(Note: For those reading via email, remember to click the link at the bottom to expand in full.)

The Kyler Murray Project, Part I: Liberated

He’s the high-voltage QB capable of electrifying these Vikings. First, Go Long examines the forces that brought Murray to town: a Bidwillian dystopia, Marvin Harrison Jr. and “Nine.” Tread carefully.

The Kyler Murray Project, Part II: The Great Unknown

“It’s now or never. Hopefully he senses the moment.” How will Kyler Murray perform as the new QB1 in Minnesota? Go Long speaks to those who know both the QB and the QB’s game best.

Jordyn Brooks is the captain now

“We become a team? The sky’s the limit.” The Miami Dolphins have been anything but that. It was bad. Now? Jordyn Brooks is the man in change and he views this moment as his football destiny.

Do or Die for C.J. Stroud

This is an all-time defense, one that has cracked the code on the sport’s greatest player. And this is also Year 4 for the Houston Texans quarterback. Will Stroud deliver?

Tony Pollard is the NFL’s hidden warrior

Shattered leg. Father of 4. CJ2K perspective. All Tony Pollard knows is to move one relentless direction. Go Long sits down with the best running back nobody’s talking about into 2026.

The “Big John” Simpson Creed

“Shit’s hard. Shit’s going to be hard. That’s life.” He had every reason to quit on life like everyone around him. Instead? John Simpson is back in Baltimore. He’s the bully this team needs.

Tate Ratledge feels no pain

“Dev’s gone.” Those words changed his life. Meet the Detroit Lions ass-kicker who knows he’s a cold, “numb” product of his Athens, Tenn., upbringing and the night in Athens, Ga., he’ll never forget.

‘We will be the best offensive line in football’

He overcame a cruel stretch of anxiety and panic attacks. Now? Anderson aims to be the bully setting a violent tone on the Bills’ offensive line.

‘Who’s going to take this yard?’ The Arrival of Eric Wilson

An NFL vagabond for a decade, Eric Wilson is suddenly one of the best linebackers in the sport. Here’s why this “modern-day explorer” is finally unleashed and unhinged in all his fury as a Viking.

Dregs to Domination: The Aaron Brewer Blueprint

Backflips. Training until he collapses. Fasting. Defiant self-belief. The Miami Dolphins center became the best at his craft and he’s kicking all asses, from 330-pound nose tackles to 170-pound DBs.

Will share a Gameday Chat thread inside the Substack app right here…

Available for iOS and Android

Do or Die for C.J. Stroud

Tyler Dunne — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 15:47:56 GMT

Illustration by Brave Buffalo

Our final 2026 NFL Season Preview feature is an extensive look at the player under the most pressure this season: Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud.

Our two-parter on this team’s defense — OUTLAWS — is right here as well, icymi.

How will Joe Brady attack this defense? Here’s our 1 on 1 with the Bills’ head coach.

Links to all summer features are also below.

In an alternative universe, one within the realm of reality, the scene inside Levi’s Stadium looks quite different at the conclusion of Super Bowl LX. The Houston Texans outlast the Seattle Seahawks in a 12-round bareknuckle brawl for the ages. Bodies stagger. Wounds hemorrhage. Butkus and Nitschke and Deacon Jones smile from above as two defenses straight out of our grandfather’s NFL preserve the violence of football in all its forgotten glory.

The Texans are victorious and there is no debate.

They’re universally crowned one of the greatest defenses in league history.

Azeez Al-Shaair takes the microphone. He’s choked up. Not too long ago, Park Avenue suits cast him a villain unfit for its league. Now, look at him. A champion. The kid who saved his brothers and niece from a burning house, whose family of 11 then crammed into an extended-stay motel at $370 per week, who rode the city bus 2 ½ hours to school because he needed to drop those two little bros off at elementary school is now immortalized as one the generation’s most feared linebackers.

Will Anderson Jr. is announced as the Super Bowl MVP. This monster of a man was once the runt of the family, tortured by his five older sisters. It’s their fault he’s afraid of the dark. Back in Hampton, Ga., they’d shove him into a closet and lean against the door so he wouldn’t escape. Or lock him into their dungeon of a basement. Or dress him up in a giraffe costume and push him into the backyard with the family’s three pit bulls. After screaming, “I’m going to Disneyland!” into a camera lens, Anderson is surrounded by those sisters on the field. He hugs them, kisses them, thanks them for all the tough love.

The party rages on inside the locker room. At the vortex of a champagne whirlpool, IG Live catches one player spouting off a viral one-liner that perfectly encapsulates this curb-stomping. Naturally, it’s Kamari Lassiter. The kid who started playing tackle football at 4 years old and has been suplexing fools ever since. He once told us he’d give his “life” to this sport.

Finally, a nickname sticks. Maybe they’re the savages, as coined by safety Calen Bullock. Maybe the ‘25 Texans is enough.

We should be able to remember this defense in such fashion.

This would’ve been justice in American Football.

Because — when history books are written? — this may go down as the defense that broke the generation’s greatest talent: Patrick Mahomes.

I know, I know. He’s a deity. Doubting the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback is heresy that warrants a thorough burning at the stake. There’s always been unparalleled wizardry to his dominance. He may go down as the greatest player of all-time. But en route to his fifth Super Bowl appearance the season prior, in 2024, this Houston defense made him look… ordinary. Specific principles — call ‘em the “Mahomes Rules” — utilized by head coach DeMeco Ryans, defensive coordinator Matt Burke and this ransacking Texans defense in those games were implemented by the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX, sources from both teams confirm. Vic Fangio is a mastermind in his own right, obviously, but there are a few acute fundamentals to follow. The result was carnage. At halftime, Philly had more points (24) than KC had yards (23). Mahomes’ passer rating was 10.7. Mahomes didn’t even cross the 50-yard line until his team trailed, 34-zip.

This was Michael Jordan going 3 for 28 in a Game 7. This was Tiger Woods quadruple-bogeying the 16^th hole at Augusta. (We’ll get to those specific rules later.)

Philadelphia, not Houston, was worshipped for authorizing a defensive masterpiece.

The next season, the Texans treated Josh Allen like a piñata, put a dagger in Mahomes’ Chiefs season, body-bagged Aaron Rodgers in the wild card round and then headed to Foxborough with their own eyes set on immortality. Three more wins and they’d unquestionably join the ’85 Bears, 2000 Ravens and 2013 Seahawks as an all-time defense. We told the story of this Texans defense with this two-part series.

Instead, they lost.

Instead, the defense in Seattle is lionized. Seattle wins the Super Bowl. From his home, one offensive coach on this Houston staff watched Seattle thump New England 29-13 and the room went silent. His wife finally spoke up. “You guys really fucked it up,” she told him.

Into the offseason, rent was due. Anderson received the richest non-QB contract in NFL history. Danielle Hunter was re-signed. Al-Shaair inked a new deal, too. The franchise operated with maximum urgency on this side of the ball.

Over on offense, however, one player did not receive a new contract.

It’s no coincidence that this same player cost the team its season.

Nobody in the NFL faces more pressure to perform than the quarterback in Houston.

All 32 starters carry a burden on their shoulders. It’s the nature of the profession.

Nobody, period, has more at stake than C.J. Stroud.

Inside today’s story:

Where have things gone wrong for the 2023 offensive rookie of the year? And what’s the key to Stroud becoming everything we thought he’d be?
Insight from Hall of Famers Kurt Warner and Warren Moon.
How has this Texans D made Mahomes look human? The rest of the NFL watched closely.
Driver vs. Irons dilemma for OC Nick Caley.
Why nobody should expect regression from this rabid Houston defense.
The hidden trait inside Stroud the Texans must unlock in 2026.

GM Nick Caserio did not slide a blank check across the negotiating table. Instead, the Texans eliminated all possible excuses around the quarterback position with another round of signings, trades and firings. This is Year 4. If Stroud excels, he could earn himself a contract worth $60 million per year. Not too long ago, Hall of Famers like Kurt Warner were in awe. This flame-throwing rookie appeared destined for greatness. If he falters, he won’t get a new contract and, odds are, the Texans will have no choice but to scramble for a new QB1 while they can with this defense.

Both outcomes are possible.

This summer, Go Long canvassed the league — including sources who’ve been around the QB up close — to see which path he takes.

A team can only do so much around the quarterback position.

Stroud must make his move in 2026. This is the most consequential season of his football life.

First, the bad news. On the field, he isn’t seeing the field like he did as a rookie. Something’s off and it’s baffling Warner. Inside the building, Stroud butted heads with one OC (Bobby Slowik) and is onto another. Last season was littered with growing pains with Nick Caley. Explosive plays were down. Some wish the QB brought more of an alpha personality to the office.

The good news? There is an edge to this quarterback. A spunk that could — in theory — complement this defense. Don’t mistake public reticence for private indifference.

Flash back to the spring of 2023. Back to when he left a magnetic first impression with NFL teams. Those who interviewed him — coaches, execs, scouts — sure didn’t question whether he possessed the requisite amount of alpha then.

He had attitude.

Teams saw a face of the franchise.

“We were blown away by him,” says one source inside the Atlanta Falcons room then.

“Blown away.”

Go Long is your home for independent journalism.

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Jekyll and Hyde

Yes, the Falcons were interested in C.J. Stroud ahead of the 2023 draft. The only problem was that they were out of range at the eighth overall pick.

When the Ohio State quarterback sat down with the team, he was blunt. He declared that he’d be taken No. 1 overall by the Carolina Panthers.

Which is when the team’s head coach, Arthur Smith, served as the bearer of bad news.

He told Stroud, point blank, that Alabama’s Bryce Young would be Carolina’s pick. Stroud was perplexed considering those same Panthers were bringing him into town on a visit. “I’m going to tell you the truth,” Smith responded. “It’s not going to happen.” The Falcons coach knew the truth because he shared the same agent as Young and Nick Saban: heavy-hitter Jimmy Sexton.

Stroud sat in silence. “Stunned,” one source recalls.

Then, Smith explained that they’d do everything in their power to trade up for him. Everyone was in on Stroud. QBs coach Dave Ragone loved his character, his swagger, and, of course, that smooth-as-silk throwing motion. Draft night in Kansas City, Mo., arrived, Carolina took Young and the Houston Texans sniped Stroud at No. 2, killing any dream of any team trading up.

Stroud embraced his family, fit a Texans flat brim atop his braids, glided toward the main stage and shouted “Let’s gooo!” at full throat before embracing commissioner Roger Goodell.

In his mind? No. 2 was too low.

“There was a chip on the shoulder,” says one former coach on the Texans staff. “When Bryce Young went first, that fueled him because he felt that he should have been the first pick in the draft, and he wasn’t.”

Stroud wasted no time torching pro defenses with one of the finest rookie seasons in NFL history, throwing for 4,108 yards with 23 touchdowns and only five interceptions in 15 starts. “He was such an aggressive downfield thrower,” one ex-Texan coach recalls. “He was standing in there. He wasn’t bailing in the pocket.” The HOF’er Warner — one of the toughest graders of the position — was “blown away” by his complete game. When we were chatting about Jordan Love one day, he pivoted to Stroud. Dubbed him a Top 5 quarterback.

Midseason, Go Long sat down with the team’s coordinator for a piece on all three rookie quarterbacks.

Slowik was effusive in his praise. The future, for both, appeared limitless.

“We could not do all we want,” Slowik said, “unless he walks out and has a great command of every play and what’s going on and where things are going to be. I mean, he lets balls go when they need to be thrown. A lot of times it’s happening when someone’s sticking their foot in the ground to indicate where they’re breaking.

“That’s more than coaching. That’s a massive credit to him.”

Slowik later added: “He’s a special kid.”

Our final exchange is quite telling in retrospect. After Slowik told me that he sincerely did not know Carolina was selecting Young until the card was turned in, I asked if Stroud was his preference all along. A softball for any coach who would’ve loved his game — especially in real time with the getting good. Instead, Slowik said his pre-draft evaluations “will remain locked in my drawer.”

Good vibes in ’23 swiftly faded into ’24.

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QB and OC worked on their relationship for a while. One source recalls Stroud entering Slowik’s office unannounced to talk ball for 30+ minutes at a time. But when Houston’s offense slipped into a malaise, those 1-on-1 sessions abruptly stopped. The two became strictly co-workers. Little more. “They hardly talked unless they had to,” one coach on staff recalls. Houston made the playoffs at 10-7 and the two tried to rekindle the meetings to piece together a run. But it was too late.

One assistant believes Slowik grew frustrated in Stroud not “mentally exhausting” himself after the banner rookie season. In that, he’d watch a ton of NFL games but not necessarily study installs the night before.

“He had that year and it was kind of like, ‘Alright, well, I made it,’” this source recalls. “And that’s not the case. You have to do it for an extended period of time. I think he lost a bit of his edge.”

When I bring up Stroud’s low score on the pre-draft S2 Cognition test (18%), as reported here by our Bob McGinn, one ex-Texans coach says the quarterback can digest and comprehend everything. To him, it’s not a matter of ability.

Slowik was fired and ex-Patriots, ex-Rams assistant Nick Caley was hired as OC.

Stroud was a mixed bag in 2025. He produced the eighth-best EPA per dropback in the NFL and the fifth-lowest turnover rate. Gritty moments like this third-and-3 stiff-arm of Chris Jones endeared him to teammates. When everything was going wrong that night at Arrowhead, wideout Christian Kirk said Stroud rallied the offense together at the end of the third quarter to say: “We’ve got to go take this thing. These are the defending world champs. They’re not just going to sit back and hand it to us.”

One source who’s familiar with each coordinator puts the philosophical difference between Slowik and Caley in golf terms. With Slowik, the Texans were using their driver off the tee. Which led to birdies and bogies. With Caley, the offense preferred to use their irons and keep the ball in the fairway to make par.

“With Bobby, we were trying to hunt explosives in the run and the pass game,” this source says. “And with Nick, we were trying to avoid negative plays. And sure, it looked OK. But we weren’t built to win games offensively. We didn’t call games to win offensively. The defense would do their job. And if the defense had a bad day, we weren’t going to be able to bail them out for a multitude of reasons.”
“And when it got to the playoffs and the kid started turning the ball over, we had no shot.”

If Ryans chooses keepaway over gunslingin,’ can we blame him? This Texan defense is an anaconda constricting its adversary into bone-crushing submission. Then again, one coach on the current staff counters that a defense this freakin’ good could actually compel the offense to take more chances deep. Because if you fail, it’s not a big deal. You’re getting the ball right back. Each opponent requires its own unique gameplan. But considering one of Stroud’s greatest gifts is the deep ball and considering Nico Collins (profiled here) possesses a gear most 6-foot-4, 222-pound receivers do not, more big-play hunting makes sense in 2026.

The decline in dynamic plays might’ve been rooted more in the Swiss cheese offensive line, too.

Bring up “confidence” to one coach and he pushes back. Draws a distinction.

This coach doesn’t believe Stroud lost confidence in himself last season. Rather, in his offensive line. Rather, in a front five that ranked 32^nd of 32 teams in run-block win rate (68.4 percent) and 30^th in pass-block win rate (55.5). Ineptitude fed a skittishness. So even when the pocket was clean, he’d get nervous. Bail. Panic into a bad decision. To the layman, such helter-skelter moments probably looked bizarre. Stroud thought his clock was speeding up when he actually had ample time to stand firm in the pocket.

“He’s got to be confident in that everybody else around him is going to be doing their job for him,” this coach adds, “and then he can just go fucking operate and be who he is. Because he is a confident kid. He’s got to feel the O-Line. He’s got to feel like, ‘Oh man, we’re running the ball better. I can pair with this play-action. I can take these shots. I can hold the ball, take longer.’”

Given the personnel changes on offense, perhaps Caley dials up more bombs and Stroud is less antsy.

No assistant coach faces more pressure than the man who scored the most coveted coordinator gig in the ‘25 offseason. Caley was victorious over six other candidates and let’s not forget Houston didn’t interview eventual Super Bowl champ Klint Kubiak.

His tact is different. Sources say Caley is not as hard on Stroud as Slowik.

Whether that’s good or bad is up for debate. Examples for both theories are all over the league. In Chicago, from Day 1, Ben Johnson made it clear he would not cater everything to the quarterback like the previous staff did through a turbulent rookie season. Caleb Williams needed to get in line or get out, and the QB bought in. One coach on the Texans’ 2025 staff wishes Caley took a similar approach to Stroud. Instead, he was more apt to cater to what his quarterback preferred, such as zapping plays from under center at the expense of unpredictability. If Stroud executed a play wrong but still completed a pass, the mistake wasn’t always corrected.

Making any offense QB-friendly can lend itself to a sugar high. In the long run, this source believes, you’re not doing the QB any favors. This is a cruel league. Forcing your starter to do the hard stuff prepares him for January when the weather worsens, the stakes heighten and all defensive minds dust off their best calls. Indeed, chickens came home to roost for the Texans offense against Pittsburgh and New England in the playoffs. Stroud completed only 51 percent of his passes for 462 yards with two scores and seven turnovers (five interceptions, two lost fumbles). His four first-half picks vs. the Patriots doomed. Season over.

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Into the offseason, Caserio dismissed chatter of trading Stroud as “moronic” and picked up his fifth-year option.

Houston’s bet is that the lights come on.

Warner, a stickler, was a staunch believer. And Warner doesn’t give a damn about those sparkling rookie statistics. His eyes. His feet. How “effortless” he threw the ball. Everything about Stroud suggested he was progressing at warp speed. The question that stays on Warner’s mind when he studies all QBs is Do you see it? Those incapable of processing will eventually be swallowed whole. It’s impossible to make a living freestylin’ out of structure.

So, that’s what concerns him. All of a sudden, the picture in front of Stroud became more of a 90s magic-eye poster.

“I know they’ve changed coordinators,” Warner says. “But there’s been things in front of him that should be easy based on what I saw as a rookie.”

He believes in a three-year sample size. By then, your true game is revealed.

Warner uses himself as an example. When he won MVP in 1999, everything was much easier. Defenders didn’t understand him or the Greatest Show on Turf. The degree of difficulty ratcheted up in Year 2 and Year 3. Defenses forced Warner to cycle deeper into his reads. He continued to make a ton of plays — and even won a second MVP — but the St. Louis Rams’ quarterback also threw 40 interceptions his next 27 games.

“You can have a really good year, especially in the early stages, that isn’t fully indicative of who you are as a player,” Warner says. “You come in the league, nobody expects it, it’s brand new and all of a sudden, boom, it gets harder. We get to see who you really are.

“I thought CJ was great as a rookie and was excited to see where he was going to go. And then it’s been step back, step back. Where it makes me start to wonder if we just got a ballooned look, if it was something that was elevated in his first year but wasn’t indicative of necessarily the level that he’s at.”

All of it’s a mystery to Warner because a.) he also doesn’t believe quarterbacks outright forget how to read the field and b.) while it’s true a new scheme can blur the picture, Caley’s offense seems perfectly fine to him. He sees routes fitting together. Everything correlates. Stroud’s worst sin, to him, was what the current Texans assistant noted: the blitz. Happy feet ruined too many plays. Overall, he’s seen good. He’s seen bad. Warner won’t make a bold proclamation on Stroud either way. The fact that he wasn’t asked to decipher coverages at a complex level in college doesn’t give him comfort. It’s impossible to learn how to read NFL defenses at an NFL speed, Warner adds, because these are “the best athletes in the world.”

It’s why he also has no clue what’s next for Jayden Daniels in Washington.

Year 1, Daniels saw it all. He’d work from the frontside to the backside of a play lickity-split.

Now he wonders if the young quarterback was simply working through a pure progression.

“So those are guys,” Warner adds, “that give me pause to go, ‘OK, were we just fooled a little bit in their first year because everything happened to fall into place? And that’s not who they are? Or the second year, were there other things that factored in: a new OC, injuries that created some of these negatives and now they’re going to settle back in and become that guy we saw their first year?’ When I watch a guy play game after game after game and he’s looking in a certain direction and he can’t see what’s in that direction, that gives me room for concern. He’s even looking in the right direction! When you start in the right direction and your eyes are lined up there and you can’t see something that to me should be pretty easy to see, that gives me a lot of concern that they don’t know what they’re looking at and they’re just trying to find an open guy, which is always very concerning at the NFL level.”

That being said, Warner is still holding out hope.

He’s not forgetting the 2023 edition of this quarterback.

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Moon is more optimistic. This wait-and-see approach — to him — is wise in the wake of the Tua Tagovailoa disaster. Miami ate $99.2 million this spring to send him packing. Moon, plugged in, hears that Stroud has “rededicated” himself to the profession. And he’s all, all, all in on Caserio’s offseason maneuvers. A mashing back like David Montgomery alleviates stress. The O-Line will only improve. If the Texans start strong, Moon predicts the front office ponies up. Nobody threw a prettier spiral than Moon through the 1990s. As he revealed on one Happy Hour appearance, nail clippers were to thank. Moon, the Run-and-Shoot cannon, is a huge fan of Stroud’s fluid throwing motion. The ball also snaps off his wrist.

“He can get back to who he was his first year,” Moon says. “He’s got to have his weapons healthy. He’s got to have all the bullets in his gun to be able to use. And then it’s rededicating himself and just getting himself in better overall physical shape. It’ll help him to have more confidence in who he is to go out there and do what he needs to get done.”

There’s no telling how a quarterback will respond to receiving a life-changing contract. The problems in Miami were ingrained but Tagovailoa shouting “Show me the money!” into a mic at training camp set an awful tone. To Moon, it’s a matter of pride. He was the highest-paid player in the NFL multiple times through his career and sincerely relished the expectations to deliver as the best of the best. That’s why he wore No. 1. At his Oilers peak, the words Bring It On might as well have been stitched across his chest.

He sees Stroud getting mocked all offseason.

Public reaction to the QB cutting his braids was borderline insane.

From what he knows? Stroud is ultra-motivated.

“He has a lot of pride and he wants to be one of the best,” Moon says. “You could tell he was visibly hurt after the playoff loss. He was in tears and really felt like he let down his team and his organization and the city and he took a lot of personal blame for it. So I think he’s doing everything to get himself back to where he was.”

Multiple sources told us through the offseason that the Texans planned to challenge Stroud. They needed to see more before investing premium dollar. There is no middle tier after Baker Mayfield’s extension in Tampa Bay. Soon, Sam Darnold will also get the bag. Either the Texans pay Stroud money on par with the richest quarterbacks in the sport, or not.

The offense and defense, one coach notes, had two different cultures last season. He diagnoses the lack of a true alpha on offense as a problem on par with anything else — injuries, personnel, decoding coverages. Crisis is inevitable… who speaks up? Running back Joe Mixon would take charge in ‘24, but he missed the entire ’25 season with a foot injury. Young players looked up to tackle Laremy Tunsil but he wasn’t exactly the best example to follow.

Both Stroud and Collins are described as introverted.

Maybe the ex-Lion Montgomery fills this void. He’s $2 steak tough.

There’s certainly no concern over the lack of voices on defense. They’re overflowing with alphas who take names, kick ass. More than anything, this is why Stroud’s seat is molten-lava hot. This Houston Texans defense is fully equipped to win a Super Bowl. Or two.

So, about those Mahomes Rules…

Reloaded

The sport’s designated grim reaper doesn’t scare anyone down here. Oh, Patrick Mahomes is a peerless competitor. Greater the stakes, the calmer his nerves. Simply look at the science. His WHOOP band showed his heart rate slow to its flow state at the crescendo of his “13 Seconds” epic vs. Buffalo Bills in the 2021 postseason.

But he does bleed. These Houston Texans supplied the league a handbook.

After conversations with one coach on staff, here’s how they do it.

No. 1, it’s crucial to remember that Mahomes kills you by stepping through your inside rushers and taking inside gaps. You’ve got to close off those interior escape lanes. Give him a sliver of a vertical A or B gap, and… you’re toast. The smart plan is to flush him horizontal. Traditionally, this is a poison pill. Traditionally, it’s always been best to quarantine such magical improvisers inside the pocket. Think Aaron Rodgers. At his peak, the Packers’ four-time MVP feasted on the move. And, true, Mahomes also owned the broken play for a while. Travis Kelce may be the best ever at uncovering and finding dead zones. Their rapport was damn near telepathic. But now, Kelce is a skeletal 37-year-old shell of himself and people around the NFL are whispering about Mahomes’ declining mobility. Multiple execs have brought it up to me unsolicited. He’s also returning from a torn ACL.

Mahomes thrives on defenders flying wide out of the play, shimmying up into those vacated lanes to deliver rockets. Or run. These Texans proved — and Philly followed — that if you stay in your lanes, refuse to rush behind Mahomes and force him to “go back and out,” as this coach put it, you’ve got a chance. Especially with 11 maniacs who can close.

Forge a disciplined wall. Flush him outside.

Then, hunt. Chase. Close.

The decline in talent at wide receiver doesn’t help Mahomes. Houston was fully confident in its corners locking down KC’s receivers throughout a 20-10 win last season. They played three coverages in all and blitzed three times on 64 snaps as Mahomes staggered through the worst night of his NFL life: 14 of 33 for 160 yards, zero touchdowns, three interceptions and two sacks. Both his yards per attempt (0.8) and passer rating (19.8) were less than half of his previous career lows. Reid essentially admitted these Chiefs must evolve in paying running back Kenneth Walker Jr. $43 million over three years.

Marry disciplined fundamentals with cannibalistic personnel and you’ve got the recipe for a special defense.

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Speaking to this Texans coach about his formula dusted off one memory.

We’ve seen this all before.

Andy Reid had the conviction to select Mahomes 10th overall in 2017 because he saw shades of his quarterback 20 years prior: Brett Favre.

Seven years and three MVPs into his Packers career, this Hall of Famer faced a Waterloo of his own.

Favre — like Mahomes — was an unorthodox star with no precedent before him. He didn’t know what a nickel defense was through the early 90s and his fundamentals were so wonky into the late 90s that both Reid and Mike Holmgren told backup Matt Hasselbeck not to emulate anything he does. In Super Bowl XXXII, the Denver Broncos harassed Favre throughout a 31-24 thriller. In “Gunslinger,” author Jeff Pearlman pinpoints John Teerlinck as the mastermind behind an aggressive gameplan that rendered Favre mortal. “If Favre was the NFL’s Moby Dick,” Pearlman wrote, “Teerlinck was Captain Ahab.” The D-Line coach studied 523 Favre passes ahead of the title game in San Diego and crafted a full menu of rules. A few included tackling him low (because he relied on the stiff-arm), consciously finishing sacks/hits (because he didn’t have as quick of a release as people think), timing up the snap count (“Dick!” meant the snap was one, “Balls!” meant two, “Muff!” meant three), steering Favre into “Zone No. 3” if the pocket was divided into quadrants (that’s where he tended to force passes) and utterly ignoring the Packers running game.

Then, the NFL did its thing: the rest of the league copied this plan. Favre regressed.

It took a half-decade, and the emergence of running back Ahman Green, for Favre to evolve. Even then, he never made it back to the Super Bowl.

A select few quarterbacks force you to think about defense in a completely different way. Defensive masterminds no doubt spent the last two offseasons studying what Ryans, Burke and the Texans built. For the first time in his career, Mahomes had a losing record in 2025, failed to make the Pro Bowl and had career lows in TDs (22), passer rating (89.6), completion percentage (62.7) and game-winning drives (one).

The Texans, meanwhile, are getting the band back together.

Sustaining an elite defense, year to year, is often a game of Jenga. Not too long ago, the 2017 “Sacksonville” Jaguars dreamt big. This trash-talking bunch was one inexplicable Foxborough whistle on Myles Jack’s fumble recovery away from reaching the Super Bowl. Then, the tower collapsed. I spent as much time around those Jags in my Bleacher Report days as these Texans at Go Long and — in hindsight? — there is no comparing the psychological makeup of these two units. One took its swaggering cue from a cornerback (Jalen Ramsey) who once showed up to training camp in an armored Brinks truck. One follows a “Terminator,” Will Anderson Jr., who needs to be pulled off the practice field. Literally. The day after inking his whopping three-year, $150 million contract — “fucking easiest decision we could make,” one coach says — Anderson was in the building to train. This coach sees a man “on a mission.” In OTAs and minicamp, Anderson was so nonstop that, yes, coaches ordered him to take plays off.

The idea of tempo’ing down to 75 or 50 percent does not compute. Williams only knows one speed.

Nor do coaches ever want to dull this motor. The 6-foot-4, 243-pounder is propped up as the example for all players to follow.

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At the other edge is 31-year-old Danielle Hunter off a 15-sack season. Signing him to a one-year, $40 million was also money well spent. The Texans see his play improving vs. the run, too. Al-Shaair is the defense’s heartbeat. As chronicled, everyone stood by the polarizing linebacker as the NFL tarred and feathered him. He isn’t slowing down. Cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. was voted the second-best cornerback in the NFL by execs/coaches/scouts across the league. No corner in the league has more picks (14) since ’23. Quarterbacks completed only 46.9 percent of their passes targeting him 64 times last season. Good luck throwing to the other side where Lassiter is a rising star. He’ll soon be a rich man. Safety Jalen Pitre is the secondary’s enforcer. Ask Rashee Rice.

And, somehow, Houston managed to upgrade this offseason. Into free agency, the Texans expected Reed Blankenship to be out of their price range in free agency. At three years, $24.7 million, the real-life “Rocky” was targeted as a missing piece. With his addition, the Texans view the spine of their defense as stronger than ever. Into the summer, the Texans also reeled in a familiar face at $5.5 million. Former No. 1 overall pick Jadeveon Clowney has been playing some of his best ball this side of 30 years old with 23.5 sacks and 40 QB hits the last three seasons. On his seventh team in 12 years, desire should not be a problem.

They’ve got the players — clearly — but these Houston Texans have cultivated something more valuable in today’s NFL. The hint of dread you hear in voices of defensive players and coaches discussing the crème de la crème is wholly nonexistent here. Quarterbacks are not put on pedestals because the Texans fear no one. Defenders are not exactly peeing down their leg ahead of games vs. Josh Allen. In a ’24 loss, the Bills’ superstar went 9 of 30. In a ’25 loss, he was sacked eight times, hit 12 times and threw two picks. We’ll see what Allen and new Bills coach Joe Brady cook up this time around. Something must change because, philosophically, it’s different in Houston. When the Texans watch film, they don’t obsess over play design. They crawl inside an opposing quarterback’s brain.

Even the greats like Mahomes and Allen have specific, Favre’ian tendencies.

“At some point you’re playing the man,” one coach on staff says. “It’s poker. You’re playing the man, not the hand.”

Regression is an impossibility. Akin to Anderson playing hooky, Al-Shaair reverting to two-hand touch or Hunter’s biceps deflating.

So, no. Stroud won’t need to put up 30+ points each week. Montgomery can eat up the clock in ways last year’s collection of backs could not. Tank Dell will eventually return from his torn ACL, MCL, LCL and dislocated kneecap — a catastrophic injury that had Stroud in tears. Up front, Braden Smith also starts this season on IR but he’ll be a major upgrade at right tackle whenever he returns from a partially torn plantar fascia. Guard Keylan Rutledge is affectionately labeled a “prick” by one coach. He ignited endless scuffles all camp. Veteran Wyatt Teller supplies depth.

Hold up in protection — get Stroud comfortable — and perhaps that quarterback who once torched the No. 1 defense in the NFL in a playoff win goes full Undertaker.

“It’s all mental with him,” says one Texans coach. “He is super talented. If he’s comfortable, dude, he’s fucking fine.”

Expect wrinkles to Caley’s offense. Perhaps more shots deep. It’s also noteworthy that Stroud has not lost the support of the locker room. On our visit, they were extremely complimentary. Off the record, those inside Texans HQ insist players love their quarterback. This isn’t Legion of Boom 2.0. Teammates haven’t revolted. Not yet anyway.

This defense’s way of life is established. Players follow Anderson’s lead. This offseason, for example, coaches needed to tell defensive tackle Tommy Togiai more than once to go home. He wouldn’t stop training. Everyone knows these are the players who get paid in Houston. Guys like Anderson, “Sting,” Togiai, everyone who trains relentlessly.

Meanwhile, Stroud waits. The Texans must see more.

Honestly, it behooves both parties to wait. Why would Stroud and agent David Mulugheta want to negotiate off of the worst game of his life? Everyone can still win here.

Urgency is high.

A moment of truth for this quarterback nears.

An edge

Confidence is a fickle thing at this position. Discover it, harness it, weaponize it and anything feels possible. The last quarterback to get paid, America’s Quarterback, doesn’t wow anybody with a singular physical gift. What separates Baker Mayfield is pure belief. It oozes from every throw, every curse word lobbed at opposing fans.

C.J. Stroud had it. Those inside NFL draft rooms were convinced this was a quarterback fully capable of throwing a team on his back for 10 to 15 years. One GM heard whispers of “entitlement” and “arrogance” around Stroud and became obsessed with him two minutes into conversation. To him, this was a man “you want to go battle with.”

That edge is still in there… somewhere.

When I ask one critical ex-coach for his odds that Stroud electrifies the Texans and resembles a rising star again, his answer surprises me: “40 percent.” It’s very possible. After seven months of scorn and ridicule, he wouldn’t be surprised if Stroud was motivated to stick it to doubters.

But he’ll need help on the sideline. More abrasive coaching may be good for Stroud. “Someone who will push him,” says one former coach in Houston. “I don’t think he’s ever had that in the NFL.” This is the same refrain we heard from coaches in Arizona on Kyler Murray. The Vikings’ new QB1 is at his best when a coach is barking vulgarities in his ear.

Either way, the playcalling itself can tap into this wild side. Dinking and dunking and staying on the fairway only takes a team so far.

Even a team with this defense.

Stroud’s reputation around the league hasn’t fallen off a cliff. One QBs coach in the NFC believes there are plenty of brilliant offensive minds that’d love to coach the Texans QB because they’ve seen the ability. It’s on film. Defensively, the first man prepping to face Stroud — Buffalo Bills defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard — summed up his game perfectly.

“I think when he’s on — at times I think he’s a little bit streaky — when he’s on, it’s pretty,” Leonhard said. “There’s a reason he was drafted two overall. Rookie of the year. If it’s clean and he’s playing on rhythm and on timing, he’s a damn good quarterback. … So he’s going to have some confidence coming into this game. He knows he’s a talented player and he’s got some really good weapons around him and the way that they use the run game, play action, the boots, getting him on the edge, it can be set up for it to snowball on you as a defense if you let it.”

If Stroud was pissed about going No. 2 instead of No. 1, he most certainly is eager to prove the last time America saw him was an aberration.

DeMeco Ryans never put the governor on Stroud. He wasn’t a micromanager demanding Caley run the ball in the middle of a game. But the buck ultimately stops with him. He sets the tone. As one former Texans assistant posits: “How do you want to play football?” During Leonhard’s presser on Thursday — discussing why complementary football is a real thing, not a cliché — the Bills DC also described Houston as a team that is not overly aggressive because they prefer a “slug fest” that keeps the score low.

That’s likely how most around the NFL view these Texans.

What an opportunity for Ryans to zag. There’s still time. There’s a path for all parties involved to work their way to Los Angeles on Valentine’s Day and create a scene of their own underneath torrential confetti.

Those on offense should close their eyes and picture a championship scene of their own.

There’s Montgomery cherishing the moment with his sister, Kiki, who’s paralyzed from the neck down and his nephew, Yhzrah, who has battled leukemia. There’s Collins thinking of the athlete from this city he idolized as a kid: the late Kobe Bryant. He pins a picture of the Black Mamba’s menacing stare in his locker. He celebrates with his family and reminisces back to surviving without hot water for weeks.

At some point, Stroud gets his chance to splatter his fingerprints all over the trophy and see his reflection in the silver.

Tears trickle down his face.

Only this time, they mean something different.

2026 NFL Season Preview Features:

Tony Pollard is the NFL’s hidden warrior

Tyler Dunne — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 17:46:59 GMT

Getty Images/Go Long

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Madness awaits Tony Pollard. Whenever he wraps up work here as the starting running back for the Tennessee Titans, he returns home to his wife and kids.

Four children to be exact.

Four, that is, under the age of four: 4, 3, 1 and 2 ½ months.

“Chaos,” Pollard assures. “A lot of diapers, a lot of bottles.”

No nannies, no in-laws, no close friends at all assist with a single changing or feeding. Mom and Dad handle 100 percent of the parenting. And as Baby No. 4 closed in this offseason, so did the No. 4 overall pick. Pollard had a feeling who his employer coveted, too. Jeremiyah Love, a thoroughbred from Notre Dame, was mocked to Tennessee so relentlessly it’s a shock he didn’t open up a honky tonk on Broadway between Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places” and Blake Shelton’s “Ole Red.”

Pollard isn’t naive.

He acknowledges all the telltale signs of an expiration date nearing.

He turned 29 in April. He has 1,568 total touches on the odometer. This is the final year of his contract. Nothing about the man’s physical stature — 6-foot-nothing, 209 pounds — suggests Pollard is an anomaly who’ll ward off the sharp regression we see from all 30-something backs. He’s a former 128^th overall pick, a hybrid weapon out of Memphis who needed to prove himself on special teams before he ever received meaningful carries on offense.

Everyone’s on notice. This organization is also run by a new head coach with a new direction.

Oh, he fully immerses himself into Dad Life. The second Pollard steps through the front door, it’s on. They ask him to make pancakes on a stick. Or SpaghettiOs. His oldest loves gymnastics. She’s flipping nonstop. He’s a very, very busy father.

Even then… yeah. Pollard cannot lie.

“I heard the noise,” he admits.

A flame was relit. He found himself back in the role he prefers.

“It all put me back into the prime spot to feel like I’m the underdog,” Pollard says. “I’m easily overlooked. So it’s easy for me to get up and get going. It’s easy for me to grind and give my all every day because I know they might not be expecting that from me or they may be surprised by the things that I’m doing. I look at it as motivation.”

Right around 8 p.m. the night of April 23, diapers were put on hold. Pollard nestled into a seat and watched those first few draft picks: Fernando Mendoza to the Raiders, David Bailey to the Jets and then, at No. 3, the Arizona Cardinals selected Love. Tennessee drafted Ohio State pass catcher Carnell Tate. Good news, true, but he didn’t deeply exhale and throw himself a party. Even if the Titans did land Love, he insists the same thoughts would’ve been running through his mind: Earn your spot every day. Earn your respect every day. Earn your position.

An offseason that could’ve re-routed his career was instead reinvigorating.

One bonkers statistic served as the impetus for this trip. Look up the current running backs who’ve strung together four consecutive 1,000-yard seasons and No. 1 is obvious. Derrick Henry is a bionic man who should be studied by our nation’s top health experts ASAP. Then, there’s Pollard. That’s it. That’s the end of the list. Mainly because no athlete in sports is battered quite like the NFL Running Back. Injuries are a guarantee, you’re always deemed replaceable, nor is this Grandpa’s three-yards-cloud-of-dirt NFL.

So… how?

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From afar, No. 20 in powder blue appears remarkably unremarkable. Up close, he’s soft-spoken. The Memphis native who hails from a family of barbecuing extraordinaries speaks in a slow southern drawl. When he repeats the word “consistency,” however, it’s no platitude. It’s a lifestyle. Dive into a four-year streak he fully plans on extending to five and Pollard’s edge crystallizes.

Quickly, it’s clear to see Pollard is part of the solution in Tennessee.

He enjoys being overlooked. He labels himself an underdog multiple times.

Pollard is also a believer that “the cream will always rise.”

“Being confident in yourself,” Pollard adds, “knowing that you’re the best at what you do and even if you may be overlooked, your time will come. Keep chipping wood.”

A state of mind that sure seemed impossible to adopt when his leg literally snapped in half.

This is the best place to start. Back when the streak stood at one 1,000-yard season.

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Four years later, he puts himself right back into the Dallas Cowboys huddle.

2022 NFC divisional playoffs. Tied game. First down from the Niners’ 26-yard line with 1 minute and 36 seconds left in the first half. As the crowd roared, Pollard leaned toward Dak Prescott and told his quarterback that if the first and second reads are covered, he’ll be wide open on a checkdown. On cue, Prescott dumped the ball off to Pollard, the back turned upfield and that’s when safety Jimmie Ward grabbed him around the waist and pulled him down.

All of Ward’s weight crashed on top of his left leg.

“I felt my ankle get collapsed underneath him,” Pollard says, “and then I felt something pop.”

He balled up his fists, army-crawled across the Bermuda grass for seven paces and tried to get up. He could not. Utter “shock” overwhelmed all pain. Hell, he barely felt anything. A drop of bad blood still lingers. When I ask Pollard if Ward really needed to drop his weight on top of him that, he’s quick to say “no.” The NFL itself would later cite this play as justification for banning hip-drop tackles. Still, Pollard admits the defender is in a lose-lose predicament because they’ve got to do everything in their power to get backs to the ground. There’s a reason officials rarely enforce Rule 12, Section 2, Article 18.

Either way, the damage was done.

Pollard broke his fibula and tore ligaments in his ankle.

Even as he hobbled into the blue tent and eventually the locker room, the only pain he felt was helplessness. That season, he usurped Ezekiel Elliott as the team’s best running back and made the Pro Bowl. That previous week, his Cowboys sent Tom Brady into retirement. He believes his presence could’ve gotten Dallas to the NFC Championship, then the Super Bowl.

Instead, Dallas lost 19-12. Pollard was a spectator.

“I felt like I let the team down,” he says. “That’s what ate me up the most.”

One moment, Pollard’s dreaming of a playoff run for America’s Team. The next, his leg literally snaps in half and he faces a grueling, monotonous rehab to an audience of one. Such is the shadow war you’ll never see plastered across NFL Network and ESPN. When all hopes and dreams abruptly die, a pro football player’s mental health can suffer. Sometimes, to catastrophic extremes. AJ Green helped drive this conversation into the mainstream after Rondale Moore committed suicide this offseason.

Moore is an extreme, tragic case of a darkness all players fear.

Into the ‘23 offseason, Pollard attacked each day, embraced small wins in treatment and rushed for 1,005 yards. Physically, he was cleared. He told himself, “This shouldn’t be bothering me.” But he was not the same player — not even close — because he couldn’t cleanse his mind and trust that leg. He hesitated. He didn’t fight through tackles like before.

“Once you get injured,” Pollard says, “it can be very mentally, physically, spiritually tough in all aspects of life.
“Some days, I would go out there and run and I’m like, ‘I can’t do it.’ And that’s scary. Because people don’t realize injuries in this league? They can really mess with you mentally. When you know what you can do and what you’re capable of — and then to get on the field and have to tell yourself, ‘I can’t do this right now. I can’t run. I can’t sprint. I can’t cut.’ It hurts to even digest it and accept that.”

The key, he adds, is to maintain a tight circle. Listen to your body.

Not until he got to Nashville, in ’24, did Tony Pollard feel like Tony Pollard again.

A rare threshold for pain fuels his career. He refuses to tap out.

In 2024, Pollard suffered a high-ankle sprain against the Detroit Lions in late October and this hurt far, far more than his leg splitting in half.

“One of the worst pains ever,” Pollard says. “A constant pain that you learn to tolerate.”

Players often think they can simply numb up an ankle, but quickly realize it doesn’t help much at all. Toradol doesn’t do a damn thing, he explains. Not for this. He describes more of a vicious cycle. On gameday, adrenaline powered him through. The morning after? The rehab clock set. It was back to ground zero. He couldn’t put any pressure on his foot at all. Monday to Tuesday to (eventually) kickoff, Pollard lived in the training room to rehab.

Each week, he felt good enough to play. If his ankle was on fire, Pollard headed to the sideline to focus on his breathing, let the pain subside and then sprinted right back into action. His first game off the injury, Pollard plowed ahead for 128 yards on 28 carries in an overtime win over New England.

He finished with 1,079 yards on a career-high 260 carries with five touchdowns.

All for a Titans team on a 150 MPH path toward irrelevancy. They finished 3-14.

“That’s just me,” Pollard says. “I felt like I was good enough to play. I wanted to be there for the team and I wanted to finish the year off strong.”

When he looks around the NFL, he sees peers making very different business decisions.

Pollard never thinks twice and cites DNA as the reason why.

He watched his father, Tarrance, bust his ass 24/7 to grow Pollard’s Bar-B-Q on Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis. To this day, it’s hard to get Dad to travel 212 miles east to visit because he genuinely loves working.

Growing up, Tarrance told Tony that if you don’t believe in yourself, nobody will. That wasn’t easy when he broke an ankle into his crucial 11^th grade year and missed four games. He was forced to play a manic game of catch-up. As all of Pollard’s friends raked in SEC offers, he generated minimal interest from small schools.

“Always having that mindset,” Pollard adds, “feeling like I’m the underdog and feeling like I always have a chip on my shoulder. I’ve got something to prove.”

His best offer came from the hometown Memphis Tigers and Pollard did everything. Ran the ball, played receiver, returned kicks. Onto Dallas, backing up a player fresh off inking a six-year, $90 million deal, Pollard hit rewind on Dad’s childhood message. He knew a few dynamic kick returns was all it’d take for the Cowboys to realize he needs the ball on offense. Life always felt a bit odd in Jerry’s World with stadium tours passing by and the owner holding his own press conferences after each game. “It’s definitely different,” he says. Yet, Pollard forced his way into an NFL backfield with a slew of jaw-dropping plays — “put the league on notice” — and hasn’t looked back.

We see what makes Henry special. With these Titans, he’d stiff-arm defenders into Wednesday.

We see Saquon Barkley backward-hurdle fools.

We see Jahmyr Gibbs, dust DBs who seemingly have perfect 45-degree tackling angles.

Pollard’s gifts aren’t so visible to the naked eye. He’s no Adonis. Pollard could blend into any crowd around Nashville. Suggest that he also isn’t a track star with blazing 4.2 speed and he’s compelled to interrupt. Even this self-described “mild-mannered” gentleman must set the record straight.

“I’ve run a 4.2 before,” he says. “I have.”

Fair enough. He’s got better afterburners than we’d think.

The skill that separates Pollard, however, is more nuanced.

We’ve got to look deeper.

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Longtime NFL running backs coach Randy Jordan has been with Pollard all three seasons in Nashville. Look up the word “pro” in a dictionary, he begins, and we’ll find a picture of this player. Attitude, effort, intelligence, leadership, how he treats his body. Jordan rattles off all the reasons and then knocks on wood because he doesn’t believe Pollard is close to finished.

In meetings, he asks for the “why” behind every play. Pollard doesn’t want to operate as some sort of robot moving from Point A to Point B. He must zoom out and study the greater picture to see, for example, how the Titans are leveraging defenders out of a 3-by-1 formation.

The more he knows, the more he subconsciously filters that intel into his rushing style.

“He’s seen it all, he’s done it all,” Jordan says. “So he can operate efficiently. And that’s what I think makes him so good. He’s a guy that you watch him run — he runs fucking hard — but you don’t usually get a big shot on him. He knows how to get skinny where he takes his body and torques and squeezes and then he just leaves about this much body surface. Whereas a rookie comes in and he’s fucking running in there and gets blasted.”

Pollard masters the full intent of a play, throttling down to Le’Veon Bell-level patience behind the line of scrimmage when required.

On trap plays, Jordan loves to tell his guys: “Hit it and get it so you say you did it.” It’s fast.

On tight zone plays, the goal is set up defenders on the first level to cut back. One or two extra seconds can feel like an eternity. It’s more of a feel.

“He knows there’s different speeds and tempos when you’re running the ball,” Jordan says. “He can put all that together. And when you look at his body of work, it goes unappreciated because he’s not 6-3, 230 pounds. He’s a guy that just goes about his business.”

The Titans’ No. 2 back, Tyjae Spears, views this ability to shift gears as a superpower because it allows Pollard to strategically place defenders on blocks. He can stay on a track and make everything look the same on a specific play through the course of a game to bait defensive linemen and linebackers into blockers.

One crevice of daylight and he slams his foot into the ground. Gets vertical.

“He attacks it,” Spears continues. “And what’s special about him, he gets skinny. He jumps through holes, he sheds tackles. One of the hardest things to do with Tony is tackle him. The first guy rarely tackles him. So he’s going to squeeze through at least two, three after contact each and every time.”

Take one handoff vs. Cleveland. Pollard stretches a run wide — waits for those dark-brown jerseys to wash down — and turns upfield 65 yards to the house. Defenders are in a bind. You’ve got to respect his speed to the corner, but how much respect is too much? Try to beat him to the sideline and he’s liable to crank the steering wheel.

Pollard never dances, either. His decisions are quick and he can easily rip right through the massive 34-inch arm of a 6-foot-5, 261-pounder like Carl Granderson.

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Nobody in team history — perhaps NFL history — accelerated 0-to-60 in such fashion like the player Pollard grew up watching. Chris Johnson is forever immortalized in Titans lore for his ability to effortlessly glide past defenders as if moving at 2x speed. In his second season, “CJ2K” set an NFL record with 2,509 scrimmage yards.

So, Pollard’s reaction to the news that rocked the football world this offseason was the same as your reaction.

On the morning of June 29, he was scrolling on YouTube, saw Johnson’s name, clicked the video and outright refused to believe his eyes. Right there, on Good Morning America, was an athlete with superhero strengths now completely immobile and reduced to communicating through an eye-tracking device. Johnson, of course, is now battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

“It’s hard to even grasp what’s happening in such a short amount of time,” Pollard says. “I know it’s hard on him and his family. But all we can do now is just pray for them, send our condolences and just try to spread awareness for it.”

At halftime of Tennessee’s Week 1 game vs. the New York Jets at Nissan Stadium, Johnson will be inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor. The man who once treated this same field as his personal NASCAR track will be in wheelchair surrounded by loved ones.

There will be tears. Many tears. Everyone will again see how life can change to the most cruel extremes imaginable in an instant.

Perspective Pollard keeps at the forefront of his mind. Earlier this day, he and Spears were lamenting the dog days of training camp. Some mornings, they’re not exactly in the mood for 90+ degree practices. Some people work at a desk in a climate-controlled office. They crash into other humans.

But then, Pollard took a step back. He remembered it’s a blessing to feel so exhausted. Johnson’s ALS isn’t his only dose of reality. His wife’s brother was born with a deformity that renders his arms and legs useless. To this day, this brother-in-law relies on help to function on a day-to-day basis. And he’s smiling. Always. His spirits never waver.

“A lot of people would die to even be able to work out ‘til they get tired,” Pollard says. “So it helps keep things in perspective and not take things for granted. I’m really blessed that I’m able to walk. I’m able to get up on my own, move around, all of this.”

No way could the draft selection of any player any spring throw him for a loop.

Ahead of April’s draft, Pollard told his coach he was ready to compete if Love joined their backfield.

To Jordan, this player gunning for a fifth consecutive 1,000-yard season works like he’s still on special teams. “He had to fight for everything,” Jordan adds. “He knows the value of, ‘Hey, listen, every day I’ve got to fucking fight to keep my job.’”

A day in his life? If meetings start at 8:30 a.m., Pollard gets into the building by 7 to eat and slip into both the cold and hot tubs to get his mind right. He’ll review all play installs for the day, then head into Meeting No. 1 ready to ask questions. Next, it’s time for a full team meeting. Next, he makes time for Red Light Therapy. The red wavelengths of light help repair skin cells and tissue. Then, it’s time for practice… a lift… more meetings… more walkthroughs… and a return to the chaos at home.

Baby No. 4 needs a bottle ‘round the clock. Babies No. 1 through 3 want to play ‘round the clock.

A difficult combination.

“It’s, ‘Daddy, daddy, daddy, can we do this?! Can we do that? Can we do this? I want this. Can you make me this? Can you make me that?’ So, it’s nonstop.”

Not that he’s complaining. Pollard makes a conscious effort to prioritize his family.

Jordan notices. He sees a young father who doesn’t make football out to be any bigger than it should. (“If the mind’s right and the heart’s right,” the coach adds, “football will follow.”) That’s certainly been the case. With each child, Pollard felt himself leveling up at his day job. It’s no coincidence he’s getting better age 26… to 27… to 28… to 29. A large family demands optimal “efficiency,” Pollard says. Be it those 2’ish hours before bedtime at home or those 2’ish seconds in the middle of wide-zone play, he wastes zero time.

Expectations are low outside of this Titans building and Pollard’s name still generates minimal national buzz. Even locally, he’s overlooked. Fans no doubt miss the days of King Henry stampeding through defenders. Tennessee bid adieu too soon. These cleats would’ve been impossible for anyone to fill.

Pollard doesn’t care. He promises to prove people wrong this 2026 season and, yes, he’s got very detailed statistical goals.

Not that he’ll be disclosing them. He won’t go full Aaron Jones with talk of Canton. Nor will Pollard hint that a three-year rebuild can be three months like Jordyn Brooks with those Miami Dolphins.

We’ll need to see for ourselves, starting next Sunday.

“I’m going to hold it in,” says Pollard, with a brief pause.

“I’m just going to do it.”

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2026 NFL Season Preview Features to date…

Tony Pollard is the NFL’s hidden warrior

The “Big John” Simpson Creed

Tate Ratledge feels no pain

The Kyler Murray Project, Part I: Liberated

The Kyler Murray Project, Part II: The Great Unknown

‘We will be the best offensive line in football:’ Q&A with Alec Anderson, Buffalo Bills enforcer

‘Who’s going to take this yard?’ The Arrival of Eric Wilson

Jordyn Brooks is the captain now

Dregs to Domination: The Aaron Brewer Blueprint

The “Big John” Simpson Creed

Tyler Dunne — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:16:20 GMT

Illustration by Brave Buffalo

OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Long before he was the 6-foot-4, 330-pound colossus handpicked to make the Baltimore Ravens malevolent again, John Simpson was a kid from North Charleston, S.C., whose father was in prison and whose grandfather had just gotten out. The generational curse was real. Drugs were everywhere. Guns, too.

Something inside him stirred.

He cannot pinpoint the biological mutation, but one vivid image comes to mind.

Hanging out with his younger cousins, something inspired him to be “different.” They were into drugs. They knew exactly where this life led: prison or six feet under. Everyone in the Simpson family tree — for years — could clearly see the consequences of living the fast life with their own damn eyes. Nobody needed to theorize. His grandfather was a testimony.

“How can you see this and then still want to be in it?” he’d wonder. “Some people just don’t get it. It’s hard. I feel the same way about my little brother. It’s like, ‘Bro, we all grew up in the same thing. How can you just follow that shit?’ It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

We’re seated on an outdoor bench outside the Ravens’ castle of a practice field. “Big John” — seven-year vet, husband, gregarious father of two — is a gentle giant. Throughout this conversation, he laughs. And smiles. And exudes optimism. This topic, however, summons irritation. He doesn’t claim to author an elaborate “blueprint,” and that’s the problem with lemmings who line up to sell drugs like everyone before them in his old neighborhood.

Too often, people make it seem as if they’re sentenced to this grim lifestyle in perpetuity.

Stuck, with no way out.

What a horrible way to think.

“Bro, it’s not impossible,” Simpson says. “A lot of people think that it’s impossible. Life is hard and they make it hard on themselves because they choose the fast way. Everything doesn’t need to be fast. For me, I keep my head on straight and try to be the best version of me every day. Putting one foot in front of the other and take — not the easy way — but the most effective way.”

The mental calculation is strikingly basic. Every dream, to him, is attainable through hard mothereffin’ work.

All anyone must do is embrace this reality. OK, so you were dealt a terrible hand. Does that mean you outright concede defeat? Quit on life? It’s easy to bitch and moan and claim that guy had connections or this guy had the right genes. Alert: Life itself is not fair and — guess what? — life will never be fair. A word like this (“fair”) makes a hyper-driven individual like this (“Big John”) cringe and shake his head because he knows it’s a cop-out excuse people in all walks of life use to loaf.

All hours spent overanalyzing alleged “fairness” is time wasted incinerating your own prospects of success. You atrophy. Bring up sermons from Andy Frisella and David Goggins on the subject, and he nods. That’s his life personified.

Simpson had every conceivable reason to cast himself a victim — a helpless, hapless casualty of a broken world. The two most important men in his life spent time behind bars. Friends have been murdered. He didn’t have a mentor holding his hand every step of the way. Instead, he outright refused to accept preordained destitution. All pioneers in all industries cite insomnia, relentlessness, buckets of perspiration as the foundation for their success.

An alarm blares and they’re overwhelmed with the urge to kick the collective asses of anyone standing in their way.

John Simpson can hear that noise. He’s back in Baltimore.

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These Ravens have been loitering at the championship doorstep for most of the last decade. Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry are unicorns who’ll don gold jackets one day. John Harbaugh is out, Jesse Minter is in. To go the distance, this organization knows it must re-embrace its belligerence. What’s needed is a player unafraid to speak and play in blunt terms. Originally drafted by the Las Vegas Raiders in the fourth round of the 2020 draft, Simpson spent the 2023 season in Baltimore and lived through a gutting home AFC title loss to Kansas City before spending two seasons with the terminally ill New York Jets.

He was brought back here to displace other 300-pounders in the trenches and mold minds in the locker room. Everyone should listen.

“I talk to a lot of the younger guys,” Simpson says, “and just tell them to keep going, man. Keep your head up. Shit’s hard. Shit’s going to be hard. That’s life. And it’s a part of it. Every day you wake up, you’re going to have that like… ‘Fuuuuck.’ But fuck that! How are you going to approach today? You can either approach it like that or you can come in with a great attitude every day and give your best.”

One message plays on repeat. Simpson tells everyone to embrace “every moment.”

Don’t stress over the bigger picture. Don’t obsess over the Super Bowl.

Do focus on the one specific task in front of you. Do embrace the suck because, over time, all of those moments will add up and you’ll love where it leads.

That’s exactly how he chose to grow up.

He didn’t watch peers sell drugs, get a nice car and view this as an attractive option.

To him, there’s no such thing as pushing a button and getting rich in life.

He relished the long game.

“My Dad showed me what not to do, what not to be like,” Simpson says. “Obviously selling drugs and all that stuff — where I was at? — it was easily and readily available if you wanted to go that route. But bro, I want to be great outside of the shit that’s the normal everyday life.”

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First, explore his old neighborhood — Dorchester-Waylyn — in North Charleston. Crime was rampant. The sound of gunfire blended with horns blaring and birds singing.

There was rampant poverty, theft, depressing sights everywhere.

“You’ve got junkies — crackheads — and shit like that all over,” Simpson says. “You see it all the time. It was everyday life for me. Not really knowing too much different. It was definitely shitty. Shitty. And it’s eye-opening now to be where I’m at. Like, OK, that’s not how life is supposed to be.”

Take one trip on the city bus, Simpson’s mode of transportation in high school. One day, an elementary-aged kid bounded onto the bus in glee. He was overjoyed with a new toy he had found in the woods. “Look what I found!” he yelled. It was a gun. Simpson stepped in to safely put the gun away.

He didn’t see cartel members behead people in the street — like Dolphins center Aaron Brewer — but police often needed to block off his street to examine dead bodies. Many days, Simpson was told to stay inside his home in the name of safety. “I’ve seen some shit dog,” he says, pausing. “For me, it was more hearing it than seeing it.” Top of his head, he can count five times gunfire spontaneously broke out and he dove behind a vehicle to take cover.

Simpson kept a small circle of friends growing up. Calls himself a “popular loner” those days. Everyone wanted to be around him, everyone knew he was going somewhere. But he turned down so many invitations to parties that Simpson is positive peers at Fort Dorchester High School thought he was “weird as hell.” Simply, he never wanted to jeopardize football. He heard his coach say that whoever got into a fight wouldn’t play and decided, right then, to mind his own damn business 24/7.

People could try him if they wanted. No way would he retaliate.

One party he did attend scared the bejesus out of him, too. A fight broke out inside the house, spilled outside and… you guessed it. Guns were drawn. Bullets, sprayed. Simpson bolted home.

“Shit got real,” Simpson says. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not going to no more parties, dog.’”

One comprehensive 2017 series in The Post and Courier illustrated why the Waylyn and Terrace neighborhoods in North Charleston are teeming with gun violence and the problem has only exacerbated over time. In 2021, the city’s police department reported 36 homicides. Numbers alone fail to tell the tale. Simpson can point to specific childhood friends who could’ve made it with a different frame of mind. Kids like Kharee Whitley. They played little league football together, then basketball in eighth grade. “That was my dog,” Simpson adds. “My dog.” Their paths gradually diverged — Simpson toward sports, Whitley the streets — and the news rocked his world.

One Sunday afternoon in July 2019, on the 5300 block of Albert Street in North Charleston, Whitley was shot dead. This shooting marked the 15^th homicide investigation for North Charleston police that year.

“Somebody robbed him,” Simpson adds, “and they killed him in the process.”

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Simpson’s home life wasn’t any better than anyone else in his neighborhood.

He, too, should’ve been ensnared.

His grandfather, John Simpson Sr., got out of prison in 2000. John III was three. And when he got out, John Sr. was determined to be a better man for his 11 grandchildren. He started his own lawn care business and relayed valuable lessons, impressing on his grandson the need to work hard and excel in school. In the summer, he’d then take him to North Carolina to see his father behind bars: John Simpson Jr.

Always a sobering trip. Dad was in and out of prison for selling drugs most of his childhood.

When John Jr. finally got out for good, his son was 13 or 14 years old. A relationship between the two technically exists but Simpson admits that he keeps his Dad at “a respectful distance.” Scars remain. He wanted a father as a kid and a father was nowhere to be found. Instead, Simpson was mostly raised by his mother and his Dad’s Dad. “Weird at first,” he adds. “My Dad was a little salty about my granddad being there more than he was.”

His mother, Keyonna Snipe, worked the third shift on the assembly line at Cummins Turbo Technology. Only recently did she retire from this job, and she still cannot stop moving. Snipe cooks food, sells food. “A beast,” Simpson adds. She refused to ask for any help raising her two boys.

Seeing her sacrifice every available second to give them a decent life instilled the same instinct in him.

“She was a dog,” Simpson says. “Obviously it was hard on her. She did everything she could to give us what we had.”

Into his teen years, Simpson became the man of the house. At 15, he started working at Halls Chophouse through an outreach program, “Teach the Need,” to bring home extra dough. He’d even get in hours after his Friday night football games. Simpson bandaged up his bruised and bloodied hands, never complained, and got to work.

Football, of course, was his sanctuary. Football was where he could unleash all anger bottled up inside. But mostly? Football is where he learned life’s greatest lessons. Simpson loved zeroing in on the smallest, most nuanced details to execute a play, working with others toward a common goal and testing the limits of body and mind.

“I was never the type to give up on myself,” Simpson says. “Whatever it was going to be, I was going to be successful at it. If it was going to be the military, this football shit, whatever. If I was working at a damn car dealership, I would have been the best car seller. So it was having that mentality.”

Simpson seriously considered joining the military, too. He was all about Army ROTC. Once those Division I college offers started to pour in, he switched gears. But the structure of military life appealed to him. That’s who he is to his core, and that’s why he got married at 23 years old. Simpson knew Aliyah — a biochemistry student, a future M.D. — was the headstrong woman he needed in life. From Clemson to the NFL, Simpson was out to change everything the name on his jersey represented.

“Flip the script,” Simpson adds, “and not be anything like the people that I grew up around.”

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Take a moment to revisit the infancy of these Baltimore Ravens and you realize Simpson is exactly where he should be. Five years ago, I chatted with Hall of Famer Ozzie Newsome at length for “Blood and Guts.” When Art Modell left Cleveland for Baltimore (in November 1995) and named Newsome de facto GM (in February 1996), the former tight end essentially started from scratch. Calling the franchise “bare bones,” as he did, is a remarkably kind assessment.

Baltimore didn’t have a team name, team colors or a functional team headquarters.

Twelve years had passed since the Baltimore Colts departed in Mayflower Transit moving trucks overnight.

Since then, the Colts’ old facility had been transformed into police barracks.

When the Ravens moved into town — and the building was flipped back into football shape — Newsome’s crew found old bullet casings on the field where the police academy had done pistol training. On March 29, the team finally had a name. The “Ravens” won via city vote. One week later, a small group that included Newsome, Phil Savage and Kirk Ferentz got to work inside this rectangular-shaped bunker of a facility. They told themselves “it’s not the walls, it’s the people within them.” But then they looked at those walls, and… damn. It was humbling With no shelving available, the men building the Ravens stacked up about 3,500 VHS tapes around the perimeter.

“We had a mountain to climb trying to get this franchise moved,” Newsome recalled. “It was a monumental task, but when you have a good team of people working with you — and everybody working toward the same goals — you can accomplish things, and that’s what we did. We started from scratch and we built it. And we built the way we wanted it to be built.

“Guys rolled up their sleeves and we went to work.”

With the No. 4 pick, Newsome selected UCLA tackle Jonathan Ogden over the player Modell coveted: troubled running back Lawrence Phillips. Simply, he stuck to the board. Ogden was their No. 1-rated prospect and he knew he’d lose the confidence of all scouts on staff if their first pick defied their hard work.

With the 26th pick, Newsome then selected Miami (Fla.) linebacker Ray Lewis.

The two combined for 23 Pro Bowls and were first-ballot Hall of Famers.

The Ravens took on Newsome’s personality in Year 1, Draft 1 and never looked back.

Life is different in 2026. The Under Armour Performance Center is affectionately known as “The Castle,” and Go Long can confirm the nickname is justified. There’s not a bullet casing to be found at this majestic 33-acre complex. One sight, however, has not changed. Newsome, who stepped down as GM eight years ago, remains a strong presence. He watches each practice. He consults with GM Eric DeCosta. He’s a 70-year-old sage on daily patrol. The soul of this organization endures.

These Ravens are at their best balling up a proverbial fist and cold-cocking the opposition in the mouth. Each collision must inflict maximum damage. That’s Simpson’s game. “Nasty,” the left guard adds, “on each and every play.” He talks shit. He says things that invite literal punches to the face. Unprompted, Simpson brings up the name Trysten Hill. Back in his Raiders days — after a 36-33 win — he strutted past Hill at midfield and said something obscene enough to warrant a haymaker to the head. His silver helmet went flying. A scrum broke out. This was the culmination of the two jawing all game.

“It definitely got personal,” Simpson says. “I don’t know if I can go into details.”

These Ravens are also talented enough to vault themselves right back into high-stress playoff games.

When the margins are razor thin, when nerves can spike uncontrollably, Simpson’s perspective is needed most.

“There’s always going to be times where you’re uncomfortable,” he says. “But how are you going to operate to get yourself out of those situations? How are you going to perform on this football field in front of all these people that are watching you? Be calm. Be in the moment. Be present in the moment. It’s not focusing on the big picture and not trying to do too much at once.
“Make every moment matter.”

He’s most passionate on this topic because this is the formula to win in football, in life.

“You might not win every rep, but you come back and you try your hardest and do the same shit over and over and over again and you’re going to get great results. Nowadays, we try to rush to the Super Bowl. But that’s not how this shit works. It’s a journey. Everything’s a journey. So you’ve got to embrace everything. Today was a great day. Embrace every day you come out here and step a foot on the field. Find joy in everything you do.”

Not easy. One bad bounce tends to decide the fate of this team. The last three season-enders have been particularly disturbing. 2023. If Zay Flowers doesn’t fumble at the goal line against the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game, perhaps Baltimore is in the Super Bowl. 2024. If Mark Andrews doesn’t have a fourth quarter from hell in the AFC divisional round — one fumble, one drop — the Ravens get their shot at Chiefs redemption the next week. 2025. If Tyler Loop connects from 44 yards in Week 18 against Pittsburgh and the Ravens win the AFC North, is John Harbaugh fired? Baltimore might’ve won a playoff game. Or two.

All players who lived through such misery certainly wished they could slam a fast forward button back to January.

After the ‘23 loss, Simpson buried his head in his hands on the bench.

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Yet, Simpson knows the worst thing any pro can do is obsess over the next do-or-die playoff moment.

“Everything,” Simpson says, “leads up to something.”

This contrasts the latest evolution of our species. Err, devolution. Homo sapiens have taken a lazy turn the last 10 to 15 years. Anyone can press a button for anything they need. Hungry? Place an order on DoorDash and keep your ass fixated on the recliner. Going somewhere? No need to drive and carefully follow directions. Call an Uber. Seeking a mate? No need to court a woman on a date and seek a meaningful relationship. Young men are hooked on porn and old billionaires can’t stop soliciting prostitutes.

Delayed gratification — patience — is becoming a lost art.

Those who grasp this concept have a striking advantage over their peers.

Simpson never envisioned an NFL pot of gold on the other side of a rainbow. He lived an honest life, made daily deposits and earned this dream life.

Off the field, Dad life is beyond rewarding. The Simpsons have 2-year-old and 10-month-old boys. Both are albino. Both parents shared the same gene, so there was a 25 percent chance of albinism during the first pregnancy and a 6 percent chance on the second. “It’s got to be something in the water,” Simpson says. “God knew what he was doing.” Simpson dubs himself an overbearing father. He’ll be the father he never had.

The way he sees it, this stage of life is fleeting. He needs to be with them every free second.

“For me growing up,” Simpson adds, “I know what a kid would want.”

So, one day, he’ll also talk to young kids who lack a father figure in their life. His major in college was sociology. If Simpson never made it to the NFL, the plan was to get into social work. Simpson doesn’t view himself as “mentor.” Rather, a voice. He’ll share his story, offer wisdom and leave the rest up to whoever chooses to listen. Kids will naturally take heed or think he’s full of it. He wants to speak to the kids that want to be spoken to.

Until then, Big John is the missing piece on a contender.

“They brought me here for a reason,” Simpson says. “And that’s to improve the trenches and bring nastiness back and instill into the younger guys behind me or beside me: ‘Yo, we’ve got one goal and that is to impose our will on the person in front of us.’ I truly believe every moment matters. Every little thing matters to get you to where you ultimately want to be.”

Which is obviously Super Bowl XLI in Inglewood, Calif.

A quarterback this talented shouldn’t go a decade without reaching the sport’s grandest stage. X’s and O’s are secondary. Lamar Jackson has won two MVPs in two different offenses. Personnel is no problem. Baltimore is loaded. Please, go ahead and doubt 32-year-old Derrick Henry. Up close, he still resembles a genetic freak.

The missing ingredient is something more difficult to quantify. Both owners in Buffalo and Baltimore hired young coaches to usher in a fresh vision.

Eleven-year vet Ronnie Stanley has only known Harbaugh. He, too, cites the “little things” as the difference between being great and elite. He believes the coaching change should help.

“For it to be like a culture-wide thing,” the left tackle says, “it takes a lot of conscious effort, conscious awareness of what is the focus, what are we trying to value here. Our mentality. The whole thing. I think trying to separate yourself amongst the best — there are very few things that can be differentiators and that is one of those things that can make a difference.”

Ultimately, it’s up to the players. These aren’t pixelated figures on a telestrator.

Simpson understands human beings are the most complex organisms on the planet. You have good days. You have bad days. He’s a prime example himself. At the start of training camp this summer, he got into his own head overanalyzing everything. Again. This has been a problem since Simpson thought he was going to be a starter for the Raiders and got benched. He acknowledges that it gets to the point of anxiety and borderline panic attacks.

“Every camp, I go to this place of trauma,” Simpson admits. “I’m like: ‘Fuck, let’s lock in, let’s lock in!’”

Then, Simpson takes a deep breath and realizes such hyper-, hyper- intensity is not his game.

He keeps it light, has fun, brings people together.

“I can get to that point of super seriousness,” he adds. “But that’s not who I am. So I’ve got to come out here and show the guys that surround me: ‘Yo, he’s got my back no matter what. We’re going to have fun with this shit and whoop some ass while we doing it!’”

That’s the objective this season. The man who refuses to think too far ahead — briefly — allows himself to dream. He can’t help it. When he’s finished with football, his family will live on a lake somewhere with 10 acres of land and five horses. John Simpson is taking the family name a bold new direction. That’s exciting.

As for this 2026 season? Yeah, he can only contain his excitement for so long.

“This year,” Simpson assures, “is going to be fun as hell.”

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2026 NFL Season Preview Features to date…

The “Big John” Simpson Creed

Tate Ratledge feels no pain

The Kyler Murray Project, Part I: Liberated

The Kyler Murray Project, Part II: The Great Unknown

‘We will be the best offensive line in football:’ Q&A with Alec Anderson, Buffalo Bills enforcer

‘Who’s going to take this yard?’ The Arrival of Eric Wilson

Jordyn Brooks is the captain now

Dregs to Domination: The Aaron Brewer Blueprint

Tate Ratledge feels no pain

Tyler Dunne — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 11:56:51 GMT

Illustration by Brave Buffalo

ALLEN PARK, Mich. — Clouds darken overhead when it’s time to discuss the worst moment of his life. A storm’s coming. Fitting. Tate Ratledge lifts himself off a chair near the practice field, we stride toward the door and, by the time he ducks into the Detroit Lions’ facility, a light drizzle has strengthened into a torrential downpour.

Walking through the hallway, as country music blares, the 25-year-old guard mentions a honeymoon on tap. This minicamp will wrap up and it’s off to St. Lucia. In typical newlywed fashion, this new husband hasn’t packed a single item yet.

Ratledge takes a right turn, onto the Lions’ indoor field, plops atop a massive plyo box, tears off the tape around each finger and picks up exactly where he left off. Good times were had in Athens, Ga. The best times. This is where a boy became a man and he won two national championships. It’s also where he suffered the greatest loss of his young life.

He exhales deeply and starts the only place he can.

With the parade.

The Georgia Bulldogs were fresh off a 65-7 College Football Playoff National Championship win over Texas Christian. A thrashing that capped a perfect 15-0 season and catapulted this program to a new realm — back-to-back champs. They were on top of the football world. Five days later, it was time to celebrate. “The whole city of Athens,” Ratledge details, “is flooded with people.” Roughly 50,000 in all. Ratledge was perched on the back of a fire truck with three teammates. Sirens blared. Horns honked. Locals screamed and pumped fists and pointed toward the most unlikely best friends. Ratledge, from the deep country of Tennessee, sifted fingers through his signature mullet. Devin Willock, from New Jersey, in dreads, hoisted his cell phone high into the sky to capture the scenes himself.

All both linemen could see was mass humanity on both sides of the street.

“Unbelievable,” Ratledge says. “What you dream of. There’s no telling how many people were there. You can’t ask for anything better. An ocean of people from all over the state there just to see you drive by on a car. Which is insane.”

That evening, Willock posed for pictures with a young fan at Texas Roadhouse and let the boy try on his enormous championship ring.

That night, college kids then did what college kids do — drank, partied, reveled in championship glory. Ratledge remembers saying bye around 1:30 a.m. He told Willock that both he and Annabelle, his then-girlfriend, now-wife, were heading home. Ratledge dapped him up, said “I love you” and called an Uber. The school’s recruiting coordinator, Chandler LeCroy, was also hanging out with them all.

Memories replay. He pauses.

Ratledge’s exterior is an impenetrable fortress, a barricade that prevents all emotions, all sensitivities from ever seeing the light of day. The man never cries. Even then — briefly — he gets choked up, and takes a sip of water to collect himself. There’s sadness in his eyes with a tint of anger.

“They obviously get in the car,” Ratledge says, “and go somewhere. I’m going to say something I shouldn’t.”

Then, he continues.

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Ratledge returned to his place, slipped into bed and his phone rang. It was Amarius Mims, another hulking offensive lineman on the squad. He hit mute. Didn’t answer. “Mims being Mims,” he told himself. Ratledge thought nothing of such a random call in the middle of the night because this was common. The boys always swapped outlandish party stories in real time. Ratledge fell asleep and — as the sun began to rise — was awakened by Annabelle’s sobbing. Standing over the bed, she was bawling. Her eyes were red. She was barely able to articulate the crushing news.

“Dev’s gone.”

Huh? “Where did he go?” Ratledge wondered.

“He died last night.”

Ratledge entered a state of shock. He didn’t say one word and didn’t show one blip of emotion, period, until finally crying with teammates at the Bulldogs facility later that night.

It was true. Willock, 20, was dead. So was LeCroy. Operating a university SUV not authorized for use, the latter was driving 104 mph at around 2:30 a.m. and careened into two power poles and several trees. Toxicology results revealed her blood alcohol concentration to be .197, more than twice the legal limit in Georgia. An investigation would find that LeCroy, in a 2021 Ford Expedition, was street-racing Jalen Carter’s 2021 Jeep Trackhawk through Athens.

Both Willock and LeCroy were killed. Two other passengers survived.

Immediately, Ratledge felt paralyzed by guilt, by anger. Once in college, he physically ripped the car keys out of a close friend’s hands to prevent him from driving drunk. He’s never been afraid to step in.

This time, he did not.

“I knew she was hammered. I knew it,” Ratledge says. “I just didn’t know she was driving.”

He kept replaying that final goodbye in his mind and blamed himself. It took days, weeks, months for Ratledge to accept the reality that he didn’t give LeCroy the keys. Anyone could’ve stepped in. Not that he’s ever gotten over losing Dev. “It still sticks with me,” Ratledge says. “It’s on my body.” With that, he shows a black and red “DW” tattoo on his wrist. There’s the number 77. And along one forearm — in massive all caps — is “LLDW,” short for Live Like Devin Willock.

He refuses to forget what happened the night of Jan. 14, 2023. It’s part of him.

A kid hardened beyond his years was now stone freakin’ cold.

“It numbs you,” he says.

For better. For worse.

Ratledge admits he doesn’t have much sympathy for other people. Whenever a friend or loved one goes through a hard time, he brushes it off with a “whatever.” Even inside his own home, it’s difficult for Ratledge to shower his wife with compassion when Annabelle is upset. Unnatural. He half-jokes that he tells the dog to cuddle with her. (“I’m out. I don’t know what to do.”) That’s what happens when you’ve lived through the darkest of dark times at such an impressionable age. There were tears, no doubt. But when I ask if he’s ever had the opportunity to let all emotions pour out of him or if he’s been holding it all in, there’s no hesitation.

He holds it all in. He knows this isn’t healthy and Ratledge also knows what he’s about to say next is not popular in 2026.

“This is going to sound really fucked up,” he begins. “I’m not a huge believer in mental health.”

As a human being, that may not be ideal.

As a professional football player, it can be a superpower.

Football never stops. Football has progressed from owning Sundays to now owning Christmas. Nothing stands in the shield’s way. No holiday’s too important, no injury’s too severe. Players break bones, tear ligaments, suffer brain trauma, are quite literally scooped off the turf, stuffed into an ambulance and the sport just… keeps… moving. Let’s not forget the NFL played games six days after one player nearly died on the field. All 32 teams essentially high-stepped over Damar Hamlin’s body and played on.

Weak minds do not last. Compartmentalizing is often an impossible fantasy.

Callousness is endemic to the sport.

The participant impervious to all pain, all emotion thrives. Tate Ratledge is a window into the psychology of the profession. He lost “Dev,” got those tattoos and had zero choice but to charge on for two more seasons in Athens. Along the way, he inked an enormous picture of a lion to his arm above those initials because this species is the king of the jungle. And then, Ratledge was identified by Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes as a man worthy of their offensive line. This is where the two first morphed a perennial loser into a winner. Selected 57^th overall in the 2025 NFL Draft, Ratledge started all 17 games at guard as a rookie.

Titanium tough, his ascent may now be the key to the Lions reaching their first Super Bowl in franchise history.

All pain bottled up inside of Ratledge isn’t going anywhere.

His guess is as good as yours on the long-term effects.

In the short term, life outside of football sure can feel weird. Ratledge believes society today is far too sensitive. (More on that later.)

“But that goes back to how I was raised.”

So, that’s the logical place to start — with Football Practice No. 1.

“Fun fact,” Ratledge begins. “I actually cried.”

The hitting drill is called “Sharks and Minnows,” and it tends to boomerang herds of kids to more benign sports.

One player is the shark and placed in the middle of the football field. Everyone else serves as minnows sprinting from one sideline to the other. It’s not complicated. The shark simply chooses one victim to devour.

Large for his age, Ratledge played up a level with much older kids.

He was the chosen minnow. He was sent airborne.

“I got laid out,” he recalls.

Ironic considering this same exact drill was a baptism to this sport for the All-Pro on this Lions offensive line. From the village of Malaeimi in America Samoa to the state of Utah, one of Penei Sewell’s earliest football memories also happens to be Sharks and Minnows. Only, he was designated the “shark” as a 6-foot-3, 325-pound eighth-grader. Sewell gave one hapless “minnow” a concussion, a sprained ankle and never saw him again. His victim quit the team on the spot and changed schools. Share this tale with Ratledge and his eyes bug out. (“Jesus! I had the opposite experience.”) Ratledge, conversely, saw stars, his lip quivered and… uh, no. Dad was not having it. Dean Ratledge played college ball himself at Tennessee Tech before coaching high school football for 40+ years.

He’s old school. Very old school.

Son would rather not relay Dad’s message in that moment.

“That’s how I’ve been raised,” Ratledge says. “He’s hardnosed and I take after him.”

With those curse words, the sport was officially injected into his bloodstream.

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There’s growing up in the middle of nowhere, and then there’s Athens, Tenn., an hour north of Chattanooga. Both parents drove 45 minutes to work each day. Ratledge recalls the nearest gas station being a half-hour away.

If he acted up, he was dealt with swiftly. Ratledge received many, many whoopings. Down here? The parents of other kids had the permission to whoop you, too. One of Ratledge’s best friends growing up was future Bulldog teammate Cade Brock. He remembers Brock’s Dad issuing corporal punishment on him and he’s sure his own Dad did the same to Brock. It was status quo.

We’ve heard this often. Calvin Austin III and Will Campbell both looked back at their belt beatings fondly.

Ratledge became familiar with the belt himself.

Spoons, too.

“Whatever she could get ahold of,” he says.

Come again? She?

“Yeah, Mom was mean,” Ratledge adds “You did not want to piss off Mom.”

Even as a junior in college, he got whacked with a belt by Mary Stuart Ratledge for talking back. (“She’s feisty. My Mom’s got a little shit to her.”)

By no means is he complaining. All of it — Tate insists — was well-deserved.

Ratledge dubs himself “hell on wheels” as a kid. Growing up, he was booted out of four daycares — once for kicking the owner’s daughter down the slide because, dammit, she was taking too long. He was bigger than everyone else. If Ratledge wanted something, he took it. Dad loves to tell Tate he hopes he gets a child just like him. Whenever that day comes, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to spank a little girl. “But,” Ratledge adds, “I could probably strike my son.” That’s because he’s eternally grateful for his own upbringing. He wouldn’t change a thing. His parents sacrificed a ton to give him endless opportunities, right to getting him into a private school 120 miles south in Rome, Ga.

“I got disciplined when I needed to be disciplined,” Ratledge says, “and loved on when I needed to be loved on. I couldn’t ask for more. It’s why I turned out the way I am today.”

Hell yeah, he’s into country music. Everything from Waylon Jennings and George Strait to Cody Johnson and Jason Aldean. Obviously, he’s been hunting for years. Turkey reigns supreme in his neck of the woods. The deer hunting stinks, but he was usually able to fill his tags to fill up the freezer with meat. Overall? Nothing extreme ever rocked his world growing up. No tragedies, no trauma.

On the contrary, he hit the jackpot. He started dating his future wife in 10^th grade.

In due time, Ratledge was the apex predator driving kids into the dirt on the football field. By seventh grade, he was bigger than everyone. Tate only grew… and grew… and, soon, dominated every drill. Every opponent. A four-star recruit, Ratledge was coveted by schools throughout the SEC and chose Georgia over the hometown Tennessee Volunteers — news akin to an earthquake beneath the feet of some family members. Oh, Dad had no problem ditching his lifelong Vols fandom. One video of Dean peeling the orange “T” off his truck window went viral. Other family members, however, were not pleased. To this day, several refuse to speak to Ratledge. One aunt and uncle he was incredibly close to through his childhood cut him out of their lives completely. Cold turkey.

Six years later, he still hasn’t heard from either individual.

Meanwhile, diehard fans flooded his Instagram inbox with death threats.

“It’s deep,” Ratledge says. “Vol fans are crazy.”

His reasoning was straightforward. Ratledge wanted to win and believed in head coach Kirby Smart.

After barely playing as a freshman, he ruptured his Lisfranc the third play of his sophomore year in 2021. An excruciating injury. ESPN cameras captured a rare sight: Ratledge grimacing in agony. (“It felt like my foot was cut in half.”) The foot still didn’t feel right through Georgia’s undefeated 2022 season. For good measure, Ratledge also gritted through a high ankle sprain his final ’24 season — an injury that’d later require surgery. Georgia didn’t have many able bodies on the O-Line, so he played through the pain. Worth noting, Toradol only accomplishes so much. You can numb up your entire foot, but it’s still difficult to move. Ratledge didn’t feel nearly as powerful. By the time he healed up, his leg was so skinny that his knee brace wouldn’t fit.

Two championship rings made all tears, all bruises, all sprains worth it.

“Couldn’t have asked for anything better,” Ratledge says. “That’s why I decided to go to Georgia. I wanted to win.”

What he didn’t bargain for was a much different type of pain.

He remembers the first time they met. All 380 pounds this kid was carrying miraculously balanced atop a knee scooter —Devin Willock was motoring all around the UGA campus. Even to massive human beings, like Ratledge, this was a monster of a man. Ratledge dapped him up for the first time and felt Willock’s hand swallow his. “What the fuck?” he asked himself, astonished.

This was the largest person Ratledge ever met in his life.

They had nothing in common. Zilch. But Willock was hilarious. This was the happiest person he had ever met in his life. All Ratledge knew was that he needed to be around a personality this infectious.

“He would literally brighten up a room,” Ratledge says. “He was the biggest teddy bear I’ve ever met in my life. Loved everybody. Always had a smile on his face, no matter what was going on. He was the one to lift you up, bring the room together.”

Such is the beauty of football. It brings people together from all conceivable backgrounds.

Such is the beauty of Athens, Ga. It was the perfect extension of his upbringing in Athens, Tenn. The new man in charge, Smart, simply wielded a microphone instead of a belt or wooden spoon. Playing for Georgia is something like dipping into a time machine to the 70s or 80s. This coach’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers each practice. Screw up and everyone hears about it. Those ill-equipped to handle embarrassment were welcome to leave.

Ratledge was berated — ruthlessly — and better for it.

“When I first got into college?” Ratledge recalls. “Him on that microphone, he used to eat me alive. It got a little wild. I’m pretty sure he told me I was sorry and soft and I sucked with a few choice words in-between there. He can flip a switch.”

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The best memories with Willock, hands down, were “the sucky ones.” All brutal team runs they thought would kill ‘em. To build a base of mental stamina, Smart famously has players run the entire stadium stairs 15 times. Once for each game on the schedule. “Those,” Ratledge adds, “aren’t made for fat people.” Run to run to run, bonds strengthen during this state of delusion. They’d often trudge into the locker room, sprawl on the locker room floor and ask aloud: What the hell are we doing? One specific practice comes to mind. It must’ve been 120 degrees on the practice field when players looked up to see a staffer accidentally spill all of the team’s water supply down a hill.

There wasn’t one drop of H2O left.

Smart didn’t care. He instructed all players to complete the team run.

“We were dying,” Ratledge says. “You look back at that and it’s like, ‘That’s part of the reason I am where I am. Because we were put through that sucky situation. So when we got in the game, the games were easier than what we did all year long in college. … We’ve been through so much shit together.

“No other sport are you going through hell with however many other people.”

Nothing players faced in games compared to practice, the same point made by Green Bay Packers safety Javon Bullard. Smart’s cutthroat culture engrained a mental toughness that feeds the physical toughness. Ratledge firmly believes in this order of operations because it never works the other way around. It’s impossible to play through pain and/or deliver a blow if you’re unwilling, if you’re soft. “You can’t just be physically tough,” he explains. “Something bad happens and then you shut down.”

Ratledge is forever grateful for the Nick Saban disciple in a visor. Smart is a rare relic in these NIL times.

“He changed me as a person for the better,” Ratledge says. “I owe everything to Coach Smart. He built me to who I am. He believed in us and he was hard on us. That’s how I was raised. Dad was always hard on me for certain things and I wouldn’t want it any other way from my coach. So Coach Smart obviously pushed us in ways we hadn’t been pushed before. And then aside from being a tremendous coach? He’s a player’s coach. You just love him.”

All of it led to wins. So many wins.

Then came the night that changed everyone’s lives.

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Ratledge had no clue what to feel when he learned Willock was killed in a car accident.

Suddenly, that national title victory over TCU meant absolutely nothing.

The only thing teammates could do was stick together. After Willock’s death, each night, they congregated. They’d eat. They’d share stories. Simply because nobody wanted to be alone. It was a down time in the football calendar. So during the day, players tried to play golf and work out together at the facility as much as possible.

Somehow, drunk driving remains a gigantic problem in America. There’s Uber. There’s Lyft. There’s no reason anyone should get behind the wheel of a car intoxicated. Still, approximately 11,000 to 13,000 people die each year due to drunk driving. About 1,000 of those deaths occur on college campuses.

Making matters worse, State Route 10 Loop completely circles around the college town of Athens. It’s easy to pick up a head of steam and treat this highway like Daytona 500. At one point in our conversation, Ratledge gets visibly pissed off all over again. After Willock’s death, too many players refused to change. Since January 2023, the team has experienced 25+ incidents of reckless driving.

“We just lost a fucking teammate and we got guys doing all this?” Ratledge says. “That eats at me. How many does it take?”

It’s been addressed. Repeatedly. He’s seen Smart cry in front of the entire team, begging and pleading his players to slow the hell down. Ratledge recalls the head coach bringing in police, the state patrol and instituting defensive driving classes to drill home the same points.

Nothing seems to stop players from feeling invincible.

“He’s doing what he needs to do,” Ratledge adds. “You give a bunch of young kids that much money, stupid shit’s going to happen.

“Slow the fuck down.”

Because here’s what this epidemic destroyed.

Green Bay’s Bullard was close to LeCroy. To this day, his pinned tweet is a picture with her.

Ratledge lost one of his best friends, too. Willock was just starting to truly figure out his life. Everything on and off the field was starting to click.

This is how Ratledge copes. He knows Willock could be in his cleats.

“I don’t take football for granted,” he explains. “I don’t take life for granted. To understand how blessed I am and lucky I am to be in the position I am — and what he would have done to be able to be in this position — it puts it in a different perspective. It’s like, ‘Oh, I’m going to practice today, this sucks. I don’t want to do that.’ Well, fuck, I got a buddy that’s dead that would do anything to be here right now. Kind of puts it in perspective for you.”

The Bulldogs pinned a picture of Willock up in their offensive line room. And throughout the 2023 season, they took turns wearing No. 77. Upon graduating, this group asked the school not to issue the number to anyone else. As long as O-Line coach Stacy Searels is in charge, Ratledge is confident that will be the case. He does little things himself, too, like keeping a picture of Willock on the visor of his truck. (“A little reminder: Slow your ass down.”)

Ratledge doesn’t try to bury this tragedy deep into his subconscious. He admits his friend’s death completely changed his life. He’ll LLDW best he can.

“I can’t come in here and be pissed off,” he adds. “You’ve got to be in a good mood. I’m playing football for a living. What do I have to complain about?”

Yet, he also knows the aftershock is more complicated because it’s his nature to numb all emotional pain, and blast ahead at one speed. It’s who he is. It’s what gives him an edge in this sport. Ratledge doesn’t believe in mental health, a stark departure from the last ass-kicking lineman featured in our pages.

Ratledge understands his approach is not the norm.

“I hear somebody say they’re depressed? Stop being fucking sad. That’s my mindset,” Ratledge says. “I’m never too high. I’m never too low. I’m just even-keeled. I’m not going to have something happen that fucking explodes my life and ruins my whole week. I might let it affect me for a day.”

One twist of a knee ligament on FieldTurf. One horrendous call by an official. One teammate botching an assignment, thus leaving you high and dry and humiliated in front of millions. Hell, one bad bounce of this funny-shaped ball.

So much is out of your control in this sport. A complete lack of emotional sensitivities is a gift.

Attacking day-to-day life with 10 onion layers around his feelings has been a blessing. Ratledge stayed at Georgia for five years. In no universe did he ever imagine walking into Smart’s office and threatening to transfer if he didn’t receive a raise — common practice today. He spurned the hometown Vols (and lost family members) in the interest of winning, and that’s precisely what Smart delivered. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to repay the coach.

Football’s Darwinism naturally led The Mullet to his next coach: Dan Campbell.

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He never saw it coming. Ratledge only met with the Lions once. But playing next to Sewell? And a veteran center in Graham Glasgow? Quickly, Ratledge realized this was home. Both players helped him in countless ways as a rookie. Glasgow had answers for every question he threw his way. And then, there’s the head coach who recently decreased his caffeine intake from a gallon of coffee per day to a half gallon.

“The way football’s supposed to be played, how he wants it played,” Ratledge says, “I fit into that mold. Fast. Physical. Nobody’s going to mentally out-do us, physically outdo us. He’s a smashmouth football kind of guy and that’s my best football.”

Granted, this means re-entering a familiar crucible. The ecosystem inside this building is not for everyone. When we chat a second time, via phone, Ratledge insinuates that he’s fresh off getting his ass chewed out by coaches. Battles with Alim McNeill, another titan on this line of scrimmage, have been intense. If you have a rough practice here, the urgency to respond the next day is high.

Campbell and Lions O-Line coach Hank Fraley have no time for repeated errors.

Mistakes must be corrected, or you’re out.

Before, he took life for granted. He thought that nothing bad could ever happen to him. Tate Ratledge viewed himself as “invincible.”

A loved one died and he quit thinking this way entirely. So, in his mind, it’s simple: There’s zero time to hyper-analyze emotions. Life moves too fast.

“It’s not waiting up on you,” Ratledge says. “You must come to a point where you can accept what happened — whatever that is — and move on. Don’t get me wrong, it still hurts. It still sucks. That day rolls around every year around that time, and it sucks. But life goes on. You’ve got to keep going.”

Exactly as pro football keeps going.

Campbell has described the nature of the sport as a freight train, a nod to Metallica’s No Leaf Clover. Each Monday, players can see a glint of light at the end of the tunnel. Come Sunday, the train is in your face — whether you’re ready or not. There are pros mentally equipped for the head-on collision and pros who are not. The latter do not last long. Watching peers get cut in the pros was strange at first. But then Ratledge remembered Smart’s boot camp. He credits Dad for opening his eyes to the sport’s reality ages ago.

Dean Ratledge always told his son: Hear the message, not the tone.

Listen to what correction is being taught, instead of being consumed by emotions and thinking someone’s being a big meanie.

“You’ve got to be able to be coached,” Ratledge says. “You can’t take things to heart.
“Bad shit’s going to happen. It’s all about getting back up off the mat. Keep going.”

Unfortunately, this mentality comes with unintended consequences. Ratledge is not a cozy shoulder in times of need, no. If anyone’s crying around him — if anyone’s sad, period — he has no clue what to do. He’s basically Ricky Bobby saying, “I’m not sure what to do with my hands.” That’s been true since high school.

So, yeah. Sorry if this hug feels a little forced, Annabelle. He’s trying. He’s slowly figuring out what to say whenever you’re stressed.

“It’s gotten better,” Ratledge says, “but it’s still an awkward thing for me.”

Let’s give this 6-foot-6, 322-pounder some grace. His day job isn’t easy.

After all, there are Bulldogs scattered across the league.

To reach a Super Bowl, he’ll need to slay former teammates. Bullard is trying to give the Packers a killer instinct. Carter, the player racing LeCroy, inked a four-year, $152 million deal with the Philadelphia Eagles this offseason. After falling to ninth overall, amid character concerns, he’s been a treacherous assignment for all NFL guards and centers. Bring up his role in the fatal accident, and Ratledge cuts in. He harbors no resentment. (“I love Jalen. Jalen is one of my favorite people I played with. Great teammate, great guy. I love Jalen.”) Carter also got the best of him in a 16-9 Eagles win last season. Carter enjoys talking shit on the field. Six seconds into the 2025 season, he spit on Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott and was ejected.

That’s what makes these meetings between ex-Bulldogs special. Expletives are never exchanged, let alone saliva. There’s a mutual respect.

Says Ratledge: “We went through so much shit together.”

After seeing their win total improve from three to nine to 12 to 15 in Campbell’s first four years, the Lions backtracked to 9-8 last season and missed the playoffs. Hence, the healthy tension in Allen Park this summer.

Take it from Campbell. Here’s how the face of the franchise summarized the tone of training camp in a recent press conference.

“We don’t have time to waste, and we can’t wait for anybody,” Campbell said. “We’re out to get this job done and we can’t mess around. So, we have to be able to trust you, you’ve got to be dependable, you’ve got to be coachable, and you’ve got to be a competitor, man. You’ve got to be able to line up and go back for the next play no matter what happened in the last one. It is competitive. We love that. Because that’s where the cream always rises to the top. You’re going to find those guys and then you’ll find the ones that it’s just too much, it’s hard. Doesn’t make them bad people. It’s probably not for you, at least not here.”

Urgency, once again, is ratcheted up most on the offensive line. That was the case when Campbell and Holmes first built this roster and that’s the case in Season No. 6. Especially considering Jared Goff, surgical yet immobile, is still the quarterback. And especially after seeing Jahmyr Gibbs average less than four yards per carry in five of his last six games. It’s clear the Lions intend to feed their No. 1 back the ball a lot this season. To achieve this mission, Campbell wants his five best linemen starting regardless of position. That’s why Ratledge has also gotten reps at center.

He improved as Year 1 wore on. Ratledge allowed only one sack and four QB hits his last 12 starts.

Like his team, he’s all business. Gone is the mullet that made him a cult hero in the SEC. Nor does he have any imminent facial hair plans.

Last season’s letdown up front still “stings” players and coaches, Ratledge says. There’s no need for signs or speeches or daily affirmations. Everyone realizes the time to reach the Super Bowl is now. The Lions aren’t a lovable underdog anymore. They’ve got to win.

“What’s known,” Ratledge says, “doesn’t have to be talked about. Why are you playing if that’s not your goal? It’s definitely serious around here. Not that it gets brought up 24/7, but it’s a very known thing around the building.”

With that, it’s time to head off to another meeting.

Mistakes will be magnified. F-bombs will fly.

Tate Ratledge doesn’t want it any other way.

All the perspective he needs is inscribed right there on his arms.

Tate Ratledge feels no pain

The Kyler Murray Project, Part I: Liberated

The Kyler Murray Project, Part II: The Great Unknown

‘We will be the best offensive line in football:’ Q&A with Alec Anderson, Buffalo Bills enforcer

‘Who’s going to take this yard?’ The Arrival of Eric Wilson

Jordyn Brooks is the captain now

Dregs to Domination: The Aaron Brewer Blueprint

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'We will be the best offensive line in football:' Q&A with Alec Anderson, Buffalo Bills enforcer

Tyler Dunne — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 19:35:57 GMT

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PITTSFORD, NY — Shaking the hand of Alec Anderson feels more like grabbing ahold of a deadly weapon. There’s so much tape wrapped around his palms, that they’re more like a pair of clubs… if those clubs were composed of concrete.

Yes, this is legal in the actual games.

“That shit will hurt,” he assures all future combatants.

The man looking to lock down the left guard spot on this Buffalo Bills offensive line has zero filter. It’s all he knows. Ask him any question and he’s ruthlessly honest — always.

When Joe Brady was officially announced as the new head coach of this team, Anderson assured all assholes wouldn’t be so tight inside the building. Back when we chatted into the ‘24 playoffs, Anderson didn’t care that nobody was talking about this O-Line. “We just do our fucking job,” he said then. “That’s what’s wrong with today’s society. Everybody wants a fucking pat on the back for doing their job. It’s bullshit. Man up and just do your job.”

Here the Bills are again, knocking on that championship door.

Undrafted out of UCLA in 2022, the 6-foot-5, 305-pounder has patiently waited for this opportunity in 2026. With David Edwards off to New Orleans, he’s been competing with Austin Corbett for the spot and appears close to locking it down and earning a coveted starting spot.

He fully expects the Bills to boast the best O-Line in the league, too.

On our trip to Bills camp, Go Long chatted with Anderson about his total mental transformation. He’s always been transparent on his battle with anxiety and depression.

He’s loud. He’s confident. He vows to kick copious amounts of ass this season for a Bills team trying to find any new edge it can. Maybe it’s him.

Go Long is your home for longform.

We are fueled by you.

This is a huge opportunity for you. What’s your mindset this summer?

Anderson: It’s great. It’s honestly full of excitement and anticipation. Today we got to throw on the pads for indy and some 1 on 1’s, so that was really fun to do. Kind of get back out there, get the hands shooting again, feel my hands on some pads and be able to hit something. So it’s nice. I think for this year I’m honestly excited more than anything to finally be able to have a shot and find myself in that left guard role as I’ve always seen. And so I’m excited for it more than anything.

Where does your story begin? Your roots, where you come from?

Anderson: So my wife and I, we both come from Southern California — San Bernardino County. Both grew up in Fontana, California and went to Etiwanda High School. And then I went to UCLA and she went to UCSD. And then I played there for four years. Left after my redshirt junior year and I was an undrafted free agent in 2022. I was on practice squad my first year and then got elevated for two games in a playoff game. And then my second year I was elevated the entire time I was active/inactive. And then my third year is when I was able to dip my toes in the water as a jumbo tight end. Most jumbo tight-end plays ever in an NFL year that year. And then my fourth year was the same thing. Still learning from the guys in front of me. Going from my rookie year — having Roger Saffold and Mitch Morse. And then my last three years having David Edwards and Connor (McGovern) there was very much of a treat because David being David, he sees the offense through a quarterback lens because that’s where he started. And so, it was fun to learn his point of view of football and then also take the stuff that I learned from Mitch and Roger as well. It’s helped me develop into the player that I am right now.

It’s got to feel like you’ve been building to this opportunity, right? You’re not just getting thrown into the fire. You’ve done it. You’ve been out there. Thinking back to that Pittsburgh game. What do you bring this offensive line? Every time we’ve talked, there’s a violence to your tone.

Anderson: You just said it with that. I think with offensive line, you need some people that are going to be violent and not give a fuck. I’m one of those people every now and then. It’s where if we need a tone-set or somebody to go out there and be the enforcer, I’ll do that job. I’ll get my hands dirty for the boys. I’m ready to do all that.

I’m thinking back to the way you put it — on the offensive line, nobody gives a fuck. Nobody cares what you’ve been through. Good day. Bad day.

Anderson: No one cares. We’re all suffering together and it’s the best part because you’ve got five guys that are willing to suffer with each other and then you add six other people onto that and you’ve got the No. 1 offense going. And so I’m excited to add myself into that equation and fire up the boys and get it going.

You’ve gotten through some hard times to get to this point — mentally. How has that made you tough for this opportunity?

Anderson: I think that it makes you realize what is important and what’s not. And I think when you’re in-between the lines, your mental health is important. When you have a job to do, you’ve got to silence that button and go out there and just know, “Yeah, I may not be in the most mentally right space. I may not want to be doing a certain thing right now or feeling a certain way.” But you’ve got to put that on hold and push through that adversity because you’ve got 10 other brothers on the offense that need you to do your job. And if you don’t do it, it’s not like defense where you could loaf on the backside and somebody’s going to be like, “All right, I made the tackle.” If you’re fucking around with the offense, man, and you’re not doing your 1/11th, it’s going to show on tape. And I think going through years of therapy, you learn different tools to fight and combat the anxiety and the different type of feelings that you get throughout season entirely, but also during the games. Because it’s up, it’s down. We just scored a touchdown, and then now we’ve got to punt. You go three and out. And so it’s in a microcosm of itself. You learn how to deal with the ups and downs of football just like you do with the ups and downs of life.

You could play 60 snaps and be perfect on 59 of them.

Anderson: That 60^th one might bite you in the ass, man, and you’re no good.

How do you process that mentally? It can’t be easy.

Anderson: No, it’s not. But it’s part of the game and you’ve got to play the game within the game. And part of that game within the game is your mental. And if you let that beat you, then you might as well not even go out there and play because you’ve got to be coming in mentally sharp on every single play. We have 60 to 75 snaps a game and you could be perfect on 74 of them. And then that 75th one, you think you’re better than you are. You think, “Oh, I just got almost beat this next play.” And you let one turn into two. That’s what I learned a lot in college. Don’t let one play turn into two, and turn into three, because then you just start letting shit slide downhill and that’s not good.

I remember George Kittle told me once that back in college, he went through all that and he put a big red dot on his wrist tape so he would hit it for a mental reset.

Anderson: A mental reset button. A lot of guys in college, we’d “wipe it off.” We’d wipe it off — the top of our helmet. Now, I just start box-breathing. I go six seconds in, four seconds out and let that do its thing. Relax that way. All right, it was one play. You’re fine. Reset because every play is its own. No matter what happened the last play, this is a new play and the last play can’t affect too much. You don’t want it to.

They say that’s the best way for everyone to breathe, too.

Anderson: Count to four or five and let it out. Exhale. It takes a minute because you don’t want to be breathing into your chest when you’re breathing into your stomach. So it’s an exercise of itself, but it works. I’ll say it works a lot.

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You’ve had some battles with Ed Oliver out here. It was close to a fight. I could see it simmering.

Anderson: They were getting up there, man. But it’s always fun going against Ed. He’s quick, he’s strong, he’s fast off the ball. So you’ve got to be really be quick with your hands and precise with how you’re striking him. I like going against Ed.

You strike me as the most interesting man in Buffalo. How would Alec Anderson describe Alec Anderson?

Anderson: Funny, hardworking, sarcastic, and don’t fuck around.

Take it way back. You got into football as a way to deal with some processing stuff going on? And ADHD? Is that where it really began with the sport?

Anderson: Playing sports was an outlet for us. My parents, they played sports. So therefore we all played sports and you grow up doing that. But it really helped me out in school, especially having to focus on one thing while do multiple things at the same time. It was really beneficial for me to be able to go out there and let my energy out and be able to understand, “OK, I can look at some stuff, but hear other things and diagnose both things simultaneously. And so I liked doing that, which that’s why I stuck with the sport. But at the same time, learning how to have a learning disorder, but also apply that in school and not just in sports. That was the battle for me. Trying to stay active in the classroom, but sitting still was a hard part. So my Dad would get green elastic bands and different types of rubber bands and put them underneath my chair and I’d be kicking on them all fucking day. Whatever class I was in, I had a vibrating watch to get me back on track. And so there were a lot of different things. But very, very fun.

What was the condition that you had with the processing?

Anderson: Man, I couldn’t even tell you. All I know is I had major ADHD and ADD and they wanted to put me on pharmaceutical-grade meth and I wasn’t about that. And so yeah, I said no. Screw big pharma. They just want to make millions and billions off of us as they use us as experimental rats.

So when did you turn that corner then playing football as a young kid? When did you realize, “I can unleash all of this energy onto other human beings?”

Anderson: Probably in middle school is when I really started having fun hitting people and wanting to do it. And I got into wrestling as well. Started out as like a punishment. I got in trouble in school. My dad was like, “All right, you want to fight? I’m going to take you to wrestling practice.” So he took me to wrestling practice and we had to do a bunch of shit and it was very hard. But at the same time, it was a lot of fun. And so I was like, “You know what? I might want to do this for a long period of time.”

You’ve been open about your anxiety in football. When was that? High school, college?

Anderson: Yeah, it started for me in high school, probably my sophomore year, having to gain a lot of weight in a short amount of time. It’s always been hard for me to maintain and keep the heavy weight on. And so you gain 10, 15 pounds and then you go to practice for two days and you lose 30 pounds. It was very hard. And wanting to get better, but you’re like, “Man, I’m lifting weights. I’m doing what I’m supposed to. I’m just not getting bigger. Am I staying stronger?” That started to weigh on me. And then also the internal pressure. Sometimes you think you have a lot of pressure on your shoulders, but majority of it can be coming from yourself. Not knowing. And that was part of my issue — not knowing how to process what I’m feeling at the time. Is it nerves? Is it excitement? Or is it me not being ready for the game because I’m underweight or is it because of another thing? And so that’s when it started. Self-processing was always a main thing for me. Having to self-diagnose and self-soothe.

Once I got in the league, I had a big panic attack, an anxiety attack that didn’t end up so good. And that’s when I knew I had to start actually getting some mental help and figure out what’s actually wrong and how to diagnose different issues and separate the two.

When was that panic attack?

Anderson: Can’t tell you about that.

Hey, it’s just my job.

Anderson: It’s part of your job to ask. It’s all right.

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But it was something you really had to work through.

Anderson: Yeah, I’m still working through it. My wife helps me out a lot with that. Being able to talk exactly how I want. Some people take me that… I get hyped up or I get amped up when I start talking and my voice will go up and I’ll start cussing a lot. And some people take it as me getting angry or kind of aggressive, but that’s just me trying to process what the fuck’s going on. And my wife allows me to do that and she’s like, “All right, are you done?” I’m like, “Yeah.” Now I actually start diagnosing the main issues and how she can help me or if I do need to go to therapy for something, she will encourage me to go and talk about it. So it’s a lot of things.

When did it happen?

Anderson: 2022. My rookie year.

So it’s been a while. You’ve figured out coping mechanisms.

Anderson: I’ve figured out ways. You always have some type of coping mechanism to get you back on track, whether it’s something small and quick or a whole routine some dudes have to do. So it’s kind of based by person, I’d say.

Meditation?

Anderson: Meditation. Breathwork. Even visualization training — that’s a big one for me as well the nights before games. So I have my little processes.

When you visualize, are you sitting, closing your eyes, imagining?

Anderson: Yeah, it’s sitting there. I’ve got a mask on my eyes. I have noise-canceling headphones and I just let it all go through. And if I’m not doing that, then our sports psychologist, “Dr. Dez” (Dr. Desaree Festa), she’ll be walking us through a guided meditation and telling us exactly like, “Okay, it’s third down. There’s two minutes left on the clock. It’s third and 8 and you guys have an under front. This is what’s going on. This is the play.” And then she goes, “I want to hear you guys’ communication.” She gets us to the line and we talk through communication. And then she goes “set hut,” and then we talk about what we’re going to do post-snap. And it helps out a lot.

And I’ve gotten to know Jordan Poyer well. We talked a lot about breathwork. Have you done his breathwork?

Anderson: Oh yeah. “Po” and I, we’re close on the breathwork. He and I, we bounced ideas off each other when he was here. And I would take a lot of his ideas, especially with the guided meditations and things like that.

Beats and Breath. It works.

Anderson: I was big on that. And WimHof breathing.

What’s that?

Anderson: So it’s all breathwork through your mouth and through your mouth, out your mouth.

Whoa now. Isn’t breathing in through your mouth terrible for you?

Anderson: It’s bad, but it’s rapid breathing and it’s meant to be like a stress meditation. And so you do about 30 exhales, 30 inhales, and it’s quick. You fully exhale and inhale completely. And then you hold your breath for about two and a half, three minutes or as long as you can go. And you hold it and then you let it out. And then your body kind of goes into this shock’ish state — like “What the fuck’s going on?” Because you think you’re about to suffocate. But no, it’s different. It’s fun. I like it.

Is that different than the holotropic breathwork?

Anderson: Yes. A little bit different, but not drastically.

Because that kind of gets you into other dimensions.

Anderson: Yeah, it’s meant for some people who go on little micro doses of some shrooms. But me and Tommy Doyle, actually, he and I would do it in my apartment and his apartment in our living rooms and we’d go back and forth going through that. Doing two of them a night and it’s about 10 minutes each and then we just go to sleep.

The breathwork or the shrooms?

Anderson: (laughs) The breathwork. C’mon now. Yeah, that’s kind of it.

All of this helps you get to a place where you can kick ass. When that switch happens, how violent are you out there? What takes over?

Anderson: It goes back to what drove me to want to play, man. It’s the excitement, the wanting to get better and the slight anxiety feel of wanting to not lose. I like that feeling. Right before the snap, you get that weird kind of heartbeat in your chest and you get that weird feeling in your stomach of like, “All right, what the fuck’s this guy going to do? I know what I’m going to do. Let’s see what happens.” And then the ball’s snapped and you do it.

How confident are you that you can win this job and be a part of one of the best lines in football and dominate?

Anderson: I’m very confident. I’m confident in my abilities to push through adversity and really strive to get better. And I think I’m doing that every day.

Can this be one of the best lines in football?

Anderson: I think this will. I think we will be the best offensive line in football this year. I think the proof’s in the pudding and we’re out here working every day and showing it.

It helps when the assholes aren’t tight, too.

Anderson: Exactly right. It’s nice.

How is it different?

Anderson: It’s not too much different. Joe wants us to go at it every day and get better and that’s what McDermott wanted, but I think it’s just a different viewpoint from the same family member.

More from Bills Camp…

‘I’m still a top receiver in this league:’ Is DJ Moore the missing piece in Buffalo?

Bills T-Camp: How new HC Joe Brady is challenging Josh Allen

It’s a Joe Brady World

2026 Season Preview Features to date:

The Kyler Murray Project, Part I: Liberated

The Kyler Murray Project, Part II: The Great Unknown

‘Who’s going to take this yard?’ The Arrival of Eric Wilson

Jordyn Brooks is the captain now

Dregs to Domination: The Aaron Brewer Blueprint

The Kyler Murray Project, Part II: The Great Unknown

Tyler Dunne — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:46:31 GMT

Illustration by Brave Buffalo

Read Part I here.

Our 2026 NFL Season Preview Features continue with a comprehensive, two-part series on Kyler Murray and the Minnesota Vikings.

Part II is below for paid subscribers.

I want NFL longform.

EAGAN, Minn. — There’s an NFL nobody sees. This NFL is scrubbed from those generously sanitized episodes of Hard Knocks and ignored entirely from cheery docuseries produced by the teams themselves. Millions are fed a manicured script, ripe with poll-tested press conferences and mic’d up segments because, frankly, there’s a growing legion of fans who demand the Disneyification of their favorite team. If reporting suggests there is not a Santa Claus, mobs assemble. Feelings trump truth.

Reality — protected behind virtual barbed-wired fences, moats and cannons — is far more cruel, cutthroat.

This is what Kyler Murray wants.

This is what Kyler Murray needs.

Each quarterback dynamic is different. In Buffalo, Josh Allen and Sean McDermott were never as close as snow angels on ESPN suggested. The two have polar opposite personalities. Change was desperately needed. In Chicago, Ben Johnson made it clear on Day 1 that Caleb Williams needed to align with his vision and his offense fresh off a nightmare rookie season. After our series published, one source close to the coach told us Johnson was fully aware of all issues before accepting the job. So far, so good. In New England, Mike Vrabel, Josh McDaniels and Drake Maye wasted no time.

Here in Minnesota? The worst mistake any coach can make is to be gentle, to tiptoe around the new QB1’s surly exterior in a kindergarten teacher’s tone. Coddle him, past coaches say, and he’ll get bored. He knows when someone isn’t operating on his Mamba frequency. Autry Denson, the ex-Arizona Cardinals assistant who grew close to the QB, repeats that Murray must be challenged.

“And I think he didn’t get challenged enough because when you challenge a competitor, they only have one response: to compete,” Denson says. “Hold a really good player to the standard that he should have been held to anyway because all he’s going to do is respond.”

The last quarterback any team should want is a mute who mopes at the sound of one coach’s piercing vulgarity. That’s never been Murray. He craves hard coaching, thus craves all pressure coming his way this season. Murray relishes the sort of debate that’d never make its way to public consumption.

When he barks, you must bark.

When he bites, you must bite.

“You ever see a dog just take it and lay over it? No!” Denson says. “Show me a great player that doesn’t have an edge and he is not a great player. People haven’t necessarily been on the same level as him. He’s not told what he needs to hear all the time because people are fanboy’ing him. They don’t understand the edge God blessed him with.”

When I ask a different member of that Cardinals coaching staff how this 2026 season will go for Murray, he echoes the anonymous Viking player who sees no middle ground. This experiment could lead to a championship podium or unravel. He begins with sharp criticism. This coach declares, point blank, that Murray’s personality is not conducive to winning. Calls him passive-aggressive. Prickly. But then something strange happens in our conversation.

This coach says he had a good relationship with the quarterback and offers the secret to unlocking Kyler Murray in full.

If the Minnesota Vikings do exactly this, he explains, they can win in 2026. And win big.

“Kyler needs people that are going to tell him, ‘Hey, you’re fucking tripping.’ He needs people to coach him like a skill guy. Not like a… ‘Hey, this is a quarterback,’” this coach says in a delicate accent. “No. You’ve got to say: ‘Hey motherfucker, throw him the ball.’ And he had that with us. It’s just all the other bombs over Baghdad that were going on with that organization that hurt us.
“Kyler wants to be challenged. He wants to be coached. He wants you to push the envelope with him.”

Indeed, as examined in Part I, life in Arizona was a mess.

In Part II, let’s gaze into the crystal ball. Murray was officially announced as the starter this week. Go Long spent much of this summer learning everything we could about the former No. 1 pick.

The talent is tantalizing. Believers envision a renaissance. Jordan Hogan worked with him inside the Cardinals quarterback room in 2020 and ‘21. “People have forgotten how good he is,” Hogan says. “He’s special. With age comes wisdom. He’s matured in all areas of life.” OK, so a three-time champion in Kansas City is returning from a torn ACL and LCL in his left knee. Whatever. Chase Edmonds fully expects this Vikings offense to rank in the Top 5 and for Murray to win Comeback Player of the Year over Patrick Mahomes. “That offense,” the former Cardinals running back adds, “is going to be better than Kansas City’s offense.”

Not everyone sees this union working. Kurt Warner managed to thrive in Arizona en route to Canton. He hasn’t seen Murray read the field at a level that can beat the best teams. Warren Moon, another Hall of Famer, knows the family. He sure hopes Murray’s maturation is real and that the 29-year-old realizes this is his last shot as a starter.

Step one is approaching this quarterback with the utmost abrasiveness.

This is where the outside world has gotten Murray all wrong all these years.

The reason Denson viewed Minnesota as the perfect destination for Murray is what’s inside the building. He sees personalities that’ll keep it real with the QB. And let’s face it. The pressure is too high for anyone to coast. Kevin O’Connell, a coach who let a future Super Bowl champ walk right out the building, is feeling the heat. Justin Jefferson, a star in his prime, does not want to repeat the horrors of 2025. Brian Flores is as cuddly as a crocodile. There’s a new GM overseeing everything. Generations of fans are restless.

Pressure builds, and builds, for all parties.

OK, the situation was wretched in Arizona. Much like Sam Darnold’s Jets.

We’re about to see if Murray is made of the same stuff inside. If he is, there’s no reason he can’t electrify this organization.

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The two do seem to share one endearing character trait. No “seeing ghosts” clip, no amount of public humiliation rattled Darnold on his eight-year quest to a Super Bowl. Those close to Murray insist he’s unbothered by all mockery, be it the “homework clause” or your toddler memes. He may be taking notes of everything said about him this offseason, but don’t hold your breath for an airing of grievances. Nor does he waste any time obsessing over his Q score through the offseason.

Denson remembers a player who never drank, never got speeding tickets, never left the house much at all. He’ll need to connect with teammates — and we’ll get to that — but the assumption that Murray sits on his ass and plays video games 24/7 is overblown. Waste zero time out on the town and it’s possible to both a.) watch a lot of film and b.) play Call of Duty. In Arizona, Murray would FaceTime his quarterbacks coach Israel Woolfork as late at 10:30 p.m. to talk about something he unearthed on tape.

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He’s a martial arts junkie. Bruce Lee has always been a source of inspiration. Murray loved telling Denson that he could take him out before he’d even blink.

Otherwise? This isn’t a quarterback distracted by anything. It’s always been that way. Growing up, Murray told Denson he wasn’t even allowed to ride bikes outside with friends. His life was so regimented. Sport to sport, there wasn’t time to live like other kids. That’s another reason why those in Arizona see Murray excelling in a less scattershot, more structured locale like Minnesota. If these Vikings tap into Murray’s primitive side to “intellectually duke it out,” this union can work.

The Vikings have tried everything. Thirty-three starting quarterbacks in all since their rivals across the border traded for Brett Favre. Tender conversations will not break the generational curse. Before heading to the NFL, Denson was the head coach at Georgia Southern and recruited prospects in the south against the likes of Nick Saban. At the grassroots level, he realized the best players in the nation also want to be coached the hardest. They do not want practices to be easy.

This practice environment is what allows them to dominate on gameday.

The outside world may think it’s crazy.

“But to them? It’s a harmony,” Denson says. “Everybody can’t understand it. When you challenge him, he’s going to come back like he’s supposed to.”

‘You’re afraid of what he can do’

Here’s the thing about this mystery. We don’t need to close our eyes and pretend what Kyler Murray can do with the ball in his hands. We’ve seen it. All of it is packaged into an 18-minute reel here if a reminder is required.

Spinning away from free runners to uncork 40-yarders on a rope. Accuracy downfield. Pulling an RPO at the last second to slingshot his body around the edge of the defense. The Hail Murray vs. Buffalo. Jared Verse, for one, is probably still wondering how he missed the QB — twice — on a third-and-5 touchdown. On one 50-yard TD run vs. San Francisco, the entire defense appears to be playing at 0.5 speed. “Super hero!” Tom Brady says on the call. “Super human!” There’s no need to travel too far back into time. Right up to his injury last season, he was making defenders look stupid. When linebacker Christian Rozeboom blitzes untouched up the middle, Murray somehow contorts his body backward and lowers a shoulder to avoid a crunching collision, Matrix-style, before scrambling right. Then left. Then vertically through the entire defense for 30 yards.

Best of all is his No. 1 objective while scrambling. He runs to throw. He wants to attack downfield with his arm.

“All starting quarterbacks are good decision-makers for the most part,” Hogan says. “They can process and they can progress through their reads. When you start talking top 10 or top five quarterbacks, any time they have the ball in their hands, an explosive play is going to happen. Kyler definitely has that impact. You’re afraid of what he can do. He doesn’t have the same effect as Lamar with his legs — Lamar can get 60 on you in a heartbeat. But Kyler can make all the throws on the football field. If he couldn’t, he wouldn’t be in the league because of his height. You fear getting him down. He’s trying to scramble so he can throw for 40 yards.”

Edmonds calls Murray a “Top 5 creator” in the NFL. Off schedule? An illusionist who flips disaster plays into explosives. To him, the 5-10 dynamo’s greatest gift isn’t so noticeable on a highlight reel. Fans love the quarterback capable of gunning a football through the proverbial brick wall and Murray has a formidable fastball in his repertoire. Again, he was the ninth overall pick in the MLB Draft. You’ve got to gun a baseball as hard as possible as an outfielder. On the gridiron, though, Murray throws the most catchable ball receivers have ever encountered. Edmonds caught 96 balls from the quarterback in back-to-back seasons and remembers Cardinals receivers raving about this spiral fluttering so elegantly into their hands. No receivers actually enjoy jamming and dislocating their fingers.

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All of which comprises a skillset O’Connell never had at the position. Nor is the Vikings head man a stubborn relic. Without question, O’Connell has spent many nights this offseason developing wrinkles into his offense that’ll maximize this human tornado. Edmonds calls O’Connell and Brian Flores the two best playcallers in the league.

He expects this Minnesota offense to be something like a fireworks show that builds… and builds… and builds toward a grand finale.

“KOC can orchestrate the gameplan around what his quarterback does well,” Edmonds says. “He doesn’t ask them to play outside of their comfort zone. He’s going to really build that gameplan to take advantage of their best skillsets. So as he plays with Kyler and as he learns Kyler’s skillset and learns exactly what type of throws Kyler performs the best and learns what Kyler likes best, after Week 6, it’ll take a drastic turn.”

Those who hail from this coaching tree historically prefer robotic terminators who rifle through progressions and deliver the ball on time. Not creators, not improvisers. To skeptics, this is a doomed marriage.

That’s what makes Hogan’s vantage point unique. He was also an offensive assistant on Shanahan’s staff in San Francisco and helped that crew reach a Super Bowl. When Shanahan, O’Connell, Sean McVay, Matt LaFleur, all coaches with this doctorate call plays, Hogan explains, they’re not guessing. They teach exactly where your eyes should track, where the ball should go and steer clear of the weapon who zigs and zags without a plan.

“Being in these meetings in this offense, most of the West Coast offensive coaches, they are not big fans of doing your own thing,” explains Hogan, who’s now the wide receivers coach at UMass. “They want you to play in rhythm. They want you to play within the pocket, play within the scheme, play within the gameplan. That’s why most of them would love to have a Kirk Cousins on their roster in some sort of fashion.”

This is how a quarterback selected 262nd overall out of Iowa State, Brock Purdy, becomes a $265 Million Dollar Man.

Hard to argue with this thinking. All over the league, we’re about to see some of the most exciting individual talents play more under center. Lamar Jackson with Declan Doyle. Jayden Daniels with David Blough.

I ask Hogan the natural follow-up: Will this shift zap Murray’s superpower?

He sees a happy medium. For one, he’s certain O’Connell did his homework on Murray the person and the player because there’s no chance in hell a coach with his X ‘n O roots would sign a veteran who lacks the necessary mental bandwidth. Especially on the heels of such a J.J. McCalamity. Hogan fully expects Murray to “operate at high level.” Sure enough, this week, the Vikings boss said Murray is further ahead in his mental processing than he expected. And while it’s true he has spent most of his football life out of the shotgun, Murray did play under center a quarter of the time under Cardinals OC Drew Petzing. He’s not being asked to learn a language used by a remote tribe in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Expect to see more movement. This offense will be fueled by a hearty volume of play-action rollouts, bootlegs and keeper concepts. It never made sense to Hogan when people likened Murray to Russell Wilson because there’s no comparing their athleticism. In Minnesota, he’ll take off whenever protection does break down. He turned 29 years old last Friday. Not 39. “His legs work fine,” Hogan adds.

The trick for O’Connell is blending his offense with a quarterback who measured 5 feet, 10 1/8 inches tall at the NFL Combine.

This is another part of the Murray debate that Edmonds thinks everyone botches.

To him, it’s a hell of a lot harder for Murray to see over those 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-5 linemen while running RPOs because he’s in the shotgun and defenders are anticipating a pass with more frequency. If ex-Dolphins run guru Frank Smith can get his wide-zone scheme rolling on the ground, there will be big plays open all over the field.

“When he goes under center,” Edmonds explains, “and he does a seven-step dropback and he fakes the outside zone — and everything looks the same because they’ve been running the ball — the windows are going to be a lot more open. The D-line is the D-Line. Whether in shotgun, whether under center. That part does not matter. But what’s going to matter are those linebackers having to commit to their run fake. The lanes on the second level are going to be a lot more open for him. He’s going to see a lot better.”

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Obviously, the prototypical 6-4 quarterback sees everything. The picture’s bound to be blurry, to some extent, for everyone south of 6 feet tall. At 6 feet 5/8 of an inch, Purdy struggles to see parts of the field. Hogan expects O’Connell to get creative with the depths of drops and launch points. Anything to clear up the field. From there? He’s seen Murray make every throw.

When those Cardinals were rolling, his targets were large and tall — DeAndre Hopkins, Larry Fitzgerald, A.J. Green, Zach Ertz, Maxx Williams. A few of those players were past their prime, too. In Minnesota, he has arguably the best wide receiver in football. The Vikings aren’t dumb. They know they’ve got to maximize this 27-year-old weapon worth $140 million. Last season was a crime against wide receiver humanity. Jefferson’s ability to stay so goosfraba cool through 2025 should be discussed in anger management classes nationwide. Murray also has a Top 12 tight end in TJ Hockenson and two other wideouts with contrasting skillsets. Jordan Addison is armed with the speed to take the top off a defense, whereas Jauan Jennings, affectionately labeled a “dirtbag” by Murray, is a 6-foot-3, 212-pound brawler.

Players will be open. It’s a guarantee. Hogan fully expects KOC to scheme up easy throws early in games that get Murray into a rhythm and build his confidence to take over late.

Jennings compared the Vikings receiver room to the Golden State Warriors at their peak. Bring this comment up to Addison and he doesn’t flinch. “A lot of talent,” Addison says. “It’s going to be hard to guard all three of us.” Yes, he was quite excited to see Minnesota add Murray in the offseason. When I ask him what makes Murray unique at the position, he doesn’t bring up the flashy highlights.

Rather, that timing.

This is not a quarterback who cycles to his seventh read in a benign 7-on-7 drill.

“His anticipation and timing,” Addison says. “He’s got good eyes. His feet tie together with it. He’s a good quarterback. Everybody knows who Kyler Murray is. He’s obviously a proven guy in this league. We want to make him comfortable and allow him to be himself.”

On the defensive side of the ball, Blake Cashman is equally enthused. As a linebacker, he knows what a pain in the ass it is to chase mobile quarterbacks around for three hours. He sees the talent. He knows the scheme. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t work,” the veteran says. “When you put great talent with great schemes, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a lot of success on that side of the ball.”

Playing in a dome helps. So does playing in the NFC. This quarterback who doesn’t necessarily enjoy playing in the cold only has to worry about a Nov. 15 game in Green Bay and a Dec. 10 game in New England. (The New York Jets, a Jan. 3 opponent, do not count until further notice.) Hogan expects the Vikings to compete for an NFC North title and fight for one of the conference’s top seeds.

Granted, it takes months of sweat equity to earn the sort of respect Darnold did inside the locker room. Murray has a long way to go before teammates serenade him in a rendition of “Many Men.” As one Cardinals assistant told us, Murray can be difficult. Yet, players on the 2020 and 2021 Arizona teams do cite that room as the best they’ve ever experienced. “College on crack,” Edmonds says. “We were always with each other. Everyone loved each other.” This, too, was a blend of youth and vets. Guys could call each other out on their BS. So, it’s possible.

Let’s face it.

If Murray performs, the Vikings will create their own college-like atmosphere. He, too, will be beloved.

No guarantee when you speak to some of the best ever at the quarterback position.

QB Concerns

For all that ails the Arizona Cardinals, it’s also true that Kurt Warner took this team to the Super Bowl. In 2008, they came within a Santonio Holmes’ foot-dot from triumphing.

Today, Warner studies the quarterback position all day. And there’s arguably no player he has been watching more than the one in his backyard.

First, the Hall of Famer waxes poetic on what’s to love. Obviously, Murray is an athletic marvel. Setting that all aside, Warner also views Murray as one of the most gifted pure throwers of the football. It’s accurate, it’s catchable, it travels in a perfect spiral. He can make any throw.

But the ex-QB also sees one damning glitch to Murray’s game.

“He’s a guy,” Warner says, “that I don’t believe has ever really seen the field.”

Murray can thrive in a 1-2-3-4-5 pure progression because if the first couple reads aren’t open, or he’s pressured, he creates. Playing for O’Connell could help in that he uses plenty of pure progression, Warner says. People on staff, though, have also told Warner that this scheme’s progression is “defender-based.” The quarterback still must read defenders as he cycles 1 to 2 to 3 to 4.

He gets the excitement. Pair this playcaller with these weapons with that breathtaking talent at QB and the possibilities can appear limitless.

When the picture gets blurry, Murray short-circuits. Through seven seasons, 88 games, 2,975 total pass attempts, Warner never saw this element of his game improve.

“Until I see that Kyler can decipher stuff,” Warner says, “and know what he’s seeing and play on time, it’s really hard to thrive in this league. No matter how talented you are, you’ve got to do that to some degree and he has always struggled with that.”

Worse, it rears its ugly head against the best defenses. All quarterbacks who cannot decode secondaries enjoy stretches of brilliance but Warner views this is an inevitable kryptonite come playoff time.

“Against teams that are going to force them to play quarterback more consistently, how do they perform?” Warner says. “Kyler has been a guy that has struggled against the top teams in the league and the top defenses in the league many times. That’s what gives me that pause. If you want to push the envelope and get to the playoffs and make some noise — which is what it’s all about as a quarterback — he’s got to get better at that sort of stuff. The theme stays the same for me: Can you see it? Can you process it? Can you deliver it on time consistently? If you can do that, you’ve got a chance. And then it’s, ‘What do you give me above that?’ Kyler can give you a lot above that if he can get that.
“When they’re playing against the best in the league, do they elevate their game and can they be part of the reason that their team wins and advances?”

Decrypting all disguise deployed by coordinators is a herculean task for any passer today. Intentions are concealed right up to the snap. This is where the Vikings will need to lean into those edgy conversations behind the scenes. Through all game-planning, all intense back ‘n forth, they’ve got to somehow create a machine of an offense that allows Murray to play fast and maximize his physical gifts. Because that’s the magic that can dizzy any defense in NFC.

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Oddly enough, another Hall of Famer doesn’t expect this to be a problem at all. Warren Moon, a QB who enjoyed a Viking renaissance of his own at age 38, believes O’Connell will get Murray on the move enough to do damage consistently. He’s certain the Vikings will devise the most potent week-to-week gameplans in the league.

The only thing he questions is this quarterback’s “frame of mind.”

Yes, Murray was blessed with a blend of nature and nurture: God-given gifts and a father pushing him toward greatness. The result was an athlete destroying everything in his path. Baseball? Football? It didn’t matter. Superstardom was preordained. Quarterback prodigies, however, are much like child actors in that they do not grow up like you or I. A natural side effect of such a destiny is immaturity. Moon knows the family and makes it clear that Murray was never a bad kid, but he was “babied.” Moon says Murray’s mother did his laundry when he first went pro.

All the ingredients to win, to Moon, are firmly in place. He hopes the last 365 days — the injury, getting released, starting over — have humbled Murray.

“He was very immature when he came into the league,” Moon says, “and some guys are that way when they’re young and don’t grasp what it takes to be a quarterback in the NFL and what it takes to be a leader on your football team. This new address and new environment for him and maybe being a little bit older and a little bit more mature seeing what needs to be done in order to be successful in this league, it’s a really good thing for him.
“It’s all in place, but it’s all up to him. So let’s see if Kyler’s mature enough to take this on and become the player that everybody thought he could be when he was the No. 1 overall pick.”

This is the direction Matt Hasselbeck steers the Murray conversation, too. The three-time Pro Bowler likes his game. He loves the situation. Those intangibles, however, leave something to be desired. He wishes Murray was the type of leader that compelled a legend like Fitzgerald to say, “I’m not retiring because I have a chance to play with you.” Instead, Fitz hung ‘em up after the 2020 season. This never happens with the greats who bring a palpable presence to the workplace. Like Mahomes. Like Tom Brady. Players and coaches refuse to walk away because they wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing they had a chance at a ring.

This is what he’s dying to see out of Murray.

A magnetism. An air of belief.

“That wasn’t the case when older guys were with him when he was the franchise quarterback. It was different,” Hasselbeck says. “To me, I think that there’s an intangible there where your teammates have this feeling and your coaches have this feeling: ‘I would never want to leave this organization because you’re here.’ That’s the next level.”

This is Year 8. It’s fair to wonder if Murray — if any quarterback — can become such a force multiplier this late into a career.

Hasselbeck correctly notes that the bar was set quite low by McCarthy last season. That helps.

He’s also stepping into one of the NFL’s best quarterback ecosystems.

Unprompted, Hasselbeck bangs the drum for the team’s QBs coach, Josh McCown. He knows coaching lifers scoff at the notion of ex-pros like McCown, Philip Rivers and Jason Witten becoming head coaches but Hasselbeck believes there’s a small subset of former pros with a special vision that guys swimming in X’s and O’s cannot fathom. Beyond schematics, McCown the person will be very good for Murray.

Then, there’s Jefferson. Moon fully expects the team’s best player to stay on Murray because there’s no way he wants to waste another year of his prime. He hopes getting knocked to the canvas stirs something inside of Murray. So far, Moon loves what he’s hearing.

From afar, Murray sounds like a grounded vet comfortable in his own skin.

All critiques bring me back to an excellent point made by Harrison Smith ahead of the Super Bowl when I asked longtime Vikings safety about Darnold’s evolution. As he explained, it’s not as if a player simply fails all the time. That’s what pissed him off most about all Darnold discourse in the media. It’s possible for a player to put his head down and improve season to season. Who you are at 23 doesn’t need to be who you are at 29.

“Everyone acts like you’re either the worst or you’re the GOAT,” Smith said then. “All the dumbass shit that people just come up with. I think Sam is a good example of a guy that just goes to work and he doesn’t make too big of a deal of anything.”

With better coaching, perhaps Murray sharpens what concerns Warner. At one point, Darnold was seeing those ghosts on Monday Night Football, right?

With self-reflection, perhaps Murray follows Moon’s advice and keeps maturing.

The stakes alone serve as all the incentive Murray needs to fix his issues with old-fashioned work.

If he fails, it’s hard to imagine he’ll get this opportunity again.

“It’s now or never,” Moon says. “Hopefully he senses the moment.”

Under pressure

One play from Vikings training camp is worth watching on repeat. Lowlights are never disseminated to the mass public by the teams, I get it. But this hookup that generated north of 2 million views is worth thinking about for deeper reasons.

With a defender closing in, Kyler Murray launches a prayer to Justin Jefferson.

Two defenders are on-site. One has a chance at an interception, one could’ve harpooned through Jefferson’s exposed torso. The throw is no work of art, but it pays to give the best player on your team a chance. It was symbolic. These 2026 Minnesota Vikings go nowhere if they’re afraid of their own shadow. Philosophically, this should be precisely how this coach, this quarterback, this entire team attack a now-or-never campaign.

This team’s prospects are in the eye of the beholder.

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One source with knowledge of this team’s thinking is skeptical. Fired GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah did himself no favors, yet took the fall for everything. And rather than promote Rob Brezinski, the Vikings tabbed Nolan Teasley their GM and he brought on Trent Kirchner as a right-hand man. In Seattle, both saw firsthand what it takes to build a Super Bowl winner. GM John Schneider is the gold standard. While sources praise Brezinski’s unselfish nature — he’s been a Viking loyalist for three decades — it’s hard to quibble with hiring anyone from the Seahawks’ personnel department.

In 2025, the Vikings assumed O’Connell was a quarterback whisperer whose Midas touch would turn McCarthy into gold. They were wrong. And they doubled down on the error by backing up McCarthy with Sam Howell and Max Brosmer into last August. “What the fuck are you doing?” says this source familiar with this team’s thinking. “None of those guys have proven they can play.” Carson Wentz signed in mid-August but, in retrospect, the entire quarterback plan was half-baked.

“They’re all to blame,” this source says. “JJ’s play might’ve got everyone fired.”

Nor did this source ever view the quarterback competition as legit because he couldn’t fathom O’Connell going down with this ship. He’s not convinced McCarthy will even be the No. 2.

The offense will improve. But to create some cap flexibility, the Vikings cut ties with a handful of integral pieces on defense. None greater than Jonathan Greenard, a premier pass rusher. He was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles. Losing the immortal Smith stings. He was the brains of this quantum-physics scheme. The defensive line is young. Dallas Turner, the 2024 first-rounder, must ascend into a game-wrecking playmaker. Jalen Redmond, the nose, must win at the point of attack. Cashman and Eric Wilson, the inside linebackers, must stay healthy. In shedding salary, the Vikings created potential problems when starters inevitably go down. “There’s no depth at all,” this source says.

Ultimately, the player who’ll decide the fate of these Vikings is no secret.

It’s Murray. It’s a quarterback who responds best to expletives.

Big picture, it’s refreshing. Our climate-controlled, Door Dash’ing, Uber’ing, complacent world is all unnatural. For tens of thousands of years, our species thrived on daily discomfort, as ’s exceptional “Comfort Crisis” details. We yearn for it. It’s primitive. And football is one of the last vestiges in modern society that forces humans to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. Sucking wind in the fourth quarter of a playoff game knowing a 260-pound edge rusher with 4.5 speed could knock you out any play may be as close as today’s homo sapiens get to eluding sabretooth tigers.

Tension. Friction. It’s all required to thrive in this wild habitat.

Otherwise, you atrophy into a sluggard state. Ask the Miami Dolphins.

It’s on O’Connell to strike the right balance. Remember, he was hired as a breath of fresh air post-Mike Zimmer. He’s more force of positivity than a drill sergeant — and that’s a good thing. But now, urgency to win reaches an all-time high. The NFC North is a four-horse race and these Vikings could take a hard turn either direction.

Harsh dialogue is required.

Hours of film beyond the walls of TCO Performance Center is a must.

All alphas involved must find solutions.

First up, the Vikings will host the Green Bay Packers on Sept. 13. Beforehand, Murray can share a war story (or five) with his old coach from that Bidwillian dystopia. Jonathan Gannon is the Packers’ defensive coordinator. Then, it’s time for the quarterback to redefine himself. Winning over a locker room takes time. When Murray walks through the hallways of this facility, he should take a moment to acknowledge those greatest moments in franchise history captured on the wall.

Specifically, the raw emotion from Darnold’s victory over Green Bay. It was spontaneous, heartfelt and fleeting.

Reaching this point of genuine affection is not easy. But there’s no reason Vikings players cannot hoist another quarterback atop their shoulders come January while rapping to 50 Cent in a cappella.

This point forward, it’s all up to Kyler Murray.

I want longform this NFL season.

Let’s hear from you:

The Kyler Murray Project, Part I: Liberated

Tyler Dunne — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:00:06 GMT

Illustration by Brave Buffalo

Our 2026 NFL Season Preview Features continue with a comprehensive, two-part series on Kyler Murray and the Minnesota Vikings. Part I is below.

EAGAN, Minn. — Failure was a foreign concept to Kyler Murray. Shame. Regret. Anguish. The stench of losing is an aroma he never experienced. No chip was implanted into his shoulder by a debilitating high school injury or a Division I coach who told him to buzz off. The football field was his personal arcade game with the difficulty level set on easy.

Ball in his hands, Murray mesmerized all witnesses.

The best way to understand the league’s most enigmatic quarterback is by first zooming out.

Ex-Arizona Cardinals running back Chase Edmonds, asks us to examine the case of “K1” through this context. When he declares Murray the greatest high school football player from the greatest football state in America, it’s no exaggeration. Murray went 42-0 with three state titles in Allen, Texas. Won the Heisman Trophy. Went No. 1 overall in the NFL Draft and No. 9 in the MLB Draft, Edmonds adds, “for shits and giggles.”

Adversity, Edmonds admits, is a word that’s never been part of Murray’s vocabulary.

Until now.

“He knows what it feels like to be on his ass for once,” Edmonds says. “And I think that’s the best thing for him. That’s my brother, that’s my friend. I say that from a true friend standpoint, as someone who cares about him and wants to see him be his absolute best. This is very necessary for what he is to become.”

Never before has this 5-foot-10 joystick of an athlete been humbled to this extreme. After seven seasons, the Arizona Cardinals ate $54.7 million in dead money to cut him loose. He signed the vet minimum to play in Minnesota and was then forced to fight for a starting job against one of the worst starting quarterbacks in the NFL last season. On Tuesday, the Vikings finally named Murray QB1.

Crawling inside his mind is no easy task. Murray shows zero emotion in front of the cameras, hasn’t conducted 1-on-1’s this offseason and keeps his inner circle microscopic. You hear Kyler Murray and, chances are, you think Homework Clause. You think, Video Games. It’s been 1,482 days since Murray signed a contract with the infamous “independent study” addendum mandating he study film on his own four hours a week. Backlash was so swift, so deafening that the Cardinals removed the clause which, of course, was akin to taking a watering can to a wildfire.

Those close to the QB believe the Real Kyler has been bastardized in the court of public opinion.

Not that he cares.

He took mental notes of everything said about him all offseason long.

“He’s the ultimate competitor,” Edmonds says. “This is going to be the hungriest version of Kyler that people have ever seen.”

Venture down this rabbit hole — hunt for the ultimate competitor — and one ex-Cardinals coach brings a vivid practice scene to life. How will Murray handle this unchartered terrain? Autry Denson points to what gets lost in the plot. Publicly, Murray appears apathetic. Privately, he’s more werewolf. Denson, a South Florida native, was a high school phenom who starred at Notre Dame in the 90s. He could relate to this hyper-competitiveness. One subtle, “I can lower the standard if you’d like” or “You can make that throw in your sleep” was all it’d take.

From ’23 to ‘25, the Cardinals running backs coach grew close to Murray and knew precisely which buttons to push.

Others on staff were more pointed.

Abrasive coaching is a must to tap into this quarterback’s wild side.

“When you challenge him, he’s going to bite,” Denson says. “He’s going to bark back because that’s what competitors do. That’s what alpha dogs do! They are alphas for a reason. It’s not going to be kumbaya. No, when I challenge him, he feels like his way is right. You have to intellectually duke it out until it’s like, ‘Alright, in this situation you win.’ That is how you become great. You need tension, conflict. People think that’s negative, but that’s how you grow. It’s not going to sound or look normal because what you’re trying to do is not normal.”

This spring, while coaching his daughter’s travel flag football team, other parents asked Denson where he thought Murray would sign. It hit him. He knows people in the building. He thought back to their joint practices. The Minnesota Vikings had the perfect blend of “structure” and “organizational competence” and “talent” to unleash Murray onto the NFL.

“Man, if K-1 went there,” Denson said aloud, “he would take off.”

Two days later, Murray became a Viking.

Take this clue. Talk to more people about this dichotomy and… oh my.

Walking through the TCO Performance Center for the first time likely felt something like landing on a new planet. That owner to this owner? Michael Bidwill is intent on triumphing over Woody Johnson for the sport’s Worst Owner crown. Marvin Harrison Jr. to Justin Jefferson? The Ohio State University Biletnikoff winner is more broken than anyone realizes. And as Murray soaks in all refreshing sights ‘n sounds, he’ll find a picture that perfectly encapsulates what’s expected of him this season. Through a main hallway, just outside the indoor field, the Vikings commemorate special moments in team history with a series of photographs. One stands out. Right there is Sam Darnold, in purple, being hoisted atop the shoulders of teammates after a victory over Green Bay in ‘24.

A year later, that same quarterback hoisted the Lombardi Trophy for the Seattle Seahawks. The Vikings had a 4,319-yard, 35-TD quarterback in their building and let him slip away. After decades of recycling veterans, the Vikings opted to draft and develop one of their own. It backfired. The Michigan Man known as “Nine,” J.J. McCarthy, was such an abject disaster that this franchise revved up the hamster wheel once more.

The Vikings are unable to travel back in time, but there’s hope in Kyler Murray. A high-voltage quarterback who warps the 160-foot-wide field into his personal playground on gameday while serving as an expletive-laced shock this organization needs the other six days of the week. A 29-year-old knows damn well his football life is on the line. A mystery.

No team in the NFL has the vertigo-inducing variance of these Vikings. One veteran starter on their roller-coaster ride of a 2025 season puts the imminent Kyler Experience best. “It could be really good,” he says, “or it could be really bad. There is no middle ground.” Minnesota strategically cleared the books to position themselves for either route. Vikings players on the record (and anonymously) supply unfiltered truth on both quarterbacks. Pack the hazmat suit, too. Players, coaches and front-office execs bring all Cardinals grime to life. And then, to objectively dissect Murray’s 1-of-1 play style, we check in with some Hall of Famers.

These Vikings could compete for a Super Bowl… or combust.

Murray could catapult into the upper echelon of quarterbacks and stick a middle finger to his doubters forever… or get banished to backup quarterback island.

This summer, our charge at Go Long was to figure out which direction Murray takes this team.

In Part I, we pan a magnifying glass over the forces that brought the Vikings and Murray together.

In Part II, we envision where this partnership goes.

This is the risk this team needs to take.

Go Long is your forever home for longform journalism.

Our mission is to bring you as close as possible to real, raw football.

Thank you for growing our community.

Murray has been politically correct in front of a microphone.

Away from the cameras? Those who’ve seen his bite up close know he’s fed up with the masses trashing his name and expect “K1” to shock the football world. The Murray that Jordan Hogan remembers from his days of coaching inside the Cardinals quarterback room wants to “shut up the people throwing mud on his name.”

“He’s very excited about this opportunity because he has seen these offenses — plural — have success,” Hogan adds. “It doesn’t matter who the quarterback is. Whether you’re very athletic. Whether you’re a first overall pick, Jared Goff, or you’re the last pick in the draft: Brock Purdy.”

The playcaller. KOC! The weaponry. Jefferson! Addison! Hockenson! Even the practice setting vs. Brian Flores each day. Edmonds describes Murray’s new life in Minnesota as quarterback heaven. Best of all, all parties involved are pissed off in the best possible ways.

“I know the mentality he’s going to carry into that situation,” Edmonds says, “and it’s the best situation that he’s been in his professional career.
“By far.”

Darnold, a portrait of resolve, is proof that situations matter in pro football. Murray now has a realistic chance to author the same resurrection.

The third overall pick in the 2018 draft needed to escape Jets Hell.

The first pick of the 2019 draft needed to escape the Arizona Cardinals.

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Arizona Absurdity

The Grand Canyon State should function as a football oasis. Warm weather, low taxes, beautiful scenery. Everything works in this team’s favor. One well-traveled veteran who began his career in Arizona believes there’s no reason this shouldn’t be a Top 3 destination for free agents. “Every. Single. Year,” he bellows. New York and Los Angeles are entertainment capitals, but some of the best players in the NFL are hesitant to hand a chunk of their paycheck back to the government.

Nor are players eager for a life of scraping windshields and driving through blinding whiteouts.

Instead, these Arizona Cardinals represent the greatest missed opportunity in the sport itself. Woody’s Jets are widely heralded as the NFL’s preeminent village idiots, but look out. He’s got company. An industry secret burst into the mainstream with the NFLPA’s Report Cards. Bidwill, scoring an F from the players, is equally incompetent. He doesn’t walk into his own locker room and berate players like the dunce in New Jersey, but life here may be worse.

“Bidwill’s not as arrogant as Woody,” one ex-Cardinal says. “Bidwill just doesn’t have a clue. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. You’ve got no reason to be cheap, dog! If you do it right, people will flock to Arizona. People love it out there. But he’s got no clue.”

This player then takes our hand and guides us through the filth. The food. (“Terrible. Piss poor.”) In 2023, those report cards revealed players needed to pay for their own dinner to take home via payroll deduction. The facilities. (“Shit. God awful.”) Everything was outdated and truncated by NFL standards. The weight room and locker room are rough. Arizona will finally modernize with a new performance center in 2028. Treatment of families. Other NFL teams go to the extreme to help players from simple sideline passes before kickoff to daycare services. Bidwill does the bare minimum. When a free agent’s decision boils down to two teams, this is often the tipping point. (“That matters. It changes the way people think about your organization.”) Treatment of players. One coach thought it was strange that they received preferential treatment on flights over the players.

All it takes is one bad experience. One player tells another. And another. And another. To the point where this franchise’s poor reputation is established.

Those who’ve worked alongside Bidwill at the top of the organization have a treasure trove of horror stories. One former exec recalls a culture of intimidation, saying Bidwill’s default mode was to scream at everyone. He calls the owner “100% evil” and claims he denigrated women and minorities.

“He doesn’t have one good quality,” this source says. “Dan Snyder was a jerk, but he had a wife and kids, so he had the capacity to care about other people. Michael Bidwill doesn’t have the capacity to care about anyone but himself. You’re not going to find one human being alive that’s going to say anything nice about the guy.”

The Athletic published a damning account of life under Bidwill. To his credit, Bidwill acknowledged in a statement he “would have done some things differently over the years” and was “extremely excited about what we can be tomorrow.”

That’ll be difficult. Toxicity is embedded deep into the fibers of the franchise. Back to the 70s. When I reported on “Blood and Guts: How Tight Ends Save Football,” one of the greatest tight ends ever — ex-St. Louis Cardinals star Jackie Smith — choked back tears thinking back to his ugly divorce with the franchise. His ultra-kind, grandfatherly demeanor turned despondent because, to this day, Smith is ostracized. The Cardinals haven’t put the Hall of Famer into their Ring of Honor. Wounds are still fresh over his messy exit from the team. He’s not alone. Bring up the Cardinals to ex-players from any decade and there’s a good chance they’ll appear as if they just took a whiff of a baby’s diaper. It’s not a joyful topic.

All issues inevitably spill onto the field. The Cardinals have made the playoffs nine times since 1948. In the name of parity, of course, the league’s worst teams (and worst owners) are rewarded the best draft picks.

So, hey, come on down Kyler Murray. You are lucky No. 1.

The quarterback who doesn’t lose headed to the franchise that doesn’t win.

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By Year 2, in 2020, Murray had these Cardinals looking like a contender when one insane “Hail Murray” vs. the Buffalo Bills upped their mark to 6-3. The next fall, in 2021, they started even hotter at 10-2. Both seasons petered out, the latter derailed by hamstring and knee injuries to DeAndre Hopkins. The roster cratered and Murray suffered through his own erratic play. One regime was fired. Another regime was hired. After a few promising moments in ’24, everything fell apart the first month of 2025. Arizona lost five games by a combined 13 points to fall to 2-5. Murray suffered a foot sprain in Week 5, the team said his injury did not heal and — into December — the quarterback was shelved for the season. On Instagram, he posted a photo of himself and teammates with the words “Weird year” and the caption “Never Again.”

This final year followed the same script we see from bad teams run by bad owners.

It’s hard to imagine head coach Jonathan Gannon was in favor of shutting down the superior quarterback with his own job at stake. Coaches are most concerned about the present, not the future. He had a strong relationship with the QB, too. They bonded off the field. Multiple sources believe Gannon was forced to follow orders and was then fired anyway.

Denson doesn’t go there, but calls Gannon a great human being who fights hard for his coaches, his players and will absolutely get another shot at being a head coach.

Another coach on staff cannot stop raving about Gannon as an “outstanding head coach” and “a monster” in all the best ways. He assures that people have no clue how rotten the Arizona Cardinals are to the core.

“You question what the intent is of the organization,” this coach says. “When you’re the head coach, you take the fall for a lot of shit that’s not on you. Nobody could have been as steady and stable and been able to be themselves the way JG was for the last three years there.”

There was no explicit edict from above. No master plan, no open line of communication with the front office at all as the season crumbled.

“To us,” says this assistant coach, “it’s like, ‘What the fuck are we doing?’”

Nonetheless, they took the blame for it all.

Gannon was fired. GM Monti Ossenfort stayed. This coach cannot help but shake his head at Ossenfort drafting Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love with so many other problems plaguing the roster. The decision is something like a family drowning in debt purchasing a Rolls-Royce.

Winning three games this season may be an odyssey.

One former Cardinals starter rips Bidwill’s cockamamie half-measure as a sure sign of organizational decay.

“Any time you know a team’s tanking and you fire the head coach — and you don’t fire the GM associated with a lot of those draft picks the last three years? — you’re setting yourself up for another recycle,” says this player. “To me, they should have cleaned complete house. Bidwill being Bidwill, he didn’t clean complete house because he doesn’t know how to run a whole operation by himself. So he stood by the GM in his ear who said, ‘X, Y, Z was the reason we didn’t do this.’”

All while the flames from A, B and C continue to burn in front of the owner’s face.

Ascending homegrown players that Ossenfort inherited slipped away — Zach Allen to Denver, Byron Murphy to Minnesota — and his drafts have been hideous. In 2023, Ossenfort traded out of the No. 3 overall slot that netted the Houston Texans defensive end Will Anderson Jr., a move praised to the high heavens by talking heads at the time. This offseason, Anderson, the “Terminator,” signed the richest non-QB contract in NFL history. Suggest to one Cardinals coach on staff that his front office passed on one of the best defensive players in the sport and he chuckles. (“We heard otherwise before the draft. This could go on and on and on.”)

As Anderson makes opposing offensive tackles piss themselves, the collection of players Arizona acquired in the deal haven’t done anything of note.

Somehow, it got worse in 2024 when Ossenfort chose Ohio State’s Harrison Jr. at No. 4 overall over LSU’s Malik Nabers.

The move was supposed to unlock greatness in Murray. Instead, it drove one final nail in his Cardinals coffin.

Even worse? It was all predictable, all avoidable. In NFL circles — one wide receivers coach explains — Nabers was widely deemed the superior prospect. “You talk to 99 percent of the league,” says this coach, “everyone knew that Nabers was a Hall of Fame player.” The variable was his supposed baggage. Nabers was obviously the more volatile personality. Harrison was the safer choice and Arizona opted for safe. (Our Wide Receiver Matrix debate most certainly applies here.)

“We knew coming out that Harrison doesn’t have that dog,” this coach explains. “He doesn’t have that fire.”

One Midwest scout whose livelihood is making sense of all prospects in Columbus, Ohio, told the team that Harrison struggled with the stress of being the son of Hall of Fame wideout Marvin Harrison Sr. — a major presence in his life.

Even after big games, Dad ripped him. Told him it wasn’t enough.

“His father is a very big influence on him,” the coach continued. “His father would text him and call him like, ‘Hey man, you need to do this, you need to do that,’ while he was at Ohio State. So he feels the pressure. Any time he comes off the field — practice, games — his Dad is always there. So, he’s not a very confident guy.”

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Coaches and scouts alike in the other three NFC West draft rooms were thrilled to see Arizona pass on Nabers. San Francisco’s Kyle Shanahan watched 10 or so clips of Harrison and said aloud that he thought the Buckeye would be better. Hard to blame him. At that point, the prospect was being compared to Julio Jones and AJ Green as the world’s next can’t-miss wideout. The closer NFL people looked, the more they didn’t understand the hype.

Especially when it was time to turn on the Nabers film.

Goodness.

This wideout was a dog in every sense of the term.

He caught slants in stride and toasted defenders. He dunked on cornerbacks in the end zone.

“It was clearly night and day,” one NFC coach recalls.

Perhaps Arizona didn’t believe it had the veteran infrastructure to take on a big personality. Gambles can backfire. But even this excuse is an indictment of Bidwill because, remember, vets should be dying to play in this market. However you slice it, the Cardinals missed on elite talents in back-to-back drafts.

Any GM petrified of selecting receivers with attitude should probably post their home on Zillow. There’s no guarantee the “safe” pick won’t give you a headache, either. One source labels Harrison one of the hardest players to coach on the entire roster and one of the hardest he’s experienced in his career. “And usually when somebody says that,” an ex-Cardinals coach adds, “it’s like, ‘Oh, that guy’s an asshole. You’ve got to get him going.’ That type of shit.” In Arizona, Harrison was difficult “for all the opposite reasons.” He lacked fire.

Production equals tolerance.

Nabers has already flashed that Canton potential.

One NFC wide receivers coach says he always prefers the WR1s with “some shit to them” like Nabers. He’ll handle baggage. He’ll tell guys to simply make sure they roast Patrick Surtain and Jalen Ramsey when the game’s on the line. “That’s why those guys get 30, 40 million dollars,” he adds. The goal is to land on the Ja’Marr Chase end of this spectrum and avoid Brandon Aiyuk-level disasters. To him, it’s obvious Harrison Jr. lacks the confidence required at this position. The 6-foot-3 wide receiver who refused to run a 40-yard dash at his pro day runs slow and plays small. In 42 percent of his games, he caught two or fewer passes.

This coach points out that the soft-spoken Harrison Jr. doesn’t seem very confident when he speaks. But it’s bigger than that. Some receivers bring a palpable presence to the field. They plant a feeling of play-to-play dread inside a cornerback across the line of scrimmage. Like Nabers. Like Chase.

Others, like Harrison, do not.

“His game’s not very powerful,” this coach says. “He’s a big guy, but he’s not. If you’re ever on the sideline while he’s playing, you don’t feel him out there. You can feel Malik Nabers. You can feel Justin Jefferson. The best players, you can feel the presence. You don’t feel him out there. He’s just kind of out there. You can easily take him out of the gameplan.”

Murray tried to fuel his young receiver with confidence. Pull up Arizona’s gut-wrenching 23-20 loss to the eventual Super Bowl champs in Week 3. Harrison quits on one route that leads to an interception. Later in the game, on a slant, he bobbles the ball right to linebacker Ernest Jones IV for another interception. Murray refuses to ice him out, as if knowing that would be the worst thing for a young player’s mental state. The QB gives Harrison a chance to high-point a touchdown and the two later connect on a crucial third and 5 that helped knot this game up at 20-20.

It took Seattle all of 28 seconds to move into field goal range. Seattle won.

Murray played all of one more game for Arizona.

Hey, on one hand, Ossenfort isn’t the man who preceded him. Bidwill’s previous GM for a full decade is embroiled in controversy this week. Pro Football Talk reported this week that Steve Keim has ties to Mohamed Coulibaly, the man a Barron’s investigation revealed ran a scam duping pro athletes into investing in fake Shopify stores. Keim is identified on the company’s pitch deck as “chief operation/growth officer.” He’s the only name on the deck with Coulibaly.

The alleged scammer was found dead in a pool last week. A New Jersey investigation is underway.

Bidwill has not hired the best of the best, no.

Off to Minnesota Murray goes. (Most likely at the speed of light.)

He’s now throwing the ball to a dominant receiver with an undeniable presence. Blinding diamonds around his neck, Justin “Jets” Jefferson feasts on corners.

He’s now employed by owners with an undeniable desire to spend, to win. The Vikings’ pristine headquarters in Eagan, Minn., a $120 million project, is the league’s crown jewel. At some point, the narrative completely got away from Murray in Arizona. Maybe because the Cardinals avoid the nationwide mockery typically reserved for the Cleveland Browns and New York Jets. The career arc of Darnold should’ve opened all eyes. Edmonds, the team’s former running back, repeats one word: Situation. Organizational structure, coaching, all factors around an individual talent matter more in football than all other pro leagues combined.

“You draft Victor Wembanyama in basketball and it doesn’t matter who’s coaching,” says Edmonds, who has played for five different teams himself. “You’re going to be fine. In football, those things matter — that influence, that structure, that situation, that can literally determine the success or failure of players’ careers.”

Which begs one question.

If everything’s so gorgeous here in Minnesota, how in the hell did someone drafted 11^th overall play worse than any other quarterback in the NFL last season? Look closely and the math starts to add up.

The JJ Miscalculation

All coaches who fancy themselves quarterback sommeliers make their move. The decision to draft a quarterback and then start that quarterback after a redshirt season is not outlandish. It’s wise. It’s practical. Kevin O’Connell worked his magic with Kirk Cousins, Sam Darnold, hell, Joshua Dobbs. It was high time for a man who played the position himself to handpick, mold and unleash a creation of his own.

Lord knows he tried to trade up for Drake Maye ahead of the 2024 draft.

Inside St. Philip the Deacon Lutheran Church in Plymouth, Minn., during a “Faith & Leadership” speech, one fan asked the Vikings head coach if he’s working his old Patriots connections to trade up to No. 3 overall. O’Connell joked that he sent a bouquet of flowers to Robert Kraft. New England (wisely) did not budge and Maye nearly won NFL MVP in Year 2. Minnesota settled on the fifth quarterback in the class, McCarthy, at No. 10.

After Darnold’s riveting season ended with a thud, the Vikings ushered in the J.J. Era.

There was a lot to love. Winning? McCarthy went 27-1 with a national title at the University of Michigan, home of Tom Brady. Tangibles? The 6 foot 2 ½, 219-pounder recorded a throw of 61 miles per hour at the Combine, just shy of the 62 MPH set by an MVP (Josh Allen) and the NFL’s Happy Gilmore (Joe Milton). McCarthy said he once threw a football 78 yards with the wind. His three-cone time of 6.82 seconds was the best in five years. Intangibles? McCarthy’s been candid about his battle with depression as a high school senior and the power of meditation. His leadership and intensity in Ann Arbor were lauded so much by Jim Harbaugh that you couldn’t help but assume the kid was a long-lost son.

A damn impressive resume for any CEO of the position to consider.

After the pick, O’Connell made it clear it was his mission to find the team’s long-term answer at the position. A quarterback he can “pour into and develop.” Added O’Connell: “There’s nothing I love more than coaching that position and being around somebody hungry to get better every single day with a great skillset like JJ has.” Meanwhile, GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah called McCarthy “as talented as anybody in the draft.” In their conversations ahead of the draft, McCarthy asked Adofo-Mensah a question: Is there any reason you wouldn’t draft me? To which, the GM admitted there’s some “guesswork” because of Michigan’s run-heavy offense. “But,” he told the QB, “we think you can do it.”

Even players on the roster who I’d consider very pro-Darnold understood O’Connell’s logic.

During that magic carpet ride of a ’24 season, one vet explains, it was fair to assume the coach was driving this ship. Those Jets and Panthers days were the last images everyone had of Darnold. Then came Game No. 272 for the NFC’s No. 1 seed. Then came a wild-card meltdown vs. the Los Angeles Rams. The gameplan stunk, the offensive line caved, Darnold was skittish. Ghosts of trauma past seemed to resurface amid a flurry of sacks (11) and incompletions (38) those two blowout losses.

So, the Vikings reverted to the original plan.

“It didn’t seem crazy at the time,” says one starter on the team. “I think KO does a really good job and I think obviously Sam does a great job and I think JJ’s young and talented. That’s about as simple as it is. It’s not super complex after that.”

He hears his words out loud, pauses and adds an important word.

“Well, it’s costly. Very costly.”

Darnold won a Super Bowl for someone else.

McCarthy was half EJ Manuel, half Chris Farley SNL skit.

Adofo-Mensah took the fall, though it’s naïve to think the head coach hired for his quarterback prowess was an innocent bystander.

The Vikings failed to properly measure two variables in this quarterback equation.

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One, everything that post-Packers celebration symbolized. Players grew to genuinely love Darnold’s stoicism and how he never painted himself a victim. He had every plausible reason to bitch about those losers in the swamps of New Jersey, yet never did. We covered it in real time. Even during Super Bowl Week as a Seahawk — interview to interview to interview — Darnold never came remotely close to dunking on the Jets. When the entire football world declared him a bust, all Darnold did was work. And improve. And work some more. Former Vikings teammates pulled hard for him in Santa Clara. They loved his mentality. It was galvanizing. Linebacker Blake Cashman told us that everyone would’ve been thrilled if Darnold returned as the starter. (“The guys in our locker room, everyone’s thinking: ‘Why wouldn’t you run it back?’ … Of course you think about all the what-ifs.”)

In retrospect, all Darnold needed was coaching. It’s obvious he was already on his way back.

The Vikings’ other blunder was failing to grasp just how thick the bubble wrap was around McCarthy in college. Fatal flaws were concealed. This was a player who threw the ball all of eight times in a game at Penn State. In his team’s championship win over Washington, he was 10 of 18. A perfectly fine way of doing business if you’re Bart Starr in the 60s or Bob Griese in the 70s. Not so much in the 2020s. Code-Red sirens were blaring at full blast this entire time. Nonetheless, they went all-in. Off a 14-3 season, the Vikings chose McCarthy over Darnold, Aaron Rodgers, Daniel Jones, everyone who was available and signed a slew of free agents to capitalize on McCarthy’s rookie contract.

No team in the NFL spent more cash last year.

The plan was to compete for a championship.

It did not take long for players on the roster to realize those dreams were silly.

Early. As in OTAs early. On both sides of the ball, players noticed that McCarthy’s timing wasn’t close to NFL ready. During 7-on-7’s, a pop-a-shot drill for most QBs, one player recalls McCarthy waiting until his seventh read to throw the ball. He worked from 1 to 5, then all the way back to 2. Nor was the Vikings defense doing anything crazy. Flores wasn’t rushing anyone in this drill.

He was the antithesis of decisive. Wonky mechanics compounded the problem.

“And when training camp started,” one starter recalls, “I was like: ‘Oh. Yeah. This isn’t going to work this year.’”

McCarthy never revved up to NFL speeds with the worst completion (57.6) and interception (4.9) rates of any starter in the league. This pick rate was a full percentage worse than the next QB (Tua Tagovailoa). “If it takes you a little while to process,” said this player, “and then your mechanics are weird, it’s hard to play.” The QB’s best success came off extending plays — when timing doesn’t matter anymore. O’Connell’s passing game never found a rhythm.

Immaturity did not help. McCarthy’s approach was a stark departure from the stone-cold Darnold. Take the Nine meme. Even when the getting was good, McCarthy created needless issues for himself. At Detroit, he scored three touchdowns and hit Jalen Nailor on third and 5 late to ice a 27-24 win. Moments later, the quarterback was recorded in the locker room mean-mugging and swaying back ‘n forth with war paint splattered underneath his eyes. This peculiar visual was soon followed by a mid-week press conference in which McCarthy was asked if he mentally enters a different place on gameday.

The QB began by noting that, yes, he flips a switch.

“I call him ‘Nine,’” McCarthy said. “Nine comes out and I’ve got to understand, ‘OK, he can’t be at his peak performance throughout 3 ½ hours. So how do I find little ways on the sideline, get back to my breath, get back to my visualization to maintain that intense competitive stamina throughout the whole game? It’s just the pure will and determination to get the job done.”

For a young quarterback trying to find his way, the comment was strange.

One teammate understood McCarthy’s point. He, too, becomes someone else on the football field. Many players tap into a darkness, an alter ego to excel. It’s a violent profession.

“It doesn’t mean I’m, ‘Mr. Badass,” says this player. “It’s just: ‘This is how I’m going to operate within football.’ That’s what he was trying to get across, but it sounded more like there’s some hubris to it where it really doesn’t need to be hubris. It needs to just be like, ‘Here’s what I have to do in order to operate at a high level.’ … It was silly for him to create that issue. That’s the immaturity. You don’t say that after one nice win. I don’t think he realized how big the spotlight is on him.”

McCarthy’s performance tanked and the Internet did its thing photoshopping face after face into the cartoonish nine meme.

To his credit, McCarthy was a good sport. Teammates remember him laughing it off.

Still, he couldn’t help himself the next time he had a good game.

At Dallas, as he crossed the goal line for a TD on a bootleg, McCarthy held the ball low to the turf and did his version of Jefferson’s Griddy. Minnesota won, 34-26. This was the quarterback’s best game. Unprompted, O’Connell kindly noted he did not enjoy a celebration before the touchdown was scored. McCarthy admitted he did it in practice and was told not to do it. “Me being who I am,” he added, “it’s like, ‘Oh, now I’m more enticed to do it.”

Another eye-roll moment for vets in the locker room.

Another hard turn from everything they experienced the year prior.

“Like, why? You’re just inviting more,” says one starter on the team. “Some of the stuff where you’re like, ‘I know you’ve talked about this and thought about it.’ You can avoid unnecessary scrutiny.’”

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Right to the end of the season. This player brings up a third example. Against Green Bay in Week 18, McCarthy tried to grit through a hairline fracture in his right hand. Admirable. Especially after missing five games due to a high ankle sprain and one to a concussion. To polish off one run, McCarthy even lowered his shoulder and taunted a Packers DB with a flex that’d cost him $11,593. When the pain was too much in the second half, McCarthy took himself out of the game.

That wasn’t strange. But what some teammates did find odd was McCarthy’s decision to cover up his hand with a towel.

There wasn’t anything gruesome about the injury. No blood gushing from a wound.

“Why are you putting a towel over your hand?” one teammate recalls. “It’s just kind of weird.”

Perhaps McCarthy did it to prevent himself from fist-bumping teammates. Former Vikings linebacker Ben Leber, who’s part of the team broadcast, ripped the “theatrics” and “drama” of it all on K-Fan 100.3 the next day. “It’s not melting,” Leber said. “There’s not a bone sticking out. It’s not disfigured. It’s not harming anybody by looking at it. He’s got a lot to learn about just the body language, the behavior, the outward optics of how things look.”

One teammate gets a soccer player flopping to sell a foul. It looks ridiculous, but there’s gamesmanship. There’s an advantage to such theatrics. This made no sense.

Nine. The Griddy. The Towel. All of it would’ve been nothing but footnotes in 2-point font if McCarthy performed. He did not.

When O’Connell made coaching points, sources say, McCarthy too often pushed back: Why don’t we do it this way? An acceptable rebuttal for a veteran quarterback with a full library of game reps to his name. Not so much for a novice who barely threw the ball in college. The head coach doing all of the teaching has pelts on the wall, too. O’Connell can point to Matthew Stafford, Kirk Cousins and Darnold. “You don’t really have that latitude,” one teammate says. “Just execute as good as you can.” In 2024, sure, Darnold would occasionally ask for a different route on the backside of a play. Even then, he was more diplomatic about it. There was an understanding that O’Connell had a bigger-picture why to everything he was dialing up.

Think of Caleb Williams in Chicago. In Year 1, as we reported, the No. 1 pick in the ’24 draft pushed back and the staff was much obliged. The snap count. The scheme. Everything changed on the fly to the rookie’s preference. A horrible precedent was set and all the coaches were fired anyway. In Year 2, Ben Johnson arrived and made it clear the quarterback needed to get with his program or he’d simply find someone who would. Williams, to his credit, bought in. He realized Johnson was a rare coach and signed off on winning different types of games. Chicago leaned on a powerhouse rushing attack, was OK with punting, kept games close and Williams — 2 minutes to go, down one score, crunch time — was given a green light to improvise. It pays for a young quarterback to trust in coaching.

One press conference during minicamp hinted that immaturity may still be a problem for McCarthy. He stated that he sits on one side of the classroom and Murray sits on the other.

The good news? Some sources in the building believe McCarthy has taken a more realistic approach to his job this summer.

This NFL career does not need to end with memes and wounded ducks. McCarthy has time to rehabilitate and build a pro career.

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Take Matt Hasselbeck. He heard whispers of “preparation” and “professionalism” issues with McCarthy. But he also lived this same predicament as a player and managed to carve out a 17-year career.

After getting traded to the Seattle Seahawks to be the starter — handpicked by his own ex-coach in Green Bay — Hasselbeck fell flat on his face. Mike Holmgren benched him for veteran Trent Dilfer. It was humbling. It was humiliating. Dilfer received a four-year contract to be the new starter and told the younger Hasselbeck to watch how he prepares, competes, leads. “At the time,” Hasselbeck concedes, “I hated him for it.” Then, into late October, Dilfer tore his Achilles.

Hasselbeck took over and, this time, he was ready. “Way more ready,” he says. All he did next was throw for nearly 30K yards and 174 touchdowns as a Seahawk.

All along, Hasselbeck fully expected Murray to be the QB1. His hope is that McCarthy learns the same lessons he did. Some quarterbacks sulk when they’re demoted. Others learn how to read defenses, swallow their ego and savor their hearty slice of humble pie.

Right now, McCarthy is the lemon Minnesota chose over a Super Bowl champion.

This doesn’t need to be his legacy.

Hasselbeck’s advice? Stay ready.

“Hopefully, he’s ready the second time around,” Hasselbeck says. “I lived that. And I’m sure half of the locker room was not in on me — at all — but there was at least a handful of people in the building that saw something that I didn’t even see that really no one else saw. And I’m grateful for those guys: guys like Mike Holmgren and Jim Zorn.”

The crime of last season is that a maelstrom of a Vikings defense was wasted. Members of this unit believe they could’ve done real damage in the playoffs with even average quarterback play because, by December, they had total command of Flores’ defense. Confidence was skyrocketing. Opposing quarterbacks were spooked. It’s no stretch to suggest the Vikings could’ve been the team dancing atop the Super Bowl dais in Santa Clara if they simply chose Darnold.

But enough looking back. Free from Arizona, Kyler Murray now gets his chance to right all quarterback wrongs as the starter in Minnesota.

This whole quarterback competition charade may go down as nothing but a time-suck O’Connell regrets. Murray missed valuable reps in a complex scheme. By letting it drag into mid-August, though, O’Connell did cultivate more adversity for a quarterback who hasn’t experienced much of it in his football life. This is Murray’s moment of truth as a professional athlete. Outsiders have no clue how he’ll respond with his back against the wall.

Insiders know the key is to tap into Murray’s wild side.

Somehow unlock this version of the quarterback and the 2026 Vikings have a chance to shock the football world.

Read Part II here.