There are 28 NFL teams not playing this weekend, which means there are 28 teams trying to figure out how to get to where they want to go: the Super Bowl. Some, naturally, have better ideas about it than others.
As the offseason lurches forward for all those teams that aren’t in the mix for Super Bowl LVI, their activities can give us a clue about how seriously to take their hopes of getting to Super Bowl LVII.
Let’s take a look at six:
Nathaniel Hackett is the new head coach, hired out of Green Bay, where he was the offensive coordinator. The Packers were 10th in the NFL in total yards and scoring this year, and wound up as the NFC’s top seed thanks to their starting quarterback tossing 37 touchdowns with only four interceptions.
It’s not as if Hackett has been widely touted as some kind of genius, or talked about for years as a head coaching candidate. Hiring him appears, pretty starkly, to be about trying to attract that same starting quarterback to Denver.
Put aside all of Aaron Rodgers’ idiocy, and that’s still a terrible idea. The Broncos may have gone 7-10 this year, but that included beating four of the five worst teams in the league, plus two more wins against NFC East teams. The Denver defense is legit, but the AFC West is still a division that includes Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert, and Derek Carr — this is a very different division from the one Denver was in when the Broncos signed Peyton Manning. Instead of a win-now move with a quarterback who will be 39, the Broncos need to accept that it’s going to take a dedicated rebuild to return to glory.
One of the few places where Rodgers would represent a character upgrade at quarterback, Pittsburgh still needs to think long and hard about how to replace Ben Roethlisberger.
Much like the Broncos, the Steelers are in a spot where Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson are in their division, and it’s unfair to count out Baker Mayfield, who pretty clearly wasn’t 100 percent this season.
So long as the Steelers have Mike Tomlin as their coach, they’ve got a vitally important piece of the puzzle, but they do need a quarterback. Thing is, the answer there probably isn’t available this offseason, so the best move for Pittsburgh probably is to scale back, clean up the salary cap, and point toward a better QB draft class in 2023.
If Tom Brady retires, going after Rodgers would be some kind of way to replace him and try to stay in title contention. The Bucs have lots of other talent, which is part of the reason why Brady has thrived there, and it’s hard not to like the idea of an aging Rodgers slipping into a similar role, especially if there’s a way to slide Randall Cobb into the Antonio Brown role.
New general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s first order of business is hiring a new coach, and he has to do better than the Bears did with their hire of former Colts defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus. The second order of business is deciding whether to just go through it with Kirk Cousins for the last year of his contract, or try to trade him to a dopey team like the Broncos that thinks it’s closer to contending than it is. That’s probably preferable, but also the NFC North looks pretty open for 2022, so maybe the play is to go for it with Cousins, then go get an actually good quarterback next offseason to get to the next level.
Rich Bisaccia got the Raiders to the playoffs after Jon Gruden’s ouster, so naturally, they’re looking to make Josh McDaniels their new coach and let Bisaccia walk. Because the Patriots’ offense has been so impressive post-Brady? Because he was so good coaching Denver? Bisaccia wasn’t perfect as interim coach, but keeping him is a better idea than bringing in a retread.
If Jerry Jones loves Dan Quinn so much that he made it seem like Mike McCarthy’s job was in danger, to make it seem like Quinn might become the Dallas coach, and thus keep Quinn away from other head coaching opportunities… why not just make Quinn the head coach? Oh, right, because Sean Payton is going to be the Cowboys’ head coach as soon as he decides he wants to be. None of this really matters, because we already know that the 2022 Cowboys will either win the NFC East again and then lose their first playoff game again, or they’ll finish second in the NFC East and lose their first playoff game again.