With the start of the NFL regular season less than a month away, I want to spend time today taking a synoptic view of the league and the upcoming season. I will try to highlight things to look for as the season unfolds and to look at some ongoing issues I have with the universally acknowledged behemoth of US sports. And I want to begin with the demise of the “Rooney Rule”.
This rule was well-intentioned from the start even if it had no enforcement mechanism. The idea was to give minority coaching candidates a better chance to get one of the 32 head coaching jobs in the NFL than had been the case over most of the history of the league. Some critics said that the rule was not about “minorities”; it was about Black head coaches, and it seems that there is a basis for that criticism. Lots of commentators today say that there are only 3 minority coaches in the NFL, but actually, there are 3 Black, head coaches and a Hispanic head coach and a Muslim head coach of Lebanese extraction. Put all of that aside …
Last year, the league turned over about 25% of its head coaches. No Black men were elevated to those jobs; Robert Saleh was the only minority hired in the process. And that happened even though the original “Rooney Rule” that required every owner/GM to interview one minority candidate for the job had been expanded to two mandatory interviews and expanded to coordinator and GM positions. It is time to deal with reality.
NFL owners are going to hire whomever they damned well please to coach the teams they own. If that means they must conduct a sham interview or three along the way, they will do that to abide by the rule and not incur the wrath of The Commish. So, what started out as a well-intentioned step toward “social justice” has become feckless and demeaning to some of the people the rule intended to benefit. Put the Rooney Rule out to pasture.
When Adam Vinatieri entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame this summer, he did so before Tom Brady, Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick. Raise your hand if you said 15 years ago that would be the case …
There will be a couple of minor rule changes this season but a rule change that I would favor was not under consideration. I want to get rid of Overtime Games in the regular season and give both teams involved a “half-win” and a “half loss”. Here’s why:
- Having tied games in the standings cannot be anathema because they are tolerated after 10 extra minutes of play without complaint.
- The fact that the league cut the OT limit from 15 minutes to 10 minutes as a “player health and safety” advancement raises the question of why play even a minute of OT if it is dangerous to player safety and health.
Opposition to this idea could come from the sportsbooks who offer win total bets in half-game increments; having teams with “half wins” on their record could create push bets there.
I said there would be some minor rule changes this year.
- Probably the most significant rule change is one that won’t happen very often. Starting in 2025 a team can declare an onside kick at any point in the game. Before now, it could only be in the 4th quarter by a team trailing on the scoreboard. An onside kick cannot be a surprise; it still must be declared.
- The second minor rule change could become a major change if indeed it is invoked. Starting in 2026, “league personnel” may consult with on-field officials when considering disqualifications for both flagrant football acts and non-football acts without any infraction being called on the field. For the record, “league personnel” translates to the good folks manning the replay apparatus. And if they do this correctly and use replay to find out who initiated an “unsportsmanlike display” instead of who merely retaliated, it could be very valuable in cutting out some of the nonsensical fracases that happen periodically.
The resignation of Mike Tomlin as the Steelers’ head coach was a boon to the sports broadcasting industry. Tomlin made his debut on the set of Football Night In America in the Hall of Fame game and looked like a seasoned pro who had been doing that for years. He conducted player interviews and actually asked some follow-up questions in the session; how refreshing is that?
Tomlin’s resignation also removed a Super Bowl winning coach from the sidelines, but it also allowed for another Super Bowl winning coach to return to the sidelines. Mike McCarthy replaced Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh. Interestingly, McCarthy’s presence in Pittsburgh sets up an interesting comparison:
- There are only 4 Super Bowl winning head coaches who are still with the team where the coach won the Super Bowl. They are Andy Reid (Chiefs), Sean McVay (Rams), Nick Siriani (Eagles) and Mike MacDonald (Seahawks).
- Meanwhile there are 3 Super Bowl winning coaches who now coach a team different from the one where they won the Super Bowl. They are Mike McCarthy (Steelers), John Harbaugh (Giants) and Sean Payton (Saints).
- This tells me that winning a Super Bowl does not necessarily guarantee a coach a position for life within an organization – – as Bill Belichick found out about 2 seasons ago.
While I am on the subject of “Super Bowls” – at least tangentially – there are still four NFL teams that have never participated in the game. Only one of those teams is in the NFC (Detroit Lions) and three are in the AFC (Cleveland Browns, Houston Texans and Jax Jags). In one of his football novels, Dan Jenkins had the Lions in the Super Bowl game – -as the loser naturally – and in the movie Draft Day, the Browns’ GM’s brilliance in the draft has convinced Clevelanders that this is their year for the Super Bowl. It won’t happen, but wouldn’t it be a great storyline of the Lions met the Browns in the Super Bowl in February 2027?
In order to be able to play in the Super Bowl a team must first make it to the playoffs. I ran across this stat about playoff absences:
- If the Jets miss the playoffs again this year (as surely looks likely) it will be the 16th consecutive season for the Jets’ team to be sitting at home watching the playoffs on TV.
- That 16-year absence would be the longest playoff drought in all the major US sports – – MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL.
- J – E – T – S … JETS, JETS, JETS !
Speaking of the Jets, do you remember that the Jets went through the entire regular season in 2025 – – all 17 games – – without intercepting a pass thrown by an opposing QB? Opponents threw the ball 515 times against the Jets’ defense in 2025 and suffered ZERO INTs.
I mentioned the Hall of Fame game above. I rarely watch that game because it is usually an ugly contest where only very few of the players have a realistic shot at sticking with their team in September. This year’s game was different; there were two QBs on the field who looked as if they were indeed going to spend time in the NFL. Carson Beck and Haynes King both looked like “real QBs” in the game.
I have a theory about why that was the case:
- Carson Beck played all or part of 6 seasons of college football. [Aside: Don’t get me started on that …] He appeared in 55 games including 43 games over the last 3 seasons.
- Haynes King also played all or part of 6 seasons of college football. He appeared in 46 games including 36 games over the last 3 seasons.
- Both Beck and Haynes have had time to “mature” and “develop their craft”. Some top-shelf college QBs declare for the NFL with twenty or fewer game appearances and lots less practice time and coaching instruction. Those “greener QBs” may have more athletic skill that either Beck or King, but they often have a lot to learn about the game itself – – and it looked to me as if both King and Beck have figured a lot of that stuff out already.
There are some new/interesting features on the NFL regular season schedule and calendar this year. The international game schedule will expand to include Australia in Week 1 involving the Rams and the Niners. All in all, there will be nine regular season games played in overseas venues in 2026 with stops in Rio de Janeiro, London (3 games), Madrid, Mexico City, Munich and Paris in addition to the game in Melbourne, Australia. The game in Paris (Saints/Steelers) will be the first one in France too.
Also, for the first time ever, there will be an NFL game on “Thanksgiving Eve”. That game will feature the Rams and the Packers and will be available on Netflix. And there will be one other Wednesday game on the docket this season. Because of the travel time and the time change involved in that Week 1 game in Australia, the league needed to slot it in on Thursday of Week 1. That schedule slot is normally reserved for the reigning Super Bowl champs to kick off the season and so the league stuck with that “season opening tradition” and moved the Seahawks/Pats Super Bowl rematch to Wednesday night of Week 1.
That “Super Bowl rematch” has an interesting wrinkle. The Super Bowl MVP was Kenneth Walker II, and the Seahawks lost him in free agency. The other main RB for the Seahawks last season was Zach Charbonneau who will not be available until mid-season as he recovers/rehabs from surgery. Super Bowl champions usually lose players in free agency; that is not particularly noteworthy; but the Seahawks will either have to sign an experienced RB late in the Training Camp cycle or go with a tandem of rookies at the position.
Off-season trades involving top-shelf players are not a staple of your typical NFL off-seasons. However, this year Myles Garrett, Trent McDuffie, Jaylen Waddle, Maxx Crosby and DJ Moore were traded from one team to another. [Aside: Yes, I know; the Crosby trade was reneged, and he is still with the Raiders – – but they tried to trade him this summer.] And probably the most anticipated trade and the one that inspired the most commentary was the one that sent AJ Brown from the Eagles to the Pats. When you add up all the “inside info” and the “remote mind reading” that preceded that swap, it almost equaled the hoopla associated with the Travis Kelce/Taylor Swift relationship/marriage.
The removal of Brown from the Eagles’ roster makes the Eagles an interesting focal point for the season. As has been the case for every year of the Nick Siriani regime, the Eagles have a new offensive coordinator; Sean Mannion will scheme their offense and call the plays in 2026. The Eagles’ offense in 2025 was far too predictable; this is Mannion’s first coaching position where he will call plays; so, even if he too is predictable, it might take defensive coordinators a while to figure out his tendencies.
One of Sean Mannion’s unwritten responsibilities is to rejuvenate the career of Jalen Hurts who took a lot of the blame for a stagnant Eagles’ offense in 2025. In addition, a lot of the remote mindreading involving the AJ Brown trade focused on Hurts and his purported relationship rupture with Brown. Good luck to Sean Mannion on his multi-faceted set of responsibilities; Philly fans are so patient that they will surely give him the benefit of the doubt for at least the first two games of the season.
Many people think the Eagles’ QB needs a new incarnation. Such is not the case in Miami; Malik Willis is the starter there and is not in danger of losing that job unless he is injured. Here are two disturbing stats for Dolphins’ fans:
- Malik Willis has never thrown more than 40 completions in an NFL season in his career.
- Unless I missed someone on the Dolphins’ depth chart, Malik Washington caught the most passes last season; he snagged all of 46 of them.
- Stats aren’t everything to be sure, but those are foreboding omens…
Another interesting QB situation came out of the blue just this week. Teddy Bridgewater was in the Lions’ Training Camp as the backup to Jared Goff; then he announced that he was retiring from football and that left the Lions with only 2 QBs on the roster – – Jared Goff and Luke Altmyer. You will be excused if you do not immediately identify Luke Altmyer from your memory; he is an undrafted free agent this year out of Illinois. So, the translation of that situation is:
- The Lions needed a backup QB in case Jared Goff has to miss time in 2026.
The Lions addressed that need quickly signing Joshua Dobbs to a 1-year deal. Dobbs has been in and around the NFL since 2017 and the Lions will be his seventh stop along the way. In his career, Dobbs has started a total of 15 games; that is a classic background for a backup QB and the fact that Dobbs has been around in that sort of role for so long and with so many teams speaks to the fact that he is unlikely to be a royal pain in the ass in the locker room.
The NFL as a whole continued seemingly to print money last year. Since the Packers are a public corporation, the Packers must open their books to meet legal requirements and from that one can deduce something about NFL finances. One thing in those Packers’ filings is that the team received $453M from the league as its share of the national revenue for 2025. Since that national revenue is shared equally among the teams the math here says:
- $453M per team X 32 teams = $14.5B for the league
And that league revenue number is probably a tad smaller than reality because the NFL Front Office has to take a piece of the action – – sort of like “League Overhead” before the teams get their share of the bounty. And with expanded TV options continuing to surface – – see the Wednesday Night Games discussed above as one example – – that revenue is not going to dry up and blow away any time soon.
Earlier, when speaking about the actual demise of the Rooney Rule, I said that owners looked to evade the wrath of The Commish. However, a recent comment by one of the owners, Jimmy Haslam, is likely to have gotten some scrutiny from The Commish in camera. In an interview, Haslam did what owners often do around this time of the year; he expressed hope and optimism for his team. But Haslam took that sort of upbeat posture to a different level. He said that his team – the Browns – were going to beat the Las Vegas estimate of 5.5 wins for the season and went so far as to say he would take the OVER.
With all the issues and problems involving gambling on sports and the integrity of the games and all that stuff, I cannot believe that Roger Goodell needed one of the owners to be giving out “betting advice”. Agreed, it is better that Haslam took the position that he did in lieu of saying that his team would suck rocks this season and be lucky to win even a game or two; but “taking the OVER” is stretching a point.
Finally, I’ll end this synoptic view of the NFL prior to the 2026 season with these words from Vince Lombardi”
“Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………