Today’s minor moves:
Jacksonville Jaguars
- Promoted to active roster: LB Deon King
- Waived: WR Montay Crockett
The Bills have hired Brian Daboll as their new offensive coordinator, the club announced today.
[RELATED: 2018 NFL Coordinator Tracker]
Daboll, fresh off a National Championship as the offensive play-caller for the University of Alabama, will replace longtime NFL coach Rick Dennison, who was fired on Friday after only one season in Buffalo. Multiple head coaching candidates had reportedly expressed interest in hiring Daboll as an offensive coordinator, so the Bills acted quickly to add him to their staff.
While the 42-year-old Daboll spent the 2017 campaign in the collegiate ranks, he does boast vast amounts of NFL coaching experience. He’s coordinated offenses for the Browns (2009-10), Dolphins (2011), and Chiefs (2012), and has also worked in a number of offensive roles for the Patriots, first from 2000-06 and again from 2013-16.
In Buffalo, Daboll will be tasked with heading an offensive unit which ranked 22nd in scoring, 26th in DVOA, and 29th in yards a season ago. Running back LeSean McCoy and wide receiver Zay Jones will be among the weapons at Daboll’s disposal, while Buffalo has decisions to make on quarterback Tyrod Taylor and wideout Kelvin Benjamin.
Having fired Frank Pollack last week, the Cowboys are casting a wide net as they search for a coach to lead an offensive line that was considered the NFL’s best as recently as 2016. Dallas has already interviewed former Bengal OL coach Paul Alexander last week, while incumbent Cowboys assistant offensive line coach Marc Colombo is reportedly “in the mix” for the vacancy, according to Todd Archer of ESPN.com. Meanwhile, Dallas had interest in meeting with former Seahawks OL coach Tom Cable before he was hired by the Raiders, but no formal interview was ever arranged, per Archer, who adds the Cowboys also plan to meet with Giants offensive line coach Mike Solari.
Here’s more from the NFL’s two East divisions:
- In addition to finding a new offensive line coach, the Cowboys are also looking for a new coach to head up the club’s wide receivers. Former Colts wide receivers coach Sanjay Lal is interviewing to replace Derek Dooley, who was fired last week, as Archer reports. Lal, 48, originally joined the NFL ranks with the Raiders in 2007, and has since coached wideouts for Oakland, New York, and Buffalo. At present, the only other candidate to interview for the Cowboys’ WRs coach job is former Dallas pass-catcher Miles Austin, who is currently a scout for Dallas but has never coached in the NFL.
- While the Jets have interest in re-signing pending free agent tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins, general manager Mike Maccagnan & Co. have no intent of “going crazy” to retain the 25-year-old, as Rich Cimini of ESPN.com writes. Seferian-Jenkins, a former second-round pick who has overcome substance abuse issues, posted the best season of his career in 2017 by posting 50 receptions for 357 yards and three scores. While ASJ did tail off near the end of the year (he managed only 11 catches for 69 yards in New York’s final five games), his age and pedigree should allow him to garner a multi-year pact.
- Stanford has hired former Redskins assistant offensive line coach Kevin Carberry as its new run game coordinator and offensive line coach, tweets Bruce Feldman of FOX Sports. To replace Carberry, Washington has inked ex-Broncos assistant Phil Rauscher as its next assistant OL coach, per Nicki Jhabvala of the Denver Post (Twitter link).
Former Buccaneers head coach Greg Schiano is generating a “lot of interest” for NFL defensive coordinator positions, according to Bruce Feldman of FOX Sports (Twitter link).
While Schiano spent two years as Tampa Bay’s head coach from 2012-13, the majority of the 51-year-old’s experience has come at the collegiate level. He’s currently the assistant head coach and defensive coordinator at Ohio State, but he’s perhaps best known for his 11-year run as the head coach at Rutgers. Schiano nearly landed the Tennessee head coaching job last year before seemingly misplaced social media backlash caused the Volunteers to back out of a deal.
Schiano’s reputation and record in the NFL is a mixed bag, to say the least. He posted an overall mark of 11-21 in two season with the Buccaneers, and drew criticism around the league and within the organization for his “autocratic” management style. Schiano was also infamous for sending his defensive players on all-out rushes when opposing offenses were executing game-ending kneel-downs, a controversial strategy that drew ire around the league.
But Schiano does have a solid relationship with Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and other members of the New England coaching tree, leading Ben Volin of the Boston Globe to speculate (via Twitter) that Schiano could potentially follow either Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels or defensive coordinator Matt Patricia if either accepts a head coaching position elsewhere.
Here are the latest reserve/futures contract signings from around the NFL. These deals will go into effect on the first day of the 2018 league year, with players joining their respective clubs’ offseason 90-man rosters:
Cleveland Browns
- DL Ricky Ali’ifua
- OL Joseph Cheek
- DL Jeremy Faulk
- DB Corey White
Even with the NFL in the midst of the postseason, the offseason is already underway, as head coaching and general manager vacancies are quickly being fgilled. As such, it’s worth looking ahead to the NFL’s offseason calendar for an idea of which dates will be more important during the next several weeks and months. With teams filling out their coaching staffs and preparing to make changes to rosters, there are plenty of days to circle on the calendar.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the NFL’s key offseason dates and deadlines:
January
- January 15
- Deadline for college underclassmen to declare for the 2017 NFL draft.
- January 27
- Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama.
- January 28
- Assistant coaches for teams in the Super Bowl – who have previously interviewed for a head coaching job – can interview a second time with the club no later than the Sunday before the Super Bowl.
February
- February 5
- 2018 waiver system begins.
- 2018 waiver system begins.
- February 13
- Teams may sign CFL players whose 2017 contracts have expired.
- February 20
- First day for teams to designate a franchise or transition player.
- February 27-March 5
- The NFL scouting combine will be held in Indianapolis.
March
- March 6
- As of 3pm CT, teams can no longer designate a franchise or transition player.
- As of 3pm CT, teams can no longer designate a franchise or transition player.
- March 12-14
- Team may contact agents and negotiate contracts for players who will become unrestricted free agents on March 14. Free agent contracts can’t be signed yet, but informal agreements can be reached.
- March 14
- The 2018 league year begins, and free agency opens. By 3pm CT, teams must make decisions on player options, submit qualifying offers to restricted free agents, submit minimum tenders to exclusive rights free agents, and be under the 2018 salary cap. Trades can be made and free agents can be signed after 3pm CT.
- March 25-28
- The NFL owners meetings will be held in Phoenix, Arizona.
April
- April 20
- Deadline for restricted free agents to sign offer sheets.
- April 25
- Deadline for previous club to exercise right of first refusal (ie. match offer sheets) on restricted free agents.
- April 26-28
- The NFL draft will be held in Arlington, Texas.
May
- May 3
- Teams exercising fifth-year options on 2015 first-round picks must do so prior to May 3.
July
- July 16
- Deadline for teams to work out multi-year contracts with free agents designated as franchise players.
Sam Bradford was activated from IR yesterday, and today ESPN.com’s Chris Mortensen reports that Bradford will serve as Case Keenum‘s backup for the Vikings’ divisional round matchup against the Saints this afternoon (Twitter link). Minnesota head coach Mike Zimmer has never activated three quarterbacks, so it is likely that Teddy Bridgewater will be inactive for the contest.
Bradford started the Vikings’ first game of the 2017 season and performed well in leading his team to a convincing win over — coincidentally enough — the Saints. But he has not played in a full game since that opening contest, and as Bridgewater was continuing to recover from last season’s ACL injury, Keenum was given the chance to show what he could do.
He did not disappoint. He went 11-3 as a starter, led the Vikings to the No. 2 seed in the NFC, and set himself up for a big payday in the coming months. Like Keenum, Bradford and Bridgewater will be unrestricted free agents at the end of the season, so Minnesota will have some very interesting decisions to make when their season is over.
Mortensen also tweets that, on November 7, Bradford visited Dr. James Andrews to have his left knee cleaned out and a bone spur shaved. As a result, the pain in his knee is not nearly as severe as it was prior to the surgery. Apparently, he feels good enough and has played well enough since returning to the practice field earlier this month to serve as Keenum’s backup in a playoff contest.
Two of the Giants‘ top choices for their head coaching vacancy, Josh McDaniels and Matt Patricia, are reportedly set to accept jobs elsewhere. Ralph Vacchiano of SNY, however, says that Big Blue fans should not count out McDaniels just yet. One team source says the Giants have not been informed that McDaniels is out of the mix, and while it has been reported that McDaniels wants more control over personnel than New York is willing to allow, the team feels it can resolve that issue.
Nonetheless, Vacchiano concedes that Patricia is off the table, and if McDaniels does indeed take the Colts’ job, that leaves the Giants with Pat Shurmur and Steve Wilks as their top remaining targets. But Vacchiano says Shurmur appears to prefer the Cardinals’ gig, and Arizona is apparently prepared to offer it to him. So it appears that things may be coming full circle, with Wilks looking increasingly like New York’s next head coach.
Now let’s take a look at more notes out of the east:
- Ian Rapoport of NFL.com (video link) reports that Patriots owner Robert Kraft, head coach Bill Belichick, and quarterback Tom Brady will meet this offseason to clear the air and to resolve whatever tensions exist among themselves. While reports of discord within the organization were likely overblown, Rapoport says there is indeed some tension within the triumvirate, and since Belichick and Brady are not going anywhere until they choose to leave, it makes sense that the three men would want to hash out their issues.
- Bills WR Zay Jones reportedly played his rookie campaign with a torn labrum, and his father, former NFL linebacker Robert Jones, told Robert Quinn of the Bills Wire that his son will have surgery on Tuesday to repair the injury. Zay Jones finished the 2017 season with 27 catches for 316 yards and two touchdowns.
- The Dolphins will not retain defensive line coach Terrell Williams, per Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald. Williams coached the team’s D-line for the past three seasons, and his unit experienced mixed results in 2017. Jackson adds that former offensive coordinator Clyde Christensen has indeed been reassigned to a new role within the organization, as was expected after Miami hired Dowell Loggains as its new OC earlier this month.
In July 2014, Broncos owner Pat Bowlen signed over control of the club due to his ongoing battle with Alzheimer’s disease. At the time, we knew only that the three trustees of the Pat Bowlen Trust — team president Joe Ellis, team counsel Rich Sliva, and Denver attorney Mary Kelly — would handle day-to-day operations, with Ellis serving as the Controlling Owner Delegee/CEO who has full authority to make final decisions for the team.
In a piece that is well worth a read, Nicki Jhabvala of the Denver Post lends a little more clarity to the situation, though she says that the trustees and other interested parties have kept the team’s succession plans confidential out of respect for the Bowlen family. After all, the team is under no obligation to publicly disclose those plans.
Jhabvala notes that Bowlen established a family trust years ago in an effort to eventually transfer ownership of the team to his seven children, each of whom would receive an equal stake in the franchise. Nonetheless, only one of those children would be the sole voice for the team at league meetings and have the title of controlling owner, and the Ellis/Sliva/Kelly trio have full authority to sell the team to an outside party if they deem such a sale to be in the best interest of the team and the Bowlen children. That means that Ellis will have final say on his eventual replacement as top decision-maker.
Jhabvala’s sources indicate that the Pat Bowlen Trust trustees sent Bowlen’s wife, Annabel, and the Bowlen children a list of criteria to help determine who the next controlling owner will be. Those criteria include subjective items like integrity and sound judgment, but they also include requirements like a bachelor’s degree paired with an MBA, J.D., or other advanced business-related degree.
As of now, Jhabvala notes that only two of the seven Bowlen children are currently on track to meet those criteria and, in turn, to become the next controlling owner. One is Brittany Alexandra Bowlen, who is just 28. She worked in the NFL’s junior rotational program in New York, she was an analyst in the Broncos’ business department in 2015, and she completed an internship with the McKinsey & Company consulting firm last year (she expects to accept a full-time position with McKinsey after completing her MBA at Duke University later this year).
The other most likely candidate is Beth Bowlen Wallace, 47, who has a law degree from the University of Denver and who previously worked with the team as a director of special projects for more than three years, the highest position by title held by a Bowlen child.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has stated multiple times that the Broncos continue to be run effectively and that the team is in compliance with league ownership rules. Despite that, and despite the fact that the Broncos have remained a profitable enterprise, Jhabvala observes that the league will not wait forever for a new owner to be named (though there is no clear timetable in place). League rules do make it easier to keep ownership in the family, so as of now, it seems as though the safe money is on Wallace or Brittany Alexandra Bowlen becoming the team’s next controlling owner (assuming that the criteria set forth by the trustees is sufficient and will be largely satisfied). But it is still a fluid situation that bears watching as the Broncos embark on an offseason that they hope will help put an end to a two-year playoff drought.
Antonio Brown is likely to play in the Steelers’ divisional round contest against Jacksonville this afternoon, as ESPN.com’s Adam Schefter reports, although Schefter adds that Brown’s injured calf is not close to being fully healed. The league’s top wideout, who is one month removed from the partially torn left calf muscle that forced him to miss the final two games of the regular season, will go through pregame warmups to test the calf, but as Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports tweets, every expectation is that Brown will play and will play regularly. Brown was forced to miss Friday’s practice because of an illness, but he was a full participant in practices on Wednesday and Thursday, and Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tweets that Brown’s illness will not impact his playing status [Twitter update: Brown is active, per Schefter].
Now for several more notes on the AFC North champions:
- His idle threats notwithstanding, no one expects Le’Veon Bell to retire or sit out the 2018 season if he is hit with the franchise tag for the second straight year, least of all the Steelers themselves. As Ian Rapoport of NFL.com reports (video link), the Steelers are indeed expected to put the franchise tag on Bell, which has been a foregone conclusion for some time now. As Rapoport observes, Pittsburgh has historically refused to cede to the demands of players who threaten to sit out, and he does not expect the club to change it standard operating procedure for Bell. If Bell does play 2018 under the tag, he will have earned roughly $26.5MM over the 2017-18 seasons, while he would have earned $30MM if he signed the long-term deal the Steelers offered him last year. Nonetheless, we will still need to wait to see what the future holds before we can say for sure whether that was a wise financial move for Bell.
- We heard at the end of December that the relationship between Ben Roethlisberger and OC Todd Haley is strained, but Rapoport goes one step further, saying that the relationship “is in as bad of a place as it’s been in years.” Nonetheless, Roethlisberger has thrived under Haley’s leadership, which puts the Steelers in something of a bind. Haley’s contract expires at the end of the season, so Pittsburgh will need to decide whether it wants to bring him back and hope he and Big Ben can put aside their personal differences since the on-field product has been so good, or whether it wants to move on. Of course, the decision could be made for the Steelers if Roethlisberger makes good on his threat to retire, or if offensive line coach Mike Munchak gets a head coaching job elsewhere and brings Haley with him, which Rapoport says is a distinct possibility.
- Speaking of Munchak, who has already interviewed with the Cardinals for their head coaching job, we heard this morning that he could be a dark horse candidate for the Giants’ HC vacancy.