Necessity is the mother of invention. But it’s also the mother of crazy, rash, lunatic solutions to scary-sounding problems. Just ask the Soviet Union how it dealt with foreign debt.
NFL teams aren’t nation-states, but they are billion-dollar organizations that stand to gain and lose quite a lot on the backs of day-to-day decisions. Not making the playoffs when you are expected to can lead to a lot of important ones, and weighing all options to hopefully land on rational solutions is key to running a solid franchise.
But rationality is booooooooooring. Every team that has ever failed, spectacularly or whimperingly, has felt the nagging inclination to pull out the big red button and launch the nuclear option. No matter how insane, every team has access to a high-risk, questionable-reward, likely-to-blow-themselves-and-multiple-others-up option that makes fringe additions and subtractions feel like half measures. And you know what they say about half measures, Waltuh.
So with five teams — the Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs, Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions and Cincinnati Bengals — conspicuously absent from this year’s playoffs, I thought I’d do them the service of identifying their full-measure, big-red-button option and deciding if it’s time for some mutually assured destruction.
Nuclear Option: Trade Lamar Jackson
Is that a good idea: ABSOLUTELY NOT, ARE YOU CRAZY?!
Slightly better but still big-time change: Fire John Harbaugh and get a new philosophy in the door
If you, or someone you love, finds yourself thinking that it’s a good idea to trade Lamar Jackson, declaring once and for all that they can’t win with him as their quarterback and need to reset, please… send me an e-mail and I’ll talk you/them out of that. What a terrible idea.
I was debating even including this in the list, but I heard enough people float that as a possibility that I felt including at as the true “Nuclear Option” was appropriate, if only to debunk it. Trading Lamar Jackson, or signalling in any way that the franchise is looking to move on from him, is not a solution; it is a massive own goal akin to the Luka Doncic trade (which nobody will ever recover from).
The whole point of team building is to acquire a player like Lamar Jackson. Unless the Patriots are suddenly shopping Drake Maye (who’s younger and could be better) or the Bills are suddenly shopping Josh Allen (who’s currently better), I’m not exactly sure how the Ravens expect to do better than Jackson, nor how they could possibly improve their chances of winning the Super Bowl by moving on.
This was a cursed season for the Ravens, and was over before it even started. The only reason they had a prayer of making the playoffs was because the Browns managed to beat the Steelers in Week 17, not exactly a result I would count on. Lamar missed games, and for a while the entire team was injured and non-functional. And they were still a <50 yard kick away from hosting a playoff game. Stuff happens, deal with it.
But I would forgive the Ravens if they do want to make some sort of drastic change, because it is definitely getting stale in Baltimore given this was year eight of Lamar-captained teams and they aren’t exactly getting closer. Maybe it’s time for a coach shake up.
Firing Harbaugh requires a serious cost-benefit analysis, and the Ravens should only do that if there is a sentiment in the locker room that he has lost a step. Maybe he has, but I don’t take calling for people’s jobs lightly, and neither should the Ravens.
Nuclear Option: Tank next year and fake a longer-than-needed Patrick Mahomes recovery
Is that a good idea: Eh… it’s better than the last one
Slightly better but still big-time change: Clean house of non-Mahomes contracts and reset for a next run. Maybe build a Travis Kelce statue while you’re at it
I don’t think the Chiefs should actually take a gap year — that would be an insult to their Hall of Fame quarterback to ask him to take more time off than required. But the functional reality of Mahomes’ contract requires some serious financial creativity; he will be, and I’m not making this up, a $78 million cap hit next year. That’s a $50 million hike from last year because of how the deal was structured.
It is almost impossible to build a functional football team with that kind of cheddar on the books, and so the Chiefs will have to hard hard conversations about the rest of the roster. Chris Jones, Jawaan Taylor are the other big numbers, but if they’re going to fix this thing, they’re going to have to be aggressive.
The Mahomes injury will incorrectly color this Chiefs season as torpedoed by back luck, but it wasn’t; the season was well over before Mahomes went down, and their odds of making the postseason were miniscule before losing their franchise QB. There are systemic issues across the team, from the pass rush to the penalty-ridden and expensive offensive line to underperforming receivers and a likely retiring Travis Kelce. This isn’t going to fix itself, so Kansas City will have to do more than just move to Kansas.
Nuclear Option: Jones children stage a coup against Jerry Jones and start running the franchise rationally
Is that a good idea: Now we’re talking
Slightly better but still big-time change: Stop making moves for the sake of getting the 1A block on SportsCenter and FirstTake
The Cowboys have been so egregiously mismanaging their salary cap that ESPN’s Bill Barnwell has had to write not one, but two “are we sure Jerry Jones knows how to manage the cap?” pieces seven full years apart. They played cap games with Dak Prescott (twice), CeeDee Lamb, and, most destructively, Micah Parsons — trading him to the Packers like they were launching a new craft beer called “Luka-Doncic-Trade-Lite” with fewer calories and the same crisp taste.
Not to be outdone (by himself), Jerry Jones traded the Cowboys’ own first round pick this year (they had a losing record) for Quinnen Williams, a good player but… like, you cannot be trading your own first round pick when your season is already out the window.
It has become clear to me and anyone with an ounce of media literacy that Jones has made the Cowboys the biggest thing since sliced bread precisely because he always makes decisions that get his team in the national conversation. However, absent the loose financial rules of other American sports leagues, that doesn’t actually lead to winning in the financially-draconian NFL. So it might be time for Jones’ children to stage a chill revolution against their father and take control of the team. Look, we all respect what Jones has done to make the NFL the product it is today, and he is a tremendously successful owner who we wish the best in retirement. But this is not an okay way to run your team.
Nuclear Option: Replace everyone’s favorite coach… two years ago, Dan Campbell
Is that a good idea: No, but we can talk this one out
Slightly better but still big-time change: Launch the exploratory committee on replacing Jared Goff
Hot take: the Lions season was really not that bad. Yes, they somehow finished last in their division, but their failure was largely a byproduct of defensive injuries, general inconsistency and a few untenable offensive performances. They lost the best Offensive Coordinator in football, Ben Johnson, to a division rival, so a lot of that can be expected.
They had a couple of incredible performances; they dropped 52 on the Bears, who replaced them atop the NFC North. Yes, Dan Campbell taking over playcalling was a drastic step and didn’t exactly improve things, but I have no reason to believe that he was anything close to the main problem. In fact, I’m inclined to believe that the other pillar of the team may need some consideration first.
Jared Goff is not a quarterback you can win with. He is right-handed Tua Tagovailoa with significantly better PR and postseason success, so nobody thinks they can say that — but that’s what he is.
When the pocket breaks down, and Jared Goff has to do anything other than throw perfectly on-platform, the play is over. I am just out on quarterbacks like that, be it Goff or Tua or… Derek Carr or Phillip Rivers. Find me the last stationary quarterback to win a Super Bowl. Seriously.
The answer is Joe Flacco, who went on a Linsanity run in 2014 that historians are still trying to figure out. Tom Brady was slow, but he wasn’t stationary — and most importantly, he could make plays when things broke down. In fact, his ability to do so is what made him great in spite of elite athleticism. Goff gets flushed out of the pocket and it is just over. I don’t think the Lions are going anywhere with him, and it’s a hill I will die on, get resurrected on and then die on again if need be.
Nuclear Option: Fire Zac Taylor, who is not a winning coach
Is that a good idea: Yes, but they’ve already said they won’t
Slightly better but still big-time change: Spend money on the defense for the love of all that is holy
Like I said earlier, I do not take calling for people’s jobs lightly, but Zac Taylor appears to have lost the confidence of his best player and has not elevated his teams whatsoever past what Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins could probably achieve on their own. He has a 52-63 record all time.
You could blame all of their recent failure — they haven’t had a 10-win season in three full years — with Burrow injuries, but the Bengals are not getting rid of Burrow for the same reason the Ravens won’t get rid of Lamar. And Taylor, a playcaller, has called a pretty solid offense in the last couple of years… though there is a persistent question about the team’s ability to get the ball to its best players.
Something has to give, and Taylor has to be more than just an offensive coordinator for the Bengals to succeed. There has to be a culture of intensity, of winning, something that Taylor initially created in his first four years in Cincinnati — but it has gotten appreciably worse.
What has to get appreciably better is the defense, which could not stop a parked car this entire year. Their hands are pretty tied with Higgins, Chase and Burrow all under huge contracts, but Taylor and executive Duke Tobin have to figure out a way to create a playable defense — that is what got them to the Super Bowl all those years ago. It’s the only thing that will get them back.
