Last month, receiver DeAndre Hopkins visited the Titans and Patriots. Since then, he has played the waiting game.
Via Mike Reiss of ESPN.com, Hopkins is waiting for another team to enter the mix . If that happens, his value could increase.
Obviously, this implies that neither the Titans nor the Patriots have made him an offer he can’t/won’t refuse. Per Reiss, both teams have indeed made offers — and the Titans have been “more aggressive to this point.”
It’s unclear whether another team will emerge before camp opens. Hopkins could choose to wait until a veteran currently on a team gets injured or displays ineffectiveness, creating on-the-fly interest in his services. If, as many believe, Hopkins isn’t a fan of practice, waiting until the season approaches to sign could be enticing to him.
Still, at some point, he needs to get ready to make an impact right away, especially since his eventual contract will include incentives based on playing time and/or production.
Reiss also notes that, if it ultimately comes down to the Patriots or the Titans, Hopkins could ask himself which one gives him a better chance to reach his incentives and max out his earnings. His experience with Patriots offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien could be a plus in that regard.
When the Chiefs received their Super Bowl rings last month, quarterback Patrick Mahomes said that was the final time that the team would celebrate their victory over the Eagles in Arizona.
Safety Justin Reid said that the team has already moved on from last year’s success and turned their attention to climbing the mountain again in 2023. Reid signed with the Chiefs last year to step into a role previously filled by Tyrann Mathieu and said that “the reason they brought me there is to command the back end” as a leader on defense.
The message that he’s sending in that role is that the team cannot be complacent with two championships in the last four years.
“Honestly, the page is already turned ,” Reid said, via Aaron Wilson of KPRC. “We’re out there working, chasing another championship. Every year is different. We’ve got an even bigger target on our back than last year. We get to enjoy that moment. As far as the mentality in the room, we’re working to continue this dynasty and what we did last year and not just rest on our laurels. Where we are right now is light years ahead of where we were last year at this time. It’s really exciting.”
Reid said that he believes this will be his “greatest year yet” and making good on that prediction would be a boost to the Chiefs’ chances of extending their run of success.
Quarterback, the new show that debuts next week on Netflix, will provide an all-access look at the 2022 seasons of Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins, and Marcus Mariota.
With one big caveat. There won’t be as much Big Red as there could have been.
Chiefs coach Andy Reid insisted on no recordings of his meetings with Mahomes. It was his one condition, and the producers agreed.
Peyton Manning, whose Omaha Productions partnered with NFL Films to create the series, shared Reid’s request/demand with Ryan Glasspiegel of the New York Post.
Manning also explained that, after Mahomes agreed to do it, he specifically asked Manning to secure authorization directly from Reid, even after Manning suggested that Mahomes tell Reid himself.
“He said, ‘No Peyton, you tell Coach Reid,’” Manning said. “It was very telling. Here you’ve got the best player in the NFL right now, that could probably say, ‘This is what I’m doing, I don’t care whether you like it or not.’ Instead, he wants me to ask his head coach for permission.”
It’s no surprise. Mahomes, as we’ve said before, has never changed. He’s the same guy he was coming out of Texas Tech, and probably at that point the same guy he was coming out of high school. Polite when politeness is preferred. Respectful in situations that require a show of respect. Deferential when deference is appropriate.
But he’s not always like that. Manning said Mahomes will let the expletives fly , when necessary.
“I think people will be surprised to see that because obviously you don’t really have that access on the field all the time,” Manning said. “My feeling is he doesn’t really start out doing it, but if you poke the bear, look out. This is a competitive guy. A Raiders pass rusher found that out the hard way. He’s looking for things that challenge him.”
His most obvious challenge is to keep winning championships, in an effort to catch Tom Brady’s seven Super Bowl wins. Under that umbrella, he — like other elite athletes — will look for anything that will give him an extra kick in the ass. And, like other elite athletes, he’ll make something up, if all else fails.
Linebacker Drue Tranquill, a fourth-round pick of the Chargers in 2019, became a free agent in March, and he made the jump to a division rival.
Appearing Thursday on NFL Network’s Total Access, Tranquill explained the extent to which Chiefs coach Andy Reid got directly involved in recruiting Tranquill.
“I was really honored by the way the Chiefs pursued me, all the way from the front office down to the coaching staff,” Tranquill said, via NFL.com. “Andy Reid literally texted me the morning of [when] I was going to make my decision and he was like, ‘Think red. Think red. Think Super Bowls .’ I just felt really valued over there, felt like they really had a role for me and really wanted me over there.”
Tranquill shouldn’t have needed to hear it from Reid. Tranquill has lived it. In his four years with the Chargers, he saw the Chiefs go to three Super Bowls. Now that he’s with the Chiefs, he could end up personally experiencing a championship game, as soon as this year.
Given that he only signed a one-year contract, this might be the only year he thinks red. And in turn it might be the only year he thinks Super Bowl.
Former NFL quarterback and current Fox analyst Mike Vick said plenty of interesting things during an 80-minute interview with Tyreek Hill on his It Needed To Be Said podcast. One thing Vick said merits further discussion.
Vick suggested that Chiefs coach Andy Reid could be the greatest coach of all time.
“I was actually thinking this year like, after Andy won the Super Bowl, he only got two, but he went to like four or five NFC Championship Games [and] every year [the Chiefs were] in the AFC Championship Game,” Vick said, via USA Today. “He might be the greatest coach of all time . You don’t have to win championships to be considered. You know, I understand [Bill] Belichick and [Tom] Brady and that whole dynamic. But Coach [Reid] did it in Philly, and then he doing it in KC. I’m always shout out coach like I love that man to death, like for real literally I’d do anything for him.”
Reid is currently fifth on the all-time wins list with 247 regular-season victories. He has another 22 in the postseason. Belichick has 298 regular-season wins and 31 postseason victories.
But Belichick had Brady at quarterback for nearly 19 seasons. Except for two starts by Bledsoe in 2001 (before he suffered the injury that opened the door for Brady), 15 in 2008 (after Brady suffered a torn ACL), and four in 2016 (during Brady’s #Deflategate suspension), it was all Brady from 2001 through 2019 — including every postseason game the Patriots played under Belichick. Since Brady left New England, Belichick has missed the playoffs twice in three years, and the Patriots lost by 30 to the Bills in their lone post-Brady playoff game.
Reid, who has been a head coach for every game of every season since 1999, has done it with a bunch of different quarterbacks starting games: Doug Pederson, Donovan McNabb, Koy Detmer, Mike McMahon, Jeff Garcia, A.J. Feeley, Kevin Kolb, Vick, Vince Young, Nick Foles, Alex Smith, Chase Daniel, Nick Foles, Patrick Mahomes, Matt Moore, and Chad Henne.
Reid, unlike Belichick, is regarded as one of the greatest quarterback developers of all time. At one point during his tenure with the Eagles, he would draft quarterbacks low, turn them into great players, flip them for more than he’d given up to get them, and watch them become not nearly as good elsewhere as they had been under Reid. He also made one of the most savvy quarterback moves ever, pulling the plug on McNabb and foisting him onto Washington just as McNabb’s skills were eroding.
Here’s the other important reality that shows how the gap has closed. In the four years since Belichick last won a postseason game, Reid has won two Super Bowls and gone to another one. And he still has Mahomes. And he will have Mahomes.
And Reid is six years younger than Belichick.
So, in six years (if Reid stays that long), how many more Super Bowl wins will he have? By then, the answer to Vick’s question could become obvious — especially if Belichick continues to spin his wheels without a true franchise quarterback.
In the ongoing conversation about Mahomes’s effort to catch Brady, Reid’s effort to catch Belichick is rarely mentioned. Unlike Mahomes, who needs five to catch Brady, Reid needs only four to catch Belichick.
And, again, Reid had Mahomes. Which makes a huge difference when it comes to coaches seeming to be great coaches.
As one coach recently remarked in a text exchange over the post-Brady struggles in New England, the chess match on game day becomes a lot each when one team is playing with pawns and the other is stacked with queens and rooks.
While Belichick’s team isn’t hardly a collection of pawns, Reid has the ultimate chess piece, and he’s still on the front end of his prime.