Richard Sherman says it was a game against the Eagles in 2021 that told him his career was just about over.
Sherman said on his podcast that while covering DeVonta Smith, he felt the physical pain of his body not being able to cut on a dime the way a cornerback needs to do against an athletic young receiver like Smith.
“DeVonta must’ve run this comeback ,” Sherman said, via Doug Farrar of USA Today. “I had him under control, I was like, bam, quick jam, easy, had him under control. He must’ve stopped and I tried to stop and my whole groin said, ‘Snap, snap, snap, snap,’ and I said, ‘Whoa, whoa.’”
Sherman said he toughed it out and stayed in the game, but knew at that moment that he couldn’t keep up anymore.
“Then you’re trying to guard and chasing him around and you’re like please don’t throw him the ball, please. My coach is looking at me on the sideline like, ‘Hey, you wanna come out, you wanna come out?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, but they’re in a hurry-up,’ so I’m like bailing out. At that moment I was like yeah, this is probably my last year. I don’t got it for these young dudes right here,” Sherman said.
Sherman missed the next two months after that injury, came back and played briefly in two games late that season, and that was the end of his career.
For quarterbacks who have won a Super Bowl (like Aaron Rodgers), there’s a real question that emerges regarding what comes next. For those who are still chasing that first one, there’s no ambiguity. They won’t be satisfied until they climb the mountain.
Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, who nearly got there in 2022, remains driven to make it happen. And he enjoys the torment that comes with it.
“Everybody aspires to be the best and works to be the best, but ultimately you have to find some separation,” Hurts recently told Rob Maaddi of the Associated Press. “And that’s the thrill . There’s a thrill in not being satisfied and there’s a thrill in being on this journey, and I have embraced that. I love this game and I know my purpose within this game. I truly just want to be intentional. . . . So every day I just try to be the best that I can be and that is not based off of external factors. Those things don’t matter. You just try and control what you can.”
Hurts has the right mindset to succeed. We saw it last year, in his dramatic improvement following his second NFL season. This year, some wonder whether he’ll stay in the pocket more often and develop as more of a passer.
As Maaddi notes, Hurts isn’t saying.
“I put a lot of work in,” Hurts said when asked about the possibility of more passing and less running. “I invest a ton into this and always have, and I just want to continue to quantify my work. That’s been something that I’ve been able to do since I’ve been in college. So that’s always my goal. Find those weaknesses and turn them into your strengths. And then if you do have a strength, boost it and make it a touch stronger.”
Hurts will only ever be limited by the limits of his God-given abilities. He will always be driven to get the most out oeverything he has. There’s a powerful lesson in that for the rest of his teammates — and for the rest of us.
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.
The poor playing surface of Super Bowl LVII continues to be an issue from time to time. Eagles fans generally don’t want to be reminded of it, since it brings back bad memories of the loss. Chiefs fans generally don’t want to hear it, since it potentially undermines the win.
It recently came up after Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham said the Chiefs’ offensive line was “blessed” by the subpar footing on grass that didn’t perform the way it should. That prompted our report that the league has privately blamed the Super Bowl slip-n-slide on the players for not wearing the right shoes. And as that story got traction on Monday, former Eagles (now Lions) safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson chimed in.
“Man pre-game I went through 3 different cleats!!” Gardner-Johnson tweeted. “Even the studs wasn’t working explain that please.”
Added Gardner-Johnson: “Run that bowl back on legit grass, the Dline SMASH that Oline I’m sorry.”
The idea that the bad grass affected both teams equally ignores the differences between them. The Eagles had a much better pass rush. And the slippery field took just enough steam out of the pass rush to give Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes enough time to find open receivers.
Eagles receiver Devon Allen, who recently ran the fourth fastest 110-meter hurdles of the year, believes he’s faster than any other man in the NFL.
Allen made that declaration recently to TMZ.com.
“I definitely am ,” Allen said. “I’m not gonna roast [Tyreek Hill and DK Metcalf] because what they did [in track appearances] was impressive. I raced Tyreek Hill when I was in high school. We raced and he smoked me when we were in high school and DK Metcalf ran a 10.3 a couple years ago is super impressive for a guy that’s six-three, six-four, 225, but I think especially at the top level — top-five, top-10 in the world — there’s a big gap in terms of just performance.”
The problem for Allen is that the gap he owns in raw speed he doesn’t own in raw football ability. He has yet to make a 53-man roster, and he’s 28.
In his defense, he deliberately took him off from football. He’s now getting back into it.
“The first whirlwind for me was training camp, getting thrown into the fire, and realizing this isn’t college anymore,” Allen said of his 2022 experience with the Eagles. “I played at the University of Oregon, which is high-level ball, but the NFL takes it the another level.”
The clock is ticking for Allen to get to that other level. And he ultimately needs to be much more than fast (as many past track stars have learned) to make it in the NFL.