The Super Bowl LX Teams Won't Both Be Contenders

Last one here as we round out our series, Albert, are the divergent paths or potentially divergent paths of the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. We've got to talk about the teams that actually made the Super Bowl. I have resisted, and I'm doing my all 272 record predictions now, I have resisted the temptation to basically sink the New England Patriots. Now, are they going to be a 13-14 win team? I don't think so. Are they going to be a better 10-win team? Maybe. Let's start there. I think that in every conceivable way, the Patriots have improved their roster this offseason. Now it's up to how they handle the weathers of the schedule, how everybody stays healthy. Is Mike Vrabel still Mike Vrabel? That situation seems to just be blowing away. I don't know. I don't know. I think this team has a potential to surprise a lot of people this year. I like that they were aggressive in fixing some things. I think that some of the things that affected the commanders in year two with Dan Quinn and Jaden Daniels are in play here. The schedule is tougher. They had great injury luck last year. That generally doesn't happen two years in a row. They are older in spots. That was what really hurt the commanders last year. They hung on to some guys, and some of the guys came back and got hurt or weren't the same. You are relying now on some older guys, Harold Landry on the edge, Robert Spillane as an off-ball linebacker, Carlton Davis opposite Christian Gonzalez at corner, AJ Brown now as an older receiver, Morgan Moses at right tack, although you drafted Caleb Lomu, so you have a backstop there. What I do like is that this isn't just them running it back and that they were able to move some pieces around so the team looks a little different than it did a year ago, which I think is key. I think Drake takes another step. Again, I love his makeup, love his talent, and I think the ceiling for him is he could be the best player in football someday. I don't think it's going to happen this year, but he could be the best player in football someday. It's the same thing I said with Drake, which is you may be battling some forces that didn't exist last year, but there should be incremental improvement in a lot of different areas. You could make the argument that depending on who plays, you almost have four new starters on each side of the ball, which is rare for a team that made the Super Bowl and I think shows a keen understanding by Elliott Wolfe and Mike Vrabel of like, okay, we understand the parameters that last year occurred in and we need to be way better. It's not an excuse to say that we arrived too early, but I think one of the benefits of arriving too early is that it exposes your fatal flaws and this team had a few. Seattle went after them and they ended up kind of knocking them out in the Super Bowl, which is fine. I think that's what all of us thought was going to happen anyway, but to bring back the Drake-May point, I think what we're not talking enough about is the fact that what if he's the best player in the NFL this year? You know what I mean? It disappears a lot of the other issues. I mean, look at how many issues the Bills have had collectively throughout the run of Josh Allen. Well, that's what a great quarterback is, though. A great quarterback's an eraser. You know what I mean? A great quarterback can cover. That's to me when a guy becomes truly great. When you have issues on your roster and he can literally erase them. You have a deficient defense, he can score more. You have an offensive line that's got issues, he gets rid of the ball faster. You got a receiver group that can't separate, he can throw into tighter windows. To me, that's sort of the last level of, okay, this guy's truly elite, is what Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes have been able to do, which is, oh yeah, this isn't perfect around me, but we're still winning because I'm that good. The other side of this coin is the Seattle Seahawks. I think that maybe you could peg them as having a quiet offseason. It's interesting for John Schneider because this is the second time that he gets to look at a Super Bowl champion roster and have to decide, who am I going to pay, who am I going to let go, and what ingredients do I need to keep this moving and what ingredients are kind of superfluous to building a champion. We had the Russell Wilson debacle where I think he rose to a point where it made some of the other players uncomfortable. Who do you pay on the Legion of Boom? Who do you wait to pay on the Legion of Boom? All that kind of stuff. He had that issue, I think, in Seattle this year where it's like, okay, I didn't think, I mean, I'm curious what your thought is on this. I would guess if you gave that whole team truth serum, they didn't think Rasheed Shaheed was coming back. I don't think they thought Kenneth Walker, I mean, they knew Kenneth Walker wasn't coming back, but I think they got more than they thought they would, and they have a new owner, I think, that's going to bring a positive new energy to that building. I don't think the Seahawks are going anywhere. In fact, I have them going back to the Super Bowl this year. I think one of the things you've got to look at with the Seahawks is they still have a lot of players who are ascending. We talked about this with the Packers yesterday. The Packers' strength is so many of their guys are still ascending, and I think that's sort of where Seattle is. You get to argue Jackson Smith and Jigba as the offensive player of the year, still may have another level that he hasn't reached yet. Devin Witherspoon, same thing. Nicky Manwari may be just scratching the surface of who he can be. Byron Murphy, I think, has a chance to grow into a dominant, dominant defensive tackle. Charles Cross, already one of the best left tackles in football. You're bringing in Jedarium Price to play running back, and Zach Charbonnet was a damn good back before he got hurt. We'll see what he brings to the table. A.J. Barner looked really good at tight end. You start to tick off the names, and it's all these guys who are third, fourth-year guys. To me, last year was kind of the window opening for that group, and they win the Super Bowl. I think the strength of the Seahawks is that so much of that talent is homegrown. So much of that talent took steps last year and the environment in the building is really, really good. Now, that doesn't mean they don't have questions. I think the biggest one is replacing Clint Kubiak and bringing in Brian Flory. Brian Flory is really well thought of in San Francisco, and we'll see what it looks like with Brian Flory as the offensive coordinator there. I think some people will still have questions about Sam Darnold, although I'd argue he's had two damn good seasons for two different teams. I think we kind of know what he is now. It's hard to really look at that team, though, and pick away. Even the guys they let go, if you look at their draft class, the Seahawks' draft class was sort of logical, where they draft Price to replace Walker. They draft Bud Clark out of TCU to replace Kobe Bryant. They draft Julian Neal out of Arkansas to replace Tariq Willen. They draft Bo Stevens because that other guard position has been a problem. You start to look at this stuff and it's like, if what we're picking away at is, oh, they had a coordinator change and some people still have doubts about the quarterback, they're in a really good spot. I had heard through the grapevine this offseason that the initial meetings between Brian Flory and Mike McDonald, there was just some sparks there, just like football sparks. Everyone's like, oh man, I think that sometimes when a coach meets his ideological counterpoint offensively, special things can happen. While it's rare for Mike to go back-to-back on this, I think one of the best things that could have happened to Mike McDonald was winding up with a coordinator that he didn't want in his first year. I'm not saying that he didn't want the coordinator, it's just that he ended up not wanting it. I'd also say there's a pretty good track record of guys coming out of San Francisco and becoming good coordinators. I'd say if you look at a Mike McDaniel, Michael Floor, Clint Kubiak, now Flory, I think eventually Clay Kubiak is going to be part of all this. I'd say Kyle Shanahan has proven himself to be pretty good at identifying coaches and developing coaches, even if those guys sometimes feel like while they're there, it's like, I know Kyle can be the all-encompassing guy. I know some guys feel like they have to leave there to get the opportunity that they're looking for. It seems like a lot of smart guys come out of there on the offensive side of the ball. It's because they have to be, right? I think that there are people who call plays and there are people who understand the play from its most elemental place. I think that that's San Francisco, that's the Rams, that's the way that Belichick's defensive coaches always were. I think that while the Belichick defensive coach track record wasn't great, I think moving forward, a lot of them were still good coordinators. Even Matt Patricia, when he was in Philly, didn't know the system, came in and at least helped stabilize it. There are examples of that through time in Ohio State. He's crushing it right now. I think that the same is true with Kyle Shanahan and his guys offensively. They just understand the taste of the dirt on a given play. They know it down to that basic of a function. That's why they all say you have to learn it at grassroots because if you don't know the detail on every single thing, then you don't have the offense. I think Kyle would tell you, he's like, anyone can drop my plays. Any coach can sit there and drop my plays. They don't know why I'm doing it. That's the key. I think that's really what it is.