Former Colts quarterback Peyton Manning recently credited the late Jim Irsay as making Indianapolis a football town. Manning’s comment gave us an idea.
On Tuesday’s PFT Live, we did a draft of the best football towns.
It’s a subjective analysis, based on a variety of quantitative and qualitative factors. It’s based on what we’ve seen and what we’ve heard over our years of following pro football.
To those who made the list, congrats. To those who didn’t, we apologize.
For the full list, check out the video. But be advised: One of the teams picked, however, currently doesn’t have an NFL team.
Even if it should. Maybe it will again, one of these days.
Eagles linebacker Nakobe Dean’s bid to return from a torn patellar tendon is taking him to a place that’s unfamiliar to most football players.
Dean suffered the injury to his knee during the team’s victory over the Packers in their playoff opener and he’s hoping that stepping onto the dance floor will help him get back on the field sooner rather than later. Dean has been training with a Philadelphia ballet company as he tries to return to full strength.
“There’s way more flexibility, of course. Way more mobility,” Dean said, via NBCPhiladelphia.com. “It’s definitely something that’s helping with my rehab. You just feel a change immediately. After you stretch, you’re not as tight or as sore.”
Dean is not the first NFL player to look to ballet for help with preparing for the gridiron. Hall of Famers Walter Payton and Lynn Swann also dabbled in that area, so Dean is in good company as he looks for any way to speed up his return to action this offseason.
The Jets were among the 10 teams that voted to keep the tush push, defying the league’s desire to kill the play.
Could it be a sign that the Jets are planning to incorporate the technique into their offense, given that quarterback Justin Fields is on track to be the starter?
As noted by Rich Cimini of ESPN.com, Fields has attempted 12 push sneaks in his career. Eleven resulted in first downs.
Since 2021, only two quarterbacks have run the play more than Fields. Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts has 100 attempts (with an 86 percent success rate) and Bills quarterback Josh Allen has done it 55 times, with success happening on 50 occasions.
Fields’s 11-of-12 conversion rate puts him at a higher average than Hurts or Allen, with 91.667 percent success. So, yes, it’s entirely possible that the Jets opted to defy the wishes of the league office in order to advance the objectives of the team’s new coaching staff.
With the tush push here to stay (at least for another year), every team other than the Eagles has two potential objectives: (1) come up with a way to do it; and/or (2) come up with a way to stop it.
Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles recently explained that one of the team’s most prominent post-draft signings — defensive tackle Desmond Watson — wasn’t added to counter the Eagles’ signature play when the two teams meet in Week 4.
“To judge him right now is very early, and we didn’t get him for the tush push -- we got him because we really thought he could play,” Bowles said, via Jenna Laine of ESPN.com. “It’s just a matter of getting him to the point where he can play more than two or three plays [per drive].”
That’s the balance the Bucs are hoping to strike, between keeping him big while also making sure he’s not too big to handle the physical demands of taking repeated NFL snaps.
“Right now, we just have to see how long he can stay on the field, and [we] put him on a program where we think he can make some progress,” Bowles said. “We didn’t get him to say, ‘Hey, we have to put you on the field right now.’ It’s, ‘Hey, we can try to put you on this program and see what we can come up with and see if we can get our endurance better,’ and have him become a better player that way, then kind of see where he is.”
Still, Watson has plenty of work to do to parlay his position on the oversized 90-man offseason collection of players into a 53-man roster spot, especially since he arrives without the inherent benefit of the doubt that a draft pick often receives.
Watson nevertheless stands out, literally and figuratively, as a player whose unprecedented size can be an asset.
“We just haven’t seen someone that size,” Bucs defensive line coach Charlie Strong said. “He works, and he don’t mind working. I know with his size, everybody wants to make a big deal about it. But our players -- even the guys who are around him right now in our room -- they just look at him like, ‘He’s just like us. He’s got to go about his work and do his job.’”
Watson was listed at 437 pounds last year at Florida. He weighed in at 464 pounds during the Florida Pro Day workout. He said during the team’s rookie minicamp that he had lost 27 pounds to get back to 437.
On the Tampa Bay official online roster, Watson is listed at 264 pounds. Assuming someone accidentally transposed numbers (or tried to divide by the actual number by two and miscalculated), the actual reading is either 426. Or 462.
We’ll stick with 437, for present purposes. Coupled with Vita Vea (who is officially 347 pounds — which perhaps could mean 437 or 473 or even 734), that gives the Bucs 784 pounds that can be positioned at the tip of the tush-push spear.
Again, Watson first has to make the 53-man roster. If he does, it will make for an interesting moment when the Bucs host the Eagles, and when the Eagles are in a short-yardage or goal-line situation.
On Eagles player who would potentially benefit from a tush-push ban is running back Saquon Barkley. He lost plenty of potential touchdowns to his team’s signature play.
But Barkley wants to the Eagles to keep it. And he had some fairly strong comments for those who want to kill it.
“I think it’s soft, to be honest,” Barkley said on the Exciting Mics podcast with teammates Reed Blankenship and Cooper DeJean, via Nick Brinkerhoff of USA Today. “Everybody can do it. It’s not a play that we only can do. We happen to have one of the best and biggest O-lines, and Jalen Hurts can squat 600 pounds. That’s not our fault.”
Barkley’s remarks were made before the unsuccessful vote to eliminate the play. Still, 22 of 32 teams wanted to dump it. That’s 68.75 percent of the entire league.
“Josh Allen is super big, they’re not successful with it,” Barkley said. (The Bills use a different version of it, and they’re the only other team whose success compares to Philly’s.) “Lamar Jackson is one of the best running quarterbacks of all-time, they’re not successful with it. So it’s not something that everyone can’t do. Them trying to eliminate it, I think that’s kind of lame.”
Barkley made another important point: “And the teams that want to get rid of it are the teams that gotta see us two or three times a year.”
He’s right about that. Only two NFC teams joined the Eagles in supporting the ban — the Lions and the Saints. Of the 17 games the Eagles will play in 2024, only one opponent (Detroit) voted to let the Eagles keep their play.
The effort to get rid of the play was based on the hypothetical concern that it can create a safety issue, even without the data to prove it.
“Everybody can do it, there’s no health issue,” Barkley said.
The effort to ban the play will not end. The league office will keep studying the tush push. Which quite possibly means the league office will keep looking for proof to help twist two more arms to get the owners from 68.75 percent to 75 percent.
Think of it this way. If the NFL Constitution & Bylaws required a two-third supermajority to change the rules instead of three-fourths, the tush push would already be gone.
