NFL Rumors: TJ Watt's plea, Cowboys Mike McCarthy failure, Mike Vrabel's vision

Only eight teams will be left standing when the NFL’s wild-card weekend reaches its conclusion on Monday night. For the remaining 24 teams, the offseason beckons. A long road of uncertainty lies ahead as teams attempt to identify and remedy the root causes of their disappointing campaigns.

While the 2024 season may just have ended, preparations for the 2025 season have already begun. The next eight months will bring coaching changes, schematic adjustments, intense trade talks, roster cuts, free-agent bidding wars, heated contract negotiations, and intensive scouting.

The first order of business is to assess the coaching staff and retain as many key players as possible. Teams who failed to advance beyond the opening round of the playoffs will see plenty of change in the immediate aftermath of the 2024 season, and offseason storylines are already beginning to develop. 

T.J. Watt doesn’t want to leave the Steelers as negotiations loom

The Pittsburgh Steelers saw their season end in disappointment once again, but outside linebacker T.J. Watt doesn’t want to play anywhere else. 

“I want to be a Pittsburgh Steeler,” Watt said, via ESPN’s Brooke Pryor. “I don't want to leave this place ... I want to be part of the solution, not leave here and go somewhere else. That's not my intention at all.”

Heading into Week 15, Pittsburgh had a 10-3 record and held a firm lead for the AFC North title. At the time, they had just won three of their past four games, all of which were against divisional opponents. Then, everything fell apart. The Steelers ended the season with five consecutive losses, the last of which came against the Baltimore Ravens in the wild-card round.

Although coach Mike Tomlin is unlikely to be removed from his position, the upcoming offseason will surely bring plenty of roster changes. Watt is hoping he isn’t one of them. 

The 2021 Defensive Player of the Year still has one more season on the four-year, $112 million deal he signed in 2021, but he is eligible for a contract extension this offseason. Watt also has a salary cap hit of $30.4 million in 2025, which will likely need to be addressed if Pittsburgh wants the financial freedom to improve the roster in free agency. 

Mike McCarthy's playoff struggles were too much to overlook

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones released a statement on Monday to announce that the team would be parting ways with head coach Mike McCarthy. 

“Over the past week, Mike and I had the opportunity to conduct a joint review of all aspects of the past season, our players and staff, and also spent a considerable time discussing the road forward for the team,” Jones said. “These discussions were thorough and received an appropriate amount of time and depth to cover. Prior to reaching the point of contract negotiations, though, it became mutually clear that it would be better for each of us to head in a different direction. I thank Mike and wish him, his wife Jessica and their family the best. They have been a wonderful part of our community here.”

McCarthy joined the team in 2020 as the successor to former head coach Jason Garrett. Although McCarthy’s inaugural season was hampered by the pandemic, Dallas saw a sudden turnaround in 2021. McCarthy led the Cowboys to two division titles and three consecutive 12-win seasons, marking the franchise’s most victories in a three-year span since they won 37 games from 1992 to 1994. 

Unlike the 1992-94 Cowboys, who won two Super Bowl championships, McCarthy’s regular season success didn’t translate to the postseason. The San Francisco 49ers eliminated the Cowboys in the wild-card round in 2021 and in the divisional round in 2022. Last season, the Green Bay Packers trounced Dallas 48-32 at AT&T Stadium in the wild-card round.

After winning just one of his four playoff games, McCarthy entered the 2024 season on an expiring contract. It was widely believed that McCarthy would have to lead the Cowboys on a deep playoff run in order to earn a contract extension, but the embattled head coach was never given a fair opportunity. Dallas didn’t retain any of their key free agents after the 2023 season, and they didn’t bring in any external talent to replace the losses. A slew of injuries further thinned out the roster, and the Cowboys missed the playoffs with a 7-10 record.

Mike Vrabel outlined his collaborative vision for Patriots

The New England Patriots made the grave mistake of parting ways with head coach Bill Belichick after 24 seasons, and they didn’t realize it until it was too late. Belichick was replaced by de facto general manager Eliot Wolf and head coach Jerod Mayo, but it was a recipe that was destined to fail. The rookie general manager and rookie head coach did their best with a rookie quarterback, but the lack of experience at all three of those key positions led to plenty of rookie mistakes.

The Patriots finished with a 4-13 record, and team owner Robert Kraft fired first-year head coach Jerod Mayo almost immediately after the last game of the season. New England named Mike Vrabel as their new head coach, effectively replacing one former Patriots linebacker for another. Unlike Mayo, however, Vrabel possesses former head coaching experience. 

During the introductory press conference, Mike Giardi of Boston Sports Journal asked the new Patriots coach whether he would have the final say over personnel decisions, and Vrabel offered a glimpse into his vision for the future direction of the team.

 "The most important thing is that there's a shared organizational vision for what we want to do, how we want to work, and how we want to acquire players,” Vrabel said. “There are numerous ways to acquire players: free agency, trade, draft, post-draft process, and post-training camp. So again, just excited to get to sit down with Eliot and his staff.”

While Mayo is gone, Vrabel will still have to work with Wolf, who retained his official title as director of scouting.

“I need to sit down with his staff and figure out where what we need to do, and I'm confident that those types of decisions are all going to sort themselves out,” Vrabel said. “We don't want to always be on the same page. That's not the environment that we want to create. But we want to have a shared vision. And there are also different ways to get there, and I'm embracing that everybody's going to have a different personality. I don't want my staff to be like me. I don't want all our players to be similar. We're going to have diverse ideas, and that's critical to have those types of conversations. It's something that I'm looking forward to.”

The Tennessee Titans hired Vrabel as their head coach in 2018, and he led the team to a winning record in four consecutive seasons. The Titans made the AFC Championship Game in Vrabel’s second season, won the AFC South division in his third season, and earned the AFC’s No. 1 seed in his fourth season. He was fired after Tennessee fell below .500 in his final two seasons. Vrabel finished with a 54-45 record (.545), which he will need to improve to satisfy a fanbase that became accustomed to a .687 winning percentage under Belichick.