The biggest question every Super Bowl contender still has to answer with OTAs going

We’ve made it through free agency and the draft, and we’re getting into OTAs. Sure, teams are going to make some training camp trades and sign veterans later on in the year, but we’re going into the darkness of the NFL offseason, and rosters are mostly set. 

That means that it’s time to ask questions, and there’s no better place to start than with some of the main characters in the league. 

Los Angeles Rams

Biggest Question: Will the Rams care about special teams this year?

We already know the answer to that: No, absolutely not. Sean McVay would probably spit in your face, kick you in the nards, and make fun of your hair if you asked him where kicking the ball lands on his list of priorities. So let’s move on to a secondary question.

Biggest Question (Part 2): Who’s the man behind the man?

The Rams are just about as complete as you could possibly imagine for a team in May. That’s why it was a good process for them to get a backup quarterback back in the draft… Now, the execution of that process in drafting Ty Simpson 13th overall? That was bad, but the process was there. 

They’ve got an unbelievable starting 22 players, but there’s not that much behind them. It’s like that pretty much everywhere for them. If Devante Adams has another hamstring thing this season, they don’t have another cat that will make up for that production the same way. The same thing with Puka Nacua, except the worry isn’t a hamstring injury; it’s anti-Semitic comments and concussions.

You can argue that those two guys are elite, and there isn’t anyone out there who will make up for their production. That’s a good argument.

Look at their offensive line: Rob Havenstein retired this year after being their starting right tackle since 2015. That means it’s time for Warren McClendon to take over. If he goes down, that means David Quessenberry or their third-round rookie Keagen Trost is going to have to come in. Neither of those guys is a good option; swing tackles are important.

If Kobie Turner, Poona Ford, or Braden Fiske go down, they’re going to be losing a lot of production with whoever has to rotate in. 

As a matter of fact, it’s easier to just list the positions where they have depth: Tight end, cornerback, and running back. This is just a champagne problem.

Seattle Seahawks

Biggest Question: What’s Brian Fleury’s deal?

The only downside to winning a Super Bowl is that some of your coaches and players get yoinked. For the Seahawks, the players they lost were Kenneth Walker III, Riq Woolen, Boye Mafe, and Coby Bryant. So far, they’ve replaced most of them in the draft and in free agency, just like every other team.

The problem with losing part of your coaching staff, especially your offensive coordinator, is that you’re behind the eight-ball because your season ends later than everyone else's. That means a lot of the high-end coordinators have already been snatched up by other teams (the Chargers hired Mike McDaniel on Jan. 26. The Super Bowl was on Feb. 8). 

Luckily for the Seahawks, it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been because their offensive coordinator, Klint Kubiak, agreed to be the Raiders' new head coach before the Super Bowl (on Feb. 2). That means they knew they were going to have an opening, and they probably got a little bit of a head start on the hiring process. 

The guy they went with to replace Kubiak is this guy named Brian Fleury. His NFL coaching career started in Buffalo back in 2013, where he was a quality control coach. After that, he spent a couple of years in Cleveland as a linebackers coach. Then he went to Miami to be a football nerd (research analyst and director of football research). 

In 2019, he took a job with the 49ers. His first year there, he was a defensive quality control coach. In his second and third years (2020 and 2021), he was an offensive quality control coach. In his fourth, fifth, and sixth years (2022, 2023, and 2024), he was the tight ends coach. Last year, he was their run game coordinator and their tight ends coach. 

So let’s look at the pros and cons of that:

• Pro: He’s been good enough to stick around a single franchise for seven years.
• Con: He might’ve hitched his wagon to a Prime-George Kittle.
• Pro: Those seven years were spent in (and around) a Kyle Shanahan offense.
• Con: The 49ers' running game last year was very, very mediocre.
• Pro: The Shanahan scheme has been very successful in the past.
• Con: ‘Being around the scheme’ and ‘implementing the scheme’ are two very different things.
• Pro: Both he and Sam Darnold were in the same building in 2023.
• Con: He’s never called plays before.

We’ve seen Sam Darnold struggle; he spent the first five years of his career struggling and looking really, really terrible. Then, he went to Minnesota with a head coach who is a quarterback guy and had an awesome season. Then he went to Seattle with a tried-and-true offensive coordinator, and he won the dadgum Super Bowl.

To put it plainly: when Darnold doesn’t have that elite-level guidance/support staff around him, we’ve seen him struggle. 

I’m not trying to say that he’s going to go back to his old ways next year. Hell, during the postseason, I said, "I'm not going to believe in Sam Darnold until I see him not choke away a playoff game.” Sure enough, the next week he went out and beat the Rams in the NFC Championship Game. 

I’m sticking to that, and so should you. However, Brian Fleury has a lot of pressure on his shoulders in 2026 because we’ve seen what those good OCs and offensive HCs can get out of Darnold… And the cat has never had this kind of job before. Just keep your antennas up until about halfway through the season. 

Baltimore Ravens

Biggest Question: What’s this whole thing going to look like now?

For the past 18 years, the only constant thing in Baltimore has been that you knew you were going to get a physical and competitive team, at a minimum. That was all due to John Harbaugh being the CEO head coach. 

That’s the past. This offseason, the Ravens moved on from him, and now Jesse Minter is their new head coach. In three years, this guy went from being the defensive coordinator for the National Championship Michigan Wolverines under Jim Harbaugh, to being the defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Chargers under Jim Harbaugh, to being the Ravens’ new head coach, replacing John Harbaugh. That’s one hell of a ride.

On top of that, they lost a couple of key players who were more or less staples for the franchise. Tight ends Isaiah Likely and Charlie Kolar went to the Giants and the Chargers, respectively. That leaves 30-year-old (and maybe washed) Mark Andrews as the only real veteran pass-catching tight end… in an offense that used to love targeting tight ends.

Who knows what that will look like in Declan Doyle’s offense? He was the Bears’ offensive coordinator last year, but we all know Ben Johnson actually runs that show. 

Center Tyler Linderbaum has been the anchor for the Ravens' offensive line for the past four seasons. Danny Pinter, Jovaughn Gwyn, and Corey Bullock are the three cats who are probably going to compete for the starting job this year. Bullock was a UDFA from last season, and Gwyn and Pinter were FA signings this year.

Of those three, Pinter has had the most NFL snaps as a center with 617 through his six-year career. None of them is in the same solar system as Linderbaum, performance or experience-wise. That’s trouble.

They also lost the fullback Patrick Ricard and punter Jordan Stout. Those are two specialists, so it’s not a massive thing, but they were two of the most Ravens-y players in recent history, so it’s going to be quite a bit different when it comes to heavy personnel packages and punting. 

The bottom line is that there are a lot of changes happening to a team that hardly ever has any changes. It’s worth asking what that’s going to look like.

Buffalo Bills

Biggest Question: What are we doing here?

After last season, the Bills have cemented themselves as a team that just can’t do it. It’s been seven straight years of them getting to the postseason and falling short. Most of the time, that’s been because of the Chiefs, but they didn’t make it to the postseason last year. Instead, they got their teeth ripped out by the Broncos in the Divisional round. 

With the way that team was built (on both offense and defense), Josh Allen was going to have to play absolutely perfectly for four straight postseason games. He did that in the Wild Card round when they took down a better Jaguars team… But in that Broncos game, he fumbled three times, lost two of them, and threw two interceptions.

For him, that’s just about as far away from perfect as you can get. 

It all fell on him because his defense didn’t have an ounce of juice (which it’s never really had in the postseason), and his wide receivers never really made plays. So what did the Bills do this offseason? They made some moves to get pass rushers in free agency and the draft and signed a single wide receiver.

They signed Bradley Chubb in free agency, which was a great move. He’s a great football player, and if he can stay healthy, he’s shown that he can be just as productive at the end of the season as he is at the beginning of the season. 

In the Draft, they traded back into the second round and grabbed T.J. Parker, the edge from Clemson. It just so happens that his player comp is Bradley Chubb. That’s a perfectly fine draft pick. 

As far as pass catchers go, their big move was trading a second-round pick to the Bears for D.J. Moore. This one doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense because he’s not a dominant player, and if you’re trading a second-round pick, you should be getting a dominant player for your dominant quarterback. 

Moore’s not a great route runner, and he’s 29 years old, so he’s probably not going to develop into a great route runner. He’s not a great downfield threat, and he’s more of a ‘win from scheme’ player than he is a ‘win with talent and athleticism’ player. It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense why the Bills went after him instead of someone like A.J. Brown or George Pickens.

We’ve seen how much fun and how good he can be when he has an elite receiver (Stefon Diggs)...  But Brandon Beane will only get Josh Allen one wide receiver per year for some reason. It stinks, and it doesn’t make sense. 

For posterity’s sake, they did draft Skylar Bell in the fourth round, but he’s a shifty guy and not a downfield killer. 

Kansas City Chiefs

Biggest Question: Is Mahomes going to start the season?

The most important question for the Chiefs is whether or not their quarterback, who tore his ACL in the middle of December, is going to be back at the start of the season. That’s a no-brainer, and it’s not interesting.

Biggest Question (Part 2): Did you do enough?

Defense has been the story of the Chiefs' offseason, and that’s totally fine. They lost cornerback Jaylen Watson, cornerback Josh Williams, linebacker Leo Chenal, and safety Bryan Cook. Then they traded their other cornerback, Trent McDuffie, to the Rams. On top of that, they didn’t have a good pass rush or defensive line last season. That’s a whole lot of problems.

They signed a few defensive backs (Alohi Gilma, Kader Kohou, and Kaiir Elam), but they’re not good football players. Those aren’t the cats who are going to shore up what you would hope would be the weaker side of the ball in Kansas City. 

So they went to the draft and used their premium draft picks to restock. They got cornerback Mansoor Delane and defensive tackle Peter Woods in the first round and edge rusher R Mason Thomas in the second round. Then they also used a fourth-round pick on safety Jadon Canady. 

It’s the Chiefs, and their defensive coordinator is Steve Spagnuolo. So I would bet that at least three of those four guys are going to end up being studs… But is that enough?

They weren’t good last year, and that was with the high-caliber players that they lost. Are four rookies going to be enough to make that defense good? Especially if Mahomes isn’t there at the beginning of the season?

Then you look at their offense: Last year, Travis Kelce was their leading pass catcher, and he’s not getting any younger. Hollywood Brown was their leading wide receiver, and he’s not with the team. That leaves Rashee Rice, Xavier Worthy, and Tyquan Thornton as their wide receivers this season.

Rice can keep himself out of trouble, Worthy’s looking like he’s nothing more than a gadgety guy, and Thornton is nothing more than a mediocre deep threat.

This is all setting up to be another season where Mahomes is going to have to play like a superhero every single game. He’s definitely got that in his bag, but guys coming off of debilitating knee injuries don’t normally come back and look exactly like themselves right off the bat.

Now, they have upgraded their running game, which is great. They got rid of Matt Nagy and rehired Eric Bieniemy as their offensive coordinator, and they also signed Kenneth Walker III in free agency. Bieniemy was their OC from 2018 to 2022, which were the years their offense was disgustingly good. And Waler is going to be the best running back they’ve had in the past five years.

If you’re trying to help out a quarterback who’s coming off a shredded knee and open up a passing game with a glaring lack of real talent, getting an OC and a good running back is a great place to start…

But is that going to be enough? Buddy… I don’t know. It’s shaping up to be a rough year in KC.

Philadelphia Eagles

Biggest Question: How different is this offense going to be?

Two days after the Eagles lost to the 49ers in the Wild Card round of the playoffs, they fired their offensive coordinator, Kevin Patullo, because he was a football terrorist. It’s the offensive coordinator’s job to coordinate the offense, and for the entirety of the 2025 season, the Eagles' offense looked uncoordinated.

It took a little bit for them to hire their new guy, but they ended up settling on Sean Mannion, the Packers’ former quarterbacks coach. It sounds like the plan is for him to come in and implement a Shanahan-style offense.

That’s totally cool… But that is a whole lot different than anything the Eagles have ever had. 

Since Sirainni got hired, the Eagles offensive game plan has been: ‘You’re bigger, you’re better, you’re faster, and you’re stronger. Go out there and beat the guy across from you.’ That can work, and it has worked. We saw the Eagles make it to two Super Bowls in the past four seasons, and they won one of them using that game plan. However, we’ve also seen some really, really, really terrible offenses as well. 

For the most part, receivers haven’t been schemed open. If they don’t beat the guy across from them, nothing works. Last year, it didn’t work, and every drive went run, run, pass, punt. It was bad, sad, and boring.  

Based on what we know of Mannion's past and the play style of the pass catchers that the Eagles brought in this year, this is an offense that’s going to use scheme and not lean purely on athleticism.

Their first round pick, wide receiver Makai Lemon, isn’t an athletic specimen… But he’s sick. A lot of the damage he does is when he’s on the move and makes a catch over the middle. The hiccup there is that Jalen Hurts doesn’t really throw the ball over the middle of the field. 

Is that because he’s not good at it? Is it because with his previous coordinators, those over-the-middle throws aren’t open, and Hurts doesn’t want to throw contested balls in the middle of the field? Or is it because Sirianni’s obsession with limiting turnovers, no matter what, meant those throws weren’t a primary read?

We’ll never know the reason, but we will find out if Hurts can do it. 

The offensive line is a big part of this whole thing, too. Last year, they were terrible. Lane Johnson missed more than half of the season, Landon Dickerson looked hurt, and Cam Jurgens looked bad. Johnson had time to heal, and Dickerson and Jurgens went to South America to get stem cells for whatever their problems are (I’m not a doctor. I don’t know what the problem is). You’d rather not have to have your starting offensive linemen leave the country to get treatment, but if it works, then it’s all peachy.

The biggest change that the Eagles have had this offseason is that Jeff Stoutland isn’t the offensive line coach anymore. It sounds like he wasn’t seeing eye-to-eye with other people in the building (Read: Nick Sirianni), and he stepped down. 

He’s been the guy for the past 13 seasons, and he's the best offensive line coach in the NFL by a mile. Not having him on the coaching staff is terrifying and uncomfortable.

Now it’s Chris Kuper, the Vikings' old O-Line coach. The offensive lines that he coached in Minnesota greatly underachieved. Stout liked running his offensive line the way he liked it. He’d run all kinds of concepts, whereas Shanahan-style offenses are much more reliant on outside-zone runs. 

It was a running game that produced the best full-season by a running back in NFL history just two seasons ago, but they’re changing it up now. Is that a good idea? Probably not… But at least they’re changing things and not just doing what didn’t work last year. 

The Eagles are in a tough spot right now, and we won’t get an answer to the question until probably November. So for now, just chill and appreciate A.J. Brown while he’s still technically on the team.

New England Patriots

Biggest Question: When’s there going to be good news?

For most fanbases, the offseason after you lose a Super Bowl stinks. If there is a fanbase that wouldn’t think it stinks, it’d be the Patriots. Part of that is because they’ve won so many Super Bowls, but also because they’re desensitized to losing Super Bowls, because they’ve done that more than any other team… However, this isn’t a normal offseason.

This whole Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini thing is spiraling out of control. It started off with a few pictures, and there was some plausible deniability about whether or not they were hooking up. 

Just about every week since then, more information, pictures, video clips, and theories have been coming out. At this point, these two look like they were having a straight-up affair for six years.

It’s crazy. It’s weird. It’s bad… Not necessarily for Vrabel or Russini, because if it’s all true, they’re terrible people who know what they did and they deserve to be flamed…

But the fact of the matter is that Vrabel is the head coach of a high-profile NFL team, and this weird, crazy, and bad thing has affected, and is going to keep affecting him, on a human level… And there’s a decent chance that affects his ability to do his job… And that affects the mental well-being of Patriots fans. 

It’s 2026: if all of the details on this whole thing dropped all at once, this story would probably be over by now. But because stuff keeps trickling out, the story isn’t going away, and it’s got to be tiring for Pats fans. 

(As a Patriots hater, this is delightful and wildly entertaining. A Spotify playlist? Are you kidding me? That's hilarious.) 

The good news is that in less than a month, the Patriots are going to trade for A.J. Brown. That’s going to be the highlight of the offseason for them. He changed the trajectory of the Eagles' entire franchise back in 2022, and you’ve got to think that he’ll end up doing the same for New England. 

The bad news is that there is certainly going to be more Vrabel/Russini stuff that comes out within 24 hours of that trade, and that’s all we’ll end up caring about. 

Los Angeles Chargers

Biggest Question: Is this year going to be any different?

No matter how much the Chargers set themselves up for success, something goes wrong. That’s the way it has been. That’s the way it is now. That’s the way it’s going to be in the future. 

Last offseason, they signed Rashawn Slater and solidified their offensive line… Less than two weeks later, he popped his patellar tendon, everything went into the garbage disposal, they had one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL, and Justin Herbert had another season where he got pulverized for 17 straight games.

This offseason, they hired Mike McDaniel as their offensive coordinator. He was the best offensive coordinator available this offseason, and his offense should match what the Chargers are trying to do… But is that enough? 

They reloaded the offensive line again; they signed Cole Strange and Tyler Biadasz in free agency, and then spent four of their eight draft picks on offensive linemen as well. That’s a perfectly fine strategy, and it should help them avoid another nightmare.

If there was a spot for criticism, it’d be how they spent the rest of their draft picks.

They used their first-round pick on a 25-year-old edge rusher. That’s probably fine for this year because he’s more developed than the younger guys that were available, but he’ll be 30-years-old by the time he potentially plays on his fifth-year option. 

They also didn’t do anything to get Herbert any pass catchers. Last year, their leading wide receivers were Ladd McConkey, Keenan Allen, Quentin Johnston, and Tre’ Harris. As of now, the only change is that Keenan Allen isn’t with the team, and they drafted Brenen Thompson in the fourth round.

Thompson’s downfield burner… But at five feet and nine inches tall, and 164 pounds, he’s not just a small dude in NFL terms, he’s just a straight-up small dude in general. 

Personnel-wise, it doesn’t seem like that offense really set itself up to have the lethal passing game that it needs. They’re following the Bills and the Chiefs: They’re not trying to surround their quarterback with talent. Instead, they’re trying to have their quarterback elevate everyone around him. 

Is that going to work? Is that good enough? Maybe… but it’s the Chargers, so probably not. Whatever the case, Mike McDonald has his work cut out.

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