Every week, FOX Sports NFL Insider Peter Schrager opens his notebook and opines on three of the biggest storylines around the league. Here are his takes heading into Week 16, including why Bill Belichick chose not to pursue potential NFL jobs, how the Bills are set up for success down the stretch, and a hot head coaching candidate to watch in Tampa Bay.
Belichick Aftermath
I think it’s fair to say there could be two truths with how the Bill Belichick to UNC news played out over the last week: 1. Belichick can be genuinely excited to do what he loves most — coach football — and wasn’t willing to wait around until January to see if he could do it at the NFL level, and 2. Reading the tea leaves, it appeared less and less likely or appealing to do the latter. I don’t think there was a sure thing waiting for Belichick in January, but I also don’t think he was all that interested in any of the potential NFL openings. He did indeed reach out to the Jets just to gauge their interest. When they said he’d have to wait until January, and thus, miss his chance with UNC, he moved on from those conversations and took the offer in hand.
In addition to continuing to do what he loves, he gets to build UNC as a program in his likeness and without interference from owners or a team president. His new general manager at UNC is Mike Lombardi, his lifelong friend, who will be in lockstep with him in approach and philosophy. The only known staff member besides at this moment in time is Freddie Kitchens, but I’d expect a long list of notable NFL names and potentially family as well as family of his friends on staff. That might not have been possible in the NFL. And I’m getting the sense Belichick wasn’t so enamored with the current NFL, anyway. So he takes his hoodie to the college game and there’s no harm done. And Don Shula — who famously discredited the 2007 Patriots team and Belichick’s team’s “near perfect” accomplishments before passing — remains the NFL’s all-time wins leader. Everyone seems to be coming around to the idea of Belichick in Chapel Hill and digging it. If he’s happy, that’s great. But I have to think Belichick didn’t anticipate his final season in New England being his last in the NFL when he mutually parted ways with Robert Kraft back in January 2024.
Bill Belichick decided to take the UNC job instead of waiting for potential NFL openings
The AFC Mini-Playoffs Start Saturday
The next two weeks are going to be an absolute gauntlet for six of the AFC’s top seven teams. Six teams will be playing on short weeks — for four teams, multiple games on multiple short weeks — and it’s going to serve as a little mini-AFC tournament.
One team — the Buffalo Bills — are immune to whatever AFC power-on-AFC crime is about to unfold.
Let’s start from the back and move to the front, here. The NFL scheduling Gods had the Bengals and Browns playing on the Week 16 Thursday night game. About a month ago, they went into their little war room and came out and decided to approach the Broncos with an ask. You see, the NFL’s scheduling rules state that no team will ever play two Thursday night road games in a season. The Broncos played in New Orleans in Week 7. Thirty-one other head coaches would never consider waiving that rule. But there’s one coach who potentially would. The NFL went for it. They asked Sean Payton if — and this was a month ago — he’d be willing to move his Week 16 Sunday game in Los Angeles against the Chargers to a Thursday night. Payton, whether it was because he was thinking of a nice long break afterward or his desire to be under the lights in primetime in L.A. (I think there’s something to the latter there…seriously), said “Let’s do it.” So, now, the Chargers and Broncos, the current No. 6 and No. 7 seeds in the AFC, will duke it out in what will be their second games in a span of five days. That’s rough on the body in September. It’s even rougher in late December.
Meanwhile, the Chiefs, Ravens, Texans and Steelers all play Saturday this week against each other, and then switch up opponents and play other teams in that foursome five days later on Christmas Day. When viewed from a 30,000-foot angle, we’ve got a little mini-AFC playoffs occurring weeks before the actual AFC playoffs. There are a million questions and layers to the way these six coaches want to handle things. Do you play Patrick Mahomes with his injured ankle on Saturday against a Texans front-7 that has brutalized quarterbacks all season? Do you rest him for two weeks, daring to lose the No. 1 seed with a pair of losses? Does Pittsburgh monitor T.J. Watt’s ankle, given his importance to the team, and knowing the fact they’ve got to face two tough offensive lines in five days? What’s Houston playing for at this point, knowing Indianapolis just lost, making the AFC South crown an all-but-definite conclusion?
As we list all these questions and quandaries, the Bills are sitting up in Western New York, relatively healthy, very happy, and with a standard schedule of Sunday game, Sunday game, Sunday game. Their opponents? The Patriots. The Jets. The Patriots. That is a different situation than the other six.
Josh Allen and the Bills are set up for success these next three weeks.
Liam Coen’s Surge
Liam Coen’s name went from being whispered as a head coaching candidate to now being screamed in league circles. I talk to many sources and can state with good information that Coen is getting the long, hard look from NFL teams who’ll be running head coaching searches in January. Coen had a nearly impossible task ahead of him this season. Come in and replace Dave Canales, who after one season left to become head coach in Carolina after his OC tenure in Tampa, and make the Bucs better. Coen’s done that and more. The Bucs’ offense is on fire. They entered Sunday’s game against the Chargers with the third-best total offense, the fifth-ranked scoring offense and the eighth-best rushing offense in the league. They then dropped 40 on the Chargers’ No. 1 ranked defense, tallying 223 rushing yards along the way — finishing with 506 yards of total offense. Coen’s got the goods and the resume and a nice bit of momentum. He’ll get the interviews in January, too.
Bucs OC Liam Coen is a name to watch in NFL head coaching searches.
NFL Stat of the Week
The Bills have eight straight games with 30 points or more. That ties the longest single-season streak in NFL history. The 2013 Denver Broncos are the only other team to achieve such heights.
Peter Schrager is an NFL Insider for FOX Sports and a host of “Good Morning Football” on NFL Network. You can follow him on Twitter at @PSchrags.
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