The numbers tell the story here. The Commanders have a chance to go to the Super Bowl because they have one of the most efficient offenses in the NFL. If we include playoff games, they rank fifth in offensive DVOA and 23rd in defensive DVOA. What are the things that we can generally expect to make an offense good? Sometimes, it’s the quarterback. Sometimes, it’s the supporting cast that makes the quarterback look good. Sometimes, it’s the coach that’s able to do more with less. Which one of those theories makes the most sense with this Commanders team? 

Kingsbury had four seasons as the head coach and offensive play caller of the Arizona Cardinals. His units ranked between 12th and 27th in offensive DVOA during those four seasons. Not a single top-10 ranking, let alone a top-five ranking like the Commanders have produced this year. Is it possible that Kingsbury spent some time in Thailand and came back transformed into an offensive genius? Perhaps. I do believe that people can change, and Kingsbury has done a nice job this season. But I think it’s far more likely that Daniels is making Kingsbury look good rather than the other way around. Daniels passes all the tests we generally look for when evaluating how responsible a quarterback is for an offense’s success. When pressured, he’s eighth in expected points added (EPA) per dropback. In other words, he can perform at a high level under less than ideal circumstances. On third and fourth downs—situations when the defense often knows that a pass is coming—Daniels is fourth in EPA per dropback. He has the highest EPA in the league on scrambles by a wide margin. The difference between him and Patrick Mahomes, who is no. 2 on those plays, is roughly the same as the difference between Mahomes and no. 15 Geno Smith. We’re not going to actually attribute that to the play calling, are we?

And then there’s the supporting cast. This is what makes Daniels’s rookie season especially impressive. He’s making everyone around him better. Wide receiver Terry McLaurin has never looked better. Tight end Zach Ertz has found the fountain of youth at 34 years old. Dyami Brown set career highs in receptions and yards. And an offensive line that was projected as possibly the worst in the NFL coming into the season has looked viable. Did all those players suddenly overachieve at the exact same time? Or do they look better because of Daniels? You tell me.

We’ll see if Daniels can extend the Commanders’ dream season with a win against the Eagles on Sunday. Regardless, he’ll have to prove next season that he can do it again. Success for young quarterbacks in the NFL is not linear. We saw that this season with Houston’s C.J. Stroud, who didn’t make a big leap in Year 2. But for now, Daniels is going to get a lot of people around him paid or promoted. That’s what happens in the NFL when a franchise lands a great quarterback—everybody eats. But when those things happen, just remember: Daniels is the catalyst, not the beneficiary. And it’s not particularly close.

For the Bears, hiring Ben Johnson was a chance worth taking.

I’m a sucker for the “new head coach enters team building for the first time” videos. We were blessed with a new one when Johnson arrived in Chicago on Tuesday.

I like to picture myself doing that on my first day at The Ringer. 

“We’re gonna make some great podcasts! We’re gonna write some great columns! It’s not gonna be easy, but with everyone pulling in the same direction, I believe we can build the best sports and pop culture website and podcast network in the world. HAND ME A MIC! WHO’S READY TO GET TO WORK?!?!”

OK, where were we? Oh yeah, the Bears. Let’s start with a caveat: Most of the time, it is really hard to know which of the new head coaches are going to work out and which are going to flop. As an organization, you try to have a good process and understand you are making a decision bound by uncertain conditions. I think the Bears did that here. There is real upside with hiring someone like Johnson. He built an elite offense in Detroit without an elite quarterback (I like Jared Goff, but c’mon). That is hard to do. And it wasn’t just a one-season thing. The Lions improved from seventh to fifth to third in offensive DVOA in three seasons with Johnson as their coordinator. Again, very impressive. The most straightforward path to sustained success is to build an offense that can be efficient year in and year out. That always gives a team a chance. If the Johnson–Caleb Williams partnership hits, and there’s a chance that it hits big, the Bears will be chasing championships for the next decade. That’s why the swing makes sense to me.

Of course, there are no guarantees here. The hard part about hiring the hotshot play caller is that we usually don’t know how they’re going to perform at the other aspects of the job. Leadership. Accountability. Building a quality staff. Game management. Player relationships. Talk to any first-time head coach, and they almost always express some version of the same idea: “I had to adjust to all the non-football stuff that came across my desk.” 

The point is that Johnson’s play calling and offensive scheming matter, but they’re not everything. He’ll need to prove he’s adept at the other aspects of the job. He’ll be dealing with a talented but inexperienced quarterback in Williams. He won’t have the same offensive line he had in Detroit, and he won’t have an explosive back like Jahmyr Gibbs or an All-Pro receiver who can win on every down like Amon-Ra St. Brown. In other words, it’s going to be a lot harder, and success might not come right away. 

But if you’re a Bears fan, at least the move makes sense. Go ahead and get pumped about next season (and maybe the next decade?), knowing that there’s a chance you’re going to get hurt again. But let’s be real: You don’t need me to remind you of that.

Josh McDaniels as OC? I guess the Patriots are out of new ideas.

New Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel has reportedly made his first big hire and it’s a familiar name: Josh McDaniels. There are smart people who know a lot about football who think that McDaniels is a brilliant offensive mind. I would like to see a little more proof—you know, maybe just one time where the guy had a successful stretch of coordinating an offense without Tom Brady or Bill Belichick by his side? McDaniels has spent the majority of his career in New England. But he spent almost two seasons as the Broncos head coach, one season as the offensive coordinator of the St. Louis Rams, and a season and a half as the Raiders head coach. Note that in both head-coaching stints, McDaniels was such a disaster that he got fired before even completing his second season.

I know what you’re saying: The Patriots aren’t hiring him as a head coach. They are hiring him as offensive coordinator. OK, let’s ignore everything else and just look at how McDaniels’s offenses performed without Brady.

Want to give him credit for the 2021 output with Mac Jones? OK, that’s fair. But I’ll also point out that McDaniels still worked for Belichick that season. In the five years without Brady and Belichick, his offenses never finished higher than 15th. Oh, by the way, the Patriots finished first in offensive DVOA in all three seasons after McDaniels took his first head coaching job (2009-2011), when Brady was the quarterback. .

Listen, I’m not trying to crush the guy. OK, that’s a lie. I am kind of trying to crush the guy. I’m just saying he’s never struck me as a coach with an ability to do more with less. I like quarterback Drake Maye a lot, but look at the rest of the Patriots’ offensive roster. I know the team will try to make some upgrades in the offseason, but in the short term, that’s almost certainly going to be a situation that requires the coaching and scheming to elevate the play of less talented players.

The McDaniels hire also makes me a little nervous about the direction that Vrabel and the organization are choosing to head. Are they actually turning the page from the Belichick era? Or are they chasing the Belichick era without, you know, Belichick actually being there? It’s all just a little bit puzzling. This move speaks to Vrabel wanting to add someone who he knows and is comfortable with. But if he did a thorough search for an offensive schemer and quarterback developer, would McDaniels really have been the best man for the job? It’s hard for me to believe that. There’s a chance this all works out. As I wrote above in the section about the Commanders, when the quarterback is special, everyone else comes out looking good. And Maye really might be special. But I’m not convinced that McDaniels is the right guy to bring the best out of him.

It might make sense for the Rams to run it back one more time with Matthew Stafford.

There were times this season where it felt like this was going to be the end of the Matthew Stafford–Sean McVay partnership that brought the Rams a Super Bowl title three years ago. The Rams restructured Stafford’s deal last offseason with no commitment from either side to extend the relationship beyond one year. This wasn’t among Stafford’s best statistical seasons, but the Rams still finished 10th in offensive efficiency. In a one-game sample, Stafford could still look like one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. But he’s 36 years old, and I was skeptical he could lead the Rams on an extended playoff run.

Stafford was very close to proving me wrong and doing just that. The Rams upset the Vikings in the wild-card round and were close to pulling off a stunning comeback in Philadelphia in the divisional round before falling just short. Against the NFL’s best defense, Stafford was literally throwing no-look darts in the snow, piling up 324 passing yards in a 28-22 loss. 

He’s at a tricky age. When quarterbacks reach this point of their career, sometimes when the body goes, it goes quickly. But the physical tools still seem to be there with Stafford, and McVay still feels like the right coach to get the most out of him. The Rams used play-action at the fifth-highest rate in the NFL, and on those throws, Stafford ranked second in EPA per play. Without play-action, he ranked 26th. When Stafford was kept clean, he ranked eighth in EPA per play. When he was pressured, he ranked 30th. 

In other words, Stafford can’t do all the things that he used to, and he needs more help from the scheming and supporting cast than he did when he was younger. But there’s a chance he can still do enough to make the Rams a contender—for one more season at least. What does the Rams offense look like if they add another good pass catcher or get a healthier offensive line in 2025? They’ve built one of the best pass rushes in the league through recent drafts, and the defense could be improved too with a little help in the secondary. Add it all up, and I think I’d like to see Stafford and McVay take one more shot together. Maybe it won’t work. Maybe Stafford will show signs of decline. Or injuries will get to him. But when he’s on, his game can still look beautiful. And I think the two sides are better off together than apart for 2025.