Standard gameday elevations for tomorrow’s playoff games:
Jacksonville Jaguars
Kansas City Chiefs
New York Giants
Philadelphia Eagles
Had the Bengals beaten the Bills in Week 17, the four-loss team would have been on track to secure the AFC’s No. 2 seed. The results of Week 18 — Chiefs, Bengals and Bills wins — would have finalized that scenario. But only the Buffalo side of the “what if?” equation ended up factoring into the NFL’s neutral-site proposal.
The Bills controlled their own destiny for the AFC’s top seed, which would have been the franchise’s first since 1993, but the frightening Damar Hamlin scene leading to a cancelled game ended up nixing that path. While the Chiefs have drawn the 9-8 Jaguars in Round 2, despite losing to both the Bills and Bengals in the regular season, the latter two teams will face off Sunday. A third straight year featuring a Bills-Chiefs playoff matchup would take that game to Atlanta, and while the NFL discussed a second neutral site for a Bengals-Bills tilt, that game will be played in Buffalo.
“There was some discussion,” NFL executive VP Troy Vincent said (via the Buffalo News’ Clevis Murray) of Bengals-Bills being played in a neutral location, “but membership thought it was best for [only] the championship game to be at a neutral site.”
The Bengals’ main objection amid a swift push to shoot down the NFL’s compromise came as a result of the coin-toss scenario involving the Ravens, but they would have been part of the neutral-site scenario had the Chiefs lost to the Raiders in Week 18 and a rematch of last year’s AFC championship game ended up occurring. The team obviously voted against the proposal, with the Chiefs abstaining and the Bills being one of the 25 teams to submit a “yes” vote, Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports notes. Barring a Jaguars upset of the Chiefs on Saturday, the Bengals will need their road whites for the remainder of the AFC playoffs.
Should the Chiefs hold seed and the favored Bills prevail in the teams’ first playoff matchup since the 1988 AFC championship game, the teams will head to Georgia for a game that has already seen 50,000 tickets sold — per ESPN.com’s Adam Schefter (on Twitter) — to Bills and Chiefs season-ticket holders. One (or two) team’s fans would collect some sobering refunds depending on this weekend’s results, but should the league’s Atlanta contingency come into play, Bills and Chiefs fans would be seated on opposite sides at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
The Chiefs wanted an outdoor venue on grass, Jones adds, while it is not clear what the Bills preferred. Although both the Colts and Lions’ venues were floated as options, neither Lucas Oil Stadium nor Ford Field ended up being in play. The NFL selected Atlanta because of its fairly equal distance (893 miles from Buffalo, 801 from Kansas City) between the two cities, per Jones, while the NFC South stadium has been an in-case-of-emergency site for a bit now.
Speculation about the NFL using a Bills-Chiefs matchup as a test run for conference championship games to be played at neutral sites has emerged, and sources outside the league office floated to Jones that theory. Despite the draft and combine now rotating venues, the conference championships — played at the site of the team with the better record since 1975 — being held at neutral locations would mean the No. 1 seed would only come with a bye and one home game. The No. 2 seed having a path to host two games might be a nonstarter for the league. But the NFL has moved a wild-card game to Monday, despite the Monday game’s winner guaranteed a short week. The Atlanta scenario being a prelude to a drastic format change should not be entirely dismissed, though we are not there yet.
The Chiefs welcomed a pair of offensive players back to practice today. According to Herbie Teope of The Kansas City Star (on Twitter), the Chiefs designated running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire and tight end Jody Fortson for return. The team will now have 21 days to activate either player to the 53-man roster.
Edwards-Helaire hasn’t seen the field since November while dealing with a high-ankle sprain. At the time of his injury, CEH was already seeing a reduced role on offense, with rookie Isiah Pacheco and pass-catcher Jerick McKinnon soaking up many of the RB snaps. Even if Edwards-Helaire is good to go for the rest of the playoffs, there’s no guarantee that he’ll be anything more than the third running back on the depth chart.
The 2020 first-round pick has shown flashes during his brief career, including a rookie campaign that saw him finish with 1,100 yards from scrimmage. In 10 games (six starts) this season, the 23-year-old collected 453 yards from scrimmage and six touchdowns.
“Anytime you get talented players back, it helps the whole team — not just the offense, but everybody,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said (via Teope). “To have that energy in the locker room again, to have it on the football field and both those guys are special-type players.”
Fortson suffered an elbow injury in Week 15 that shut him down for the rest of the regular season. The tight end had 108 yards and two touchdowns while playing behind Travis Kelce and Noah Gray on the depth chart.
Today’s practice squad transactions:
Buffalo Bills
Kansas City Chiefs
Philadelphia Eagles
The Titans have a vacancy at offensive coordinator after firing Todd Downing, and two candidates for the post have emerged. As Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com reports, Tennessee has requested permission to interview Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy and senior assistant/QBs coach Matt Nagy (Twitter link).
Bieniemy, of course, has been a fixture on the head coaching interview circuit in recent years. He has been unable to land an HC gig as of yet, and while he recently interviewed for the Colts’ head coaching position, it does not appear that the four other clubs who are in need of a new bench boss have him on their shortlist.
Since being promoted from running backs coach to offensive coordinator in 2018 — the year that Patrick Mahomes became the Chiefs’ starting quarterback — Bieniemy’s offense has never finished worse than sixth in either yards per game or points per game. Kansas City finished first in both categories in 2022 en route to the AFC’s No. 1 seed.
Many reasons have been floated for the 53-year-old’s inability to land an HC job, including his race — Bieniemy is Black — and unimpressive interviews. From an on-field perspective, it could be that other teams believe head coach Andy Reid and Mahomes have been more critical to KC’s offensive output over the past five years than Bieniemy, especially given Reid’s significant influence in the offense’s design and execution (though former QBs coach/passing game coordinator Mike Kafka earned a promotion in 2022, when he joined Brian Daboll‘s first staff as the Giants’ offensive coordinator).
Perhaps having success outside of the Reid/Mahomes shadow would give Bieniemy a better chance to secure a head coaching post, although a lack of success in a new setting would obviously damages his HC prospects. The Titans, who have an uncertain quarterback situation, who are presently light on skill-position talent outside of running back Derrick Henry, and who are in the midst of a GM search following Jon Robinson‘s surprising ouster, may not give Bieniemy the best chance to pad his resume. Indeed, Josina Anderson of CBS Sports reports (via Twitter) that Bieniemy remains focused on HC opportunities.
Nagy, meanwhile, was able to parlay his efforts as the Chiefs’ quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator under Reid into a head coaching job with the Bears in 2018. After a successful first season in Chicago, Nagy’s outfits struggled over his next three years on the sidelines, and he was fired at the conclusion of the 2021 campaign. Nagy has been mentioned as a name to watch in the Jets’ present OC search, and there have also been reports that he could one day succeed Reid as Kansas City’s head coach.
Per Anderson, Nagy has yet to confirm Tennessee’s request.
A big name has been added to the list of Colts head coaching candidates. Owner Jim Irsay announced on Twitter that the Colts have completed an interview with Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy.
This is a sudden development in the organization’s head coaching search, but not a particularly surprising one. Zak Keefer of The Athletic tweets that the Colts have been “digging” on Bieniemy over the past few days.
A fixture on head-coaching carousels in recent years, Bieniemy has been unable to land a top job. The coordinator was connected to all seven head coaching vacancies during the 2021 campaign, but he only interviewed for two gigs (Saints, Broncos) in 2022. Now, after years of interviewing for a head coach job, Bieniemy has secured only his first interview of the year.
A Chiefs assistant throughout Andy Reid‘s nine-year tenure, Bieniemy has been the team’s OC throughout Patrick Mahomes‘ QB1 run. A report indicated that the 2021 season was somewhat trying for Bieniemy mentally, and the prospect of sitting out 2022 or returning to the college ranks emerged. He ultimately decided to stick in Kansas City, and despite the loss of wideout Tyreek Hill, the Chiefs offense still managed to lead the NFL in points and yards.
Bieniemy would be a logical fit in Indianapolis, where the Colts are looking for a head coach to replace Frank Reich and (potentially) interim HC Jeff Saturday. As ESPN’s Stephen Holder tweets, the coach has “strong ties” to Colts general manager Chris Ballard dating back to their time in Kansas City.
As our 2023 NFL Head Coaching Search Tracker shows, the growing list of known and potential Colts head coaching candidates includes:
Today’s practice squad moves:
Buffalo Bills
Kansas City Chiefs
Teams continue to sign players to reserve/futures contracts, allowing the organization to retain (routinely) young, practice squad players throughout the offseason. Here are the latest reserve/futures contracts:
Kansas City Chiefs
New England Patriots
New York Giants
Pittsburgh Steelers
Tennessee Titans
Two days before the playoffs, the NFL announced the neutral site that could play host to the AFC championship game. Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium would host a potential Chiefs-Bills conference title tilt, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweets.
This NFC venue emerged as the host after it became known Indianapolis and Detroit indicated their stadiums were not available. This stadium would only come into play if the AFC’s top two seeds — Kansas City and Buffalo — meet to decide the conference’s Super Bowl representative.
While an outdoor stadium was believed to be a consideration for this unique circumstance, as both the Chiefs and Bills hail from cold-weather cities, only indoor sites were mentioned during this process. Mercedes-Benz Stadium hosted Super Bowl LIII and has been the site for CFP national championship games.
Should the Bills and Chiefs reach the conference championship game, it would be Buffalo’s second relocated contest this season. A snowstorm moved a November Browns-Bills contest to Detroit. While weather issues have moved games before, a conference title game being relocated is new territory for the league. But the owners narrowly approved the NFL’s proposal on a compromise, as the Bills controlled their own destiny for the AFC’s No. 1 seed prior to the Damar Hamlin injury and hospitalization leading to the cancellation of Week 17’s Bills-Bengals matchup.
Although the Bengals launched a protest of the playoff modification, they only objected to the coin-toss component — which affected the AFC North teams and which is no longer in play, thanks to Cincinnati’s Week 18 win over Baltimore — in the proposal. The Bengals, Bills and Chiefs were all believed to be fine with the relocated AFC title game, though the Chiefs abstained from voting. The Bengals also had a narrow path to the No. 1 seed going into Week 17, but the Chiefs’ Week 18 win would have prevented that regardless of a Bills-Bengals result. As such, this relocation measure will only take effect if the Bills and Chiefs meet for a third straight postseason.
Both those matchups — a 2020 AFC title game blowout and 2021 divisional-round classic — occurred at Arrowhead Stadium and went the Chiefs’ way. The Bills (13-3) have not held home-field advantage since the 1993 season (when they beat the Chiefs to book a Super Bowl XXVIII berth), and because win percentage gave the 14-3 Chiefs the edge, the AFC East champions are set up for a tougher road to the AFC title game.
Should the Bills and Bengals win their respective wild-card games, as they are heavily favored to do, they will meet in Round 2. The Chiefs will face a less-accomplished team — likely the winner of the Chargers-Jaguars matchup — despite the Bills having defeated them in Kansas City this season, still providing the top-seeded team an advantage despite the NFL stepping in to prevent the Bills from playing in K.C.
Rumors of the NFL using this as a trial balloon for neutral-site conference championship games have emerged, and while that would be intriguing (and similar to college football’s setup), it would minimize the importance of obtaining home-field advantage and thus devaluing the regular season to a degree. But if a third Patrick Mahomes–Josh Allen playoff clash commences, the league will see this compromise/experiment come to fruition.
18 teams had their seasons come to an end yesterday, and their front offices have already turned the page to the 2023 NFL seaon. This started today, as a number of players were signed to reserve/futures contracts, which allows organizations to retain (routinely) young, practice squad players throughout the offseason. Here are today’s reserve/futures contracts:
Arizona Cardinals
Atlanta Falcons
Buffalo Bills
Carolina Panthers
Chicago Bears
Cleveland Browns
Denver Broncos
Detroit Lions
Indianapolis Colts
Kansas City Chiefs
Las Vegas Raiders
Los Angeles Rams
New Orleans Saints
New York Jets
Washington Commanders