VITO'S VIEWS

The Carolina Panthers are like the dog that caught the car.

They traded four draft picks, including two No. 1 picks, and receiver D.J. Moore to the Chicago Bears for the top pick in the draft.

The next question: Now what?

The Panthers made the trade before they decided which quarterback they will take with the top pick.

That means there is no automatic first choice like when players like Trevor Lawrence and Andrew Luck were at the top of the draft board.

Instead, there are four quarterbacks likely to be drafted high on the first round, but it won’t be an easy decision. And if the Panthers pick the wrong one or none of them make it big, they will be back to square one.

It is likely they will choose between C.J. Stroud and Bryce Young, who had a great college career at Alabama but is only 5-10 1/8.

The most athletic quarterback is Anthony Richardson, who had a dynamite combine but a lackluster college career.

The fourth one is Will Levis of Kentucky, who isn’t likely to be the top pick.

If nothing else, the Panthers have created a lot drama. They can’t afford to miss on this pick.

In another interesting development, even the Panthers aren’t convinced the player they draft with the first pick will be ready to start as a rookie. They signed veteran Andy Dalton to give them a stopgap starter if the rookie needs time to develop.

The Panthers also could have gotten a shot at Lamar Jackson for two No. 1 picks if they had offered him a fully guaranteed contract. They then could have saved two picks and kept Moore. But the NFL is trying to hold the line on fully guaranteed contracts because most owners were unhappy that Deshaun Watson got one from Cleveland.

So the Panthers are now on the clock. We can only wait to see what they will do.

–It is tag season and the most controversial tag was placed on Lamar Jackson by the Ravens.  If a team makes a deal with Jackson, the Raven can match or let him go for two first round picks. But no team seems to be rushing to sign him because he apparently wants a fully guaranteed deal like the one Deshaun Watson got. The NFL is trying to hold the line on fully guaranteed deals, which is otherwise known as collusion. But what is overlooked is that the NFLPA should never have agreed to tags in the first place. They weren’t in the original press release the league sent out when the two sides first agreed to a salary cap and free agency after four years.

–Have the Titans put Derrick Henry on the block or not? There have been reports both ways. At age 29, Henry probably doesn’t have much left in the tank. But they could probably challenge the Jaguars in the AFC South with him. They are not likely to without him. We will have to wait to see what they will do.

–The league just can’t seem to let go of Tom Brady. Rich Eisen, who should know better, said there was chatter at the combine that Brady still might return. Brady replied with a joke saying if you get a kitten for your kid, you don’t have time to return. After retiring and then returning last year, Brady doesn’t figure to do it again. 

–Another apparently bogus report was that Philip Rivers contacted the 49ers and Dolphins late last year about returning and still might look to return this year. Rivers quickly shot that down, saying he didn’t contact any team. He said he was contacted without naming the teams but said he is retired. At age 41 after being away for two years, it is not likely to return.

–It is surprising more players don’t skip the combine. Even though they are running around without pads, there is still an injury risk. At least five players were injured in this year’s combine, including offensive lineman Andrew Vorhees of USC. He suffered a torn ACL and will likely miss this upcoming season. He showed he is a tough guy as he did 38 reps on the bench after suffering the injury but the injury is likely to cause him to drop in the draft. Players should tell teams to look at their college tape.

Eric Bieniemy was treated like a rock star or a head coach when he had his first press conference as the new offensive coordinator of the Washington Commanders last week.

He made a good impression as he set out his plans for his offense and the players who attended gave him positive reviews. His new quarterback, Sam Howell, said he is super excited to play for him.

Yes, this is the same Bieniemy who was the offensive coordinator for the Chiefs as they went to three Super bowls in the last four years and won two of them, but he failed to get a head coaching job despite all that success.

He is the best example recently of how difficult it is for black coaches to get head coaching jobs. It’s even often difficult for them to keep them once they are hired.

Some of the excuses for Biemiemy being overlooked included that he hasn’t called plays in Kansas City and that he doesn’t interview well. And some off the field problems he had when he was younger sometimes get brought up.

Those are just excuses.

With the Commanders he will call plays and hopes that will help his resume. But the Commanders have been one of the worst run teams in recent years under Dan Snyder while the Chiefs have been one of the best with Clark Hunt as the owner. And Snyder is supposedly planning to sell the team. So there is the that the new job won’t help his quest for a head job although he said his only focus now is being the OC for the Commanders.

And there is no guarantee he will get a head coaching job even if he has success. There’s also the chance he will lose out on winning more Super Bowls with the Chiefs.

Still, Bienemy is getting a raise and a longer term contract than he had in Kansas City, and a chance to call the plays and run the offense.

Granted, there is no guarantee he will be a good head coach. But he deserves the chance to show whether he can be a successful head coach.

The NFL has never been more successful.

It now makes billions of dollars every year and is the most watched programming on television. In the 100 channel universe, it draws the most viewers and the TV rightsfees  keep going up.

But the strange thing is that the Super Bowl ratings seem to be at a plateau. The game drew 133 million viewers but that was a million less than what they drew in 2017. It figured to drop during Covid but hasn’t bounced all the way back.

And the halftime show drew 5 million more viewers than the game.

The NFL makes so much money that it may not be a matter of concern. But the NFL likes to think the game keeps growing.

Maybe the league has reached a saturation point in the U.S., which may explain why it is playing five games in London and in Germany.

Whether this develops into a problem remains to be seen. But it is something worth watching in the future.

Andy Reid took two decades to become an overnight sensation.

He started his head coaching career with the Eagles in 1999 and posted a 140-102-1 record before being fired after the 2012 season when the Eagles slumped to 4-12 after an 8-8 season.

The rap on him is that he couldn’t win the big one. He went to only one Super Bowl in Philadelphia and lost it to the Patriots after the 2004 season when he failed to go to an up-tempo offense trailing by 10 in the fourth quarter and wound up losing by three. He made it to five NFC championship games and lost four of them.

He was quickly hired by the Chiefs in 2013 to take over a 2-14 team that had the first pick in the draft.

He had an immediate turnaround, going 11-5 in his first year to make the playoffs as a wild card team but lost his first playoff game to the Colts.

He then missed the playoffs in 2014 with a 9-7 record but made the playoffs in 2015 as a wild card team at 11-5 and won his first playoff game with the Chiefs by beating Houston before losing to New England.

Then in 2016 he started a string of seven consecutive division titles and started a string of hosting five consecutive AFC title games in 2018, won three of them to make the Super Bowl and won two of the three Super Bowls.

And now he is a folk hero and a first ballot Hall of Famer. He is one of the most liked coaches and pokes fun of himself for his weight, calling himself “chubby” and talks about loving cheeseburgers and pizza.

He will turn 65 next month and is being asked if he is considering retiring. But why should he retire?

Reid saved the best for last. He has been a head coach in the NFL for 24 consecutive years and shows no signs of burning out. He got a lot of props for his innovative play calling in the second half of the Super Bowl.

And Patrick Mahomes hasn’t even hit his prime yet. 

While Bill Belichick doesn’t have a playoff win in the last four years, Reid has won his first two rings the last two years. 

Don’t be surprised if he wins a few more.

The Super Bowl cemented the legacies of Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes as future Hall of Famers and gave the Kansas City Chiefs pole position in the race for Team of the Decade.

But the game will be remembered for The Call.

The holding call on James Bradberry with less than two minutes left sparked a debate that will never be resolved.

One side of the argument is that it was a good call and even Bradberry admitted he tugged JuJu Smith-Schuster’s jersey.

The other side is that it was a ticky tacky call that shouldn’t be made in that situation with the Super Bowl on the line. There are two main issues. One is consistency. They didn’t call holding the entire game and were seemingly letting them play. The other is if that is a foul, then maybe the definition of holding should be reviewed. Maybe a light tug that doesn’t impede the receiver shouldn’t be a foul.

It is a reminder of the confusing tuck rule that they eventually did away with it. Sometimes the rule book is too confusing.

The Call took the drama out of the game because the Eagles didn’t have time to try to tie it up or win it, but they can’t blame the call for the loss.

Although Jalen Hurts played a good game, his fumble gave the Chiefs a touchdown and the longest punt return in Super Bowl history set up another one and the Chiefs twice scored touchdowns by faking the Eagles out with motion plays that left the receivers wide open.

The Eagles defense also didn’t get a sack (although the bad footing may have contributed to that) and didn’t make one stop in the second half as the Chiefs scored all four times they had the ball, with touchdowns on the first three drives.

While the Chiefs now go for their third Super Bowl in the last five years, the Eagles will face the task of trying to become only the second team to lose the Super Bowl and win it the next year since the 1972 perfect Dolphins did it. Tom Brady did it once.

Unfortunately, Kansas City’s last two playoff wins wound up having the officials play too big a role. They missed two calls on the Chiefs’ final drive against Cincinnati and then gained an edge with the controversial call.

The Chiefs also will attempt to become the first team since the 2003-2004 Patriots to repeat.

Can the best quarterback beat the best team?

That is the question hovering over Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Philadelphia has the better team with an edge on both the offensive and defensive lines. It is often said games are won or lost in the trenches and that is where the Eagles have the edge.

But they are only favored by a point or two because the Chiefs have Patrick Mahomes, who is appearing in his third Super Bowl in the last four years although he is still recovering from an high ankle sprain.

The Eagles also have a good quarterback in Jalen Hurts, who is in his third season and first Super Bowl but he is not yet in Mahomes class.

One thing they have in common is that they are both black quarterbacks and it is the first time both starting quarterbacks in the Super Bowl are black. That says more about how long it took for the NFL to play black quarterbacks than it does about them.

Another popular storyline is that Andy Reid will be coaching against the team that fired him after the 2012 season. He made one Super Bowl in Philadelphia and lost it. He is 1-1 in Super Bowls with the Chiefs.

The two sides seem evenly matched. Both are 16-3. Both scored 546 points. Both have six all pro players and both were top seeds.

But that doesn’t mean it will be a close game. Only four games have had spreads of three points or less since 2002 when the league went to 32 teams and three were decided by 10 points of more.

The Eagles won the Super Bowl after the 2017 season and the Chiefs won after the 2019 season so the winner will get its second victory in either the last five or three years.

So next year the Eagles will be going for their third win in last six years or the Chiefs will be going for their third in the win in the last four years.

The league is looking for the next dominant team to replace the Patriots. The winner of this game will have a shot at that legacy.

If you want to fix a problem, the first thing you have to do is admit you have a problem.

But it is not the style of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to admit the league has any problems, at least when it comes to officiating.

He made the stunning comment Wednesday at the commissioner’s annual Super Bowl press conference that the officiating has never been better. Although he added it will never be perfect.

He is right about the second part because it is a difficult game to officiate.

But the officials still make too many mistakes, like in the Kansas City-Cincinnati game when the Chiefs’ game-winning drive was kept alive when the officials failed to call a block in back on a punt return and missed an obvious holding call on Patrick Mahomes late scramble. And then there was the do over.

Goodell pointed out there are 42,000 calls, but many of them are routine. They miss too many at critical times.

Aaron Rodgers has even speculated one of the problems is that the league loses too many good officials to TV and that they should pay them more. The NFL isn’t likely to go for that idea even though it is likely a good one.

The one thing we do now is that the end of the Chiefs-Bengals game and Gooell”s comments put even more pressure on the refs not to make any big mistakes in the Super Bowl.

Carl Cheffers will be th referee for the second time in three years, and his crew called the most penalties in the league for the second consecutive year although only one member of his regular season crew will be on the field for the Super Bowl.

Mike Pereira, the former director of officials who joined Fox in 2010 and will be in the booth, admits there will be pressure on the officials, but said they like the challenge.

We do know one thing. No matter what the officiating is like, Goodell will say it has never been better.

One of the storylines of the Super Bowl is that this will be the first in which both quarterbacks are black.

It is another milestone for the league as it attempts to overcome its history of racial stereotyping of players because of race. Now that Tom Brady has retired, the question is which one of the young quarterbacks will be best of the next generation.

Mahomes is currently in the lead with his third Super Bowl appearance in his sixth season. He is 1-1 in the first two. Jalen Hurts is making his first appearance in his third year. Joe Burrow has one appearance and lost it. Josh Allen has yet to get there.

The winner of this game will have a leg up on next year because the Super Bowl loser has won it the year after losing it the previous year only since the 1972 perfect Dolphins did it. Brady did it once but didnt win it year after his other two losses. 

And while Brady’s record of seven Super Bowl rings is not likely to be matched any time soon, they might have a shot at four to match what Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana did. And Bart Starr won five title, three before the Super Bowl era started.

It is also forgotten that while Brady won three in his first five years in 2001, 03 and 04, he didn’t win the fourth one until after the 2014 season when Russell Wilson threw the pass from the one.

So he had a nine-year gap between his third and fourth wins while losing the Super Bowl after the 2007 and 2011 seasons to the Giants. He also was injured in the 2008 season opener and missed the rest of that year.

So if Mahomes wins his second this year, he would need only two in the next eight years to match Brady’s four in his first 14 years.

Brady then lost to Denver in playoffs in 2015 and appeared in the next three Super Bowls, beating Atlanta in the 28-3 game, losing to Philadelphia and then beating the Rams in 2016, 2017 and 2018. He lost to Tennessee in 2019 and then beat the Rams in Tampa in 2020 for his seventh and final one. 

Brady also had some close calls along the way. Take away the tuck rule, Seattle’s pass from the one yard line and Atlanta offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan’s decision not to run three plays and kick a field goal for an 11point lead with four minutes left, Brady could be 4-5 in Super Bowls instead of 7-3. He woud still be a first ballot HOFer but would he be considered the GOAT? We will never know.

Now we get to watch Mahomes and Hurts try to make their mark on history.

Teams like to say a deal is a win-win for both teams.

But will there be a winner in the Sean Payton trade to the Broncos except for, of course, the Saints?

The Saints got first- and second-round picks and gave up a third and Payton, so it worked for them. They got good compensation for a coach who quit on them last year.

But did the Broncos give up too much for a coach who went to just one Super Bowl in New Orleans with Drew Brees as his quarterback for 15 years.

And while Payton is making big money – a reported $85 million for five years – he may not be in a good situation

While he joins a team that has a good defense, he has to try to fix Russell Wilson and he is in a division where he will play against Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert twice a year. It is hard to imagine Broncos winning a division title in the next few years. And the picks the Broncos gave up for Wilson will make it harder for Payton to turn it around.

In New Orleans, he was competing against the Panthers, Falcons and Bucs.

Payton apparently got what he wanted. But sometimes you have to watch what you wish for because you just might get it.

But at least he will be cashing big checks and can always go back to his TV gig.