Is Joe Burrow the Next Tom Brady?

PHOENIX – Brace yourself for a Joe Burrow-Tom Brady comparison. 

Are you sitting down? Happy place envisioned? Gag reflex suppressed? Good. Now, rest assured that this one comes from a knowledgeable source: Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, who faced both Burrow and Brady in a meaningful game or three over the years.

“I see a young Tom Brady,” Spagnuolo said with a wide smile when asked about Burrow earlier in the week.

“Not just his talent. I love his killer instinct. He’s a killer. And when your quarterback is like that, the other 10 around him are like that and it makes the whole offense that much better.”

What does Spagnuolo see in Burrow that is so Brady-like?  “Whether it’s the gleam in his eye or the things he says … We’re always looking at the broadcast games, with the cameras down where they can zoom in. You see him pre-snap, what he’s looking at, and even after a play: nothing bothers him, he never gets rattled.”

Feel free to roll your eyes, Patriots fans. But Spagnuolo is coaching in his fourth Super Bowl, having battled Brady’s teams to a 1-1 draw in championships as a defensive coordinator before engaging in annual AFC title duels with Burrow’s Bengals. This isn’t some hottakesman bloviating into the void.

What’s interesting to Walkthrough about Spagnuolo’s remarks is the fact that he watches television tape of opponents. Isn’t coaches’ film the only proper way to attain deep football wisdom? Apparently not. Spagnuolo certainly watches tons and tons of coaches’ film too, but there is more than one way for an experienced observer to ingest football and come away with meaningful observations. 

Walkthrough is not a huge fan of gleam-in-the-eye analysis, but Coach Spags has looked deeper into more great quarterbacks’ eyes than we have. And we got to look into the coach’s eyes when he was gushing about Burrow: this wasn’t merely a media-savvy coach telling reporters what we wanted to hear so we would go away satisfied.

“I was a high school quarterback, so I’m always partial to quarterbacks,” Spagnuolo said. “I just think the way [Burrow] operates, and the way he plays a game, he’s gonna be around a long time.

“We’re gonna have a lot of battles with him. He’s gonna win a lot of games. And I look forward to watching him later on as a fan.”

Same here, Coach. Same here.

Are the Eagles an All-In Team?

A colleague, interviewing Cowboys Hall of Fame head coach Jimmy Johnson at the FoxSports press availability, asked a question along the lines of: The trend right now is for teams like the Rams and Eagles to go all-in for the Super Bowl? Will we see more of that philosophy in the years to come?

Wait. Timeout. Since when are the Eagles an all-in team?

Jalen Hurts is still on his rookie contract. The Eagles have two first-round picks in the 2023 draft. They are also showing a $4-million paper cap surplus for 2023: not much, but nothing like what the Rams (or, lol, Vikings) face in the years to come. 

Yes, the Eagles traded aggressively for A.J. Brown and signed veterans such as James Bradberry. Yes, Fletcher Cox and others (like Bradberry) are gone next year, and Jason Kelce will retire. But the Eagles have already drafted replacements for some of their departing/retiring veterans, and they have the resources to add quality reinforcements. Making a few bold trades to help win a Super Bowl isn’t going “all in.” It’s “trying.”

Johnson responded diplomatically and with broad accuracy, noting that what the Rams did was different, and that fans should be excited when the hometown team makes daring moves. It’s the very concept of the Eagles as an “all-in” team which stunned Walkthrough. Are the Bengals an “all-in” team just because they upgraded their offensive line in 2022? The 49ers because of the Christian McCaffrey trade? Is any team not on the endless rebuilding treadmill suddenly perceived as tossing grandpa’s pocket watch into the pot like a drunk in a Wild West saloon?

Establishing benchmarks is one of the things Walkthrough does. So let’s establish some benchmarks for what constitutes an “All-In Team.” An All-In Team must:

• Have a quarterback over age 30 with a contract among the ten largest in the NFL.
• Possess no first-round pick in the following year’s draft; and
• Show a paper cap deficit for the following year.

Simple, tangible and easily-attainable thresholds, right? An All-In team is paying heavily for their veteran quarterback, mortgaged some future draft capital (trading away a top pick but later getting one back is hedging a bet, which is the exact opposite of going “all-in”) and is financially leveraging itself for short-term gains at the expense of long-term consequences. 

The Rams did all of those things. The Eagles did not. And team-building philosophies are not easily lumped like political parties into only two categories.

Around the League

Sean Payton indicates that Russell Wilson’s performance team will not be welcome in the Broncos facility.

Broncos co-owner Condoleezza Rice’s performance team will be completely welcome, especially because her performance team is an M1A1 Abrams tank.

Tom Brady doesn’t plan to join the Fox announcing team until 2024.

Dude’s been retired one week and is already posting underwear pictures of himself. No one wants to learn what one year of downtime will bring. He’s gonna be like Ben Wyatt from Parks and Recreation creating Requiem for a Tuesday. 

49ers hire Steve Wilks as defensive coordinator

Wilks will spend a year polishing his resume with a playoff team in 2023 and emerge as the frontrunner in the still-ongoing Colts head coaching search. 

A.J. Green retires.

Last one out of Arizona please shut off Kyler Murray’s PS5.

Derek Carr visits Saints.

Mickey Loomis throws collection warnings into the fire pit, heads off to the Used Cabin Cruiser Expo. 

Aaron Rodgers to determine his future during a “darkness retreat.”

Rodgers must enter a sensory deprivation tank to think thoughts our puny brains cannot imagine, feel feelings none of us will ever be actualized enough to experience and sniff farts none of us are sublime enough to realize smell like the lavender meadows of heaven.

Chiefs Gamer Cornerbacks

Earlier in the week, Walkthrough wrote about Chiefs rookie cornerbacks Trent McDuffie, Jaylen Watson and Joshua Williams. Left on the cutting room floor of that feature: the lads like to hang out and play video games.

“They can’t really touch me on Madden, so they always wanna play something like Call of Duty, because they don’t wanna get thumped too bad,” Williams said of the gaming sessions.

Apparently, McDuffie isn’t always invited. “I heard he’s good at Madden,” he said. “I heard J-Wat’s good at (NBA) 2K. I can’t say anything, because I haven’t played them yet. But when I do, I’ll let you know.”

So Williams is (probably) good at Madden. But who is his team? “I’m loyal to Kansas City when the cameras are on,” he said. “When the camera’s off, I switch it up because I like to be versatile.”

Walkthrough is 99% certain we would whup all of their asses in Civilization VI.

Tomorrow: Jimmy Johnson shares a Super Bowl story, Mike Periera discusses the legality of the tush-push sneak, and more from Phoenix!