The Steelers have added another name to the list of candidates to succeed Mike Tomlin as their head coach.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that they have requested an interview with Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero.
Evero has spent the last three seasons running the defense for Carolina and he was the Broncos’ coordinator in 2022. His name has come up in conjunction with several head coaching searches in recent seasons, including those being conducted by the Falcons and Raiders this month.
The Steelers have requested interviews with a number of coaches since Tomlin stepped down earlier this week. Team owner Art Rooney II said on Wednesday that he will not be putting an exact time frame on how long he’d like the process to take.
The NFL previously applied the term “super” to the wild-card round of the playoffs. This year, the ratings were.
Via Sports Business Journal, the six games televised by Fox (which had two), CBS, Prime Video, NBC and ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 attracted an average of 31.9 million viewers.
That’s a 13-percent increase from last year, and the best since the NFL expanded the playoffs from six teams to seven in 2020, which grew the wild-card round from four games to six.
The total average is the best since the four-game format attracted an average of 32.6 million in 2016 for these games: Raiders-Texans, Lions-Seahawks, Dolphins-Steelers, and Packers-Giants. The smallest victory margin that year was 13 points, with an average score of 30-11.
This year, four of the games went down to the wire. Two of the games were lopsided.
Usually, the first game of wild-card weekend is expected to be a clunker, relative to the rest of the slate. This year, Rams-Panthers was anything but.
The 34-31 shootout, with four leads changes in the fourth quarter alone, racked up 28 million viewers on Fox. It was a seven-percent bump over last year’s early Saturday wild-card game between the Chargers and Texans on CBS and Nickelodeon, and the biggest audience for the Saturday afternoon wild-card game since Saints-Seahawks in January 2011.
The quality of the Rams-Panthers game helped overcome the reality that the Panthers were viewed as playoffs ratings poison, with an 8-9 record and a division title earned with a Week 18 loss followed by the Falcons beating the Saints the next day.
If the game had gone like last year’s 32-12 win by Houston over L.A., the number for Rams-Panthers likely would have been a lot lower.
Bryce Young is set for at least two more years with the Panthers.
Young is heading into his fourth season and General Manager Dan Morgan told reporters on Tuesday that the team plans to exercise their option on the quarterback’s contract for the 2027 season. The salary for that option year is expected to be around $26.5 million and it will be fully guaranteed once it is officially exercised.
The prospect of the Panthers picking up Young’s option seemed unlikely when he was benched early in the 2024 season, but he showed clear improvement once he returned to the lineup after Andy Dalton’s injury and he showed more progress while helping the Panthers to the NFC South title in 2025.
There was still enough inconsistency to fuel doubts about whether Young will become the kind of star that the Panthers hoped to land with the first overall pick in 2023, but picking up the option gives Young time to show that he can reach that level in Carolina.
Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero is getting looks as a head coaching candidate from multiple teams, but his current employer wants to hold onto him.
Jeremy Fowler of ESPN reports that the Falcons have requested an interview with Evero. The Raiders also put in a request to speak to him on Sunday.
Evero finished his third season with the Panthers on Saturday and head coach Dave Canales said on Sunday that he “absolutely” wants Evero to remain on the staff in Carolina.
“I have complete trust in Ejiro,” Canales said, via the team’s website. “Love the way that he’s brought this group to play quality football together, and he’s got my full support. Love our scheme, love what we do there, and getting our guys to play together when we execute this scheme, it’s really difficult to play against, and the guys have found a way to play together, communicate together.”
Evero will be able to have a virtual interview with the Falcons, Raiders and any other interested teams this week. Any in-person interviews for coaches currently employed by other teams will not happen until after the divisional round of the playoffs.
