With NFL teams possibly planning to swoop in on South Bend, Notre Dame is scrambling to keep coach Marcus Freeman.
Here’s the reality: Teams with vacancies are permitted to interview him now (if they haven’t already).
Those teams are the Titans and Giants. There’s no requirement for those teams to announce or even to disclose that they have interviewed Freeman.
That’s the rule as it relates to any coach who currently isn’t working for another NFL team. The mad dash to request permission to interview assistant coaches comes after the regular-season ends. Paperwork is filed with the league office, and the official inquiries inevitably, if not immediately, are leaked to reporters who are employed by the league.
For unemployed coaches and/or current college coaches, there’s no external paper trail.
Whether Freeman would be interested in the Titans or the Giants is unknown. Both teams have been dysfunctional in recent years, with revolving doors and chronic struggles. It could be a hard sell to get Freeman interested in either job.
Freeman also can be discreetly contacted by teams that have yet to fire their current head coaches, with no league rules violated. As the end of the 2025 regular season approaches, teams that know they’ll be making a change will be (or should be) trying to identify all potential candidates. Freeman and/or his representation can be contacted without consequence.
Given that Notre Dame has made clear its desire to keep Freeman, he doesn’t have to rush for the first bad opportunity in the NFL. He can wait, if he wants, for a good, stable job to come upon. The Steelers or the Ravens, for example, would be attractive, since both teams have kept their current coaches for 19 and 18 years, respectively.
And what if Andy Reid retires in the next few years? Who wouldn’t want to coach Patrick Mahomes — even if the rest of the roster currently needs plenty of work?
Regardless, the potential pursuit of Freeman isn’t something that must wait until the regular season ends. It can begin right away, and the teams that are talking to him can keep it as quiet as they choose.
Philip Rivers is back. And he could be playing for the Colts as soon as this weekend.
If/when he does, each yard he generates in the passing game will move him closer to moving from No. 7 to No. 6 on the all-time passing yardage list.
Currently, Rivers has 63,440 yards. Former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has 64,088 yards. With 649 yards, Rivers will leapfrog Roethlisberger.
Of course, it likely will come down to a question of No. 7 vs. No. 8. Ram quarterback Matthew Stafford is about to skip past both of them.
Stafford, No. 8 on the list, has 63,163 yards. He’s only 277 behind Rivers, and 925 behind Roethlisberger. As a result, Big Ben quite possibly is less than a month away from falling to No. 8.
Which leads to the next question. If Rivers, at 44, can return after not playing since 2020, could Roethlisberger come back after not playing since 2021? He has said that the 49ers gauged his interest in 2022.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say there was a small part of me that was intrigued,” Roethlisberger said in 2023. “I could still do it and prove to people that I could still play. At the end of the day, I just can’t see myself in anything other than black and gold.”
So there it is. The door is closed for Roethlisberger. Just like everyone thought it was for Rivers. Until yesterday.
Steelers wide receiver DK Metcalf did not travel back to Pittsburgh with the team after they beat the Ravens on Sunday, but it looks like he’ll be able to go against the Dolphins in Week 15.
Metcalf went to a Baltimore hospital after experiencing stomach pain. Head coach Mike Tomlin said at his Tuesday press conference that the wideout was injured on a hit early in the game and the pain got worse despite taking over the counter medication during the game, but is “moving in the right direction.” Tomlin said that Metcalf may be limited early in the practice week, but doesn’t “think it’s going to jeopardize his availability at all” for Monday night’s game against the Dolphins.
Tomlin also updated other injuries. Tackle Calvin Anderson is expected to miss another game with a knee injury while safety Kyle Dugger will have a chance to play after missing the Ravens game with a hand injury. Defensive tackle Derrick Harmon has missed multiple games with a knee injury and will be limited in practice as the Steelers assess whether he’s ready for game action.
Offensive lineman Andrus Peat, tight end Darnell Washington, and linebacker Malik Harrison were all ruled out against the Ravens after concussion evaluations and remain in the protocol. Peat started at left tackle and Dylan Cook got his first regular season playing time after he exited the game.
A week before the Steelers and coach Mike Tomlin secured a key win in Baltimore, Tomlin’s team suffered an embarrassing home loss to the Bills.
The 26-7 defeat prompted audible chants of “Fire Tomlin!,” and boos during the team’s iconic Renegade moment.
During Tomlin’s traditional Tuesday in-season press conference, he was asked whether he believed last week that he was on the hot seat.
“Man, I’ve been in the hot seat for 19 years,” Tomlin said. “I always feel like I got something to prove. Not necessarily to anyone in particular, but that’s just the spirit in which I go about what I do professionally.”
Still, last week was different. It also included former players, including Ben Roethlisberger and James Harrison, openly expressing a belief that it’s time for a change.
The fans who were disgruntled in Week 13 will be back for Week 15, against the Dolphins. What does Tomlin expect from them?
“I expect them to show up, man,” Tomlin said. “It’s Monday Night Football in Acrisure [Stadium]. It’s gonna be a big game.”
It will be that. The Steelers are 7-6, and the Dolphins are surprisingly 6-7. And if things don’t go well for the Steelers in a game they’re favored to win by only three points, the chants and the boos could return — for a national TV audience to hear.
Sunday’s Steelers-Ravens game included two very controversial decisions by the league office’s replay apparatus to overturn rulings on the field regarding catches. On Monday, Ravens coach John Harbaugh said he spoke to the NFL about both the decision to wipe out an interception of a batted ball (turning it into a reception by Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers) and the decision to take away what the on-field officials had determined to be a touchdown catch by Ravens tight end Isaiah Likely.
“We had a conversation with the league office, and they were they were gracious enough to spend a lot of time on the phone with myself and [G.M.] Eric and [former NFL official] Tony Michalek,” Harbaugh told reporters. “And we appreciate that. It didn’t clear anything up, it didn’t make it any easier to understand, either one of the two calls, they’re very, very hard to understand how they get overturned. But they did, and that’s where it stands.”
Harbaugh later was asked whether the discussion included an effort to reconcile the replay ruling that Rodgers had completed the process of making a catch with the replay ruling that Likely had not.
“That’s part of the conversation. Sure, that was weaved into the conversation,” Harbaugh said. “I mean, you know, [Rodgers is] going to the ground, you have to have control of the football, you have to survive the ground when you make a catch. I mean, that’s what a catch is. You know, you can’t say the time element’s like that, and he satisfies the time element when you’re going to the ground. The time element doesn’t apply to going to the ground. So it’s a pretty clear cut.”
It is clear cut. At least it should be. Whoever made the replay ruling as to Likely (and no one ever knows for sure who makes these rulings) decided — in defiance of the rule — that Likely could only complete the process of the catch by getting a third foot down. His effort to extend the ball and/or to ward off the defender who was trying to bat it away was not considered, even though it absolutely should have been.
Likewise, whoever made the replay ruling as to Rodgers necessarily determined that he maintained possession through going to the ground, even though he clearly did not.
It’s an astounding outcome, one that not only ignores the rulebook but also fails to honor the “clear and obvious” standard that applies to every replay situation.
More than a decade ago, the NFL centralized the replay process in order to ensure that the “clear and obvious” standard would be consistently applied by the same person, eliminating the potentially varying interpretations that had been adopted by the various different referees, who previously had final say.
Now, “clear and obvious” is disappearing. Rulings from on-field officials are not receiving the deference that the rules clearly require.
It’s not good. For the league, for the team, for the officials, for anyone. And it introduces the ever-present possibility that someone (who, no one knows for sure) will ignore the real-time judgment of the officials and supply their own instead.
At a time when the legalization, normalization, and monetization of gambling has caused many to be looking for any/all evidence that the fix is in, the quickest way to legitimize those concerns is to have a replay function that changes rulings in a way that disregards the rules.
That point can’t be overemphasized. Why even have officials making these decisions if someone in Manhattan is going to ignore them when performing replay review?
It’s not what the owners voted for, and it’s incumbent on the owners to clean this mess up. Because it’s becoming increasingly clear and obvious that Commissioner Roger Goodell and his lieutenants have gone rogue and re-written the rulebook.
