Mike Florio

It went 23 years Noel, 15 years Cowher, 19 years Tomlin.

Could Mike McCarthy, the Pittsburgh native who won a Super Bowl against the Steelers 15 years ago and then coached the Cowboys after that, could he be the guy that gets the job, and could they break from their tradition?

This one...

We'll learn a lot about where the Steelers are right now, but, you know, there's pressure.

When you've gotten your last three hires right, dating back to 1969, the pressure's on to get it right again.

The loose standard for coach of the year typically is the coach of the team that most exceeded the generally accepted expectations for the team heading into the season.

So that makes Mike Vrabel a viable candidate, Liam Cohen, Ben Johnson.

Like, who expected any of those three teams to be as good as they were?

Shanahan becomes a compelling candidate because it's more about coaching a good team, a Super Bowl team, that had more injuries last year than they could overcome.

through more injuries this year than they should have overcome to get to where they are but i think it's going to be vrabel or cohen possibly ben johnson but look at what vrabel did who expected the patriots to be 14 and 3 after two years of 4 and 13 so and then there's mike mcdonald i mean he only took the seahawks to the number one seed in a very competitive conference and meanwhile sean payton's not even one of the finalists and he took the broncos to the number one seed in the afc

In answering a question about international play, that's when Kraft nonchalantly said there's going to be 18 regular season games and two preseason games.

They have wanted this for years.

They backed off because of the unprecedented focus on player safety, and they knew you couldn't reconcile expanding the regular season while also caring about the overall well-being of the players.

After they made some safety changes, then they were able to justify going to 17.

I think we're going to see 18.

At the latest in 2013,

31, maybe 2032.

What's going to happen is if they don't reach a deal with the union to expand the regular season before 2031, when the current CBA expires in March 2031, just five years away, the NFL will lock the players out again until they cry uncle and agree to 18 games.

So the question is, and this is why they agreed to 17 games back in 2020.

They knew what was coming.