The NFL is valuing youth and innovation more than ever before. A year after the Rams made Sean McVay the youngest head coach in league history, Patrick Mahomes became the youngest MVP winner since Dan Marino. In the 2019 offseason, an avalanche followed: The Cardinals threw caution to the wind and paired Kliff Kingsbury with Kyler Murray, the Packers ended the Mike McCarthy era, and the Bengals poached the Rams’ quarterbacks coach to be their new head coach. When did the NFL begin to resemble Silicon Valley? Welcome to Wunderkind Week, where we’ll dive deep into how the NFL became a young man’s league.
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August 22, 2019
Byron Leftwich and Bruce Arians Hope to Change the NFL by Changing the Bucs
The Tampa Bay coordinator enters this season as the only black offensive play-caller in the NFL. That status says a lot about the state of coaching in the league.
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August 19, 2019
The Era of the Once-in-a-Generation QB Prospect Is Here. How Will NFL Teams React?
Tua Tagovailoa and Trevor Lawrence are about to force NFL teams to decide if they’re transcendent talents worth tanking for—or just the faces of a larger trend
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August 16, 2019
“You’re Going to Have to Run Faster”: How Football Neglects Black Coaches
NFL teams are in search of the next offensive mastermind, but where are they looking? For many black coaches, this year’s coaching cycle felt like another instance of the league moving the goalposts.
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August 15, 2019
Can the NFL’s Youngest Play-caller Unlock Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott?
Kellen Moore has just one year of coaching experience under his belt. This season, he’s tasked with getting Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott to justify their looming mega-extensions.
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August 14, 2019
Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray Just Raised the Stakes of the NFL’s Offensive Revolution
As teams around the league search for innovative coaches and dynamic passers, the Cardinals have taken those trends to their extremes. Will hiring an Air Raid head coach and drafting a 5-foot-10 QB pay off?
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August 14, 2019
History Says Patrick Mahomes Should Regress. History Has Never Seen a Patrick Mahomes.
The Chiefs phenom had the best debut season of any quarterback in NFL history. Could he be even better in Year 2?
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August 13, 2019
Move Over, Rookies: Midlevel Veterans Are Having a Moment
The NFL keeps getting younger, but the oldest teams are winning Super Bowls, which has led coaches and general managers to turn to an undervalued resource to build their rosters
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August 13, 2019
Matt LaFleur Is Here to Modernize the Packers Offense—and Maximize Aaron Rodgers’s Prime
Can Green Bay’s coaching whiz kid help one of the greatest QBs in NFL history return to MVP form?
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August 12, 2019
The NFL’s Great Sean McVay Experiment and the Age of the Coaching Wunderkind
What will determine who succeeds or fails in a league where the play-calling phenom is football’s most precious commodity?
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August 12, 2019
How the NFC West Explains NFL Offenses in 2019
Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, and Kliff Kingsbury are taking the NFL into the future—but their approaches couldn’t be more different. Pete Carroll, meanwhile, is doing things his own way in Seattle. There’s something for everyone in the NFC West.
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August 9, 2019
Training Camp With the Chiefs, Rams, and Vikings. Plus: Wunderkind Week.
The duo also discusses the differences between building a team around Patrick Mahomes and Jared Goff