Sean McDermott Talks Broncos-Seahawks, Cowboys, Commanders & More with Rich

Every other Friday, Sean McDermott checks in with Rich from an undisclosed porch, and this week he brought a coach's eye to the most talked-about quarterback in football, the defending champs' slide to .500, the Cowboys' midseason defensive shakeup, and the end-of-game mess in Washington that nobody can stop talking about.

The setting has become part of the bit. Rich floated renaming the segment "porch time with Sean McDermott," and McDermott, laughing, declined to give away too many of his hideouts in case Rich was "casing the joint." He watches the games on a TV out on the porch, then breaks down the film from a desk in his office, his man cave for right now.

That led to a question fans have wondered about forever. When coaches say they need to look at the film, do they really? McDermott admitted that being a fan this year has given him some sympathy for the complaint. People used to accuse him of the same line, and now he hears his colleagues use it and understands how it sounds. "Isn't enough enough?" he said with a laugh. "How many times you're going to say that?"

**Bo Nix and a crisis of confidence**

Rich went straight to Thursday night, when Denver beat the defending Super Bowl champions on their own turf to move to 4-2 and somehow left a worse taste than a loss. Ryan Fitzpatrick tore into Bo Nix after the game, and Dan Orlovsky said Nix looks like he wants anybody but himself touching the football. What does McDermott see?

He started by vouching for the critics. Both have played the position at a high level and take pride in it. Fitzpatrick, he said, has "legendary status in my book" for ripping off his shirt in Buffalo before a playoff game. "Probably the loudest crowd I've ever heard in my life was when Fitz ripped off his shirt."

Then he answered the question. "Do I see what is being said? I do." McDermott remembered game-planning against Nix the last two seasons as "a very competitive, edgy type of player," someone he has a great amount of respect for. This year he sees "some of the maybe indecisiveness." He also noticed Nix looking very relaxed on the bench, which might just be his demeanor, since a quarterback has to stay poised for his team. But his conclusion was clear. "There is something a little bit off this year, and I would agree from that standpoint, because I know what he's capable of doing."

McDermott offered one possible explanation. Offense depends on rhythm far more than defense, and part of that rhythm is the cadence with the play caller, knowing what's coming next. Nix has been with Sean Payton a long time, but for the first stretch of this season he had Davis Webb in his ear. Now it's back to Payton. "I'm sure they're going to regain their cadence and their rhythm together."

**The Seahawks at 3-3**

Seattle is .500 a third of the way through its title defense, and Rich doubted Mike Macdonald would have believed that in a million years. McDermott said every coach goes through the same assessment after each game: where are we, what are our strengths, where do we need to improve. The strength is obvious. The Seahawks are "probably one of the better, if not the best defense right now in the NFL."

Offensively, he pointed to a new coordinator and missing running backs who would make the attack more two-dimensional. Sam Darnold was "affected" all night by a very good Denver defense, sacked five times and hit even more. But McDermott liked the adjustment. Once the offensive coordinator got to the quick game later on, Darnold got the ball out fast, Jaxon Smith-Njigba got going with over 100 yards in the second half alone, and the run game opened up.

Do the Seahawks miss Kenneth Walker? "Any team would miss his ability and his contribution," McDermott said, recalling Walker's run through the NFC Championship Game and Super Bowl, and noting what he's doing now in Kansas City. One-dimensional teams are easier to defend, and with defenses playing so many split-safety looks, you need a running game to set up play action.

Rich pointed to Darnold's 51 attempts and asked if McDermott ever pulled Josh Allen back after a 50-throw game. "Absolutely," he said. Quarterbacks are wired to like throwing it, but no coach wants to need that many. Seattle was forced into a one-dimensional comeback mode late, and McDermott believes the Seahawks are best with Darnold under center, where he lived last year, with the run threat, play action and screens built off it. "That's a harder thing for a defensive coordinator to call a game against."

**The Cowboys bring in Mike Pettine**

Dallas hired Mike Pettine from outside the building to help defensive coordinator Christian Parker, who reportedly got his first NFL job from Pettine. What can the Cowboys get out of this in the middle of a season?

McDermott said having a senior assistant on staff is very valuable, and when you don't have one, you end up going outside, which you'd rather avoid. "You throw a little bit of a pebble into a still pond and it's just going to have some ripple, whether you like it or not." Pettine, he added, is a tremendous coach who has sat in Parker's seat before.

The bigger issue is system knowledge. Teams hire young coordinators out of great systems, and Parker comes from Vic Fangio's, "one of the best defensive coordinators to ever coach in the NFL." But how long was he in it, and was he there in the early days in Philadelphia when Fangio was building it? Now Parker has to build his own system from the ground up. And then there's play calling, "one of the toughest jobs in the building in the NFL." It's an art form. "In some cases, you either have it or you don't," McDermott said, and it's hard to evaluate when the candidate hasn't done it before.

Moving Parker to the box changes everything, too. Upstairs is "more of a library type of static environment where you can see everything," a place to play chess. What you lose, McDermott stressed, is leadership and the feel of the game, because the sideline is where you can look your players in the eye. His suggestion: divide and conquer, with Pettine on the field and Parker upstairs, comparing notes at halftime and after the game.

**The Commanders' overtime breakdown**

Rich saved the strangest topic for last. Days later, people are still talking about how Washington's Sunday game ended, partly because the Commanders don't play again until Monday night, with Jayden Daniels saying it was on him and Dan Quinn saying it was on him too. Had McDermott ever seen anything like it?

He watched it once as a fan, then several more times through a coach's lens. "As head coaches, you wear that result and you carry that result, good or bad." He laid out three options. The simplest was to run the play with 55 seconds left, get up, clock it, and try to win it, though that leaves time for a counterattack and a possible field goal. The second was to clock it immediately and run what Buffalo called "foul ball," rolling the quarterback out to buy time and launch it high and deep to burn clock. The third was a slow-tempo approach, sitting at the line and draining as much clock as possible before kicking.

McDermott, who has known Quinn a long time and called him a tremendous coach, is sure Quinn had those on his radar. Where it likely broke down, he said, was "the execution of their communication," which is harder than people think. He admitted he had a similar situation late in a season in Buffalo, and that it starts with the head coach. Coaches won't detail exactly what happened publicly, but he's sure Quinn is meeting with the people he needs to. "Accountability versus calling people out and ostracizing, those are two different things."

So, Rich asked, what was the moment in Buffalo? "We're not going to go there," McDermott said, offering instead to tell him over a beer sometime. Rich looks forward to it.