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| Thursday, February 6, 2025 |
| NEW ORLEANS -- Welcome to the Thursday edition of the Pick Six newsletter! |
| I don't know how it happened, but the Super Bowl is now only three days away. At least, that's what I've been told. I actually have no idea how far away it is because I've lost all sense of time out here in New Orleans. If I've learned one thing this week, it's that time does not exist in this city. Whoever wrote the song "It's five o'clock somewhere" definitely wrote it from a bar in the French Quarter. |
| Anyway, we have a huge newsletter today: Not only will we be handing out our own NFL awards ahead of NFL Honors (which is tonight), but we'll also be ranking EVERY Super Bowl ever played. With that in mind, let's get to the rundown. |
| As always, here's your daily reminder to tell all your friends to sign up for the newsletter. Or you can tell people you run into at the grocery store. That also works. To get them signed up, all you have to do is click here. |
| 1. NFL Honors is tonight, but we're going to hand out our awards first |
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| If there's one thing that always seems to get lost in the shuffle during Super Bowl week, it's the fact that the NFL hands out all of its major awards. That will he happening tonight during the NFL Honors ceremony. |
| This year, that means if you want to know who's going to win MVP, you'll need to tune in to the NFL Honors show, which will be airing at 9 p.m. ET on Fox. During the two-hour ceremony, which will be hosted by Snoop Dogg, we'll see every award handed out from Coach of the Year to Offensive Player of the Year to Defensive Rookie of the Year and everything in-between. |
| Here are all the details on how you can watch: |
Show: 2025 NFL Honors
Date: Thursday, Feb. 6
Location: Saenger Theater (New Orleans)
Time: 9 p.m. ET
TV: Fox | Stream: fuboTV (try for free) |
| Before the awards get handed out tonight, our NFL crew here at CBS Sports decided to vote on our own award winners, but with a catch: We were allowed to take into consideration a player's postseason performance in our vote (The NFL's awards are for regular season performance only). |
Offensive Player of the Year: Saquon Barkley
Defensive Rookie of the Year: Jared Verse
Coach of the Year: Kevin O'Connell
MVP: Lamar Jackson AND Josh Allen |
| That's right, we had a tie in our MVP vote. There were 18 voters and both Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson received seven first-place votes. The coach of the year award was also a nailbiter with O'Connell beating out Dan Quinn by one vote. You can check out our full list of award winners here. |
| As for tonight's awards, we made some predictions for those and you can check them out here. |
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| 2. Ranking all 58 Super Bowls |
| Will Brinson took the time to rank EVERY Super Bowl ever played so we are obviously going to have to take a look at his rankings today. I don't want to spoil the entire list for you, so I'm going to go through his top 10, plus I'm also going to reveal the Super Bowl that he views as the worst one ever. |
1. Super Bowl XLIX: Patriots 28-24 over Seahawks
2. Super Bowl XLII: Giants 17-14 over Patriots
3. Super Bowl LII: Eagles 41-33 over Patriots
4. Super Bowl LI: Patriots 34-28 (OT) over Falcons
5. Super Bowl XIII: Steelers 35-31 over Cowboys
6. Super Bowl XXV: Giants 20-19 over Bills
7. Super Bowl XXIII: 49ers 20-16 over Bengals
8. Super Bowl XXXIV: Rams 23-16 over Titans
9. Super Bowl III: Jets 16-7 over Colts
10. Super Bowl XLIII: Steelers 27-23 over Cardinals
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58. Super Bowl XXIX: 49ers 49-26 over Chargers. |
| With the Chiefs and Eagles getting set to play again, I was somewhat surprised that their first game -- a 38-35 win by the Chiefs -- didn't crack the top 10. That game had a 45-yard touchdown catch, a defensive touchdown and a game-winning field goal in the final 10 seconds, but it still couldn't crack the top 10. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT IN A SUPER BOWL, BRINSON? Anyway, he ranked that game as the 12th-best Super Bowl of all time and to be honest, that sounds about right, so I'm going to stop complaining. If you want to see where the other Super Bowls fall on Brinson's list, then be sure to click here. |
| 3. Patrick Mahomes is 8-0 against Vic Fangio: Breaking down the numbers |
| One of the key battles in Super Bowl LIX is going to be Patrick Mahomes against Vic Fangio. The Eagles defensive coordinator has faced Mahomes a total of eight times as either a head coach or coordinator and he's gone 0-8 in those games. |
| Although that record probably won't make Eagles fans feel very good heading into Sunday, Fangio's ugly record against Mahomes is actually kind of deceiving, according to CBSSports.com's Doug Clawson. |
| Yes, Fangio is 0-8, but it's not because Mahomes has been lighting up his defense. |
| Fangio was getting no help from his offense. In Fangio's eight games against Mahomes, Fangio's offense has only averaged 11.9 points per game and it's almost impossible win in the NFL if you're averaging under 12 points per game. The QB matchup was almost unfair. In his eight games against Mahomes, Fangio's quarterbacks were Tua Tagovailoa (twice), Drew Lock (four times), Joe Flacco and Teddy Bridgewater. Mahomes' career numbers are actually worse against Fangio. In his eight wins over Fangio, Mahomes and the Chiefs have averaged 26.9 points per game, which is slightly under their average of 28.6 points in all other games with Mahomes. Mahomes also has a lower completion percentage (64%) against Fangio's defense than he does in all the other games of his career (67%). |
| If you want to read more about why Fangio might actually be feeling good heading into Super Bowl Sunday, you can check out Doug's full story here. |
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| 4. Players from Super Bowl LIX who could make the Hall of Fame |
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| With the NFL getting set to announce the newest members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame tonight, we thought now would be a good time to try and predict which players from this year's Super Bowl might make it to the Hall of Fame at some point down the road. |
| Our resident NFL historian Bryan DeArdo came up with 13 players from this year's game who might one day make it to Canton. |
| Hall of Fame locks |
| Chiefs QB Patrick MahomesChiefs TE Travis Kelce |
| Toss up |
| Eagles DE Brandon GrahamEagles CB Darius SlayEagles OT Lane Johnson |
| Close, but not there yet |
| Chiefs DE Chris JonesEagles RB Saquon Barkley |
| If you want to see his full list of potential Hall of Famers playing in this year's Super Bowl, be sure to click here. |
| 5. NFL headed to Australia: Four things to know |
| The NFL is officially headed Down Under. The league is putting a regular-season game in Australia for the first time and that will be taking place in 2026. |
| Here are five things to know about the game: |
| The Rams will be the home team. The Rams are one of two teams -- along with the Eagles -- that hold marketing rights in Australia, so the NFL is shipping them Down Under for a game in 2026. The game will be played in Melbourne. The NFL considered multiple cities in Australia to host the game, including Sydney and Perth, but ultimately, they chose to let the Melbourne Cricket Ground host the game. The stadium has a capacity of more than 100,000 fans for the AFL (Australian Football League), so this could one of the most highly attended games of all time. The opponent won't be announced until a later date. The Rams' home schedule in 2026 consists of the Cardinals, 49ers, Seahawks, Giants, Cowboys, Chiefs and Chargers along with a TBD NFC North team and a TBD AFC East team, so one of those nine teams will be headed Down Under with the Rams. The game will likely be in Week 1. The NFL hasn't pinned down a date for the game, but NFL executive Peter O'Reilly said it would likely happen in Week 1. "We won't lock into to any scheduling here, but the likely scenario would be a Week 1 game," O'Reilly said. O'Reilly also added that it would likely be a day game in Melbourne, which would make it a prime-time game in the United States. For example, if the game kicked off at 12:30 p.m. in Melbourne on a Friday, that would be an 8:30 p.m. ET kickoff on Thursday night in the United States. |
| You can check out our full story on the Australian game here. |
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| 6. Extra points: Jaguars finally hire an offensive coordinator |
| It's been a busy 24 hours in the NFL, and since it's nearly impossible to keep track of everything that happened, I went ahead and put together a roundup for you. |
| Jags hire a 29-year-old offensive coordinator. For the second time this year, a team has hired an offensive coordinator who's under the age of 30. The Bears did it first when they hired 28-year-old Declan Doyle and the Jaguars joined them on Wednesday night by hiring Grant Udinski, who's just 29. Udinski had held several coaching jobs with the Vikings over the past three seasons. In 2024, he was the team's assistant offensive coordinator. Udinski will be working under new Jaguars coach Liam Coen. You can read more about Udinski's hiring here. NFLPA does NOT want an 18-game schedule. Roger Goodell has been pushing hard for an 18-game schedule, but it seems the NFLPA does NOT want that to happen. NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell Jr. said most players are adamantly against expanding the schedule again. "No one wants to play an 18th game. No one," Howell said, via ESPN . "Seventeen games is already, for many of the guys, too long. Seventeen games is also so lengthy that you're still dealing with injuries going into the next season." It will be interesting to see where the NFL and NFLPA go from here. Patriots might try to trade Joe Milton. The Patriots have their QB of the future in Drake Maye, which means that Milton is now expendable. Milton threw for 241 yards and a TD while playing for most of the game in New England's regular-season finale, which was a 23-16 win over the Bills. You can read more about the trade speculation here. Myles Garrett wants to play for a contender. During an interview with Rich Eisen on Wednesday, Myles Garrett didn't talk too much about his trade demand, but he did throw in one very important tidbit about where he wants to go, "I just want to go to a contender," Garrett said. It's hard to see the Browns trading him to an AFC contender, so if that's the case, don't be surprised if he ends up in the NFC if he gets traded. On that note, Garrett told ESPN that he would "Absolutely" love to play with Jayden Daniels, so the Commanders should probably pick up the phone now. Anyway, wecame up with three possible trade packages for Garrett and you can check those out here. |
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