SAN JOSE — Jadeveon Clowney predicted this a month ago. Predicted that a field of 14 NFL playoff teams would winnow into Super Bowl LX and would feature Seattle and New England. Which LX features, just as the sack specialist with a future in prognostication said.
Clowney chose these teams based on his informed opinion, having played for both Mike Vrabel and Mike Macdonald in his 12-seasons-for-seven-franchises NFL career. He loved them both, especially their brains. Macdonald was brilliant, and his brilliance is well-documented. But Vrabel was that, too, just not in the obvious, outward way.
“I told everybody, everywhere I went, that Mike Vrabel was the smartest coach I ever played for,” Clowney says. He adds an addendum later in the same interview with Sports Illustrated: “Those two guys, to be honest, (were) the smartest in my career.”
The Vrabel-Macdonald similarities end there, with their respective intellects and ability to translate their depth of football knowledge into ways that can be applied, in split seconds, to tens of thousands screaming. Clowney found that much of how each operated was in contrast to the other. Macdonald, Baltimore’s defensive coordinator for Clowney’s season there (2023), didn’t hold many deep conversations with his players or, per Clowney’s recollection, many conversations, period, with them. He spoke in football. “Definitely nerdier,” Clowney says, and he means that as a compliment.
Vrabel spoke the same language but not in the same way. Houston made him its linebackers coach in 2014, assigning him to develop Clowney, the No. 1 pick in the draft. The soul of a retired champion still oozed from Vrabel’s pores. He talked smack to his own players. It took Clowney time to understand and delineate Vrabel’s approach. The coach wasn’t announcing his on-field superiority. He wanted to optimize his players’ natural gifts, just as he had while playing football, with far less natural anything to work with.
“It’s his style of coaching,” Clowney says. “I was his rookie.”
Vrabel taught Clowney lessons that sustain the edge rusher, who has 66.5 sacks in his pro career. Clowney only thought he knew football. Vrabel showed him how little he actually knew. Vrabel broke the game down into all its various components, explaining each in granular detail.
In Houston, Clowney didn’t know much about advanced run plays; at South Carolina, he terrorized defenses primarily through freakish athletic ability, size disparities and will alone. Vrabel taught Clowney how NFL run games worked, how to identify plays based on formations, how a back lined up, how he positioned his body, head or eyes before the snap. Clowney noticed something else: Vrabel knew and understood the Texans’ backup linebackers as well as he did a generational prospect who shared the same position room.
“That’s where Vrabel separated himself from other coaches I have played [for]. He knows the game. He taught me so much football.”
Jadeveon Clowney
“That’s where Vrabel separated himself from other coaches I have played [for],” Clowney says. “He knows the game. He taught me so much football.”
Vrabel had a soft touch, too, the kind that endears players to a meathead, a taskmaster or a schematic wizard. Vrabel can be all three of those and empathetic; surprisingly, remarkably human. Clowney tore his right meniscus in his NFL debut, and the toll that injury exacted, borne from where expectations intersected with an inability to fulfill them right away, sent him to dark places. That’s when his position coach, the one who prodded and talked s—, became his 6′ 4″, 260-pound-ish cheerleader, too. “J, you gotta push through stuff,” Vrabel would say, while encouraging Clowney to stay positive and focus on what he could directly impact, rehabilitating his injured knee. “I’m with you,” Clowney told him.
He can still hear those Vrabel-isms. Either you’re gonna whoop his ass, or he’s gonna whoop yours! It’s a man’s game! JD, I played this game with violence and a lot of passion!
Clowney played for Dallas this season. He respected all his coaches at each stop, he says. He prefaces this next part with a disclaimer—he’s not trying to light up any other coach he played for. But none of Clowney’s other coaches, he says, combined Vrabel’s tactical acumen, motivational supremacy and empathy.
Nothing wrong with that, Clowney says. He loved playing for Macdonald, too. He is, he says, a “big fan” of Macdonald’s personality. Of Vrabel’s, in contrast, Clowney says, “I love that. It rubs off on me a little more because he’s more aggressive. Sometimes, you need that aggressive love around you. And I needed that when I couldn’t play, and my head was in a bad place—and Vrabel helped lift me out of that.”
Clowney understands these concepts on a level far different from most humans; primarily, this understanding comes from his sample size. He has played for dozens of defensive coaches. At some stops, soon after leaving Houston, he says, he wondered why some schemes did not work as well as Vrabel’s game plans, which often worked as intended.
Eventually, he answered his own question. “It’s because the way they’re being coached,” Clowney says. “Like when I first got to Dallas (2025)—I’m not trying to point fingers at anybody—but, I was like, ‘It’s not good enough.’
“I can tell you right now. I’ve played in some schemes where I was like, ‘This is not it, but, oh, well.’ We ran with it. I dealt with it all year. I knew where we were gonna fall.”
“This is gonna be one of the coolest defensive games, fundamental games, we’ve ever watched in a Super Bowl.”
Clowney
As for LX, Clowney says, “This is gonna be one of the coolest defensive games, fundamental games, we’ve ever watched in a Super Bowl.”
He picked these teams’ coaches a month ago. If he must pick between them, Clowney says, he picks the Seahawks. They have a better offensive line, in his mind, and he’d give Seattle’s defensive line a slight edge, too.
Q&A: Kolohe Andino on Sam Darnold
Today’s conversation features Kolohe Andino, a retired professional and Olympic surfer who is friends with Darnold and also, like Darnold, a native of San Clemente, Calif.
On their friendship: “He’s just my boy. I’ve rooted for him no matter what.”
On the NFC championship: “It was a full tearjerker all around (back home). Everyone was crying. He’s so even; that’s the most badass thing about him. He’s lifting the NFC title trophy, and he’s barely cracking a smile. He’s like American sports royalty now. He doesn’t act like that. I was crying, thinking: Man, this feels like a Hollywood story.”
On the narratives: “I’ve been written off my whole life; under-performer-kind of guy, blah, blah, blah. I know what that’s like. Sam doesn’t care. He’s the winningest quarterback the last two years. I know him. He just wants to win.”
In defense of: “I used to get bummed. I had some friends tell me, straight up, like he sucks or whatever. Like to my face. And I’d get all [defensive] about it.”
Sam is …: “Stoked.”
Super Bowl XLIX revisited
For Super Bowl LX, I spent a few hours looking back at what I’ve written on the Patriots and Seahawks since 2013 or so. And, in reading, I was surprised at how many long-ago events shaped either participants in LX, narratives that engulf both teams and far more connective tissue than most anyone expected.
This is from the cover story I wrote about Pete Carroll the offseason after XLIX, when the Seahawks came this close to entering the dynasty conversation. This was an optimistic take on how that group would heal. At the time, it sounded a little overly optimistic but not like it presents now, with 12 years of hindsight:
Carroll believes he made the right call. He’s never wavered there. Where some people say “worst possible decision,” he says “worst possible outcome.” That’s his distinction, and he’s sticking to it. But that won’t stop the questions. “I know you want to find out—everybody wants to find out, the intrigue, the depth and all that,” he says. “And how much it hurt.
“You’ll never know. I can’t make you understand. You pour everything in your life into something, and—it goes right, it goes wrong—it’s in you. It becomes part of you. I’m not going to ignore it. I’m going to face it. And when it bubbles up, I’m going to think about it and get on with it. And use it. Use it!”
Looking at his roster, Carroll says this team is deeper than it was a year ago, closer to what it was when they won Super Bowl XLVIII. “The challenge is out there again. Here we go,” he says. His eyes narrow. “Do you hear what I’m saying?
“We’ll come out of this better than if we had won.”
The ultimate birthday present
Seahawks safety Nick Emmanwori will turn 21—yes, that’s not a typo—this freaking Saturday. Set aside the fact that he played at an All-Pro level this season, starting 14 games and playing in 11, while becoming the multiple, versatile, movable piece that every great Mike Macdonald defense needs, before he could legally order a drink. I asked Emmanwori last week how he planned to celebrate; you know, turning 21. “Prepare for (the Super Bowl),” he says. “Go get that ring. Make a birthday wish. Wake up. And get it done!”
Tom Brady stands with Jonathan and Robert Kraft during a statue unveiling before New England’s preseason game against Washington in August. | Paul Rutherford-Imagn Images
‘Nobody my age should have a statue’
Tom Brady, on his statue in New England, which the Patriots first displayed earlier this season while inducting Brady into the team’s ring of honor: “I look back on these things time and again,” he tells SI. “I still feel like I’m young, and I still maintain that nobody my age should have a statue. Obviously, I’m grateful. Not anticipated. Greatly appreciated. New England left an indelible mark on me. And when they unveiled the statue, it was kind of jaw-dropping.”
On background
Chalk this up to strategy. But I’ve spoken to folks who swear Darnold’s oblique injury isn’t close to healed. Most deploy this bit of info to make him more heroic. I’ve spoken to others who say he’s fine and won’t be impacted this week, let alone on Sunday. Believe precisely … none of them. This may sound far-fetched but it’s true. Half this week is about spreading misinformation. Much more common than it might seem.
Only at the Super Bowl
Of the 20 that I’ve covered, I’ve never seen one as dark as this one. The best part, honestly, was the line outside. It didn’t wrap around the block. It wrapped around three blocks. It nearly formed a square. There were hundreds and hundreds of people in that line. Now, I’m not one of those reporters who find the job we do interesting. Most young journalists who shadow me fall asleep. So I’ve certainly never understood the appeal here.
Most jerseys: 12s. But split between various iterations of Brady’s jersey in New England and those fans in Seattle who root, primarily, for other fans.
Quote without context
“You ever watched an interview from 200 feet away?”
Context
This was from one fan, in that line. The answer, we must hope, was “no.”
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