NEW ORLEANS — In an ideal world, Super Bowl week is something of a lull in the perpetual news cycle for an NFL insider.
For the most part, this year’s NFL coaching vacancies have been filled—the Saints are still lingering, but widely expected to sign Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore—and sights are set ahead to free agency, trades, and the draft. But that hasn’t always been the case.
“The worst case scenario for my logistics is the coaching carousel’s still going on,” NFL Media insider Ian Rapoport told Front Office Sports in a hotel lobby in downtown New Orleans.
“A couple of years ago there were some openings that really hadn’t been decided. A couple of them broke during Super Bowl week. That’s the nightmare scenario because it’s hard to get a lot done at Super Bowl week. I’m not at my desk. There’s a lot of things going on. If you walk around, there’s people that grab you all the time.”
Rapoport explained that trying to interview players from the Eagles and Chiefs at media night on Monday was “literally impossible” as other media members kept asking for two minutes of his time.
“I’m generally happy to do it, but I also want to work!” Rapoport said. “So it makes it kind of a challenge.”
Typically, Rapoport revealed, he spends Super Bowl week seeking to “set the table” for NFL fans about what’s expected to come up this offseason.
“At the start of the week, I broke the Myles Garrett trade request. I tracked it for five or six days, wanted to make sure it was perfect, wanted to get it first, which I was able to do, which is great, and that kind of splashed,” Rapoport said.
Rapoport does his best to break a big story on Super Bowl Sunday. He still wears a big smile on his face a decade later when he recalls the time in 2015 when the consensus belief was that the Seahawks and Marshawn Lynch would part ways at the end of a season.
“I found out two weeks before that they secretly made a big offer to extend him,” Rapoport remembered.
“It was like, ‘We could put this out now, or we could save it for Super Bowl Sunday.’” He ultimately decided to sit on the news, trusting that the Seahawks wouldn’t leak it anywhere else, and getting the payoff of dropping the huge story on the eve of the Big Game.
This week, he traditionally makes a list of about 40 storylines for the offseason, and shares it with his colleagues Tom Pelissero and Mike Garafolo, with whom he co-hosts The Insiders on NFL Network.
“Where are the big names going? What are the trades going to be? Where are the quarterbacks going to land?” Rapoport said, describing the strategy breakdown with his teammates.
This year, there aren’t any major in-game storylines in relation to which stars will be healthy or injured, but some years, like when Patrick Mahomes had a high-ankle sprain, it’s a major factor.
Rapoport has to balance countless scheduling conflicts during Super Bowl week, between staying on top of the news, going on-air, promotional appearances, and social engagements like dinners and parties.
“If it’s a non–NFL Network appearance, it’s always around my schedule. My main job is my main job,” Rapoport said.
“You sort of find time. The parties or events generally happen after 8 pm and I’m usually off-air at 7. The thing I struggle with a little bit is getting places logistically. You plan on being somewhere on time and then six phone calls happen or something’s breaking. Everything slows down. Leaving time to get places knowing that something’s going to get messed up in the schedule is important.”
New Orleans is a good location for these complexities because everything is close together and walkable, as compared to Phoenix two years ago where logistics were spread a half-hour apart with events also happening in Scottsdale and Glendale.
“I walked back from the SuperDome last night. That was great. You get a sense for the city. We got some late-night eats,” Rapoport said.
“The Super Bowl in Indianapolis. Was that the most star-studded? Probably not, but I think it would be in everyone’s top five because you could walk everywhere.”
