{"id":432422,"date":"2026-01-23T15:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T15:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/432422\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T15:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T15:02:09","slug":"how-every-nfl-team-left-can-win-the-super-bowl-according-to-espns-ryan-clark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/432422\/","title":{"rendered":"How Every NFL Team Left Can Win the Super Bowl, According to ESPN’s Ryan Clark"},"content":{"rendered":"

After spending the better part of the last five months taking a fine-tooth comb to the entire league, ESPN NFL analyst Ryan Clark<\/a> now has to adjust to a football landscape that includes just four teams. With this weekend\u2019s conference championship games upon us\u2014pitting the Denver Broncos<\/a> and New England Patriots<\/a> against each other on one side of the bracket, and the division rival Seattle Seahawks and Los Angeles Rams on the other\u2014Clark has zeroed in on all the minute details that will make Sunday\u2019s games so juicy.<\/p>\n

Games of this magnitude often come down to things like special teams mishaps or anonymous players fumbling at the worst possible moment. Clark, who played safety in the NFL for 13 years and won a Super Bowl with the Steelers, is well aware of the balletic havoc that defines January football. A man who took the field for eight postseason games during his playing career, and has now been talking ball on ESPN for over a decade, Clark essentially has a PhD in football. Crucially to this conversation, he also has a plan for how the Broncos can make the Super Bowl<\/a> with their backup quarterback, a healthy appreciation for Rams head coach Sean McVay, and firsthand experience dealing with Seattle\u2019s vaunted 12th Man during the playoffs.<\/p>\n

GQ: I imagine this is a pretty fun time of year for you, just high-stakes football all the time?<\/p>\n

Ryan Clark: Oh, I think this is the hardest part of the season, actually. You\u2019re tired by now. You have to generate so much energy for such a long period of time. It\u2019s akin to [playing] football. It\u2019s the most exciting time, because it\u2019s the most important time, and you\u2019re also trying to muster up enough energy to make sure you can accomplish the job in a way that reflects what\u2019s going on on the field. I have to have the energy that the fans of the Rams, Seahawks, Broncos, and Patriots have, because this is the time they\u2019ve been waiting for the entire year.<\/p>\n

How do you watch football? Paint the picture for me. Are you in the studio with a bunch of screens, or are you just watching on the couch like the rest of us?<\/p>\n

This year was a little different for me because my son [New York Jets cornerback Jordan Clark] played. What was really hard for me this year was that on Sundays, especially once he became a starter, I was at the game. So, I\u2019m at the Jets game\u2014luckily, the Jets were never playing in prime time\u2014so it was 1 o\u2019clock every week. I try to follow as much as I can on RedZone or whatever. But, normally I\u2019ll try to have an iPad on, a TV, and then I\u2019ll have RedZone on my phone. That\u2019s usually how I\u2019ll watch during the day. And then, let\u2019s say Monday for NFL Live<\/a>, we\u2019re going to talk about six games specifically. I go back and re-watch all of those games first.<\/p>\n

You have football homework!<\/p>\n

You\u2019re watching them on the NFL app, you\u2019re watching the all-22. If I need to see the big picture on certain plays, I go watch the all-22 to try to make sure I\u2019m seeing the coverage, seeing the rush, seeing the adjustments, stuff like that. I just have a rule. I\u2019ll get on my production call and they\u2019ll ask me about a game and I\u2019ll tell them, \u201cI can\u2019t talk about that, at least not yet, because I haven’t rewatched it.\u201d \u200b\u200bJust because, man, these dudes work so hard at their job. There\u2019s already a disconnect between media and athletes. I don\u2019t want to be that guy that\u2019s misrepresenting what\u2019s happening on the field. I want to be able to, if I say something, be able to point to the play, point to the moment, and recap exactly what I\u2019ve seen that makes me have the opinion.<\/p>\n

I can be honest about this part. If it\u2019s late in the season and the Tennessee Titans are playing the Las Vegas Raiders, I\u2019m probably not going back and watching that, just because I know we won\u2019t really cover it on any of the main shows. That normally starts to happen once teams get eliminated. But, the problem comes when the Las Vegas Raiders play the Seattle Seahawks, who will be a playoff team. You still have to watch that game. But, you do your best to alleviate some of the work as it gets later on in the season, to try to get some rest to be as fresh as you could possibly be. This [past] weekend, for instance, we were in Foxborough on Sunday for the Patriots game, but I also had First Take<\/a> at 10 a.m. in Miami.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like, if you sleep, you sleep. If you don\u2019t, you don\u2019t. But then the problem is, how do I bring the energy on the show as if I have slept, as if I am rested? It\u2019s kind of just all a vicious cycle of psychosis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After spending the better part of the last five months taking a fine-tooth comb to the entire league,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[34777,64,63,794,596,43125,1231,593,1254,85,20116,1672],"class_list":["post-432422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-affiliate-disabled","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-espn","tag-football","tag-gq-sports","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-nfl","tag-seattle-seahawks","tag-sports","tag-textbelowcentergridwidth","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}