AFC Notes: Jets, Douglas, Darnold, Anderson, Ballentine, Texans, Ravens, Patriots, Lance
The Jets still haven’t won a game, and it’s being treated by many like a foregone conclusion they’ll draft Trevor Lawrence if they get the first overall pick. But at least publicly, the team is still making it sound like they believe in Sam Darnold long-term. Speaking to the media recently, GM Joe Douglas indicated he doesn’t think Darnold is the problem. “I certainly haven’t done a good enough job of surrounding Sam with the weapons he needed last year or this year,” Douglas said, via Ralph Vacchiano of SNY. “I’m looking at what I can do better moving forward in terms of making sure that we have the right skill and the right protection for him.”
Interestingly, Vacchiano writes that Douglas “expressed regret” about misreading the contract market for receiver Robby Anderson this past offseason. The Jets, of course, let Anderson walk to the Panthers back in March, and apparently Douglas thought he was going to get a bigger deal. Vacchiano writes that Douglas made “it sound like he would’ve been interested if he knew Anderson would only command $10 million per year.” That probably won’t satisfy New York fans. The cupboard has been pretty bare, with Jamison Crowder and Breshad Perriman operating as their top two wideouts when healthy.
Here’s more from the AFC:
- The Jets just got cornerback Corey Ballentine off waivers from the Giants, and they weren’t the only AFC teams interested. The Ravens and Texans also put in claims for the young corner, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network tweets. The Texans are toward the top of the waiver wire themselves, but they couldn’t beat out the winless Jets. Ballentine was drafted in the sixth-round by the Giants in 2019. He started two games as a rookie and the first two games of this season before quickly falling out of favor with Joe Judge’s staff.
- The Patriots look to be in the midst of a rebuilding year, which is a big disappointment after they got off to a 2-1 start with Cam Newton. If Newton doesn’t show enough down the stretch to get brought back in 2021, all eyes will turn to what Bill Belichick does in the draft. The Pats could be picking toward the top of the first-round for the first time in many years, providing them with a rare opportunity. Ben Volin of the Boston Globe recently took a look at the quarterback market for 2021, and NFL Network Daniel Jeremiah thought North Dakota State quarterback Trey Lance makes a lot of sense for the Patriots. “I think Lance would be an incredible fit,” he said. “Big, strong, athletic, and smart. He has been in a complex system with a lot of responsibility on his plate. His competitiveness and toughness would be appreciated by Bill Belichick.” Lance is regarded by many as the third-best quarterback in this draft class behind Lawrence and Justin Fields.
Giants Extend Graham Gano
On the heels of David Bakhtiari‘s extension, we’ve got another one to pass along. Although it’s not nearly as large, kicker Graham Gano is getting an extension that runs through the 2023 season from the Giants, the team announced Sunday.
Gano signed a one-year, $2.5MM deal with the Giants back in August that was set to expire at the end of the season. He’ll now get three additional years tacked on. Those three years will come with $14MM in new money, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network tweets. Of that, $9MM is guaranteed, so the Giants are tied to Gano for a whlie. He’s been on fire recently, and has an active streak of 20 consecutive field goals going.
An UDFA in 2009, Gano spent his first couple of seasons as Washington’s kicker before signing with Carolina in 2012. He held down the Panthers’ job for the next seven seasons, making the Pro Bowl in 2017. He missed all of last season with a knee injury, and the Panthers cut him back in July.
Packers Extend David Bakhtiari
The Packers made a major move before their Week 10 date with the Jaguars. Green Bay locked up left tackle David Bakhtiari with a four-year extension, a source told Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com (Twitter link). He had previously been set to become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season.
The deal is worth up to $105.5MM in new money, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network tweets. The base value is $23MM per year, Rapoport adds, which makes him the new highest-paid offensive lineman in NFL history. Widely considered one of the best tackles in the league, Bakhtiari made his return on Sunday from a chest injury that cost him a few games. This is certainly a nice welcome-back gift.
A fourth-round pick back in 2013, he turned into a steal for Green Bay. The Colorado product became a full-time starter as a rookie, and he’s been protecting Aaron Rodgers‘ blindside ever since. He’s been pretty durable, starting all 16 games in five of his seven full seasons and never missing more than four in one year.
An All-Pro in each of the past four seasons, Bakhtiari only turned 29 in September. As such, he should still be in the prime of his career when this new pact expires. Laremy Tunsil became the highest-paid offensive lineman and first to eclipse $20MM annually back in March, and now Bakhtiari has blown past those numbers.
He’s pretty much in quarterback-money territory now. Rapoport later posted a follow-up tweet saying he’ll get a whopping $30MM signing bonus, with $62.8MM coming his way before the end of the 2022 campaign. Since 2017 Bakhtiari is first in the league in pass block win rate among tackles, according to a tweet from Seth Walder of ESPN.com.
NFL Owners Pass Two Proposals
The NFL’s owners passed two proposals with potential significant ramifications Tuesday, commissioner Roger Goodell announced.
In the event that regular season games with playoff implications are cancelled and the league can’t complete it’s schedule in 17 or 18 weeks, the NFL will add an additional playoff team in each conference to limit the chances a team is unfairly left out of the postseason due to COVID-19 cancellations. This is only a contingency plan, and the current plan is still to proceed with seven playoff teams in each conference. As you’ll recall, this is the first year the playoffs has been expanded to seven teams from six.
The proposal lays out a new seeding system based on winning percentage in the event that teams end up with different numbers of games played. You can read the full language of the proposal courtesy of this tweet from Tom Pelissero of NFL Network. The second measure to pass will reward teams for developing minority coaches and executives. If a team has a minority coach/exec that gets hired away to be a new team’s head coach or general manager, they’ll receive two third-round compensatory picks. The picks will come one at a time in consecutive years, not two in the same draft.
You can read the full language of that proposal via this tweet from Pelissero. The vote to pass the playoff contingency plan was unanimous, and it sounds like the minority coaching development reward was passed overwhelmingly as well. The original playoff plan would’ve reseeded the eight teams regardless of division winners, meaning the NFC East winner likely would’ve been the eighth seed, but that part was struck down.
As for other potential rule changes, this offseason there was talk of the NFL adopting new onside kick rules to make it easier for teams to come back, potentially replacing a kick with a 4th and 15 attempt for trailing teams. That ultimately didn’t come too close to passing, but Goodell said Tuesday the issues isn’t going away. “It is something we have thought, and many clubs have thought, would be an exciting addition to the game, and something I think merits a lot of discussion,” the commissioner said, via Michael David Smith of ProFootballTalk.com.
Minor NFL Transactions: 11/10/20
We’ve got a long list of all the minor transactions from the last day or so:
Arizona Cardinals
- Waived: CB De’Vante Bausby
Atlanta Falcons
- Promoted: LB Edmond Robinson
Chicago Bears
- Signed: DT Anthony Rush
- Placed on reserve/COVID-19 list: Deon Bush, Lachavious Simmons
Cincinnati Bengals
- Placed on reserve/COVID-19 list: DL Margus Hunt
Denver Broncos
- Claimed off waivers from Cardinals: CB De’Vante Bausby
Detroit Lions
- Placed on IR: CB Tony McRae
- Activated from reserve/COVID-19 list: LB Jarrad Davis
Green Bay Packers
- Activated from reserve/COVID-19 list: QB Jordan Love, LB Kamal Martin, RB Jamaal Williams
Houston Texans
- Activated from reserve/COVID-19 list: LB Dylan Cole, LB Whitney Mercilus, G Max Scharping
- Placed on IR: LB Kyle Emanuel, LB Brennan Scarlett
- Claimed off waivers from Washington: DE Nate Orchard
Indianapolis Colts
- Waived: DL Ron’Dell Carter
- Promoted: WR DeMichael Harris
Kansas City Chiefs
- Activated from reserve/PUP list: T Martinas Rankin
- Waived: DE Demone Harris
Los Angeles Rams
- Waived: LB Natrez Patrick
Minnesota Vikings
- Activated from reserve/COVID-19 list: LB Todd Davis
- Placed on reserve/COVID-19 list: LS Austin Cutting
- Waived/failed-physical: LB Ben Gedeon
- Placed on IR: DB Holton Hill
New England Patriots
- Claimed off waivers from Cardinals: TE Jordan Thomas
- Waived: LB Cassh Maluia
- Placed on IR: TE Dalton Keene
New York Giants
- Activated from reserve/COVID-19 list: G Will Hernandez
- Waived: CB Corey Ballentine
New York Jets
- Activated off NFI list: CB Bryce Hall
- Waived: QB Mike White
- Placed on IR: TE Trevon Wesco
San Francisco 49ers
- Placed on reserve/COVID-19 list: WR Kendrick Bourne
Washington Football Team
- Promoted: WR Jeff Badet
- Waived: WR Tony Brown
Bears’ Roy Robertson-Harris Done For The Year
The Bears have slipped up the past few weeks with three straight losses as the offense has been unable to get going, and now their defense is taking a blow. Defensive tackle Roy Robertson-Harris will have season-ending shoulder surgery, sources told Ian Rapoport of NFL Network (Twitter link).
Robertson-Harris has started six of eight games so far this season, and usually plays around half the snaps as a run-stuffer. He’s also shown a bit as a pass-rusher the last couple years, notching 2.5 sacks last season and three the year before. An UDFA from UTEP back in 2016, he’s already carved out a nice career for himself. He missed his entire rookie season on the NFI list, but became an immediate contributor as a sophomore.
The team thought highly enough of him to place a second-round tender on the restricted free agent this past offseason to prevent teams from poaching him. That paid him a little over $3.2MM for this season. The big fella will hit the open market as an unrestricted free agent this March, and Rapoport writes that he’s headed toward a “nice payday in free agency.”
Cowboys Notes: Prescott, McCarthy, Dalton
The Cowboys are in the midst of a truly disastrous campaign, entering their bye week at a pitiful 2-7. Just about everything that could’ve gone wrong has gone wrong, including a devastating injury to quarterback Dak Prescott. Team EVP Stephen Jones spoke to the media today, and fortunately he had some positive news about Prescott. Jones revealed the signal-caller had avoided any infections in his leg, a distinct and scary possibility with any compound fracture, like we saw with Alex Smith. Jones also declared that Prescott was “ahead of schedule” in his recovery.
That’s all fantastic news, and of course all of us here at PFR continue to hope that’s the case. As for the future, Jones was asked about the possibility of the Cowboys drafting one of this class’ top quarterbacks assuming Dallas has an early pick, which looks likely at this point. Jerry’s son shot down any such speculation, reiterating that “Dak’s our quarterback” and saying “we’re fired up about our future with Dak.” Prescott is of course set to be an unrestricted free agent, and his contract situation is arguably the biggest story of the rapidly approaching NFL offseason.
Here’s more from Dallas:
- Speaking of shooting down speculation, Jones clearly wanted to tamp down any talk about Mike McCarthy’s job security. “Absolutely. Unequivocal,” Jones responded when asked whether McCarthy will definitely be back as the team’s head coach in 2021. When he was hired it would’ve been hard to imagine he could be a one and done, but there have already been reports of dysfunction in the locker room and McCarthy potentially losing the team. The Jones family has been steadfast in their commitment to him however, and this is about as firm as one can get.
- Former AAF star Garrett Gilbert came off the bench as the Cowboys’ fourth starter at quarterback this season and almost led them to an improbable upset over the Steelers Sunday, but it doesn’t sound like he’s on the verge of getting the full-time starting job. “When he’s cleared, we fully expect him to step in as our starter,” Jones said of Andy Dalton, who has been dealing with a concussion as well as COVID-19. Dalton struggled mightily through one and a half games before getting hurt, and since the team has no real long-term commitment to him it wouldn’t be surprising if they went back to Gilbert before too long if Dalton plays poorly again out of the bye. Gilbert didn’t exactly light it up, but he moved the offense competently against one of the best defenses in the league. For his part, Jones insisted the team still feels like they’ve got a shot to win the lowly NFC East.
Falcons Waive DE Takk McKinley
Takk McKinley‘s time with the Falcons has come to an end. Atlanta has waived the defensive end, a former first-round pick, they announced Monday afternoon.
It was widely reported that the Falcons were shopping the pass-rusher ahead of last week’s trade deadline, but last Monday McKinley announced he wouldn’t be traded, saying Atlanta turned down a handful of offers for him. If that’s true, then it’s pretty strange the Falcons would have chosen not to take some draft compensation only to cut him loose a week later. We heard last week that the team had been seeking a fourth-round pick for him in trade talks.
The 26th overall pick of the 2017 draft, McKinley will now be subjected to waivers and any team can claim him. He’s only owed a little under $900K for the rest of the season, so there’s a good chance we see a team submit a claim this week. Since the Falcons declined the fifth-year option on his contract back in April, he’s set to be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year.
If he isn’t claimed, there figure to be a number of interested suitors on the free agent market. There are a handful of contending teams who could use edge rushing help including the Titans, who just released Vic Beasley and are dealing with an injury to Jadeveon Clowney, and the Seahawks, who did already trade for Carlos Dunlap.
The UCLA product entered the league with a lot of fanfare, but like most recent Falcons defensive draft picks, he didn’t pan out in Atlanta. He had six sacks as a rookie and seven the next year, but regressed to 3.5 last year despite starting 13 games and appearing in 14. He was only playing a part-time role in the four games he played with them this year, racking up eight tackles, seven quarterback hits, and one sack.
He only turned 25 last week, and still has a lot of theoretical potential. He blasted the team on social media this week for not trading him and allegedly turning down past deals on the table, making the situation untenable. He’ll likely benefit from a fresh start, and it’ll be interesting to see where he lands. We’ll keep you posted as soon as we hear something.
Injury Updates: McCaffrey, Minshew, Biadasz
Christian McCaffrey finally made his highly anticipated return from his ankle injury yesterday against the Chiefs, but unfortunately the Panthers superstar picked up another minor ailment toward the end of the game. McCaffrey hurt his shoulder on the final drive of the game, and head coach Matt Rhule is labeling him day to day moving forward. But McCaffrey is apparently in a great deal of pain and his status for this Sunday’s game against the Bucs is “very much in doubt,” reports Ian Rapoport of NFL Network (Twitter video link). It doesn’t sound like anything long-term, but this could once again become Mike Davis‘ backfield, at least for this weekend.
Here are more health updates from around the league:
- The Jaguars nearly picked up an upset win over the Texans in Jake Luton‘s NFL debut, and he’ll get another crack at it in Week 10. Head coach Doug Marrone told the media that Gardner Minshew is unlikely to be available this weekend due to his thumb injury, and that Luton will likely start once again. Luton had a pretty impressive debut for a sixth-round rookie, passing for 304 yards and a touchdown with an interception while coming very close to leading a comeback. It’s no guarantee Minshew gets his job back even when he’s healthy.
- Speaking of the Jaguars, they at least did get some good news back on rookie receiver Laviska Shenault. Shenault left yesterday’s game with a hamstring injury and was ruled out, but Rapoport tweets that he received good news from his MRI, and a source told him Shenault has a good chance to play this week against the Packers. The 42nd overall pick of April’s draft has been a consistent contributor, with at least three catches in every game that he’s finished.
- The Cowboys on the other hand weren’t quite as fortunate. Rookie center Tyler Biadasz hurt his hamstring during pregame warmups, and EVP Stephen Jones said on 105.3 The Fan this morning that he’ll be out 2-3 weeks with the injury. It’s another brutal blow to a Dallas offensive line that has been decimated by injuries. The fourth-round pick from Wisconsin had been the Cowboys’ center for the past 5.5 games. Joe Looney started the first few games, and he’ll now get his starting job back for the time being.
- Colts tight end Jack Doyle is in the concussion protocol and likely won’t be able to be cleared in time for Indy’s Thursday Night Football AFC South showdown with the Titans, head coach Frank Reich announced Monday. Doyle had touchdowns in back to back weeks before going down on Sunday, and his absence will limit Indy’s ability to run the multi-tight end sets they like so much with Mo Alie-Cox and Trey Burton.
Calais Campbell To Miss Multiple Weeks
It looks like the Ravens will be without a key part of their defense for the time being. Defensive tackle Calais Campbell has a calf strain that will likely sidelined him for multiple games, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network tweets.
Fortunately, Rapoport reports that there are no structural issues and it’s not considered a particularly major injury at this time. Campbell left yesterday’s win over the Colts very early with the injury. In a separate video tweet, Rapoport says it’s expected to be 2-3 weeks, with a “worst case scenario” of four weeks. Calf issues can linger, so Baltimore will likely be cautious with the big fella. The veteran is 34 now, so there’s no reason for him to rush back from an injury like this.
The Ravens made a deal with Jacksonville to trade for Campbell back in March, and signed him to a two-year extension worth up to $27MM immediately after. That deal will run through next season and since almost all of it is guaranteed, he’ll almost certainly be back in 2021 no matter what.
Campbell has remained very productive even at his relatively advanced age, racking up 24 tackles, four sacks, and a whopping six passes defended in only seven-plus games. He’s made the Pro Bowl in five of the past six seasons, and was a first-team All-Pro in 2017. He’s also a vocal leader in the locker room and on the field, so his absence will be felt in more ways than one.