Chiefs’ Louis Rees-Zammit On 2024 Role
When former Gloucester Rugby star Louis Rees-Zammit signed with the Chiefs late last month, it was reported that he would be utilized in a running back/wide receiver hybrid role as well as in the return game. As the player himself recently noted, he will primarily be deployed as a return specialist.
Rees-Zammit, 23, entered the NFL via the league’s International Player Pathway program and also drew interest from the Jets, Browns, and Broncos. He indicated that he chose Kansas City over his other suitors because of the clarity of the vision that the Chiefs’ coaching staff has for him, which includes a focus on return duties.
“Yeah, so the plan we’ve got is, obviously, the new kickoff rules this year are absolutely massive,” Rees-Zammit said (via Charles Goldman of AtoZSports.com). “That’s where my main position is going to be. So I’ve got to fight to be a starter in that positon this year.”
Of course, the new kickoff rules that Rees-Zammit references are those that were recently approved by league owners and that are laid out by ESPN’s Jeff Darlington here. The special teams coordinators who crafted the changes are hoping for a kickoff return rate of at least 80% in 2024 after just 21.7% of kickoffs were returned in 2023. The modifications have already had an impact on roster decisions; we recently learned that the Steelers initiated contract talks with All-Pro returner Cordarrelle Patterson when talks on the new rules were gaining steam, and the Ravens’ recent acquisition of Deonte Harty was motivated at least in part by Harty’s return abilities.
The Chiefs returned just 12 total kickoffs in 2023, nine of which were handled by Richie James, who is presently a free agent. James also led Kansas City with 20 punt returns, and it is certainly possible that, if Rees-Zammit makes the club, he will be tasked with punt return work as well.
The Welshman did indicate that he would not be limited to the third phase of American football, and that he would have a role in KC’s offense. He certainly possesses the athletic traits to do so, having posted a 4.43-second 40-yard dash time, 9’7″ broad jump, and 29″ vertical jump during his pro day.
Ultimately, though, his chances of cracking the roster and his contributions will depend on how quickly he picks up the game.
“And then it’s within the offense, it’s about how quick I can learn the playbook,” he said. “Because, you know, we’ve got a plan to put me in various positions, play out the backfield at running back, be a slot receiver, just being able to use me as much as possible and be creative with me. So it’s all about me learning the playbook and getting the chemistry with all the players on offense to be able to use me.”
Patriots, S Kyle Dugger Agree To Deal
APRIL 11: Dugger’s new pact is guaranteed in full for its first two years; he will collect $29.75MM over that span, as detailed by the Boston Globe’s Ben Volin (the additional $2.75MM guaranteed, set to paid out in Year 3, is conditional). The contract includes an $18MM signing bonus along with per-game roster bonuses worth up to $5MM. Dugger’s cap hit will sit at $7.5MM in 2024 before rising to $11MM the following season, then $12.5MM and $13.5MM.
APRIL 7: Patriots safety Kyle Dugger is no longer on the transition tag. Per Mike Garafolo and Eric Edholm of NFL Media, player and team are in agreement on a four-year contract, which NFL Media colleague Ian Rapoport says has a base value of $58MM (including $32.5MM in guaranteed money). The maximum value, according to Rapoport, is $66MM.
This offseason, New England made it a point to retain its homegrown talent, re-signing players like Michael Onwenu, Anfernee Jennings, and Josh Uche. At one time, Dugger seemed the likeliest of that group to remain in Foxborough on a long-term basis, with the Patriots submitting a $13MM/year offer to the Lenoir-Rhyne product shortly before the deadline to apply the franchise or transition tag. The two sides were unable to come to terms prior to that deadline, which compelled the Pats to deploy the transition tag, but it ultimately did not take too long for an agreement to be consummated.
Per the rules of the transition tag, if Dugger had signed an offer sheet with another team and New England declined to match the offer sheet, the Patriots would have received no draft pick compensation. Fortunately for them, no outside club extended an offer, as Dan Duggan of The Athletic confirms. As such, all the Pats needed to do was bump the average annual value of Dugger’s new contract ($14.5MM) slightly above the $13.8MM transition tag value to get a deal done.
In terms of both AAV and total guarantees, Dugger now ranks fifth in the league’s safety hierarchy (excluding Bucs safety Antoine Winfield Jr., who remains on the franchise tag as of the time of this writing). That underscores his importance to New England’s defense, a unit that finished in the top-10 in total yardage and defensive DVOA in 2023.
Now 28, Dugger has been a full-time starter for most of his four-year career, racking up nine interceptions (including two pick-sixes) and 20 passes defensed along the way. He has not yet earned any Pro Bowl acclaim, and his Pro Football Focus evaluation in 2023 was less than ideal; PFF assigned him an abysmal 50.0 coverage grade and considered him the 68th-best safety out of 95 qualified players.
While it is true that Dugger is more suited to play near the line of scrimmage — he eclipsed 100 tackles for the first time in his career last season — he did yield a fairly modest 82.7 QB rating on passes thrown in his direction in 2023, and his PFF evaluation was much more favorable in 2022, when the advanced metrics placed him as the 11th-best safety among 88 qualifiers.
Regardless of what PFF might say, the Patriots clearly consider Dugger to be a foundational player and value his versatility (in addition to lining up in the box and at free safety, he has also seen action as a slot and boundary corner, on special teams, and even on the D-line). His new contract will keep him under club control into the Pats’ next competitive window.
Latest On Arik Armstead’s 49ers Departure
Needing to clear cap space and with a considerable amount of resources invested in their defensive front already, the 49ers elected to release defensive tackle Arik Armstead last month. San Francisco, which selected Armstead in the first round of the 2015 draft, first offered the Oregon product the opportunity to remain with the club via a pay reduction (he was due to earn a $17.4MM salary in 2024, the final year of his contract).
Armstead declined the Niners’ proposal, and he drew interest from multiple clubs upon reaching the open market. He ultimately scored a three-year contract with the Jaguars, which was initially reported as a $51MM accord. David Lombardi of The Athletic says that the deal is actually worth $43.5MM, though it includes $28MM guaranteed at signing (subscription required).
Regardless of the contract’s maximum value, the Jags were simply prepared to pay significantly more than the 49ers to secure Armstead’s services, as Lombardi writes. In an episode of his Third and Long with Arik Armstead program on YouTube, the player himself confirms that the 49ers offered him a one-year, $6MM contract for 2024, with incentive provisions that could have pushed the total payout to $8MM. While acknowledging the difficulty of the business decisions that NFL clubs often have to make, Armstead nonetheless said he felt “extremely disrespected” by the offer.
San Francisco ultimately replaced Armstead by swinging a trade with the Texans for Maliek Collins, who comes with an $8MM base salary and $8.47MM cap charge in 2024. Per Lombardi, the team hopes to put the money saved by the Armstead release into a new contract for wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk, though the latest reporting on that topic indicates that the 49ers and Aiyuk are not close on their extension talks. Aiyuk is under club control through 2024 via the fifth-year option.
In addition to Collins, the 49ers further buttressed their front seven by signing Leonard Floyd and Yetur Gross-Matos, whose modest 2024 cap numbers check in at $3.4MM and $3.2MM, respectively. While Gross-Matos, a second-round pick of the Panthers in 2020, did not live up to expectations during his four-year run in Charlotte, Niners GM John Lynch said the 26-year-old edge defender generated significant free agent interest from around the league.
“I thought (Gross-Matos’ agent) handled it like a house in Los Altos,” Lynch said (via Lombardi). “He priced it low, then he got the whole league interested and then everybody (got in on the bidding). Yetur was the guy that we signed that we had the most people in the league say, ‘Man, we were in on him.’ A lot of guys were after him.”
Lynch believes Gross-Matos has a real opportunity to thrive in San Francisco’s 4-3 alignment, which will allow the team to utilize his versatility and put him in the best position to succeed.
Dallas Mayor Advocates For Chiefs To Relocate To Dallas
Voters in Jackson County (Missouri) recently shot down a ballot initiative that would have generated, via a sales-tax extension, $800MM for renovations to Arrowhead Stadium, the Chiefs’ home venue. Prior to the vote, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt and team president Mark Donovan suggested the club would consider relocation if the measure was not passed.
While such a move would still qualify as a major surprise and would take a long time to come to fruition — the club’s lease with the Truman Sports Complex runs through 2031 — sharks are smelling blood in the water. As Lukas Weese of The Athletic writes, Dallas mayor Eric Johnson is openly advocating for the Chiefs to move to Dallas (subscription required).
In the wake of the voters’ decision on the sales-tax extension, Johnson said on X, “welcome home Dallas Texans” (prior to moving to Kansas City and rebranding as the Chiefs after the 1962 season, the club began play as the Dallas Texans, a charter member of the AFL). While that was something of a tongue-in-cheek comment, Johnson is serious about the possibility of bringing the franchise back to Texas.
“The connections are so deep, the history is so rich,” Johnson said. “We actually could put together the deals that would make sense for them to get them here.”
Johnson’s enthusiasm aside, even if the Chiefs were to undertake a relocation effort, there are any number of hurdles that could thwart a move to Dallas. One such hurdle, of course, is the fact that there is already a team in that city, and it is the most valuable team in the league, under the stewardship of perhaps the NFL’s most influential owner.
Despite having failed to advance to the Super Bowl since the end of the 1995 campaign, Jerry Jones‘ Cowboys remain hugely popular and were recently valued at $9 billion. Several years ago, Jones dismissed the idea of another team competing in his market, saying, “you can be rest assured that you would not have the NFL supporting another team because of the kind of value that the game and the NFL receives of having [the] Dallas Cowboys as one of its marquee teams.”
Johnson, however, is not so sure. “When the NFL looks at the next round of expansion, they will not find an American city where there is not an NFL franchise currently that will be a more lucrative or faster-growing market to put a team,” he said.
Weese, citing census reports, says that the population of Dallas-Fort Worth has increased by approximately 23% since 2010, and current estimates suggest that it could be the third-largest metro area in the country — behind only Los Angeles and New York, both of which have two NFL clubs — by the 2030s.
With respect to Jones’ comments, Johnson said, “you never say never because [Jones is] a businessman and he’s in the business of making money. There is a strong argument to make that the Cowboys’ franchise value is not tied to the city it plays in or is connected with. It’s an international phenomenon at this point.”
Johnson, who took office in 2019, has been seeking another major sports franchise for Dallas for some time, and two years ago, he put together an ad hoc committee as part of that endeavor. As far as where a hypothetical second NFL team would play, he has floated Hensley Field, a 738-acre city-owned site that was once the Dallas Naval Air Station, as a possible home. The site is on the water and offers the chance for an increasingly popular mixed-use development that could represent “an economically vibrant district of the city that brings new opportunities to its residents and workers.”
The Chiefs, fresh off their third Super Bowl title in five years, are a bonafide dynasty that still has many more years of Patrick Mahomes to enjoy. It is far too soon for their local fans to panic, but if Hunt, Donovan & Co. seek to move, they will find that one of the country’s biggest cities has its arms wide open.
Steelers Rumors: Patterson, Heyward, Wilson, Peterson
Cordarrelle Patterson became one of the best return men in NFL history despite playing during an era when rule changes limited the number of kickoffs that were actually returned. Patterson, 33, recently signed a two-year contract with the Steelers, and as Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes, the club initiated a dialogue with Patterson when talks to modify the kickoff rules were gaining steam among league owners. Once those modifications — which are designed to encourage more kick returns — were formally approved, Pittsburgh acted quickly to bring Patterson aboard.
Per Dulac, Patterson’s two-year deal is worth $6MM. While the versatile four-time First-Team All-Pro may see some action in the passing game and ground game, it is clear the Steelers are primarily counting on him to reprise his role as a dominant return specialist.
Now for more news and notes out of Pittsburgh:
- Franchise icon Cameron Heyward seemed to be contemplating retirement following a 2023 season marred by a serious groin injury, and there was even a possibility that the Steelers could seek to release him given how much cap room the club could save by doing so. As Josh Alper of Pro Football Talk relayed back in February, Heyward underwent an unspecified surgery, and the player himself wrote on X that he is “done doing stuff on [one] leg that guys were doing on [two] legs.” Heyward added that he “can’t wait to get back to myself,” and Dale Lolley of the team’s official website wrote several weeks ago that HC Mike Tomlin believes the soon-to-be 35-year-old will be fully cleared by training camp. In sum, it appears that Heyward will be back for a 14th season, $22.41MM cap charge and all.
- Another indication that Heyward would return to the Steelers for the 2024 campaign is the fact that he was one of the strongest advocates for the team’s Russell Wilson acquisition, per Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network (video link). Both players have Walter Payton Man of the Year Award honors to their name, and Tomlin also pushed for a Wilson signing after meeting with the veteran passer. According to Pelissero, Wilson’s agent made calls around the league to see if any team — like the Steelers — that might be interested in signing his client to a one-year contract would also be willing to tack on an “unprecedented, massive player option for 2025.” Unsurprisingly, there were no takers, so after another lengthy conversation with Tomlin, Wilson signed his contract with Pittsburgh.
- Defensive back Patrick Peterson, whom the Steelers released last month, recently said that he has had preliminary talks with a handful of teams since his release, though he does not anticipate signing a new deal before the upcoming draft. The future Hall of Fame corner struggled during his one season in Pittsburgh, and the team gave him an extended look at safety as a result. Once clubs have a better idea of their roster weaknesses post-draft, interest in Peterson could pick up, and as Lolley writes, Tomlin is open to a Steelers-Peterson reunion (though a new contract will certainly be less valuable than the two-year, $14MM accord Peterson signed with the club in 2023).
- Before signing Wilson and trading for Justin Fields, the Steelers considered, at least to some degree, Kirk Cousins, Ryan Tannehill, and Tyler Huntley.
Latest On Commanders’ No. 2 Pick, Giants-Jayden Daniels Connection
USC quarterback Caleb Williams is seemingly a lock to be drafted by the Bears with the No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming draft. Although most prognosticators believe the next three players off the board will be quarterbacks, it is less clear who those quarterbacks will be, and which teams will be selecting them.
Jason La Canfora of the Washington Post recently suggested that the Commanders, owners of the No. 2 overall pick, will select Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy, whose draft stock has soared thanks in no small part to an excellent pro day performance. The Athletic’s Jeff Howe (subscription required) says that, of the seven team executives, coaches, and scouts that the publication recently polled, three of them believed Washington would select LSU’s Jayden Daniels, two believed UNC’s Drake Maye would be the pick, and one said it would be McCarthy (the final executive said a trade-down maneuver would be the Commanders’ best bet).
The opinion of that cheeky non-conformist notwithstanding, it would be surprising if the Commanders traded down or picked a non-QB with the No. 2 selection. But if Washington opts for a player other than Daniels, then the Giants could suddenly become a team to watch, as Jordan Raanan of ESPN.com notes.
In possession of the No. 6 overall pick, Big Blue has been doing its due diligence on this year’s top collegiate passers and scheduled “30” visits with each of Maye, McCarthy, and Daniels. According to Raanan, Daniels is particularly well-regarded within the organization, and sources close to GM Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll believe the reigning Heisman Trophy winner would be an “ideal fit” in the Giants’ offense.
That said, New York would almost certainly need to trade up to land Daniels, and the Patriots’ No. 3 overall pick likely represents the highest choice that could be available via trade. It appears that New England is prepared to stay put and select a QB of its own, though a trade could still be on the table if the right offer comes along. The problem is that the Giants have just six picks in the 2024 draft and a great number of roster holes, so efforts to jump up the draft board could be cost-prohibitive.
While owner John Mara has consistently endorsed incumbent QB1 Daniel Jones — who is on track to be back from his ACL tear by training camp — Mara has also given Schoen the green light to select a quarterback with the Giants’ top choice. Schoen is no stranger to trading up the board, and the team has been connected to such a move for at least a month. Regardless of the overall strength of a roster, there is almost no price too steep to pay for a franchise quarterback, particularly since Jones has generally failed to impress during his pro career and since the 2025 class of signal-callers is generally considered to be a weak one.
In the above-referenced piece, La Canfora says the Giants are actually higher on McCarthy than any other non-Williams quarterback, a sentiment that Raanan apparently does not share. Raanan does say the team has interest in McCarthy, but he suggests that such interest would be at its zenith if the former Wolverine should fall to the No. 6 pick. In other words, the ESPN scribe seems to believe that while Schoen would contemplate a trade up to land Daniels, he may not sacrifice additional draft capital to acquire McCarthy.
One way or another, as Howe succinctly puts it, “there’s more mystery surrounding the 2024 quarterback class than there’s ever been.”
Falcons Were Interested In Top Defensive FAs; More On Kirk Cousins’ Decision
On the day before the 2024 league year opened, the Falcons agreed to a four-year, $180MM deal with former Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins, a deal that will pay the 35-year-old passer (36 in August) $50MM in guaranteed money. Even if Atlanta had not signed Cousins, the club was still prepared to make a major free agent splash.
Albert Breer of SI.com, in a piece that is well-worth a read for fans of the Falcons and Vikings in particular, explores in considerable detail how Cousins came to sign with Atlanta, beginning with the February 2022 meeting between the quarterback, his agent, and Minnesota head coach Kevin O’Connell, whom the Vikes had just hired. While most of Breer’s writing focuses on the discussions, both football and contractual, between Cousins’ camp and Vikings brass and then between Cousins’ camp and Falcons brass, he does note that Atlanta had interest in top defensive free agents Danielle Hunter — another long-time member of the Vikings — and Christian Wilkins.
Per Breer, if the Falcons had not been successful in their pursuit of Cousins or another high-priced FA signal-caller like Baker Mayfield, they would have spent their money on defense, with Hunter and Wilkins named as potential targets. Mayfield had agreed to a new contract with the Bucs while Cousins was still in limbo, so Atlanta GM Terry Fontenot spoke with the agents for Hunter and Wilkins in case he would have to address his QB position via a trade for a player like Justin Fields or via the draft. He was told that both players would fetch at least $25MM per year, which turned out to be pretty accurate. Fontenot also explored the possibility of trading up into the top-three of the draft to land a blue-chip collegiate quarterback, though the teams holding those selections (the Bears, Commanders, and Patriots) were not interested in dealing, at least not that early in the process.
Ultimately, Cousins chose to sign with the Falcons, and Atlanta subsequently bolstered his pass-catching contingent by authorizing a notable contract for wide receiver Darnell Mooney and sending displaced quarterback Desmond Ridder to the Cardinals in exchange for slot man Rondale Moore. Without a high-end QB contract on their books, it was the Vikings who pivoted to the defensive side of the ball, adding Jonathan Greenard, Andrew Van Ginkel, and Blake Cashman in quick succession while bidding farewell to Hunter.
Shortly after Cousins decided to make the move to Atlanta, he said the team simply seemed more prepared than Minnesota to commit to him on a long-term basis. Indeed, Breer reports that while the Vikings did improve their offer to Cousins as negotiations went on by putting more guaranteed money on the table, it was the structure of those guarantees that swung the pendulum in the Falcons’ favor. The Vikings’ proposals always gave them the ability to part ways with Cousins in 2025 without many financial ramifications, and Cousins ultimately felt he was being viewed as a bridge to a passer that the team would select in next month’s draft.
The Falcons’ deal, on the other hand, guarantees all of Cousins’ 2025 base salary of $27.5MM, effectively tethering player and team to each other for the next two seasons. Atlanta can realistically get out of the deal in 2026, at which point Cousins’ cap number skyrockets to $57.5MM. Still, he will at least have an NFL home beyond the upcoming campaign, which was clearly a top priority for him.
Having devoted so many resources to their offense, Fontenot & Co. will have to turn their attention to the draft to address a defense that finished 24th in DVOA and 21st in sacks in 2023. To that end, the team has scheduled a predraft visit with Alabama edge defender Dallas Turner, as Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network reports. The Vikings and Bears will also visit with Turner, who could be the first defensive player off the board.
Lions WR Amon-Ra St. Brown To Land $26MM-$28MM AAV On New Contract?
We heard at the end of last month that the Lions and star wideout Amon-Ra St. Brown would begin working on an extension at the Scouting Combine. ESPN’s Dan Graziano confirms that contract negotiations are indeed underway (subscription required).
Per Graziano, St. Brown’s new deal could feature an average annual value of $26MM-$28MM, which would position the former fourth-rounder near the top of the WR market as it currently stands. At present, Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill‘s $30MM AAV is tops among his peers, though that number is artificially inflated by an exorbitant ~$44MM salary in 2026 that Hill will almost certainly never see. Raiders wideout Davante Adams is next on the list with a $28MM AAV, while the Rams’ Cooper Kupp enjoys a $26.7MM AAV and also secured a WR-record $75MM in total guarantees when he signed his extension with Los Angeles in June 2022.
St. Brown, who is entering his age-25 season, clearly has an argument to be the highest-paid player at his position. The USC product has improved his production over each of his first three years in the league, and in 2023, he posted a stellar 119/1,515/10 slash line. Those totals earned him First-Team All-Pro acclaim along with the second Pro Bowl bid of his young career, and he has been one of the driving forces behind Detroit’s hugely successful rebuild.
Plus, as a non-first-round draft choice in 2021, St. Brown does not have a fifth-year option on his rookie contract, and he is therefore eligible for free agency in 2025. The Lions could of course deploy the franchise tag next offseason if they cannot work out a multiyear accord between now and then, but the tag for receivers is projected to be in the $25MM ballpark (h/t OverTheCap.com), and St. Brown’s is not the only contract that needs to be addressed. Quarterback Jared Goff is also entering the final year of his current deal and is due for a significant raise of his own, and GM Brad Holmes may also want to explore extensions for OT Penei Sewell and DT Alim McNeill.
Sewell, a 2021 first-round choice, could be retained via the fifth-year option in 2025, though McNeill was a 2021 third-rounder and will be out of contract at the end of the 2024 campaign. Nonetheless, St. Brown will clearly be a top priority, and there is seemingly no chance that Holmes will allow him to sniff the open market, even if he has to pony up an historic contract to keep him in Honolulu blue.
In order to create some salary cap breathing room, at least in the short-term, the Lions restructured the contract of recently-acquired cornerback Carlton Davis, as Jason Fitzgerald of OverTheCap.com reports. The move frees up $4.5MM of cap space in 2024, though as Justin Rogers of the Detroit News observes, that additional flexibility was created via three void years. Aaron Wilson of KPRC2 passes along the full details.
Of course, the Lions could also recoup additional spending power as a result of the unfortunate Cameron Sutton situation.
Browns Work Out DE/OLB Aaron Lynch
It appears that former NFL edge defender Aaron Lynch is attempting to make a comeback. Lynch, who last suited up in an NFL game in 2020 and who has been in the business world since hanging up his cleats, had a “positive” workout with the Browns last week, per Ian Rapoport of NFL.com.
A fifth-round pick of the 49ers in 2014, Lynch was a useful pass rusher in the early stages of his career, racking up six sacks in his rookie campaign and 6.5 sacks the following year. Unfortunately, he was limited to just seven games in each of the subsequent two seasons due to suspension and injuries, so he hit the open market in 2018 with little momentum. He ultimately signed a one-year deal with the Bears in March 2018 and did enough in his first year in Chicago to secure multiple free agent visits the following offseason.
He returned to Chicago on another one-year accord in 2019, but his playing time and overall production took a dip that year. He nonetheless found a home with the Jaguars in May 2020, and though he announced his retirement several months later, he subsequently unretired and returned to Jacksonville. In eight games with the Jags, he recorded one sack and six total tackles.
Despite limited statistical success since his second professional season ended, Lynch managed to stay in the league for another five years without being waived or released. Given the importance of pass rushing depth in today’s NFL, it would not be terribly surprising to see a club take a low-risk flier on the USF product at some point in the coming months.
Texans LT Laremy Tunsil Undergoes Successful Knee Surgery
Texans left tackle Laremy Tunsil recently underwent successful surgery on his left knee, as Aaron Wilson of Click2Houston.com reports. Per Wilson, the surgery was an arthroscopic procedure to address the injury that sidelined Tunsil for three games during the 2023 season.
Critically, both Wilson and Ian Rapoport of NFL.com note that Tunsil will make a full and fast recovery, so the club can continue to count on him to serve as one of the league’s best LTs. Despite the nagging knee ailment, which Tunsil managed last year by having it drained and by sitting out of practice once or twice per week, the former first-round pick of the Dolphins earned the fourth Pro Bowl nod of his career in 2023.
Tunsil’s work on the blindside was instrumental in quarterback C.J. Stroud‘s Offensive Rookie of the Year campaign, and, by extension, Houston’s surprising run to the divisional round of the playoffs. His Pro Bowl acclaim was buttressed by the advanced metrics, as Pro Football Focus considered him the 20th-best OT out of 81 qualifiers in 2023 and the fourth-best pass blocker. His work against the Browns’ Myles Garrett in the Texans’ wildcard round victory over Cleveland was especially telling, as Tunsil yielded no sacks or hits when lined up against Garrett, who earned Defensive Player of the Year honors last year (h/t Wilson).
The successful surgery is not only good news from an on-field standpoint, but from a financial one as well. Tunsil landed a massive three-year extension last March that includes a $25MM average annual value, the highest figure in league history for an offensive tackle. Tunsil, who is entering his age-30 season, is under club control through 2026, though his base salaries from 2024-26 ($18MM, $20.95MM, and $20.95MM) are not unreasonable for a player of his caliber.
On the defensive side of the ball, DeMeco Ryans‘ team has made a number of offseason additions, including a big-money contract for former Vikings standout Danielle Hunter. In terms of pass-rushing presence, Hunter will take the place of Jonathan Greenard, who parlayed his breakout contract-year campaign into a four-year, $76MM deal with (coincidentally) Minnesota. Although Houston was reportedly interested in retaining Greenard, we had heard that the club was concerned about his eventual price tag, and Greenard believes the Texans never extended an official contract offer (via Wilson, who passes along Greenard’s full statement on the matter).