Jets Claim G David Moore
The Jets snagged David Moore off the waiver wire, but they weren’t the only club interested in the rookie guard. The Bears, Browns, and Raiders also submitted claims for him (Twitter link via Field Yates of ESPN.com), but the Jets won out due to their higher priority.
Moore was projected as a Round 4 or 5 prospect but wound up going undrafted. After that, he was one of the most coveted UDFAs in the NFL. The Panthers picked him up, but didn’t have room for him. Earlier this week, Moore was waived along with defensive end Austin Larkin (injured). To replace them on the roster, the Panthers added defensive end Kendall Donnerson and defensive back LaDarius Wiley.
Moore made some noise at Grambling over the course of three years, including two years as a full-time starter. He then opted out of the 2020 season, which may have slowed his momentum. Still, his Senior Bowl opponents voted him as the game’s top offensive lineman and teams still haven’t forgotten about that performance.
He’ll have an opportunity to showcase himself with the Jets who just placed Alex Lewis on the exempt/left squad list. If Moore makes the final cut, he’ll support starting guards Alijah Vera-Tucker and Greg Roten.
To make room for Moore, the Jets dropped fellow UDFA OL Teton Saltes.
Giants Cut Ryan Anderson
Ryan Anderson won’t be playing for the Giants in 2021 after all. The outside linebacker signed with New York in the second wave of free agency, but was cut on Monday, the team announced.
Anderson signed a one-year deal worth $1.125MM, only slightly above the $990K minimum for a player with his service time, back in March. The 49th overall pick of Washington back in 2017, Anderson never really lived up to his draft status. The Alabama product was mostly a reserve during his four years in Washington, but he did make a big impact in 2019.
That season he appeared in all 16 games with four starts, finishing with 44 tackles, four sacks, and five forced fumbles. In 2020, he played in only nine games and had just nine total tackles. Anderson “was expected to compete for a role on the edge,” previously, Dan Duggan of The Athletic tweets, while noting that he “missed the first two weeks of camp with a back injury.”
When he gets healthy he should be able to latch on elsewhere. Anderson will turn 27 later this week.
Lions To Sign CB Nickell Robey-Coleman
After Monday’s workout, the Lions are signing Nickell Robey-Coleman, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweets. This will reunite the veteran slot cornerback with new Lions front office bosses Brad Holmes and Ray Agnew.
The new Lions GM and assistant GM were with the Rams during Robey-Coleman’s three-year Los Angeles stay, with Agnew serving as the team’s director of pro personnel when Robey-Coleman signed there in 2017. The Lions were the only team connected to Robey-Coleman this offseason, and the 28-year-old cover man will attempt to stick with a fourth NFL franchise.
Robey-Coleman played last season with the Eagles, and while he did not fare as well in Philly as he did in L.A., the Lions will pair him with 2020 No. 3 overall pick Jeff Okudah and recently added vet Quinton Dunbar. Detroit dismantled its 2020 cornerback crew, cutting Desmond Trufant and slot defender Justin Coleman this offseason. The Lions have now added two ex-Rams defensive regulars this year, with Robey-Coleman following Michael Brockers to the Motor City.
Pro Football Focus ranked Robey-Coleman as a top-20 overall corner from 2017-19, when he manned the slot for Wade Phillips-led Rams defenses. The eight-year veteran will transition to first-year DC Aaron Glenn‘s unit in Detroit.
Robey-Coleman began his NFL career with four Bills seasons, arriving in Buffalo as a UDFA. He has done well to beat the odds and stick around in the league, and the rebuilding Lions will provide another opportunity.
Saints To Sign K Brett Maher
The Saints have moved quickly to land a Wil Lutz replacement. After their kicker suffered a groin injury, the Saints agreed to terms with Brett Maher, Mike Triplett of ESPN.com tweets.
Maher worked out for the Saints on Monday. He will have the opportunity to relaunch a career that paused when the Cowboys cut him late in the 2019 season. Maher, 31, did not kick in 2020.
A two-year Dallas kicker, Maher spent time with four franchises since. He went to camp with the Jets last year but bounced to Washington, Houston and Arizona. The Cardinals retained Maher via reserve/futures contract in January but cut him in March.
While the Cowboys parted ways with Maher late in 2019, moving to Greg Zuerlein the following offseason, he displayed historic long-range accuracy during his short stint in Dallas. Maher became the first kicker in NFL history to make three 60-plus-yard field goals, accomplishing this feat during the 2018 and ’19 seasons. However, after he made more than 80% of his field goals in 2018, Maher was just 20-for-30 a year later. Maher first broke into the NFL as a UDFA in 2013, but after failing to secure a role, he moved to the CFL for a four-season run.
Lutz has been New Orleans’ kicker for the past five seasons. He is likely to undergo core muscle surgery, and the procedure would sideline him for a few months. An IR move before the season starts would knock Lutz out for the year. If the Saints want to use Lutz this season, they would need to carry him onto their 53-man roster before placing him on IR ahead of Week 1.
Minor NFL Transactions: 8/9/21
We’ll keep track of today’s minor moves here:
Arizona Cardinals
- Signed: DT Darius Kilgo
Atlanta Falcons
- Waived: CB Tyler Hall
Baltimore Ravens
- Signed: WR Siaosi Mariner
- Waived/injured: TE Jacob Breeland
Green Bay Packers
- Activated from PUP list: TE Dominique Dafney
Miami Dolphins
- Waived: LS Rex Sunahara
Minnesota Vikings
- Signed: WR Warren Jackson
New England Patriots
- Waived: QB Jake Dolegala
- Signed: LS Brian Khoury
Philadelphia Eagles
- Signed: S Blake Countess
- Waived/injured: S Obi Melifonwu
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
- Activated from PUP list: TE Cameron Brate
Washington Football Team
- Signed: C Jon Toth
Lions Sign WR/KR Darius Jennings
The Lions have signed wide receiver Darius Jennings, per a club announcement. In a related move, center Drake Jackson has been waived. 
Jennings entered the league as an undrafted free agent with the Browns back in 2015. After starting out on the practice squad, the Virginia product earned his promotion. he caught 14 passes for 117 yards in four games, showcasing speed and potential for GMs around the league.
The next couple of years were spent on various practice squads before he resurfaced with the Titans in 2018. Operating as Tennessee’s kick returner that season, he took kick 94 yards and all the way to the house. His 31.7 yards per return average led the league in ’18, but the Titans jockeyed him on and off the roster in ’19.
Jennings, 29, was set to play with the Chargers last year but that deal didn’t last. If he sees the field in Detroit, it’ll mark his first live action since 2019.
Falcons Sign D’Onta Foreman
The Falcons have signed running back D’Onta Foreman, per a club announcement. The former UT standout will now battle for a spot on the roster with just a few weeks to prove himself before final cuts.
Foreman, a 2017 third-round pick of the Texans, saw time in ten games as a rookie, notching 327 rushing yards and two scores on 78 carries. The Texans saw him as a possible heir to Lamar Miller in the backfield, but his season was cut short by an Achilles tear. His 2018 follow-up was limited to just one game and he was subsequently released.
Foreman then had a cup of coffee with the Colts, but sat as a free agent for all of 2019. In 2020, he caught on with the Titans and tallied 22 totes for 95 yards – good for 4.3 yards per carry in a very limited sample. For his career, Foreman has 421 yards rushing and a decent 3.9 ypc average.
For now, Foreman will practice alongside veteran Mike Davis, wide receiver-turned-running back Cordarrelle Patterson, and 2019 fifth-rounder Qadree Ollison.
Colts, Darius Leonard Agree To Extension
7:31pm: Guarantee-wise, it does not look like Leonard’s deal will be quite as lucrative as Mosley’s. The Colts linebacker will see $33MM fully guaranteed, Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports tweets. That comes in $10MM below Mosley’s figure, which could be expected given that the Jets linebacker was a free agent when he inked that deal in 2019.
Factoring in the injury guarantees, Leonard’s extension does lead all off-ball linebackers; the Colts included $53MM guaranteed overall. Leonard’s full $20MM signing bonus will be paid by March 2022, JLC adds. Overall, Leonard’s extension checks in at $98.5MM base valeu, per OverTheCap, but it can max out at $99.3MM through weekly bonuses and Pro Bowl incentives.
8:07am: The Colts and star linebacker Darius Leonard have agreed to a five-year, $99.25MM extension, as Ian Rapoport of NFL.com reports (via Twitter). Leonard is now the highest-paid off-ball LB in the league.
Leonard and 49ers ‘backer Fred Warner, both selected in the 2018 draft, became extension-eligible at the end of the 2020 campaign, and because they were not first-round choices, they were slated for free agency next spring. So it was imperative for their respective clubs to extend their defensive cornerstones sooner rather than later, and after Warner signed a five-year, $95MM pact last month, it felt like only a matter of time before the Colts and Leonard came together on a slightly more lucrative accord.
Indeed, we heard on July 21 that the two sides were close to a new deal, but as Rapoport adds in a separate tweet, negotiations came to a standstill over the past several weeks. It’s unclear exactly what the holdup was, but perhaps it had to do with guarantees and cash flow.
As Jason Fitzgerald of OverTheCap.com reports, Leonard did not just set the off-ball LB market in terms of average annual value ($19.85MM). His $52.5MM in guaranteed money edges out the $51MM that C.J. Mosley pulled down from the Jets several years ago, and the $60MM that he will receive over the first three years of the deal tops Warner’s $58.7MM (Twitter link).
Leonard, 26, is certainly worthy of that type of commitment. He earned Defensive Rookie of the Year honors in 2018, and in his first three years as a pro, he has made three Pro Bowls and earned two First Team All-Pro nods. Although Pro Football Focus did not think as highly of his run defense or pass coverage in 2020 as it did in the prior two years, he consistently ranks among the best LBs in football in terms of both advanced metrics and raw stats. Since entering the league, Leonard leads all inside linebackers in tackles per game (9.9), TFL per game (one), sacks (15), forced fumbles (nine), and he is second in interceptions (seven) (h/t Field Yates of ESPN.com on Twitter).
In short, he is an elite defender and an indispensable piece of Indy’s front seven. He is now being paid like it.
Alex Marvez of SiriusXM NFL Radio first reported that a deal was either done or close to being done (Twitter link).
Cardinals Sign RB Ito Smith
A second member of the Falcons’ 2020 running back trio has found a home. The Cardinals agreed to a deal with Ito Smith, whom the Falcons waived in April.
Smith joins Brian Hill in securing a landing spot, with Hill catching on with the Titans in May. Todd Gurley remains a free agent. Smith will join a team transitioning in the backfield. A year after trading David Johnson to the Texans, the Cardinals allowed Kenyan Drake to defect to the Raiders in free agency.
Arizona has Chase Edmonds and James Conner in place as its top running backs. The team appears set to give each considerable work this year. With Conner having struggled with injuries throughout his career, Smith profiles as veteran insurance.
A 2018 fourth-round pick out of Southern Miss, Smith has accumulated just 175 career carries. Sixty-three of those came in 2020, when the Falcons diminished Gurley’s workload down the stretch. Smith averaged 4.3 yards per carry last season, totaling 268 rushing yards and a touchdown. He has six career TDs, with four of those coming as a rookie — a season that featured Devonta Freeman barely see the field due to injury. Smith finished his college career with back-to-back 1,400-yard rushing seasons.
Arizona waived running back Khalfani Muhammad and safety Lorenzo Burns as well. Burns spent most of the past two weeks on the team’s reserve/COVID-19 list.
Dolphins, Xavien Howard Agree To Reworked Contract
Xavien Howard is staying in Miami. The Dolphins and their star cornerback have agreed to a restructured deal that gives Howard more earning power, as Mike Garafolo of the NFL Network was first to report (via Twitter).
This was the expected outcome after we learned yesterday that Howard had returned to practice. And while this transaction is believed to mark the first time in league history that a player with four years remaining on his contract has received new money and guarantees — without a full-blown extension, at least — it doesn’t seem like a particularly onerous commitment from Miami’s perspective.
The Dolphins fully guaranteed Howard’s 2021 salary of $12.785MM and added $3.5MM in incentives tied to playing time and a Pro Bowl or All-Pro appearance, as veteran NFL reporter Josina Anderson details (Twitter link). Plus, as Ian Rapoport of NFL.com and Dan Graziano of ESPN.com report, Howard will see $6.775MM of his $12.975MM 2022 pay fully-guaranteed right away. The remainder is guaranteed for injury for now and will become fully-guaranteed on the first day of the 2022 league year (Twitter links). Cameron Wolfe of the NFL Network tweets that the club is also waiving the $93K of fines that Howard incurred for holding out of minicamp.
Most importantly, perhaps, is the fact that the Dolphins have assured Howard that they will return to the negotiating table in February or March of 2022 (Twitter link via Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald). Of course, Howard will need to stay healthy and continue to perform at a high level, and one hopes that player and team are aligned on the potential outcomes of a renegotiation next year. For instance, if Howard believes the team is open to an extension but the team is thinking more along the lines of another restructure, the relationship could sour quickly.
When Howard signed his current deal in 2019, he was the highest-paid corner in the league. But his current $15MM/year average now ranks just sixth at the position, and as he led the NFL with 10 interceptions last year and graded out as the second-best CB in the league per Pro Football Focus’ advanced metrics, he was pushing for a pay bump and requested a trade to force the issue.
Ultimately, the fact that he was still under club control for four years limited what the Dolphins were willing to do, but the team is certainly happy to have its top defender back on the field and at peace with his contract status. The adjustments Miami made to Howard’s deal seem like a small price to pay for that.