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.
Baker Mayfield Fine With Negotiations Continuing Into Season
Josh Allen became the 2018 class’ first contract domino to fall, signing a monster extension with the Bills. This provides a clearer road map for Lamar Jackson and Baker Mayfield.
While Jackson and Allen have thus far ascended to high higher peaks than Mayfield, who has yet to secure his first Pro Bowl invite, the Bills’ extension decision stands to help his cause. Browns GM Andrew Berry attempted to downplay the impact Allen’s $43MM-per-year extension will have on Mayfield talks, though the Bills quarterback’s deal will certainly factor into the Browns’ equation.
The Browns could wait, but Allen provides yet another example of teams locking in QBs ahead of their fourth seasons. Dak Prescott represents the outlier here from recent years, and the Cowboys did not exactly benefit from their wait. The NFL now having a third $40MM-per-year player, with Allen joining Prescott and Patrick Mahomes, stands to benefit other passers.
“I’m worried about winning. I think the rest will take care of itself,” Mayfield said, via the Akron Beacon Journal’s Nate Ulrich, on Allen’s contract’s potential effect on his situation. “It’s good for the quarterback position overall. I’d be lying if we said otherwise, but I’m worried about winning right now. I don’t know the timeline on it. We haven’t talked about it because I’m worried about winning this season.”
Since the 2016 draft class became eligible for new deals in 2019, six QBs have signed big-ticket extensions. Five of those — Mahomes, Allen, Deshaun Watson, Carson Wentz and Jared Goff — agreed to terms in the summer before their fourth seasons. Russell Wilson and Ryan Tannehill did the same from the 2012 class. Extending Nick Chubb and discussing a deal with Denzel Ward, the Browns are taking care of their other core pieces ahead of what could be a tricky negotiation with Mayfield.
The former No. 1 overall pick finished second in the 2018 Offensive Rookie of the Year voting but regressed in 2019. After the Oklahoma product bounced back in 2020, the Browns may be willing to see if he can keep that momentum going to start this season before committing. Mayfield does not plan to set a hard deadline on negotiations this year.
“I’m not doing the negotiations, so quite frankly, I don’t give a damn,” Mayfield said on negotiating in-season. “I’m worried about winning Week 1 and going onto Week 2 and focusing on that week one week at a time. That’s my mindset, so no matter how many times I get asked this question throughout the year, it’s going to be the same answer because that’s just the truth.”
With Allen’s deal done, the focus will shift to Mayfield and the self-represented Jackson. Mayfield should be expected to join the $40MM-AAV club, Ulrich estimates. The former Heisman winner’s uneven start to his career injects intrigue into this situation, as does the Browns’ near-20-year struggle finding a quarterback between their relaunch and Mayfield’s arrival. Mayfield is signed through 2022 and set to make just $920K in base salary this year.
Latest On Baker Mayfield, Denzel Ward
We heard at the end of June that the Browns were “working on” an extension for cornerback Denzel Ward, and it sounds like that has become the top item on the team’s agenda. According to Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com (via Twitter), Cleveland and Ward are actively discussing a new deal now that RB Nick Chubb has put pen to paper on an extension of his own.
Ward, a 2018 first-round choice, saw his fifth-year option for 2022 exercised earlier this year, so player and team do have some time to hash things out. Of course, the Browns have Ward’s draftmate, quarterback Baker Mayfield, looking for a new contract as well, and it sounds as if Cleveland is at least trying to get everything else off its plate before digging in on the inherently more complex QB negotiations.
Indeed, Fowler adds that talks with Mayfield have not yet heated up. As soon as Josh Allen signed his mega-deal with the Bills, the NFL world turned its attention to Mayfield and the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson, but Cleveland GM Andrew Berry downplayed the impact that Allen’s contract would have on Mayfield’s situation.
“I think for really any player or any positional market, we’re always aware of the deals that have been done over the past couple years and certainly any deals that come up over the next couple weeks because we realize that impacts the market to some degree,” Berry said (via Michael Middlehurst-Schwartz of the Akron Beacon Journal). “But at the same time with any player that we’re considering extending, we really deal with it on a case-by-case and individual level. We really operate within the parameters that we think make sense for our organization and our team, and that’s what we’ll continue to do really across positions.”
That’s generally what one would expect a GM to say, but we also heard back in June that, if Allen and Jackson landed contracts paying them north of $40MM per year — and now that Allen is sitting at a $43MM AAV, Jackson will certainly get something in that neighborhood — Mayfield would not “settle” for a yearly rate of $35MM (his current market value per Spotrac). So once the Browns open Mayfield negotiations in earnest, it will be interesting to see how much of a gap there is between the two sides.
Ward, meanwhile, currently has a market value of $18.5MM per year, which would position him near the top of the league’s CBs. Despite being forced into more zone coverage than he probably would have liked in 2020, Ward finished as Pro Football Focus’ 23rd-best corner out of 121 qualifiers. Though he has missed at least three games due to injury in each of his first three professional seasons, his performance between the lines has been everything the Browns could have hoped for. He earned Pro Bowl honors in his rookie season, and he has tallied 40 passes defensed and seven interceptions — including one pick-six — in his young career.
Given the value of top-flight boundary corners, expect Berry to make a strong push to get a deal finalized. It’s presently unclear where things stand with guard Wyatt Teller, yet another extension candidate.
Minor NFL Transactions: 8/6/21
We’ll keep track of today’s minor moves here:
Cleveland Browns
- Signed: RB Corey Taylor II
Detroit Lions
- Signed: DT Miles Brown
Greedy Williams Receives Full Clearance
For the first time in nearly a year, Greedy Williams was a full practice participant. The Browns began their 11-on-11 drills without Williams on Tuesday. A day later, the former second-round pick was full-go, Nate Ulrich of the Akron Beacon Journal notes.
The third-year cornerback is officially off the Browns’ active/PUP list and will attempt to return to Cleveland’s starting lineup. A shoulder nerve issue sidelined Williams during training camp last year — on the same day ex-Williams LSU teammate Grant Delpit suffered a ruptured Achilles’ tendon — and he went on IR in October. Neither Williams nor Delpit played last season.
The Browns have eased Delpit back into action, but Williams can begin making a legitimate attempt to recapture his starting job. A second-round pick during John Dorsey‘s GM regime, Williams started 12 games as a rookie. While Williams will face stiffer competition for a first-string job this year, he lined up with the Browns’ starting defense during OTAs and was back in that role Wednesday
After using stopgap solutions alongside Denzel Ward in 2020, the Browns were active in bolstering their cornerback group this offseason. Cleveland signed Troy Hill and drafted Greg Newsome in the first round. Williams’ return gives the team interesting depth. The Browns have made extensive outside investments on defense this year, after ranking 25th in DVOA on that side of the ball last season. But the returns of Williams and Delpit also stand to strengthen the unit.
Contract Details: Chubb, Thomas, Allen, Wilson
Let’s catch up on the details of some of the big contracts recently signed around the NFL:
- We heard last night that Browns running back Nick Chubb was signing a big three-year extension worth $36MM with $20MM guaranteed. We’ve got the full equation now, thanks to what a league source told Jason Fitzgerald of Overthecap.com. For starters, Chubb is getting a $12MM signing bonus. It also turns out that not *quite* $20MM is fully guaranteed. The actual guarantee is only $17.133MM. However, it’s almost effectively $20MM, since the other $2.87MM in guarantees vests in 2022 and it’s incredibly unlikely Chubb would be off the roster by then. Chubb will have low salaries and low cap hits in 2021 and 2022. In 2023, he’ll have a cap hit of $14.85MM. He’ll have a $10.85MM salary but only the $2.87MM of that will be guaranteed. In 2024, he’ll have a non-guaranteed salary of $11.775MM and a cap hit of $16.2MM for his final year.
- Washington just made Logan Thomas the seventh highest-paid tight end in the game, and now we have new figures on his deal. His three-year, $24MM extension will give him a cap hit of $6.465MM in 2022, $8.75MM in 2023, and $8.315MM in 2024, John Keim of EPSN.com reports. The dead cap hits for those three years will be $7.465MM, $3.5MM, and $1.75MM respectively. In other words it won’t be too hard for the team to get out of the contract after 2022 if they wanted to. Thomas will receive a $300K roster bonus each season, and is due a $500K roster bonus on the fifth day of the 2024 league year, so that will be an important date in the final season of his new pact.
- Thomas wasn’t the only player to get an extension from Washington this past week. The Football Team also gave defensive tackle Jonathan Allen a big four-year, $72MM deal. We didn’t previously know the full guaranteed amount, but it’s apparently $35.6MM. Allen’s cap hits for those four new seasons will be $9.5MM, $21.5MM, $21.5MM, and $23MM, Keim writes. As such, he won’t start really weighing down Washington’s books until 2023. He has a $14MM salary for that season which becomes guaranteed on the third day of that league year. His dead cap charges will be $26MM, $18MM, $12MM, $6MM for 2022-2025.
- Zach Wilson and the Jets avoided potential disaster by agreeing to terms on his rookie deal right before training camp started, and now we have more context on the holdup. We knew there was an issue about potential signing bonus money deferment, and it turns out New York wanted the rookie quarterback to wait to get a significant amount of cash. The Jets “only opened negotiations last week,” and wanted Wilson to defer a whopping $6MM of his signing bonus to 2022, a source told Jeff Howe of The Athletic (Twitter link). After the team relented and agreed to pay the whole signing bonus upfront, Wilson hopped on a plane to New York. In return, the Jets did get some of the offset language they were seeking.
Browns Gave Paul DePodesta Five-Year Extension In 2020
The Browns’ young GM/HC combo of Andrew Berry and Kevin Stefanski, both of whom were hired in January 2020, appear to have the team headed in the right direction. Although much of the current roster was constructed by former GM John Dorsey, the Browns finally got back to the postseason with Berry and Stefanski at the helm, and they look poised for an extended run of competitiveness.
Berry and Stefanski are signed through 2024, and so is the man who is largely responsible for their hirings, chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta. As Nate Ulrich of the Akron Beacon Journal writes, DePodesta was given a five-year extension in 2020, which club owner Jimmy Haslam just revealed yesterday.
“It lines up with [Berry and Stefanski],” Haslam said of DePodesta’s contract. “That makes all the sense, and we’re super excited about that. Paul’s going to be with us for a significant amount of time. Paul’s not the type, you don’t need to announce something on Paul’s behalf, but he’s going to be with us for a significant amount of time.”
Haslam brought DePodesta on board in January 2016, and his hire was an unconventional one to say the least. He had no previous football experience, having made his name as a Major League Baseball executive with the Moneyball-era Athletics before becoming the GM of the Dodgers. He also worked in the front offices of the Padres and Mets.
His analytics-based approach to roster construction is what initially caught Haslam’s attention, and he has clearly earned the owner’s trust over his first few years in Cleveland. DePodesta has outlasted former executive VP of football operations Sashi Brown and Dorsey, and Berry and Stefanski were the GM and head coach candidates that DePodesta preferred. For the first time in a long time, the organization’s top power brokers appear to be completely in sync, and Haslam has acted to maintain that unified vision.
Minor NFL Transactions: 7/31/21
We’ve got a bunch of minor moves to report from what turned out to be a pretty busy Saturday in the NFL:
Atlanta Falcons
- Signed: LB Tuzar Skipper
Cleveland Browns
- Placed on reserve/retired list: WR Derrick Willies
Houston Texans
- Signed: OL Danny Isidora
Indianapolis Colts
- Signed: QB Brett Hundley, DT Joey Ivie
Jacksonville Jaguars
- Signed: WR Tevin Jones
- Cut: LB Leon Jacobs, K Aldrick Rosas
New England Patriots
- Signed: OL Jerald Hawkins
New York Giants
- Signed: WR Damion Willis
New York Jets
- Signed: K Matt Ammendola
- Cut: K Sam Ficken
Seattle Seahawks
- Signed: QB Sean Mannion
Washington Football Team
- Claimed off waivers from Dolphins: OL Ross Reynolds
Hundley is the biggest signing on this list. The Colts adding him is a pretty good sign they expect Carson Wentz to miss some significant time. Assuming Wentz misses games, Hundley will battle it out with second-year pro Jacob Eason.
A couple of kickers who have started a bunch of games both found themselves sent packing in Ficken and Rosas. Mannion latched on with the Seahawks. He’s familiar with new Seattle OC Shane Waldron from their time together with the Rams, explaining why the Seahawks added him as an option behind Russell Wilson.
Browns, Nick Chubb Agree On $36MM Extension
We’ve heard a lot about a potential Nick Chubb extension this offseason, and now it’s officially happening. The Browns and the running back have agreed to terms on an extension, a source told Mike Jones of USA Today (Twitter link).
Jones said four years, but it’s actually a three-year extension worth $36MM with $20MM guaranteed, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network tweets. Veteran NFL reporter Josina Anderson was first to tweet that a deal was close. It had always been up in the air whether something would get done before the season started, but they managed to get it done with plenty of time to spare.
As a second-round pick in 2018, Chubb was previously set to enter the final year of his rookie deal. He’s been one of the best running backs in the NFL since entering the league, and has made the Pro Bowl each of the last two seasons.
The Georgia product led the league in rushing in 2019 and led the league in rushing touchdowns last year with 12 despite playing only 12 games. Impressively, Chubb has averaged at least five yards per carry in each of his three pro seasons.
Chubb is now one of the league’s highest-paid running backs, and he should have at least another opportunity to break the bank. As a result of this relatively short-term deal, Chubb will get to re-enter free agency in the spring of 2025 when he’ll still only be 29.
Head coach Kevin Stefanski loves to run the ball, and he wasn’t about to let the engine of his offense go anywhere. The deal will keep Chubb tied to the Browns through the 2024 campaign. Cleveland also has Kareem Hunt in their backfield, but that didn’t appear to make them at all hesitant about paying Chubb.
Browns Hire Bob Quinn
The Browns have hired former Lions GM Bob Quinn as a Senior Consultant (Twitter link via NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport). Quinn will act as a “sounding board” for GM Andrew Berry as he returns to football for the first time since November of last year. 
Quinn, a longtime scout/exec for the Patriots, was hired as the Lions’ GM in January of 2016. After inheriting Jim Caldwell, he made his first official head-coaching hire in Matt Patricia.
The Lions fired Quinn and Patricia shortly after their blowout Thanksgiving loss. It was a trying year for the Lions — they missed the playoffs for a fourth straight season and had just dropped back-to-back games against the Panthers and Texans in embarrassing fashion. And, in the (almost) three years leading up to Quinn’s firing, they posted a 13-29-1 record.
Despite all of that, some believed that Quinn would still garner serious consideration in the early 2021 GM cycle. That didn’t happen, so he’ll spend the year with the Browns’ FO.