NFL minicamps are underway—or at least the one in Chicago is (the rest are next week and the week after). You had questions. As always, I have the answers …
From David Kromelow (@dkrom59): Which division do you think will be more competitive this season: the NFC North or the AFC West?
David, that’s a really good question, and I guess I’d have to go with the AFC West. The reason why is in each division, there’s an established powerhouse—the Kansas City Chiefs and Detroit Lions. In each division, there are two other solid playoff teams (Los Angeles Chargers, Denver Broncos, Minnesota Vikings, Green Bay Packers) with established programs and top-10 GM/head coach infrastructures. Also, the two teams at the bottom (Las Vegas Raiders and Chicago Bears) have promise as they go through regime changes.
So what’s the tiebreaker? It’s that one division has the Chiefs, and the other doesn’t. I love what the Lions have done, and I don’t think any sizable regression is coming. That said, Kansas City’s been to three consecutive Super Bowls and has Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid.
That’s hard to ignore.
From Todd Talavera (@quarterflip24): Will the Chiefs seriously start a rookie at LT?
Todd, I’d be surprised if Josh Simmons, a wildly talented young tackle, is ready for Week 1. The Chiefs paid Jaylon Moore $15 million per year to come over from San Francisco to, at the very least, stopgap the left tackle spot, and I’d expect he’ll be out there in Week 1.
Also, Simmons’s high ceiling comes with a healthy amount of growth needed, which is the case with most offensive linemen coming into the NFL. He’ll lose some development time as he continues to work his way back from the ruptured patellar tendon he suffered last October, an injury considered more challenging to return from—particularly for a big man—than a torn ACL.
The most likely scenario is Moore at left tackle, Jawaan Taylor at right tackle and Simmons seeing playing time somewhere at some point, with Simmons at left tackle, Moore at right tackle and Taylor gone in 2026.
From Billy Conway (@bonescon): If the league is concerned with playoff-bound teams resting starters (like the Rams, Eagles and Bills did in week 18) and using that as a justification for not changing the playoff seeding format, why isn’t that same concern being used in support of a draft lottery?
Great question, Billy. Again, I’d raise the operative question that Rams COO Kevin Demoff asked in the meeting room in Minneapolis and said the owners had to answer: Is the open-seeding idea about fairness or about creating compelling matchups for television? I’d say, for the league office, it’s the latter. For owners, there’s concern about the former. And because of the conundrum, more big-picture questions are coming.
I don’t think the same logic is applied with the bottom of the standings because the concerns there are a little different. First, there’s the idea that adding a weighted draft lottery might lead to more tanking, not less, with mediocre teams that aren’t quite at the bottom trying to game the system to increase their odds of getting a high pick (especially in a quarterback-rich year). Then, there’s the reality that tanking hasn’t been nearly the problem for the NFL that it has been for the NBA.
Maybe, above all else, there’s the league’s ethos: The NFL wants to protect parity, and the best way to do that is to take from the rich and give to the poor. That happens with the salary cap forcing good teams to bleed second-tier players in free agency, and the draft system is also set up this way.
If you don’t want bad teams to be perpetually bad, the best way to accomplish that is to arm them with resources to dig out of such holes. I do think that’s a priority for the NFL.
From Eddie from Acworth (@eddyfromacworth): Will the Falcons trade Kyle Pitts?
Eddie, I’m just not sure I see a match right now. This seems to me like the sort of story that only gains steam in June.
Yes, Pitts is talented. But his 2022 knee injury left a mark. He regularly had to get the knee drained in ’23. It stunted his development as a player who was still learning the position. And with a new staff in place last year, he had to earn his spot all over again, and he wound up splitting snaps with Charlie Woerner throughout the season.
So he’s no longer valued like he was by anyone as he had been before the 2021 draft. And now he’s playing on a $10.88 million fifth-year option. This means another team would have to have a pretty high level of confidence it could get more out of him than the Falcons (he had 47 catches for 602 yards and four touchdowns last year).
More likely is that another team would view acquiring Pitts as taking a flier on a player who hasn’t lived up to expectations. It’s unlikely, as I see it, that such a team would be willing to give up the kind of pick that would entice Atlanta to deal him and pay him almost $11 million.
At this point, the discussion probably isn’t worth the oxygen people are giving it.
From The Magic Man (@ThoughtsBengals): Do you think Trey Hendrickson and the Bengals agree on an extension?
Magic Man, because I think Joe Burrow has real power there, my guess is they’ll get something done. I just don’t know how they’ll get there. This is the third consecutive offseason it’s been an issue for Cincinnati. Hendrickson’s initial deal was a COVID-19-affected discount deal. He got a Band-Aid extension in the summer of 2023. He got nowhere last summer, and generally when a guy has to wait that long, he won’t be looking to cut his team a break.
Meanwhile, the market has materially changed. Hendrickson may not be the sort of war daddy pass rusher such as Myles Garrett and Nick Bosa, who both demanded market-changing deals. But Hendrickson did have 35 sacks the past two years, so he’s more than within reason to expect to get where Danielle Hunter and Maxx Crosby did this offseason, somewhere around $35 million per year.
The Cincinnati Bengals haven’t gone there yet. We’ll see if they do.
From The Truth (@xxAMATTxx): Which late-round draft pick has the potential to be this year’s Bucky Irving?
Truth, Bucky Irving went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with the 125th pick in 2024. Dylan Sampson went to the Cleveland Browns with the 126th pick this year. Both were uber-productive as collegians, when their programs went to them as “The Guy.” Each packs a punch for a small-ish back. Each fell in the draft for the same sorts of reasons—size and, perhaps, the lack of a real elite trait.
Both carry an innate feel for the position. Of course, it’s tough to ask for any Day 3 pick to rush for 1,100 yards out of the box. And I don’t really think Sampson will, not with a top-40 pick in Quinshon Judkins also in his draft class. Still, I see the Browns’ second rookie running back as having a good shot to turn some heads as part of a tandem in an offense that figures to be reliant on the run.
From Rolltide! (@JetsRollTide): Love this feature and your columns. What is the Jets’ ceiling for wins this season? Easier schedule, lots of returning starters. Will Fields and the lack of any good WRs outside of Wilson be the deciding factor that holds them back?
Rolltide, I actually feel a little stronger on the New York Jets than most people. Maybe I’m the idiot. But I think they have the second most talented roster in the AFC East. They have good young groups on the offensive line, defensive line, the offensive backfield and at linebacker. Even if there are the depth/balance questions at receiver and corner, they have young No. 1s at both of those spots (even if Sauce Gardner’s coming off a rough year).
I think there’s a lot to like, and I think Justin Fields was on the precipice of a Ryan Tannehill–type of career renaissance last year when the Pittsburgh Steelers yanked him from the lineup. The front end of the schedule is a bit unforgiving. If they can survive that and stay around .500, I think a nine- or 10-win season is certainly feasible.
From 2006KGB (@2006kgb): Do you think Jalen Milroe will start any games for Seattle at the end of the season?
KGB, I understand the buzz and clamoring for Jalen Milroe. He’s a ridiculous athlete and outstanding kid. He was always going to turn some heads. The Seattle Seahawks also thought enough of him to take him in the second round, which is definitely not nothing.
That said, he’s raw, and assimilating to Klint Kubiak’s offense, which is centered on detail and precision, is different than Alabama. The starter in Seattle, Sam Darnold, has played in offenses like Kubiak’s the past few years, and was even with Kubiak in San Francisco, where Kubiak was pass-game coordinator in 2023.
For Milroe to start this year (absent an injury to Darnold), it’d have to be a situation where the Seahawks’ season was circling the drain and the staff wanted to get a look at what it has in him headed into 2026.
From BuffaLowDown (@BuffaLowDown): If James Cook is out of Buffalo after 2025, do you believe Ray Davis can step in as the main back in 2026?
Buffa, Ray Davis is such a different back than James Cook, that it’s almost hard to answer that question. Cook’s a stick of dynamite who can do a little bit of everything. Davis is a mudder, a tough guy with a fire hydrant build who can grind out the tough yards.
As I see it, if you’re really drawing it up ideally, I think each guy needs someone like the other to share the backfield. So I’d bet Davis’s role grows a bit this year.
I wouldn’t close the book on a Cook deal yet. The sides are nowhere near getting anything done, but there are still some checkpoints in the calendar that could certainly get one side to try to get a deal done.
From NFLDetail (@NFLDetail): Your take on “Jordan Love regressed last year”?
Detail, my take is that things get harder in some ways for a young quarterback in his second year as a starter. The league has had an entire offseason to study him. Teams are facing him for the third and fourth time, giving them familiarity with his game, and others the opportunity to see how those in-division opponents are attacking him. As teams start to pick at the quarterback’s weaknesses, he has to develop in those areas.
I think Love will be fine. At this point, the one thing you can say about the Green Bay Packers’ starter is that he’s been a bit streaky. He caught fire at the end of 2023, and everyone expected that to carry over into ’24, and that’s not how it works. But he did have a hot hand again in November and December of last year, posting triple-digit passer ratings in five consecutive games, as part of a 5–1 stretch that got the Packers in the playoffs.
I’d be optimistic about Love, with Matthew Golden now in a deep receiver mix and the offensive line adding Aaron Banks going into 2024.
From Uncle Bern (@SBernard30): With the talk of adding an 18th game to the schedule, have you heard of possibly adding any players to the 53-man roster as well to help not dilute the product?
Bern, sure, they’ve already sort of toyed with it, allowing the two practice squad elevations on game weekends that really bring the number to 55.
But I would answer this one the same way I’d answer the questions people have asked me on expansion: This comes down to how many ways you want to slice up the pie. There’s a finite amount of dollars to go around every year. So for the same reasons teams wouldn’t necessarily want to go from 32 pieces to 34 or 36, players would need to have a real tangible benefit to swallow turning their 53 pieces per team into, say, 60.
That said, with an 18-game season seemingly inevitable these sorts of big-picture discussions are definitely coming.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as NFL Mailbag: Why the AFC West Will Be the NFL’s Most Competitive Division.