It’s not football season. But we have the NFL takeaways, nonetheless …
Dallas Cowboys
I think the Dallas Cowboys are done with the term “all in.” And it’s certainly not because they aren’t in that mindset. More so, I got the sense, after talking to Dallas COO Stephen Jones late Friday morning, it’s even the idea they wouldn’t be for the season ahead.
Jones knows why it keeps coming up, a year after his father, Jerry Jones, used the term. He just doesn’t see how they wouldn’t be.
“I don’t buy into all that. Name one person that isn’t all in,” Jones said. “I’d hate the fans to hear their owner say that people aren’t all in, when you’re competing in the NFL … I mean, it’s kind of a joke. Every year we line up, we’re moving our chips in.”
And, thus, while maybe last week’s move to land Pittsburgh Steelers receiver George Pickens in a big early-May trade gave the appearance that, finally, the Cowboys’ chips are in the middle of the table on the current year’s team, the Joneses didn’t see it straying much from how they’ve set their plan for the totality of the 2025 offseason.
Proof is in the timing of how it all went down. Dallas went into draft week wanting to add a receiver to play alongside $34 million man CeeDee Lamb. In making the rounds, Dallas identified a handful of receivers available via trade (some who are still available, by the way). The team considered its options and felt, throughout, that the best course was to let the draft play out first, then more seriously consider making a run at a receiver.
“We had a nice list of guys that we were looking at, comparing that to what was available in the draft, and giving up the pick versus picking one,” Jones said. “And as you know, when you pick a receiver in the draft, you get him for a good number for four years, so obviously that was one of the routes we were looking at hard.”
The important thing, as Jones explained it, was not to go into the draft pressing needs in the first couple of rounds, or predetermining that a position had to be filled high: “I don’t think you draft well doing that … that’s not how we draft.”
So Alabama guard Tyler Booker was the pick at No. 12, simply because he was, for Dallas, the best player there. And while Jones said there were receivers the Cowboys really liked going into Day 2, it just so happened that a pass rusher projected by some to go in the first round, Boston College’s Donovan Ezeiruaku, was there at No. 44. A round later, a first-round talent at corner with a torn ACL, East Carolina’s Shavon Revel Jr., was there for the Cowboys.
Which underscored the whole idea of waiting until after the draft before pulling the trigger on a veteran receiver.
“We wanted to take advantage of our picks this year,” Jones said. “Especially with those first three picks, we really didn’t want to do anything with those, because we felt like we were going to get really good football players. … And obviously when you’re paying guys like Dak [Prescott] and CeeDee, trying to pay Micah [Parsons], and [Trevon] Diggs and Osa [Odighizuwa], that plays into it. So we really didn’t want to give up any one of our first three.”
With the 2025 picks aboard—and not a receiver selected among the nine of them—the Cowboys reengaged with teams on a trade for a veteran.
Pickens, of course, required some discussion.
Both the team and Pickens himself would have to be on board with executing the trade, with the receiver headed into a contract year. And the prospect does exist where Pickens is on the move again in 2026, with Dallas protected to a degree in that the Cowboys would get a comp pick back if he leaves via free agency.
Then, there’s looking into the reasons he was available in the first place. The Cowboys did their homework there, too, as they always would, going back into their reports on him from the 2022 draft, pulling on connections at Georgia, and also whatever they could gather from Pickens’s three years in Pittsburgh (Stephen Jones and Mike Tomlin served together on the competition committee). What they came back with was an assessment that Pickens was fiery in a lot of ways, and hope that he could grow in a new environment.
“He’s just a dynamic receiver,” Jones said. “Everybody says we’re looking for a [number] two. I mean, George can be a one. He’s got that type of talent. He’s got unbelievable ball-tracking ability. He’s got plenty of juice and he’s a fiery competitor. And we love that, he plays with an edge, and we think he’d be a good fit for our team.”
And after working through all this with first-year coach Brian Schottenheimer, Jones saw a vision for the offense that might be a little more than what you’d expect after the Pickens trade.
Why? Because, again, this move didn’t happen in a vacuum.
It was part of a bigger picture.
“My biggest thing that I’m hearing is a bigger commitment from the get-go to the running game,” Jones said. “And what we did in drafting Booker, obviously we are—and we’ve been putting our money into it, too—putting our resources, first round, into the offensive line. And then paying CeeDee and getting George. It’s a big commitment there, but the biggest thing is I see us really wanting to come out and establish a strong running game from the start.”
Maybe that’s not how the public interpreted the past few weeks in Dallas.
But as you can see, the Cowboys would tell you that the public doesn’t always have it right.
Derek Carr’s retirement
Derek Carr’s retirement is more proof that things rarely end as planned for pro football players. It was just three years ago that I sat in Josh McDaniels’s office, and heard how the Las Vegas Raiders planned to bring second life to the career of a guy with undeniable talent, but who never quite found a way—in many cases, through no fault of his own—to harvest that potential.
At the time, there was promise, just as Jon Gruden had seen promise taking over the Raiders four years before that. There was promise, too, even after McDaniels decided Carr wasn’t the quarterback for him, and Carr wound up back with the coach who drafted him. And Dennis Allen, like the guys before him, really tried, even replacing longtime offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael with Klint Kubiak last year.
Faced with another restart this offseason, it was clear that all parties in New Orleans weren’t on the same page. Carr wanted affirmation from new coach Kellen Moore that he was the guy moving forward, then a contract adjustment, then to explore a trade. The Saints played hard ball. The news of his shoulder injury, initially sustained during the 2023 season, Carr’s first in New Orleans, threw a wrench into everything.
And, clearly, at that point, things were sideways.
Right after the draft, rumblings emerged that closure on the whole situation was coming. The Saints had closed ranks—few knew their plan. But with second-round pick Tyler Shough aboard, New Orleans was in a stronger position at quarterback than it had been with just Spencer Rattler and Jake Haener in-house. Shough, who spent seven years in college, is just six months younger than Haener, is older than Rattler and was seen, by many, as the most pro-ready quarterback in the class.
In the end, 15 days separated Shough’s selection from Carr’s retirement. The Saints had another answer at quarterback, and we’ll see how viable that answer is. In the meantime, they negotiated the deal to move on where the team won’t go after the $10 million roster bonus it already paid out for 2025, and Carr will walk away from the $30 million that he could’ve gotten simply by having surgery and going on injured reserve.
A win-win it is not. But it’s a tenable ending for a situation that long seemed completely untenable. And if some team decides, for one reason or another, it wants to call the Saints to see if Carr would be available down the line, we’ll see what happens.
Saints’ QB search
Sometimes, it’s easy to forget how often teams stumble around at quarterback after having a legend—and the Saints are another example. If you consider the examples of Drew Brees and his legendary contemporaries, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, it’s all there for you, with the most recent example proving as stark as the previous couple …
• The New England Patriots had three different Week 1 quarterbacks over their first five years post-Brady, and they’re already two first-round picks in (Mac Jones and Drake Maye).
• The Denver Broncos had seven different Week 1 starters in the nine seasons post-Manning. Bo Nix is the second first-round pick they’ve had at the position (Paxton Lynch is the other), and that’s on top of the mega-trade made for Russell Wilson in 2022 and a high second-rounder (Drew Lock).
• The Saints have had three Week 1 starters over their first four years, and will have a fourth in five years with the retirement of Carr.
• The Indianapolis Colts came out of their Manning era pretty clean, having bottomed out when Manning’s neck injury cost him the 2011 season, facilitating the pick of Andrew Luck. But since Luck’s retirement, they’ve had five Week 1 starters in six years.
That leaves the post-Brady Tampa Bay Buccaneers as perhaps the greatest success story, with the reclamation of Baker Mayfield giving the team a real answer at the position—and positioning the team to win fourth consecutive NFC South titles.
Maybe Shough will be the answer in New Orleans. I wouldn’t rule it out. But it’s most certainly easier to assume that now than it will be for it to become reality in the fall.
Denver Broncos
I think George Paton and Sean Payton deserve a lot of credit for building the team they have in Denver. The Broncos roster that Paton took on in 2021 was broken in a million pieces, unrecognizable from the one that won a Super Bowl six years earlier. The team’s best player, the MVP of that Super Bowl, Von Miller, was turning 32 and in a contract year. There was no answer at quarterback. The team hadn’t made the playoffs since the championship.
In Paton’s second year, he traded first- and second-round picks in 2022 and ’23, plus Drew Lock, Noah Fant and Shelby Harris to the Seattle Seahawks for Russell Wilson. Both first-rounders were top-10 picks; both second-rounders were top-40 picks. Then, before Paton’s third year, after striking out on the hire of Nathaniel Hackett, Denver sent the first-rounder it picked up for Bradley Chubb to land Payton. So that’s a total of five top-40 picks in two years.
Given that the Broncos still needed a quarterback coming out of all that, and add in all the cap debt they accumulated in the failed Wilson experiment, it’s pretty astounding to consider that they’re going into 2025 with the arrow very clearly pointing up.
They’ve turned left tackle Garett Bolles around, developed Quinn Meinerz, and added vets Ben Powers and Mike McGlinchey to stabilize the line. They’ve brought along young guys such as Devaughn Vele and Marvin Mims Jr. to get the receiver spot above water. They have, against all odds, found edge rushers outside of the first round such as Nik Bonitto and Jonathon Cooper. They’ve nailed the two high-first-round picks they have had, landing All-World corner Patrick Surtain II in Paton’s first year and quarterback Bo Nix in his fourth.
With a very, very narrow path through, they’ve found a way to a place where now they have flexibility to add pieces such as Dre Greenlaw and Talanoa Hufanga to make a very good defense great, while getting back to the point where they have a full complement of draft picks to land promising pieces such as Jahdae Barron and RJ Harvey.
They’ve done it, too, through a partnership between Payton and Paton that many thought wouldn’t last long beyond the star coach’s arrival. And we’ll have more on how they did it soon.
Bill Belichick
Bill Belichick, for what it’s worth, isn’t ignoring the problems he’s taken on himself and foisted upon the University of North Carolina. Pro Football Talk reported on the likelihood that former Chicago Bears PR chief Brandon Faber would be retained to help out Belichick, in the wake of the firestorm that has come from his girlfriend Jordon Hudson’s presence, well, everywhere. And I can report that the hire is in its final stages.
A couple of things are worth adding here. One, Faber is being hired by UNC, rather than Belichick himself. His title is to be determined, but his role will be the de facto head of football communications. Two, Faber will be in attendance for the ACC coaches meetings which kick off today in Amelia Island, Fla.—which is a pretty good sign that he’s at the dotting-i’s and crossing-t’s portion of the hiring process.
Now, that North Carolina is making the hire itself, to me, is a good sign that the coach and school are working together to try to make all that’s gone wrong to this point right. This is me talking, but Belichick had rock-solid infrastructure around him in Foxborough over a quarter century, to the point where it was all turnkey for him and had been forever.
So maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that, minus guys such as his chief of staff Berj Najarian (who’s now with Bill O’Brien at Boston College) that there would be hiccups for a guy who’d had things set up for him to just coach football, with the rest taken care of, over 24 years.
And I have heard that he’s aware of what’s being said, and how he’s being perceived and that, at this point, he’s far from having it all figured out.
We’ll see whether he gets to the point, anytime soon, where he’s gotten these things in a better place than he has over the past few weeks. His ability to will certainly affect how Carolina plays in 2025—and also any shot he has at returning to the NFL down the line.
NFLPA turnover
The NFLPA lost a couple of important people two weeks ago, and their path out is an interesting sign on where the sport’s going. The idea started, innocently, over coffee, or sodas or tea (depending on whom you ask). The timing wound up being fortuitous. The union’s director of salary cap and agent administration, Mark Levin, and staff counsel, Todd Flanagan, sat there with 60 years of collective experience, pondering a new way to use it.
The world of football was changing. Agents were now having to recruit teenagers. Client lists, as a result, grew. The dynamics of those jobs bulged, too, with the NIL landscape so vastly different from the way NFL players have always made their money.
A month later, in January, NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell Jr. called an all-staff meeting to offer a generous separation package to employees who met a certain criteria. Those employees were given a week or two to decide. Both Levin and Flanagan were eligible. Levin was planning to retire in two or three years anyway. And, immediately, the conversation that started in Flanagan’s office came to mind. Everything was lining up.
“When they made the announcement [on the buyout offer], it was like, This may be a good time,” Flanagan says, “even if it wasn’t something we’d seriously planned for. It was just, Maybe this is a good time?”
Levin then added, “It was taking advantage of an opportunity.”
Within a week, both had accepted their buyouts. Levin agreed to stay on through the draft. Meanwhile, the pieces were slowly, steadily coming together for the launch of Pro Football Consulting, LLC. Last week, with Levin’s last day at the NFLPA coming May 2, they got off the ground, not knowing exactly what the coming weeks or month would hold—knowing only that there was a growing void, and they had, on paper at least, the skill sets to fill it.
For years, Levin has advised agents in negotiations, helping them to define the marketplace, set priorities in a contract and navigate the unique challenges working with each team brings. Meanwhile, Flanagan worked as a sort of lawyer at large to all players, fighting for them on drug suspensions and in resolving disputes with teams. Levin and Flanagan also worked together on writing the agent certification test.
As they see it, being capable in those areas should allow them to help agencies work through the increased responsibilities that come with representing players like they always have, doing it now at a more intensive level with a much smaller list of people.
“We’re going to be able to concentrate more time on specific agents or agencies, rather than trying to answer calls from 500 of the 1,000 agents that have clients—or dealing with the other stuff that comes up when you’re the manager of a department,” Levin says. “When you’re managing five or six people, it takes away from the part of the job that you love. …Bottom line, I think I can speak for Todd, we love servicing the players. We want to improve these players’ lives.”
They’ll see where it goes from here. Levin conceded that the big agencies, like CAA and Athlete’s First, have a lot of this covered, and may not need their services as much. But the bet here is that for the bigger independent firms, and mid- and smaller-sized shops, there is a need for these types of services with the growing demands on agents.
Maybe there will be. Maybe there won’t be. Either way, again, for these two guys, things just lined up the right way to pull the ripcord now, and go ahead and find out.
“I love the PA; I’m never gonna say anything bad about it,” Flanagan says. “I can’t say every day was a great day there. Ultimately, it is a job. But I’ve never wanted to work anywhere else. I loved it. And it was just, Maybe this is the right time. And this all came together.”
Schedule release
The schedule release is this week, and this is your annual reminder that we already know who the teams are playing—meaning we’re just waiting for the order. Now, the people who put the whole thing together work pretty much nonstop on it for four months, and they’re serving a lot of masters (everyone has a boss, and the broadcast partners are that for the league office). So, for sure, Onnie Bose, Mike North and Howard Katz, among others, always deserve credit for the work they do in trying to satisfy everyone.
That said, in the end, the effect this week has will be felt in two ways.
The first is simply in the timing of the games, and how it matches up with injuries, and the normal ebbs and flows of the season. It’s tough to forecast how that will work out ahead of time. Then, there’s the stress the slate puts on certain teams in stacking games into short windows—with the governor on that having come off last year in several ways.
The NFL went back on a few things it had set as guidelines before last year. One was the promise that it wouldn’t make teams play three games in 10 days. Another was the stated rule that the league wouldn’t schedule games on a Christmas Tuesday or Wednesday.
And one team that really felt the more ambitious scheduling last year was the New York Jets. The team started the season with a Monday night game in San Francisco, three time zones away, then played the following Sunday, again on the road in another time zone, against the Tennessee Titans, before its home opener the next Thursday. Privately, the Jets told everyone that the early slate took a toll that put the team in a hole it struggled to climb out from.
New York wound up winning the last two of those early games, but those wins came against two of the four worst teams in football. A trip to London followed in Week 5, there was a Monday night game in Week 6, and after that, Robert Saleh was fired. The 2–1 start was a precursor for a 1–9 stretch that basically led to a full organizational reset.
Now, again, these weren’t the only reasons for the Jets’ struggles. But that gantlet didn’t help, per the people who had to run it. And the Steelers dealt with similar issues, going through their “Christmas round robin,” with two road games ahead of a Wednesday game against the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs.
Will the league office be as aggressive this year as last year? The scheduling team had a final meeting Sunday night, and will meet with commissioner Roger Goodell on Monday to finalize the whole thing (obviously some games are already set in stone).
It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of that for the guys taking the field.
Browns’ QB situation
The more digging I do into the Cleveland Browns’ quarterback situation, the more I think this thing is wide open. Kevin Stefanski basically said as much during rookie minicamp. The likelihood is, when Cleveland gets to OTAs, that Joe Flacco will get the first snap. But even that, Stefanski added, isn’t all that relevant.
After some thought on this, I’d believe him.
One piece is the guarantees in the contracts for Flacco and Kenny Pickett are nearly identical, so there’s no heavier penalty for walking away from one than the other. The other piece is how the two rookies arrived in Cleveland in the first place.
The interesting thing in asking around on the team’s decision to draft Dillon Gabriel in the third round is the near-universal sentiment I got from Browns people, and those with other teams—the former Oregon star absolutely aced the predraft process. That, of course, doesn’t guarantee anything. But you can see, based on his history, why Stefanski would be taken by an experienced, cerebral young quarterback who’s seen a lot.
As for Shedeur Sanders, his selection, and the decision to double down on the position after taking Gabriel, reflects two things.
First, Sanders was, indeed, separated on the board from what else was available to the Browns at that point in the fifth round. It’s certainly possible that in small-circle meetings between ownership, Stefanski and GM Andrew Berry, owner Jimmy Haslam pushed for Sanders. I just don’t know that it happened. I do know the Browns thought Sanders was more than a fifth-rounder. And second is that this is an effort to throw everything possible at the quarterback position and see if something, anything, sticks.
Based on the investments, the Browns are dating all these guys, and not marrying any of them (yet). Which, given the situation the Deshaun Watson trade put the brass in, isn’t the worst path to try to take out of a mess.
Jadeveon Clowney
Jadeveon Clowney’s plans to keep playing show you something. And not just that he wants to keep going—lots of guys try to stay in the league until the wheels fall off. It’s the confidence he has that there’s little doubt he’ll find work.
“I’m definitely gonna play well—you can mark my word on that,” Clowney told The Athletic. “I don’t care where I end up playing at, I’m gonna play extremely well. I think I played well for Carolina, considering the circumstances that unfolded for me. I played with a bunch of guys that was hurt this past year. And I ended up playing extremely well for them. So it is what it is. I can play the game. I can play football. There are 31 other teams. I just hope another team gives me that opportunity so I can prove myself again. I feel like I can do that.”
Remember, Clowney’s 32. He suffered a devastating knee injury in his first NFL game, 11 years ago, that necessitated microfracture surgery. That robbed him of some of the explosiveness that made him the No. 1 pick in 2014. The Panthers, who were his sixth team, cut him last week. He’s tough as nails, but never had a reputation as a grinder.
And he’s still going.
The lesson? The NFL remains, and always will remain, a big man’s game.
There are other examples. Former Pro Bowl guard Kevin Zeitler is now 35, and the Titans will be his sixth team, and he’s set to make $9 million this year. Morgan Moses is 34, and just got a three-year, $24 million deal in New England. Jason Peters, released by Philly after the 2020 season, at 38 years old, got deals with Seattle the past two years, at 41 and 42.
The facts? Good big men are hard to find. They’re hard to replace when you let one go. So when the league finds one, that guy is probably going to keep getting paid like Zeitler, Moses and Peters, and like Clowney, surely, will.
And that’s not part of some grand theme permeating the league. There’s nothing more to it than simple supply and demand. Big men are increasingly tough to find. So when the NFL teams unearth a good one—doesn’t even have to be a great one—they stick around a while.
Quick-hitters
Let’s fire through some mid-May quick-hitters. Starting now …
• Early UDFA sleeper: Chiefs TE Jake Briningstool. The 22-year-old Clemson product showed in minicamp he has natural hands and route-running ability, and is a good fit for the “U” tight end position in their offense. Seventh-round running back Brashard Smith flashed, too, showing speed and vision to be a mismatch guy in the passing game.
• The Packers picked the fastest receiver in the draft, Matthew Golden, and early returns from Green Bay say the rookie’s overall athleticism has already shown up. It’ll be interesting to see whether a veteran receiver shakes free in a trade based on Golden’s development.
• With Pickens gone from Pittsburgh, it’s worth mentioning that Aaron Rodgers used to speak very highly of Romeo Doubs’s football IQ and route-running ability. If Rodgers is there, it might be worth the Steelers calling the Packers to try to bring in a familiar face for the quarterback.
• While we’re there, the Steelers think more highly of Calvin Austin III than people realize. He’d be a name to watch with Pickens gone.
• Good luck to Jaylon Smith with the Raiders. It’s amazing that nearly a decade after his gruesome bowl game injury in his final game at Notre Dame, he’s still playing football. Had he not sat out last year, this would be his 10th season.
• I think the Jaguars’ plan for sequencing Travis Hunter’s learning makes sense. Any rookie is drinking through a fire hose. Starting him on offense last week and then giving him the baseline on defense this week—rather than doing it all at once—is logical.
• It’s kind of fitting that the last remnant of a Belichick championship team on the Patriots’ roster was a long snapper from Navy. Joe Cardona was cut after the draft, and signed with the Dolphins last week after New England drafted his replacement.
• Expect to hear a lot of tush push talk this week. Goodell wouldn’t have tabled the vote from March until next week’s league meeting in Minnesota if he didn’t plan on pushing to get it banned. My guess is Goodell will get his way on this.
• It’s good to see Nico Collins openly embracing his role as a leader in the receiver room in Houston, with rookies Jayden Higgins and Jaylin Noel coming in. Not everyone at that position would.
• Next time a rookie asks for a retired number, I hope they do it quietly. To me, it puts a legendary player in an impossible position—he should be proud to have his number retired, reserve the right to say no and not be worried about being put on the spot over it.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as NFL Takeaways: Why the Cowboys Are Done With the Term ‘All In’.