NFL Player News

Big if true. Dobbins hasn’t played since suffering a knee injury in Week 12’s loss to the Ravens, but would slide into a heavy workload if he’s activated this week. Gus Edwards (ankle) has already been ruled out of Saturday’s contest, and rookie Kimani Vidal only saw a 12 percent opportunity share from Weeks 13-16. The Patriots have allowed the 11th-most fantasy points per game to opposing running backs in their last five games. Dobbins would profile as a volume-based RB2 if active.

After sustaining what had the look of a gruesome injury against the Vikings in Week 18, Arnold was upgraded to “alive” by the Lions. (OK, he was upgraded to day-to-day with a foot contusion.) This full session confirms we should expect to see Arnold on the field against the Commanders in the Divisional Round.

Montgomery has a high chance of playing against the Commanders after missing the last three weeks of the season with an MCL sprain. Dan Campbell noted last week that he expected that to be the case, and it is all coming together for Montgomery to return in the Divisional Round. He’ll likely step right back into his usual role splitting snaps with Jahmyr Gibbs, though it is possible Gibbs gets a larger share of the workload than usual if the Lions want to make sure everything is good with Montgomery early in the game.

Graziano is not the first person we have seen using Saleh’s tenure as Jacksonville’s linebackers coach from 2014-2016 as a positive point for Saleh. Saleh clearly has some fans in the building. The Jaguars have been widely expected to hire an offensive-minded coach, but most coaching scoop articles have slowly started to push Ben Johnson to Las Vegas based on not being able to bring his own general manager to Jacksonville. If the Jaguars do want to keep Trent Baalke badly enough to only hire a coach who will work with him, it makes some sense that they’d lean beyond the big obvious candidates and wind up with someone like Saleh.

“And probably land him,” Graziano adds. The Saints process seems to be less pronounced than the expansive Jets head coaching search, so a strong push from the Saints might land Glenn if he’s, indeed, their No. 1 choice. It’s also possible that this article has yet to fully account for the recent Mike McCarthy smoke, as McCarthy is not mentioned despite getting an interview lined up with the Saints for next week. Glenn should probably be regarded as a favorite in the Saints coaching search regardless of McCarthy’s interview.

Mayfield signed a three-year, $100 million deal with the Buccaneers last offseason, while Geno Smith signed a three-year, $75 million contract prior to the 2023 season. While watching Darnold destruct against the Rams last night was horrifying, he definitely waltzes into the offseason as the best quarterback available in free agency. If the Vikings can retain him on a contract similar to Mayfield’s, perhaps one that only carries some guarantees in 2026 as the team figures out what the J.J. McCarthy looks like, that’d probably be better for the organization than relying purely on a quarterback who couldn’t practice with the team all season because of injury.

“Yeah,” Vrabel confirmed, per WEEI. “It’s a long list. There’s a long list, and, you know - I’ve had a relationship with Josh, and I’ve had relationships with other offensive coaches and defensive coaches that we’re going to interview and wanna bring in here.” It’s likely that we’ll see some former Texans and Titans — like former Titans OC Tim Kelly — eventually show up on the Patriots interview list. But it would be hard for Patriots fans to be disappointed in landing McDaniels given how well that worked for so many years, even after the team moved on from Tom Brady.

“A source in Minnesota actually said that’s been talked about within their building,” Hughes added. McCown probably is worthy of an offensive coordinator shot after a successful stint as Vikings quarterback coach, and Flores is certainly deserving of another head coaching role after the job he did with the Vikings defense this year. We have no idea who invited Ryan Grigson to the discussion — does Trent Richardson work for the Jets? — but at least in theory it’s interesting to talk about the idea of porting a large chunk of the Vikings braintrust over to New York.

So far we only have John Spytek and Sullivan down as general manager candidates for the Raiders, who are operating a lot like a team who might consider a package deal for their head-coaching hire with that hire’s preferred general manager candidate. (In other words: They will give Ben Johnson the GM of his choice.) Sullivan has already interviewed with the Titans once, making the second cut for that job, and has also had an interview with the Jets.

Smith has played 192 regular season games and will turn 36 in February. He pondered retirement before this season, eventually agreeing to come back on a restructured contract in March. But Smith said this won’t be “the same as last offseason” because “My life’s different ... I’m older.” Smith enters the 2025 season as a free agent, but it doesn’t sound like he’s especially likely to continue playing.

Higbee was hospitalized after leaving the game with a chest injury because he was “spitting up a little bit of blood.” That’s our sport, folks. It’s great news for the Rams that he appears to be good to go for Sunday because he looked excellent before leaving, catching 5-of-5 targets for 58 yards and helping stake them to an early lead. He may have taken over the No. 2 role from what looks to be a declining Cooper Kupp. Higbee will be a worthwhile DFS play this weekend.