NFL Player News

McCarthy, after missing his entire rookie campaign with a knee injury, “enters the offseason” as Minnesota’s QB1, per Pelissero, adding that the Vikings are not pursuing Aaron Rodgers “at this time.” The Vikings are widely expected to add a veteran quarterback in the coming weeks, though Rodgers seems to be out of the equation as the Giants and Steelers pursue the 41-year-old two years removed from an Achilles rupture. McCarthy would certainly be set up for success in Kevin O’Connell’s QB-friendly system: The pass-catching trio of Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, and TJ Hockenson represent one of the best in the league. In his lone 2024 preseason appearance, McCarthy completed 11 of 17 attempts for 188 yards, two touchdowns, and an interception. If the Vikings are truly out on Rodgers, his options have narrowed considerably.

Earlier in the day, Haslam was quoted as saying the trade for quarterback Deshaun Watson was “a big swing and a miss.” The team’s plans under center certainly remain up in the air with Watson rehabbing a torn Achilles suffered in 2024, but Haslam asserted the team does not feel the need to reach for a signal caller at No. 2 overall, nor trade up to the first pick in the coming NFL draft to select a quarterback. With that, expectations for the 2025 season continue to be uncertain in Cleveland as the team struggles to put previous mistakes behind them.

“Meanwhile, the slot in New England -- which was a staple over the years with Troy Brown and Wes Welker, among others -- could use a rebirth. It was expected that Douglas would be the top option in 2025, but Diggs’ arrival could alter plans at times,” Reiss writes. Diggs saw 43 percent of his snaps in the slot with the Texans last season, but they also had the No. 1 receiver that the Patriots lack in Nico Collins. Reading between the lines, this could be a tough scene for PPR scam Pop Douglas, who had a 66/621/3 line in 17 games last year. Diggs operating out of the slot for a large part of his snaps would seem to further reinforce his WR2 upside in this offense.

Cominsky took to social media to announce his retirement due to medical reasons. A former 2019 fourth-round pick by the Falcons, Cominsky missed all of last season due to a torn MCL he suffered during the summer and saw his contract with the Lions expire at the end of the season. Cominsky appeared in 57 games in his career, making 20 starts while totaling 7.5 sacks and 107 tackles.

The Rams considered an in-house suspension for Robinson after his DUI arrest in November, but ultimately decided to let him play. The Athletic’s Matt Barrows believes Robinson could be suspended for the first three games of the season, with Lynch saying “there’s an opportunity that he may miss some time.” With Brandon Aiyuk also expected to be taking the slow road back from ACL surgery, it’s possible that Jauan Jennings and Ricky Pearsall could have huge early workloads for the 49ers in 2025.

“We just weren’t in a position to keep him at his salary. Because, look, he played some good snaps for us and he made plays for us when we acquired him, so we would have loved to been able to keep him. We just weren’t able to. ... We’ll just see how it goes.” Smith’s market has been pretty quiet so far despite another big season with nine sacks and 63 pressures, but that does seem to be the way the game goes sometimes with players entering their age-33 season. We’ll probably get more clarity on where Smith will wind up after the draft. Smith would be a nice late-wave pickup in free agency for many teams at this point.

“Usually another team who gets into that more serious level usually drafts that player earlier than we (would),” Snead added. It’s possible that the level of quarterbacking in this draft creates a situation where the Rams are comfortable with someone at 26th overall — that depends both on who is there and what grades they have on the middle-of-class quarterbacks — but it doesn’t seem like it will be the club’s priority this offseason despite Matthew Stafford entering his age-37 season. Snead noted that the Rams keeping Stafford means the club are in a “win-now” scenario.

The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue reported that Snead said the Rams would like to “engineer a long-term partnership” with the back entering the final year of his rookie contract. “We all want this to work out. It’s just, ‘Can we agree upon a contract where … we feel like it’s a win-win?’ And if it doesn’t happen this year, it doesn’t mean that Kyren is not going to be a part (of) next year, doesn’t mean that we don’t do something a year from now.” This sounds more like a meeting to establish the parameters the two sides have, but perhaps it’s possible the Rams sign Williams to an extension this offseason. Snead has been mentioning this as a possibility since January.

Robbins was a sixth-round pick of the Bengals who missed all of last season with a quad injury. In his first season as a pro, Robbins booted 76 punts for a net average of 40.1 yards. He landed 26.3 percent of those punts inside the opposing 20-yard line and will now have a chance to battle for the punter role that was vacated by Sam Martin after the team opted to release him earlier this month.

The real quote to take away from Berry’s answer was: “I’ll be honest: It is still a little bit nebulous in terms of what that the timeframe looks like. So we really are trying to deal with it week to week and month to month.” Owusu-Koramoah went on IR with a neck injury in early November after being carted off in Week 8 following an attempt to tackle Derrick Henry. The vagueness with which the Browns have talked about his injury since leaves us with real questions about whether he will be playing in 2025.

It’s not exactly a glowing endorsement of the behind-the-scenes development from Hooker. The 2023 third-round pick appeared in three games in which the Lions scored 49 or more points last season, completing 6-of-9 passes for 62 yards. It sounds like Kyle Allen (and potentially Jake Fromm) will push him for No. 2 duties this offseason.