It’s one thing for a bozo like me to say it. It’s quite another when it comes from the guy who will be calling the game.
Appearing this week on Rich Eisen’s show, lead CBS play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz expressed a belief that the Thanksgiving game between the Chiefs and Cowboys will establish a new standard for regular-season NFL football.
“K.C. and Dallas, to put those two gigantic brands together on the most-watched day of the regular season in the NFL, it’s gonna set records,” Nantz said, via AwfulAnnouncing.com. “That’s not what I’m out for it to do. I just hope it’s a great football game. It will be a wonderful matchup to call on Thanksgiving. K.C. at Dallas, it’s the game we wanted.”
It’s hardly a stretch. The Cowboys are America’s legacy team. The Chiefs are the flavor of a month of Sundays. Put them together, and the record won’t just be broken. It’ll be shattered.
Especially on Thanksgiving. Three years ago, 42.1 million watched the Cowboys beat the Giants, 28-20. That’s the current record. And seven of the top nine games happened on Thanksgiving.
The other two? The 1990 Monday night game between the 10-1 Giants and 10-1 49ers, and the 1985 Dolphins-Bears Monday night showdown that gave Chicago its only loss of the year.
The NFL could have dropped any Cowboys game on Thanksgiving and generated a huge number. By giving the captive audience a game involving two destination teams, the league wants — and will get — its biggest regular-season audience ever.
Our guess is that it will be at least 45 million, if not 50 million. Especially since Nielsen rolled out earlier this year some new kind of technique for measuring out-of-home viewership.
The Chiefs signed third-round cornerback Nohl Williams, according to the NFL’s transactions wire.
His signing leaves only second-round defensive tackle Omarr Norman-Lott unsigned among the Chiefs’ seven draft picks.
First-round offensive lineman Josh Simmons, third-round defensive end Ashton Gillotte, fourth-round wide receiver Jalen Royals, fifth-round linebacker Jeffrey Bassa and seventh-round running back Brashard Smith previously signed their deals.
Williams played at UNLV three seasons before transferring to Cal, where he led the country in interceptions with seven in 2024. In his five seasons of college football, Williams made 14 interceptions and 25 passes defensed.
He joins a cornerbacks room that includes Trent McDuffie and Kirstian Fulton, Chamarri Conner and Jaylen Watson.
Plenty of players in the UFL have spent some time in the NFL and most of them would like to get back in the league, but few of them squandered the kind of opportunity that cornerback Damon Arnette did.
Arnette was a Raiders first-round pick in 2020 and he was released in November 2021 when video of him making threats while carrying firearms surfaced. He signed with the Chiefs in January 2022, but was released a little more than a week later after being arrested for charges that included assault with a deadly weapon.
Further legal issues cropped up over the last couple of years and Arnette was out of football until he signed with the UFL’s Houston Roughnecks ahead of their 2025 season. He has 18 tackles, a sack, and a 51-yard interception return for a touchdown and his play has led some NFL teams to reach out to the Roughnecks to gather information about the corner. Arnette says that the good play is a result of the growing up he’s done over the last few years.
“With coaches, I feel like I’ve proved a complete turnaround,” Arnette said, via Aaron Wilson of KPRC. “All the coaches that have been with me right now, I feel like their words would be more valuable because I’ve said a lot of things in the past. What I would say is what they see on film, that’s me being out of commission for three years. I’m a dawg on the field. I’m more of a professional now than I ever was before. I wasn’t a professional before. I was just a dawg. I found professionalism and a calm state of mind. I feel like I’m the best version of myself that I’ve ever been.”
The UFL season is winding down and we’ll see if Arnette finds a spot on a 90-man roster heading into the summer. If he does, he could be an unlikely comeback story for the 2025 season.
With the 49ers and Brock Purdy working out a long-term deal, there’s no other quarterback currently expected to get one in the immediate future.
Yes, there could be a tweaking of the ultra-long-term Patrick Mahomes contract, especially after the Bills tore up the last years of Josh Allen’s deal and replaced it with a $55 million-per-year-from-signing package. As it relates to guys who have never gotten a second deal, no one else is waiting to get paid.
The next one to get a new deal will be Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud. He’ll become eligible after the 2025 regular-season finale. (Which means that the Texans could sign him to a new deal between Week 18 and the playoffs, if the Texans qualify.)
Despite the availability of the fifth-year option, the Texans likely won’t take a page from the Cowboys’ playbook and drag their feet through the cheap (relatively speaking) fourth year. Especially since the Texans recently signed cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. after only three seasons.
Stroud’s spot on the list of highest-paid quarterbacks remains to be seen. Purdy landed in a tie for No. 7. Stroud, with a better offensive line and overall improved offense, could put himself in position to fall between Allen and Dak Prescott and the cluster of guys who are in the vicinity of $55 million in new-money average.
Remember, the cap keeps going up. That means the market should keep going up, too.
Beyond Stroud, no one else from the 2023 draft class seems to be destined to get paid after the coming season. Panthers quarterback Bryce Young possibly could position himself for a second deal, with a breakthrough season. Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson first has to win the starting job before he can earn a second contract. Beyond Will Levis and his endorsement deal with Big Mayo, the 2023 quarterbacks won’t be getting big money.
In the interim, other quarterbacks in their second contracts could be getting a third deal. Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson could be jostling for a correction, especially now that he has fallen to No. 10 in new-money average. Ditto for Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, who has fallen out of the top 10, and for Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, who is making as much money as Trevor Lawrence and Jordan Love.
The quarterback big contract wheels will always keep on turning. For now, though, the Purdy deal seems to press pause on the process — unless and until Mahomes or Jackson or someone else in his second decides to make a play for another new contract before training camp opens.
The Chiefs drafted Utah State wide receiver Jalen Royals in the fourth round thinking he could have a similar role in their offense to Rashee Rice.
Chiefs director of player personnel Ryne Nutt said Royals shows a lot of the same traits that Rice showed when the Chiefs made him a second-round draft pick in 2023.
“His game is very similar to Rashee’s,’' Nutt said, via Adam Teicher of ESPN. “He’s got big hands, strong hands, and he’s very good after the catch. [Run after the catch] is a big part of our offense. That’s something we look for in receivers. We look for speed. The kid had that 4.40 [40-yard dash at the scouting combine]. We look for strength, and he has that. Then we look for route running and that’s probably an area where Rashee had to kind of develop a little bit, so we kind of thought they were similar in that respect.’'
Having a player who can do the same thing as Rice in the offense is important to the Chiefs because Rice is coming off a season-ending knee injury, and because Rice could face league discipline for an incident last year in which Dallas police said he raced his Lamborghini and caused a chain reaction collision that resulted in multiple injuries.
The Chiefs hope Rice is available, but if he isn’t, they hope Royals can fill his absence.
“With Rashee coming back from injury and trying to get right, the hopes are this kid can step in and try to get some playing time and help us out,” Nutt said.
If Royals can play like Rice, but stay healthy and stay in trouble off the field, he’s going to be an important target for Patrick Mahomes.
