Earlier this week, the 49ers had lost 11 of their 22 starters from Super Bowl LVIII. That number is back down to 10.
Fullback Kyle Juszczyk has returned, with a two-year deal.
Per a source with knowledge of the terms, the contract has $7 million fully guaranteed. It includes an annual $250,000 annual Pro Bowl incentive as part of the $8 million total package. He’s made it every year since 2016. He’ll likely continue the streak. Primarily since few can name many/any other NFC fullbacks.
He ultimately took a relatively small pay cut but emerged with two guaranteed years.
The 49ers made that move at a time when the Steelers were, we’re told, hot on his trail. The Raiders and Lions also had interest, but it came down to Pittsburgh or San Francisco. In the end, the 49ers came through.
The Lions have agreed to terms with tight end Kenny Yeboah on a one-year deal, Dave Birkett of the Free Press reports.
Yeboah, 26, joins a tight ends room with Sam LaPorta, Brock Wright and Shane Zylstra.
Yeboah spent the past four seasons with the Jets, appearing in 33 games with two starts. He saw action on 309 offensive snaps and 610 on special teams.
He has nine catches for 111 yards and a touchdown and 11 special teams tackles.
In 2024, Yeboah played nine games with one start and had career bests with five catches for 47 yards and a touchdown.
Detroit’s receiving corps will remain intact in 2025.
The Lions announced today that wide receiver Tim Patrick has signed a new contract.
Patrick has had an up-and-down career. He was plagued by injuries in college, went undrafted, and was cut three times in the NFL before he ever played in a regular-season game.
But once he caught on with the Broncos he established himself as a solid receiver -- until the injury bug bit him again and he missed the entire 2022 season with a torn ACL and the entire 2023 season with a torn Achilles. The Broncos cut him in 2024, but the Lions picked him up and he eventually emerged as their third receiver last year.
After thriving in Detroit while coming back from his injuries, Patrick wanted to stay with the Lions and even posted on social media at the start of free agency that the Lions were the only team he wanted to play for. Now he’ll get to do that for another season.
In 2024, Sam Darnold and the Vikings beat all but two of the teams on their schedule. The two teams to which they lost — the Lions and Rams — beat them twice each.
The Vikings recovered from the Week 6 and Week 7 losses to Detroit and L.A. to land on the brink of the NFC’s top seed. They did not recover from the Week 18 and Wild Card second act.
During his introductory press conference with the Seahawks, Darnold was asked about any lessons he might have learned from his late-season struggles.
“I was waiting for someone to bring that up, by the way,” Darnold said. “I appreciate that. It’s fair. You get all the way to that point, and you have the season that we had offensively as a team, and at the end of the day only one team can win the Super Bowl. Unfortunately we weren’t that team. But I learned a ton from those last two games, especially, playing Detroit and playing L.A. We are going to see L.A. twice a year, obviously, playing in this division and really looking forward to that. It’s just continuing to learn. Learning things about yourself, what they did schematically, and yeah, that’s basically all you can do is just learn from those experiences.”
The playoff loss wasn’t his fault. The Week 18 loss — with the No. 1 seed on the line — was. He consistently overthrew passes when the Vikings had opportunities to score touchdowns in the first half. The outcome easily could have been very different, which would have given Minnesota a week off and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
Darnold didn’t get specific as to what he learned. Ultimately, it’s less about learning something new and more about whether he’ll revert to air-mailing passes the next time the stakes are as high as they were during the last game of the 2024 regular season.
The Lions have agreed to terms with veteran quarterback Kyle Allen, Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports.
He joins Jared Goff, Hendon Hooker and Jake Fromm in the quarterbacks room.
Allen, 29, spent last season in Pittsburgh. He played only two snaps and went 1-for-1 for 19 yards.
He has played 31 games with 19 starts in his career, playing games for the Panthers, Commanders, Texans, Bills and Steelers.
Allen last started a game in 2022 for the Texans.
The Steelers brought back free agent Mason Rudolph, who was with the Titans last season, and Skylar Thompson is the only other quarterback on their depth chart.
While discussing the recent “trade rumors” (they weren’t rumors) that preceded his renewal of vows with the Rams, quarterback Matthew Stafford mentioned the events that preceded his 2021 trade from the Lions to the Rams.
Stafford explained to Jason and Travis Kelce on the newest New Heights podcast that he spent plenty of time on Zillow looking for houses. He said, nonchalantly, that he was searching for properties in Indianapolis.
That’s an intriguing twist to what seemed to be a secret handshake arrangement between the Rams and the Lions, aimed at giving Stafford a new home and allowing the Rams to have an inconspicuous opportunity to unload the Jared Goff contract by stapling a second first-round pick to the Stafford package.
Think about the final terms: Two first-round picks and a third-round pick AND Goff, for Stafford. Given Goff’s ascension in Detroit, that’s a ridiculous imbalance. Given the Rams’ desire to get out of a contract that had millions in remaining guarantees, it’s not so ridiculous.
The Rams were done with Goff. Without a quarterback-for-quarterback trade, however, it would have been obvious they were admitting to the world that they never should have signed him to a market-value second contract. And since the Lions also needed a post-Stafford quarterback, they welcomed Goff — since doing so sweetened the Stafford trade pot.
Still, it’s interesting to know that Indy was in it. There had been a sense that the Lions (with former Rams director of scouting Brad Holmes freshly hired as the G.M.) and Rams moved stealthily, blocking a more widespread and robust trade market. The Commanders, for example, were miffed that they didn’t have a chance to make a deal. (And that’s why, the next year, they called every team to see whether their starter was available, including the Chiefs.)
But the Colts were in it. As they continue to ricochet through one bad option after another in their post-Andrew Luck existence, the notion that they could have had Stafford is fascinating generally and, for Colts fans, likely nauseating.
The Buccaneers are making an addition to their secondary.
Tampa Bay has reached an agreement on a one-year contract with former Detroit cornerback Kindle Vildor, his agents told Adam Schefter of ESPN.
Vildor was one of the few players who played all 17 games on an otherwise injury-ravaged Lions defense last season. He got two starts and played 22 percent of Detroit’s defensive snaps and 48 percent of Detroit’s special teams snaps.
Originally a fifth-round draft pick of the Bears in 2020, Vildor also played briefly for the Titans.
Former Colts linebacker Grant Stuard, a strong special teams player, is signing with the Lions.
Stuard announced on Instagram that he’s heading to Detroit.
The 26-year-old Stuard was a 2021 seventh-round pick of the Buccaneers and played primarily on special teams as a rookie. He was traded to the Colts in 2022 and has also played mostly special teams in Indianapolis, and he was chosen as a special teams captain. But Stuard can also contribute on defense, and last season he started five games at linebacker for the Colts as well.
After their defense suffered through an injury-plagued season last year, the Lions want more depth at defense, and they’ve got that in Stuard, while also bolstering their special teams with a player who should be a significant contributor at a fairly low cost.
Titans coach Brian Callahan has made clear he wants a strong offensive line, and his team has taken another step toward making that happen.
The Titans have agreed to a one-year contract with former Lions offensive lineman Kevin Zeitler.
The 35-year-old Zeitler, who can play both guard and center, started 16 games for the Lions last season. He’s also been a starter for the Bengals, Browns, Giants and Ravens during his 13-year NFL career.
Zeitler was No. 39 on our list of the Top 100 free agents.
Lions defensive lineman Levi Onwuzurike had options to leave in free agency, but he decided to stay in place.
Onwuzurike has agreed to a new contract with the Lions, according to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network.
The 27-year-old Onwuzurike has played his entire NFL career with the Lions, who drafted him in the second round in 2021. In a season when the Lions’ defense was devastated by injuries, he was one of their more consistently available defenders, playing in 16 games with 10 starts.
Now the Lions will hope Onwuzurike, who was the No. 31 player on our list of the Top 100 free agents, is part of a healthier and better defense in 2025.
