The NFL will be playing a Week One game in Brazil again this year and it looks like the AFC champions are likely to be involved in it.
TheAthletic.com reports that the Chiefs are the favorite to be selected as the designated road team for the September 5 game in Sao Paulo. The league already announced that the Chargers will be the designated home team for the game.
“On playing international games, we’re willing to do it whenever the opportunity presents itself,” Chiefs owner Clark Hunt said this week. “We don’t have a lot of control over that, except periodically with whatever the rotation of the league is at where we can be the home team. We make the league aware every year that we would be delighted to play, whether as a home team or as an away team. We hope, at some point, we’ll get picked back up.”
The Chiefs’ list of standalone games in 2025 will likely include a Christmas contest as well. Per the report, the Chiefs are expected to play on Christmas for the third straight year and they have requested that the NFL make them a fixture on the holiday the same way that the Cowboys and Lions are annual participants in Thanksgiving games.
The league is set to have three games on Christmas this year and the 2025 season will include seven total international games.
The NFL will play seven regular-season games outside the United States in 2025.
Although the league has discussed as many as eight international games, the NFL confirmed that the seven teams that have already announced they will give up home games to play overseas will be all of them this year.
Three regular-season games will be played in London, with the Browns and Jets giving up home games to play at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the Jaguars giving up a home game to play at Wembley Stadium.
For the second straight year, the opening Friday of the NFL season will be in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with the Chargers playing a home game at Arena Corinthians.
Germany will host its fourth NFL regular-season game, and for the first time that game will be in Berlin, with the Colts making Olympiastadion their home.
Spain will have its first NFL regular-season game with the Dolphins playing a home game at Santiago Bernabeu Stadium in Madrid.
And Ireland will get an NFL game for the first time with the Steelers playing at Croke Park in Dublin.
The league is showing no signs of slowing down on its aspirations for international growth, and 2026 will include the first regular-season game in Melbourne, Australia. It won’t be a surprise if the NFL is eventually playing 16 regular-season games a year outside the United States, with every team in the league traveling overseas once.
Former Ravens and Michigan assistant Matt Weiss faces 24 criminal counts arising from allegedly unauthorized access to computers and aggravated identity theft. Michigan and Weiss face a class-action lawsuit arising from Weiss’s alleged misbehavior.
Via NBC News, two women (a former Michigan gymnast and a former Michigan soccer player) have sued the school for failure to supervise and monitor Weiss.
Their lawsuit alleges that Weiss and the other parties (including Keffer Development Services, which managed confidential information) violated the plaintiffs’ Title IX protections, their civil rights, and civil laws arising from legal standards including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
“The recklessness and negligence and misconduct of the Regents, the University, and Keffer in these respects enabled Weiss to target female college athletes to obtain their private and sensitive information without authorization, including but not limited to Plaintiffs,” the civil complaint alleges.
Weiss allegedly began to access personal and intimate photographs and videos from female athletes in 2015. Prosecutors allege that Weiss accessed information regarding more than 150,000 athletes.
Weiss was a graduate assistant at Stanford when Jim Harbaugh arrived as the head coach in 2007. After two years with Jim Harbaugh, Weiss took a job as the assistant to Ravens head coach John Harbaugh. Weiss then moved through a variety of positions through 2020.
He rejoined Jim Harbaugh, at Michigan, in 2021 as the team’s quarterbacks coach. In 2022, Weiss served as co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. He was abruptly fired in January 2023 following a university investigation of computer access crimes.
Neither the Ravens nor the Chargers (where Jim Harbaugh now works) responded to requests for comment from PFT. Although the alleged behavior was unrelated to Weiss’s Ravens employment, he absolutely would have been subject to league scrutiny and discipline under the Personal Conduct Policy — if he had been working for an NFL team when these allegations came to light.
Former Ravens and Michigan assistant Matt Weiss pleaded not guilty on Monday to 24 counts relating to cyber fraud.
Via Dan Wetzel of ESPN.com, Weiss was released on a $10,000 bond. He also was required to surrender his passport, and to allow officials to place software on his computer to monitor his Internet use.
Prosecutors allege that Weiss’s misconduct dates back to 2015. He allegedly accessed the personal accounts of “thousands” of NCAA student-athletes. He allegedly targeted specific female athletes, accessing personal and intimate photos and videos.
He allegedly exploited the Keffer Development Services system that keeps medical data for student-athletes at roughly 100 schools. He allegedly cracked Keffer’s code for obtaining and guessing passwords.
Weiss faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on 14 different charges, along with another two years behind bars on 10 additional charges.
Weiss has worked for both of the Harbaugh brothers. The relationship began with Jim at Stanford, from 2007 through 2008. Weiss then worked for John and the Ravens, from 2009 through 2020. Weiss rejoined Jim, at Michigan from 2021 through 2022.
Safety Tony Jefferson’s return from retirement in 2024 went well enough that he’s set to play again in 2025.
Jordan Schultz of Fox Sports reports that Jefferson is set to re-sign with the Chargers. It will be a one-year deal for Jefferson in Los Angeles.
Jefferson announced his retirement in 2023 and spent the year working in scouting for the Ravens, but signed with the Chargers last year and made it back into the lineup. He played eight regular season games and one playoff contest in his return to action.
Jefferson had 27 tackles in the regular season and he had three tackles, a forced fumble, and a fumble recovery in their playoff loss to the Texans.
Tight end Tyler Conklin has agreed to a one-year deal with the Chargers, his agent, Mike McCartney, announced on social media.
Conklin took a free agent visit to Los Angeles this week.
He joins Will Dissly, Tucker Fisk and McCallan Castles in the tight ends room.
Conklin, 29, spent the past three seasons with the Jets.
In 2024, he played 16 games with 15 starts, seeing action on 805 offensive snaps. He made 51 catches for 449 yards and four touchdowns.
The Vikings made him a fifth-round pick in 2018, and he spent four seasons in Minnesota. He signed a three-year, $21 million deal with the Jets in free agency in 2022.
In his seven-year career, Conklin has 263 catches for 2,544 yards and 11 touchdowns. He has missed only three games, appearing in 114 with 64 starts.
With the news that Quarterback is coming back this year (due in part to the fact that Receiver fell flat), Michael Holley and I spent time on Friday’s PFT Live looking at the NFL figures we’d most like to see on a reality show.
The picks are in the attached video. Holley led things off with Deion Sanders, who isn’t technically an NFL figure but as a practical matter is. And Deion is entertaining and compelling.
My first pick was a guy who wouldn’t be obvious but who would be a superstar: Bills receiver Keon Coleman.
Coleman is naturally engaging and hilarious. He’s authentic. He’s real. He’s effortlessly funny.
Check out the clip for the other picks. And get ready to learn plenty in July about Joe Burrow, Jared Goff, and Kirk Cousins (again) on the Quarterback series.
One last point, while we have your attention. (If we do.) You can now watch PFT Live on NBC Sports Now. It’s two simple clicks to get to the content. Click here, then click “watch live.”
The Chargers are hosting veteran tight end Tyler Conklin on a free agent visit, Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports.
The Chargers currently have Will Dissly, Tucker Fisk and McCallan Castles on their depth chart at the position.
Conklin, 29, spent the past three seasons with the Jets.
In 2024, he played 16 games with 15 starts, seeing action on 805 offensive snaps. He made 51 catches for 449 yards and four touchdowns.
The Vikings made him a fifth-round pick in 2018, and he spent four seasons in Minnesota.
He signed a three-year, $21 million deal with the Jets in free agency in 2022.
In his seven-year career, Conklin has 263 catches for 2,544 yards and 11 touchdowns. He has missed only three games, appearing in 114 with 64 starts.
The Steelers had Ben Roethlisberger entering his final NFL season when they drafted Najee Harris in the first-round of the 2021draft. After that season, the Steelers started five different quarterbacks the next three seasons.
Kenny Pickett started most of the games at quarterback for the Steelers as a rookie in 2022 and in 2023. The Steelers brought in veterans Russell Wilson and Justin Fields in 2024 and now are seeking a starter for their offense for 2025.
The Steelers also had three different offensive coordinators in Harris’ time there.
Now that Harris has left to sign with the Chargers in free agency, he looks back on his time with the team as a challenge after Roethlisberger retired. That despite four 1,000-yard rushing seasons for Harris, a 38-29-1 record and three postseason appearances in four seasons.
“It was just a team where we lost Ben. We lost a lot of O-line,” Harris told KCAL, via video from Matthew Luciow. “We just didn’t know anything on offense, really. We didn’t have any identity. We had a young guy coming in at quarterback. I was young. The team was young. I really didn’t have nobody to almost learn from on the offensive side. I think the veteran guy on that team was like a two-, three-year vet. He’s still learning himself.
“I’m coming in, and I’m just trying to look for people to pick their brain, and it was just defensive guys. I’d go to the defensive guys and talk to them, but there wouldn’t be too much they could tell me about an offensive thing. Through my years, I learned a lot that I only learned firsthand. I feel like here we’ve got a lot of veterans [with the Chargers] I can learn even more stuff from, even at the quarterback position and the O-line position.”
Harris summed up his time in Pittsburgh as “it was interesting years there, I’ll just say that. Interesting years.”
He declined to go into more detail.
The Steelers play the Chargers at SoFi Stadium in 2025.
The Chargers signed free agent center Andre James, the team announced Tuesday.
The Raiders released James last week.
James signed a three-year, $24 million deal with the Raiders before free agency started last year. The team cut him in a cost-cutting move.
James joined the Raiders in 2019 in the team’s final season in Oakland. In six seasons, he played 89 games with 60 starts. James has seven career penalties, including only three holding infractions.
He returns to Los Angeles, where he played his college ball at UCLA.
