49ers quarterback Brock Purdy was an afterthought when he was drafted with the final pick in 2022. It took injuries to Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo before he saw the field, and after that, Lance and Garoppolo became expendable.
Lance, the third overall pick in 2021, lasted through training camp in 2023 before the Cowboys unwisely sent a fourth-round pick to the 49ers for him.
“It’s tough, because Trey and I are tight, dude,” Purdy said during a recent appearance on the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast, via David Bonilla of 49erswebzone.com. “Absolutely, we’re boys, and we’re bros.”
Purdy is firmly entrenched as the 49ers’ franchise quarterback, having signed a five-year, $265 million extension with the team. Lance already is on his third team, having left the Cowboys to sign a one-year, $2 million deal with the Chargers to back up Justin Herbert.
Lance’s career has not gone how anyone expected.
“I wanted nothing but the best for him, and I know he wanted that for me,” Purdy said. “But that’s just how this business goes and all that. When it did happen, we’re about to play our preseason game against the Chargers, and right before the game, they announced [the trade of Lance to the Cowboys], and I didn’t really know how to act or what to think. I was just like, ‘Man, I hope he can go to Dallas and compete and have a great opportunity.’”
Purdy said he and Lance have never discussed exactly how everything went down, but nothing has changed about Purdy’s feelings about Lance.
“We’ve just texted each other, like, ‘Hey, dude, hope you’re doing good,’ like, randomly throughout the season, offseason, or whatever. ‘Hope you’re doing good,’ this and that. It’s really just been that,” Purdy said. “We haven’t really gotten to the details of, ‘Hey, how do you feel with this happening?’ or whatever. We just stay away from that.”
Thursday’s #PFTPM including a simple question: “What are your thoughts on a potential Bills-Rams Super Bowl?”
My thoughts are it could happen, because both teams are firmly in the Super Bowl window.
In any given year, not many teams truly are. And while teams not apparently in the window can, in theory, win their way in, the salary-cap system has matured to the point where some teams have cracked the code — and some teams can’t crack their way out of a paper bag.
It also helps to have drafted and developed a franchise quarterback.
In most years, roughly 10 teams are in the window, roughly 10 teams aren’t, and the remaining 12 could break either way. This year, the AFC’s true short-list contenders are the Chiefs, Bills, Ravens, Bengals, and Texans. The Broncos and Chargers could force their way into the conversation.
In the NFC, it’s the Eagles, Lions, Rams, 49ers, and Commanders. Maybe the Buccaneers. Maybe the Vikings.
Again, things can and will change. That’s why they play the games, as someone once said. All the time.
For those who like a little variety, it would be nice for someone other than the Chiefs to get a turn in the Super Bowl. And for someone other than the Eagles, 49ers, or Rams to emerge from the NFC.
Since 2017, it’s been the Eagles three times, the 49ers twice, the Rams twice, and the Bucs once. For the AFC, it’s been only the Patriots, Chiefs, and Bengals.
That’s it. Over eight seasons, seven total franchises have taken the 16 total Super Bowl berths.
Free agency, the salary cap, and a draft process that rewards failure should be enough to mix things up. But the reality is that good teams stay good, and bad teams stay bad.
The Chargers will induct Rodney Harrison into their Hall of Fame this season, the team announced Monday.
He becomes the 36th player to receive the organization’s highest honor, and the 44th member overall.
Harrison’s enshrinement is scheduled for Oct. 23, during a halftime ceremony when the Chargers host the Vikings at SoFi Stadium on Thursday Night Football.
He was selected for induction by a vote of the living Chargers Hall of Famers.
“Rodney personified an era of Chargers football defined by physicality, emotion, relentless effort, toughness and grit,” Chargers president of football operations John Spanos said in a statement. “For nearly a decade, he gave everything he had to the Chargers, establishing a standard of accountability and setting the bar for competitive greatness. He made an immediate impact his rookie year, helping lead us to an unforgettable AFC Championship victory in Pittsburgh and appearance in Super Bowl XXIX. The fire that burned inside Rodney was the stuff of legend and, as is the case with all the great ones, it never once faded over the course of his career. And as much as he gave of himself on the field, Rodney found a way to give even more to our community, especially in his work with local youth. Inducting Rodney into the Chargers Hall of Fame is a fitting tribute to a player who gave this franchise everything he had and more.”
Harrison, who now works for NBC Sports, played 15 seasons in the NFL, including nine with the Chargers after they selected him in the fifth round of the 1994 draft. He totaled 21.5 sacks during his time with the organization, the most in franchise history by a defensive back, and 26 interceptions, which ranks third all-time among Chargers defenders and first among safeties.
Harrison, voted the team’s defensive player of the year four times by his teammates, was named to both the 40th and 50th anniversary Chargers’ all-time teams.
“What I remember most about Rodney is his incredible toughness,” former head coach Bobby Ross said in a statement. “He was a hard-hitting, relentless safety — fearless in every sense of the word. He had all the tools: speed, instincts, and range — but what separated him was that physical edge, that toughness you don’t always see, even among the best. He stood out from day one. On top of that, he was a smart, determined player who always came prepared. He had a great football mind and wasn’t afraid to speak up with ideas to help the team. Rodney was a sharp young man and a tremendous representative of our program — and I’m proud to see him take his rightful place in the Chargers Hall of Fame.”
Harrison has a case for Canton, and his induction into the Chargers Hall of Fame will add another line to his resume.
The criminal hacking case against former Michigan assistant Matt Weiss has sparked civil litigation. That civil litigation has now ensnared his former boss.
Via the Associated Press, former Michigan coach (and current Chargers coach) Jim Harbaugh was added to a lawsuit on Friday arising from the Weiss hacking scandal.
The amended complaint alleges that Harbaugh and others knew Weiss was viewing private information through digital hacking in December 2022 but still allowed him to work in a playoff game a week later.
“The university’s delay in taking meaningful protective action until after a high-stakes game sends a clear message: Student welfare was secondary,” said attorney Parker Stinar, the lead counsel in a class action based on Weiss’s alleged misconduct.
While we’ve yet to review the specific allegations against Harbaugh and others (including Michigan A.D. Warde Manuel), the claims presumably sweep more broadly, likely claiming negligent supervision of Weiss throughout his time at Michigan.
The Chargers didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding the Weiss situation after he was charged. At the annual meetings in March, Harbaugh was asked about the situation. “Shocked. Completely shocked. Disturbed,” he said.
The next question becomes whether the litigation will eventually spread to the Ravens, where he worked on John Harbaugh’s staff before taking a job with Jim Harbaugh at Michigan. That will depend on whether evidence is developed showing the Ravens knew or should have known that Weiss was hacking into private information — especially if there’s evidence that he was using any equipment owned by the Ravens to do so.
Tuesday was an interesting day. More interesting days could be coming.
After the NFL and NFL Players Association managed to hide the 61-page ruling in a landmark collusion arbitration for more than five months, the cat is out of the bag. And some players are paying attention.
Multiple individuals who routinely interact with players tell PFT that multiple players have begun to inquire regarding their rights, and regarding their options both as to the league and as to the union.
As one source with knowledge of the collusion grievance told PFT, Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert would be the perfect plaintiff against either entity. The exchange between Chargers owner Dean Spanos and Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill shows coordination (i.e., collusion) between two owners regarding the contracts given to Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert and Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray.
The threshold question becomes whether Herbert is within the additional 594 veteran players for whom damages were sought in the collusion grievance, beyond Murray, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, and Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson. There’s a still-hidden list of 594 names that was attached as an exhibit to the 61-page ruling. The league would argue that, as to those players, the issue has been concluded.
The counter would be that discovery was taken only as to the three quarterbacks. From Herbert’s perspective, there could be a treasure trove of communications within the Chargers organization regarding whether Herbert will (or did) want a fully-guaranteed deal, beginning in the immediate aftermath of the Deshaun Watson fully-guaranteed contract.
The other 593 players (if Herbert’s name is on the list) could make the same argument. They would ask, essentially, how did my rights get caught up in and extinguished by the three-quarterback collusion case when I never had a chance to prove that the clear effort to encourage collusion resulted in a specific effort by my team to restrict guarantees in my deal?
The union faces a different problem. The claim by the specific members of the NFLPA would fall under the federal duty of fair representation. And there would be at least two different potential avenues, as we see it.
For the 594 players whose rights were tied up in (and extinguished by) the existing case, they would (or at least could) argue that the union failed to properly develop and investigate their grievances by simply lumping them in with the three main claimants and without fully investigating the claims. For all anyone knows, there are internal smoking-gun texts or emails as to any, some, or all of the 594 players that would say, for example, “I know [Player X] wants a fully-guaranteed contract, but the Management Council told all teams to limit guarantees. We need to comply.”
For the players not within the group of 594 who were added (presumably unbeknownst to them) to the case, there’s a different issue. Because the union hid the outcome from them (and everyone else) for more than five months, their 50-day window under the Collective Bargaining Agreement for filing a non-injury grievance based on the key finding of the collusion case has expired.
This assumes that the NFL and NFLPA didn’t enter into a tolling agreement that would acknowledge their mutual effort to keep the collusion decision secret and give any other players who choose to proceed a fresh 50 days from whenever the decision sees the light of day. Neither the NFL nor the NFLPA responded to the question of whether a tolling agreement exists.
Our guess is that there’s no such agreement, and that the NFLPA has — in their effort for whatever reason to hide the outcome of the case — hampered if not defeated the effort of any other player who signed a contract before today from using the collusion ruling as the starting point for a grievance of their own.
So what will happen next? It’s up to the players. And it will be up to whether any lawyers out there see the merit in litigation against the NFL and/or the NFLPA and choose to pursue it on behalf of the players.
Until that happens, the NFL and NFLPA will (or should) be sweating out the potential ramifications of the players finally knowing about the thing that was inexplicably hidden from them.
The 61-page ruling in the landmark collusion grievance features an unprecedented peek behind the NFL’s curtain, in various ways.
Regarding the 2022 negotiations that culminated in a second contract for Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, the ruling contains a text exchange that directly contradicts System Arbitrator Christopher Droney’s conclusion that the league’s encouragement to collude didn’t take. (Droney, as seen later, disagrees.)
On July 22, 2022 — one day after word of Murray’s non-fully-guaranteed contract surfaced — Chargers owner Dean Spanos texted Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill.
From the document:
Spanos: “Congratulations on signing Murray.”
Bidwill: “Thanks Deno! These QB deals are expensive but we limited the fully guaranteed money and have some pretty good language. Thankfully, we have a QB that’s worth paying.”
Spanos: “Your deal helps us for our QB next year.”
Bidwill: “I think many teams will be happy with it once they have a chance to review. Cleveland really screwed things up, but I was resolved to keep the guaranteed [money] relatively ‘low.’”
As evidence of collusion/coordination among supposedly competing businesses goes, the gun doesn’t get much more smoky than that. If the Chargers and Cardinals (and the other 30 franchises) are truly in competition, why would they coordinate? Why would they care?
Does the board chairman at Coke call the board chairman at Pepsi when Pepsi hires a CEO whose compensation package reverses a potential trend regarding CEO pay? That’s exactly what happened with Spanos and Bidwill.
Droney’s written ruling ignores the obvious import of the coordinator between Spanos and Bidwill. Writes Droney, in the portion of the ruling that systematically dismisses what seems to be important circumstantial evidence of collusion in action, “Neither do texts or emails from owners about contract negotiations show that they were participating in a plan to reduce guarantees. In the text exchange between Mr. Bidwill and Mr. Spanos, Mr. Bidwill recognizes that other teams will be pleased with the fact that the Cardinals kept the guaranteed money in Mr. Murray’s [contract] relatively low, and Mr. Spanos acknowledges that doing so will help the Chargers in upcoming negotiations with their quarterback (Justin Herbert) presumably because they could use Mr. Murray’s contract, rather than Mr. [Deshaun] Watson’s, as a reference point. . . . These communications are more in line with ‘independent response to common stimuli, or mere interdependence unaided by an advance understanding among the parties,’ rather than participation in a collusive agreement.”
Again, do competing businesses in the same industries so casually compare notes about the compensation of key employees? Do they try to do deals that will help the others do better deals?
How was Droney so blind to that?
It should be obvious to anyone with any basic common sense. The NFL “encouraged” (told) them to collude. The communications between Spanos and Bidwill are circumstantial evidence that they did.
And that evidence is now available for anyone and everyone to see.
The recent incident involving federal agents attempting to enter the parking lots at Dodgers Stadium has a bright-line connection to other L.A.-area sporting events that will begin in fewer than two months.
SoFi Stadium will be hosting 19 total NFL games featuring the Chargers and the Rams.
Unlike Dodger Stadium, where the gates can be accessed only through a parking-lot area not open to the public, the gates at SoFi Stadium are fully open to the public and not within an area to which access can be denied. Which means that federal agents can, if they choose, gather at the gates to SoFi in search of those who are or who may be authorized to be present in the United States.
It’s still not entirely clear what happened at Dodgers Stadium on Thursday. The team said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were denied entry to the parking lot. ICE called that claim “false.”
Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told NBC News that Customs and Border Protection vehicles “were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement.”
That wasn’t the end of the matter. On Friday, the Dodgers donated $1 million to “toward direct financial assistance for families of immigrants impacted by recent events in the region.”
That wrinkle raises an obvious question. Will the other Los Angeles teams follow suit?
Immigration continues to be a hot-button issue, throughout the country. But it’s one thing to secure the border and/or to remove immigrants who have engaged in documented wrongdoing. The indiscriminate snatching and grabbing of human beings by federal officers who are inexplicably wearing masks raises very real questions about who we are and what we are becoming.
Right or wrong, these actions create real trauma for immigrants and their families. By contributing $1 million to the effort, the Dodgers have underscored the simple reality that the chest-thumping mass deportation effort has real consequences for those who are taken away, and for those who have left behind.
Maybe you’re wired to say in response, “Eff around and find out.” Or maybe you’re actually inclined to believe and live the lessons of the New Testament, and not to simply pretend to be a Christian.
The Rams have interest in a reunion with Jalen Ramsey, and the cornerback apparently does, too.
Adam Schefter of ESPN said Friday on the Pat McAfee Show that Ramsey “would like to go to the West Coast, to Los Angeles — Rams, Chargers, somewhere like that.”
The Dolphins have sought to trade Ramsey since early April, and he was expected to have a new home soon after June 1. It hasn’t happened yet.
Schefter indicated a deal should happen before training camps begin roughly a month from now.
Ramsey is scheduled to make a fully guaranteed $24.235 million in 2025, and it seems likely the Dolphins will have to pay some of it to facilitate a deal.
Remember when Steve Ballmer bought the L.A. Clippers for $2 billion and everyone lost their minds?
Eleven years later, stay in town multiply it by five.
Minority owner Mark Walter has purchased a majority stake in the L.A. Lakers at a valuation of $10 billion. That’s a record for any American sports franchise.
The late Dr. Jerry Buss bought the team in 1979 for $67.5 million.
The Buss family had owned 66 percent of the team. Jeannie Buss reportedly plans to continue to continue to serve as the team’s governor, which will give her the power to vote on league matters at NBA ownership meetings.
Earlier this year, the Boston Celtics sold at a valuation of $6.1 billion. Last month, a minority stake in the 49ers was sold at a valuation of $8.6 billion.
It’s safe to say that controlling interest in any NFL team would generate a valuation of more than $10 billion. Some teams (like the Cowboys) would approach or exceed $15 billion.
The fact that the Lakers were sold at a $10 billion valuation will only make that more likely.
The Chargers tweaked their roster on Tuesday.
They announced that they have signed offensive tackle Elijah Ellis to their 90-man roster. Offensive lineman Tyler McLellan was waived in a corresponding move.
Ellis transferred to Marshall from Baylor for the 2024 season and started 13 games at left tackle in his final college season. He appeared in nine games over three years before making the decision to transfer.
McLellan signed with the Chargers last year, but spent the entire season on injured reserve.
The Chargers are holding their final organized team activities of the spring this week. They held their mandatory minicamp last week.
