The Seahawks were going to trade Sam Howell after signing Sam Darnold in free agency, re-signing Drew Lock and drafting Jalen Milroe with the 92nd overall pick.
Seahawks General Manager John Schneider confirmed earlier this week the team was receiving trade inquiries about Howell.
On Saturday, at the open of the fifth round, the Seahawks sent Howell to the Vikings for a swap of picks 142 and 172.
Howell started 17 games for the Commanders in 2023, prompting the Seahawks to trade for him in 2024. Seattle traded third and fifth-round picks to Washington in exchange for Howell and fourth- and sixth-round picks.
He saw action in only two games last season for the Seahawks, going 5-of-14 for 24 yards and an interception.
Howell, a fifth-round pick in 2022, is due to make $1.1 million in 2025 in the last season of his rookie contract.
He joins a roster that has J.J. McCarthy and Brett Rypien in the quarterbacks room.
The Vikings have closed out Day 2 of the 2025 NFL Draft by selecting a receiver.
Minnesota picked Tai Felton out of Maryland with No. 102 overall to finish the third round.
Felton, 22, played his entire collegiate career at Maryland. He appeared in 46 games with 31 starts for the program.
After finishing 2023 with third-team All-Big Ten honors, Felton was a first-team selection in 2024 when he set a new single-season receptions record. He ended the year with 96 catches for 1,124 yards with nine touchdowns.
In all, Felton caught 172 passes for 2,207 yards with 17 TDs for the Terps.
He’ll now join a receiving corps led by Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison in the pros.
Former Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was arrested for driving while intoxicated early Friday morning after attending the Vikings’ draft party on Thursday night, the Minnesota Star Tribune reports.
Police say a state trooper saw Peterson driving 83 miles per hour in a 55 mph zone at about 3:20 a.m. The trooper pulled him over and a breath test measured his blood alcohol content at 0.14%, nearly twice the legal limit.
Peterson was booked on a misdemeanor count of fourth-degree driving while impaired and was released after he posted a $4,000 bond. Police described him as cooperative.
The 40-year-old Peterson attended the Vikings’ draft party Thursday night at U.S. Bank Stadium and conducted an interview with the team’s radio station. According to the report, the Vikings provided former players with transportation to and from the draft party, and Peterson left the stadium in the team-provided shuttle at 9 p.m.
The Vikings drafted Peterson with the seventh overall pick in 2007 and he played for them for 10 years. He later spent time in New Orleans, Arizona, Washington, Detroit, Tennessee and Seattle. He was named NFL MVP in 2012.
The Vikings need toughness along the offensive line. They’re trying to get it.
With the 24th pick in the draft, Minnesota has taken Ohio State guard Donovan Jackson.
The move gives the Vikings a fully revamped interior line, with Ryan Kelly at center and Will Fries and Jackson at guard. Both Kelly and Fries were signed as free agents from the Colts.
The Vikings have Christian Darrisaw and Brian O’Neill at tackle.
The pass blocking is fine. Th run blocking needs to improve. And they need more of an edge. An attitude. A dirtbag mindset, but within the rules.
Last year, the Falcons committed $100 million to quarterback Kirk Cousins, roughly six weeks before making quarterback Michael Penix Jr. a top-10 pick.
This year, the possibility of a Cousins trade looms over the team.
During a Wednesday pre-draft press conference, G.M. Terry Fontenot addressed a recent report from ESPN that the Falcons want a new team to pick up $20 million of Cousins’s remaining $37.5 million in full guarantees.
“We haven’t put . . . a number on it,” Fontenot told reporters. “We wouldn’t share specific conversations with what we’re doing, but no, we haven’t — to answer your question — we haven’t put a specific number on it.”
Fontenot later reiterated that it’s “not accurate” to say they’ve applied a number to what they expect a new team to pay.
Cousins has a no-trade clause, which gives him final say on whether a trade happens. And it’s hard to imagine him agreeing to a trade to a team that won’t install him as the starter. If he’s going to be a backup, why not stay put?
It also makes sense for him to show up and work out at the team facility. If he pops another Achilles tendon at the facility, he gets his money. If he gets injured while working out at the local Planet Fitness, the Falcons could void his remaining guarantees and move on.
Longtime Chargers star Antonio Gates is going into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this summer and the franchise will be there to take part in the festivities.
The Hall of Fame announced on Wednesday that the Chargers will be taking part in the Hall of Fame Game this summer. They will take on the Lions at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio on July 31.
The game will be broadcast on NBC and Peacock.
Gates is joined in the 2025 class by cornerback Eric Allen, defensive end Jared Allen, and wide receiver Sterling Sharpe. None of the players spent time with the Lions, but the organizers are presumably hoping that fans will make the short trip from Detroit — which is Gates’s hometown — to see their team anyway.
The Vikings trimmed their roster a bit on Wednesday.
They announced that they have waived defensive back Najee Thompson. The move came with a failed physical designation.
Thompson signed with the Vikings after going undrafted in 2023 and played in 15 games for the team during his rookie season. He spent last season on their injured reserve list.
Almost all of Thompson’s playing time as a rookie came on special teams. He recorded seven tackles and a fumble recovery in that action.
The Vikings also waived offensive lineman Trevor Reid this week and both moves free up roster space for draft picks and rookie free agents to join the team in the coming days.
As free agency approached, Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins tried to become one. But the Falcons declined to release him.
By keeping Cousins, his remaining guarantees moved from $27.5 million to $37.5 million, thanks to a $10 million roster bonus due in March 2026.
Outside Atlanta, the game of quarterback musical chairs commenced. Seats were filled. Starting jobs, even if in some spots tentative, were claimed. And Cousins, leery about a repeat of last year’s late-April surprise, opted to wait until after the draft to entertain whether to waive his no-trade clause.
With the draft looming, Adam Schefter of ESPN.com recently reported that the Falcons want Cousins’s new team (if there’s a trade) to pick up $20 million of his remaining guarantees. Implicit in that assertion is that the Falcons would remain on the hook for $17.5 million.
At first blush, it’s a surprising revelation. With the top of the market currently at $60 million in new-money APY for a quarterback, $27.5 million is a relative bargain. With few starting jobs vacant — and with most budgets dented by contracts paid out once the frenzy began — the market has largely dried up.
It’s dried up to the point that, as Schefter puts it, there’s a feeling around the league that a team like the Vikings or Steelers would be willing to pay only $10 million of Cousins’s remaining guarantees.
That number seems to be more than coincidental. If Aaron Rodgers is willing (as he claims he is) to play for the Steelers or Vikings for only $10 million, why should either team offer more than that for Cousins?
There’s another important factor at play. If a team like the Steelers or Vikings can get Cousins for only $10 million, his spot at the top of the depth chart would become more tenuous. (He’s far more likely to start in Pittsburgh than in Minnesota, unless J.J. McCarthy gets injured or simply doesn’t have “it”.) If Cousins would be waiving his no-trade clause to potentially become a backup in a new city, why not stay in Atlanta (close to his wife’s family) and serve as the backup to Penix?
At this point, it seems like the best move for the Falcons and for Cousins will be to wait. If there’s a season-ending injury to a starter before the trade deadline, a new team might be willing to absorb much more of the remaining contract — and Cousins might be more inclined to waive the no-trade clause.
There’s no real downside to keeping Cousins around. It’s not as if he’s going to be doing shirtless driveway situps or conducting “next question” press conferences on his front lawn. He’ll be a good soldier. He’ll keep his feelings close to the vest. He’ll do his job. And he’ll be ready to play if he’s needed.
Will he be happy about the situation? By the end of the regular season, he will have made $90 million for two years in Atlanta. While money can’t buy happiness, it can go a long way toward removing the stick from one’s butt.
So unless Cousins has a clear shot at starting, why uproot his life to potentially be No. 2 in a new town?
Of course, the Falcons could decide that they don’t want Cousins on the depth chart at all, in the event Penix struggles and portions of the locker room start murmuring for the other guy. If the Falcons cut him, he’ll be free to go wherever, for whatever he can get. (And if no one will be paying more than $27.5 million, Cousins possibly would take $1.255 million and stick the Falcons with the balance.)
At this point, the Falcons have an easy way out — especially since Cousins holds full and final say over whether a trade will happen. In time, a solution could emerge. At a time when there isn’t an obvious one, patience seems like the smartest play.
The Vikings waived offensive lineman Trevor Reid with a non-football injury, the team announced Tuesday.
Reid signed with the Vikings in January after a season with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the Canadian Football League. He also had workouts with the Colts and Bengals before joining Minnesota.
He started all 18 regular-season games and the Western semifinal for the Riders, and the team nominated him for the league’s most outstanding rookie award. The Riders own his CFL rights through February 2026.
Reid signed with the Eagles as an undrafted free agent in 2023 and spent training camp with the Falcons that season.
Reid played three seasons (2020-2022) at Louisville.
Safety Harrison Smith is back for a 14th season with the Vikings, but he isn’t looking for more of the same.
Smith has made All-Pro and Pro Bowl teams while helping Minnesota make the playoffs six times, which has made him a face of the franchise. None of those trips to the playoffs have resulted in Super Bowl appearances and Smith said on Monday that now is the time for the Vikings to push themselves beyond where they’ve gone in the past.
“There’s a foundation that’s been set that, you can notice it — things operate pretty smoothly, and the people here are giving high-level effort and winning a lot of ball games,” Smith said, via the team’s website. “But there’s another level that we need to get to, and in this business, you have to do it right now. It’s not like, ‘Oh, you know, year one was good. Let’s just keep trying,’ It’s got to happen right now. I think moving forward, that emphasis of, ‘Turn it up a little bit to a level we haven’t been before’ — that is necessary to get where we want to go.”
Smith and the defense will be a big part of anything the Vikings do this season, but their ultimate ceiling may have more to do with how quarterback J.J. McCarthy fares in his first season running the offense in Minnesota.
