The 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement created a rookie wage scale that leaves few issues on which to haggle. This year, one of those issues has prevented 30 of 32 second-round picks from signing.
The problem is simple to explain, far from simple to solve. Before 2025, no second-round picks had received fully-guaranteed rookie contracts. With the Texans giving receiver Jayden Higgins, the second pick in round two, a fully-guaranteed deal, the issue was framed.
The Browns quickly gave linebacker Carson Schwesinger, the first pick in round two, a fully-guaranteed deal. They had little choice, once the player taken immediately after him got a fully-guaranteed contract.
For the next 30 picks in round two, no deal has been done. While all of them participated in the offseason program under participation agreements, they won’t be practicing (or even present) without signed contracts.
It gets real on Saturday, when the Chargers report — and when (as noted by Adam Schefter of ESPN.com) second-round receiver Tre Harris does not.
Harris was the 23rd pick in round two. And this isn’t about whether he’ll get a fully-guaranteed deal. He won’t. Beyond determining how deep into round two the 100-percent guarantee will go, the challenge becomes setting the right percentage of full guarantee for the rest of the round.
At the risk of making this blurb too damn long, here’s the percentage of full guarantee for each of the 2024 second-round picks:
No. 1: 95.69 percent.
No. 2: 91.9 percent.
No. 3: 88.09 percent.
No. 4: 86.41 percent.
No. 5: 84.73 percent.
No. 6: 82.98 percent.
No. 7: 81.23 percent.
No. 8: 80.46 percent.
No. 9: 79.52 percent.
No. 10: 78.65 percent.
No. 11: 77.98 percent.
No. 12: 77.3 percent.
No. 13: 76.38 percent.
No. 14: 74.14 percent.
No. 15: 72.6 percent.
No. 16: 71.13 percent.
No. 17: 69.72 percent.
No. 18: 68.28 percent.
No. 19: 66.8 percent.
No. 20: 65.22 percent.
No. 21: 63.61 percent.
No. 22: 61.95 percent.
No. 23: 60.24 percent.
No. 24: 58.71 percent.
No. 25: 57.26 percent.
No. 26: 55.7 percent.
No. 27: 54.01 percent.
No. 28: 52.99 percent.
No. 29: 52.75 percent.
No. 30: 52.57 percent.
No. 31: 52.51 percent.
No. 32: 52.39 percent.
The Tre Harris slot had 60.24 percent. It will be higher this year. But how much? If Harris does his deal now, he’ll ideally set the floor for all taken ahead of him and the ceiling for all taken behind him. There’s also a chance that his percentage will be too low — which could result in players taken after him getting a higher percentage. That will become ammunition for other agents to criticize his representation at Athletes First when competing for the same incoming players.
Athletes First is relevant at the other end of the spectrum. They represent the third pick (and first unsigned pick) in round two: Seahawks safety Nick Emmanwori. Thus, as to the threshold question of how deep into the round the fully-guaranteed deals go, Emmanwori and A1 are in the batter’s box.
However it plays out, the urgency reaches full boil as players aren’t showing up for camp. And while the agents and players are permitted to coordinate/collude on a strategy for maximizing the guarantee for the players, the teams cannot coordinate/collude. Now that everyone (finally) knows about the union’s partial win in the collusion case over fully-guaranteed deals, the process from the perspective of the teams becomes a little riskier.
Or a lot.
It’s already a mess. It could soon become a full-blown fiasco, with most teams missing a key young player during training camp, and with some (Browns, Seahawks) missing two and one (Bears) missing three.
We’ve recently taken a look at the coaches on the hot seat for 2025. This week, a reader asked the same question as it relates to quarterbacks.
Plenty of them are feeling the heat, or should be, this season. Let’s take a look at each spot, based on the loose arrangement of the conferences and divisions that has been tattooed onto my brain.
Justin Fields, Jets: His contract has $10 million in guarantees that spill into 2026. That’s not enough to guarantee him two years as the starter. He needs to do enough in 2025 to earn 2026 — and beyond.
Tua Tagovailoa, Dolphins: His contract guarantees his pay through 2026. If the Dolphins fall flat and change coaches, the next coach likely will want a fresh start at quarterback. While the cap charges will complicate a split before 2027, every high-end quarterback contract eventually leads to a big cap charge when the relationship ends. The next coach (and the next G.M., if owner Stephen Ross cleans house) may want to rip the Band-Aid off in one motion.
Aaron Rodgers, Steelers: He says he’s pretty sure this is his last year. If he doesn’t play well enough for the Steelers in 2025 and if he wants to keep playing in 2026, the Steelers may give him the same cold shoulder that Russell Wilson got after 2024.
All Browns quarterbacks: With Jacksonville’s first-round pick in their back pocket, the Browns could be in position to get a future franchise quarterback in next year’s draft. That raises the stakes for every quarterback currently on the Cleveland roster. Because there’s a chance none of them will be the starter in 2026.
Daniel Jones and Anthony Richardson, Colts: It already feels like Jones will be the Week 1 starter. He’ll then have a chance to lock the revolving door the Colts have had since Andrew Luck retired. If he doesn’t, the Colts will be looking elsewhere in 2026. As to Richardson, his best play is to play better than he ever has, if and when he gets the chance.
Trevor Lawrence, Jaguars: Every new coach wants his own quarterback, except when the coach inherits a true franchise quarterback. But Tony Dungy landing with Peyton Manning doesn’t happen very often. And it’s not clear whether Lawrence is a short-list franchise quarterback. He was on track to be one as of 2022. The past two years haven’t been good enough, long-term contract notwithstanding. What do coach Liam Coen and G.M. James Gladstone want? If Lawrence doesn’t play better in 2025 than he did in 2024, Lawrence and everyone else may find out in 2026.
Geno Smith, Raiders: He’s being mentioned simply to say he’s not on the hot seat. He has $18.5 million in guarantees for 2026, and his close ties to Pete Carroll will keep Smith around for at least two years. (Unless, of course, a certain minority owner decides otherwise.)
Dak Prescott, Cowboys: He’s probably not on the hot seat, because his $60 million per year contract would wreak havoc on the salary cap if the Cowboys were to cut or trade him (yes, he has a no-trade clause, but he can waive it) in 2026. The complication for the Cowboys is that his $45 million salary for 2027 becomes fully guaranteed on the fifth day of the 2026 league year. They’re basically stuck — all because they waited too long to give him his second contract, and then waited too long to give him his third contract.
Russell Wilson, Giants: If he’s the Week 1 starter (if Jaxson Dart lives up to his first-round draft stock, Wilson shouldn’t be), the clock will be ticking. Immediately. In 2004, the Giants benched Kurt Warner after nine games for Eli Manning, even though the Giants were 5-4 at the time. When Dart is ready, Dart will play. Even if Wilson makes it through 2025 without getting benched, he’ll have to do plenty to keep Dart on the sideline for 2026.
Jordan Love, Packers: He’s not on the hot seat per se, but he needs to play better in 2025 than he did in 2024. If not, he will be on the hot seat in 2026. The wild card in Green Bay is new CEO Ed Policy, who operates as the de facto owner of the team.
J.J. McCarthy, Vikings: He’s getting his shot to play, after a knee injury wiped out his rookie season. Anything other than an outright disaster will ensure his status for 2026. At worst, he’d have to compete with a more established veteran next year.
Tyler Shough, Saints: He’ll need to do enough in 2025 to earn the chance to do well enough in 2026 to get the Saints to not pursue the grandson of Archie Manning in 2027. (And, yes, I think Arch Manning will spend two years as a college starter before entering the draft.)
Bryce Young, Panthers: In year three, he needs to continue the growth he showed late in the 2024 season, in order to secure a fourth season, the fifth-year option, and ideally (for him) a second contract.
Kyler Murray, Cardinals: His contract gives him two more years of financial security. But this is the team that drafted Murray a year after using the 10th overall pick on Josh Rosen (not Lamar Jackson). So who knows what the Cardinals will do if Murray doesn’t propel the team into contention this year?
Sam Darnold, Seahawks: He has a one-year deal, as a practical matter. And the Seahawks seem to really like rookie Jalen Milroe. Darnold will need to play very well to secure his status for 2026.
Matthew Stafford, Rams: It’s not the “hot seat” as much as it’s a mutual understanding that player and team are taking things one year at a time. After the season, both sides will have to recommit. Whether the Rams will want to do that depends on how Stafford plays in 2025, and on their other options for staffing the position in 2026.
That’s a lot of names. But it’s no surprise. There aren’t many true, unquestioned, year-after-year franchise quarterbacks. And the teams that don’t have one are always hoping to find one.
It has created more quarterback movement in recent years than ever before. Plenty of the names listed above will be on the move in 2026.
The Seahawks made it official today that Shaquill Griffin is back in Seattle.
Griffin, a cornerback who spent his first four NFL seasons with the Seahawks, officially signed a contract with the Seahawks on Wednesday.
The Seahawks drafted Griffin in the third round in 2017 and he made the Pro Bowl in 2019 and played in Seattle through 2020. For three of those seasons, Griffin was playing with his twin brother Shaquem Griffin, an inspirational player who made the NFL despite having his left hand amputated at age 4.
Since leaving Seattle after the 2020 season, Shaquill Griffin has spent time with the Jaguars, Texans, Panthers and Vikings. Last year in Minnesota, Griffin played all 17 games, with three starts. Now he’s back in Seattle, joining a cornerback group that includes returning starters Devon Witherspoon, Riq Woolen and Josh Jobe.
The Seahawks waived cornerback JT Woods to make room for Griffin on the roster.
The collusion grievance, which found that the NFL/Management Council encouraged teams to violate the CBA, flowed from an effort to limit the spread of fully-guaranteed contracts. And there’s an ongoing effort to limit the spread of fully-guaranteed contracts.
The vast majority of all 2025 draft picks have signed their four-year rookie deals. In round two, 30 of the selections have yet to sign.
The problem is that, for the first time ever, a second-round pick has gotten a fully-guaranteed contract. It started with Texans receiver Jayden Higgins, the second pick in round two. That sparked a fully-guaranteed contract for Browns linebacker Carson Schwesinger, the first pick in the second round.
For the next 30 picks, nothing has happened. Obviously, the players and their agents want as many of the deals as possible to be fully guaranteed. The teams want to draw the line as close to the third pick in round two (Seahawks safety Nick Emmanwori) as possible.
There’s no colluding to be done, since the common goal of limited guaranteed deals is obvious. Still, it’s the current battleground when it comes to whether the full four years of a contract will be guaranteed.
None of the players will take something less than a fully-guaranteed deal below Emmanwori, because they don’t want to be responsible for ending the run of fully-guaranteed deals. And every team will want to be the one that successfully held the rope and won the full-guarantee tug-o-war.
Eventually, someone will have to blink. It’ll probably start later in the round, with players who wouldn’t expect to get a full guarantee anyway. And then it could work its way up the ladder.
At some point, a player is going to insist on a fully-guaranteed deal and the team is going to insist on not fully guaranteeing the deal and there will be no middle ground.
In a roundabout way, the mere existence of this problem proves that collusion, if it’s happening, is far from universal. The Texans created the predicament by becoming the first team to give a fully-guaranteed contract to a second-round pick. If all 32 teams were in cahoots on a plan to limit fully-guaranteed contracts, the Texans never would have done that.
However it plays out from here, one thing is clear. There won’t be any emails or other written communications encouraging the teams to resist giving players fully-guaranteed deals. Documents like that nearly created a major problem for the NFL.
It would still be a major problem, if the NFLPA had any inclination to capitalize on the leverage they’ve secured.
Free agent cornerback Shaquill Griffin is returning to Seattle.
Griffin and the Seahawks began talking about a reunion six weeks ago, and it has finally happened, with Griffin agreeing to terms Wednesday, Jordan Schultz reports.
Griffin, 29, initially joined the Seahawks as a third-round pick in 2017. He played his first four seasons with the club, reaching the only Pro Bowl of his career with the Seahawks in 2019.
He’s also spent time with Jacksonville, Houston, Carolina, and most recently, Minnesota. Griffin appeared in all 17 games with three starts for the Vikings in 2024, recording two interceptions and six passes defensed.
Griffin has appeared in 106 games with 82 starts in his career. He’s tallied 70 passes defensed with nine interceptions.
The 61-page ruling in the collusion grievance contains plenty of fascinaring details. Several of them relate to the contract signed by Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson in 2022, after the trade that brought him to Denver from Seattle.
A deeper dive on the Watson negotiations and eventual deal is coming. For now, it’s important to applaud the instincts of then new-owner Greg Penner.
In contemporaneous notes created by Penner at the time, he wrote this: “2 years left on contract, why not wait?”
It would have been the smart move. Wilson always received new contracts with one year left on his existing deal. The Broncos could have given Wilson a year to prove that he can still cook, before burning millions on his next contract.
But the Broncos didn’t wait, committing $124 million to Wilson in full guarantees from 2022 through 2024. And they cut him in March 2024, before his $37 million injury guarantee for 2025 became fully guaranteed.
Still, the Broncos ultimately gave Wilson $124 million (minus the league-minimum $1.21 million he earned in Pittsburgh last year) for two seasons of so-so football. While not the same degree of disaster as the Deshaun Watson contract for the Browns, it was a very bad deal for the Broncos.
And the Broncos could have avoided it, if they’d simply acted on the instincts of their new owner and waited until after the 2022 season to fashion a new contract (if any) with Wilson.
It’s not necessarily new, but it’s worth mentioning.
In the recent item from Mike Silver of TheAthletic.com regarding quarterback Sam Darnold’s latest fresh start, in Seattle, Silver reports that Raiders minority owner Tom Brady didn’t want to pursue Darnold as the team’s next quarterback.
That meshes with the reporting that emerged after quarterback Matthew Stafford decided to stay in L.A. Brady and Raiders G.M. John Spytek weren’t enamored with the other veteran options (they had zero interest in Aaron Rodgers), while the coaching staff wasn’t thrilled with the idea of targeting and developing a rookie.
Geno Smith became the compromise candidate, given his clear connection to coach Pete Carroll.
It makes for an interesting compare-and-contrast between two franchises that were, for years, rivals in the AFC West. Did the Seahawks get it right by opting for Darnold? Did the Raiders get it right by focusing on Geno?
The fact that Brady was directly involved in the evaluation of veteran quarterbacks also makes his clumsy effort to disclaim any role in the decision to pass, repeatedly, on quarterback Shedeur Sanders.
“There’s . . . I — I — it’s a good question,” Brady said when asked a fairly broad question about the Sanders free fall. “I wasn’t a part of any evaluation process or to see that.”
While Brady doesn’t seem to be rolling up his sleeves and applying elbow grease to his work with the Raiders, Brady definitely has a voice in the shaping of the roster.
Whether he intended it or not, Brady has created a potentially ideal middle ground that will allow him to claim credit if the Raiders turn things around — and to escape blame if the franchise continues to be far more sluggish than successful.
Pete Carroll strongly opposed the proposal that would have taken away a guaranteed home playoff team from division winners, a stance rooted in his own coaching history.
For decades, NFL division winners have earned the right to open the playoffs on their home fields, regardless of their records, while wild card teams hit the road. A proposal this offseason suggested that if a division winner had a losing record, the wild card could be the home team when they met in the playoffs. Carroll’s 2010 Seahawks went 7-9 in the regular season but won the NFC West, faced the 11-5 Saints in the first round of the playoffs, and won an upset in Seattle.
That game is best remembered for Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch’s iconic “Beast Quake” touchdown run, one of the greatest plays in NFL history, and Carroll reminisced about it on Lynch’s podcast with fellow former Seahawk Mike Robinson.
“I wasn’t voting for that other rule. I was voting for the division winners,” Carroll said. “I like the structure and I like the championship within the championship. That’s just part of it. Remember? Own the NFC West was our deal, and own the AFC West is what it is now.”
Carroll said anyone who thinks a division winner with a losing record can’t make noise in the playoffs need only remember what those 7-9 Seahawks did.
“Remember what we did with it? Remember that freaking game? Nobody ever thought — they were saying, ‘This is the worst matchup in the history of the NFL, and we were going to get murdered,’” Carroll said.
For this year, the playoff seeding will be unchanged. It’s possible that the NFL could revisit the rule next year. If so, expect Carroll to be a voice at the league meeting in favor of guaranteeing division winners home-field advantage.
Quarterback Sam Darnold’s lone season as Minnesota’s starter was magical, until it wasn’t.
At 14-2 and with one game in Detroit with the No. 1 seed on the line, Darnold’s chariot became pumpkinized. Then, in the wild-card round, the orange menace spread to the rest of the team.
“For lack of a better term, we laid an egg as an offense,” Darnold recently told Mike Silver of TheAthletic.com. “And I think, for me personally, that sucks. I felt like we were a really good team, but at the end of the day — and this is gonna sound a little pessimistic — but when you get to the end of it and you don’t win the whole thing, you failed.”
He’s right. There’s only one trophy. And the better a team performs in the regular season, the more prominent the failure seems when it happens.
“I feel like I could have played way better, to be completely honest with you,” Darnold said. “I feel I didn’t play up to my standard. I truly feel that way. I feel like if I would have just played better, I would’ve been able to give the team a chance.”
Darnold’s play was more conspicuous in Week 18, when the Vikings repeatedly had chances and Darnold repeatedly misfired. By the time the playoffs started, the Vikings were simply overmatched and overpowered.
So what happened in those two losses that turned a 14-2 start into an 0-2 finish?
“I feel like L.A. did very similar things on third down to what Detroit did to us,” Darnold said. “They played man and tried to play some ‘robber’ stuff, and that just gave us some troubles. It gave me some troubles, personally.”
As Darnold tries to learn from that experience, it sounds as if he’ll be more committed to running with the ball in 2025 if/when his options are stymied in the passing game.
“[Kevin O’Connell] and those guys in Minnesota did such a good job — and we do a great job here as well — of giving me answers if they take options away,” Darnold told Silver. “Like, just go through your progressions and work your feet and if it’s not there take off and run — because there’s no one accounting for the quarterback, unless they play a spy or whatever.”
Whatever happens in 2025, the gains Darnold made in the first 16 games of the 2024 season were undermined by the regressions of the final two. And even if he gets off to a great start again this year, the real question will be whether he shows up when the lights are the brightest and the stakes are the highest.
More than a year after he was arrested for DUI, former NFL cornerback Richard Sherman officially has been charged.
Via Brady Henderson of ESPN.com, a spokesperson for the King County Prosecuting Attorney said Tuesday that a formal charge has been filed, after the Monday receipt of blood-test results from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab.
The test showed that Sherman had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.11 percent, which exceeds the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
The charge is a gross misdemeanor, which was enhanced by Sherman refusing a breath test.
On the surface, it seems unusual that it would take more than 16 months for the blood sample to be tested. The prosecutor’s office told Henderson that a protracted delay is not uncommon, given the capacity and increased caseload of the lab.
Sherman spent 11 years in the NFL, playing for the Seahawks, 49ers, and Buccaneers. He currently serves as an analyst on Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football.
