MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — I’m headed to my 14th training camp Monday, out in Oxnard, Calif., and we’ve got a lot to cover from the road …
Denver Broncos
Bo Nix is better than you think. And my belief in that is based largely on the Broncos’ belief in it, which is buoyed by the way Sean Payton evaluates the position.
But before we get to that, there’s a simple untruth that Payton wanted to dispel.
To illustrate it, in the lunchtime hour on Saturday, he had a play from last December’s Saturday-night overtime thriller against the Bengals up on his office big screen. There was a little under nine minutes left, Payton’s team was down 17–10 with the ball, first-and-10 on the Cincinnati 49. Nix ran a play-fake to fellow rookie Audric Estime, then rolled right.
“This was heavy play-action,” Payton said, finger on the screen. “We tied down the corner here [with a tight end] and then [Marvin] Mims runs what looks like a corner sting.”
Nix, as he rolls, is reading a pin-block, which is in place, and tells him to stop and set his feet near the right hashmarks—“his feet are great here,” the coach explained—and look deep downfield to his left, where Mims is streaking just beyond two defenders. Nix winds up and launches it from his own 40, dropping it into a window between the two defenders and the endline more than 60 yards downfield, and against his body.
It covered 72 air yards and tied the game.
“That was the longest pass, by air yards, in the league in the ’24 season,” Payton said. “The ’24 season, the longest ball traveled is from the guy that has no arm strength.”
As you can tell, Payton doesn’t agree with narratives assigned to his quarterback.
And finding the fallacies in those narratives is what led the Broncos to Nix in the first place. Some of it was simple—like challenging the widespread notion that there were physical limitations that would set a glass ceiling on Nix’s career, with Payton & Co. endeavoring to come up with their own take on it by finding throws like that one in Cincinnati. Some of it was more complicated, and rooted in ferreting out analytics that could aid the evaluation.
But all of it related back to a premise that Payton took to Broncos CEO Greg Penner before the 2024 draft, in trying to explain how saturation of coverage of the event was actually starting to seep into the way teams were picking players.
“If you’re not careful, there’s this train that’s moving with these assumptions,” Payton said. “And no one really knows who’s driving it. We know there’s a number of people grading, and in charge of the draft, but it’s not like there’s a captain. And it just moves. I said to Greg Penner, It’s important that we pay attention to that train, because that can give us information, relative to other teams. But man, let’s never hop on.”
As such, in an effort to keep their feet on the metaphorical platform, the Broncos dove into the numbers on the quarterback class—numbers that kept pointing toward Nix.
“No. 1, when we did the dirty-pocket study, and that’s what our league is, he was exceptional,” Payton said. “His efficiency without a clean pocket, he could move a little, whoosh and throw it. He’s a tremendous foot athlete. He’s 6' 2½", 218. And he didn’t run the shuttle, because he had a turf toe. But this whole low-ceiling/system guy, it’s like, All right, we have to see that and evaluate it. And the more we kept watching?
“He’s the most accurate passer in the history of college football. That’s just numbers, but you see his accuracy. His dirty-pocket efficiency was first in his class. His negative-play differential—sacks, fumbles, interceptions—one out of every 82 plays. At Oregon, he never fumbled one time. End of half, he was first in that quarterback class. End of game, he was first, when you’re grading points. Third down, he was first in the class. Red zone, he was second to Spencer Rattler.”
But there was one particular stat that Payton valued above the others. You probably wouldn’t guess which one either: sacks. As the process wore on, Payton asked Denver analytics chief Tony Lazzaro to study quarterbacks over the past 30 years to see if any had high sack numbers as collegians and then got to the NFL and flipped it, becoming less sacked as pros.
What Lazzaro found was an eerie (and very real) correlation between college and pro sack statistics for quarterbacks graduating from one level to the next.
“Who gets the blame? God, the line’s gotta get better,” Payton said. “And it’s always the line. The sack is a quarterback stat. We had 26 [in 2024]. I had Bobby Hoying [in the late 1990s], third-round pick. Man, he was a great looking prospect. He took three or four sacks a game. It’s a processing thing. It’s decision-making, multi-tasking, ball out.”
Parallel to Lazzaro’s study, the Broncos ran another one on their 2023 season. That year, Russell Wilson took 45 sacks, part of 51 Denver took as a team. A deeper look into the numbers showed the cost. The Broncos’ drive efficiency on possessions without a sack was actually a tad above the league average. Conversely, when they did take a sack—“After a sack, it’s like a penalty and loss of down,” Payton said—the Broncos offense was dreadful.
The Broncos weren’t going to view that as a coincidence.
“You could never get to [Drew] Brees,” Payton said. “You wouldn’t say Brees was fast; he was a great foot athlete. [Tom] Brady, it was hard to get to him. You’d sack them, but my point is, at the end of the year, those guys were at the lower end, because they processed it.”
The sack study had Nix and No. 2 pick (and eventual Offensive Rookie of the Year) Jayden Daniels as the draft’s top guys, mirroring the Broncos’ evaluation.
Armed with the information, Payton went to work out Nix in Eugene with a clear head.
We told the story of the Oregon workout in our post-draft column last April. There was a lot that happened for Payton on that trip. The overriding thing, though, could be summed up in five words: The Nix narratives were wrong.
“You draft a guy because that’s the ‘next’ guy,” Payton said, referencing how public perception can sway teams. “And he may be. But force yourself to be a contrarian. Force yourself to pay attention to what you think. When we went and had the private workout, I’m watching the ball whistle out of his hands …”
… Payton was impressed enough to make the pick. But just to make sure, he made two calls to old friend Philip Rivers, who had a bunch of top college quarterbacks—Nix included—work out at his Alabama home near Mobile prior to the combine.
The first call was on Nix. Rivers first said Nix was bigger than he thought he’d be, after watching him at Auburn and Oregon. Then Rivers, who rarely swears, explained his and his brother’s reaction after Nix finished up their first throwing sessions. “F---,” Rivers’s brother said. “No s---,” Rivers responded. “He said it was unreal,” Payton recalled.
The second call to Rivers was actually on Drake Maye. Rivers loved Maye, but as the conversation went on, he kept going back to Nix.
“It was one wise person who was reaffirming what I saw,” Payton said. “When there’s only a few of you that feel that strongly, you want to make sure you’re not losing your mind.”
The season to follow was proof positive that Payton hadn’t.
This year, his expectation is that Nix, having the offense down, and having earned the ability to lead his teammates, will take another step as the Broncos try to build off their surprise playoff season of 2024. And the coach, for one, won’t limit where that step will take the quarterback he’s building around.
“I honestly think he’s gonna be one of the top quarterbacks within the next two years,” Payton said. “I think he’s going to be a superstar.”
And maybe more of us should’ve seen it coming.
Cleveland Browns
The Browns’ quarterback situation is complicated in a lot of ways, except one. And that relates back to what the team has had to manage over the past two years—the two years after the franchise rode out Deshaun Watson’s suspension, and natural rust, in 2022.
The idea in trading for Watson was to get a quarterback capable of elevating the team around him, while covering up for any flaws that might come up on the roster. That’s what you give up three first-round picks and $230 million guaranteed for.
Instead, for the most part, the opposite has happened—the position has, more or less, held the team hostage since the Watson trade went down.
So step one in Cleveland’s quarterbacking derby, as coach Kevin Stefanski laid it out to me last week, will be finding a guy who can put a stop to that. No one’s under the illusion that Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, Shedeur Sanders or Dillon Gabriel will suddenly become Josh Allen. But to quote a great coach who once led the Browns, “You can’t win until you keep from losing.” Simply put, the first thing Cleveland is looking for at quarterback is a guy who can do that.
“The guys understand what it’s going to take to win football games,” Stefanski told me before a steamy Monday practice. “And I don’t care what your name is, I don’t care who you’re talking about at quarterback, the big thing for this football team is not giving the ball away. We led the league in giveaways the last two seasons, and that’s a really hard way to win football games. In ’23, we were able to overcome it, taking the ball away at a great clip. We didn’t do that in ’24.
“We need to do a way better job offensively of taking care of the ball. Doesn’t mean we aren’t gonna throw interceptions. We are. Doesn’t mean we aren’t going to fumble. We are. But we have to do a much better job of making the defense earn it, so we keep our defense off the field. I’d say that’s something where all the guys know how important that is.”
So if solid, efficient, mistake-free play is the goal, at least initially, that would naturally push the veterans, Flacco and Pickett, to the front of the line. And that’s pretty much been where those two are since camp started, save for Pickett’s time nursing a hamstring injury.
As for what I know about where the four guys are now, it’s been apparent to those watching that Flacco’s got the best command over the offense, and can still really throw it. Pickett and Gabriel are the most athletic. Gabriel, the third-rounder, has shown solid aptitude, feel and instincts for a rookie. And Sanders, way behind from a knowhow standpoint when he reported in May, has been fighting to keep up. The reason he’s not with the first team, for now, is easy: He’s not ready to operate the offense at the level needed to lead a veteran starting group.
Each of the four is a little different, and the players can see that.
“I’d say Flacco, he’s Rob De Niro, been in every movie,” veteran safety Grant Delpit said with a smile. “If he makes a mistake, it’s because he wants to—because he wants to test it. Shedeur, young, attitude, showtime. Dillon, technical, accurate, Drew Brees–esque. Pickett, I’d say he’s the biggest dual threat.”
Add it up, and it seems highly unlikely a rookie will start right away, particularly with the tough six-game stretch the team has to kick off the season (Bengals, at Ravens, Packers, at Lions, Vikings in London, at Steelers). Perhaps the better question, then, is whether Gabriel or Sanders is ready to be the primary backup, which would give the team the flexibility to move a veteran, if it so desires, and not keep all four quarterbacks.
That said, the Browns are prepared to keep four if that’s what it comes to, and would like to have a starter in place before the third preseason game. Whoever it is will, again, simply have to be adept at avoiding the big mistake—rather than trying to make up for the one the franchise made three years ago.
Micah Parsons
The folks least surprised about how the Micah Parsons negotiation has gone are the ones who’ve actually done these sorts of deals with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in the past. Now, last week, this one got considerably louder for a number of reasons. One, of course, being that Parsons had stayed quiet up until his Friday social media post. Another is that Jones himself did not hold back at his camp-opening press conference, and had not before that.
But as for where things are in the negotiation—which apparently is nowhere, as of Parsons hitting send on his written statement—this really isn’t unusual.
Jones and the Cowboys, increasingly in recent years, haven’t paid players until pushed to the brink. It was September before Ezekiel Elliott ended his 2019 holdout. Zack Martin’s holdout of 2023, which wasn’t even about getting a new deal, but a market correction, went into mid-August. And last summer, CeeDee Lamb took his holdout into late August, and didn’t sign until after Dallas broke camp and returned to Texas from California. Two weeks after that, Dak Prescott, on the doorstep of a contract year, finally signed his extension.
These aren’t coincidences, nor is it happenstance that the Prescott and Lamb negotiations moved very slowly, if at all, through the summer months last year, before accelerating once the season approached. Jones, people who’ve negotiated with him will tell you, won’t spend until he’s forced to, almost as a matter of principle. So when he said Saturday, that how things have gone is “just a part of the negotiation,” he really does see it that way.
Why? There are a few reasons …
• He believes the Cowboys’ brand brings intrinsic value to players they can’t get anywhere else. He is, by the way, not wrong about that. Take Lamb. He got $34 million per year last summer, just shy of the deal Justin Jefferson landed at $35 million per. But it’s fair to say that because of the star on his helmet, Lamb is making more in Dallas than he would if he were a Viking on Jefferson’s contract. Jones is also right to believe that players want to play for the Cowboys. In fact, Parsons said so himself, in expressing his disappointment in the talks.
• Jones has been a firebrand inside owners meetings on how teams and the league pay their executives, coaches and, yes, players, too—he’s gone so far as to zero in on commissioner Roger Goodell’s pay. So in a way, Jones is practicing what he preaches to his peers, in taking hard lines in contract negotiations. Whether taking those stances has worked out for him is, of course, another matter altogether. But the ethos of old Cowboys president Tex Schramm—who once told the players union, “We’re the ranchers, you’re the cattle—is there.
• Deep down, I think part of this is the show. Jones is a staunch believer that almost any attention his team gets is good attention and, for better or worse, the Cowboys are one of the biggest stories in training camp this summer, coming off a non-playoff year, with a new head coach who was an internal promotion. I’ll be there at their camp in Oxnard this week. There’ll be no shortage of topics to dive into. Jones generally sees that as good for business.
• Jones going directly to a player in negotiations may not be wholly appropriate, but it’s part of the deal in Dallas, to the point where agents have to prepare their clients ahead of time for when it happens.
So where does this end? Well, the fact that some of Parsons’s relationships inside the building have gotten a little sideways the past couple of years adds a different dynamic to this one. That said, new coach Brian Schottenheimer has said to me a couple of times this offseason that Parsons has handled his situation gracefully and in lockstep with his coaches. And in the aftermath of his comments last week, the players did seem to get in line behind the star pass rusher, in a “finally, someone said something” kind of way.
Which, of course, would make a lot of sense, since he’s hardly the first Cowboy to go through something like this.
Terry McLaurin
The Terry McLaurin situation is different from that. This one is unique in that I don’t think anyone in the Commanders organization, or even any rational corner of the fan base, is remotely upset with the team’s star receiver. My sense is GM Adam Peters, coach Dan Quinn and everyone on down gets McLaurin’s stance, even if they don’t agree with it.
This is about the market, and about McLaurin’s age, and I think even analytics.
O.K., on the market, there’s a comp out there that makes a ton of sense, at least on paper. DK Metcalf and McLaurin were both part of the receiver class of 2019, both drafted outside the first round. On July 6, 2022, McLaurin got his second contract, a three-year, $68.2 million extension with Washington. Three weeks later, Metcalf signed a three-year, $72 million extension to stay in Seattle.
Metcalf went into this offseason with a year left at a touch over $18 million on that deal. McLaurin went into the offseason with a year and $19.4 million left. Metcalf has 438 career catches for 6,324 yards and 48 touchdowns. McLaurin has 460 career catches for 6,379 yards and 38 touchdowns. Metcalf’s bigger and cut more like a traditional No. 1 receiver, but McLaurin’s been more consistent and a better leader over his career.
Naturally, McLaurin’s camp has wanted what Metcalf got after he was traded from Seattle to Pittsburgh for a second-round pick. Here’s the crux of Metcalf’s Steelers deal …
• $132 million over four new years ($33 million APY).
• $150 million over five years total ($30 million APY).
• $60 million over the first two years, fully guaranteed.
• De facto team options in 2027, ’28 and ’29.
Essentially, the Steelers are getting control over the rest of Metcalf’s prime, and flexibility after two years, and Metcalf’s getting a deal that puts him within sniffing distance of Jefferson and Lamb.
So what prevented this deal, done back in March, from making McLaurin’s negotiation easy?
Age is the first piece of it. McLaurin (a five-year college player) turns 30 in September. Metcalf won’t be 28 until December. Also, Metcalf was traded—and completion of the trade was contingent on a deal being agreed to, which gave the receiver leverage with Pittsburgh.
Then, there’s the data-driven part of this. The Commanders have been hyper-aggressive over phe last 10 months or so, acquiring stars Marshon Lattimore, Deebo Samuel and Laremy Tunsil via trade, in an effort to take advantage of Jayden Daniels’s rookie-contract window. What’s interesting, though, is two of those guys are deep into their second NFL contracts, and the other is into his third, and Washington has left them on those deals.
That doesn’t mean they won’t do deals with those guys, of course. But it does seem to show some reluctance to, and discipline on, giving guaranteed money to older players.
Samuel and Lattimore, by the way, are both younger than McLaurin.
And all this doesn’t mean they don’t want to pay McLaurin at all. But it does show there are limits to how far they’ll go to reward him and, obviously, those limits don’t meet the desires of their No. 1 receiver. It’s also worth noting that, under still-new owner Josh Harris, the Commanders have become more data driven, and Peters comes from a 49ers organization that wasn’t averse to riding out tough summer negotiations (Nick Bosa, Brandon Aiyuk and Samuel himself are examples; though Aiyuk’s negotiation was after Peters left).
My whole take on this? I think, to a reasonable extent, you go the extra mile to sign McLaurin. His game isn’t nearly as dependent on his physical gifts as, say, Metcalf’s is. His route running, smarts and savvy should sustain him whenever he loses a step (and even after that, those traits will give him a chance to reinvent himself, like Larry Fitzgerald once did). He’s also such an important piece to, and symbol for, the program that Peters and Quinn have built—to a point where teammates will ask, That’s the guy you’re messing with?
I just believe there’s a very slim chance that, two or three years from now, you’d regret giving McLaurin what Metcalf got in Pittsburgh.
Maybe I’m wrong on that. Maybe Washington has evidence I will be.
But it’s pretty hard for me to envision that scenario.
Las Vegas Raiders
Chip Kelly’s return to the NFL is a subplot I can’t wait to see unfold. The Raiders—in an investment that was partially a show of financial might from a brand new crew of limited partners—spent $6 million per year to pry Kelly from the national champion Ohio State Buckeyes, where Kelly was comfortable and coaching for his old University of New Hampshire quarterback Ryan Day, after the two exited the NFL nearly a decade ago.
At the time, the thought was that the NFL had caught up to Kelly.
Since then, Kelly’s kept it moving, and his offense has evolved quite a bit, which is a big part of why Pete Caroll & Co. wanted to bring him aboard.
Last year, new Raiders quarterback Geno Smith had a front-row seat to watch it all unfold, with his cousin, all-world OSU freshman Jeremiah Smith, a focal point of Kelly’s offense in Columbus. He was impressed then and, after working with him over the past four months, he’s even more impressed now.
“I got a chance to scout Chip all last year, with Jeremiah there. And he’s a champion, man, as you can see,” Smith said. “He took that Ohio State team, and made sure every single guy got the ball—it was almost effortless the way that their offense just flowed. And now that I’m a part of the system, and I’m running the system, it’s the easiest the game has ever been for me, taking a lot of the responsibility off the quarterback, in terms of you don’t have to make these hard reads or super complicated throws, yet there’s answers for everything.
“We’re getting the ball out of our hands fast, we’re putting the best guys in position to make plays, and every day he’s got a new scheme. There’s a new layer, there’s another answer. To me, it warms my heart knowing that he knows exactly what he’s doing.”
With the caveat that the games still have to be played, Smith then added he’s optimistic that Kelly—who actually recruited him to Oregon out of high school, before Smith chose West Virginia—will be the best coordinator he’s ever had.
So how has Kelly changed?
Last year’s offensive approach at Ohio State explains it.
Through the regular season, the Buckeyes were actually, snap-to-snap, one of the slowest moving offenses in all of college football, becoming the antithesis of the Oregon “Blur” offense that Kelly brought to the NFL in 2013. One reason for it was Day anticipating that OSU would go deep into the playoffs, and play more games than a college team ever had before, which amped up the need to save miles on players’ legs.
But another piece was football-specific strategy. With a fifth-year senior in Will Howard under center, the Buckeyes gave their quarterback more time and latitude to adjust to the defense with check-with-me’s late in the play clock, and as the play clock ran low, the defense would be forced to show its hand, with no time to adjust to Howard’s adjustments.
Obviously, all of it worked—the Buckeyes went into the College Football Playoff fresh and flying, and the offense had defenses in a blender. And thus, you can see how this version of Kelly is different from the one that coached the Eagles, one that’s more malleable, more experienced in the program and carrying more weapons in his bag.
Smith is sold that, for him and cornerstones such as Brock Bowers and Ashton Jeanty, it’s going to work, and work right away. Watching them practice Friday, I think I’d agree.
San Francisco 49ers
There may not be a team in football that relies more on its draft class than the 49ers. It sounds weird saying that, since Kyle Shanahan’s crew has been to four NFC title games since 2019, and brings back, even with all the attrition, a real veteran core.
But once you get a look at the roster, and see the team practice, it’s apparent.
The dead cap the team is carrying into this year, at nearly $100 million now, is apparent in the roster’s depth. And so while the core’s still in place, the cash spending is still high, and the coaching staff is experienced and accomplished enough to have your trust, a lot of young guys are going to have to contribute right away for the Niners to maintain their standard.
Taking a hard look, I’d say at least five rookies are trending toward significant roles on the defense. The youth is most obvious on the line, where revered position coach Kris Kocurek has his work cut out for him. The good news is the three rookies that will play a lot (DE Mykel Williams, and DTs Alfred Collins and C.J. West) were taken in the first four rounds and have talent. Meanwhile, linebacker Nick Martin could be part of the equation in replacing Dre Greenlaw, and fellow third-rounder Upton Stout may be the starting nickel.
On offense, there’s less need for immediate contributions, but insurance policies are absolutely necessary.
The loss of Jordan Mason behind Christian McCaffrey leaves a hole, and concern given the injury-riddled season the Niners’ star tailback just endured. Fifth-round pick Jordan James could wind up being the primary backup, and has shown an edge and burst that has some believing he’ll beat out Isaac Guerendo for that role. The Niners also have injury concerns at receiver, and likely won’t have Brandon Aiyuk until somewhere around Week 10, leaving an opening for fourth-rounder Jordan Watkins to compete for playing time.
Now, no one’s saying the Niners won’t contend. The Rams did it with heavy cap debt in 2023, and the Bills did it last year. Their schedule’s favorable, and they still have Brock Purdy, Trent Williams, Nick Bosa, Fred Warner, George Kittle, McCaffrey and, eventually, Aiyuk. There’s also the hope, on the part of Shanahan and GM John Lynch, that the young guys will infuse the roster with a new energy—and also allow for more spirited, productive practices through the year.
That said, to make this work, they’ll need what the Rams and Bills had, and that’s a lot of young (and cheap) guys elevating into bigger roles. We’ll see if that happens.
Seattle Seahawks
The Russell Wilson trade has brought the Seahawks to a new phase of contention, and smoothed the transition from Pete Carroll to Mike Macdonald. Three years later, it’s worth taking a good look at the fallout of the trade. Here are the particulars …
• The Seahawks got the ninth and 40th picks in 2022, which became OT Charles Cross and DE Boye Mafe. They also got a 2022 fifth-rounder, and moved down eight spots from there, where they picked DE Tyreke Smith, and picked up a seventh-rounder, which became WR Dareke Young. And in 2023, they got the Broncos’ first- and second-round picks, which became the fifth pick, CB Devon Witherspoon, and the 37th pick, edge Derick Hall. Witherspoon’s already made two Pro Bowls, Cross is one of the top young left tackles in football, and Hall and Mafe are key rotational guys on Macdonald’s defensive front, while Young and Smith are still around, fighting for roster spots.
• The Seahawks got three active players. Shelby Harris played a year, and started 15 games for them on the defensive line. Noah Fant had 130 catches, 1,400 yards and five touchdowns over 48 games before being cut last month. Drew Lock backed up Smith in 2023, left, and now is back to back up Sam Darnold.
• The Broncos got two years of Wilson, and a 2022 fourth-round pick that became DT Eyioma Uwazurike, who got in eight games as a rookie, was suspended for the 2023 season for gambling violations, and then played in four games last year. He’s fighting for a role in Vance Joseph’s defense in camp this summer. Meanwhile, the Broncos took on $53 million in dead cap last year and are carrying $32 million in dead cap this year for trading Wilson. They’ll finally be out from underneath the Wilson debt after this year.
Really, I have two thoughts here.
The first is that it’s amazing the job that Payton and Paton have done digging the Broncos out from that trade, given the drain on cap and draft resources.
Second is that the Seahawks are sort of in a similar position as the Packers are, which we wrote about in last week’s takeaways. Simply put, the Seahawks have drafted well the past few years in capitalizing on the Wilson return—and have a team that won 10 games last year despite all the coaching turnover (and having an offense that really didn’t translate from college to the pros).
Now, I think, the combination of Sam Darnold and that core (which also includes guys such as Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Kenneth Walker III, Riq Woolen and, now, rookies Grey Zabel and Nick Emmanwori) have to show if they can go from pretty good to great.
Given the age of those guys, it’s certainly possible that will happen.
James Cook
Now, James Cook is a hold-in too. Or at least it seems that way. The fourth-year Bills star had participated in training camp up until Sunday, when he sat out, and gave “business” as the reason to ESPN’s Alaina Getzenberg.
Cook’s really the last piece of undone business the Bills had to do this offseason.
His draft classmates Terrel Bernard, Khalil Shakir, and Christian Benford, as well as 2021 first-round pick Greg Rousseau, all signed extensions over the past five months. The Bills wanted to do something with Cook, too. And for most of the spring, the sides were far enough apart where the narrative out there made it feel like Cook playing out his second-round rookie deal was inevitable.
But I don’t really think the Bills ever saw it that way, and one thing that gave them a level of optimism was that Cook reported to camp on time, and was fully engaged both as a team leader and a player—signs that backed up the notion that Buffalo’s where he wants to be.
There’s been a little progress since then, too.
Paying a running back is always tricky, as are the contract comps, which are all over the place. Josh Jacobs and Saquon Barkley played last year at $12 million and $13 million per year, respectively, and Derrick Henry was at $8 million. Barkley and Henry have since done market-correction extensions that further cloud the picture at the position.
To me, the crux of this, though, is Cook’s aforementioned desire to stay, and the reality that a running back’s earning power is so fragile. For those reasons, I think the sides will find a way to do a deal. And you should, again, take Cook’s latest action as an effort to get there.
Trey Lance
I loved seeing Trey Lance look so comfortable in the Hall of Fame Game on Thursday night. Sure, it’s only the preseason, and a game in which neither team was really playing anybody. But the calm demeanor Lance exhibited out there, and how at ease he looked moving around and finding open receivers, was great to see.
He’s a good guy, and a good worker, and still has tools.
I also think it’s going to be tough for him to make it as a starter. What I’ve always heard about him is that he just needs to play, and I’m not sure who could afford him the chance to do that, absent some sort of injury emergency somewhere. If you draft a guy in the top five, as the Niners did with Lance, you can afford to give a quarterback the runway to gain experience and knowhow in the name of development. When you’re taking a flier on a guy, you can’t.
So I don’t know how he gets the playing time he needs (this, by the way, is why the volume of starts in college is taken so seriously by NFL teams in scouting quarterbacks). But here’s hoping there are more chances for him like Thursday’s, where he can play through some ups and downs, and get the time on task he needs.
At the very least, he’s with a coaching staff, with Jim Harbaugh and Greg Roman, that’ll know how to get the most out of him and bring him along.
Quick-hitters
It’s time for the quick-hitters. Let’s go ...
• It goes without saying, but all our best to everyone affected in the horrible attack on 345 Park Ave. last week, and especially to the four families who are dealing with the ultimate loss. Our own Conor Orr wrote a really thoughtful column on the subject that you should check out.
• The Chiefs’ left tackle competition doesn’t seem like much of a competition at all. Rookie Josh Simmons has taken pretty much all the snaps—a result of being ahead of schedule in his return from a torn patellar tendon suffered last October (original timelines had the start of the season uncertain). If Simmons hits like the Chiefs think he will, this would be another nice notch in the belt of K.C.’s medical staff, after all the work they did to sign off on Trey Smith four years ago.
• Cleveland.com’s veteran Browns beat reporter Mary Kay Cabot with the line of the summer, which you can check out here. And big congrats to Cabot on winning the Bill Nunn Award, and getting in the de facto writer’s wing of the Hall. No one’s worked harder for it.
• While we’re on the Hall class, I’d say it’s hard to quantify the impact Antonio Gates had on the NFL, going from college basketball star (after Nick Saban wouldn’t let him play both sports at Michigan State) to pro football legend. Gates is the reason why NFL teams started scouting the NCAA tournament, and helped normalize teams looking to other sports for talent. So while guys such as Julius Thomas and Mo Alie-Cox followed Gates from hoops, others like ex-Australian rugby star Jordan Mailata owe him a debt of gratitude, too.
• Payton had a great analogy with the media Saturday, in discussing the big extension defensive lineman Zach Allen got. In recalling signing Allen as a free agent, he explained how free agency usually goes, and used his parents loving garage sales when he was a kid to drive his point home. “So they’d come home with a new couch, and you’d remove the old one,” Payton said. “And you were so excited, it was a sectional, until you sat in the right corner and it wiggled and you realized why it was a free agent.” That, to me, sums up most of the hysteria of March. And why Allen, who was better than Denver though, is an outlier.
• Who might that guy be among the 2025 free agents? Safety Cam Bynum’s looked excellent so far for the Colts. He’s a guy who sees the field incredibly well, has off-the-charts football IQ and has gotten his hands on the ball consistently in practice. He should play a role similar to one Jessie Bates III once played in Lou Anarumo’s defense.
• If Browns fans want some reason for optimism, they should watch second-round LB Carson Schwesinger in the preseason opener this weekend. I had a scout tell me before the draft that he was studying another defensive player at UCLA, and it was a real challenge to evaluate him because Schwesinger seemed to swallow every play up. That heat-seeking-missile dynamic’s already showing at Browns camp. And he could wind up with the green dot on his helmet, as the team’s defensive play-caller.
• We mentioned this before, but now, with the ESPN/NFL Media deal at the goal line, it’s worth noting again that the justice department has to approve the merger. Which a lot of folks believe is why the league has been playing nice with President Donald Trump of late.
• On the Bengals and Trey Hendrickson—my sense is the average per year on the contract is no longer the problem. Cincinnati’s well into the 30s, and closer to the top of the market than people want to believe. The stumbling block remains the guarantees. As we’ve said the past few weeks, the Bengals broke their rules on those to extend Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase, but didn’t with Tee Higgins.
• I get that putting Arch Manning’s name into a headline probably makes smoke come out of a search engine. But can we let the kid actually settle in as a college starter before we talk about teams positioning to get him in a draft that I’m pretty sure he won’t declare for?
This article was originally published on www.si.com as NFL Takeaways: Bo Nix Is Better Than You Think.