McCarthy's roster additions say everything about the offense he wants to run. The quarterback question is still open. And Indiana just signed a stadium bill that changed the conversation in Springfield.
Week two of free agency opened Monday without the quarterback question in Pittsburgh being answered, and I want to spend this morning talking about why that unanswered question is the most interesting story in the league right now. Here is what Pittsburgh has done in the first week and a half of the new league year: they traded for Michael Pittman Jr. from Indianapolis and signed him to a three-year, $59 million contract. They signed Rico Dowdle, who rushed for 1,076 yards in Carolina last season, as their primary back. They re-signed Cameron Heyward on a two-year extension. They brought in Jamel Dean from Tampa Bay for the secondary. Pittman, notably, played under Mike McCarthy in Dallas.
Brown stays in Philadelphia without resolution. Atlanta's 'compete' word keeps doing its work. Dallas gets specific about its window. And the teams left behind after seven days of free agency.
The first week of the new league year ends this Sunday without the story I most expected to have been resolved. A.J. Brown is still a Philadelphia Eagle.
Underneath every contract structure is a human decision. Etienne made the home decision. The Cowboys made the window-is-open decision. Atlanta made a decision that requires a lot of other decisions to follow.
Day four of the new league year, and I want to start with the transaction that tells you the most about how this league operates when it is moving at full speed. Travis Etienne just signed with the New Orleans Saints. The kid from Jennings, Louisiana — eight hours from the Superdome — who went to Clemson, got drafted by Jacksonville, spent five years in Florida, and is now home. He called it "more than a cherry on top." I've been in this business for twenty-five years, and I have watched enough of these signings to know when a player's voice changes in the press conference. Etienne's voice changed. He was trying very hard to sound like a businessman and not quite managing it.
Arizona will pay $35.5 million for Murray to play somewhere else. That is not a transaction. That is leverage in three directions at once.
The new league year is thirty-six hours old. Here is what I know. The most interesting organizational story in the first day and a half of free agency is not the biggest contract. It is Kyler Murray walking out of Arizona with $36.8 million in guaranteed money already in his pocket, signing with his next team for the veteran minimum, and doing so by design. That structure — one team still obligated to pay him a career-altering sum while he suits up somewhere else — is a consequence of offset language in his original Cardinals deal that most people who covered the signing didn't fully explain at the time. Arizona will pay him regardless. The team that signs him pays only $1.3 million. The Vikings, who were described by Adam Schefter Wednesday morning as the "overwhelming favorite" to sign him, effectively acquire a former first-overall pick and two-time Pro Bowler for the cost of a backup. That is not a transaction. That is leverage moving in three directions at once.
Patience in the negotiating window is information gathering at scale. The teams that close well aren't always the ones that moved fastest.
By tonight at 11:59, the negotiating window closes and everything that was a conversation becomes either a contract or a dead end. The things I've learned about the last day of the window, having covered it for thirty years: the teams that close well are not necessarily the ones that moved fastest. Some of the best roster decisions I've seen in this league were made on the final afternoon of the window by organizations that spent the first two days watching what the market was telling them and then acted on what they'd learned. Patience in the window is not passivity. It is information gathering at scale.
The first twenty-four hours of the negotiating window tell you which front offices did the work and which ones are making calls they should have made three weeks ago.
The negotiating window opened yesterday, and I've been in this business long enough to know that the first twenty-four hours tell you almost nothing and everything at the same time. What they tell you is which organizations were genuinely prepared. The teams that had already done their due diligence — the medicals, the film, the compensation structure — moved quickly. The teams that hadn't moved slowly, or not at all, or made calls they should have made three weeks ago. By now, every general manager in the league has a reasonably clear picture of what the first wave looks like. Some of them are happy with what they see. Most are not.
The hours before a deadline tell you which teams have been building toward something and which ones have been hoping the calendar would solve their problems.
The franchise tag deadline is tomorrow, and I've been doing this long enough to know that the hours right before a deadline are when you find out which organizations have actually been doing the work and which ones have been hoping the calendar would solve their problems. A few things on my mind as we get to Tuesday morning.
The tension in Philadelphia isn't personal — it's mathematics. What the Eagles front office is actually deciding before Tuesday's deadline.
The A.J. Brown situation in Philadelphia is the most interesting front-office story in football right now, and I want to take a minute to explain why — not just the drama of it, but the business logic underneath it. What makes it interesting isn't that a star player and his team have disagreements. That happens everywhere, every offseason. What makes it interesting is the timing, the leverage, and the way the franchise tag changes both.
Mendoza goes first overall and that part is settled. What happens after him — and what a GM said Thursday evening that stuck with me.
A few things I've been thinking about as the combine wraps up in Indianapolis this week. The quarterback class is thin. I don't mean thin in the way that draft analysts use as shorthand for "no generational talent at the top." I mean thin in a structural way — there are fewer quarterbacks who can step into a starting role in year one without significant protection around them than there have been in any class I can remember covering over the past decade. That has real implications for roughly a third of the league.
A coaching change, a quarterback in question, and an offensive line that needs rebuilding — the offseason story in Dallas starts up front.
A few things worth thinking through as the NFL offseason begins to take shape. The first is this: the coaching change in Dallas was coming. Everyone in the league knew it. The front office knew it. The people I talked to before the season started knew it. When you bring in a new head coach — particularly one being handed a roster that is, in many ways, still being built around a quarterback who may have already played his best football — you're making a statement about organizational patience. Dallas isn't a patient franchise by nature. They never have been.