Jets, Ravens end drama months ahead of time
While we watched the Bruins and Celtics this past week, and analyzed the 31 picks from the first round of the NFL Draft, two huge pieces of NFL news seemed to fly under the radar.
After two months of haggling, the Jets and Packers finally settled on a trade that sent Aaron Rodgers to New York. And after two years of negotiating, during which the Ravens used the franchise tag and Lamar Jackson requested a trade, the Ravens and Jackson finally agreed on a five-year contract that made Jackson the highestpaid player in the NFL.
“It was a long, long process, but family is never easy,” Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta said.
There was little doubt that the Rodgers trade would get done after he told the world on March 15 that his intention was to play for the Jets. But it had the potential to drag on for several more months, with the Packers not needing to trade Rodgers until his $60 million came due in Week 1 of the regular season.
Considering that the Jets gave up a lot in the trade — the equivalent of a second-round pick this year, and a likely first-round pick next year — and they’re paying the entire freight on Rodgers’s contract ($108 million over two years), it seems that Jets owner Woody Johnson got a little impatient and told GM Joe Douglas on Tuesday, “Just get the deal done.”
There is business to be conducted based on Rodgers joining the Jets. Already on the team website is a banner advertisement for season tickets with Rodgers’s image and the message, “Rodgers Happens Here.”
“I’m extremely excited,” Johnson told SNY.
Rodgers, 39, is making an effort to be a good teammate. After skipping voluntary offseason workouts the last few years in Green Bay, Rodgers participated on Wednesday with his new teammates. He also said he’s going to spend the rest of the offseason getting to know his new teammates on the East Coast.
Rodgers said he is thrilled to reunite with Jets offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett and excited about the Jets’ young talent, which carried them to a 710 record last year despite the worst quarterback play in the league.
“I’m here because I believe in this team,” Rodgers said Wednesday after spending 18 years in Green Bay, winning four MVPs and a Super Bowl.
“This is an opportunity to be a part of a city that’s hungry, a team with an incredible fan base that’s hungry to win again. Twelve years without playoffs, not a Super Bowl win since Super Bowl III — it’s been a long time.
“That Super Bowl III trophy is looking a bit lonely.”
Rodgers also said he won’t mind mentoring third-year quarterback Zach Wilson, who struck up a relationship with Rodgers during Packers-Jets joint practices a couple of years ago.
“I feel like part of my role here is to help him get his confidence back,” Rodgers said. “The team believes in him. That’s one question I asked: ‘How do you feel about Zach?’ Because I care about his feelings and I care about how he’s viewed. They really believe in him. They think he can be special — and so do I.”
This trade could be awfully expensive for the Jets if it’s only for one season. Rodgers wouldn’t officially commit to anything beyond 2023, but he did tell reporters, “This isn’t a one-anddone, in my mind.”
But even if it’s just for one year, Rodgers brings a confidence and swagger the Jets haven’t had since Rex Ryan was fired as coach after 2014. The Jets have the longest playoff drought in pro sports (12 years), but Rodgers isn’t afraid to openly talk about a Super Bowl.
“I’m an old guy,” he said, “so I want to be part of a team that can win it all. And I believe this is a place [where] we can get that done.”
While Rodgers and the Jets celebrated their new arrangement on Tuesday night, DeCosta was miserable. A Taunton native, he was watching his beloved Celtics lose Game 5 to the Hawks when a text message from Jackson popped on his phone just after Trae Young delivered his winning 3-pointer. The text was along the lines of, “I think we can get a deal done. We’re getting close.”
“I said back to him, ‘Lamar, you just saved my night,’ ” DeCosta said. “Because I was in a dark place, and at that point I didn’t care anymore about the Celtics.”
On Thursday, hours before the draft began, Jackson and the Ravens announced that they had reached a fiveyear deal to replace the franchise tag. Reports have it at a total of $260 million, for a $52 million average that is highest in the NFL, with $185 million in guarantees.
For the last year it didn’t seem that Jackson and the Ravens would reach this finish line. Jackson was adamant about wanting a fully guaranteed, fiveyear contract similar to the $230 million deal Deshaun Watson signed with the Browns, and the Ravens were adamant about making Watson’s contract an outlier.
Complicating the negotiations was that Jackson didn’t have a traditional agent, instead relying on his mother, the NFL Players Association, and random associates such as rapper Meek Mill. The negotiations were sometimes nasty, and some NFL observers thought Jackson didn’t try hard enough to play through his injury as he sat out the Ravens’ playoff loss last season. Then in March, Jackson went public with a trade request.
But the Ravens remained calm, didn’t take matters personally, said all of the right things about wanting Jackson back, and even went out and signed receiver Odell Beckham.
Then when Jalen Hurts signed with the Eagles, it gave Jackson the parameters to do his deal. He didn’t get the full guarantee he was seeking, but Jackson was able to add a few more dollars to Hurts’s deal (which is for $255 million over five years, with $179 million guaranteed) and get the richest contract in NFL history.
Finally, the Ravens got Jackson one more weapon in the draft, taking Boston College receiver Zay Flowers with the 22nd pick.
“I just felt like we were doing things the right way, and treating Lamar the right way and that it would work out one way or another,” coach John Harbaugh said. “To see it happen the way it did, today, to hear how excited Lamar was on the phone about it when we talked about it, that was really a great moment.”
Cardinals can’t get anything right
The Arizona Cardinals have turned into a daily soap opera. Their front office can’t seem to get anything right.
Before the first round of the draft on Thursday night, a bizarre story was revealed — the Cardinals were trading pick No. 66 to the Eagles in exchange for No. 94 and a fifth-round pick in 2024 as the result of a tampering charge levied by the Eagles. New Cardinals GM Monti Ossenfort admitted on Thursday that he had an impermissible phone call with new head coach Jonathan Gannon in the days following the NFC Championship game, when Gannon was still the Eagles’ defensive coordinator.
“I made a mistake,” Ossenfort said, via the team’s website. “I own that. It’s a situation we were able to resolve. I have apologized to [Cardinals owner] Michael Bidwill, I’ve apologized to our staff. The deal we worked out, it is what it is and we are moving on from it.”
The Cardinals self-reported the violation to the league office, but there has to be more to this story. Tampering happens all of the time and teams rarely file charges with the league office unless there is a beef to settle. In 2019, the Patriots accused the Texans of tampering with Nick Caserio, but then dropped the issue after settling it privately.
Here, the Cardinals were forced to give up a premium draft pick, but strangely, the teams were allowed to work the terms out on their own. Either way, it’s not a great way for Ossenfort to begin his first GM gig.
Meanwhile, the first round of the draft ended, and receiver DeAndre Hopkins was still a Cardinal, despite trade rumors with the Bills and Titans, among other teams. Ossenfort intimated that Hopkins won’t be traded during the draft, though it’s unclear if the Cardinals plan on keeping him for 2023.
“I don’t foresee that happening,” Ossenfort said of a trade. “DeAndre’s a Cardinal and we’re moving forward.”
The employment dispute between the Cardinals and former executive Terry McDonough also moved forward this past week, with commissioner Roger Goodell reportedly tabbing Jeffrey Mishkin, the former chief legal officer for the NBA, to serve as the hearing officer in arbitration. McDonough accused Bidwill of harassment, workplace discrimination, and cheating NFL rules, and Bidwill has responded aggressively by attacking McDonough’s character and painting him as an “erratic” and scorned former employee.
McDonough may have a hard time winning his arbitration given that Goodell is the one who picks the arbitrator and the proceedings are clearly tilted in favor of the teams/owners. Mishkin, now in private practice, led the NBA’s legal department for seven years.
Eagles bullish on Georgia Bulldogs
The Eagles may want to change their nickname to the Bulldogs, because after Thursday night they now have four starters from the University of Georgia defense.
Last year, they took defensive tackle Jordan Davis in the first round and middle linebacker Nakobe Dean in the third round. Thursday night, the Eagles drafted defensive tackle Jalen Carter at No. 9, then took pass rusher Nolan Smith at No. 30.
“There’s a lot of things that they’re going to come into this league that are unfamiliar to them,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “So to have a little bit of sense of familiarity with some of the guys that you’ve gone to battle with and won a lot of games with, that’s huge.”
The Eagles seemed tickled to be able to draft Carter, trading up one spot from No. 10 to get a player who slid down the board because of off-field issues. Carter is a freakish athlete at 6 feet 3 inches and 310 pounds, and Sirianni and GM Howie Roseman shared a story of the game of “Horse” that Sirianni played with Carter during Carter’s official predraft visit to Philadelphia.
“He kind of stood right there and did a windmill dunk without taking a step,” Sirianni said. “He got an ‘H’ on me right there because I didn’t have that in my repertoire.”
Roseman added: “I think your reaction was, ‘Jalen Carter just took a flatfooted windmill dunk and asked me to match him.’ ”
It would be understandable if NFL players, coaches, and employees are a little confused about the league’s gambling policies. After all, the league has official partnerships with Caesars, DraftKings, and FanDuel. Three stadiums (Arizona, Washington, New York/ New Jersey) now have sports books onsite. And the owners voted in March to keep those sports books open on game days, so fans can place all the bets they want.
Yet it hasn’t stopped the NFL from maintaining a heavy-handed gambling policy that has snagged a half-dozen players and reportedly dozens of league employees. Calvin Ridley was the first to get popped last year, serving a yearlong suspension for making parlay bets while he was on injured reserve. Then this past week, the NFL suspended five more players for violating the policy. The Lions’ Quintez Cephus and C.J. Moore, and the Commanders’ Shaka Toney were suspended for at least a year, while the Lions’ Stanley Berryhill and Jameson Williams were suspended for the first six games. Pro Football Talk also reported that handfuls of business side employees across the 32 teams have quietly been dismissed for violating the gambling policy.
Certainly, to protect the league’s integrity, the NFL can’t have players betting on its games, and must police that seriously. And rules are rules, and the league is very clear about them.
But Berryhill and Williams were suspended for a minor infraction, if you can call it that — placing bets on other sports from inside the Lions’ facility. Their suspensions were shorter, but the punishments still seem harsh considering the pro-betting messaging coming from the teams and league office.
“Jameson takes full responsibility for his actions and is very apologetic to the NFL, his teammates, and the fans and city of Detroit,” Williams’s agents wrote in a statement. “However, it is important to note that Jameson’s violation was not for betting on football but rather due to a technical rule regarding the actual location in which the online bet was placed — and which would otherwise be allowed by the NFL outside of the club’s facility.”
Extra points
One player who could use a bit of good news is Chargers cornerback J.C. Jackson. He signed a five-year, $82.5 million deal last offseason, but then everything went wrong — a foot injury, poor play, and a season-ending torn patellar tendon in October after just five games. The Chargers aren’t sure that Jackson will be ready for training camp in late July but are giving him some positive reinforcement. “He’s still got some ways to go, but I saw him running in the weight room the other day on the treadmill. He looked really good,” Chargers GM Tom Telesco said
. . . Some teams are tough to read on draft night. The Cowboys are not one of them. The Bills traded up from No. 27 to 25 on Thursday night to get ahead of the Cowboys and draft tight end Dalton Kincaid. The Cowboys don’t have a No. 1 tight end after Dalton Schultz left in free agency. “We had a good feeling that Dallas would take him [at No. 26] and we just really liked him and just felt he would be a great fit in our offense,” Bills GM Brandon Beane said. When asked if the Cowboys wanted Kincaid, owner Jerry Jones responded, “I am not going to give you the draft board this time.” So that’s a “yes.” . . . The Texans surprisingly gave up picks No. 12 and 33, and their first- and third-round picks next year to get picks 3 and 105 from the Cardinals. “From our perspective, it’s not about what the points tell you on the chart,” said GM Nick Caserio, which is what you say when you know you lost the trade. The hunch here is that Caserio took C.J. Stroud with the No. 2 pick to appease the owner (and create the impression that the QB was his top target all along), then traded the kitchen sink to get the player he really wanted, Alabama edge rusher Will Anderson ... Get ready for Super Bowls and Final Fours in Nashville, with a $2.1 billion, domed stadium approved this past week, with a record $1.26 billion in public funding. The Titans will contribute $840 million in private financing but will raise a majority of it through personal seat licenses and loans from the NFL. Owner Amy Adams Strunk apparently understands that you don’t get rich by spending your own money.