More NFL draft stuff coming this week from me. Until then, the takeaways are here …
NFL draft
The Cleveland Browns and New York Giants look less likely to take quarterbacks in the top three. As we detailed last week, New York has Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston signed to deals heavy on incentives tied to starting. Cleveland, meanwhile, has Kenny Pickett fighting for his viability as a starter, Joe Flacco arriving with designs on winning the job, and Deshaun Watson posting on social media that he shouldn’t be doubted.
Stop me when you see a situation fit for a rookie quarterback here.
There’s the obvious piece of that, which is these have the potential to be Game of Thrones quarterback rooms—competitive climates that are good for pushing veterans, but perhaps less healthy for rookies expected to perform in Year 1. Then, there’s a less-obvious element, at least to people who don’t understand how these things work, and that’s how there are only so many practice snaps to go around.
Let’s use Jacoby Brissett in New England last year as an example. He’d played, and started, for then-Patriot OC Alex Van Pelt in Cleveland. So in addition to being a mentoring type (even if he once said his job wasn’t to be a mentor), he also wouldn’t need as many practice snaps as a quarterback generally might to get up to speed with new coaches. As such, Van Pelt could give Drake Maye snaps, while trusting that Brissett would be ready to start, since the rest of the football team needed him to be.
So when Maye got his shot, he’d had plenty of work, and showed himself ready to play.
There is, perhaps, a little bit of that in Cleveland with Kevin Stefanski having worked with Flacco a couple years ago. But less of it because Tommy Rees is in his first year as an NFL offensive coordinator, and Pickett is there, too. There is, really, none of it in New York.
That, by the way, doesn’t mean you can’t take a quarterback in the second or third round. If a guy’s getting redshirted, you of course still want as ideal an environment as you can give the young quarterback. The difference is that if a couple other guys are battling, and eating up so much of the practice work, it’s less of a concern.
Taking all that into account, I’m not saying it’s impossible Shedeur Sanders goes second or third on April 24 in Green Bay. I just think, at this point, it’s pretty unlikely.
Browns and Falcons
The Joe Flacco deal is interesting, in that it might tell a piece of the real story on Kirk Cousins. The Browns and Atlanta Falcons have stayed in touch, from a big-picture standpoint, on a potential Cousins trade over the past couple months.
The idea of it has always made sense. Cleveland’s been in need of a starting quarterback. Atlanta effectively has two of them—Cousins and the 2024 first-rounder the Falcons turned to at the end of last year, Michael Penix Jr. Stefanski also coached Cousins in Minnesota, and his contract situation made him potentially palatable for a team still working around Watson’s guaranteed money over the next two years.
The Falcons have maintained they’re totally comfortable with carrying Cousins and the guaranteed $27.5 million he’s owed on their roster, to the point where they allowed for another $10 million to vest and become fully guaranteed in March. The Browns have mostly played it cool, too, not overreaching to get the quarterback who makes the most sense for them.
Then, on Friday, Flacco signed for $4 million, with another $9 million in incentives. And while this isn’t the death knell for a Cousins-to-Cleveland trade, it does give you a couple hints …
• That the Browns would be willing to pay Flacco $13 million if he starts and performs for them could be a clue that they weren’t willing to go much beyond that to get Cousins. The Falcons, I’ve heard, have been tough on the idea that they should take on much of Cousins’s salary to facilitate a trade, not wanting to pay down too much of it to “buy” a draft pick.
You’d think the Browns would rather have Cousins than Flacco, but my sense is the team views the two similarly. So the number they maxed Flacco out at tells me that the Falcons weren’t going pick up even half of Cousins’s money for 2025 to push a deal through.
• Cousins is serious about wielding his no-trade clause to prevent a move before the draft.
Cousins’s meeting with Arthur Blank happened a month ago. The quarterback really wanted the team to let him go before his guarantee for this year vested. The Falcons refused. Then, Cousins pulled back and signaled to teams he wouldn’t accept a trade until after the first round of the draft, so as not to get “Penix-ed” again.
The thing is, there’s risk involved with that, too, in that any remaining chairs in the game of musical quarterbacks could be filled by April 25.
So where could Cousins go? I think Cleveland is a lot less likely now, but not completely impossible. The other team I’d pay attention to is the Pittsburgh Steelers, if Aaron Rodgers decides not to go there. How he fits there, with the strong personalities in that locker room, and on offense in particular, is a fair question. But you don’t have to squint too hard to envision a marriage of convenience between two sides who, once the dust settles on Rodgers, may need each other.
And it’s not like there isn’t some level of risk for the Falcons in handling things like this. If they hold on to Cousins into the summer with the idea of trading him, he could decide, with his family now rooted in Atlanta (his wife is from the area), that he’d be less willing to leave in a camp-emergency situation than he might be in the spring. There’s also no guarantee that such an emergency situation arises—those don’t happen every year.
Of course, that presumes the Falcons are motivated to move Cousins, to the point where they’d handle some of his 2025 salary to make it happen.
To this point, they sure haven’t operated like they are willing to do so.
Derek Carr
And while we’re on veteran quarterbacks, the Derek Carr situation in New Orleans continues to provoke arched eyebrows. Over the weekend, my buddy and old NFL Network colleague Ian Rapoport reported that Carr’s dealing with a shoulder injury that could jeopardize his 2025 season, and that he’s weighing options, including surgery. And it’d be easier for folks across the league to take that at face value, were it not for the drama that preceded this most recent revelation.
I’ll say that I think the New Orleans Saints’ response to this one, when they do address it publicly, will be interesting, because of all the recent history.
Dennis Allen was a huge reason for Carr being in New Orleans in the first place. The coach who helped bring Carr into the league in Oakland in 2014 was fired in November. So that was the first sign that material change could be coming in the team/quarterback dynamic. Soon after Kellen Moore was hired in mid-February, a second sign emerged—with rumors percolating that Carr might want out.
While how and when and whether at all the trade request officially went in is unclear, other teams were under the impression that Carr was seeking a new home, as some quarterback-needy ones considered him a potential option for 2025.
The door seemed closed on that in early March when the Saints converted $28.745 million of his $30 million base salary into a signing bonus (taking his base all the way down to the league minimum). In doing so, it locked New Orleans into paying that money for 2025, meaning if Carr was traded, the Saints would be paying Carr to play for someone else this fall. The move also was made without Carr’s blessing, since the Saints had the contractual right to do that (it’s common that teams have that conversion lever written into a contract).
So at that point, you essentially had a quarterback who was at best uneasy with his new circumstances, and a team doing everything it could to show him they weren’t going to let him go, whether he wanted to stay.
Which brings us to where we are now. The Saints knew about this shoulder issue. What I’m less sure about is if they view it as something that was actually threatening his 2025 season. The story I’ve heard is that Carr’s camp has told people that this actually stems from his ’23 AC joint sprain, which never fully healed.
Either way, this situation is a strange one. If Carr’s not the Saints quarterback this fall, I’m not sure who will be. They could try to make a late run at Rodgers. It seems unlikely that the Falcons would trade Cousins to a division rival, but New Orleans could make a call on that. Or maybe they look at Sanders or Jaxson Dart 10 or 11 days from now.
Regardless of the course the Saints choose, Moore’s clearly got his first big challenge as the team’s new head coach. We’ll see how he and GM Mickey Loomis attack it.
Nico Iamaleava
The Nico Iamaleava situation threatens to have a ripple effect felt all the way into pro football. For those who missed it—the now former Tennessee quarterback staged what could be called major college football’s first real “holdout”. Set to make a reported $2.4 million this fall, and wanting a market correction, the 20-year-old sat out practice last week looking for a raise. A day later, the Volunteers decided to cut bait rather than give him one.
O.K., so first thing’s first. In my opinion, this is a very real mistake by Iamaleava.
Maybe he gets a little extra scratch out of this. If so, great. I’d never begrudge an athlete getting what he can, because their ability to make money off their gifts is fleeting. So I’m happy for him on that count. But in the big picture? It’s hard to imagine it’d be worth it.
Let’s say Iamaleava has a chance to be a first-round pick. By transferring, he’ll be forcing himself into a new situation, having already missed spring practice, in a new system with a new set of teammates. He’s also naturally raised questions that weren’t there previously about his commitment to a team. Yes, there’s the argument that coaches do this sort of thing all the time, which is true. But if we’re just talking Iamaleava in a vacuum, it seems obvious that NFL teams would look at this and wonder what might happen three years from now.
So if there’s a little natural regression from the transition after a promising first year as a starter, and those questions lingering, it sure looks like he could have just negatively impacted his draft stock for whatever extra he makes, if there is even extra at UCLA or some other place. And even if it drops him, say, 15 slots in the draft, that means something.
Let’s say he’d be the eighth pick if he stayed and 25th pick if not, just to choose two points of reference to compare. He’d go from making around $6 million per year to closer to $3 million per year. Added up over the four guaranteed seasons of a rookie contract, that’s $12 million, and that’s before you even get to all the ancillary income players make.
Of course, if this was a guy without NFL potential, we’d be talking about something else.
But I think, as a quarterback, Iamaleava has the ceiling to get to the pros, and is probably, at this point, a victim of taking bad advice. That, at least, is what the NFL folks and college football staffers I’ve talked to think—that it’s not an agent, but family and handlers, perhaps focused too much on what they can collectively make now, and not on what’s coming.
And that sucks, because while the guardrails that were in place previously were too draconian in nature, they did serve a purpose, and that purpose did serve the players in certain ways, one of which was in keeping them on a path to develop as players and actually graduate from college.
Which brings us to the real villain here and that’s ex-NCAA president Mark Emmert, who ignored the writing on the wall for 20 years that telegraphed these days were coming. Instead of addressing the obvious and looming problem, he and his cronies kept cashing checks, then bailed just as the NIL era was dawning—Emmert announced his retirement in April 2022, less than a year after college athletes started getting paid.
Bottom line: The NCAA had the chance to get ahead, and didn’t, and there are plenty of real-life consequences that resulted from it.
I’d just hope now that Iamameava’s future isn’t one of them.
Shedeur Sanders
I’m having a really hard time finding coaches or scouts who believe Sanders is a first-round talent. This, by the way, is separate from any issue anyone has with his personality. Those questions exist, but lots of teams have made exceptions in that department in the past to take on guys with special talents.
The problem seems to be that too many folks don’t think Sanders has those types of gifts.
What I keep hearing—and this has nothing to do with anyone having some personal issue with Sanders, or looking for him to fall in the draft so they can draft him—is that he isn’t a great athlete on tape, doesn’t have exceptional arm talent, and too often does things that simply won’t translate to the NFL game.
Now, it’s not like Sanders is devoid of ability. Even his critics will tell you that he’s accurate, smart and tough, and credit him for winning consistently at programs where it’s hard to do that. There’s production there that doesn’t happen if a kid can’t play.
But one interesting point that was raised to me in comparing Sanders to Ole Miss’s Jaxson Dart a couple months ago was interesting. The coach I was talking to said, simply, that when you watch those two under duress on tape, you see Dart moving forward, and Sanders moving backward. That essentially means that where Dart would climb the pocket, Sanders would bail out the back of it, and run away from defenders to create time to throw.
It’s a little thing, but to this coach, it was an example of how Dart’s game may translate to the NFL better—and how in a league with freakish pass rushers all over the place, the quarterback who manipulates the space around him has a much better chance than the one trying to create space on his own.
Anyway, I don’t think Sanders is going in the top three. And at this point, it feels like it’d be surprising if the Las Vegas Raiders, New York Jets or Saints took him in the top 10.
I’ve had more than one person say to me that if Sanders goes in the first round, it’ll be because an owner got involved. That, of course, is a bit of a guess from a few guys who are clued into how Sanders is viewed. But it’s also a bit of a window into the way evaluators are looking at the Colorado star.
Draft class
While we’re there, it’s also worth adding that the top of this draft class is marked by its flaws. Even the consensus top two—Penn State rusher Abdul Carter and Colorado Heisman winner Travis Hunter—have their warts. For Carter, it’s his lower lean-body-mass number, and injury history that may relate to that. For Hunter, it’s whether his raw size will allow him to hold up playing on both sides of the ball.
After that, the questions are a bit more significant …
• LSU OT Will Campbell’s arm length and narrow shoulders (for a tackle) have some questioning whether he’s a left tackle or a tackle at all. Meanwhile, Missouri’s Armand Membou may be strictly a right tackle, which is O.K. in the bigger picture, but may limit some team’s willingness to draft him in the top 10.
• Georgia’s Jalon Walker is a menace on the field, but short and light (6'1", 243) to play on the edge in the NFL, which is where he was probably most effective in college. Meanwhile, he has a freakish edge-rusher teammate in Mykel Williams, who is the prototype but wasn’t nearly as productive as Walker in college.
• Similar to Walker, Michigan DT Mason Graham was hyper-productive as a collegian, and is smaller, with shorter arms, for his position in the pros.
• Michigan’s Will Johnson has injury concerns, and questions about his long speed. Texas’s Jahdae Barron was a Swiss Army knife of a corner at Texas, but his size has some wondering if he may be more strictly a nickel in the NFL.
• As for the receivers, it wouldn’t be a shock if none go in the top 15. Arizona’s Tetairoa McMillan, once seen as one of the class’s top prospects, isn’t real fast, has faced some questions on his football makeup, and there’s a good chance he won’t even be the first to go at his position (that could well wind up being Texas burner Matthew Golden).
And that leaves Boise State RB Ashton Jeanty and Penn State TE Tyler Warren, who may be cleaner prospects than any of the guys above (save for Hunter and Carter), but play positions that traditionally don’t get drafted the same way tackles or edge rushers or receivers or quarterbacks do within the top 10.
Add it up, and this is the sort of year where scouting ingenuity and front-office creativity seems like it’ll have to come into play more than usual.
Chicago Bears
The deal done for Kyler Gordon in Chicago this week got my attention. The 2022 second-round pick landed a three-year, $40 million deal with the Chicago Bears, and did it after a year in which he settled in primarily as the team’s nickel, playing inside while No. 1 corner Jaylon Johnson and promising second-year man Tyrique Stevenson handled the outside spots.
That development did, in fact, impact his playing time. He finished the season third on the team in snaps at his position behind Johnson and Stevenson. And after new head coach Ben Johnson named Dennis Allen his defensive coordinator, Allen, in his own introductory press conference, referred to Gordon as an “outstanding nickel”, which reflected how the specific way he was deployed in 2024 led to his ascension as a player.
Why does all that interest me?
Twenty years ago, an inside corner was seen as someone you’d churn on your roster rather than pay, a player not good enough to play outside. Today, given the rise of the NFL slot receiver and “move” tight end, having guys who major in playing there is almost a must.
And that’s what Gordon does. And why he got paid with a new staff aboard.
And, ultimately, why he illustrates where the game has gone. Which is why I think it’s pretty fascinating how the Bears rewarded him so early on in the first offseason during which he’s eligible to get a second contract.
Detroit Lions
It’s good to see Aidan Hutchinson in high spirits. The Detroit Lions star spoke with ESPN’s Marty Smith from Augusta on his Thursday at the Masters show on YouTube, and gave himself what amounted to a clean bill of health (pending a Friday checkup).
“I’m there. I’d say I’m good,” Hutchinson told Smith. “I’ve got my last evaluation when I get back, I leave today and I go back tomorrow to the rehab. I’m gonna finish those evals and once I knock them out of the park, I’ll be on my way and done with rehab. It was a long process, I’ll tell you that. It felt pretty long. The early stages were pretty rough. But just being out of that now, like we were talking about earlier, you have an appreciation for your body, you have an appreciation for no pain and running. I’m happy to be done with that.”
It’s also a great reminder of how much the Lions withstood last year—Hutchinson’s injury was the tip of the injury iceberg that eventually shipwrecked Detroit in the playoffs—to win 15 games and the top seed in the NFC.
With Hutchinson, Alim McNeill and a bunch of others back and at full health, the defense has a chance to be really good, even without Aaron Glenn around to call it.
Then, there’s the other part of this, which is that Hutchinson’s now eligible, for the first time, for a massive second contract. If last year’s deals for 2021 draftees Penei Sewell and Amon-Ra St. Brown are any indication, Detroit will move aggressively to get its hometown-bred star inked for the long-term. And while he won’t come cheap, with how the pass-rusher market has moved in recent years, it sure seems like the sooner they get it done, the better (and more affordable) it will be for the team.
Kyren Lacy
Here’s hoping for peace for the family of LSU receiver Kyren Lacy. The 24-year-old draft prospect was found dead in Houston early Sunday morning. The suspected cause of death is suicide. Police say Lacy was found dead inside his car with a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a vehicle pursuit. Deputies were initially responding to a call from one of Lacy’s family members, who said Lacy had fired his gun into the ground during an argument Saturday night.
There aren’t really any words that I could come up with after hearing about this, and the pain his family is feeling right now must be unimaginable.
Lacy was arrested earlier this year on charges related to a deadly hit-and-run crash in Louisiana. A grand jury was assembled to start hearing evidence in that case Monday morning. Lacy played the past three years at LSU after starting his collegiate career at Louisiana, and was less than two weeks away from his own draft week when he passed.
Here’s a pretty powerful message from his dad …
Kyren Lacy’s father pic.twitter.com/j0C67yFVSD
— Forever Trill🇳🇬 🇰🇪 🇧🇸 (@mccauley318) April 13, 2025
I think it’s a good reminder to all of us to check in on people. And to remind people that are having suicidal feelings or thoughts to reach out to loved ones, who’ll always be there to help.
Quick-hitters
Back on football, we’ve got your quick-hitting takeaways for the week. Let’s go …
• The retirement of Patrick Peterson is just a reminder of the wild amount of talent that was there at the top of the 2011 draft. I’d say seven of the first 11 picks (Cam Newton, Von Miller, A.J. Green, Peterson, Julio Jones, Tyron Smith and J.J. Watt) have a very real Hall of Fame case. Which is just a ridiculous level of talent for one draft class.
• Remember, that group also lost its first offseason program in its entirety to the NFL lockout of 2011. Take from that what you will.
• The Carter tweet with the “Once a Giant, Always a Giant” on it, complete with a picture of Lawrence Taylor, was a pretty smart way to leave East Rutherford. It looks a lot like the floor for the Penn State star at this point is the third pick.
• How the Tennessee Titans handle L’Jarius Sneed, as he faces charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon over a December shooting at a Texas car dealership, will be interesting, since new GM Mike Borgonzi was actually part of trading him away from the Kansas City Chiefs a year ago. Kansas City, for the record, really liked him, but was nervous about his balky knee. I bet they’d bring him back if the Titans end up cutting him.
• One big early challenge for Liam Coen in Jacksonville will be installing his new offense without having his quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, out there for much of it, as he rehabs a left-shoulder injury.
• Dallas Cowboys players were more supportive of the hire of Brian Schottenheimer than most people realize.
• I do genuinely hope Jack Jones gets his life in order. He has a ton of potential, but between time in New England and Vegas, he could never figure things out for long enough to really stick, even if his talent keeps affording him these chances.
• A T.J. Watt deal will get done, I believe. But as social media showed you this weekend, there could be some pain between he and the Steelers getting there.
• I said last week that the Miami Dolphins should explore trading Tyreek Hill. It’d be a little harder to do it after the news that’s come out since. But I still like the idea, when and if the dust settles and Hill is back in good standing with the team and league.
• I believe Kyler Murray when he says Marvin Harrison Jr. will be a lot better in 2025.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as NFL Takeaways: Unlikely Shedeur Sanders Goes No. 2 or 3 to the Browns or Giants.
