NEWS AND NEAR NEWS

Signings galore across NFL … With numerous NFL teams hosting their rookie mini-camps this weekend, the pace of first-round signings has picked up with another four teams coming to terms with their #1 picks today. That includes both the 2nd and 3rd picks overall this year as the NY Jets inked DE David Bailey who they took with the second pick overall, while Arizona signed RB Jeremiyah Love who went third overall. Meanwhile, New Orleans signed WR Jordan Tyson, the 8th player picked last month, while Cleveland signed OT Spencer Fano, whom they selected with the 9th pick after trading down with Kansas City. In fact, NFL.com is reporting that barely two weeks removed from the draft, half of this year’s first-round picks have already signed.

At the same time, Denver has signed GM George Paton, the architect of the Broncos’ recent turnaround, to a contract extension thru 2030. It was also a good day for the NFL referees as they have come to terms with the league on a new CBA that will run thru 2032. And just for the record, the league confirmed today that the full NFL schedule will be released on May 14th.

Two more top picks sign … A couple more first round picks at the 2026 draft came to terms as Washington has reportedly signed LB Sonny Styles, the 7th pick overall, while the NY Jets agreed to terms with TE Kenyon Sadiq, the 2nd of their two opening rounds selections whom they grabbed with the 16th pick. Meanwhile, Buffalo has signed the bulk of its draft class including DE TJ Parker whom the Bills selected early in the second round after trading out of the first.

Two more #1 picks, top UDFA sign … A couple more first round picks at the 2026 have come to terms with their respective teams as Tampa Bay agreed to terms with DE Rueben Bain, the 15th pick overall, while Carolina signed OT Monroe Freeling, the 19th pick. Both signed standard 4-year deals with a club option for a 5th with Bain agreeing to a deal worth 22.8M guaranteed, while Freeling signed for $20.9M, $11.6 of which was a signing bonus. For the record, the Panthers also announced their 2026 undrafted free agents including former Georgia Tech QB Haynes King, while New Orleans has reportedly come to terms with former Mississippi DT Zxavian Harris, the top-rated player on our list of leading undrafted players from last month’s draft.

Giants 2026 draft report: Part deux – What’s left to do … At least on paper, the Giants had an outstanding draft at the end of last month as they were able to add some quality prospects at a number of positions. The consensus before the draft, though, was that it was highly unlikely that they would be able to address all of the issues that John Harbaugh and company were focused. Indeed, while it is probably safe to say they have closed most of the gaps in the roster that left unfixed would cost them games, there are still a number of other areas that are still in need of some kind of upgrade. Read more

Bills, Bucs get late draft shoutouts … In the process of putting the finishing touches of our files for both the full selection order for the 2026 draft, as well for the picks by team, we noted the drafts of a couple of teams that maybe didn’t quite get the credit they deserved in the immediate post-draft reaction. One was Buffalo which came into the draft with just a couple of top 125 picks, but after a series of 3 separate trade downs from their original first-round selection, the 26th overall, all of a sudden the Bills had 5 picks in that range. When the dust had settled, the Bills were able to still snag former Clemson DE TJ Parker, a player they likely had on their short list at #26, with the 35th pick. The Bills also had a productive 3rd day when got a group of quality prospects including UConn WR Skyler Bell and TCU LB Kaleb Elarms-Orr in the 4th, South Carolina S Jalon Kilgore and Penn State DT Zane Durant in the 5th and TexasA&M OG Ar’maj Reed-Adams in the 7th. On the other hand, Tampa Bay seemed content to sit where they were throughout much of the draft, but still were able to get Miami DE Rueben Bain, a legit top 10 candidate with the 15th overall, as well as several other players who had been considered to be rising prospects at some point in the pre-draft process including Missouri LB Josiah Trotter, Georgia State WR Ted Hurst, Miami CB Keionte Scott, Clemson DT Demonte Capehart and Notre Dame OG Billy Schrauth. Meanwhile, it was tough to argue that Atlanta didn’t maybe have the worst draft of any team. The Falcons didn’t have a first round pick this year as they traded it away in 2026 to get a player who is in jail, or at least facing serious criminal charges. Atlanta had used this year’s #1 pick to trade back up into the latter part of last year’s opening round to select ER James Pearce, who did have a solid rookie campaign posting 10.5 sacks, but now faces an uncertain future after he was arrested in Florida in February on two charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and one count of aggravated stalking stemming from a domestic dispute while he was also charged with fleeing and eluding police officers, aggravated battery of a law enforcement officer and resisting an officer. If there is any consolation for the Falcons its that they did get a potential replacement for Pearce when they selected LB/ER Harold Perkins, who is something of a clone, in the 6th round.

QB Sorsby hires lawyer as betting story continues … Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorrsby has now reportedly hired himself a lawyer as he tries to deal with the fall out from gambling issues he’s facing that are rocking the college football world. For those that haven’t been following the story, Sorsby, one of the top prospects for the 2027 draft who recently transferred to Texas Tech from Cincinnati, checked himself into a gambling addiction rehab facility last month after allegations surfaced that he had been betting on a wide-range of sports including college football and that the NCAA was investigating. Given the likelihood of a possibly lengthy suspension there has been speculation that Sorsby could apply to the NFL for this summer’s supplemental draft, although with his recent troubles there’s no guarantee that he’d eve be selected there. Which might bring the lawyer into play to fight any NCAA charges. Indeed, one wonders if one avenue for Sorsby would be to claim the whole thing is a health issue. Ultimately, in the log run, he might be best served by sitting out the upcoming season, getting ‘clean’ and returning to college football in 2027 for his final year of eligibility. Time will tell!

Eagles first to sign top pick … Philadelphia became the first team to sign their first round pick this year when they came to terms with WR Makai Lemon who agreed to a four-year rookie deal worth just over $20.8M in guaranteed money, including an $11.5M signing bonus. The Eagles chose Lemon with the 20th pick overall on Thursday night after trading up with division-rival Dallas. Lemon is expected to help fill the gap if as expected the Eagles trade Pro Bowl WR AJ Brown after June 1st.

Pack, ‘Hawks projected to top 2027 comp pick list … Based on the current state of free agent signings, NFL.com is projecting that Green Bay and Super Bowl champion Seattle will each get the maximum 4 compensatory picks for the 2027 draft. At the same time, Baltimore, Jacksonville and Kansas City are expected to get 3 comp picks apiece, while each Atlanta, Denver, Detroit and Indianapolis will get a couple apiece. Interesting to note, though, that all of those picks will be third day selections. Three teams – Cincinnati, Philadelphia and the LA Chargers – though are projected to get a comp pick at the end of the third round, although that is likely to be their only extra pick. At the same time, Buffalo and the NY Giants are both projected to receive a 4th round comp pick, while Minnesota will get a 5th and Miami a 7th. Analysts are able to make a pretty accurate assessment of which teams will get which comp picks as only free agent signings before April 27th are included in the league’s formula; however, it is still possible for some variation as the formula also includes factors such as snap counts and postseason awards.

Chargers ace CFL draft … The Ottawa Redblacks selected OG Gio Vaccaro who played his senior year at Purdue with the first pick overall at the 2026 CFL draft of Canadian-born players last evening. In fact, due to some of the oddities of the CFL draft, Vaccaro, who was not a starter at Purdue, was only the 11th rated prospect prior to the draft. In fact, neither of this year’s top two CFL prospects – Miami DE Ahkeem Mesidor and Boston College C/G Logan Taylor – were selected at all last evening as both had been selected by the LA Chargers in last weekend’s NFL draft and as such likely won’t be available to Canadian teams for some time. Indeed, the Chargers may be the real ‘winners’ of the CFL draft as they have also signed Louisville DE Wes Bailey, the 4th ranked player on the CFL list who also wasn’t drafted, as an undrafted rookie free agent. Meanwhile, Toronto selected Queens’ OT Niklas Henning, the CFL’s top-rated from a Canadian uiversity, with the second pick overall; however, in the end 8 of the 9 first-round CFL picks played at American colleges.

Another senior NFL exec moving on … Tennessee president of football operations Chad Brinker is leaving the organization. Brinker, who came to the Titans in 2023 after a 13-year stint in the Green Bay personnel department, has served as the team’s head of football ops the past three years, was instrumental in the hiring of current GM Mike Borgonzi, but stated he was looking for a new role back in personnel somewhere.

The missing link in draft grades … One of our pet peeves when it comes to the draft, or at least the draft grades, is that for teams that have either acquired, are traded away, a veteran player for early picks, the player gained or lost is almost never accounted for in said analysis. In particular, we’ve had a hard time making sense of Kansas City’s trading star CB Trent McDuffie to the LA Rams for the 29th pick, as well as 3rd and 5th rounders this year and a third next. The consensus from analysts around the league seems to be generally positive; indeed one prominent analyst even had the Chiefs with the top-rated draft of any team. Said CBS Sports’ Pete Prisco of the Chiefs’ draft “they landed the best cover corner in the draft in Mansoor Delane, a power defensive tackle in Peter Woods” and an explosive edge rusher in underrated DE R Mason Thomas. Which is all true.

However, what the analysis does not mention is the fact the Chiefs already had one of the best corners in the league in Trent McDuffie, whom they had traded to the LA Rams for a very late opening round pick. It also doesn’t mention that they then had to include two of the three lower round picks they got in the McDuffie deal in order to move up from their own pick (#9) to get Delane at #6. Now, obviously, there are some salary cap implications to the whole deal and the Chiefs did flip some of those later round picks, but I am having a tough time figuring that what the Chiefs didn’t actually do here was swap one corner for another and then in effect trade the 9th pick overall for Woods, a player most analysts had listed as a 2nd round prospect, and a third round pick in 2027. And if that is a good deal I am not seeing it. Meanwhile, the Chiefs did absolutely nothing to help QB Patrick Mahomes – who’s coming off a torn ACL to boot – by addressing either a shaky offensive line or a subpar WR room that lacks a big-play threat that likely could have been accomplished is they had simply held onto McDuffie and used the 9th pick on one of those options.

Debate continues about Rams’ Simpson pick … One of the ongoing debates following last weekend’s draft centres around the LA Rams somewhat controversial selection of former Alabama QB Ty Simpson with the 13th pick overall. There are, for example, more than one analyst suggesting that no other team was planning on using a first round pick to tab Simpson. For the record, we don’t have a particular problem with the Rams’ move. Indeed, we are reminded of a somewhat similar situation back in 2020 when Green Bay chose Utah State QB Jordan Love with the 26th pick. At the time, we were doing a Packers’ podcast with our old buddy John Dodds and Kato Kaelin (yes that Kato Kaelin – long story). They, along with several callers that evening, were mystified why the Packers, who had Aaron Rodgers at the time, would opt for a developmental QB over a player at a position of need. We made the case that while Rodgers was firmly entrenched as the Packers’ starter, he was getting older and that it made some sense to grab a decent prospect at the position when one was available and give him some time to develop because he was very likely going to be the best QB prospect the Packers, who regularly picked in the 20s, were going to have a shot at any time in the near future. And I think one can make pretty well the same argument for the Rams, although of course there are no guarantees it will work out as well in LA cause its the draft where there are no guarantees.

Eagles lose two top personnel execs … With the draft in the books, now is the time that NFL front offices get something of a makeover as some personnel people get released, while others simply move on. Philadelphia, for one, lost two of their top senior executives this week as both Assistant GM Alec Halaby and Senior VP Bryce Johnston have left. Halaby, who had been one of the Eagles’ top analytics proponents, joined the team as an intern in 2007 eventually moving up the ladder to his current post in 2022. Halaby, in fact, interviewed for several GM openings in recent years, but gave no indication what he plans to do next when he resigned. Meanwhile, Johnston, the Eagles’ primary cap specialist, has joined Atlanta’s front office in a so far undisclosed position.

Better late than never: Thoughts on the Giants 2026 draft … We have had a number of queries from our Giants’ fans friends wondering what we thought about this year’s draft so here we go. We did comment at the end of the first round that our initial reaction to the selection of Arvell Reese and Sisi Mauigoa was kind ‘meh!’ No question the Giants got two really good players – they were always going to get two really good players – but was there enough sizzle adding a LB and a OG. But then we looked at each guy individually and it we really did begin to sense the sizzle! Read more

When 300,000 people likely ain’t quite that many … The NFL proudly announced that this weekend’s attendance at the draft in Pittsburgh set a new record of over 800,000 with 300,000 in attendance for Thursday’s opening round. No question there were a lot of people there each day, but we kept looking at the overheads and saying ‘really!’ Turns out it probably wasn’t as it has since been revealed that a person was counted as in attendance every time someone entered the grounds. However, if someone wandered off the premises and then wandered back in they were in fact counted twice or as many times as they did wander in and out. And there did seem to be a lot of wandering around out at the fringes of the crowd.

At the same time, it has been announced that the viewing audience for the first round was 13.2 million which was down slightly from 13.6 the previous year. And while no reason was given we bet the difference can probably be summed up in two words: Shedeur Sanders. In fact, last year’s draft had a ton of drama, most of it centered on Sanders, whereas this year’s event was largely drama free.

Tech QB Sorsby being investigated for gambling issues … The NCAA is reportedly investigating Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorsby, one of college football’s top returning players who has emerged as potentially one of the top 4-5 prospects at the position for the 2027 draft, for gambling on pro and college sports which is not allowed by college athletes. For his part, Sorsby has not denied the allegations, but rather has checked himself into a residential treatment program for a gambling addiction. Sorsby played last fall at Cincinnati but transferred this winter to Texas Tech.

Jets with big early edge in 2027 picks … The NY Jets were the only team that ended up with three picks in Thursday night’s opening round of this past weekend’s draft. And they could very well be at it again next April as the Jets are the only team currently with multiple first round picks for the 2017 draft. In fact, they currently have three more first rounders for next year as a result of trades last fall with Dallas (for DT Quinnen Williams) and one with Indianapolis (for CB Sauce Gardner). For the record, a half dozen or so 2027 picks were also traded during this weekend’s draft, although none was for higher than a 3rd rounder. Minnesota did acquire a 3rd round pick next year as compensation from Philadelphia in a trade for veteran DE Jonathan Greenard, while Cleveland got 2027 fourth rounders from both Seattle and the NY Giants as part of one of this weekend’s draft day trades. At the same time, San Francisco (from Baltimore) and New England (from Minnesota) got 2027 6th rounders this weekend, while Buffalo got a 7th from Las Vegas. Here is the updated list of trades as we have them for the 2027 and beyond drafts.