NFL Player News

The Chiefs listed numerous healthy, core players as doubtful to play this week with Kelce of course among them. His deactivation was fully expected. Backup tight end Noah Gray is an intriguing, if volatile, dart throw. The fourth-year veteran is having a career-best season and the Chiefs could use the opportunity to see what they have in Gray for the long-term. It is possible Andy Reid already views Gray as an important passing-game contributor though so he may have a limited role, with the playoffs in mind.

Entering its third week, the Eagles offensive coordinator search is taking on an eau de Browns and they are responding by adding even more candidates to the pool. Mannion, 33, a former NFL backup quarterback, has no play calling experience and has only coached for two seasons.

Ledford was let out of his contract by the Falcons after they brought on legendary offensive line coach Bill Callahan. The Ravens did well to poach him, and though they don’t have an offensive coordinator yet, this is a good start to Jesse Minter’s staff.

Leonhard has been on the Packers and Cowboys radars at various points this offseason, though neither could have him in for a full interview before they settled on Jonathan Gannon and Christian Parker, respectively. The former Bills safety and Wisconsin defensive coordinator drew a lot of acclaim in coaching circles and would be a nice rebound for the Bills after they moved on from Sean McDermott.

Not exactly earth-shattering news here, especially with no offensive coordinator tied to him yet. This should always have been the expectation for McCarthy. Steelers fans should get ready to get re-acquainted with slant/flat combination routes with Arthur Smith off to Ohio State.

Removing the part of our brain that understands what this really means is six more months of daily speculation about Aaron Rodgers coming back, it does make sense that win-now hire Mike McCarthy would want the best quarterback he could have. He has a pre-existing relationship with Rodgers, and Rodgers — clearly flawed at this point — is probably as good as the Steelers could hope to do at the position next year. Anyway, here’s to another offseason of this.

Well, it really made no sense to keep Engstrand and find a new playcaller, so we guess from that point of view it makes sense. Engstrand’s run game was versatile and varied and he probably deserves a role as someone’s run game coordinator at the very worst next year — perhaps he’ll head back to Detroit. The Jets will do whatever it is the Jets do from here, which from the looks of their defensive coordinator search probably means they’ll wind up paralyzed by overanalyzing 10 different candidates. Frank Reich has been the rumored playcaller replacement for the Jets in recent days.

Duker, whose biography at Dolphins.com brings up a “This page cannot be found” result after the takeover of new head coach Jeff Hafley, was part of the Lions staff in 2021-2023 as a defensive backs coach and also worked with the Ravens, 49ers, and Browns in his early days. He’s been Dolphins pass game coordinator and secondary coach for the past two years and, considering the talent he worked with, we’d say he did a pretty great job. He’s the latest entry into a Jets DC search that has seemed to take an abnormally long time.

In other words, this is exactly like the Mike McDaniel scenario that played out over the last week. Daboll had enough pull to organize a ready-made Plan B in case he did not win a head-coaching job this cycle, just as McDaniel picked the Chargers offensive coordinator position while completing interviews for head-coaching gigs. It’s very unlikely any of this would have leaked to reporters if Daboll actually had a real chance at winning the Raiders job, but sometimes NFL teams do very strange things at the last minute.

Stefanski added that he thinks “you see a player on tape that can get through progressions, can layer the ball, can push the ball down the field” and said Penix is attacking his rehab from a late-season torn ACL. Stefanski was notably reluctant to dive into the future on Kirk Cousins, which could be read as a non-endorsement for his return. If Cousins doesn’t return, the Falcons may need a new bridge quarterback for the early season while Penix returns to the field. But with no first-round pick, it always made sense for the Falcons to give Penix the balance of the season to see what he could do. Alternatives with notably higher upside would appear hard to find in free agency or in the later rounds of the draft.

Stefanski ceded play-calling power to Rees down the stretch in Cleveland last year and they turned into a heavily screen-focused team with (holding back laugh) Pro Bowler Shedeur Sanders under center. We wouldn’t necessarily expect the same things next year in Atlanta since we don’t know who the quarterback will be just yet, but Rees did get a decent amount of offense out of what was a fairly weak core on paper last year.