Offseason programs will start getting underway around the NFL next week.
The ten teams that hired new coaches this offseason will be eligible to start working with their players on Monday, April 6. The Ravens are the only team that has set that as their first day of work while the Cardinals, Falcons, Bills, Browns, Raiders, Dolphins, Giants, Steelers and Titans have set Tuesday as their opening day.
All of those teams will also be able to hold a voluntary minicamp later in the spring. Every team is also scheduled to hold a rookie minicamp and a mandatory minicamp over the course of the next few months.
The first two weeks of work for all teams is limited to meetings, strength and conditioning, and physical rehabilitation only. The three-week second phase allows for on-field work, but no full-speed team drills while the third OTA phase allows for team drills, but there is no live contact allowed at any point in the offseason.
Most of the 22 teams with returning coaches will be opening their offseason programs on April 20 or 21. The Broncos have set May 4 as their first day.
Jadeveon Clowney tied his single-season high with 9.5 sacks while playing for the Ravens in 2023 and he left a good impression on quarterback Lamar Jackson during his time with the team.
Clowney is a free agent after playing for the Cowboys in 2025 and said this week that he feels he has a lot left in the tank. He also said, via Aaron Wilson of KPRC, that his year in Baltimore was “a great time” and that he’d be open to an encore.
Those comments made their way to Jackson on social media and he was asked if he’d like to be teammates with Clowney again in 2026.
“Definitely,” Jackson wrote on X.com.
The Ravens signed Trey Hendrickson as a free agent last month, but backed out of a trade for Maxx Crosby so they may still have their eye on adding depth to their group of edge rushers.
Every NFL team wants to create an edge for itself, in every way possible. It requires an understanding of the rules, the limits of the rules, and the manner in which any loopholes can be exploited.
The Raiders have taken advantage of a fairly glaring loophole in an effort to give quarterback Kirk Cousins $20 million for 2026 while only paying him $11.3 million.
It happened like this. The Falcons owed quarterback Kirk Cousins $10 million for 2026, subject to offset. Other quarterbacks in recent years who have been cut with remaining guarantees (Russell Wilson, Kyler Murray, Tua Tagovailoa) signed one-year deals for the minimum salary, sticking their former teams for the balance.
As to Cousins, his market value exceeded $10 million. When the Falcons didn’t cut Cousins after the 2024 season (despite a Sunday Splash! report from December 2024 that they were expected to do so), some concluded that the Falcons were content to guarantee $10 million for 2026 since he likely would get more than $10 million on the open market, allowing the Falcons to escape the final installment.
Enter the loophole. If the Raiders had signed Cousins to a one-year, $20 million deal, Las Vegas would have owed Cousins all of it — and the Falcons would have owed nothing. Instead, the Raiders paid Cousins $1.3 million this year, with a $10 million full guarantee in 2027.
As mentioned on Thursday, it seems too easy. Too convenient. Too obvious that the Raiders came up with a way to get Cousins to $20 million while paying only $11.3 million of it.
Albert Breer of SI has wondered aloud whether the league will attempt to close that loophole. Frankly, it’s amazing the loophole even exists.
It’s something other teams could have been doing, whenever a player has guaranteed money from another team. Pay him the minimum now, and promise more later.
Legitimate or not under current rules, it seems as if the Raiders have pulled a fast one. Which should — as Michael Holley said on Friday’s PFT Live — dry any lingering crocodile tears regarding the Ravens’ decision not to proceed with the Maxx Crosby trade.
The rules are the rules. The rules allowed the Ravens to back out of the Crosby deal, at any time and for any reason before the trade became official. The rules apparently allowed the Raiders to find a way to pay Cousins more than the $10 million he was guaranteed to receive from the Falcons this year by putting the Falcons on the hook for $8.7 million.
All’s fair in love, war, and football. And every NFL team needs to know the rules. To understand how to use them to their advantage. And, more importantly, to have a plan for keeping those rules from being used against them.
New Giants head coach John Harbaugh was eager to sign tight end Isaiah Likely after coaching him the last four years on the Ravens. Not so much because of what Likely has done, but because of what Harbaugh believes Likely will do.
Harbaugh acknowledged that Likely’s stats in Baltimore — he never had 500 receiving yards in a season — weren’t overwhelming. But he said on the Giants, Likely will have a bigger role and better production.
“I’m certain he’s going to be able to put up the numbers, the stats,” Harbaugh said. “That wasn’t the thing in Baltimore because of the supporting cast.”
Harbaugh said he’s very aware of everything Likely is capable of.
“I’ve seen him every day in practice,” Harbaugh said. “I’ve seen him make plays. I know how he plays the game. So, you try to kind of create a vision for a player. What do you think they’re capable of doing? And one thing that we always have tried to do is see what players can do. Not so much concerned about what they don’t do, what they haven’t done, what they can’t do. What can they do? And when you see a player do it every day, you got a pretty good idea what he’s capable of.”
Harbaugh said Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart will benefit from Likely making plays in the offense.
“He’s a playmaking football player,” Harbaugh said of Likely. “He’s going to make plays for us. I think Jaxson’s going to really like him running the routes and being in his line of vision. He’s got a big catch radius. He can he can make plays, after he makes the catch he can get up field. He can make people miss. He can run people over. He’s a very good perimeter blocker. You’ll see that. That’ll be good for our run game. So, all those things he brings to the table.”
Harbaugh thinks Likely will bring even more to the table in New York than he did in Baltimore.
The NFL announced earlier this year that the Cowboys would host a game in Brazil. The details were to be released at a later date.
Giana Han of The Baltimore Banner reports that the Ravens will be the Cowboys’ opponent in Week 3 in Rio de Janeiro.
It will be the first NFL game played in Rio and the first of at least three games to be held at Maracaña Stadium over the next five seasons.
The NFL played games in São Paulo the past two seasons, with the Packers and Eagles meeting in 2024 and the Chiefs and Chargers matching up in 2025.
The NFL will have a record nine international games across seven countries in 2026.
