Wednesday brought another twist in the saga of Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase.
Reporters at Bengals practice sent word that Chase was not present for the start of Wednesday’s workout and then shared that Chase arrived late to the session. The wideout was in street clothes rather than a uniform.
Chase returned to practice this week after sitting out of training camp and the preseason in a contract impasse with the team. Bengals head coach Zac Taylor said on Tuesday that he’s confident Chase will play in Week One and that the plan was for him to continue working all this week.
It’s not clear why that plan changed, but there will likely be an update from Cincinnati in the near future.
The Patriots have decided on a starting quarterback for the first week of the 2024 season, but their choice doesn’t know he’s won the competition yet.
Head coach Jerod Mayo told reporters at a Wednesday press conference that he’s made a choice between veteran Jacoby Brissett and first-round pick Drake Maye, but that he has not shared the news with either player or with the team at large at this point. Mayo said he wants “both sides to hear it from me” and that hasn’t been possible on Wednesday because of ongoing roster machinations.
“I’m gonna talk to the individual players tomorrow. I’m gonna have a team meeting tomorrow and then I’m gonna get it to you guys,” Mayo said.
Brissett seemed to be the likely choice for most of the offseason and summer and Mayo said Maye is the team’s second-best quarterback the other day, but he also said Maye outplayed the veteran in preseason action to cloud the picture a bit. Those clouds will be gone soon and the Patriots will be on to Cincinnati for the opener.
Defensive end K.J. Henry’s time with the Commanders ended after one season, but he found a landing spot with the Bengals.
The NFL’s transaction report shows that the Bengals claimed Henry and added him to their roster on Wednesday. Henry was let go as the Commanders slashed their roster to 53 players on Tuesday.
Henry was a third-round pick in 2023, but the Commanders cut him and four others from that draft class as the new regime in Washington made it clear they didn’t think much of what their predecessors did last year. Henry had 19 tackles and 1.5 sacks as a rookie.
The Bengals lost Cam Sample for the season to an Achilles tear and Myles Murphy is out for several weeks with a knee injury, so Henry provides some needed depth behind Sam Hubbard and Trey Hendrickson in Cincinnati.
When it comes to high-stakes contract negotiations, the first decision becomes one of the most important.
When is the deadline for getting a deal done?
For the Cowboys and receiver CeeDee Lamb, the deadline they set was a mistake.
Look at the Vikings and Justin Jefferson. They decided to make the clock strike 12 before the mandatory minicamp in June. And so, when a deal was finalized, he was available for a couple of offseason practices and all of training camp.
Lamb missed all of camp and all of the preseason. He’ll be playing catchup until he literally catches up. And there will be more pressure on him to play like he did last year.
It’s unclear whether the player or the team set the deadline. Given that Lamb, based on his comments from Tuesday, wanted to be at camp, chances are the Cowboys decided to make this week the week to move to their bottom line. Especially since owner Jerry Jones seemed to relish the extra attention that came from Lamb’s holdout.
Jones knew what to say and when to say it, in order to get the most bang for his unwillingness to commit to spending his bucks. Was it a coincidence that Jones said he had “no urgency” to sign Lamb, just as the Giants and Patriots were preparing to launch the preseason slate with a pair of Thursday night games? By saying what he said when he said it, Jones stole the spotlight from his chief rival in the division and his top rival in Club Oligarch.
It won’t help the Cowboys or Lamb get the most out of the 2024 season. It did help Jerry and his team get maximum press from the Lamb holdout — which would have been avoided if the Cowboys had handled Lamb’s situation the same way the Vikings handled Jefferson’s.
And, yes, this also applies to the 49ers and Brandon Aiyuk/Trent Williams and the Bengals and Ja’Marr Chase. The deadline should always come before training camp opens, in order to let the player to get properly prepared — and to reduce the pressure that player and team eventually will feel to get up to speed.
On Tuesday — the same day all rosters reduced to 53 players for 2024 — the NFL adopted a rule allowing limited private equity investment in teams.
And hardly anyone cares.
Hell, I barely care. It’s a sport-business story, dealing with a pretty boring and mundane aspect of sports business. Most teams have a group of minority owners who hold a slice of equity less than what it takes to control the franchise. Now, private equity funds can buy non-voting shares of NFL franchises. Big deal.
The deeper question is whether this new door will lead to others. The maximum percentage of a team that can be owned by a private-equity fund is 10 percent. Earlier this summer, Commissioner Roger Goodell didn’t rule out the possibility of increasing that, in time.
The biggest potential long-term implication becomes whether the NFL would ever allow institutional or corporate majority ownership of teams other than the Packers, which has been publicly owned for decades. Would a pivot to something other than the current really-rich-person-buys-a-team-and-then-a-family-member-eventually-runs-it model be good or bad for the league? That depends on the quality of management of the mom-and-pop shop that would be sold, and it depends on the quality of the institution or corporation that would replace it.
The move comes in large part from the fact that the dearth of really rich people who are content to own a sliver of a team with no ability to run it makes it hard to maximize the value of the overall asset. Private equity funds exist for the purpose of dumping a bunch of money into a business that will likely generate a proper return. This new rule will make it easier both to sell minority stakes — and to maximize the price tags placed on them.
The desire to position franchises for the greatest possible valuation growth could tempt the league to expand institutional or corporate ownership. If allowing non-individuals to buy part of a team is good, allowing them to buy most of a team is, in theory, better.
Where it goes from here remains to be seen. For now, the league has overwhelmingly entered this new age of institutional money. Per multiple reports, the Bengals cast the lone dissenting vote. Although Katie Blackburn technically pulled the “no” lever, it continues a trend started by her father, Mike Brown.
As one source with knowledge of the dynamics remarked, the Bengals consistently oppose anything that contributes to modernizing the league’s financial infrastructure.
For now, the league has modernized the league’s financial infrastructure by approving several funds to buy pieces of up to six different teams, via Sports Business Daily: Arctos Partners, Ares Management Corp., Sixth Street, and a combined group consisting of Blackstone, Carlyle, CVC, Dynasty Equity, and Ludis, which was founded by Hall of Fame running back Curtis Martin.
Given that each fund can own up to 10 percent of one team and that each fund can own pieces of up to six teams, there could be one fund (in theory) with the equivalent of 60 percent of one team. Which could make it easier for the league to justify an eventual push to allow institutional or corporate money to buy franchises that currently operate like family-owned food trucks.
