Broncos wide receiver Courtland Sutton has been in the market for a new contract, but he’s settling for a revised one for the time being.
Tom Pelissero of NFL Media reports that Sutton, who reported to training camp this week, has agreed to a reworked deal for the 2024 season. Sutton was set to make a base salary of $13 million, but can now make up to $15.2 million after the Broncos added incentives to his pact.
Sutton is under contract for 2025 with a base salary of $13.5 million, but none of that money is guaranteed so he’ll remain in the market for a longer commitment from the team in the future.
Sutton led the team with 59 catches, 772 yards and 10 touchdowns last season and may need to upgrade those numbers to secure the deal he’s looking for in Denver.
Shane Ray, an outside linebacker who was selected by the Broncos in the first round of the 2015 NFL draft but hasn’t played in an NFL game since 2018, is getting another chance with the Titans.
The Titans signed Ray and he is on the practice field in training camp today.
Ray’s career has been a long, strange trip: As a first-round rookie, he was a solid if unspectacular contributor who helped the Broncos win Super Bowl 50. In his second season he had eight sacks and looked like he was emerging as the kind of player the Broncos thought he would be when they traded up to draft him.
But after that Ray’s career collapsed, he managed just two more sacks in his final two seasons with the Broncos, and his last NFL game was almost six years ago.
Ray also spent some time in the training camps in Baltimore and Buffalo but didn’t make it on either team’s regular-season roster. He played two years with the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League.
Ray faces an uphill battle to make the Titans’ roster, but at the age of 31 he’s not giving up on his NFL career yet.
There’s less of running back Javonte Williams in Broncos training camp this summer.
Williams suffered a major knee injury in 2022 and was able to return to action in 2023, but he dropped to 3.6 yards per carry as he seemed to be without the same ability to break tackles that he flashed as a rookie during the 2021 season. Williams played at a heigher weight last year because he bulked up during the recovery process and head coach Sean Payton suggested he cut weight this spring after watching tape of Williams during his college days.
On Wednesday, Payton said Williams took his advice and the early returns are good.
“He’s lost weight. He looks trim. I thought he looked sharp today,” Payton said, via Arnie Melendrez Stapleton of the Associated Press. “He looked much different. His weight’s down and I’m proud of him.”
A return to rookie form would be a plus for the Broncos and it would be a plus for Williams as he tries to show he’s a true No. 1 back while moving toward his second NFL contract.
The Brian Flores lawsuit continues to be caught at square one of the litigation process, with the question of whether he’ll be required to submit all of his claims to arbitration still not resolved.
Currently, a federal appeals court is taking up an NFL challenge to a lower-court decision that allowed Flores to keep multiple aspects of his case in court, specifically as to claims against the Giants, Broncos, Texans, and the NFL. (Flores’s claims against the Dolphins have been sent to arbitration; he is not yet able to appeal that ruling.) The paperwork submitted by the NFL flagged a new issue that was, to say the least, surprising.
After the Dolphins fired Flores in early 2022, he landed as an assistant coach with the Steelers. The move raised eyebrows; with Flores suing the NFL and, ultimately, four different franchises for racial discrimination and (as to the Texans) retaliation, many expected Flores to be shunned from ah industry where a lawsuit against the league and/or specific teams is perceived as an attack on all 32 organizations.
The bad news for Flores came after the fact. The NFL and multiple teams have argued that his contract with the Steelers forces his pre-existing legal claims into arbitration.
That wasn’t supposed to happen, based on the understanding between Flores and the Steelers. As part of the litigation, Flores’s lawyers have submitted a February 19, 2022 email from Steelers G.M. Omar Khan (at the time, he was the V.P. of football and business administration). The Khan email attached a copy of Flores’s contract and included this important message: “This employment agreement is not intended to infringe in any way on the lawsuit filed by Coach Flores in February 2022, which is currently pending. The Club and Coach Flores do not intend for anything in this employment agreement to infringe upon Coach Flores’ right to prosecute the pending lawsuit, and neither does this agreement infringe upon the rights of the NFL or any party to the lawsuit in asserting any defenses in the lawsuit.”
In other words, the Steelers contract was supposed to have no impact, one way or the other, on the “pending lawsuit.” And then the NFL seized on that contract as a potential silver bullet to kill the pending lawsuit, by forcing the remaining claims made in the lawsuit into the secret, rigged kangaroo court.
The Steelers declined comment to PFT on the matter. That said, it’s hard to imagine Khan or head coach Mike Tomlin being anything other than pissed off about the league trying to use a contract that was specifically intended not to become an issue in the lawsuit as a “gotcha” tool.
There’s another strange wrinkle to all of this. The league submitted to the district court a copy of the Steelers-Flores contract that had not been officially approved (as all coaching contracts are) with a signature from Commissioner Roger Goodell. The district court rejected the argument on the basis of the contract not being signed by Goodell. Then, after the NFL suddenly found a copy of the contract with Goodell’s signature on it, the NFL raised the issue again through a motion for reconsideration. The court rejected the request.
As a practical matter, then, the appeals court would first have to conclude that the district court should consider the Steelers-Flores contract argument on the merits. The case would go back to the lower court, which would fully explore whether the Khan email prevents the NFL from using the Steelers-Flores contract as a way to force the rest of the case into arbitration.
Regardless of how it plays out — and it’s possible that the courts will conclude that the Khan email does indeed force the pending claims to arbitration — there’s a basic question of right and wrong at the heart of this. Of trustworthiness versus gamesmanship.
The Steelers hired Flores with a clear statement of no intention to undermine his existing lawsuit. The NFL is now trying to use his contract with the Steelers to undermine his existing lawsuit. While it might be technically legal, it just feels wrong.
When you have two quarterbacks, you have none. When you have three quarterbacks, you have the 2024 Broncos.
Veteran Jarrett Stidham. 2021 top-two pick Zach Wilson. Rookie first-rounder Bo Nix. Who will the starter be?
That’s to be determined. Coach Sean Payton was asked about the quarterback rotation during his first training camp press conference.
“We’ll mix it up again,” Payton said. “Obviously, it won’t stay that way for the long term. As we get started, we will keep you posted. Eventually, we will settle into the routine we want.”
So how will it go? Payton kept his cards close to the vest.
“We will keep you posted,” Payton said. “I’m not going to sit here and lay out, ‘Here’s how it goes.’ . . . Organically in my experience, we will see a rotation initially and then we will move on from there.”
Many are watching Nix, the twelfth pick in the draft.
“He is a quick study, so the progress in the playbook will be just like it will be for Zach [Wilson],” Payton said. “They both have been here for the same amount of time. All of these young players are studying pretty hard.”
Stidham has the advantage of being in the system last year, and of playing after Russell Wilson was benched. But the Broncos took Nix for a reason.
Time will tell. Whoever the quarterback is, the Broncos need to start winning some games. They haven’t been to the playoffs since winning Super Bowl 50.