Former Jets defensive end Mark Gastineau’s lawsuit has been, yes, sacked.
Last year, Gastineau sued ESPN, the NFL, NFL Films, and co-directors James Weiner and Ken Rodgers for The New York Sack Exchange, which included a clip of Gastineau verbally accosting Brett Favre for his gift to Michael Strahan that allowed Strahan to break Gastineau’s single-season sack record in 2001.
Via Zach Powell of The Athletic, a federal judge dismissed Gastineau’s lawsuit on Monday.
The defendants had argued that the complaint failed to state a claim on which relief could be granted. Which is a fancy way of saying that, even if every fact alleged is true, there’s no recognized legal theory that would make the conduct a violation of Gastineau’s legal rights.
Gastineau had argued that the inclusion of his words with Favre were used without Gastineau’s consent or permission, and that the clip portrayed him “in a manner which was maliciously false.” Gastineau argued that the producers “intentionally and maliciously” omitted footage of Gastineau and Favre shaking hands.
Regardless, the court decided it wasn’t enough to create a valid claim for relief.
Gastineau will have the right to appeal the decision. Sometimes, a plaintiff whose first crack at fashioning an actionable legal claim gets a chance to try again.
Rashan Gary’s contract with the Packers this season called for him to make $19.5 million, none of it guaranteed. Before the Cowboys would agree to trade for Gary, he had to agree to take less.
Gary agreed to a pay cut that will see him make $16 million this year, according to Tom Pelissero of NFL Network. He’ll also get $16 million in 2027, whereas his old contract had his 2027 pay at $22.5 million.
The Cowboys structured the new contract with an option and void years, so Gary’s salary cap hit is only $5.44 million this year and $8.24 million in 2027. Then his cap hit will grow in 2028, even if he’s no longer on the team at that point.
The good news for Gary is that he got a $13.2 million signing bonus in the deal, which is guaranteed money he didn’t have on his old contract.
The Cowboys sent a 2027 fourth-round pick to the Packers to acquire Gary, a deal Dallas surely would not have been willing to make without the revised contract.
Spurred by the ability to sell pieces of teams to private-equity funds, plenty of NFL owners have been converting slivers of equity into stacks of cash. Most recently, Dolphins owner Stephen Ross sold one percent of his team at a $12.5 billion valuation.
The lone publicly-owned franchise could be at risk of being left behind.
In a recent interview with Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal, Packers president and CEO Ed Policy expressed concern that the Packers are at a disadvantage when it comes to the increasing flow of money that the 31 other franchises are in position to capture.
“If you think about, any other team, they’ve got deep-pocketed owners, most of them are worth significantly more than that, and they could sell less than 10% of their team, give up no controlling interest, and raise a heck of a lot more than that,” Policy told Fischer.
That forces Policy to find ways to generate more revenue for the Packers — with a stadium naming-rights deal possibly inching toward being on the table.
“We’re soon to be the only stadium without naming rights,” Policy said. “That’s not a threshold we’re looking to cross any time soon, but we might be a little more aggressive with some of the other entitlement inventory we just hadn’t taken advantage of in the past, including things like training facility entitlements and the Titletown campus.”
Still, it sounds as if Lambeau Field presented by Google, or something truly jaunty like Fontainebleu Lambeau Field, could be coming, sooner or later.
One way to raise money is to raise ticket prices. This year, face values for Packers home games are rising by three to 11 percent. And there’s more meat on the bone, given the basic realities of supply and demand.
“Despite the fact that we are probably a top-three team in terms of demand, we are middle of the pack in terms of price,” Policy said.
That’s the team’s biggest selling point. No effort is needed to sell tickets to games. The massive, six-figure waiting list shows that the price point is too low.
Ultimately, the Packers may have no choice but to make the game-day experience more expensive. As franchise values go up and up and as the people who buy teams become richer and richer, the Packers could be running out of options to compete with the oligarchs who collect sports franchises as part of the broader competition to get more.
For now, it’s not a crisis. Policy wants to be sure that doesn’t happen.
“Finance and economics really don’t play into our football decision-making right now, and it’s my job to ensure that it never does,” Policy told Fischer. “Given the pace that the expenses have accelerated over the past few years, if we find ourselves falling behind, it’s going to be really hard to catch up. So, we have to keep ourselves in a position where we’re not falling behind.”
A cynic would see this as a part of the potential plan by owners to overhaul the cap system in the next round of labor negotiations. Especially since the Packers still emerged from their most recent fiscal year with a profit of $83.7 million.
If that number starts to drop, it could be a problem. Then again, the Packers can always sell more stock to folks who’d like to put an ownership certificate in a frame, right next to the spot where they hang their cheeseheads.
The Panthers have added an offensive tackle.
Carolina has agreed to terms with Rasheed Walker on a one-year deal, per a report from NFL Media.
Walker, 26, was a seventh-round pick in the 2022 draft and just completed his rookie contract with the Packers.
He was No. 14 on PFT’s list of the top 100 free agents of 2026.
The Panthers had a need at left tackle after Ikem Ekwonu suffered a torn patellar tendon during the club’s postseason loss to the Rams in January. Walker can now slot in at that spot as Ekwonu heals.
Walker has started at least 15 games in each of the last three seasons. In 2025, he was on the field for 94 percent of Green Bay’s offensive snaps and 18 percent of special teams snaps.
Cornerback Nate Hobbs has found a new team.
Hobbs has agreed to sign with the 49ers. Tom Pelissero of NFL Media reports that he has agreed to a one-year deal worth up to $4.5 million.
Hobbs was released by the Packers this week, so he moved quickly to find another place to play.
The 2025 season was Hobbs’s first in Green Bay and he had 27 tackles in 11 games for the Packers before landing on injured reserve with a knee injury. He had 281 tackles, three interceptions, three sacks, three forced fumbles and a fumble recovery over four seasons with the Raiders.
Hobbs will join a cornerback group that also includes Deommodore Lenoir, Renardo Green and Upton Stout.
