Former NFL linebacker Darron Lee, a first-round pick in the 2016 draft, has hired a lawyer to represent Lee on first-degree murder charges in Hamilton County, Tennessee.
Via WDEF, former Hamilton County District Attorney Neil Pinkston will be handling the case. He has entered no plea on Lee’s behalf, which is the same as entering a plea of not guilty.
Lee is accused of killing his girlfriend, Gabriella Perpetuo, in February 2026. The details of Perpetuo’s injuries are extensive and graphic.
The case against Lee includes evidence that he used ChatGPT for advice on how to deal with an unresponsive person.
Lee could face the death penalty. The prosecution has not yet announced whether it will be seeking it.
Lee was drafted by the Jets ten years ago. He also played for the Chiefs and Bills.
Who would say no to an invitation to the Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift wedding?
Charles Barkley would. And did.
Via Brandon Contes of Awful Announcing, Barkley said on 97.5 The Fanatic that he was invited to the event, but he chose not to go.
“I don’t go to weddings or funerals,” Barkley said. “But I did get an invite, and I politely declined because I thought it was going to be a crap show. I love Travis and Jason, and I’ve only met Taylor one time, but yeah, I did get an invite. But I said, that’s just too much. I just want to hang out and play golf, and I don’t want to dress up and all that other stuff. But I appreciate the invitation. It was pretty special.”
The invitation reportedly came with an NDA. And, frankly, it’s easy to envision Barkley saying he’s not signing any damn NDA.
Generally, I agree with his approach. I rarely go to weddings. And funerals are sad and awkward and stressful but, sometimes, you just have to go. (Especially to your own.)
For Barkley, who is hilarious and blunt and gives no effs and who I could listen to all day long (especially if Shaq is around), there’s one way they could have enticed him to show up — they could have added a note in the invitation that the menu will include churros.
The NFL is making a significant change to the offseason calendar for the 2027 season.
Tom Pelissero of NFL Media reports that the free agent negotiating window will open on March 9 next year. That is the same date that the two-day window opened this year, but the change comes in how close it will be to the end of the Scouting Combine.
NFL teams will wrap up their examinations and interrogations of incoming prospects on March 8 in 2027, which moves the league away from having a week or so between the two events as they have in past years.
Under that setup, the Combine has always been rife with table-setting for free agency as agents and team executives are all in the same place with their minds on the same things. With that gap eliminated, there will likely be even more of that work being done in Indianapolis so that teams are ready to make moves right from the starting gun.
I wasn’t going to say anything more about the Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift wedding, but an item from Drew Lerner of Awful Announcing got the addled gears of my brain turning.
Lerner notes that both FOX and Amazon had a very strong presence at the ceremony, with even rules analyst Dean Blandino on the guest list. And while there also was a solid presence from ESPN (Jason Kelce’s current employer), no one seemed to be present from CBS or NBC.
The inclusions and omissions invite speculation that Travis may be thinking about future media employment with Fox or Amazon. Or possibly both.
There were rumors in media circles last year that Travis was interested in Kirk Herbstreit’s seat in the Thursday Night Football booth. (Neither Herbstreit nor his dog were among the Amazon personnel spotted at the event.) With Herbstreit’s deal running through 2026, Travis (who already has a relationship with Amazon through the New Heights podcast) could be in line to take the spot.
And he could then, if he wanted, join the desk at Fox NFL Sunday when the next spot opens.
Doing both would be easier, if Travis wanted to do it. It would be much easier than Herbstreit’s current triple duty of ESPN College GameDay, the top ESPN/ABC college football game, and Thursday Night Football.
Frankly, Travis would get whichever gig he wants, at any network with an available spot. The only question is the price. And the over-under for the combined gigs would be, in our view, $40 million per year, easily.
UPDATE 8:00 p.m. ET: A source with knowledge of the situation tells PFT that Jim Nantz and Tony Romo, the members of the top CBS broadcast team, were present for the wedding.
Adam Sandler was back in Madison Square Garden for reasons other than watching a Knicks game.
Here’s the only thing we’ll say about the wedding of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce to global superstar Taylor Swift at MSG: Adam Sandler officiated, and sang an original song for the couple.
It’s the one perfectly random nugget that moved the PFT needle.
The other stuff didn’t. So it won’t be mentioned.
No, we won’t mention that Mike Vrabel and his wife were there. Or that Tom Brady left early. Or that the invitations came with NDAs.
Or that one guest, who had to overpay to reserve time for hair and makeup given the avalanche of glitterati into New York City, said of the ordeal, “It’s a really fun shit show.”
Or that another guest griped about the location of the event: “Who on earth is in Manhattan for the Fourth of July? This couldn’t have been a destination wedding?”
Nope. None of that mattered. The only thing that caught our eye was Sandler — who has an impressive catalog of original songs (I didn’t know the one about the zit on his back) — wrote another one for the event.
In Zittly Van Zittles, Sandler bemoans the fact that, by cheating on his girlfriend, he lost the woman who would pop it for him. That’s an important lesson for any newly-married couple.
