The Giants will not be looking for a new long snapper this offseason.
The team announced that they have re-signed Casey Kreiter on Wednesday. It’s a one-year deal for Kreiter, who has twice been named a captain by the team.
Kreiter will head into his sixth season with the Giants. He appeared in every game over the last five seasons and also played in every games during his final three seasons with the Broncos. He was selected for one Pro Bowl while in Denver and has been credited with 16 career tackles.
The Giants now have 20 players set to become unrestricted free agents next week.
Will the Giants make a play for a top rookie quarterback? Will they sign Aaron Rodgers?
According to the betting markets, why not both?
DraftKings has the Giants as both the co-favorite to make the first overall pick and the favorite to sign Rodgers.
The Titans and Giants have odds of -105 to make the first pick. For the Giants to do it, they’d have to trade up by two spots. And they’d presumably pick quarterback Cam Ward, given their needs at the position.
The Giants are also -150 favorites to sign Rodgers. The Steelers — who have shown no interest in Rodgers — are next at +275, followed by the Raiders and Titans at +450 each.
The idea of pairing Ward and Rodgers doesn’t make much sense. Rodgers starts in 2025. What if the Giants struggle? At what point do they switch to Ward? And how awkward will that be?
Regardless, the Giants seem likely to do one or the other. The short-term interests of coach Brian Daboll and G.M. Joe Schoen point to Rodgers. If they’re making a longer-term decision, Ward makes much more sense.
Next year, the FIFA World Cup is coming back to America. And the final match will be embracing an American tradition.
For the first time ever, the game will include a Super Bowl-style halftime show.
The list of artists for the halftime show for the match to be played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey will be curated by Coldplay.
Coldplay headlined the Super Bowl 50 halftime show in Santa Clara, with Beyoncé and Bruno Mars.
“I can confirm the first ever half-time show at a FIFA World Cup final in New York New Jersey,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said. “This will be a historic moment for the FIFA World Cup and a show befitting the biggest sporting event in the world.”
The standard halftime is 15 minutes. Whether the break will be extended has not been announced.
All due respect to the Super Bowl, the FIFA World Cup final is indeed the biggest sporting event in the world. The 2022 World Cup final had 1.2 BILLION worldwide viewers, roughly 10 times the amount of this year’s Super Bowl audience.
Since the Jets were going to cut receiver Davante Adams before next Wednesday, they gave him a head start on the open market.
So he’s now a free agent for the first time in his career.
And the betting favorite to sign him is the team that drafted him in 2014. Via DraftKings, the Packers have +190 odds to be Adams’s next team.
The Chargers are next at +500, followed by the 49ers at +650, the Rams at +750, the Steelers at +950, and the Broncos and Patriots at 1000.
Another reunion, with the Raiders, is a 12-1 proposition.
Some think he’ll land wherever quarterback Aaron Rodgers goes. With the Giants at -150 to sign Rodgers, maybe Adams (like Rodgers) will be changing teams without changing addresses.
Usually, NFL players sign two or three career contracts, at most. Some, like Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, do a few more than that.
NFL teams do hundreds. They have the expertise. They know the markets, the precedents. More accurately, they know their players.
It now appears that Stafford was never going to leave the Rams, and that he flirted with the Raiders and Giants in order to get the Rams to kick in a little more cash for 2025. There’s a good chance the Rams knew it.
It would explain their willingness to let him talk to other teams. If it was their assessment that Stafford wasn’t going to uproot his family for a team with a lesser collection of talent, why not let him talk to other teams? The Rams come off as magnanimous and selfless. If you love something, set it free.
It’s easier to set it free when you know it’ll never fly away.
While we don’t know the specific numbers that the Raiders and Giants offered, indications persist that both teams were in the range of two years, $100 million. Rams coach Sean McVay’s comments from Monday make it clear that it’s a one-year deal, with Stafford’s status beyond that to be figured out next year.
“Last year, it took about seven months,” McVay told reporters. “This year, about three weeks. Maybe it’ll be about two or three days next year if we have to do this.”
Last year, Stafford didn’t get much of an adjustment to his contract. This year, our semi-educated prediction is that the Rams originally were willing to bump his compensation package from $27 million to roughly $36 million — and that the Rams moved to $40 million after Stafford found interest elsewhere.
The Rams held firm with a far lower number than the could have gotten from a new team. There’s a good chance they knew he’d take it.
We’ll post the final numbers once they’re available. Even though Stafford has played well enough to get an annual average starting with a 5, it will likely be a 4.
And it might be right at $40 million for one year. With the next year TBD.
