As the 16th overall pick in the 2022 NFL draft, wide receiver Jahan Dotson has been a disappointment. In two years with the Commanders and two with the Eagles, he has a total of just 1,519 career receiving yards.
Now Dotson is on his third team after signing with the Falcons in March, and he thinks he’s in the right place — for the first time.
“I want to be one of the greatest,” Dotson told Josh Kendall of TheAthletic.com. “I’m not afraid [of saying that]. I was talking to Jessie Bates, and he was talking about wanting to be the best who ever played, and I’m comfortable with those sort of things. I want to be one of the best in the league. I want to show my talent. I haven’t really gotten to do that.”
Dotson signed a two-year, $15 million contract, but he says more important than the money was believing the Falcons had a plan to use him to the best of his ability.
“The big thing for me was going to a team where I felt like my talent could be showcased,” Dotson said. “I learned a lot in my first four years in the NFL from some great receivers and great coaches, but I feel like now is really my time to put my talents on display.”
Dotson didn’t get many balls thrown his way with the Eagles last year, but that hasn’t affected his confidence.
“I 100 percent believe in my talent and ability to make plays in this league,” Dotson said. “It’s just about getting the opportunity to do so. I didn’t really have that opportunity the past couple years. Now I’m looking to really do that, and I can’t wait to make plays for this football team.”
Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter became eligible for a contract extension this offseason and the lack of one may have contributed to his limited participation in the team’s practices this spring.
If no deal is in place by the start of training camp, Carter’s participation will be a storyline again. The Eagles’ hesitation about extending Carter will be another one and defensive line coach Clint Hurtt’s comments about Carter from May could provide a view into the team’s thinking.
Carter has been named to two Pro Bowls and has had stretches of dominant play, but Hurtt suggested that the Eagles are looking for a more reliable baseline from the 2023 first-round pick.
“He has to be consistent with doing little things,” Hurtt said, via Cayden Steele of PennLive.com. “We’ve all talked about the talent and the overall potential that he has . . . but it’s the consistency of doing these small things the right way all the time. That’s a big piece for him.”
Injuries kept Carter off the field at times in 2025, so health could factor into the variance that the Eagles want Carter to eliminate from his game. Whatever the case, consistency is something they want more of in Philadelphia.
Before the Texans nearly made it to the AFC Championship for the first time in franchise history, they started the year 0-3. Then, they shook things up by abruptly cutting safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson.
It was a surprising move, especially since the Texans (who acquired Gardner-Johnson in a trade with the Eagles) made no effort to re-trade him. They simply cut ties with him.
The Texans never provided a clear explanation of why Gardner-Johnson, who had just won a Super Bowl in Philadelphia, needed to go. In a new interview with Tim Graham of The Athletic, Gardner-Johnson supplies his side of the story.
According to the player, things started to go sideways at training camp in West Virginia, after a confrontation with “the GM’s friend.”
“If y’all going to cut me, cut me,” Gardner-Johnson said. “But I’ll give nobody reasons to cut me. I haven’t. I don’t. I’m not a cancer. There’s nobody in this locker room that says, ‘Chauncey’s a problem.’ The media loves me. The only thing that’ll do it is something that triggers somebody that has a say in the building that can alter somebody else’s mind. That happens every time.
“That’s how I got [cut] in Houston. One person that’s not technically a part of the organization called me a B-word at Greenbrier. I get out my body; he says something to the GM, and the next thing I’m cut.”
The Texans declined to comment for Graham’s story. Still, the objective timeline doesn’t exactly support the effort to connect the training-camp incident to Gardner-Johnson’s release.
The Texans were at The Greenbrier from August 4 to August 7. The Texans cut him on September 23, a full 47 days after leaving West Virginia.
It had been reported that Gardner-Johnson struggled to learn the Houston defense, and that he “finger-pointed” in lieu of accepting responsibility for his mistakes. Another report indicated that the team had become exhausted by his complaints.
Whatever the reason for his exit from the Texans, Gardner-Johnson has never stayed in one place for very long. Picked by New Orleans in the fourth round of the 2019 draft, the Saints traded him to the Eagles after three seasons. After one year in Philly, he signed with the Lions. After one year with the Lions, he returned to the Eagles. After another year with the Eagles, he was traded to the Texans.
Cut after three games in Houston, Gardner-Johnson landed on the practice squad in Baltimore. One week later, the Ravens released him.
The Bears signed him in late October, and he finished 2025 in Chicago. Then, Gardner-Johnson signed with the Bills.
Seven seasons. Six departures. Gardner-Johnson can say it’s not him — and maybe it isn’t. Still, he’s made six exits in less than four calendar years (the Saints traded him to the Eagles on August 30, 2022).
On several occasions, Gardner-Johnson aired grievances after his departures. He called his year with the Lions “hell,” and he claimed he was “lied to.” He said the Eagles traded him after the team won Super Bowl LIX because they were “scared of a competitor.”
He complained to Graham about his week in Maryland: “They sign you in the middle of the night with the plan for you to play that week, then literally 14 hours later they trade for a safety and tell you, ‘Oh, we’re going to start him and keep you on the practice squad.’ I’m a Super Bowl champion!”
Despite his performance in 11 games with the Bears, Gardner-Johnson told Graham that he knew the Bears wouldn’t re-sign him.
“I’m a firecracker, but let’s take the body of work: never legally been in trouble; never physically harmed a person,” Gardner-Johnson said. “But I haven’t been a captain ever in my life. They say, ‘You gotta lead the right way.’ My definition of leading is winning. . . . There’s a lot of captains in this league — and I want this to come out — that’s just for jersey sales. I can show you three, four captains right now that I wouldn’t get behind. Why would I get behind anybody that doesn’t believe in himself? I’ve played for plenty of false captains, but I gotta fake it, like, ‘That’s my leader!’”
He knows that people already think the Bills will cut him. Bills GM Brandon Beane was nevertheless willing to roll the dice on Gardner-Johnson, after both doing the research on the player and making sure he understands the ground rules.
“We talked about just making sure, ‘You’ve got to be a good teammate,’” Beane said. “We don’t want any cheap shots in practice or anything like that. You want to keep it in between those lines, but you do want his edge.”
Implied in that message is that Beane concluded Gardner-Johnson has a reputation for not being a good teammate, and for taking cheap shots in practice.
So far, the Bills seem to like him. Defensive coordinator Jim Leonard calls Gardner-Johnson a player who “loves football,” and who “loves being in the building.”
The challenge isn’t to be in the building. The challenge is to stay in the building. Gardner-Johnson vows that he will.
“I’m going to win the next two out of three Super Bowls,” he told Graham. “How? Look where they placed me at. Look who’s my quarterback. If I got a fucking fighting chance, it’s over with.”
Frankly, that’s the kind of fire the underachieving Bills need from their new “firecracker” safety. And maybe it’ll be enough to have a “C” on Gardner-Johnson’s jersey when he walks onto the field for Buffalo’s Week 1 game at, yes, the Texans.
Steve Zabel, a tight end and pass rusher who was Oklahoma’s last two-way player and then played both positions in the NFL, has died at the age of 78.
Zabel could do everything in college at Oklahoma, playing tight end, linebacker and punter, and the Eagles selected him with the sixth overall pick in the 1970 NFL draft. Zabel recalled in a 2021 interview with the Eagles’ website that his status as a two-way player began because he was one of the few Sooners playing well during a tough start to the 1968 season.
“Chuck Fairbanks called me in his office and said, ‘Steve, we’ve proven we can’t outscore people. We want you to play defensive end as well as tight end and see if we can’t win some games.’ For me, it was a great transition. I played both ways and punted, and we won our last six games in a row and won the Big Eight Championship,” Zabel said.
When he got to Philadelphia, Zabel again started as a tight end, only to have his coaches decide that his violent style of play would make him a better fit for hitting people on defense.
“As a rookie tight end, I’d gotten kicked out of three games for fighting. And at the end of the year, they told me they didn’t think I had the proper temperament to be successful on offense and wanted to move me to outside linebacker,” Zabel recalled. “I jumped at the opportunity. My rookie year, I came into camp weighing almost 270 pounds. They told me they wanted me to get big to be a blocking tight end, and it really hampered my speed and agility. My second year, I came to Training Camp as an outside linebacker weighing 230 pounds. I gained all my quickness and speed back. It was a wonderful thing. I was all for playing linebacker, believe me.”
In 1975, a contract negotiation with Eagles head coach Mike McCormack turned personal, and Zabel was traded to the Patriots.
“I was asking for a contract for $75,000, and I got up and said, ‘You know what, Coach? I wouldn’t play for you for $100,000.’ I walked out the door and stuck my head back in and said, ‘Well, maybe for $100,000, I would.’ And I got traded two hours later to the New England Patriots,” Zabel said.
Determined to make things better for players after his own contract negotiations, Zabel became a labor organizer, often saying that the NFL players’ union was not fighting hard enough for its members. In 1975, a Patriots preseason game was canceled when Zabel and his teammates refused to play, citing a lack of progress on changes to the players’ pension, insurance, medical benefits and working conditions.
“We were sick of the owners and we were sick of our own [union] management that had allowed us to go forward,” Zabel recalled in an interview with The Oklahoman.
A deal between the league and the union was reached soon after, but Zabel called it a bad deal for the players, whom he said were “duped” by the owners.
After four seasons with the Patriots, Zabel finished his career with one season on the Baltimore Colts, in 1979.
In retirement, Zabel went into coaching, but he turned down job opportunities with major college programs, preferring to coach at the high school and small college level where he would have more time with his family and with his charitable work. Zabel and a college teammate founded a nonprofit organization that provides food for homeless people and mentoring for children in Oklahoma City.
The Eagles have gotten another member of their draft class under contract.
Via Tom Pelissero of NFL Network, Philadelphia has signed third-round pick Markel Bell.
Bell, an offensive tackle out of Miami, was selected at No. 68 overall in April.
He was Miami’s left tackle in 2025, helping the program advance to the CFP National Championship Game. He is expected to provide depth at offensive tackle behind starters Jordan Mailata and Lane Johnson.
