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.
Former NFL safety Myron Rolle went to medical school after he completed his playing career and the pediatric neurosurgeon is now coming back to work with the NFL Players Association.
The NFLPA announced that Rolle will be joining the union as a strategic advisor. Rolle’s work will focus on player health, brain cognition, and preventative care for active players.
“This sport gave my family joy, discipline, and community,” Rolle said in a statement. “To return now, as a physician, researcher and former player, and contribute to the wellbeing of the men who make this game what it is, feels deeply meaningful. I am honored to support the NFLPA’s mission and help advance a future where every player’s health is protected with the highest standard of care.”
Rolle was named a Rhodes Scholar while playing at Florida State and the Titans drafted him in the sixth round in 2010. He also spent time with the Steelers, but did not play in any regular season games before going back to Florida State for medical school in 2013.
Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy are in their first year together in Pittsburgh, but after 13 years together in Green Bay, they know each other as well as any quarterback and head coach in the NFL.
Rodgers says he knows exactly what he needs to do in the McCarthy system, and it’s all about him having his timing down with his teammates.
“It’s just the next generations of the West Coast offense,” Rodgers said, via TribLive.com. “It went kind of Bill Walsh to kind of what Mike was doing with Paul Hackett, and then it’s kind of grown from there. From a real fundamental level, it’s all about the quarterback’s timing.”
Rodgers said McCarthy has changed some of the terminology in his offense since the two were last together on the 2018 Packers, but the system is fundamentally the same.
“I spent 13 years in [McCarthy’s offense],” Rodgers said. “He’s changed some stuff when he was in Dallas. . . . It’s stuff that we used to run, but he’s just called it something different now.”
In three months, McCarthy will hope to see Rodgers running that offense the same way he did in Green Bay.
Not all grass field are the same.
While NFL players overwhelmingly prefer grass to artificial turf, they want high-quality grass. At Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh, the grass has not been high-quality.
While it’s come a long way from the Punt That Didn’t Bounce Of 2007, last year’s surface was an embarrassment for the Steelers and the league. (It doesn’t help that Pitt plays there, too, and that on multiple weekends the field had Saturday and Sunday games.)
Via Jack Markowski of SI.com, a new surface has been installed at Acrisure Stadium. Precision Turf announced on Wednesday that the installation of Tahoma 31 Bermudagrass has been completed.
Earlier this year, Steelers owner Art Rooney II acknowledged that the grass field, which drew an F-minus in the annual NFLPA report cards, would be replaced. He also left the door open to a potential switch to artificial turf, if the new version doesn’t perform as intended.
The players would hate that. But they’d hate it less than another bad grass surface in Pittsburgh.
Drew Allar has some familiarity with the West Coast offense, but the Steelers rookie quarterback doesn’t know nearly as much about Mike McCarthy’s offense as Aaron Rodgers.
Rodgers played for McCarthy in Green Bay from 2006-18.
Allar will get at least one season to watch and learn from Rodgers and McCarthy, who has also had Joe Montana, Brett Favre and Dak Prescott as his quarterback.
“I’m really excited to learn from [Rodgers],” Allar told Eric Williams of Fox Sports. “With him being in coach McCarthy’s system in Green Bay, it’s beneficial because he knows the system inside and out, even though he hasn’t played in it in five or six years at this point. And just everything he’s going through in his career, playing in tens of thousands of snaps, how much experience and knowledge he has — the nuances of playing the position of quarterback, reading coverages, the defensive tendencies — any little thing I can pick up to help me process faster and be more accurate, I’m all in for it.”
Allar, a third-round pick, is fourth on the depth chart behind Rodgers, Mason Rudolph and Will Howard.
“It’s really just taking it a day at a time,” Allar told Williams. “They do a great job of building it out throughout practice with the quarterback in individual drills. They do a great job of emphasizing things throughout each day, just so I can get that foundation, because the footwork is a little different than what I’m used to.
“We were under center a little bit at Penn State, but not in the drop-back game. It was more run game and play-action game. So, just getting cleaner with under-center drops and drop-back footwork. And just really trying to pick up on the nuances of it. Just some different teaching, and it’s really cool to be a part of that. And kind of have another chapter to learn from and grow from. I already feel a lot more comfortable in it, and I know I’ve just got to keep my head down and keep working at it.”
