The Lions will interview former Falcons offensive coordinator Zac Robinson for their vacant offensive coordinator job on Thursday, Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports.
Robinson also interviewed with the Buccaneers for their offensive coordinator job.
Robinson spent five seasons with the Rams, rising from assistant quarterbacks coach to passing game coordinator/quarterbacks coach under Sean McVay. Robinson was the assistant quarterbacks coach with the Rams in 2019 when Jared Goff was the starting quarterback.
Robinson moved to assistant wide receivers coach in 2020 in Goff’s final season in Los Angeles. Goff became the Lions’ starting quarterback in 2021.
The Lions also have Giants interim head coach Mike Kafka, former Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel and Seahawks passing game coordinator Jake Peetz as candidates. The Commanders promoted David Blough to offensive coordinator after the Lions had strong interest in him.
Falcons Clips
The Commanders are hiring D.J. Williams as their quarterbacks coach, Tom Pelissero of NFL Media reports.
Williams is the son of franchise legend Doug Williams, the Super Bowl XXII MVP in Washington’s 42-10 win over the Broncos. Doug Williams remains a senior advisor to the General Manager for the team.
D.J. Williams most recently was the quarterbacks coach for the Falcons, who fired head coach Raheem Morris after the season.
The younger Williams played quarterback for his father at Grambling and became an NFL assistant with the Saints in 2019. He joined the Falcons as an assistant quarterbacks coach in 2024 and moved into his current role in 2025.
The Commanders needed a new quarterbacks coach after promoting David Blough to offensive coordinator. Blough replaces Kliff Kingsbury, whom the Commanders fired at the end of the season.
The Giants are getting their young quarterback involved as they court John Harbaugh to be their next head coach.
Via NFL Media, Jaxson Dart was in the building and met with Harbaugh during the coach’s interview on Wednesday.
The No. 25 overall pick of the 2025 draft, Dart appeared in 14 games with 12 starts as a rookie. He finished the season having completed 63.7 percent of his passes for 2,272 yards with 15 touchdowns and five interceptions.
Dart, however, suffered multiple injuries and was checked for a concussion multiple times over the course of his rookie season.
Still, Dart displayed his potential to solidify himself as being a part of the Giants’ present and future. While his opinion may or may not hold weight, getting him acquainted with Harbaugh during the interview process is unlikely to be a detriment.
Having interviewed candidates to satisfy the Rooney Rule, the Giants can hire Harbaugh at any time. But multiple reports indicate that Harbaugh is still currently expected to meet with the Titans and Falcons about their vacancies this week before potentially taking any more meetings or making a decision about his destination.
Marcus Freeman’s name has come up for more than one job in this year’s coaching cycle.
But even though he was the favorite to land the Giants job at one point, Freeman has been consistent in saying that he’s continuing as the head coach at Notre Dame.
In a Wednesday press conference, Freeman was asked about the NFL rumors that have surfaced this offseason and the Fighting Irish HC spun them as being a net-positive.
“I’m the head coach at Notre Dame,” Freeman said. “I’ve said this before that individual recognition, individual success, NFL interest — those are all a reflection of team success and where this football program is. I’ve used some of the interest from the NFL to personally gain wisdom from maybe some of the G.M.s or front-office executives that you get a chance to talk to about your players, but also about what they view as a successful coach. Maybe it’s an NFL coach, but what are some of the things they’ve seen that have made a coach successful in their organization or franchise — and maybe not so successful.
“So, I utilize these opportunities through conversations to gain knowledge myself to be the best head coach I can be of the Notre Dame football program. So, again, that’s where my mindset is. I don’t control the noise, but I know the noise that’s in my head and where my focus is.”
Freeman had made clear his intent to stay on with Notre Dame with a social media post in late December. But even as the rumors persist, Freeman says he doesn’t mind them. In fact, he welcomes the chatter.
“The only statement I put out was let’s run it back,” Freeman said. “I was intentional about that. I don’t need to come out with a statement every time one of these job openings happen. You know I always say the future is uncertain. That’s what I tell our players, it’s what I tell myself — it’s the reality of life. But everything I want and everything that I need personally can be achieved right here as the head coach of this program.
“So, I hope this is something we have to address every year, I really do, because it means we’re having a lot of success right here at Notre Dame. If this isn’t something we’d have to address, then there’s bigger issues within what we’re doing as a football program because as your program has success, these types of things are going to occur.”
Freeman is not planning to be an NFL head coach at this point. But he did pause when asked if he would like to have one of those 32 jobs at some point in his career.
“Do I want to be? I mean, I don’t really — I’ve never done it,” Freeman said. “I don’t know enough about it. Maybe sometime in the future, if it’s the right time and it’s what I think is right for me, then maybe I’ll pursue it. But I don’t love wasting time thinking about things that aren’t right in front of me.
“So, I don’t know what I’ll want in however much length of time from now. I don’t know. But I know right now that I am as convicted and motivated to being the best head coach of the Notre Dame football program as I can be.”
Freeman, 39, has compiled a 43-12 record in his four seasons with the Fighting Irish since taking over for Brian Kelly.
The Falcons’ head coaching search will reportedly include a meeting with Antonio Pierce.
Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports that Pierce is slated to interview with the Falcons later this week. He is expected to meet in person with Falcons president of football Matt Ryan and other members of the search team.
Pierce took over as the Raiders’ head coach on an interim basis in 2023 and was hired on a permanent basis after the season. His run with the Raiders ended at the end of the season, however, and he left Vegas with a 9-17 record during his time in the job.
The Giants have also interviewed Pierce this month.
Until the Packers announce that coach Matt LaFleur definitely will be back in 2026, there’s a chance he won’t be.
While most teams have no reason after the end of a given season to state the obvious, there’s currently nothing obvious about LaFleur’s future in Green Bay.
On Wednesday’s PFT Live, we pointed out the possibility that the Packers want to see whether someone will contact them with interest in making a deal for LaFleur. And while LaFleur would have to be willing to participate in the two-step process (new team makes a deal with the Packers, new team makes a deal with LaFleur), it may be his only alternative to accepting an extension he doesn’t like or coaching the final year of his current deal.
Appearing on ESPN Milwaukee earlier today, ESPN’s Adam Schefter characterized LaFleur’s status as “up in the air.” (Aaron Rodgers is gonna be upset.) Schefter explained that, if an extension isn’t finalized, it’s possible that some other team will call the Packers about possibly hiring LaFleur.
Regardless of the procedure that applies in situations like this, the reality is that there will be plenty of back-channel communications regarding, for example, whether LaFleur would be interested in one or more of the various vacancies and what it would take to hire him.
Again, all of this ends the moment the Packers declare LaFleur will be the coach in 2026. Until that occurs, anything can happen.
Former Falcons head coach Raheem Morris has had a few in-person meetings for head coaching vacancies after Atlanta fired him earlier this month.
Via Albert Breer of SI.com, Morris has now interviewed in-person with the Cardinals, Titans, and Giants.
That means each of those teams has conducted at least one in-person interview with a minority candidate. The Giants have had two, satisfying the requirement, as they’ve met with Morris and former Raiders head coach Antonio Pierce.
The Falcons finished 8-9 in 2024 and 2025 under Morris.
Morris was previously Atlanta’s interim head coach in 2020, going 4-7. He also accumulated a 20-25 record in three seasons as Buccaneers head coach from 2009-2011.
As it relates to the Cardinals, Morris is plenty familiar with the NFC West as he served as Rams defensive coordinator from 2021-2023.
John Harbaugh is starting to take in-person interviews.
According to multiple reports, Harbaugh is in New Jersey to meet with the Giants on Wednesday for his first known in-person interview after he was fired by the Ravens last week.
As has been widely noted, Harbaugh is expected to coach in 2026.
The Giants are one of the favorites to land Harbaugh, who reportedly is also set to meet with the Titans and Falcons this week.
While most teams with a head coach vacancy are surely interested in Harbaugh — who recorded a 180-113 regular-season record with a 13-11 postseason record in his 18 seasons with Baltimore — the former Ravens coach is set to be selective about the meetings he takes.
If Harbaugh and the Giants end up being a fit, New York can hire him immediately because the club has satisfied the requirements of the Rooney Rule. But it seems likely that Harbaugh will take more than one in-person meeting before deciding on his next stop.
The Falcons formally introduced Matt Ryan as their president of football on Tuesday, officially welcoming the best quarterback in franchise history back to the organization.
Ryan had been working for CBS first as a game analyst and then a studio analyst since 2023. He told reporters in Tuesday’s press conference that he wasn’t necessarily seeking out a new opportunity. And this job with the Falcons is the only one like it that he would’ve been interested in.
“I think it’s the right opportunity,” Ryan said, via transcript from the team. “No. 1, I think when you look at organizations and you think about places you’d like to be, it comes down to ownership, ownership, ownership, ownership. Bill Cowher, I’ve sat next to him for the last three years, and he would hammer that home all the time. He would joke, the three most important people in the building are the owner, the owner, and the owner. So when you get an opportunity with a previous relationship and knowing what Arthur [Blank] stands for and what his family stands for, and you respect all of those core values, to me, that’s what makes it so exciting in terms of an opportunity.”
Ryan added that he missed getting the sense of wins and losses each week while working on television.
“So, getting back into that gets me excited,” Ryan said. “As you mentioned, not having previous experience in a role like this, nobody does. I’ve been around guys who have been hired as first-time head coaches after being a play caller. I’ve been around coaches who have been position coaches and never play callers and they step into different roles, and they adjust. That’s something that I’ve done my entire life, whether that be in football or whether that be transitioning into TV or doing things. I’ve never been scared of that.”
Plus, his experience as a franchise quarterback put him in conversations that your average player might not have been a part of, patricianly within the Falcons organization.
“When you are quarterback of an organization for a long time, the interactions that you have with the head coach and the meetings that you sit in in their office and talk about all the different things that are going on with the football team and decisions that need to be made or alterations in a plan or in a season of maybe changing directions, it’s different from other players,” Ryan said. “I feel really well versed in those conversations. I feel like I’ve done it with a number of different guys that I have a lot of respect for and seen it from a lot of different angles. I think the same can be true on the front office side of it. The longer I was here, the more discussions that were had. It was never, ‘I was going to be a part of the decision,’ but I was asked for my opinion, and I was asked to interact with them.
“So, I think some of those things will inform what I’m doing now. I’ve got a lot to earn — there’s no doubt about that. But in preparing for this, I talked to a lot of people from around the league, who have moved on as players. And I’m able to multitask. I can listen to noise in the background and not panic and keep going. … I think some of those relationships that I have from around the league, whether it be execs or coaches, owners, GMs, etc., I’m going to lean on those. I feel like I’ve got really strong relationships both inside and outside the building that are going to help me in this role.”
Late last month, Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman indicated on social media that he would remain at his current job for 2026.
Reports soon followed that Freeman had received an enhanced contract from the university, helping keep him around.
Nevertheless, rumors that an NFL team could hire Freeman in this coaching cycle have persisted.
However, Freeman is still not expected to depart South Bend.
Adam Schefter of ESPN noted on Tuesday that despite garnering interest from several pro teams, Freeman is expected to remain at Notre Dame for 2026.
Freeman, 39, has compiled a 43-12 record in his four seasons with the Fighting Irish since taking over for Brian Kelly.
His name appears likely to come up for potential NFL jobs as long as he remains successful at the college level.
