The NFL Players Association released its annual Rising Stars list on Tuesday and the first overall pick of this year’s draft is one of the players at the top.
Raiders quarterback Fernando Mendoza is No. 1 on the list of the 10 rookies that the NFLPA projects to be future members of the Top 50 list of licensed player product sales. There is also a list of 10 players with NFL experience who have not been on the Top 50 and it is topped by Saints quarterback Tyler Shough.
Mendoza is followed on the list by Cowboys safety Caleb Downs, Cardinals running back Jeremiyah Love, Titans wide receiver Carnell Tate, Eagles wide receiver Makai Lemon, Commanders linebacker Sonny Styles, Saints wide receiver Jordyn Tyson, Giants linebacker Arvell Reese, Ravens wide receiver Ja’Kobi Lane, and Buccaneers edge rusher Rueben Bain.
The list of veteran players also includes Bears tight end Colston Loveland, Raiders tight end Brock Bowers, Chiefs running back Kenneth Walker, Panthers wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan, Buccaneers wide receiver Emeka Egbuka, Cardinals tight end Trey McBride, Dolphins running back De’Von Achane, Bills running back James Cook, and Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez.
Bills Clips
Veteran cornerback Levi Wallace did not play in the NFL after landing on Jacksonville’s injured reserve list last summer and he won’t be coming back to the field in 2026.
Wallace announced his retirement on Instagram on Friday. Wallace noted that he was undrafted in 2018 and went on to spend eight years in the league, which he termed a “not bad” run in the league.
Wallace signed with the Bills after playing at Alabama and started all 57 regular season and playoff games he played in four seasons with Buffalo. He spent the next two seasons with the Steelers and saw his final game action with the Broncos in 2024.
Wallace had 333 tackles, 12 interceptions, 30 passes defensed and a fumble recovery in 96 career regular season games. He also had 23 tackles, an interception and a sack in six postseason outings.
Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby says four quarterbacks stand out as the hardest in the NFL to sack.
Asked in a kick.com interview who he considers the hardest to sack in the league, Crosby named Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, Bills quarterback Josh Allen and Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield.
“Mahomes has definitely got to be up there, Lamar is a freak athlete, he’s so quick and fast. Josh Allen is like my size playing quarterback, but you’ve got to really fucking tackle him. I’d say those three are the top,” Crosby said. “A sleeper one, too: Baker Mayfield. He pissed me off. I had two of them I should have had on him. He ducked under, got under them. I was fucking livid. Baker’s tough. I like Baker.”
Crosby never sacked Mayfield in that game (the photo accompanying this post shows one of the near-sacks that Mayfield escaped), and Mayfield threw for three touchdown passes in a 28-13 Buccaneers win. Crosby hasn’t forgotten.
In eight seasons, Josh Allen has won the MVP award once, finished second once and finished third twice. Allen has been one of the best quarterbacks in the league since the Bills drafted him in the first round in 2018.
He is headed toward joining former Bills quarterback Jim Kelly in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Like Kelly, though, Allen has yet to deliver a Super Bowl title to Buffalo. In fact, Allen has yet even to win an AFC title. He is 8-7 in the postseason, including 0-2 in the conference championship game.
Bills left tackle Dion Dawkins was asked about expectations for Allen this season, and Dawkins said the question shouldn’t be about the quarterback.
“I don’t have any [expectations],” Dawkins said on NFL Network. “I don’t add any more extra pressure to that kid that he already has. Josh understands what he’s doing, what he’s not doing. He understands what the mindset is and what we all expect. Just like we know what Josh expects from us, as well, to help him get there. When it comes down to it, Josh is Josh, and he’s gonna be Josh. He’s No. 1 for a reason, so I don’t think that we need any more expectations than we already have.”
Dawkins said the supporting cast has to be better to help Allen get the Bills their first Lombardi Trophy.
“It seems like we need all the pieces around him to continue to get better to help him get over that hump,” Dawkins said. “Because if Josh is No. 1, he’s at his best, right? If I’m not top 10 or I’m not No. 1, that means that I’m not at my best, which means I have to do better. Dawson [Knox], Dalton [Kincaid], Joe Brady, [James] Cook, everybody -- everybody has to do better. So we’re all going to be that and do that so we can get over that hump, and we can be exactly what we want to be and stop talking about it, right? I’m ready for it. It’s time.”
Allen is 83-33 as the starter for the past seven seasons, with five division titles. It hasn’t all clicked for the team in the postseason, though, and Dawkins is hoping it’s different this season.
Left tackle Dion Dawkins has been with the Bills since 2017, so he has never played a game in the NFL for a head coach other than Sean McDermott.
That will change in Week 1 this season when the Bills face the Texans with Joe Brady calling the shots. McDermott was fired after the team’s playoff loss to the Broncos last January that Dawkins compared to the part of a movie when “a drastic thing happens where the castle kinda gets a little shaky” during an appearance on NFL Network.
Dawkins said it feels like the Bills are “getting to the climax” of such a movie in 2026 and he laid out what’s on the line for the Bills in stark terms.
“Everybody has to do better,” Dawkins said. “So we’re all going to be that and do that so we can get over that hump and we can be exactly what we want to be and stop talking about it, right? I’m ready for it. It’s time. I’m telling you, man, it’s kill or be killed, and we’re not playing around. We are not playing around with nobody.”
A movie script would have the Bills win a Super Bowl title that makes all of their painful losses in recent seasons part of a story of triumph, but real life doesn’t always provide the kind of happy endings that you find at a cinema.
In 2026, the only practice receiver Stefon Diggs has experienced is legal.
Cut by the Patriots and still available, Diggs went through a criminal trial in May (the case never should have been pursued, based on the quality of the prosecution’s evidence presented in court). He also has multiple civil lawsuits to navigate.
Via TMZ, a man named Nigel King has sued Diggs for falsely claiming King stole a Ferrari — and for allegedly having Diggs’s friends attack him.
Also sued were Diggs’s brother, Darez, and three of their friends.
In July 2024, King arranged for Diggs’s Ferrari to be transported to Houston. The car was stolen. King claims he was never identified as a suspect in the theft.
King also contends that, in December 2024, Diggs began accusing King of stealing the car. King also claims that, a year later, Diggs’s friend punched King in the face.
Diggs, per the latest report as to a case that first surfaced in February 2026, requested that the case not proceed until the other defendants are properly served. The other defendants have since been served, which should set the stage for the litigation to unfold — likely slowly, as most civil lawsuits do.
In November 2025, Diggs sued a man named Christopher Griffith for falsely claiming Diggs had drugged and sexually assaulted him. Griffith filed a counterclaim, alleging that Diggs did indeed sexually assault him in 2023. Diggs has denied the accusation. That case has been unfolding with a stream of conflicting contentions and salacious details, which will make for a compelling trial if the case isn’t settled or dismissed.
Through it all, Diggs hopes to continue his NFL career. He recently claimed that there’s no WR2 in the NFL better than him. At least five unnamed teams reportedly have “checked in” on the player who had 1,013 receiving yards in his first season with the Patriots.
It was the seventh 1,000-yard season of the 32-year-old receiver’s career. Whether he’ll have a chance to do it an eighth time remains to be seen — but it was obvious last year that, even though his Ferrari was stolen, he still has gas in the tank.
As Buddy Ryan said when he became the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals in 1994, “You’ve got a winner in town.” (Of course, that winner continued to be the visiting team.)
For folks in New York City, it’ll be an invading team. On Wednesday, the Bills announced their 23-affiliate radio network for 2026. And the collection of stations includes ESPN New York — smack dab in the middle of the market belonging to the New York Jets. (And the New York Giants.)
Since the 2017 season, the Jets and Giants have combined for one playoff appearance. In that same time period, the Bills have been to the playoffs eight times.
And the Bills aren’t encroaching only on turf belonging to the Jets and Giants. Buffalo games will be aired by ESPN West Palm, roughly 70 miles from Miami. (The Dolphins have had two playoff appearances since 2017.)
It’s a bold move. But the Bills have a following that justifies radio broadcasts far from the site of their new stadium. And if the Jets, Giants, and Dolphins don’t like it, they should perform well enough that folks in or near their markets will choose to listen to their games and not to Bills games.
Or they could go full-blown spite store and find radio affiliates in Buffalo. But who in Buffalo would listen to those games? In New York City, plenty of folks likely will.
Besides, the Bills are the only NFL franchise that plays its games in New York. Why not have their radio broadcasts available in New York, New York?
Entering the offseason, Bills General Manager Brandon Beane named cornerback as an area of need. That raised some eyebrows as the Bills drafted cornerback Maxwell Hairston in the first round in 2025.
Still, the Bills drafted two cornerbacks this offseason, using a second-rounder on Davison Igbinosun and a seventh-rounder on Toriano Pride Jr.
Hairston plans to play better than he did last season when he played 11 games, starting three. He played 56 percent of the defensive snaps in the games he played.
“I’ve got a lot to prove to myself,” Hairston said, via Jay Skurski of The Buffalo News. “My goal is to be a full-season starter. Honestly, my goal is to do whatever I can to help us win a Super Bowl. Day in, day out, come in and take care of my body and just keep going.”
Hairston does not have a chip on his shoulder despite the Bills’ offseason moves to address the position.
“We’re getting young in the secondary,” Hairston said. "[Igbinosun] came in here and made plays. He’s fitting in well. We draft who we draft. I love all the rookies we bring in, but for me, I’m worried about what I’ve got to do this year to be out there. If it is competition, I love it. I’m somebody [who likes] to work. Him coming in kind of just let us know that we’re going young.”
Bills new defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard expressed confidence in Hairston, stressing the team made the offseason moves it made at corner for depth purposes.
Bills wide receiver Keon Coleman is well aware that he’s been the subject of much criticism from fans and the media. Coleman was even the subject of some offseason debate about whether ex-coach Sean McDermott deserved blame for wanting to draft him.
But Coleman says the criticism doesn’t matter to him, because it doesn’t come from anyone who’s on the field with him.
“None of them going to come lace them up and try to stand in front of me,” Coleman said, via ESPN. “People are going to say what they want to say. At the end of the day, my job is to come out here, put my cleats on, strap them up and prove my worth here.”
Through two seasons, Coleman’s production -- 67 catches for 960 yards and eight touchdowns -- hasn’t been what the Bills were hoping for when they selected him with the 33rd overall pick in the 2024 NFL draft. Coleman sees that changing this year.
“It’s time to put it all together,” Coleman said. "[Outside comments] I don’t really care to hear them. It’s time for me to just put it out there on the field.”
The Bills have made a pair of roster moves on Tuesday.
Per the league’s daily transaction wire, Buffalo has claimed receiver Quentin Skinner off of waivers from the Jets, who let him go off of injured reserve on Monday.
As a corresponding move, the club has released receiver Deven Thompkins.
Skinner entered the league as an undrafted free agent out of Kansas last year, appearing in one regular-season game for the Jets. He caught one pass for 10 yards.
Thompkins had joined the Bills in June. He appeared in seven games for the Falcons last season, catching three passes for 27 yards.
