Former Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald went from drawing NFL interest to signing a 10-year extension to being out of a job after allegations of hazing emerged in 2023.
Lawsuits were filed. Now, the lawsuits have been resolved.
According to Bloomberg News, via the Chicago Sun-Times, all claims for hazing and abusive behavior have been settled. Settlement documents are being finalized.
A Northwestern spokesperson told the Sun-Times that the agreement “will fully resolve the student plaintiffs’ claims’’ against the school and Fitzgerald.
The total number of plaintiffs was believed to be 25.
Fitzgerald started coaching at Northwestern in 2006. After leaving the school, Fitzgerald worked as a volunteer at his son’s high school, Loyola Academy.
Outgoing Packers president Mark Murphy, who served as the Northwestern athletic director before taking the Green Bay job, was named as a defendant in at least two of the lawsuits.
The Packers have defensive lineman Arron Mosby back in the fold for the 2025 season.
Mosby was tendered as an exclusive rights free agent last month and the NFL’s daily transaction report for Monday showed that he has signed that tender.
Mosby played in 16 games for the Packers last season. He had 12 tackles, a tackle for loss, a half-sack, two quarterback hits, and two passes defensed before adding a tackle in their playoff loss to the Eagles.
Mosby saw his first NFL action with the Panthers in 2022. He had one tackle in three games for Carolina.
The Green Bay tush push proposal was tabled until May. And it’s likely to return in a very different form.
The Packers’ original proposal (which may or may not have been instigated by the league office, like the Lions’ playoff reseeding proposal) was badly flawed. It prevented an “immediate” push of the player who received the snap. Which, if it had passed, would have opened a can of worms regarding officiating consistency as to what is and isn’t “immediate.”
The most obvious fallback, as mentioned last week by Commissioner Roger Goodell (who seems to want the rule to change), is a return to the pre-2006 rulebook. More recently, Packers president Mark Murphy mentioned it as the likely alternative.
In those days, pushing and pulling of the ballcarrier was prohibited. The league removed the ban on pushing a teammate, because it was never called. (As we understand it, assisting the runner — by pushing or pulling — has not been called since a 1994 divisional round playoff game between the Bills and the Chiefs. During the 2024 postseason, we reported that the league would not instruct officials to call fouls for pulling a runner, given that it hasn’t been called.)
As one source with knowledge of the dynamics explained it, however, the 2006 adjustment happened as part of a broader set of changes to the rules regarding blocking. Simply prohibiting pushing without making other adjustments to the blocking rules could have, as the source put it, unintended consequences.
Frankly, it’s unnecessary to prevent a downfield shove. While it’s regarded as unnecessary roughness for a player to charge down the field and barrel into his teammate with the ball (it’s called, we’re told, five or six times per year), there’s no specific concern about a teammate pushing a teammate with the ball spontaneously.
The best approach could be to ban pushing in limited circumstances. Basically, within the tackle box and/or five yards (or some other specific distance) on either side of the line of scrimmage.
The problem is that the league doesn’t want to create the impression that it’s changing the rules to target one specific team. But we all know that’s what’s happening. Why play games with it?
If it’s a safety risk and/or aesthetically problematic, cut with a scalpel and not a chainsaw. Green Bay’s proposal from last week, bad as it was, started the conversation. The best way to finish it, if Goodell is able to twist 24 arms, is to make a change that focuses on the technique that causes concern, without trying to fix unrelated maneuvers (like a downfield push) that aren’t broken.
Former Ohio State offensive tackle Josh Simmons is a potential first-round pick in this year’s draft and he’s scheduled a couple of meetings with possible employers.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that Simmons is visiting with the Packers on Monday. He is slated to move on to a visit with the Ravens on Tuesday.
The Packers have left tackle Rasheed Walker and right tackle Zach Tom back from last season. Last year’s first-round pick Jordan Morgan is expected to have a chance to win a starting job as well.
The Ravens re-signed left tackle Ronnie Stanley last month and 2024 second-round pick Roger Rosengarten is set for the right side of the line.
Simmons began his college days at San Diego State and played at Ohio State the last two seasons.
One of the top receivers in the incoming draft class has been visiting with a couple of NFC teams.
Per Adam Schefter of ESPN, former Ohio State receiver Emeka Egbuka is visiting with the Packers on Monday and Tuesday after spending Friday and Saturday with the Cowboys.
Egbuka, 22, was a second-team All-Big Ten honoree in 2022 and third-team All-Big Ten honoree in 2023 and 2024. He was a critical piece of the 2024 CFP national championship team, catching 81 passes for 1,011 yards with 10 touchdowns in his final season with the Buckeyes.
In 49 total games, Egbuka caught 205 passes for 2,868 yards with 24 touchdowns.
There’s an ongoing assault against the tush push. And one of the reasons for removing it from the rulebook is player safety. If so, it’s fair to know what the players think.
It became clear last week that the tush-push opponents are pointing to two things: safety and aesthetics. On the former, there’s no injury data to support that it presents a heightened risk of injury. It’s all hypothetical and speculative.
And incomplete.
What does the NFL Players Association think about the tush push? On Monday afternoon, the union declined to comment on any internal discussions about the play.
Regardless, if it’s truly a safety issue, the union should be involved. The union needs to be involved. If the union isn’t involved, it looks like it’s not a safety issue. It looks like safety is being used as a pretext to remove the play from the game.
Maybe the NFL hasn’t involved the union in the analysis because the league fears the union would say something like this: Since there’s no data to support that it’s an unacceptable injury risk, we’re OK with it; why aren’t you?
The Packers’ proposal to ban the tush push wasn’t voted upon at the league meeting, but Packers President Mark Murphy sounds confident that the tush push will be out of the NFL this season.
Murphy said in a video released by the team that he believes there’s enough support for a rule against pushing runners to be adopted next month.
“I think it ended up in a good place,” Murphy said. “We ended up tabling it, but we had a really good discussion, talked a little bit about our safety concerns regarding the play, just kind of the style of the play, but good interaction with the league and so it’ll be tabled and then what we’re going to do is it’ll be voted on in the May meeting and so we’re going to go — in 2005, the league did away with the rule that you couldn’t push runners and so we’re going to go back and see the language that we had in 2004 and I’m optimistic. I think there’s enough people that kind of look at it and say it’s really not good for the game, it’s more a rugby play than a football play, just kind of go back to what used to be the rule.”
Murphy referenced perhaps the most famous quarterback sneak in NFL history, by Bart Starr in the 1967 Ice Bowl, and how Packers running back Chuck Mercein raised his hands in the air as he fell into the pile behind Starr, not to celebrate the touchdown but to demonstrate to the officials that he wasn’t pushing Starr into the end zone, which would have been a penalty in those days.
“In the Ice Bowl, Bart Starr’s touchdown, talking to Chuck Mercein, a lot of people thought when he put his hands up that he was signaling touchdown, but he was showing that he wasn’t pushing Bart Starr,” Murphy said.
If Murphy’s preferred rule change passes, the Packers will be raising their hands in celebration that the Eagles will no longer get to use one of the NFL’s most effective short-yardage plays.
A Mississippi welfare-fraud scandal that caught national attention due in part to the involvement of Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre (who has been charged with no crimes and who has denied any wrongdoing) sparked multiple defamation lawsuits. One of them was dismissed on Friday.
Via Mark Fainaru-Wada of ESPN.com, a Mississippi judge dismissed the claim filed by former governor Phil Bryant against Mississippi Today, which spearheaded the reporting on the scandal — and which won a Pulitzer Prize along the way.
Bryant’s lawyer, Billy Quinn, has vowed to appeal. “This matter is far from over,” Quinn said. “Governor Bryant remains confident in the legal basis and righteousness of his case.”
“The reporting speaks for itself,” Mississippi Today said in response to the ruling. “The truth speaks for itself.”
The stakes of the case were higher than a potential verdict in a civil case against a non-profit publication. Multiple Mississippi Today employees, including reporter Anna Wolfe, faced imprisonment for refusing to disclose documents that revealed confidential sources.
The dismissal of the case makes that issue irrelevant. If/when the case is reinstated on appeal, it could become relevant again.
The Packers announced changes to their coaching staff for 2025.
They hired DeMarcus Covington as defensive line/run game coordinator, Luke Getsy as senior assistant, Cory Harkey as special teams quality control coach, Jeremiah Kolone as offensive assistant (minority fellowship), Jeff Koonz as defensive assistant and Jamael Lett as a defensive quality control coach.
They promoted Sean Duggan to linebackers coach and Sean Mannion to quarterbacks coach and moved Connor Lewis to pass game specialist/game management.
Covington enters his ninth NFL season and first with the Packers after working for the Patriots for the past eight seasons. He worked in multiple roles for the Patriots in his time there, first as a coaching assistant in 2017-18, then outside linebackers coach in 2019, followed by defensive line coach from 2020-23 and then defensive coordinator last season.
Getsy returns to the Packers in a coaching role after being a consultant for Green Bay for part of last season. He originally joined the Packers as an offensive quality control coach (2014-15) before a promotion to wide receivers (2016-17) and then quarterbacks (2019-21). He then added passing game coordinator (2020-21) to his positional duties. In his time between stints with Green Bay, Getsy was the offensive coordinator/wide receivers coach for Mississippi State (2018) and the offensive coordinator for the Bears (2022-23) and then Raiders (2024).
Harkey arrives in Green Bay after working as the assistant special teams coach for the Bills the past three seasons.
Kolone joins the Packers after a short time as an offensive analyst at the University of Central Florida (2025) and a season as an offensive graduate assistant at the University of Arizona (2024).
Koonz had a long collegiate coaching career, including the past five seasons (2020-24) at West Virginia University as the special teams coordinator and inside linebackers coach. He also worked as the defensive coordinator for the Mountaineers for the last part of the 2024 season.
Lett joins the Packers after working as a defensive coaching assistant for the Patriots last season, his first year in the NFL. In 2023, he was a special teams analyst at the University of North Carolina and from 2021-22 he worked as special teams coordinator/defensive assistant at South Alabama.
Duggan worked as a defensive assistant for the Packers last year. He came to Green Bay after spending the previous four years at his alma mater, Boston College, first as linebackers coach (2020-22) before adding co-defensive coordinator to his duties in 2023.
Mannion earned a promotion after working as an offensive assistant for the Packers last season.
Even if concerns about injury and aesthetics have become embarrassing pretexts for dumping the tush push, the effort to nudge the play out of the rule book has likely started the clock on the official expiration of the technique.
By flagging the play as a catastrophic injury waiting to happen, the league has (intentionally or not) activated the legal bat signal.
As noted by Kalyn Kahler of ESPN.com in an excellent postmortem on the tush push escapades in Palm Beach, NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills harped on the injury risk, to league staff, the Competition Committee, coaches, and owners.
“It’s all about health and safety,” an unnamed owner told ESPN.com. "[Dr. Sills said], ‘It’s not if but when a catastrophic injury occurs.’”
When incoming general counsel Ted Ullyot sees that quote, the die will be cast; he’ll say they need to get rid of the play before someone literally dies.
Even if the data doesn’t support it, Sills’s adoption of a hair-on-fire posture (possibly at the nudging of those who want to kill the play, including the Commissioner) becomes a massive problem for the league if/when a serious injury happens during a tush-push play.
It’s why the NFL changed the kickoff, even if they never say it out loud. They wanted to eliminate the very real risk of (another) catastrophic injury when two large, strong men run in opposite directions at top speed and collide. They have.
By introducing the vague possibility of a catastrophic injury on the tush push, the eventual reality (if it happens) of a catastrophic injury makes those remarks a goldmine for proof of league liability. For that reason alone, it now seems obvious for the first time that the anti-tush push forces will get what they want. Especially since the push doesn’t really change what fundamentally is a very effective quarterback sneak.
Indeed, the Eagles will still run the sneak. And they’ll do it very well. If/when a serious injury happens, the notion that it happened during the inherently dangerous tush-push play will be off the table and unavailable to the lawyer who is hired to obtain maximum compensation for the player who suffered it.
There it is. Game over for the tush push. And the lawyers will be the ones who make it happen — especially since that advice will mesh with what the league office seemingly wants to do, anyway.
