The Jaguars made a couple of roster moves involving cornerbacks as they opened training camp on Tuesday.
They announced that they have signed Corey Ballentine to the 90-man roster. He will take the roster spot of Dane Jackson, who has been placed on the reserve/retired list.
Jackson signed with the Jaguars in June, but Tuesday’s move suggests that the 2020 seventh-round pick has decided to pursue other opportunities. Jackson began his career with the Bills and returned to the team after spending the 2024 season with the Panthers.
Ballentine played five games for the Cowboys and one game for the Patriots last season. He has also played for the Giants, Jets, Lions and Packers. He has 103 tackles, an interception and a forced fumble for his career.
Jaguars Clips
The Jaguars put a pair of offensive linemen on their physically unable to perform list ahead of the start of their training camp.
They announced that Cole Van Lanen and Garret DiGiorgio have been placed on the list. Both players will be ineligible to practice until they are off of it and they can be activated at any time.
Van Lanen closed out the 2025 regular season as the team’s starting left tackle, but he injured his knee in Week 18. He started 10 games overall and has played 50 games for Jacksonville over the last four seasons.
DiGiorgio started at guard and tackle while at UCLA. He signed with the Jaguars after going undrafted this year.
When Jaguars head coach Liam Coen was discussing the team’s offensive backfield during their offseason program, he called the competition for playing time at running back “truly wide open” between Chris Rodriguez, Bhayshul Tuten and LeQuint Allen.
Now that training camp is about to start, Coen seems to be focusing in on one back’s upside. Tuten was a fourth-round pick out of Virginia Tech last year, but he began his college time at North Carolina A&T and Coen said on The Schrager Hour podcast that he faced “a little bit of a learning curve” when it came to all the facets of playing in the NFL.
Tuten now has a year under his belt and no longer has Travis Etienne ahead of him, which has Coen looking for a major leap forward this fall.
“He does a great job of finding the end zone and his yards after contact and rushing yards, man — when he can get going and get downhill, I mean, he was 4.28 coming out. So he can fly,” Coen said. “Now it’s more so, he was so conscientious about ball security last year and doing right. Okay, now Tuten, you got it. You understand it more. Now just go be you. Go do what got you here. Go be special, that’s who you are. We’re definitely expecting Tuten to have a big year for us.”
The Jaguars exceeded expectations by winning 13 games last season, including nine of their last 10 in the regular season. That sets a higher bar for this year and Tuten making good on Coen’s prediction would help position them to stay among the contenders in the AFC.
On one hand, the NFL has tried to keep the Brian Flores lawsuit from getting to the merits of the claims because it’s the first page from the standard big-company-that-has-been-sued playbook. On the other hand, delaying the Flores case delays the best available path to a long-overdue reckoning.
ESPN, which is now partially owned by the NFL, has posted an article regarding the Rooney Rule. The headline declares that coaches believe the process is “rigged” against them. (It’s refreshing that ESPN has pursued an issue that the league would prefer be ignored; we’ll see whether and to what extent ESPN promotes the article through its endless car wash of shows.)
The starting point, and centerpiece, of the ESPN story is the runaround former Raiders defensive coordinator Patrick Graham experienced after he had served as the league-mandated second minority interview for the Jaguars head-coaching job that went to Liam Coen in early 2025.
It was perceived to be yet another box-checking sham interview, aimed at allowing a team to comply with the Rooney Rule before hiring their preferred candidate.
Here’s the key paragraph from the ESPN article: “More than a dozen minority coaches declined to comment for this story, citing concerns that speaking candidly would jeopardize future opportunities. Among the 13 Black coaches who did speak -- some on the record but most anonymously -- the issue is clear: Even with hiring rules in place, they feel they cannot overcome ownership bias or the long-established relationships that shape hiring.”
Even Graham, who talked about his Jacksonville experience on the record to ESPN last year, declined to comment this time around.
Meanwhile, the NFL faces political pressure to abandon “DEI” efforts, now that the acronym has been morphed into a slur in sheep’s clothing. In Florida, attorney general James Uthmeier has been attacking the NFL over inclusion efforts. Nationally, the political winds continue to blow against the notion of placing diversity above merit. (As Jon Stewart observed earlier this week, “Meritocracy. It is a beautiful word. Where the fuck is it?”)
Back to Flores. Along with Ray Horton and Steve Wilks, Flores has fended off the NFL’s multi-year effort to vacuum their claims into the NFL’s secret, rigged, kangaroo court of arbitration. Now, after more than four years, it’s time to get down to talking to witnesses, gathering documents, and proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the NFL and many if not most of its teams make key hiring decisions with race being, consciously or not, a motivating factor.
It could get messy, but civil litigation is often uncivil. Owners and Commissioner Roger Goodell will be grilled under oath during pre-trial depositions. Some or all of the 25 minority coaches who won’t speak to ESPN reporters will receive a subpoena to testify under oath, which will not only protect them from retaliation but compel them to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
The Flores case becomes the only way to allow the facts to be developed, presented, and evaluated. A jury will determine, based on all of the evidence, whether Flores and his colleagues have shown that the NFL’s teams have a longstanding racial bias when it comes to hiring head coaches, offensive coordinators, and General Managers.
Many will say (because they always do) that businesses can hire whomever they choose. That opinion is grossly misinformed; federal law and the laws of many states prevent certain factors from being considered when hiring (and firing) decisions are made.
Real change can be effected in American society in one of three ways: the passage of legislation, the implementation of regulations, or the verdicts rendered through litigation.
That’s why large companies hate lawsuits. They can’t control a process that could force them to change their ways by attaching a massive financial consequence for their past failures to do so.
At some point, the NFL may realize that, win or lose, a public trial in open court will have significant negative consequences. The league and its teams could be tempted to make Flores and company a settlement offer they can’t refuse.
That’s the key. Will the league make an offer so large that the individuals won’t be able to reject it? Will they reject it anyway, realizing that taking their claims all the way to a verdict may be the only way to get the NFL and its teams to finally change their ways?
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.
Marcellus Wiley, as they say, is having a moment. And not the good kind.
The former NFL defensive end and ESPN/Fox personality was arrested over the weekend for domestic battery. On Monday, his wife made very strong allegations against him in divorce paperwork and in a request for a restraining order.
Wiley has posted on social media clear, loud denials as to the alleged battery, and as to the claims made by his wife in court filings.
Wiley has yet to deny this one: TMZ reported on Wednesday that Preferred Bank sued Wiley in December 2025 for failing to satisfy a $500,000 loan.
Per TMZ, Wiley and his company, Dat Dude Entertainment, borrowed the money in May 2023, promising to pay it back after one year. The bank, per TMZ, claims it didn’t receive the money or the associated interest. Wiley allegedly received multiple extensions until December 2025, when the bank then filed suit.
As of this posting, Wiley has not addressed the TMZ report.
Wiley spent 10 years in the NFL, playing for the Chargers, Bills, Cowboys, and Jaguars.
Coach Liam Coen said last month the Jaguars were unsure when Travis Hunter would be full go. The Jaguars apparently now know.
Cameron Wolfe of NFL Media reports that the wide receiver/cornerback is expected to be fully cleared for the start of training camp on July 28.
Hunter tore the lateral collateral ligament in his right knee during an Oct. 30 practice. He underwent surgery Nov. 11 in Dallas, with Cowboys team physician, Dr. Dan Cooper, and Jaguars team physician, Dr. Kevin Kaplan, performing the procedure.
Hunter is now running over 20 mph, which is faster than the 2024 Heisman Trophy winner has ever run, per Wolfe.
Hunter played 324 offensive snaps and 162 defensive snaps in seven appearances as a rookie before his season-ending knee injury. He had 28 catches for 298 yards and a touchdown on offense to go with 15 tackles on defense.
He is expected to play even more on defense this season as the Jaguars have a need at cornerback.
Travis Hunter’s rookie season came to an early end due to a knee injury, but one of the 2025 first-round pick’s veteran teammates saw enough to know he believes the wide receiver/cornerback brings something special to the table.
Defensive lineman Arik Armstead has spent more than a decade in the NFL and he said on SiriusXM NFL Radio that he thinks Hunter stands alone when it comes to what he’s capable of doing on the field.
“He’s a game changer,” Armstead said. “He’s probably the most naturally talented athlete, just pure athlete I’ve been around, and I’ve been around some amazing ones. It was good for our sport, and it was good for our team.”
That ability led the Jaguars to trade up for Hunter and there were flashes of it on both sides of the ball, but Hunter was still finding his footing at the time of his injury. Armstead thought Hunter was “starting to hit his stride” when his season ended and he believes having a year under his belt will lead to more production this fall.
“Things will slow for him, just like they do for all of us,” Armstead said. “He’ll be going into his second year being in the same system, around the same coaches, and knowing what is asked of him. We know how challenging that can be as a rookie just mastering one side of the ball, so I think in Year 2 he’s going to take a huge step and help our team in a lot of different ways.”
The Jaguars haven’t outlined exactly how Hunter will be deployed in 2026 and he’ll need to be fully cleared for practice before that plan really starts to take shape, but Armstead will be among those expecting big things once it does.
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.
In the wake of Saturday’s arrest of former NFL defensive end Marcellus Wiley, his wife has pursued two separate legal avenues.
Via TMZ, Annemarie Wiley (who appeared on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) has filed for divorce, and she has submitted a request for a restraining order that would require Wiley to remain at least 100 yards away from her.
She claims that she has been subjected to a “continuing and escalating pattern of physical violence, sexual abuse, verbal and emotional abuse, financial control and intimidation.”
While she makes the general claim that, “[b]ecause of the trauma associated with many of these events, there are gaps in my memory, as I have blocked out much of what Marcellus has done to me,” specific allegations include (per TMZ) that he punched her in the face in 2014, threw a Coke bottle at her head in 2012 when she was nine months pregnant, and allegedly raped her while she was intoxicated in 2012.
More recently, he allegedly struck her in the face with his shoes in 2025. She also contends that, in January 2026, he dragged her out of bed, berated her and hit her on the head, and “then raped me, telling me that I was his property and that I had to do what he said.” She claims he raped her again that same day, and that he raped her another time two days later.
She seeks custody of their three children and exclusive use of their home in Los Angeles.
On Monday, Marcellus Wiley issued a broad denial of “these allegations” without mentioning any specific claim.
Wiley played 10 years in the NFL for the Chargers, Bills Cowboys, and Jaguars. After retiring, he worked for ESPN and Fox.
