Chiefs Clips
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.
Cornerback L’Jarius Sneed is back with the Chiefs and he hopes that isn’t the only way he turns back the clock during the 2026 season.
Sneed spent four seasons with the Chiefs to start his NFL career and helped them to a pair of Super Bowl titles in his final two years with the team. Sneed wasn’t able to work out a long-term deal to stay in Kansas City and wound up getting traded to the Titans after receiving a franchise tag.
The Titans gave him the four-year deal he was looking for, but injuries limited Sneed to 12 games during back-to-back 3-14 seasons in Tennessee and he was released in March. The Chiefs brought Sneed back on a one-year deal in June and Sneed’s plan is for it to feel like old times again across the board.
“Reclaim who I am. Not to prove anything but to show people I am who I was,” Sneed said, via KTAL.
The Chiefs used a first-round pick on Mansoor Delane and a fourth-round pick to add Jadon Canady to a cornerback group that also includes 2025 third-rounder Nohl Williams. Sneed said he wants to “show them guys the way” now that he’s the experienced hand in the secondary and playing mentor while still contributing on the field would make his return a double win for the Chiefs.
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.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes said during the offseason program that his goal is to be ready for Week 1, despite suffering a torn ACL in December.
With training camp just around the corner, that goal is starting to seem more and more in reach.
Mahomes reiterated his stance during an interview with Yahoo Sports Daily on Wednesday.
“That’s my goal,” Mahomes said. “I’ve said that since the beginning, is being ready to go Week 1. I can’t predict the future, and I know that it’s a long process. It’s not just my decision, but at the same time I’m going to give the doctors and the coaches every single opportunity I can to let me be out there Week 1.”
The Broncos being the season-opening opponent adds an extra layer of motivation for the three-time Super Bowl champion.
“I don’t want to miss that game because that’s the team that won the division while we were gone, and you want to be out there and ready to go with your teammates,” Mahomes said. “I’ll give every single thing I can to be out there Week 1, and hopefully the doctors and the coaches give me the green light, and I’m able to go out there with my guys and compete against one of the best teams in the league.”
Mahomes acknowledged that his return has been “a long process,” but feels like he’s in a good spot with training camp set to begin at the end of the month.
“[A]ll I can do is be as great as I can be every single day,” Mahomes said. “You just have to maximize that day and slowly get better and better as the year goes on.
“I’m excited to get back to training camp. I’m excited to get the guys back around. I’ve kind of been in the building in Kansas City by myself. Just [to] have the guys back and getting to be on the football field will get me going and get me ready for the season.”
Chiefs rookies and veterans are set to report to training camp on July 28.
Former NFL linebacker Darron Lee, a first-round pick in the 2016 draft, has hired a lawyer to represent Lee on first-degree murder charges in Hamilton County, Tennessee.
Via WDEF, former Hamilton County District Attorney Neil Pinkston will be handling the case. He has entered no plea on Lee’s behalf, which is the same as entering a plea of not guilty.
Lee is accused of killing his girlfriend, Gabriella Perpetuo, in February 2026. The details of Perpetuo’s injuries are extensive and graphic.
The case against Lee includes evidence that he used ChatGPT for advice on how to deal with an unresponsive person.
Lee could face the death penalty. The prosecution has not yet announced whether it will be seeking it.
Lee was drafted by the Jets ten years ago. He also played for the Chiefs and Bills.
Who would say no to an invitation to the Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift wedding?
Charles Barkley would. And did.
Via Brandon Contes of Awful Announcing, Barkley said on 97.5 The Fanatic that he was invited to the event, but he chose not to go.
“I don’t go to weddings or funerals,” Barkley said. “But I did get an invite, and I politely declined because I thought it was going to be a crap show. I love Travis and Jason, and I’ve only met Taylor one time, but yeah, I did get an invite. But I said, that’s just too much. I just want to hang out and play golf, and I don’t want to dress up and all that other stuff. But I appreciate the invitation. It was pretty special.”
The invitation reportedly came with an NDA. And, frankly, it’s easy to envision Barkley saying he’s not signing any damn NDA.
Generally, I agree with his approach. I rarely go to weddings. And funerals are sad and awkward and stressful but, sometimes, you just have to go. (Especially to your own.)
For Barkley, who is hilarious and blunt and gives no effs and who I could listen to all day long (especially if Shaq is around), there’s one way they could have enticed him to show up — they could have added a note in the invitation that the menu will include churros.
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.
I wasn’t going to say anything more about the Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift wedding, but an item from Drew Lerner of Awful Announcing got the addled gears of my brain turning.
Lerner notes that both FOX and Amazon had a very strong presence at the ceremony, with even rules analyst Dean Blandino on the guest list. And while there also was a solid presence from ESPN (Jason Kelce’s current employer), no one seemed to be present from CBS or NBC.
The inclusions and omissions invite speculation that Travis may be thinking about future media employment with Fox or Amazon. Or possibly both.
There were rumors in media circles last year that Travis was interested in Kirk Herbstreit’s seat in the Thursday Night Football booth. (Neither Herbstreit nor his dog were among the Amazon personnel spotted at the event.) With Herbstreit’s deal running through 2026, Travis (who already has a relationship with Amazon through the New Heights podcast) could be in line to take the spot.
And he could then, if he wanted, join the desk at Fox NFL Sunday when the next spot opens.
Doing both would be easier, if Travis wanted to do it. It would be much easier than Herbstreit’s current triple duty of ESPN College GameDay, the top ESPN/ABC college football game, and Thursday Night Football.
Frankly, Travis would get whichever gig he wants, at any network with an available spot. The only question is the price. And the over-under for the combined gigs would be, in our view, $40 million per year, easily.
UPDATE 8:00 p.m. ET: A source with knowledge of the situation tells PFT that Jim Nantz and Tony Romo, the members of the top CBS broadcast team, were present for the wedding.
Adam Sandler was back in Madison Square Garden for reasons other than watching a Knicks game.
Here’s the only thing we’ll say about the wedding of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce to global superstar Taylor Swift at MSG: Adam Sandler officiated, and sang an original song for the couple.
It’s the one perfectly random nugget that moved the PFT needle.
The other stuff didn’t. So it won’t be mentioned.
No, we won’t mention that Mike Vrabel and his wife were there. Or that Tom Brady left early. Or that the invitations came with NDAs.
Or that one guest, who had to overpay to reserve time for hair and makeup given the avalanche of glitterati into New York City, said of the ordeal, “It’s a really fun shit show.”
Or that another guest griped about the location of the event: “Who on earth is in Manhattan for the Fourth of July? This couldn’t have been a destination wedding?”
Nope. None of that mattered. The only thing that caught our eye was Sandler — who has an impressive catalog of original songs (I didn’t know the one about the zit on his back) — wrote another one for the event.
In Zittly Van Zittles, Sandler bemoans the fact that, by cheating on his girlfriend, he lost the woman who would pop it for him. That’s an important lesson for any newly-married couple.
It’s Fourth of July weekend. And it’s also the weekend on which Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift will be married.
Via the Associated Press, the event will happen later today at Madison Square Garden. Things got going on Thursday night, with a rehearsal dinner at Madison Square Garden.
They’ve reportedly already been “legally married.” (Maybe for the same reason Jim and Pam took a detour to the Maid of the Mist.)
The effort to keep things secret eventually yielded to the practicalities of the various logistical realities of reserving and securing such an iconic venue. And there wasn’t much of an effort by anyone involved to push back once the cat was out of the bag.
It got to the point that some thought the MSG plan was a misdirection. It wasn’t.
So that’s it. They’re now married. Don’t look for her to take his last name. Or for him to take hers.
