The NFL has added two current head coaches to the league’s Competition Committee.
Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell and Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans are the new additions to the group. Former Bills head coach Sean McDermott is no longer on the 11-person committee.
Broncos head coach Sean Payton and Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel also joined the group this year. Former Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin and former Dolphins General Manager Chris Grier joined McDermott in leaving the group.
The committee, which is co-chaired by former Falcons CEO Rich McKay and Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones, reviews all competitive aspects of the game. That includes playing rules and they will meet before the Combine to begin determining any potential changes to present to league ownership for a vote at league meetings later in the offseason.
The other current members of the committee are Bengals executive vice president Katie Blackburn, Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles, 49ers General Manager John Lynch, Giants co-owner John Mara, and Rams head coach Sean McVay.
Vikings Clips
Four years ago, Malik Willis was favored to be the first quarterback in the draft. He wasn’t.
At pick No. 86, Willis went third among all quarterbacks, behind Kenny Pickett and Desmond Ridder.
It never really clicked for Willis in Tennessee, and he became expendable after two seasons. The Packers obtained Willis for a seventh-round pick not long before the start of the 2024 season.
While he has been the clear No. 2 to Jordan Love for the last two years, Willis has made the most of his limited opportunities.
In 11 appearances with four starts for the Packers, Willis completed 70 of 89 passes (78.6 percent) for 972 yards (10.92 yards per attempt), six touchdowns, and no interceptions. His passer rating was 134.64. He also has 261 rushing yards on 42 attempts (6.2 yards per carry) for three touchdowns.
Yes, the sample size is small. But, yes, the impact has been significant.
And he’s less than three weeks away from free agency.
Where he goes, and what he’ll get, becomes one of the more intriguing questions of free agency. The coming class of free-agent quarterbacks is headlined by Aaron Rodgers and Daniel Jones. One is 42, and the other is recovering from a torn Achilles tendon. Both are generally expected to return to their current teams (Steelers and Colts, respectively).
Other current free-agent options for quarterback-needy teams include Russell Wilson, Marcus Mariota, Joe Flacco, Tyrod Taylor, Pickett, Zack Wilson, and Jimmy Garoppolo.
The Kirk Cousins contract adjustment from January guarantees he’ll be cut on March 11 or 12, so he’s essentially a free agent. Kyler Murray and Tua Tagovailoa likely will be released, unless a trade can be worked out for either or both. The Jets also could move on from Justin Fields. And Mac Jones looms as a potential trade option, if the 49ers are willing to move him. (They say they’re not, but ‘tis the season for posturing.)
Then there’s Geno Smith, who already has $18.5 million fully guaranteed from the Raiders in 2026, with the remaining $8 million vesting on the third day of the 2026 league year. He could be available for trade, or he could be cut. (The Raiders also could keep him as the bridge to Fernando Mendoza, if they make him the first overall pick in the draft.)
Willis’s numbers are undeniable. Is he ready to be a full-time starter? And is a team ready to give him a starter-level contract?
As starter-level contracts go, the range is broad. The market tops, generally speaking, at $60 million per year. The bottom of the veteran starter market, as of last year, was $10.5 million for Russell Wilson (who started only three games). Fields has a $20 million average, and he received $30 million guaranteed on a two-year deal. (Fields also was eventually benched, after being publicly bad-mouthed by his thin-skinned owner.)
Sam Darnold, with only one viable suitor, received $33.5 million per year on a three-year deal from Seattle, which has quickly proven to be a steal. (In hindsight, he should have signed a one-year deal, like Jones did in Indy. With no other options, however, it wouldn’t have been easy to insist on a one-year commitment.)
Where will Willis fit? Much of it depends on the number of teams that pursue him. The Dolphins, who are now run by a pair of former Packers employees, are a team to watch — if they can wedge Willis’s contract into the cap wreckage of the Tua contract. The Cardinals, where Packers coach Matt LaFleur’s brother, Mike, is now the head coach, could make sense, too.
The Steelers could be an option, but they seem to be content to wait for Rodgers to make a decision. Which would take them out of play in the early days of free agency. The Vikings will be looking for a veteran to compete with J.J. McCarthy.
And don’t rule out the Ravens. If (and it’s not a big if but it’s still on the radar screen) they trade Lamar Jackson, they’ll need a quarterback, too.
Other teams that will or at least could be looking for a veteran quarterback include the Jets, Browns, Colts (if Jones leaves), and Falcons.
Someone surely will want Willis. The more teams that want him, the more money he’ll make.
The process will accelerate next week in Indianapolis, where every team will meet with every agent who represents every looming free agent in an annual swap meet of untraceable tampering that happens with no electronic footprints or popcorn trail.
Our guess is that Willis will land between $20 million and $30 million per year — unless a land rush emerges. If that happens, who knows? $35 million? $40 million? (While $40 million sounds like a lot, it’s still only 66.6 percent of the current market limit.)
Or maybe Willis will have the leverage and willingness to insist on a one-year deal that pays him a relatively modest salary but gives him another shot at free agency in 2027. (A no-tag clause would be even better, if not virtually impossible to finagle on a one-year deal.)
However it goes, it’s a story that isn’t getting the kind of attention it should, or that it will once teams start jostling for a chance to see whether Willis can do on a full-time basis what he did as a part-timer for the Packers.
His numbers suggest that he could be not just a capable starter but a potential superstar. With true franchise quarterbacks so hard to find, why wouldn’t someone roll the dice on the possibility of landing a player who could become one of the best quarterbacks in the league?
If, as expected, the Raiders use the first overall pick in the draft on Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, then the quarterbacks coach will have one of the most important jobs in Las Vegas. Jordan Traylor could be that quarterbacks coach.
The Raiders have requested to interview Traylor, who is currently the Vikings’ assistant offensive coordinator, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN.
New Raiders head coach Klint Kubiak has worked with Traylor before. When Kubiak was the Saints’ offensive coordinator in 2024, Traylor was an offensive assistant for the Saints.
The Raiders have already hired Andrew Janocko as their offensive coordinator, as Kubiak gets to work on building an offensive coaching staff that can build a new offense in Las Vegas, likely around Mendoza.
When former Dolphins coach Brian Flores filed his lawsuit against the NFL and multiple teams in February 2022, the claim of systemic and chronic racial discrimination made it a landmark attack against the league. Flores’s efforts have had, to date, a much more significant impact.
Through a series of rulings during a four-year war over the question of whether the claims of Flores, Steve Wilks, and Ray Horton will be resolved in open court or (as the league strongly prefers) arbitration controlled by the Commissioner, Flores and company have torn down the league’s longstanding method for forcing employee legal claims into a secret, rigged, kangaroo court.
The problem is simple. The league wants civil cases filed against it to be determined not by an independent party but by the league itself. Finally, independent judges with the power to do so are telling the NFL that it cannot do so.
“The court’s decision recognizes that an arbitration forum in which the defendant’s own chief executive gets to decide the case would strip employees of their rights under the law,” attorneys Douglas H. Wigdor and David E. Gottlieb said Friday, after the latest decision scrapping the league’s practices. “It is long overdue for the NFL to recognize this and finally provide a fair, neutral and transparent forum for these issues to be addressed.”
And that’s really the next step. Instead of maintaining its current Hail Mary pass to the U.S. Supreme Court, the NFL should do the right thing and abandon the heavy-handed practice of insisting that lawsuits filed against the league be presided over by the Commissioner.
The Commissioner, who recently defended the practice by saying, essentially, “it was like that when I got here,” shouldn’t want to do it. It’s a hopeless and irreconcilable conflict of interest.
Few if any other companies attempt to stack the deck in such a laughable, third world, banana republic way. Most companies realize it’s more than sufficient to force employees into arbitration handled by one of the various companies (like the American Arbitration Association) that exist for that purpose.
It’s still a much better forum for corporate America than the traditional judge-and-jury process. Especially since the various companies that provide arbitration services tend to skew toward the interests of the businesses that are responsible for creating the system that funnels them so much business.
But that’s not good enough for the NFL. Its longstanding approach to arbitration is proof positive that it wants to completely control anything and everything it can.
Finally, the NFL is losing control over legal claims made by non-players. The consequences sweep far beyond Flores, Wilks, and Horton. Every other team and league employee who is compelled to agree to the arbitration term in their contracts now have a pathway to avoiding a fundamentally unfair and un-American approach to justice.
For that reason, maybe it will be useful for the league to keep pushing its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Assuming that at least five of the nine justices of the highest court in the country see this game for what it is, the end result will be a published opinion that becomes the law of the land as to the league, all of its teams, and every current and future employee who have no choice but to agree to a contract that forces them to allow the Commissioner to have final say over any and all grievances they ever may pursue.
The NFL’s secret, rigged, kangaroo court is on life support.
In the lawsuit filed four years ago by former Dolphins coach Brian Flores, the presiding judge has reversed a prior order sending some of the claims to arbitration. Now, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has concluded that all claims will be litigated in open court.
The ruling means that the Flores claims against the NFL, the Dolphins, the Giants, the Broncos, and the Texans will be handled in court, not arbitration. It also applies to the claims made by Steve Wilks against the Cardinals, and by Ray Horton against the Titans.
Friday’s decision flows from last year’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which denied arbitration as to the remaining Flores claims based on the NFL’s insistence that Commissioner Roger Goodell control the process. That same “fatal flaw” (as Judge Valerie Caproni described it) impacts all efforts to compel arbitration.
The league will undoubtedly fight the result. Although Goodell defended the practice during last week’s Super Bowl press conference, it is fundamentally unfair for the person hired and paid by the teams to be resolving legal claims made against his employers. No one in that position can be fair and impartial.
The NFL hates external oversight. It wants to control its business, and it hopes to keep any dirty laundry tightly under wraps.
The league previously filed a petition for appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the question of whether the arbitration requirement is legitimate. Whatever the final outcome, it’s long overdue that the highest court in the country examine and resolve whether it’s appropriate for any organization to require employees to submit their legal claims not to an independent party but to the boss.
The Cardinals are hiring Tony Sorrentino as their wide receivers coach, Peter Schrager of ESPN reports.
Sorrentino has spent the past four seasons as the Vikings’ assistant wide receivers coach. He has coached Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, among others, with the Vikings.
Sorrentino has spent eight seasons in the NFL ranks, having previously coached in Jacksonville. He worked with the team’s wide receivers from 2013-16, which overlapped with new Cardinals offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett in Jacksonville for two seasons.
He previously spent three seasons with Northern Illinois, serving as the passing game coordinator/wide receivers coach his last two seasons there.
It’s convenient to drag the Vikings for not re-signing quarterback Sam Darnold a year ago. But the Vikings were far from alone.
Multiple other teams could have pursued Darnold as a free agent. They didn’t.
The Steelers opted for Aaron Rodgers. The Raiders traded for Geno Smith. (Tom Brady reportedly didn’t want Darnold.) The Jets overpaid Justin Fields (not that they could have brought back Darnold). The Colts went with Daniel Jones as the alternative to Anthony Richardson.
The Seahawks, after getting a third-round pick for Smith, pivoted to Darnold. They signed Darnold to a three-year, $100.5 million deal. He’s making $33.5 million per year, nearly half the amount of the open market.
He’ll make $27.5 million in 2026 and $35.5 million in 2027. Darnold received $37.5 million in 2025, with a cap number of only $13.4 million. His cap number increases to $37.9 million in 2026 and $41.9 million in 2027.
It was, and is, a steal for Seattle. One that, given his performance and the team’s achievements in 2025, justifies a new deal, much sooner than later.
The contract was a great one for the Seahawks. They bought low. The fact that Darnold grossly outplayed the deal counts as a good problem to have for the Seahawks.
Regardless, it’s time to pay the piper — if the Seahawks regard Darnold as the short- and long-term answer at the quarterback position.
The Eagles have found a new offensive line coach.
Per Tom Pelissero of NFL Media, Philadelphia is hiring Chris Kuper for the role.
Kuper, 43, spent the last four seasons as Minnesota’s offensive line coach before the club quietly parted ways with him last month.
A Broncos fifth-round pick in 2006, Kuper appeared in 90 games with 79 starts along the offensive line for the franchise through 2013.
He has since worked for the Dolphins, Broncos, and Vikings as a coach in the league. Kuper crossed paths with new offensive coordinator Sean Mannion when Mannion was a backup QB for Minnesota in 2023.
Kuper has a big job, replacing longtime Eagles famed offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland.
Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold is a Super Bowl champion.
That seemed like an unlikely destination for Darnold when he was traded by the Jets three years after being selected with the third overall pick and it didn’t feel any likelier when he bounced from the Panthers to the 49ers before the end of his sixth season. Darnold got back on track with the Vikings last year and rose even higher in leading the Seahawks to the top of the NFC during the regular season.
Darnold wasn’t able to replicate his big day from the NFC Championship in Super Bowl LX, but he avoided mistakes during the 29-13 win over the Patriots and touched on his unusual career path while speaking to Melissa Stark of NBC after the game.
“It’s unbelievable,” Darnold said. “Everything that’s happened in my career, but to do it with this team — I wouldn’t want it any other way. I’m so proud of our guys. I can’t say enough great things about our defense and special teams.”
Darnold said in the days leading up to the Super Bowl that he wasn’t interested in personal vindication, but his history was on his mind on Sunday and his persistence showed when Stark asked what message others can draw from his story.
“As long as you believe in yourself, anything is possible,” Darnold said.
Darnold may have cribbed that line from Kevin Garnett, but his story does a spectacular job of making that point.
The Vikings have brought in an experienced personnel executive to help the team handle their football business in the wake of firing General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah.
The team announced that they have hired Matt Thomas as a football administration consultant. Thomas served as the Seahawks’ vice president of football operations from 2013-2024.
Thomas oversaw the team’s salary cap and contract negotiations while in that role and will assist executive vice president of football operations Rob Brzezinski in his new role. Brzezinski will be handling the General Manager responsibilities through free agency and the 2026 NFL Draft.
A search for a new GM is expected to get underway in Minnesota after the draft.
