If former Raiders and Saints quarterback Derek Carr wants to play again, there are teams interested in his services. But so far, he hasn’t heard an offer intriguing enough for him to accept.
Carr said on NFL Network today that teams have contacted him about potentially coming out of retirement, and he isn’t ruling it out. Carr did not name those teams, but if they didn’t get permission from the Saints first, they were violating the NFL’s tampering rules. Carr was still under contract with the Saints when he retired, and other teams can’t contact him without the Saints’ permission. The Saints would also likely want trade compensation from any team that wanted Carr.
“I never say never,” Carr said. “It would take a special situation. There were multiple teams that reached out to me this offseason. I won’t say who or how, but they reached out and were gauging my interest on what I wanted to do. They were good, solid football teams.”
Carr said he will only return if a Super Bowl contender needs him.
“I’m just at the point where I just want to win. I want to win. So if I were to do it, it would have to be a special team that maybe lost somebody or needed somebody, but even then, it’s not guaranteed,” Carr said. “I’m having too much fun hanging out with my wife, hanging out with my kids, and trying to get good at golf. So it would take a special deal.”
When Carr announced his retirement last year, he and the Saints both said his injured shoulder would have hampered his ability to keep playing. But Carr now says that if the right team calls at the right time, he’ll be in shape and ready to play — even if he doesn’t anticipate that happening.
“I’m always training,” Carr said. “I’ll be in shape and ready, but probably not. I’ll probably be just coaching my kids.”
The 35-year-old Carr was drafted by the Raiders in 2014, played nine seasons with them, and then played his final two seasons with the Saints in 2023 and 2024. Now, after a year out of football, he’s not ruling out playing for a third team.
Saints Clips
Saints quarterback Tyler Shough got a new target in the first round of this year’s draft when the team took wide receiver Jordyn Tyson, but there was a sense of familiarity once Shough and Tyson began to work together this spring.
During an appearance on the Green Light with Chris Long podcast, Shough told the former NFL defensive end that Tyson is like “a carbon copy” of another Saints wideout. Shough said that Chris Olave is the “perfect combination” of speed and finesse and that Tyson shares “that feel with these underneath routes and big playability” with his more experienced teammate.
Shough’s expanded thoughts about what Tyson brings to the offense drove home his confidence in the rookie’s ceiling.
“His brother’s an NBA player for the Cavs, Jaylen,” Shough said. “He’s kind of just like an elite hooper. Like he’s just going to go; he’s going to hoop regardless. Like he’s going to go jump out the gym on somebody. He’s going to get open in the most crazy way, but he’s also kind of got this grittiness to him that I feel like not a lot of people give him credit for.”
One other thing that Tyson and Olave have in common is that they have both missed chunks of time with injuries over the course of their careers. Avoiding reprises of those absences will be key to making sure that their partnership with Slough blossoms to its full potential.
The Saints will kick off training camp on July 29 and their first open practice of the summer will be held the next day.
It will be the first of nine sessions that will be open to members of the general public. They will also hold open workouts on July 31, August 2-3, August 5, August 8-9, August 13 and August 29.
The August 13 practice will be a joint session with the Jaguars. The team will also practice with the Cowboys and Rams during a five-day trip to Los Angeles ahead of a preseason game against the Rams.
All of the practices will take place at the Saints’ facility except for the August 29 workout. That will be held at Tulane’s Yulman Stadium.
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.
Saints center Erik McCoy has missed more games than he’s played over the last two seasons.
McCoy missed 10 games in 2024 with elbow and groin injuries before missing another 10 last season with a torn biceps. That’s left a hole at a key spot on the New Orleans line too often, but McCoy does not believe that there’s much he can do beyond hoping for better fortune in 2026.
McCoy said he’ll do anything he can to lessen injury risk, but that “the play where I tore my bicep was something I’ve done a million times” to illustrate that injuries in the NFL come down to the “luck of the draw” more than anything else. Given that feeling, McCoy said he won’t alter his playing style in hopes of being on the field more often.
“There’s always going to be an awareness, but you can’t play with an awareness, you know what I mean?” McCoy said, via Luke Johnson of NOLA.com. “It’s kind of just got to be reckless abandon, and whatever happens happens. I’m going to keep that same mentality. I don’t want to be a guy that plays timid, that plays soft, that plays afraid to get hurt. If I play like that, I should quit football.”
McCoy went to the Pro Bowl after starting all 17 games in 2023. The Saints would welcome a reprise on both fronts in 2026.
It took some time, but defensive end Cam Jordan and the Saints agreed on a contract that will keep the veteran in New Orleans for a 16th season.
Jordan said that will also be his final year in the NFL, but he’s not just back for a retirement tour. During an appearance on SiriusXM NFL Radio, safety Justin Reid called Jordan one of the first people that comes to mind when you think of the Saints and that his presence is significant to what the team is trying to build in 2026.
“Huge for the culture of the team, hard worker, still productive going into Year 15-16, whatever it is,” Reid said. “I think that aside from his production on the field, which he still has a healthy engine running, I think that he’s so good for the defensive line and the defense in general just by bringing that veteran leadership, that consistency. Having a Hall of Fame guy in the locker room that guys can bounce questions off of, they know what it looks like. ‘Hey, if I want to play this long, it looks like Cam Jordan. Do what he does.’”
Jordan had 10.5 sacks last season, so there’s a number of ways that he can benefit the Saints in a swan song that could include his first trip to the playoffs since 2020.
Former NFL linebacker Keith Mitchell has died, Texas A&M athletics announced on Thursday. Mitchell was 51.
His cause of death is unknown.
The Saints signed Mitchell as an undrafted free agent in 1997, and he played five seasons in New Orleans. In 2000, Mitchell earned Pro Bowl honors.
He played with the Texans in 2002 and was with the Jaguars in 2003 before his retirement.
Mitchell totaled 408 tackles and 19.5 sacks in 94 career games.
He was inducted into the A&M Athletics Hall of Fame in 2015 after a four-year career that saw him earn All-Southwest Conference honors in 1995 and an All-Big 12 nod in 1996. He made 34 career sacks for the Aggies, including 14.5 during his senior season.
Before the Texans nearly made it to the AFC Championship for the first time in franchise history, they started the year 0-3. Then, they shook things up by abruptly cutting safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson.
It was a surprising move, especially since the Texans (who acquired Gardner-Johnson in a trade with the Eagles) made no effort to re-trade him. They simply cut ties with him.
The Texans never provided a clear explanation of why Gardner-Johnson, who had just won a Super Bowl in Philadelphia, needed to go. In a new interview with Tim Graham of The Athletic, Gardner-Johnson supplies his side of the story.
According to the player, things started to go sideways at training camp in West Virginia, after a confrontation with “the GM’s friend.”
“If y’all going to cut me, cut me,” Gardner-Johnson said. “But I’ll give nobody reasons to cut me. I haven’t. I don’t. I’m not a cancer. There’s nobody in this locker room that says, ‘Chauncey’s a problem.’ The media loves me. The only thing that’ll do it is something that triggers somebody that has a say in the building that can alter somebody else’s mind. That happens every time.
“That’s how I got [cut] in Houston. One person that’s not technically a part of the organization called me a B-word at Greenbrier. I get out my body; he says something to the GM, and the next thing I’m cut.”
The Texans declined to comment for Graham’s story. Still, the objective timeline doesn’t exactly support the effort to connect the training-camp incident to Gardner-Johnson’s release.
The Texans were at The Greenbrier from August 4 to August 7. The Texans cut him on September 23, a full 47 days after leaving West Virginia.
It had been reported that Gardner-Johnson struggled to learn the Houston defense, and that he “finger-pointed” in lieu of accepting responsibility for his mistakes. Another report indicated that the team had become exhausted by his complaints.
Whatever the reason for his exit from the Texans, Gardner-Johnson has never stayed in one place for very long. Picked by New Orleans in the fourth round of the 2019 draft, the Saints traded him to the Eagles after three seasons. After one year in Philly, he signed with the Lions. After one year with the Lions, he returned to the Eagles. After another year with the Eagles, he was traded to the Texans.
Cut after three games in Houston, Gardner-Johnson landed on the practice squad in Baltimore. One week later, the Ravens released him.
The Bears signed him in late October, and he finished 2025 in Chicago. Then, Gardner-Johnson signed with the Bills.
Seven seasons. Six departures. Gardner-Johnson can say it’s not him — and maybe it isn’t. Still, he’s made six exits in less than four calendar years (the Saints traded him to the Eagles on August 30, 2022).
On several occasions, Gardner-Johnson aired grievances after his departures. He called his year with the Lions “hell,” and he claimed he was “lied to.” He said the Eagles traded him after the team won Super Bowl LIX because they were “scared of a competitor.”
He complained to Graham about his week in Maryland: “They sign you in the middle of the night with the plan for you to play that week, then literally 14 hours later they trade for a safety and tell you, ‘Oh, we’re going to start him and keep you on the practice squad.’ I’m a Super Bowl champion!”
Despite his performance in 11 games with the Bears, Gardner-Johnson told Graham that he knew the Bears wouldn’t re-sign him.
“I’m a firecracker, but let’s take the body of work: never legally been in trouble; never physically harmed a person,” Gardner-Johnson said. “But I haven’t been a captain ever in my life. They say, ‘You gotta lead the right way.’ My definition of leading is winning. . . . There’s a lot of captains in this league — and I want this to come out — that’s just for jersey sales. I can show you three, four captains right now that I wouldn’t get behind. Why would I get behind anybody that doesn’t believe in himself? I’ve played for plenty of false captains, but I gotta fake it, like, ‘That’s my leader!’”
He knows that people already think the Bills will cut him. Bills GM Brandon Beane was nevertheless willing to roll the dice on Gardner-Johnson, after both doing the research on the player and making sure he understands the ground rules.
“We talked about just making sure, ‘You’ve got to be a good teammate,’” Beane said. “We don’t want any cheap shots in practice or anything like that. You want to keep it in between those lines, but you do want his edge.”
Implied in that message is that Beane concluded Gardner-Johnson has a reputation for not being a good teammate, and for taking cheap shots in practice.
So far, the Bills seem to like him. Defensive coordinator Jim Leonard calls Gardner-Johnson a player who “loves football,” and who “loves being in the building.”
The challenge isn’t to be in the building. The challenge is to stay in the building. Gardner-Johnson vows that he will.
“I’m going to win the next two out of three Super Bowls,” he told Graham. “How? Look where they placed me at. Look who’s my quarterback. If I got a fucking fighting chance, it’s over with.”
Frankly, that’s the kind of fire the underachieving Bills need from their new “firecracker” safety. And maybe it’ll be enough to have a “C” on Gardner-Johnson’s jersey when he walks onto the field for Buffalo’s Week 1 game at, yes, the Texans.
Having won his first MVP award in 2025, quarterback Matthew Stafford is coming off a year where he played some of the best football of his career.
But Stafford, who turned 38 in February, is clearly on the back nine of his career — if not the proverbial final few holes.
There was speculation that Stafford could retire after the 2025 season, but he put that to rest in his MVP acceptance speech. He and the Rams are now comfortable going year-to-year as it relates to Stafford continuing his career.
As Stafford gets older, he’s consulted with some of his former peers about potentially playing into his 40s: Tom Brady and Drew Brees.
He addressed that in a recent interview with Chris Long’s Green Light podcast.
“I talked to [Brady] a little bit, I’ve talked to Drew Brees a little bit about it as well,” Stafford said. “It is year-to-year because I think it’s fair to the team, I think it’s fair to me, my family — I don’t want to sit there and say, OK, 24 months from now, I’ve got to be ready to play another football season. I’m like, phew, that just seems like a lot. I know that I’m ready to play this year. And hopefully, I feel great at the end of next year, and I’m ready to play another one after that. And then maybe we just kind of keep going like that. But, committing to more than that feels a little bit daunting. And I think a little bit unfair to the team and myself.
“So, the last thing I want to do is sign some five-year extension, and after one year be like, ‘Oh man, I’m ready to retire. I want to spend time with my family.’ And they’re sitting there with four years on the books and had a bunch of planning done that I was going to be around. I don’t want to play football not all the way in it, too, and just be half-assed leading it.”
Stafford added that the Rams’ brass has been great about the situation.
“But, yeah, I don’t know,” Stafford said. “I don’t know how far I want to play. I know I’m excited about playing this year and then we’ll see after that.”
Stafford added that he’s spent time talking with Brady in each of the last two offseasons. But one of his most notable conversations with Brees happened last year.
“I think one of the things that surprised me is, I was talking to Drew — this was before last season — and he was like, ‘How old are you, again?’ I was like, ‘I’m 37.’ He’s like, ‘You might have your best five years of your career coming up.’ And I was like, ‘Huh,’” Stafford said. “I never really thought about it that way. You’re taught as a player in this league it’s a young man’s game and the older you get, you’re just kind of doing everything you can to try to stay up to par with everybody else. And Drew saying that kind of lit a fire under me, and it give you a little bit of belief that maybe an old guy can go out there and spin it around a little bit.
“Obviously, last year was a successful year for our team and for myself. And just gives you a little bit of energy moving forward and hope that that continues.”
Stafford completed 65 percent of his passes last season, leading the league with 4,707 yards and 46 touchdowns while throwing just eight interceptions. In the postseason, Stafford completed 55.5 percent of his throws for 936 yards with six touchdowns and one pick in three games.
There are several NFL teams that have taken notice of UFL players, bringing them onto their 90-man rosters.
As noted by the UFL on Tuesday, so far 23 players who played in the league this spring have been signed to NFL rosters.
The Lions have brought in the most UFL players, having signed four.
The Falcons, Cowboys, and Saints have each signed three players. The Bears, Broncos, Dolphins, and Eagles have signed two each, with the Bills and Steelers bringing in one.
Receiver has also been the most popular position for NFL teams, with the group accounting for 10 of the 23 signings. There have been four defensive backs, three defensive ends, and two offensive linemen signed.
