Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart visited the Browns today, ESPN reports, with a visit to the Raiders next on Dart’s itinerary.
Dart previously has had a private workout with the Browns, who are looking for a starting quarterback. Kenny Pickett is the only healthy quarterback on the Browns’ roster.
Dart visited the Steelers last week.
He also has spent “considerable time” with the Giants, Saints and Rams, per ESPN.
Dart completed 69.3 percent of his passes for 4,279 yards with 29 touchdowns and six interceptions during his senior season. He appeared in 45 games in his career.
It doesn’t appear Shedeur Sanders will go No. 1 overall to the Titans, so where will he go?
Plenty of teams have interest in the University of Colorado quarterback.
Sanders, who has visited the Giants and Browns, will take a top-30 visit to Pittsburgh on Thursday, Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
The Steelers, who draft 21st, did not meet with Sanders at the Scouting Combine, and General Manager Omar Khan, coach Mike Tomlin and offensive coordinator Arthur Smith did not attend Colorado’s Pro Day on Friday.
Sanders drew plenty of interest from scouts at his Pro Day. Eric Galko, director of football operations for the Shrine Bowl, had Sanders completing 58 of 63 passes during the workout with three of the incompletions drops by his receivers.
In three seasons at Jackson State, including a redshirt season he didn’t throw a pass, Sanders passed for 6,976 yards, 70 touchdowns and 14 interceptions. The Tigers were 23-3. Colorado went 13-11 the past two seasons as Sanders completed 71.8 percent of his passes for 7,364 yards, 64 touchdowns and 13 interceptions.
The Titans canceled their private workout with Sanders, presumably because they have settled on University of Miami quarterback Cam Ward.
The Aaron Rodgers watch continues, even if most are no longer paying much attention.
Attention is the key word. For some, the thinking is that Rodgers hopes to be the guy everyone is thinking and talking about.
The truth seems to be more complicated, and nuanced. He visited the Steelers 18 days ago. There’s a theory that he’ll show up for Wednesday night’s Pat McAfee event in Pittsburgh, with Rodgers making a WWE-style entrance as his theme music plays before announcing to an enraptured audience that he’s signing with the hometown team.
It makes sense, if he knows he’s joining the Steelers. Some still believe he’s waiting to see whether the Vikings will decide to pivot from J.J. McCarthy, and that he prefers Minnesota to Pittsburgh.
The notion that Rodgers would continue the Brett Favre career arc seems odd, to say the least. Regardless, if he knows what he’s doing, why wait? Unless the goal is to avoid part, most, or all of the offseason program, there’s no reason to not put pen to paper.
There’s still a chance he’ll retire.
Will he make a decision before the draft? The Steelers need a young quarterback, with or without him. Besides, coach Mike Tomlin has called training camp the line of demarcation.
So the wait continues. Unless Rodgers does the discount double check at PPG Paints Arena tomorrow night, we still might not know anything about his plans for 2025. For a while.
Offensive tackle Calvin Anderson will be back in Pittsburgh.
The Steelers announced on Monday that they have signed Anderson to a two-year deal. They did not announce any other terms.
Anderson signed with the Steelers last September and appeared in four games before landing on injured reserve. He was activated ahead of their Wild Card game in the playoffs, but did not play in the loss to the Ravens.
Anderson appeared in five games for the Patriots in 2023 and 41 games over three seasons with the Broncos. He started 12 times for Denver and made a pair of starts during his time with New England.
Regardless of where Colorado coach Deion Sanders thinks Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders will be picked, the process will play itself out in 17 days.
And the sports books are taking action on where Shedeur will land.
Both DraftKings and FanDuel have the Saints as the favorites to select Sanders. DraftKings has the Saints at +300. New Orleans holds the ninth overall pick in the draft.
The Giants are next, at +350. The Browns have +425 odds. The Steelers are 7-1. The Jets, Raiders, and Rams are 10-1.
Few think the Giants would take Sanders at No. 3. In theory, they could trade down and take him later. The Raiders, at No. 6, have a contract with Geno Smith that doesn’t eliminate them from the quarterback conversation. The Jets have the 7th pick, and the Justin Fields contract cries out “bridge” quarterback.
If Sanders slips past the Saints at No. 9, he could slide. Or, more accurately, someone could trade up to get him.
That dynamic makes the eighth pick (held by the Panthers) a potential hot spot. Eight years ago, the Chiefs cut the line in front of the Saints to get Patrick Mahomes. This year, someone could trade up with the Panthers to get Sanders before the Saints do.
The floor seems to be the Steelers at No. 20. Even if Aaron Rodgers signs, they need a long-term answer. Kenny Pickett wasn’t. Maybe Shedeur would be.
The Steelers think they’ve done enough in free agency not to need to reach for any position in the draft.
That’s what Steelers General Manager Omar Khan tries to accomplish each year, and it’s his feeling heading into the 2025 NFL draft that the Steelers don’t have any one need they have to hit.
“Our goal is always to put ourselves in a position where we don’t have to take a guy at a specific position,” Khan said in a video made by the Steelers. “And I feel like we’ve added some key pieces to what we’re trying to accomplish. And this draft is, there’s some really good players in this draft that can help us at various positions. And we’ve been working hard at trying to make sure we set our board right, and there’s more work to come. This is the next three or four weeks are going to be really important, but we’re right in the middle of it and feel good about it.”
The position that’s the greatest need for the Steelers right now is quarterback, but they appear more likely to address that need by signing Aaron Rodgers than by drafting a quarterback who could start as a rookie. The Steelers may be looking for depth on the offensive or defensive line, the secondary or at running back, but there’s not one glaring need they have to fill, and that’s the way they want to approach the draft.
Ray Seals, who became notable for making it to the NFL without ever going to college, has died at the age of 59.
Seals was a star football player at Henninger High School in Syracuse, but he decided not to go to college and to start working after graduating high school in 1984 to help support his family. Seals didn’t quit playing football, however, joining a semipro team in Syracuse.
Seals played so well in semipro football that a football coach from the area began calling around to NFL teams to urge them to sign him as an undrafted free agent. The only NFL head coach who would listen was Ray Perkins of the Buccaneers, who had previously met Seals on a recruiting trip when Seals was in high school and Perkins was head coach at Alabama. Perkins agreed to give Seals a shot.
The Buccaneers ended up signing Seals in 1988, although he didn’t play at all that year. In 1989 he played as a backup in two games and in 1990 he played as a backup in eight games, but in 1991 he earned a starting job and was a starter on the defensive line in Tampa Bay for three years.
In 1994 Seals signed a free-agent contract with the Steelers, and he was a starter in Pittsburgh for two years, including the 1995 season when he started all 16 games in the regular season and all three games in the postseason, concluding in Super Bowl XXX, where the Steelers lost but Seals had a good game, including a sack of Troy Aikman.
In addition to that sack of Aikman, Seals is remembered for his role in the first completion — and first catch — of Brett Favre’s Green Bay Packers career: Favre threw a pass, Seals tipped it into the air, Favre caught it, and Seals tackled him behind the line of scrimmage.
After missing the entire 1996 season with an injury, Seals signed with the Panthers in 1997 and played one more season, then signed with the Bengals in 1998 but never got on the field.
Garry Acchione, Seals’ teammate from their time in Syracuse, told Syracuse.com that the people who played with him always knew he had what it took to make it to the NFL.
“We were all behind him. We were rooting for him like you couldn’t believe, to have that opportunity to make it,” Acchione said. “I never had a doubt in my mind that he was good enough to play in the NFL, I mean, we all knew it. It’s just, OK, how do you get him there? How does he get the opportunity? Because back then, I mean, he didn’t come out of college. You’re not going to just walk onto a pro team and make it.”
But that’s what Seals did, going from semipro football to a sack in the Super Bowl, completing one of the most unique stories in NFL history.
The Steelers are still waiting to see if Aaron Rodgers will end up signing with them for the 2025 season. But on Friday, they brought a potential quarterback of the future into their building.
According to multiple reports, former Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart was among the team’s top 30 pre-draft visits today.
Dart, 21, is considered to be among this year’s top prospects at quarterback. The Steelers have the No. 21 overall pick in the first round but traded their second-round pick at No. 52 overall to the Seahawks as part of the deal for receiver DK Metcalf.
While there was one report head coach Mike Tomlin was not slated to be at the team facility on Friday, Steelers senior director of communications Burt Lauten shot that down as inaccurate.
In addition to Dart, the Steelers hosted Iowa State receiver Jaylin Noel, Oregon defensive lineman Jamaree Caldwell, and South Carolina safety Nick Emmanwori for top-30 visits on Friday.
The Falcons are waiting for an opportunity to trade quarterback Kirk Cousins. Cousins is waiting until after the draft to decide whether he’ll waive his no-trade clause.
In four weeks, we’ll all know whether one or more teams will still be looking for a starting quarterback. At this point, however, the universe seems to be fairly small. It consists of two possibilities: the Steelers and the Browns.
The Titans possibly could join that mix, if they trade the first overall pick and don’t draft quarterback Cam Ward. (There’s still a chance that will happen, in part because the Titans in recent years have done some unconventional things.) For now, though, it’s Cleveland or Pittsburgh for Cousins.
So which one would want him? To the extent the Steelers witnessed his post-Achilles struggles in Week 1 last year, they might not be thrilled about casting their lot with a player who has lost the footrace with Father Time. (Especially since they did precisely that a year ago.) But if Aaron Rodgers doesn’t sign (and he still has his arm, despite his advanced age), the Steelers will be stuck.
The Browns make more sense than the Steelers, for a couple of reasons. First, coach Kevin Stefanski spent two years with Cousins in Minnesota. And Stefanski parlayed a final-eight season from Cousins into the job Stefanski now has. Second, Cousins has a low salary for a veteran starter — and the Browns could instantly restructure his $27.5 million, creating nearly $21 million in cap space.
Cousins also could decide to play the waiting game. If/when a starter elsewhere gets injured, he could waive his no-trade clause and rush to the rescue. In the interim, he’d be getting paid his full salary from the Falcons.
There’s still a chance Cousins will simply be a highly paid understudy to Michael Penix Jr., and that the Falcons will cut Cousins after the 2025 season. The final pieces won’t begin to fall into place until later this month, once the picks have been made and the depth charts come into far greater focus.
For now, Steelers, Browns, Falcons seem to be the top (and perhaps only) options.
Steelers owner Art Rooney II sounds confident that Aaron Rodgers will sign with his team soon.
“We keep hearing that he’s, I guess, headed in our direction, and so that seems to be all signs are positive so far,” Rooney said, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN.
Rooney acknowledged, however, that he didn’t expect to still be working on this in April, and that the Steelers can’t wait forever for Rodgers to make up his mind.
“No. Didn’t envision it taking this long,” Rooney said. “Not forever, but a little while longer.”
Rooney said it was a “good sign” that Rodgers spent time working with new Steelers wide receiver DK Metcalf last weekend and that there are “positive signs” that a deal will get done.
