Veteran linebacker Anthony Walker will not be back for a 10th season in the NFL.
Walker announced his retirement on Thursday via a post on his Instagram account.
Walker played at Northwestern before being drafted by the Colts in the fifth round in 2017. He spent four seasons in Indianapolis and had 343 tackles, 3.5 sacks, three interceptions, a forced fumble and two fumble recoveries during his time with the team.
The Browns signed Walker in 2021 and he spent three seasons in Cleveland. He had 170 tackles, a sack, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery in that action.
Walker wrapped up his career by playing for the Dolphins and the Buccaneers over the last two seasons.
Bucs Clips
At a time when tanking has become a regular talking point for the NBA, the NFL’s approach typically goes like this: See no tanking, hear no tanking, speak no tanking.
Commissioner Roger Goodell was required to break from that habit on Tuesday, when he was asked about tanking at the press conference that capped the league’s annual meeting.
“We obviously keep a keen focus on it, but we don’t see any evidence of that,” Goodell told reporters, via Omar Kelly of the Miami Herald.
He then pivoted to touting the competitive nature of the league, with “players and coaches who want to win, and they’re out there playing their hearts out.”
But the issue isn’t whether the players and (for the most part) coaches want to win. Tanking can happen when owners and executives who make a business decision about the cost of finishing, say, 3-14 instead of 4-13, and the benefit of landing higher in the draft order.
Late in a lost season, a team can legitimately decide to evaluate younger players, or (as the Raiders did in 2025) shut down key players who had been playing with injuries.
Tanking doesn’t happen often in the NFL, in large part because the season is short enough to minimize the number of games during which a bad team is dog paddling through the final legs of a lost season. But it has happened.
The best example of blatant tanking came in 2014, when the Buccaneers removed a large chunk of their starters to start the second half of a Week 17 game against the Saints. At halftime, the Buccaneers led 20-7. The Saints won the game, 23-20.
“Heck, they lost a game on purpose to us at the end of the season prior with [head coach] Lovie Smith,” then-Saints coach Sean Payton said in 2020. “They forced Lovie [Smith] to take his starters out of the game so they could get the one spot to draft Jameis [Winston].”
Payton explained the dynamic during a subsequent visit to PFT Live. The Buccaneers put down the sword to clinch the Jameis pick by removing their best players. The players who were inserted into the game were trying to win. They weren’t good enough to fend off the Saints.
During that same appearance, Payton also mentioned the Eagles’ decision to replace quarterback Jalen Hurts with Nate Sudfeld in a Week 17 loss to Washington, which didn’t give Philadelphia the first overall pick but bumped them higher in the draft order for 2021.
“Nate has been here four years and I felt he deserved an opportunity to get some snaps,” Pederson said after that game.
The value of having a higher pick in the draft is indisputable. In most years, teams sacrifice significant assets to move higher. For the teams that are out of the playoff conversation, the easier — and cheaper — way to move higher is to lose meaningless games.
Still, the first rule of Tank Club is you do not talk about Tank Club. On Tuesday, Goodell had no choice, given the direct question he was asked. In answering the question, however, he flatly denied the existence of Tank Club.
It may not have many members. It may not have annual meetings. But it exists. And, for the most part, the NFL has been able to conceal it.
Why do you think there’s no draft lottery in the NFL? If the NFL had one, it would become yet another money-for-nothing offseason tentpole, with massive ratings for a prime-time game show aimed at fueling hope for failing teams.
But the mere existence of a lottery becomes an acknowledgement of the temptation to tank. As evidenced by Goodell’s response to Tuesday’s question, the league will never do that.
Even if it’s hiding in plain sight.
When it comes to the performative antics of Florida attorney general James Uthmeier, we’ve urged the league to respond with three words: “Bring it on.”
On Tuesday, Commissioner Roger Goodell essentially said just that during his press conference at the NFL annual meeting.
Asked whether the Rooney Rule, which Uthmeier has demanded the NFL ditch as to the three Florida-based teams, is going anywhere, Goodell was clear: “No. No, the Rooney Rule has been around a long time. We’ve evolved it, changed it. We’ll continue to do that as circumstances warrant.”
The league may be changing the Rooney Rule, but it won’t be changing it to create less diversity in the selection of candidates for key jobs.
“Well, the one thing that doesn’t change is our values,” Goodell said. “We believe that diversity has been a benefit to the National Football League. We are well aware of the laws, where the laws are changing or evolving. We think the Rooney Rule is consistent with those. We certainly will engage with the Florida [attorney general] or anybody else, as we have in the past, to talk about the policies and what they are.
“As you know, the Rooney Rule is not a hiring mandate. It’s intended to try to help and has been used by industries far beyond football, far beyond the United States, to help identify candidates — a diverse set of candidates — bring in better talent, and gives us an opportunity to hire the best talent. Ultimately, clubs make those decisions individually and those are, I think, principles of how we try to get better — bring in the best talent.”
Uthmeier believes otherwise, obviously. And he has given the NFL a deadline of May 1 to scrap the Rooney Rule as to the Dolphins, Jaguars, and Buccaneers, or risk potential enforcement action.
Call his bluff. Let him do it. Stick to your principles.
It sounds like that’s what the NFL plans to do.
Defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul returned to the Buccaneers late last season and he wouldn’t mind another trip down memory lane.
Pierre-Paul addressed a post on X.com to the Giants letting them know he’s interested in continuing to play. The Giants drafted Pierre-Paul 15th overall in 2010 and employed him for his first eight seasons in the NFL.
“I’m still available and ready to take on some OT’s and dominate in run-stop football the GIANTS WAY,” Pierre-Paul wrote. “Let’s make it happen, Giant Fans, Giant Nation Let’s go!! I know I know I know.”
Pierre-Paul won a Super Bowl with the Giants and another in his first four-year stint with the Bucs. He then played for new Giants head coach John Harbaugh with the Ravens in 2022, played sparingly for the Saints and Dolphins in 2023 and then saw action in three games for Tampa last year after sitting out the 2024 season.
Pierre-Paul is not the only former Giant and Raven to come up in conjunction with a possible Harbaugh reunion this week. Wide receiver Odell Beckham is looking to return to the league and Harbaugh said he’s open to the idea on Monday.
The NFL is struggling to balance the P.R. and legal realities of diversity in key positions with a potential political assault from those who regard the three-letter “DEI’ acronym as a four-letter word. Through it all, the results speak for themselves.
Exhibit A? The 2026 photo of the NFL’s head coaches. Exhibit B? The 2026 photo of the NFL’s General Managers.
Falcons G.M. Ian Cunningham, whose promotion from assistant G.M. in Chicago somehow didn’t result in the Bears receiving a pair of third-round compensatory picks, addressed the situation on Monday, in comments to David Brandt of the Associated Press.
“Just from my position, especially being a Black man, there’s still work to be done,” Cunningham told Brandt. “Now that I’m in this position and have this platform, I’m going to be intentional about what we do from a grassroots effort to a director level. . . . I do think it’s important to give people of all races and sexes a chance to be in a position to further their career.”
Cunningham’s comments come only days after Florida took aim at the Rooney Rule as discriminatory against white men, and in the aftermath of Steelers owner Art Rooney II acknowledging that “the environment has changed.”
The environment has changed, at the national level and in plenty of states. The law has not. And the NFL’s historical performance as it relates to the hiring of coaches and General Managers — coupled with the league’s decision more than 20 years ago to make interviews of minority candidates for the most coveted positions mandatory — shows that the longstanding legal standard has not been met.
The problem is that there has been no real accountability. And the irony is that the first governmental effort to enforce the law comes from the perspective of the demographic that has benefited from the league’s traditional hiring practices.
The league undoubtedly hopes the Florida problem will go away. That the demand made by Florida attorney general James Uthmeier to abandon the Rooney Rule as to the Dolphins, Jaguars, and Buccaneers is more performative than substantive.
Whatever Uthmeier’s motivations and intentions, the NFL should do the right thing. Don’t run. Don’t hide. Stand up and say, in a clear, loud voice, “Bring it on.”
Would that be good for business? Probably not. But doing the right thing isn’t always good for business. The truest test of an organization’s true character is whether it will do the right thing when it could be bad for business.
Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield’s contract status has been a topic of conversation around the team this offseason and General Manager Jason Licht didn’t have much of an update on Monday.
Mayfield is heading into the final year of his current deal and Licht said on PFT Live last month that “our plans revolve around Baker in the future,” but that there was no timeline in place to reach agreement on a new pact. Nothing has changed about the team’s view of Mayfield as their quarterback over the last few weeks and nothing has changed in terms of the imminence of a contract extension.
“Baker is still our quarterback,” Licht said, via Rob Maaddi of the Associated Press. “He’s one of the toughest guys on the team. He’s a great leader. Everything kind of revolves around the quarterback spot. At some point, I’m sure we’ll figure something out. There’s no timetable on that.”
The Bucs parted ways with two longtime faces of the franchise this offseason, but an extension will show that they believe Mayfield’s presence will allow them to continue competing for NFC South titles in the years to come.
Todd Bowles will be back as the Buccaneers’ head coach in 2026, but two franchise mainstays will not be in Tampa with him.
Linebacker Lavonte David has retired after 14 seasons with the team and wide receiver Mike Evans left after 12 seasons to sign with the 49ers as a free agent. During an appearance on NFL Network on Monday, Bowles discussed how difficult it will be to move on without the two veterans.
Bowles said that David’s decision “really stung me” because of how much he has meant to the defense over the years.
“He was the guy off the field that got everyone going,” Bowles said. “He practiced that way, he carried himself that way. He was, right now, the cream of the crop of who you want to coach and how you want that guy to play. He was that guy. He was that guy for us for 14 years. I can’t say enough good things about him. He was like a brother to me.”
Bowles called it “very hard to see [Evans] leave sentimentally and professionally” and that they will miss the wideout’s presence on offense, but he also noted that Emeka Egbuka, Chris Godwin and Jalen McMillan mean the cupboard isn’t bare at receiver now that Evans is in the NFC West.
The Eagles are adding a former first-round pick to their defense.
Via multiple reporters, General Manager Howie Roseman said at the annual league meeting on Sunday that Philadelphia is signing edge rusher Joe Tryon-Shoyinka to a one-year deal.
Tryon-Shoyinka, 26, was the No. 32 overall pick for the Bucs in 2021. He spent his first four seasons with Tampa Bay before signing a one-year deal with Cleveland last offseason. He was then traded to Chicago midway through the season.
In 16 total games last year — eight for the Browns, eight for the Bears — Tryon-Shoyinka registered 22 total tackles with one tackle for loss and a pair of QB hits.
He’s appeared in 82 total games with 45 starts, registering 15.0 sacks with 22 tackles for loss and 37 quarterback hits.
After Florida attorney James Uthmeier posted a video on Wednesday demanding that the NFL suspend the Rooney Rule, the team owned by the man after whom the rule is named had no comment.
On Friday, Steelers owner Art Rooney II — the son of Dan Rooney, the namesake of the Rooney Rule — had a comment.
“There’s no question that the environment has changed in recent years,” Rooney told Kalyn Kahler of ESPN. “We do have an obligation to make sure that our policies comply with the laws, whatever the law is, and whatever the changes in law might be. We’ve got to look at that and make sure we’re in compliance. . . . That’s just the environment we’re existing in today.”
The laws haven’t changed. The attitude toward them has. No state attorney general has ever investigated the NFL for decades of questionable hiring practices when it comes to race. Now, out of the blue, a red-state attorney general is attacking the Rooney Rule as being discriminatory on the basis of race.
Rooney’s comments have relevance far beyond Florida. They explain the NFL’s tiptoeing through the DEI minefield, dumping the Accelerator program last year before bringing it back in 2026 and expanding it to include white candidates.
The NFL has tried to strike the balance between saying all the right things and doing as little as possible. Now, the league is faced with a dilemma. Paying lip service to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts has invited an attack from Florida. What the NFL does from here could invite a social-media assault from one specific location in Washington, D.C.
It also could spark an effort by a blue-state attorney general or two to pluck low-hanging fruit that has been hanging there for decades.
On Wednesday, Florida attorney general James Uthmeier demanded that the NFL suspend the Rooney Rule as to the three franchises based there: the Dolphins, Jaguars, and Buccaneers.
On Friday, the NFL issued a statement regarding Uthmeier’s correspondence.
“We are reviewing the letter,” NFL executive V.P. Jeff Miller said. “We believe our policies are consistent with the law and reflect our commitment to fairness, opportunity, and building the strongest possible teams.”
Uthmeier believes otherwise. It’s part of the current assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Programs meant to rectify past instances of systemic discrimination have been met with claims that those programs are discriminatory.
Obviously, the NFL’s Rooney Rule doesn’t mandate the hiring of minority coaches. The goal is to get owners to slow down, to take a look at a broader pool of candidates. Even with it, the NFL’s collection of head coaches doesn’t begin to reflect the demographics of its rosters.
The situation puts the NFL in a delicate spot. It’s possible that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is watching, waiting, and ready to start posting social-media attacks in the wee small hours of the morning.
For now, the NFL has said something. Even if it’s not much of anything. Starting this weekend at the annual meetings, owners undoubtedly will be asked about the situation. The league presumably hopes they’ll say nothing more than, “We are reviewing the letter.”
