It’s been more than two months since the story of the offseason landed out of the blue, courtesy of photos from the New York Post and (more importantly) clear and strong denials from the people involved.
Although the drip-drip of worthwhile developments has ended (that hasn’t stopped some from using anything/everything they can to harvest clicks and video views), there’s one unresolved issue that apparently will remain that way, into the summer.
Via Oli Coleman of the New York Post, The Athletic executive editor Steven Ginsberg recently provided an internal update regarding its investigation into the reporting of Dianna Russini, given the evidence that emerged of her relationship with Patriots coach Mike Vrabel.
“It’s going to take a few more weeks,” Ginsberg reportedly said. “There’s just a lot to go through, and we obviously want to take our time and be careful doing that. We will update everybody when we get to the end of that. We’ve also said that if we find anything that needs to be corrected, we will correct it along the way.”
In her April 14 resignation letter, Russini repeated her strong denial of wrongdoing that blamed the media for engaging in “self-feeding speculation that is simply unmoored from the facts.” The Athletic continued its investigation after her departure.
It’s unclear why it has taken so long for The Athletic, which is owned by the New York Times, to finish its investigation. As Coleman notes, the delay is creating internal concerns.
For now, it appears that The Athletic intends to continue its investigation, to conclude it, and to share its outcome. Even if The Athletic doesn’t publish any final report, chances are that someone within the broader Times apparatus will get it, and leak it.
Even without publication of the report (or a leak of it), The Athletic may go back and “correct” past reporting.
It’s a delicate balance for The Athletic and the Times. Photos of Vrabel and Russini from March 2020, which emerged after her resignation, raise questions about the quality of the vetting process and/or the oversight of Russini. Basically, what did management know, what should it have known, when did it know it, and when should have been known? A full and transparent investigation could make the publications, which already look bad as to their initial statement on the matter, come off even worse.
Brushing it all under the rug won’t be acceptable, either. The issue highlights pre-existing tensions between the Times and The Athletic. Will the employees of The Athletic be held to the same standard as employees of the Times?
Hovering over everything The Athletic says or does is the possibility of litigation, if Russini continues to adhere to her denials and is willing to back them up by filing a defamation case against anyone who says otherwise.
Titans Clips
Titans wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson wore No. 17 in his four seasons with the Giants. When he signed with the Titans, Robinson could have tried to buy the No. 17 from Chimere Dike, who earned All-Pro honors as a returner last season as a rookie, or pick another number.
He chose another number in honor of a friend.
“I didn’t want [No. 17],” Robinson told Kay Adams of FanDuel TV. “I was going in wanting a single digit, and then also my late friend, Rondale Moore, he wore No. 4. So that was kind of the reasoning behind me getting that number. Just kind of to honor him, and the time that he was here. That’s where I was going in. I wanted No. 4. I don’t know about Carnell [Tate] and exactly what went on with him and Chim. But, yeah, I was good with leaving 17 in the past.”
Tate wore No. 17 at Ohio State. The first-round wide receiver will wear No. 14 with the Titans.
Moore died in February from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Robinson and Moore trained together in the Louisville area the final two years of Robinson’s high school career and became fast friends.
There may be a reunion in Kansas City.
Veteran cornerback L’Jarius Sneed is visiting with the Chiefs on Thursday, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports.
Sneed, 29, played his first four seasons with the Chiefs before they traded him to Tennessee in the 2024 offseason. Sneed was instrumental in helping Kansas City win back-to-back Super Bowls in 2022 and 2023.
But his two seasons with Tennessee were marred by injury, as Sneed played just 12 games over the last two years. He was on the field for seven contests in 2025, recording 26 total tackles with three passes defensed.
The Chiefs have to replace two starting corners for 2026, as Trent McDuffie was traded to the Rams and Jaylen Watson followed him to Los Angeles in free agency.
In his 69 career games with 66 starts, Sneed has tallied 10 picks with 43 passes defensed, four forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries, and 6.5 sacks.
There’s not much physical resemblance between running backs Derrick Henry and Tony Pollard, but Pollard has proven to be a capable replacement for Henry in the Titans’ backfield.
Pollard has crossed the 1,000-yard mark in each of his two seasons with the Titans and he did the same in his final two seasons with the Cowboys, which means that he and Henry are the only two backs with four straight 1,000-yard campaigns under their belts as they head into the 2026 season.
Pollard said last week that he takes “a lot of pride in my consistency” and feels he’s still growing as a player in his eighth season.
“The work ethic, everything that I’m doing behind the scenes, it’s paying off,” Pollard said, via Teresa Walker of the Associated Press. “I slowly feel like throughout my career I’ve just slowly progressed more and more, and I feel like I’m still trending in that direction.”
Pollard’s steadiness has not led to a lot of winning for the Titans and that would be the best kind of progress for Tennessee to make over the rest of the year.
Tony Pollard has had four consecutive 1,000-yard seasons, the past two with the Titans. Still, the Titans were betting favorites to take Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love in the draft.
The Cardinals ended up drafting Love third overall, one pick ahead of the Titans, so it’s unknown whether Tennessee would have drafted Love.
Pollard was unbothered by talk of the Titans taking his replacement.
“I know in this league, it’s their job to try to replace you,” Pollard said, via Nick Suss of The Tennessean. “That’s what comes with the business. To be honest, I wasn’t really paying attention to it. Not much. I’d seen it, but I’ve got a wife and three kids and my wife’s pregnant, so I’ve got a lot of things that keep me occupied.”
Pollard and former Titan Derrick Henry are the only running backs who have 1,000 yards each of the past four seasons. In two seasons with the Titans, Pollard has 576 touches for 2,605 yards and 10 touchdowns in 33 games.
“The work ethic, everything that I’m doing behind the scenes, it’s paying off,” Pollard said, via Teresa Walker of the Associated Press. “I slowly feel like throughout my career I’ve just slowly progressed more and more, and I feel like I’m still trending in that direction.”
Now that the Supreme Court has declined to accept the NFL’s last-ditch effort to force all or part of the Brian Flores case into arbitration, the litigation will finally get going.
And the going could get nasty.
By way of background, I have handled many employment cases. From both sides. After working for years at a firm that focused on representing corporate clients that had been sued (no matter how strong or weak a given case may have been), I decided that I was more interested in representing individuals who had cases I believed to be strong.
So I’ve been there, done that. Many times.
Here’s the reality. No company that has been sued for wrongful termination will admit it. The witnesses will have locked into their stories months before it’s time to take the oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Proving that the party line is essentially a lie requires a relentless pursuit of circumstantial evidence to contradict the predictable denial of discrimination, retaliation, etc. (For example, if the plaintiff was fired for violating a specific workplace rule, it’s useful to show that others violated the same rule, without being fired or even disciplined.)
This means that, in the Flores case, his lawyers will aggressively pursue deposition testimony from a wide range of witnesses from the league office and the various teams that have been sued (so far, the Dolphins, Broncos, Giants, Texans, Cardinals, and Titans). Plenty of the witnesses (starting with the Commissioner and any owners) will not react well to being verbally poked, prodded, and pressed for anything beyond the predictable default position: “we didn’t do anything wrong.” These witnesses will emerge from the deposition process feeling anywhere from frustrated to flat-out pissed off.
Flores (along with the other plaintiffs, Steve Wilks and Ray Horton) will deal with the same kind of thing. The lawyers representing the NFL and its teams will look for anything they can find to make them look bad. They’ll dig and dig and dig some more to make the process as uncomfortable as it can be. They’ll throw mud at the wall. They’ll throw mud directly at the plaintiffs. They’ll try to catch them in any potential misstatement, big or small, that could then be characterized at trial as a lie.
In the deposition process, there’s a wide range of latitude when questioning a witness. With no jury present, the lawyers don’t have to worry about being so aggressive (to the point of being openly hostile) that it may alienate the people who will decide the case.
This is what I’d typically say to anyone who was interested in suing a current or former employer: “Think of the worst thing about yourself that you wouldn’t want other people to know. You don’t have to tell me what it is. Just think of what it is. Then, think of what would happen if that thing became public. And then assume that, at some point during this litigation, it will.”
The unofficial playbook for lawyers defending corporate clients against claims of illegal employment practices includes turning the tables on the plaintiff in the hopes of making the plaintiff look as bad as possible when it’s time to present the case to a jury. It gets messy. It gets ugly. And, like the Commissioner and owners who are questioned by Flores’s lawyers, Flores will emerge from his deposition feeling anywhere from frustrated to flat-out pissed off.
That’s how it goes. The discovery process becomes the legal equivalent of a street fight. Which could be bad for the league, the teams, and/or Flores, Wilks, and Horton.
As the snippets of deposition testimony come to light, it will be very good for my current business.
The 49ers have made an addition to their offensive backfield.
The agents for running back Jordan Mims announced that their client has agreed to a deal with the NFC West club. Mims appeared in one game for the Titans in 2025.
Mims initially signed with the Bills after going undrafted in 2023 and moved on to the Saints to make his regular season debut. He played two games as a rookie and 11 games the next season. He has 20 carries for 71 yards and 12 catches for 71 yards for his career.
Christian McCaffrey is the lead back for the 49ers. Jordan James, Isaac Guerendo, Patrick Taylor, Sincere McCormick, and third-round pick Kaelon Black are the other backs.
UPDATE 4:35 p.m. ET: The NFL’s daily transaction wire shows that the 49ers also signed running back Jermar Jefferson. They waived McCormick and placed defensive back Darrick Forrest on injured reserve.
The Titans have signed all of their 2026 draft picks.
First-round pick Keldric Faulk became the final member of the class to sign his rookie deal on Wednesday. The defensive end became the second of the team’s two first-round picks in April after the Titans exchanged picks with the Bills to move back into the first round.
Faulk was a three-year starter at Auburn and closed out his college time with 29 tackles, five tackles for loss, and two sacks in 2025. He had seven sacks in 2024 and the Titans will be hoping he can boost their pass rush off the edge as a rookie.
Jermaine Johnson, John Franklin-Myers, Jacob Martin, and Femi Oladejo are also part of that group in Tennessee.
Tuesday’s decision by the Supreme Court to not accept the NFL’s petition for appeal in the Brian Flores case means that all of his claims will be decided in court, not in arbitration.
And Flores recently added some new factual allegations to the various legal theories raised in his four-year-old litigation against the league and various teams.
In the third amendment to his initial civil complaint, Flores has added specific allegations of retaliation against the NFL.
The 483-paragraph, 106-page document includes at paragraphs 298 through 312 allegations that the NFL has retaliated against Flores since the filing of his initial lawsuit.
“Despite it being widely understood by the public and sports media that Mr. Flores should be considered one of the elite Head Coach candidates, Mr. Flores has not been offered a Head Coach job since starting this lawsuit,” the new complaint alleges at paragraph 311.
From paragraph 312 of the new complaint: “The NFL teams’ failure to hire Mr. Flores is consistent with an NFL Head Coach hiring process that is [sic] has for decades treated Black candidates disparately to white candidates and led to significantly disparate impact. It is also consistent with a culture of retaliation in which NFL teams close ranks against those who raise complaints of discrimination.”
The new factual allegations did not result in an additional cause of action; the existing lawsuit already includes multiple specific claims for retaliation.
As to the concept of retaliation based on the failure of teams to hire Flores as its head coach, the current complaint lists only one team — the Texans. In 2022, Houston made Flores one of three finalists for the job (along with Josh McCown and Jonathan Gannon) before hiring Lovie Smith instead. Flores claims that the decision to not hire him was motivated by the filing of his lawsuit against the NFL and multiple teams.
Although no specific other teams have been accused of failing to hire Flores in retaliation for filing and pursuing his lawsuit, the discovery process could lead to evidence that would support a finding that Flores was not given proper consideration by one or more teams with vacancies during the 2023, 2024, 2025, and/or 2026 hiring cycles.
The contention that the NFL maintains a “culture of retaliation” shows that Flores suspects his failure to get more interviews and/or any offers resulted from retaliation. Time will tell whether other specific teams are added to the case as defendants.
Flores’s current claims target the Dolphins, Texans, Broncos, and Giants. (His co-plaintiffs, Steve Wilks and Ray Horton, have sued the Cardinals and Titans, respectively.)
Obviously, Flores won’t be able to force any team to hire him. His aggressive legal arguments won’t make that any easier. Throughout the litigation, however, he has chosen doing what he believes is right over what would be expedient for his career.
And so he’ll continue to serve as Minnesota’s defensive coordinator, while waiting for a head-coaching opportunity that may never materialize. In the end, the NFL and/or specific teams could be on the wrong end of a verdict that requires them to pay Flores as if he has been a head coach since 2022.
Even if Flores never becomes a head coach again.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court declined to accept the NFL’s appeal in the case brought by Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores (and Steve Wilks and Ray Horton). The decision allows his case to proceed in court — and, in theory, to culminate with a public trial.
Both sides have issued comments in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“We respect the Supreme Court’s decision not to grant review,” a league spokesperson said. “Regardless of the forum, we are fully prepared to defend ourselves as this matter proceeds.”
Said Flores’s lawyers: “We are pleased that the Supreme Court declined to accept the NFL’s appeal. The NFL must now accept that its commissioner cannot be the arbitrator over discrimination claims against the league and its teams. We look forward to litigating these claims in court.”
Obviously, the league wants the forum to be its in-house arbitration process. It keeps things secret, and it tips the scales of justice in the league’s favor.
But, no, the NFL won’t suddenly surrender. It will aggressively challenge Flores at every turn, with the goal of securing a victory without having to take the case to trial.
When will that happen? It could take months. Maybe years. After all, it took nearly 52 months to get the case past the threshold question of whether the claims will be resolved in court or in arbitration.
