As it turns out, Harrison Smith isn’t quite done yet.
According to a report from NFL Network, Smith is signing a one-year contract to return to the Vikings for 2026.
The deal is worth $12.25 million with a maximum value of $16.25 million.
Smith, 37, appeared in 15 games with two starts for Minnesota last season, recording 10 passes defensed, two interceptions, a forced fumble, and a sack.
The six-time Pro Bowler has spent his entire career with the Vikings, who selected him at No. 29 overall back in 2012.
Smith has recorded 39 career interceptions, which ranks No. 4 in franchise history. He’s one away from tying Ed Sharockman for No. 3 on the franchise list, which is led by Paul Krause with 53.
The West Virginia football program hasn’t retired many numbers. Only two quarterbacks have gotten the honor. In 2021, WVU retired No. 9 for the 30-years-ahead-of-his-time phenomenon known as Major Harris. Second, as of today, the Mountaineers will retire No. 5 for the incomparable Pat White.
White won four bowl games in four years with the Mountaineers, including a win over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl (played that year in Atlanta) and a victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. He also authored a win over Georgia Tech (and Calvin Johnson) in the Gator Bowl, despite trailing 35-17 in the fourth quarter.
Here’s just a small taste of what he could do. (One of my favorite Pat White highlights didn’t happen on the field.)
White finished his four-year career with a record of 35-8. He threw for 6,049 yards and ran for 4,480 — a career average of 6.5 yards per carry. He generated 103 total touchdowns running and passing.
NBC’s Devin McCourty, who faced White three times while playing for Rutgers, called him “unstoppable.”
“He was the guy that you thought you had a good game plan for,” McCourty said. “On paper, everything was covered and you knew how they were going to attack you. Then the moment came to make the play on him, and it never happened. He made you miss or he made the great throw against good coverage. He was unstoppable.”
White entered the NFL at a time when the wildcat quarterback was becoming very popular. Drafted 44th overall by the Dolphins in 2009, he made cameo appearances in 13 games as a rookie. A January 2010 concussion that left him unconscious would be his final regular-season appearance.
White later played in the UFL, had a short stint with Washington, and finished his career in the CFL.
Regardless, White became one of the all-time greatest college football players, at any school. And if he were playing today, he likely would be scooped up by one of the big-money programs after only one year in Morgantown.
That’s really the saddest part of the story. White played at a time when college football players weren’t getting paid. He never got anything close to the value he generated for West Virginia or for college football generally.
Retiring his number is an appropriate gesture, even if the total debt owed by the entire state to White is far greater than that.
Thursday was a good day for Deion Sanders, on two counts. First, his Colorado team upset Georgia Tech to start the season 1-0. Second, the judge presiding over Shilo Sanders’s bankruptcy trial decided that Deion wouldn’t be required to testify in the case.
Via Brent Schrotenboer of USA Today, the presiding judge declared on Thursday that Deion was released from his subpoena.
The day didn’t go as well in court for Shilo. As Schrotenboer explains, a witness called by Shilo’s lawyers offered contradictory testimony on a key question in the case of whether injuries inflicted by Shilo on John Darjean, a security guard at his school, were “willful and malicious.”
The witness, Ruda Nash James, testified that she saw Darjean choking Shilo. During the testimony, Darjean’s lawyer played a recording of a phone call between James and Shilo’s mother from the day of the 2015 incident.
“Did you see his hand around Shilo’s neck?” Pilar Sanders asked James.
“I didn’t see the neck part,” James said. “I didn’t see all that.”
Oops.
Separately, Shilo’s lawyer was stopped by the judge (who will be deciding the case) from questioning Darjean about the possibility that his injuries were the result of his baseball career. As the judge pointed out, the current case isn’t about whether the fight with Shilo caused injuries that culminated in an $11.89 million judgment that created the debt Shilo hopes to discharge through bankruptcy. It’s only about whether the injuries were willfully or maliciously inflicted.
The biggest bit of drama on Thursday happened when Darjean collapsed after testifying, apparently due to his chronic pain.
It appears that the case was paused on Friday. Eventually, the judge will decide whether Shilo will, or won’t, carry the $11.89 million debt moving forward.
North Carolina G.M. Michael Lombardi resigned on Thursday, not long before a sweeping report from WRAL painted an ugly picture of the Tar Heels program. Defensive coordinator Steve Belichick, based on that report, could be next.
The eventual target could be coach Bill Belichick, also in a for-cause, you’ll-get-nothing-and-like-it outcome that would wipe out the remainder of his buyout.
Here’s the key portion of the WRAL report, as it relates to accounts from individuals who have been questioned by an external law firm: "[T]he people said they were asked whether they had reported any potentially questionable behavior to Bill Belichick.”
That’s an important potential finding, as it relates to Article 11 of Bill Belichick’s five-year, $50 million deal. The provision sets forth the various ways in which Belichick can be fired for cause.
The key language appears in Article 11(c): “Any action that is (i) taken by Coach or someone supervised by Coach, or (ii) taken at the direction of Coach or someone supervised by Coach, or (iii) known by Coach or someone supervised by Coach and not reported by Coach as required by this Agreement to the Department of Athletics Compliance office by the person supervised by coach, and that results in any material form of disciplinary finding, material action against, or material sanction for the Coach or the Program by the University’s athletics association (e.g. NCAA), athletics conference (e.g. ACC), University, or other regulatory body that exceeds an institutional letter of admonishment or reprimand.” (Emphasis added.)
Given the potentially serious subjects currently under investigation (reportedly including whether Steve Belichick “used drugs on the job or provided drugs to at least one player,” whether an unnamed member of the North Carolina recruiting staff had a sexual relationship with a player, and whether assistant coaches and the recruiting staff engaged in sexual relationships), a finding that Bill Belichick knew about one or more of those matters and failed to report them could provide the basis to fire him for cause, and in turn to cut off his buyout.
The mere existence of the investigation suggests that someone within the UNC power structure may be looking for a reason to fire Belichick for cause. At plenty of schools where the program is winning, the inclination will be to look the other way when evidence of potential violations emerges. Only when management is looking for a way out do the chapters and verses of the contract’s termination provision become a priority.
The Bills fired coach Sean McDermott two days after an overtime loss to the Broncos in the divisional round of the playoffs. That’s not stopping McDermott from rooting for his former team — or from believing that they can get farther in the first year after his exit than McDermott took them in nine seasons on the job.
“With what they’ve done, the moves that Brandon Beane has made, and the activity they’ve had on the roster, just so over the last, you know, ‘X’ amount of months has, I think, been very important,” McDermott told Rich Eisen on Friday. “And so I think, if you’re betting on the Super Bowl contender, they’re certainly one of them. I don’t see why, you know, why you wouldn’t bet on them? Because the games, at the end of the day, have to be played, right? It’s one thing on paper, but it’s another thing to play the gams.”
Eisen asked whether this means McDermott envisions a Rams-Bills Super Bowl, which would be a rematch of their Week 5 Monday night showdown.
“It';; be Bills-Rams,” McDermott said. “It’d be a great Super Bowl. Those Rams. Listen, people ask me all the time, ‘Hey, do you still root for your old team?’ And I said, ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Right? Of course I do. I mean, the impact that you want to have as a head coach on a team and a community, that’s one thing. But, man oh man, the impact that that team, that building, and that community had on me and my family, we’ll remember that for the rest of our lives, Rich, and that’s part of sports, right? The wins and the losses are important, but it’s, like, the impact you leave, or that is left on people and the fan base and them on you, and that’s the real part of sports.”
In the NFL, the real part of the game is that plenty of coaches are shown the door, after every season. McDermott was one of 10 who left, voluntarily or otherwise, after the 2025 season. And he’s clearly hoping that, after the 2026 season, he’ll have a chance to fill one of the inevitable vacancies to come.
Which means that his freedom to root for the Bills and only the Bills may be short-lived. Come 2027, McDermott could be coaching another team in the AFC — and possibly another team in the AFC East, if there’s eventually an opening with the Jets.
