Kicker Younghoe Koo will take a shot at earning a job with the Saints this weekend.
The team’s roster for this weekend’s rookie minicamp shows that the former Falcons and Giants kicker will attend the camp on a tryout basis.
Koo was released by the Falcons after missing a game-tying field goal at the end of a Week 1 loss to the Buccaneers and then appeared in five games with the Giants later in the season. The most memorable moment of that run came when Koo failed to hit the ball on a field goal attempt in a loss to the Patriots, although the embarrassing moment wound up having a positive outcome for a Kentucky man who discovered he had a brain tumor after laughing himself into a seizure in the wake of Koo’s miscue.
Koo was 4-of-6 on field goals and 11-of-12 on extra points while with the Giants. He is 185-of-217 on field goals and 186-of-194 on extra points for his career.
Charlie Smyth is the returning kicker in New Orleans. The Saints also signed undrafted free agent Mason Shipley.
The criminal trial against free-agent receiver Stefon Diggs played out on Monday and Tuesday. It ended with an acquittal.
Now that the case is over, there are a few things to be drawn from the entire experience. Here are five of them.
1. The prosecution failed to properly vet the case.
The case didn’t fail because of the story the alleged victim, Mila Adams, told on the witness stand at trial regarding the alleged assault. The rest of her testimony undermined her credibility, to the point that the jury rejected her story as to the most important aspect of the case.
The prosecution knew or should have known there were flaws, both as to her broader story and as to her ability to sell it. They should have pressed her aggressively during their interviews of her, in an effort to ensure she would hold up under cross-examination — and, more importantly, to develop true conviction (or not) that her story would be believed by strangers to the situation.
Based on her testimony, Adams arguably didn’t behave in the days and hours after the alleged incident like someone who had been slapped and strangled. She had no obvious injuries in the immediate aftermath of the alleged incident; if she did, she failed to take even one photo or video of them with her phone.
Most importantly, her financial motivations were unclear. She claimed she had been underpaid during her time as Diggs’s personal, live-in chef. The evidence presented by the defense suggested otherwise. Also, she tried too hard to make it look like she wanted no compensation from Diggs for the alleged assault and strangulation. Her way of dealing with that wrinkle was to periodically attribute the involvement of others on her behalf as part of an effort to get workers’ compensation, even though she had no injury that prevented her from going about her normal activities — such as working.
These are all things the prosecution could have, and should have, realized without forcing Diggs to incur the expense, annoyance, and uncertainty of a trial. Undertaking that effort should be part of the obligation a prosecutor has to the people.
A police report can be filed by anyone, about anything. It’s ultimately for law enforcement, as controlled by the local prosecutor, to exercise their very broad discretion as to who does and doesn’t get criminally charged with prudence and justice.
Diggs, based on the evidence that came to light at trial, never should have been charged. He never should have been charged because the prosecution never should have believed it was going to convince a jury that Diggs was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
2. The prosecution failed to properly prepare the alleged victim.
Any witness who testifies at trial has to fully understand how the process will unfold. Mila Adams apparently had no clue that it would be far more exacting than showing up, giving her version of the key facts, and leaving.
She hadn’t been prepared to address in a persuasive way the obvious weaknesses in her testimony. Why didn’t she immediately pick up her phone and take pictures of any redness or swelling from allegedly being slapped and strangled? Why didn’t she say something to the people she was with later that day, or the next day? Why did she wait two weeks to go to police? Why was she working with others to seek money from Diggs?
It was as if she was surprised by the fact that she’d be questioned aggressively on those issues. At one point, the presiding judge had to tell her (without the jury present) how the question-and-answer process works — and to say that her entire testimony “may be stricken” if she continues to not answer questions and/or to attempt to insert unrelated narratives into her answers.
While it’s possible the prosecutors did everything in their power to get Adams to understand what would happen and they believed she understood, her performance shows either they didn’t properly prepare her for the experience and/or they grossly misjudged what would happen when it was time to face cross-examination.
3. The prosecutor highlighted the alleged victim’s poor performance.
In perhaps the most stunning moment of the entire trial, prosecutor Drew Virtue began his closing argument by admitting that Mila Adams did a poor job on the witness stand.
“Was Ms. Adams a perfect witness? No. She was argumentative, avoidave [sic], difficult. But does that mean you should throw away everything she said? No,” Virtue said. “You don’t have to like Ms. Adams. You don’t have to like the way she testified today and yesterday. But you do have to give her and her testimony the weight that it deserves.”
The weight it deserved was overrun by the things that made her an imperfect witness, and by the things that made her and/or her performance potentially unlikable by a jury.
Maybe it was Virtue’s way of making things right. Maybe he knew, after watching the cross-examination of Mila Adams, that Diggs should not be convicted.
If that was the case, Virtue should have dismissed the charges before letting the jury deliberate.
If Virtue was indeed still trying to secure a conviction, it was an abysmal closing argument. The best fact in the Commonwealth’s favor — that Adams said she urinated while being strangled — wasn’t even mentioned during the closing. This specific detail doesn’t seem to be something a person making it all up would think to add to the story. An aggressive and impassioned plea to the jury to focus on that one critical fact and to ignore the noise about unrelated issues could have made a difference.
We’ll never know whether it would have, because Virtue made no effort to try to argue the case that way.
4. The trial was boring.
Most jurors have had no prior exposure to the trial process. Their expectations are largely if not exclusively shaped by movies and TV shows they have seen. That places a burden on the lawyers in any case to try to meet those expectations — by making the process interesting and, ultimately, entertaining.
None of the four lawyers involved in the Diggs trial seemed to appreciate that basic reality. The jurors need to have their attention grabbed by the performance of the lawyers. They need to have a reason to want to pay close attention to whatever happens next. The lawyer’s job is to carefully fashion every aspect of the trial — from jury selection to opening statements to witness questioning to closing arguments — with an eye toward capturing and keeping the full and constant attention of the jury, and on establishing and maintaining their trust.
The trial was, frankly, boring. While it’s not supposed to be entertainment, the more it feels like entertainment, the more the jury will pay attention to what’s happening and, ultimately, answer the plea of the lawyer who has won their trust when the lawyer asks them to deliver the desired verdict.
5. Professional athletes need to be careful about who they surround themselves with.
Lawyer Mitch Schuster, who represented Diggs, said in a statement issued after the acquittal that “professional athletes have a target on their back.” The target comes from their money and fame. And they need to act accordingly.
Players need to be very careful about the people they welcome into their inner circle. Adams served as Diggs’s personal chef. She lived in his house. He surely wouldn’t have done that if he knew she’d eventually file a police report against him, especially if (as his lawyers claimed) her allegations were false.
Adams described the environment in Diggs’s house as a “circus.” She was part of it. And she nearly brought down the big top, once she became motivated (for whatever reason) to make a police report that resulted in a felony case to be pursued against him.
Is it easy to ensure the various members of the inner circle can be trusted? No. That doesn’t make it any less important. Just as the prosecution failed to properly vet Adams as a witness, Diggs failed to properly vet her as someone who could be trusted to work and to live in his home.
That’s the biggest takeaway for Diggs and any other professional athlete. Be careful about the people who are around you all the time. They’re the ones who will be the most likely to eventually say you did something you didn’t do.
The Saints will host two veteran quarterbacks at their rookie minicamp.
Kyle Trask and Easton Stick are among the players trying out this weekend, Nick Underhill of NewOrleans.Football reports. They will join rookie free agents Kaleb Blaha from Wisconsin-River Falls and Braylon Braxton from Southern Mississippi in a competition for the fourth spot on the depth chart.
Tyler Shough, Spencer Rattler and Zach Wilson are the top quarterbacks heading into organized team activities.
Trask, 28, entered the NFL as a second-round pick of the Bucs in 2022. He spent last season with the Falcons.
Trask has played seven regular-season games but has never started, going 4-for-11 for 28 yards.
Stick, 30, played for Saints head coach Kellen Moore with the Chargers in 2023. He was a fifth-round pick of the Chargers in 2019 and has appeared in six games with four starts, completing 64 percent of his passes for 1,133 yards with three touchdowns and one interception.
Tuesday’s acquittal of free-agent receiver Stefon Diggs on charges of strangulation and assault ends the criminal case against him. It does not end the NFL’s investigation of the situation.
From an NFL spokesperson: “We have been monitoring all developments in the matter which remains under review of the Personal Conduct Policy.”
The NFL applies a much lower standard of proof, when it comes to the evaluation of allegations of domestic violence or other conduct that falls under the Personal Conduct Policy. Tuesday’s verdict means only that the prosecution failed to prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.
Despite the obvious issues with the testimony of the alleged victim, Mila Adams, as to various topics related to the alleged incident, her testimony regarding the alleged incident was clear and unequivocal, and unrebutted. If she chooses to cooperate, the NFL could interview her and come to its own conclusion as to whether she was telling the truth as to the incident itself — despite the truth-telling capabilities that otherwise emerged while she was being cross-examined.
Also, Diggs exercised his constitutional right to not testify. He will not have that ability, if/when the NFL seeks to interview him.
However it goes from here, the acquittal doesn’t end the inquiry. And it wouldn’t be the first time that a player was disciplined despite not being charged criminally. In 2022, the NFL suspended Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson 10 games even though he was not indicted by a grand jury in Texas.
Despite the flaws inherent to the NFL’s in-house justice system (including the lack of subpoena power), the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination does not apply to the NFL’s investigative process. The jury didn’t hear his story. If the NFL wants to hear it, the NFL will.
Russell Wilson has reached a fork in the road in his career.
Wilson visited the Jets last week to talk to the team about coming aboard as a backup quarterback behind his former Seahawks teammate Geno Smith and there was a report later in the week that Wilson has also been talking to networks about a television role. Wilson confirmed that on Tuesday while saying he’s also mulling an offer from the Jets to continue his playing career.
“It was great,” Wilson said, via Ryan Dunleavy of the New York Post. “They offered me, and I’m trying to figure out what the next best thing is for me to do. I still know I can play ball at a high level, but also I have an opportunity to do TV, so we’ll see what happens.”
There’s no word on the details of the offer that the Jets made to Wilson, who began last season as the Giants’ starter but ended it as their third-string quarterback.
