The draft is history, so it’s time to focus on the important issues of the offseason: What exactly is Jerry Jones’s plan for the Cowboys? Is Mike McDaniel cooking up something new for the Dolphins offense? And have the Panthers hit rock bottom yet?
The 2024 NFL draft is over, but there’s plenty of intriguing storylines across the league to capture our collective interest through the rest of the spring. Us sickos maintain interest through the May schedule release and rookie minicamps, though more stable individuals should use the next three months as an opportunity to actually go outside and enjoy literally anything else but the constant flow of roster news. Regardless of what camp you’re in, let’s discuss some of the league’s biggest questions as we head into the rest of the offseason:
Just how old is Jerry Jones?
Eighty-one. The famed Dallas Cowboys owner, president, and general manager is 21 years older than the NFL’s next-oldest GM and more than 30 years older than the average age for today’s GMs. Hell, he’s a month older than Joe Biden. Way back in Jones’s first year as a Cowboys executive, he drafted future Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman with the no. 1 pick in 1989. Aikman led the team to three Super Bowl wins, the last coming at the end of the 1995 season. Dallas hasn’t made it through the divisional round in any year since. Jones is stuck in the past, and it seems like it is costing the Cowboys their future.
Quarterback Dak Prescott, edge rusher Demarcus Lawrence, and guard Zack Martin—all careerlong Cowboys—enter the 2024 season on expiring contracts. Phenom wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, who caught an NFL-high 135 passes for 1,749 yards and 12 touchdowns en route to a first-team All-Pro nod in 2023, also isn’t under contract beyond this season. Lamb and star pass rusher Micah Parsons should be in line for multi-year, top-of-market extensions, and their price tags are only going up as others at their respective positions get new contracts (like receivers Amon-Ra St. Brown and AJ Brown, and edge rushers Josh Allen and Brian Burns).
That the Cowboys are in this future contract hell shouldn’t surprise anyone. Jones told reporters in January the team is “all in” for 2024 and “not building for the future.” He said “all in” three times in a row in his predraft press conference last month. Stop pretending his doodles have any hidden messages; Jones is telling us exactly how he views this upcoming season. Jones’s chips are in the middle of the table, and his cards are laid out. Could he reverse course, reach into his billion-dollar pockets and make sure his core stars—particularly Prescott—are locked in beyond this season? Sure. But Jones sure feels dug in—and 2024 is looking like a farewell tour for the most recent era of Jones’s Cowboys, like a ride off into the sunset, win or lose. Jones even re-signed Ezekiel Elliott off the least-productive year of the running back’s career just to come along for the ride. Jones is all in, but who does that leave out in 2025? Prescott? Lamb? Jones himself? I guess we’ll all find out when the Cowboys inevitably collapse in embarrassing fashion in January.
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Will a big-name wide receiver get traded before the start of the season?
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins has reportedly already requested a trade twice this offseason, and I’m losing track of who San Francisco 49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk is and isn’t following on Instagram. Are either of these receivers going to be moved ahead of the season? Could Deebo Samuel, not Aiyuk, be the odd one out in San Francisco? The trades this offseason for Stefon Diggs, Keenan Allen, Jerry Jeudy, Diontae Johnson, and Rondale Moore didn’t really move me; I want to see a star traded ahead of September.
Any team with a pulse should be hot on the phones looking to add Higgins, Aiyuk, or Samuel, but the teams best positioned to make a deal considering their quarterback timelines are the New England Patriots and Washington Commanders. Both teams just invested top-three picks in rookie passers that could start right away, and neither team should shy away from adding firepower at receiver to best develop their young starters. (Yes, not even Terry McLaurin and Jahan Dotson should prevent Washington from surrounding rookie Jayden Daniels with more weapons.) The Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers are on similar timelines with quarterbacks on rookie contracts, but it’s hard to fathom either team making a positive move in any trade scenario at this point. (If anything, Denver reportedly has received trade offers for veteran pass catcher Courtland Sutton, who could follow Jerry Jeudy out of town.) Other teams that could get aggressive without quarterbacks on rookie contracts are the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals. The Steelers are spending next to nothing on their quarterback room with Russell Wilson and Justin Fields, so they might as well spend big on a veteran receiver. And the Cardinals adding Marvin Harrison Jr. at the top of the 2024 draft shouldn’t prevent them from upgrading over Michael Wilson and Greg Dortch for the WR2-3 spots.
Just how sad is the situation going to get in Carolina?
Is it even fair to still be laughing at the Panthers? Probably. But the scene is only getting more morose with every new piece of content that comes out of Charlotte. (Sorry, Adam Thielen.) Maybe it’s best to start with a list of the recent punchlines:
- The Panthers fired head coach Frank Reich after a 1-10 start last season; outside of Bill Belichick’s one-day stint with the Jets, it was the shortest stint for an NFL head coach in the last 45 years. (Urban freakin’ Meyer lasted longer in Jacksonville.)
- A month later, Panthers owner David Tepper threw a drink at a Jaguars fan during a game, resulting in a $300,000 fine from the league (which should pale in comparison to the amount of embarrassment it caused for him and the franchise).
- Carolina finished the season with the league’s worst record. But because the team traded away future draft capital in its move up to the no. 1 pick for Bryce Young in the 2023 draft, Carolina had to sit and watch as the Bears drafted generational QB prospect Caleb Williams with that pick.
- In March, Carolina traded edge rusher Brian Burns to the Giants for second- and fifth-round picks—that coming not even two years after the Los Angeles Rams reportedly offered multiple first-round picks for Burns at the 2022 trade deadline. Burns joined running back Christian McCaffrey, wide receiver DJ Moore, and quarterback Cam Newton on what is now a running list of former Panthers stars pushed out of the building since Tepper bought the team.
- Roughly a week before the 2024 draft, ESPN reported that Tepper “often sifts through data to critique his coach’s play calling,” which played a part in the team passing on Bill Belichick as its head coach and instead opting for former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Dave Canales. (If you don’t think that’s hilarious, I don’t know what to tell you.)
- Hours before the start of the first round of the draft last week, Tepper entered a local Charlotte restaurant after seeing a sign out front that read “PLEASE LET THE COACH & GM PICK THIS YEAR.” Charlotte television station WBTV obtained video footage from the restaurant that showed Tepper taking an employee’s hat off his head at the start of what could only have been a terribly awkward, fruitless conversation. Now, the same restaurant is still taking shots at Tepper a week later.
- Even things that should be exciting for Panthers fans, like the fresh start that comes with offseason workouts under a new coaching staff, wind up looking terribly depressing.
Bryce, Year 2. pic.twitter.com/Gwy9VoCmmp
— Darin Gantt (@daringantt) April 23, 2024
Charming rookie wide receiver Xavier Legette may be the team’s only saving grace at this point. His accent is a showstopper by itself, and his unique blend of size and speed immediately make him the most physically talented pass catcher on the team. He will need to be all of that and more to help Carolina out of the hole Tepper has dug his team into.
The problems begin with Young. The Charlotte restaurateur who clowned Tepper is right. It certainly seems like Tepper was behind the decision to trade up to no. 1 in 2023, then use that pick on Young to be the franchise’s savior. By all measures, Young so far has fallen well short of the mark. Seventy-two different quarterbacks have had 200-plus dropbacks in their rookie seasons since the 2000 season; Young’s 2023 campaign ranks dead last among them in EPA per dropback in obvious passing situations (second, third, and fourth downs of 7-plus yards). Tepper’s hiring and firing decisions and drink-tossing are embarrassing, but missing on Young will set the team back if the QB doesn’t flip the script in 2024. Per FanDuel’s win total projections, the Panthers are tied for the lowest implied market probability to clear 5.5 wins of any team in the league. Stop laughing! It’s not funny!
How soon will C.J. Stroud and Jordan Love be considered in the top tier of NFL quarterbacks?
C.J. Stroud of the Houston Texans and Jordan Love of the Green Bay Packers set the league on fire in 2023 in their first full seasons as NFL starting quarterbacks. Stroud won Offensive Rookie of the Year; Love finished second in the league in passing touchdowns. Both quarterbacks won a playoff game in convincing fashion. Love closed out the regular season ranked fifth among all starters in EPA per dropback (0.12); Stroud finished sixth (0.11). How quickly the league’s fans will move on from other young success stories (Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Trevor Lawrence) and old heads (Matthew Stafford, Aaron Rodgers) if Stroud and Love take another leap in 2024 will be eye-opening. Both quarterbacks have every reason to make us believe they will continue their ascent.
Texans offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik already took head coach interviews after just one season working with Stroud, and Packers head coach and offensive play caller Matt LaFleur should continue to be revered as one of the league’s best. Green Bay’s flight of young pass catchers will only continue to get better as they develop with LaFleur and Love at the helm, and the team added some firepower this offseason in former Las Vegas Raiders running back Josh Jacobs and first-round offensive tackle Jordan Morgan. It’s the same sweet song in Houston, too. Wide receiver Nico Collins is entering a contract year coming off a monster season with Stroud in 2023. Veteran wideout Stefon Diggs could be a one-year wonder for the team after the team traded for him and renegotiated his contract in early April. The Texans also traded a late-round pick for former Bengals running back Joe Mixon and invested a second-round pick in Notre Dame’s Blake Fisher to compete at right tackle. All of the stars are aligning for both Love and Stroud to enter a new stratosphere in 2024.
Photo by Nick Cammett/Diamond Images via Getty Images
Who will survive the New York Jets’ last stand?
The Jets remain in win-now mode, but with a roster full of players with injury questions. Aaron Rodgers is 40 years old and coming off a torn Achilles. New receiver Mike Williams, signed in free agency from the Chargers, will turn 30 years old in October and is coming off a torn ACL. Starting offensive tackles Tyron Smith and Morgan Moses are both 33 years old, and Smith hasn’t played more than 13 games in a single season since 2015. Running back Breece Hall is a young star, but he suffered a torn ACL in 2022 and in his return last year, didn’t play more than 40 snaps in a game until Week 6. If all of those players manage to stay healthy, this could be a banner season in New York. But if not … the axe could be coming for everyone, starting with general manager Joe Douglas and head coach Robert Saleh. Jets ownership already gave Douglas and Saleh a second chance in Rodgers after swinging and missing on former no. 2 pick Zach Wilson, who was traded to the Broncos for a late Day 3 pick swap not even two weeks ago. Do they wish Rodgers had played more than four snaps last season? Yes. Do they also wish he wasn’t a weekly guest on The Pat McAfee Show, a friend of Robert Kennedy Jr., and chopping it up about Dr. Fauci on any podcast that will have him? Probably yes! Either way, their bed is made. Rodgers and Co. will either lead the Jets into the postseason and keep Douglas and Saleh in New York after 2024, or they’ll drag them into the rabbit hole and onto another team. Tune in to McAfee to get a play-by-play of how all of that is going throughout the summer.
What is Mike McDaniel cooking?
With the way the Dolphins’ season fizzled out in January, people forget just how hot Mike McDaniel’s team was to start the season. They put up 70 points against the Broncos in Week 3, and averaged 0.21 EPA per rush and 37.2 offensive points per game in Weeks 1-6; both stats ranked third-best of any team this millennium. The Ringer’s Steven Ruiz and Ben Solak called the Dolphins offense “the most dangerous in the league” and “more than just a big-play offense” within nine days of each other in September. Before the first month of the season ended, McDaniel’s new cheat motion—the one where he asked his really fast players to run really fast horizontally right as the center was snapping the ball—was the most copied offensive concept across the entire league. McDaniel used last offseason to add wrinkles to his offense that literally changed the game of football after a streaky first year as an offensive play caller in 2022. What he does this offseason to continue to elevate quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and his uniquely fast skill group after another disappointing finish could be revolutionary (again).
But what if McDaniel doesn’t have another rabbit in his hat? What if his deep bag of tricks turns out to be empty? Or, even if McDaniel does find a way to turn it up to 11 and takes his offense into a new level with a creative pre-snap motion or shift, what happens when the league copies him again to level the playing field in the critical December and January months? The answer, sadly, is that quarterback Tua Tagovailoa will need to reinvent himself. McDaniel can raise both the ceiling and floor of the offense with his innovations, but Tagovailoa will need to be the big-game quarterback he’s never managed to be in the handful of critical, high-pressure, late-season situations necessary for the Dolphins to get over the hump.
How quickly will Caleb Williams make Chicago forget about Michael Jordan?
Too far, sorry. Jordan is Chicago. He is an icon that no Chicago athlete will ever come close to in terms of talent, status, and prestige. Hall of Fame running back Walter Payton is the only Bear who could even be in the same conversation as Jordan, and he retired nearly 40 years ago. Chicago Blackhawks legends Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews are city favorites, but neither player ever had Jordan-level star power. Derrick Rose could have come close if injuries didn’t derail his career, but that dream died before it could really get off the ground. The Caleb Williams dream, however, has only just begun.
As a prospect, Williams is in the same tier as guys like Andrew Luck, Trevor Lawrence, and Joe Burrow. He draws striking similarities to the game’s best quarterback today, Patrick Mahomes; and Chicago’s worst nightmare for the last decade-plus, Aaron Rodgers. No quarterback in Bears franchise history has thrown for 4,000 yards or 30 touchdowns in a single season. Williams could realistically set both records as a rookie. His supporting cast includes veteran wideouts DJ Moore and Keenan Allen, plus rookie top-10 pick Rome Odunze. New offensive coordinator Shane Waldron is coming off a three-year stint with the Seattle Seahawks where he revitalized Geno Smith’s career. What Waldron can do with Williams’s talent and the Bears’ revamped roster could be special right away. The ceiling is the roof for Williams. Being Like Mike isn’t just a kid’s movie for him; Williams could actually live that dream.
Lock in for every rookie minicamp highlight in Chicago next weekend. Beyond that, every Williams pass to Moore, Allen, Odunze, and even tight end Cole Kmet in the summer months will take us one step closer to the Bears’ new quarterback living up to his lofty expectations. Inject every buzzy offseason headline preaching “synergy” or “chemistry” or “confidence” with Williams and this Chicago offense into my veins. Keeping the hype train firmly on the track will turn the Williams dream into a reality before we know it.
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How much longer can the Jacksonville Jaguars blame Urban Meyer for wasting Trevor Lawrence?
Jaguars general manager Trent Baalke distanced himself far enough away from Urban Meyer in 2021 that when Meyer came crashing down in a big ball of flames and phenomenal headlines, Baalke not only kept his job, but also amassed more power. Meyer was so bad that he gave Baalke, quarterback Trevor Lawrence—who was essentially gift-wrapped to Baalke with the no. 1 pick in the 2021 draft, Baalke’s first draft in charge in Jacksonville—and plenty of other Jaguars players and staffers a mulligan. Jaguars ownership added an adult to the room the following offseason, hiring former Super Bowl–winning head coach Doug Pederson, and the team won a playoff game in heroic fashion with a comeback over the Los Angeles Chargers in the wild-card round in the 2022 season. But not much else has gone right for Baalke and the Jaguars since.
Rather than build off of their success in 2022, the Jaguars took a step back last season. The offense regressed under Press Taylor, who took over from Pederson the team’s primary play caller, despite adding star wideout Calvin Ridley and first-round offensive tackle Anton Harrison, dropping from 10th in offensive EPA per drive in 2022 to 23rd in the same stat in 2023. And that was the case even before Lawrence played through multiple injuries late in the season and the Jags lost five of their last six games to miss the playoffs.
Lawrence’s injuries, Taylor’s inexperience, Meyer’s everything—they’re either excuses or reasons for the Jaguars not living up to expectations. Baalke likely prefers the framing of the latter, but that broken record can’t keep playing now that the offense has Baalke’s fingerprints all over it. He signed (and overpaid) wide receiver Christian Kirk, tight end Evan Engram, and, most recently, Gabe Davis in free agency. Baalke also traded for, drafted, or signed four of the team’s five starting offensive linemen. He just drafted former LSU receiver Brian Thomas Jr. in the first round of this year’s draft, and he, of course, drafted running back Travis Etienne Jr. and Lawrence in 2021. Baalke’s seat should be red hot for more reasons than one; no point in saying “excuse me” now.