Table of Contents
Jump to a topic
- Kirk Cousins
- Las Vegas Raiders
- Aidan Hutchinson
- Jalen Hurts
- Puka Nacua
- Conflicts of interest
- Ty Simpson
- Ian Cunningham
- Quick-hitters
We’re a day late this week due to a family trip over Easter weekend, but I’m back now and the takeaways are loaded up for you …
Kirk Cousins
Kirk Cousins is, as pro football players go, a bag-getting God. That much is pretty easy to ascertain. If you fold in his latest contract with the Raiders ahead of his 15th season in the NFL, Cousins has made $341,469,288 over the course of his career—with $339,369,288 of that money earned as fully guaranteed. That’s 99.4% of the cash he has taken home as a pro, in a sport in which guaranteed dollars are a premium.
The last time he went into a season in which every dollar of his base pay wasn’t fully guaranteed was more than a decade ago, in 2015.
For one reason or another, a lot of folks act as if he stumbled into that circumstance, which, of course, is not how it happened at all.
To understand the full picture, you need to go all the way back to 2015. That offseason, Washington exercised the fifth-year option on former first-rounder Robert Griffin III’s rookie deal despite a feeling among head coach Jay Gruden, offensive coordinator Sean McVay and new GM Scot McCloughan that Cousins was the team’s best quarterback. Sure enough, Cousins beat out Griffin that summer, started all 16 games and led the team to the playoffs.
Cousins’s deal was up after the season, and his agent, Mike McCartney, proposed a fully guaranteed, three-year deal. Washington was borderline offended, and offered a deal with an APY around $16 million, well short of the $19.95 million franchise tag. The quarterback then did something unconventional—he welcomed the fully guaranteed tag.
He knew at the time that a longer-term deal that wasn’t guaranteed would only give the team control. So he bet on himself, knowing if he played well, his leverage would grow. And it did. Asking for more the next year after playing out the tag, he welcomed a second fully guaranteed tag at $23.94 million for 2017, knowing at that point that a third tag, at 144% of the second tag, would be logistically impossible for Washington to apply.
That’s how Cousins became a free agent in 2018, in a league in which proven, young starting quarterbacks rarely become free agents. His reward was a fully guaranteed three-year deal for $84 million in Minnesota, and he negotiated a second fully guaranteed deal off it with the Vikings, after which he became a free agent again and got his monster deal in Atlanta.
None of it would’ve happened if Cousins and McCartney hadn’t used the franchise tag as a weapon in an environment when only teams had been able to weaponize it previously.
I just dug up a conversation I had with then NFLPA president Eric Winston at the time, eight years ago, and Winston nailed it in saying, “He shifted a little risk on to himself and said, ‘I believe in myself, and I’ll go do it.’ What’s obvious is the blueprint is there. Every player’s got to decide. It comes down to how you want to handle your business.”
What Cousins did that others wouldn’t is take on that injury risk—something that, to be fair, is easier for a quarterback to do than, say, a linebacker or a guard. It wasn’t a mistake that he got where he did financially. He played the long game in a sport few guys can afford to. And he changed the game in that way, showing that there are fully guaranteed contracts out there for premium players who reach the free-agent market.
Fear of what will happen when they do is why so many teams move so aggressively to get deals with quarterbacks and guys at other premium spots done quickly. They don’t want to be Washington in 2018, and they’re O.K. paying on the high end early to avoid a fully guaranteed deal that could create a tough precedent with other star players later.
So think whatever you want about Cousins earning this much money.
Just know that it wasn’t some weird accident that got him here.
Las Vegas Raiders
While we’re discussing it, this particular deal was a good win-win for the Raiders and for Cousins, which is why he decided to take the bird in the hand. Las Vegas had been interested in Cousins for a while. Pittsburgh loomed as an option, had Aaron Rodgers decided to retire before Cousins made a decision. In the end, the Raiders gave Cousins 10 million reasons not to wait on that, primarily because they found a way to circumvent Cousins’s Atlanta offset.
Disregard the talk about this being a five-year deal—it’s not, the same way Travis Kelce’s deal in Kansas City is not really a three-year deal. Cousins’s contract is, for the most part, simply a one-year, $20 million deal. Here’s the lowdown.
• Cousins had a fully guaranteed $10 million roster bonus left on the four-year, $180 million deal he signed in Atlanta two years ago. That money was subject to be offset by whatever some other team was willing to pay him to play in 2026. So the Raiders will pay him the league minimum, $1.3 million, for this year, sticking Atlanta with the remainder ($8.7 million).
• The Raiders and Cousins then negotiated a fully guaranteed $10 million roster bonus, due next March (on the third day of the 2027 league year). The difference between the 2027 roster bonus and the ’26 roster bonus: The ’27 bonus is not subject to offsets, meaning if the Raiders cut him before it’s due, he gets to keep all of it. So it’s effectively another $10 million for 2027 from Vegas, except this isn’t Atlanta’s responsibility.
• There’s then a two-year, $80 million team option, which would make it a three-year, $100 million deal. By then, Fernando Mendoza (presumably) will be going into his second year on a rookie deal. So there’s logically almost zero chance the Raiders would go forward with a big-money veteran deal at the position while having the No. 1 pick on the cheap. It’s also pretty unlikely another team would trade for Cousins, who will turn 39 next summer.
• The final two years on the deal simply spread out the cap hit.
So, two things here …
One, as always, be careful about initial headlines on contracts (we explained the Kelce situation in March). And two, this is good creative work by the Raiders and Cousins.
Now, it wouldn’t work for everyone. The Vikings, for example, discussed doing a second year with Kyler Murray, and other creative options. And if Murray, set to make his $36.8 million guaranteed regardless, was going to give Minnesota the benefit of getting him for the minimum, he was going to prioritize his freedom in 2027—and the no-tag/no-trade provision he got accomplished that, for sure.
But this solution did work for Cousins, and it could work for other veterans in the future, which makes the new Raiders QB a trendsetter again.
(I do wonder if the owners will, at some point, look to close the loophole Cousins worked here, since this undermines the offsets teams insist on putting in contracts. But that’s a whole other story.)
Aidan Hutchinson
We now have the verdict, and Aidan Hutchinson should’ve been the first pick in the 2022 draft. It has been four years, and Hutchinson has grown into a top pass rusher in the nerve center of the Lions’ core, and the four-year, $180 million extension he signed in the fall reflects that. Conversely, the guy who went one pick ahead of him, the Jaguars’ Travon Walker, just agreed to a four-year, $110 million deal that puts him in the range of Nik Bonitto and Montez Sweat.
Translation: Detroit’s paying Hutchinson to be one of the best players in all of football, while Jacksonville is paying Walker to be a foundational piece for its defense. There’s a distinction there. The Jags didn’t necessarily mess up; they just took the wrong guy.
And that’s a good jumping-off point—as a reminder with draft season upon us—to look at that class four years in and reclassify them. That provides good context on the value of picks …
• Of the 32 guys drafted in the first round, Hutchinson, Derek Stingley Jr., Charles Cross, Garrett Wilson, Kyle Hamilton and Tyler Smith are the six who were paid at an elite level at their positions and remain with the teams that drafted them.
• Three more—Sauce Gardner, Tyler Linderbaum and Trent McDuffie—are at the top of the market at their positions, but are on their second teams.
• After that, you have Jameson Williams, Jordan Davis and George Karlaftis on their original teams with solid deals that are well below the top of the market at their positions.
• And Zion Johnson, Quay Walker and Devin Lloyd have solid deals with new teams after playing out their rookie deals, having their fifth-year options declined and cashing in during free agency last month.
• Finally, there’s Kayvon Thibodeaux, Ickey Ekwonu (who’s hurt), Drake London, Chris Olave and Devonte Wyatt on fifth-year options with the teams that drafted them—London, Olave and Wyatt could get deals this offseason—and Jermaine Johnson II is set to play out his fifth-year option after being traded from the Jets to the Titans.
That’s 21 of the 32 either on top-end or second-tier deals, or in position to get one.
That leaves, essentially, 11 guys you could classify as busts. All but one of those 11 (Evan Neal at No. 7) were drafted outside the top 10.
This tells us a few things. One, even in a just-O.K. draft—which is what 2022 was seen as—it’s much better to be picking in the top 10 than later in the first round. And two, guys such as Hutchinson and Walker are both hits—even if the Jaguars probably would rather have the guy they didn’t take with the first pick now.
Jalen Hurts
The reality on Jalen Hurts has come out. It’s not all bad. Competitor. Tough as nails. Athletic. Undaunted in the biggest moments. Capable of making high-level throws, playing to his strengths … and carrying a personality that isn’t for everyone, and a stringent belief in the way an offense must run for him to be at his very best.
It’s gotten the Eagles to two Super Bowls since 2022, and to their second Lombardi Trophy in franchise history about 14 months ago. That counts for a lot. But it also has led to the sort of discord that has fed into a widespread assumption that one of their best players, wide receiver A.J. Brown, will play elsewhere soon.
The ESPN story, reported by Jeremy Fowler and Tim McManus, clearly established two things at the core of this that I know to be true: Coaches and teammates (Brown included) have been frustrated with Hurts, and owner Jeffrey Lurie is a staunch advocate of his 27-year-old quarterback. That kind of juxtaposition, as I’ve seen it, usually creates friction because it generally empowers the player in situations where there is a philosophical divide.
And that’s part of why the Eagles’ offensive play-caller situation is what it has been. Since getting to Philly in 2021, Nick Sirianni is 59–26, giving him the fifth-best winning percentage all-time (.694) and the best career winning percentage of any active coach. Yet, over his five years, no play-caller has started and finished two seasons in the role. Really, it has been “get to the Super Bowl or get fired” for the guy in that position.
Sirianni was the first to call plays before ceding the play sheet to Shane Steichen midseason of that first year. Steichen was the play-caller in 2022, Philly went to the Super Bowl and the OC subsequently landed the Colts’ head coach job. Brian Johnson was one-and-done in ’23. Kellen Moore was hired in ’24, Philly won it all and he went to New Orleans. And Kevin Patullo went one-and-done last year, with Sean Mannion now in from Green Bay to replace him.
Again, the Eagles won twice as many games as they lost over that stretch, made the playoffs every year, and won the division three of the past four years.
That, of course, speaks louder than anything to the mounting frustration in trying to get it right schematically for Hurts. Then there are the economics of the situation. Hurts signed a five-year, $255 million extension in 2023 that tied him to the team through ’29. Next year is the first in which the team can realistically break free from him—the Eagles would be responsible for only a $22 million guarantee that vested last month, which is subject to offset.
Meanwhile, the Eagles have mounting cap debt that’ll need to be cleared at some point, which explains why they’ve been able to be nearly as aggressive building around him the past three years as they were over the three years he was on a rookie deal.
So it’s complicated. If Hurts doesn’t get a new deal this offseason and things don’t go well under Mannion, we could be asking bigger questions a year from now. On the other hand, if he and Mannion crush it together, Mannion could be gone as soon as a year from now, the same way Moore was. No one, by the way, is arguing that Hurts isn’t a good player. He is. The long-term question will be how much he’s worth to the Eagles and, more specifically, how much it’s worth dealing with all the things that seem to hover around him.
Puka Nacua
I hope Rams receiver Puka Nacua gets his life in order. There aren’t many guys as good as Nacua between the lines. Over the past three years, his first three as an NFL player, he’s fourth in the league in catches (313), second in yards (4,191), and tied for 13th in touchdowns (19) despite having missed seven games over that span.
That’s a remarkable start to a career for a receiver. Accordingly, the Rams would tell you Nacua, between those lines, has answered every question you’d have. And given that, you’d think they’d rush to pay him like the Seahawks did Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
Obviously, there’s more to the story than just that. There was controversy over the antisemitic dance he agreed (not knowing what it was) to perform for some YouTubers last fall. There was his criticism of officials on social media that drew a $25,000 fine. Most recently, there was a civil lawsuit filed over the accusation that he bit a woman on New Year’s Eve.
Through it all, the Rams have maintained their belief that while Nacua has some growing up to do—checking into rehab (which his lawyer confirmed he did) is a good step in that direction—he’s still a good-hearted 24-year-old who wants to make all this right again.
“Here’s the thing that you do know: Being around him for three years, love this guy’s heart,” Rams coach Sean McVay told Steve Wyche during the owners meetings. “He’s got this authentic zest for life. He’s got just this vibe about him that you can’t help but love. And he’s continuing to mature. And as you’re becoming this amazing player, that comes with responsibilities. But we love him. He’s one of us.
“You want to continue to put your arm around him and help him continue to grow in all areas of his life. I think we want to invest in the whole person.”
And I do believe the Rams love him. Maybe they’ll express that love in a nine-figure way later in the offseason. But, clearly, Nacua has some work to do first, and that’s what’s best.
Conflicts of interest
The Tom Brady slippery slope is starting to attract other teams to take a ride. Troy Aikman acknowledged this week to the DLLS Sports podcast, hosted by Metroplex media veteran Clarence Hill, that he’s still working for the Dolphins, long after having helped out on the coach/GM searches that led them to ex-Packers products Jeff Hafley and Jon-Eric Sullivan.
In the process, Aikman tacitly admitted the part that most teams were worried about with Brady juggling his Raiders and Fox responsibilities: “I think the Dolphins were wise in understanding my relationships around the league. And knowing that I have information they don’t have or can’t get. And I think they were smart in taking advantage of that—whether it was through me or somebody else.”
There’s a reason why for a long, long time, before teams and leagues built out their own media operations, media folks weren’t supposed to take paychecks from teams. Yes, it was first and foremost to assure that the people covering the sport were on the level. But it was also to prevent media members from being motivated to tilt the playing field in one way or another.
This was the problem with letting Brady do it all along—the NFL was willing to do it because its priority is trying to make its broadcast as big as possible, and having Brady in the booth accomplishes that, giving him the leverage to play by his own rules. If Brady can do it, then why can’t Aikman? Or Tony Romo? Or Cris Collinsworth or Greg Olsen? And if they’re all doing it, then won’t teams become more guarded in production meetings, thus making those less valuable to everyone and worsening the broadcasts along the way?
The league set the stage for this with Brady.
Now, it has to deal with the consequences.
Ty Simpson
My early take on Ty Simpson: The whole conversation has gotten out of hand. What I’ve gathered from people who study this rather than just watch on Saturday like I do, is that the Alabama redshirt junior was as good as any quarterback in America for the bulk of the college season, in his first season as a starter. But a scout’s job isn’t to marvel at that. It’s to project forward, not look back at all the good (and bad) a prospect did in college.
We can start with the look back. Todd McShay, whom I trust implicitly with this take, says that Simpson’s tape was as good as any quarterback’s in college football. The numbers bear that out. Then, in the Crimson Tide’s 10th game, it has been theorized that Oklahoma coach Brent Venables found a flaw in Bama’s protection scheme and turned chasing Simpson into target practice the rest of the year. The numbers bear that out, too, and it led to a 8–1 start crumbling in a 3–3 finish, with a deficient run game only making things tougher on the QB.
So either you see Simpson as a quarterback who was solved by the end of the year, or one undone by his circumstances. Or you see his limited number of starts (15) as a disqualifier, or you don’t. Or you’ll see his physical traits as a nonstarter, or you won’t.
The reality, to me, is that Simpson has a good chance to be a good first-contract quarterback, and less of a chance to sustain that if he someday were paid at the top of the market. From what I can gather, his tape shows him doing far more “NFL things” than Fernando Mendoza (throwing guys open, working through progressions, etc.), but that doesn’t make him a better prospect, because, again, this is about where a guy’s going, not where he has been. And while where he has been will help him play right away, where he’s going is about projecting his ceiling.
Along those lines, the comp I’ve heard most often for Simpson is Brock Purdy, who already has started in two NFC title games, a Super Bowl and eight playoff games as a pro. Yes, he’s had great talent around him, and he has played great. But it’s hard to tell how good he’ll be when the 49ers’ star-studded core ages out—that’s no shot at him, but we just don’t know yet.
Meanwhile, the Mendoza comp I’ve heard is Jared Goff, which illustrates the difference in skill set. Goff has now taken two franchises that were terrible when he arrived to conference title games. He’s big and talented, and has proved what Purdy hasn’t yet.
Anyway, that’s how I think I’d see the difference between the two at his juncture.
Ian Cunningham
The Ian Cunningham question is an interesting one. The NFL made a final call this week not to award the Bears with two third-round comp picks for developing the young exec Cunningham into a guy worthy of winning the Falcons’ GM job. They did so because when Atlanta had to choose a “primary football executive” before hiring its new regime, it chose to apply that designation to its “president of football” position Matt Ryan was hired into.
Now I’m going to do the “two things can be true” thing. Or even three.
First, the Falcons are hiring Cunningham to be a full-throated general manager. What a fan expects of the guy in that role—running scouting and all the departments that flow into player assessment/procurement, and building the roster—will be what Cunningham does on a day-to-day basis. Second, the Bears have a right to be mad they don’t get the picks they would if Cunningham got, say, the Jaguars’ job last year. And third, the league is right to do this, and almost has to do it this way.
The reason why is because personnel-chief titles in football are going the way of baseball and basketball. It actually started, as I see it, all the way back in 2016, when Miami named Mike Tannenbaum EVP of football operations and had GM Chris Grier reporting to him. In plenty of NBA and MLB franchises, a similar setup exists, with the general manager being the de facto No. 2 to someone with a president’s title. So to combat that, especially for the purposes of compensation or these guys being able to move up, clarification is important.
And, by the way, I’d imagine you’re only going to see more of this, not less. In fact, in Washington, before Adam Peters was hired as GM, the Commanders were actually planning to hire a president of football operations, like the Falcons did. After Peters nailed his interview, they decided to stick with a more traditional model, with the thought he could grow into a president’s role over time. That team, of course, has an NBA owner (Josh Harris) in charge, with another NBA executive (Bob Myers) serving as a key consultant.
Which, to me, is the big thing to take from this—it’s a window into where the NFL is going.
It stinks for the Bears, for sure, but it kinda had to go this way.
Quick-hitters
Let’s dive into the quick-hitters …
• Ravens QB Lamar Jackson showing up for the first day of the offseason is a nice symbolic win for new coach Jesse Minter. In 2023, when Jackson was in a similar spot, with a contract negotiation lingering and a new offense coming in, he did report for OTAs, but not the early portions of the offseason program. So for Minter and new OC Declan Doyle, getting Jackson in the building to start laying a foundation is significant.
• Good luck in retirement, Stephon Gilmore. I always liked the quiet, understated cornerback who made five Pro Bowls, landed two first-team All-Pro honors and was named Defensive Player of the Year in 2019. He was smart and confident, but not brash in the way some of the greats are at his position—the South Carolina native had this cool sort of Southern way about him, where he projected confidence and only occasionally projected his bravado (like when he called Jalen Ramsey a “zone corner”). I’d bet Gilmore would make a really good coach.
• Good for the NFL for defending itself on the Rooney Rule last week. Regardless of anyone’s political leanings—or my own—it’s kind of obnoxious when people come and kick the pro football hornet’s nest to try to use the game’s popularity to draw attention.
• It’d be fun to see Odell Beckham Jr. give it a go in 2026, but I’d temper expectations. People seem to forget that this would be his 13th NFL season (if he’d played every year since being drafted), he will turn 34 in November and his last 1,000-yard season was seven years ago. For perspective, only six of the 32 first-rounders (other than Beckham) from the 2014 NFL draft—Jadeveon Clowney, Khalil Mack, Jake Matthews, Mike Evans, Brandin Cooks and Teddy Bridgewater—are still playing.
• Jacksonville playing in Orlando in 2027 should be fun. I’d also imagine playing there will be good for the Jaguars from a business standpoint, especially if that season goes like last year did.
• Hats off to Broncos special teams coach Darren Rizzi, who was at the owners meetings again (he’s become a regular at these) last week to present on the adjustments that were voted through on the new kickoff. Rizzi’s commitment to helping create the rules in the first place, then adjust them so they’re sustainable, has been admirable, and shows a willingness to try to make a difference in the sport beyond what a coach does for his players or team.
• One byproduct of a potential ref lockout would be the dry run the NFL would give itself on having a sky judge, with the owners having voted through a proposal to empower New York to change calls if there is a work stoppage. I’ve been a big advocate for the sky judge for years, but my version would be a little different—having one as part of the officiating crew in the booth on site at each game. But this would be a chance to test how efficient you can be participating in the administration of a game from afar.
• As I said last week, I’d bet on Super Bowl LXIV, set for February 2030, landing in Nashville, and Washington getting one a couple years after that, provided the Commanders’ new stadium opens on time. What’ll be more interesting will be seeing whether Kansas City and Cleveland’s new domes wind up landing one (my guess would be no, but we’ll see).
• I like that we’ll get the Super Bowl teams on the next two seasons of Hard Knocks (Seahawks this year, Patriots next year), but it’s important to remember that the best one of the last decade was probably the Browns in 2019. A bleep-show makes for better TV, and a better chance that more things slip through the cracks and on the air.
• The Chiefs received good news that they’ll have Rashee Rice in Week 1 this year. But the NFL slipping that info out late on a Friday should give you an idea of how they feel about the whole thing.
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ALBERT BREER
Albert Breer is a senior writer covering the NFL for Sports Illustrated, delivering the biggest stories and breaking news from across the league. He has been on the NFL beat since 2005 and joined SI in 2016. Breer began his career covering the New England Patriots for the MetroWest Daily News and the Boston Herald from 2005 to ’07, then covered the Dallas Cowboys for the Dallas Morning News from 2007 to ’08. He worked for The Sporting News from 2008 to ’09 before returning to Massachusetts as The Boston Globe’s national NFL writer in 2009. From 2010 to 2016, Breer served as a national reporter for NFL Network. In addition to his work at Sports Illustrated, Breer regularly appears on NBC Sports Boston, 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston, FS1 with Colin Cowherd, The Rich Eisen Show and The Dan Patrick Show. A 2002 graduate of Ohio State, Breer lives near Boston with his wife, a cardiac ICU nurse at Boston Children’s Hospital, and their three children.
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