Table of Contents
Jump to
- Flopping
- Grass fields
- Caleb Williams
- Marvin Harrison Jr.
- Brendan Sorsby
- Brandon Aiyuk
- Sam Darnold
- Bears’ stadium
- Draft day trades
- Preseason games
- Video mailbag
Our final mailbag before the summer break is here. You asked. I answered. Let’s dive in …
Flopping
From Billy Conway (@bonescon): Seeing all this flopping in the World Cup reminded me of a question I’ve long had: Why doesn’t the NFL fine or suspend players (e.g., Josh Allen) who are shown on replay review to be blatantly flopping? It’s such a terrible look for any sports league.
Billy, I agree completely, and hate that this has been gamed to a point where it feels like athletes are being coached to do it. In basketball, you see it with players leaning in to get grazed by an opponent while throwing up ridiculous, unmakeable three-point attempts to get cheap free throws. In football, it’s with exaggerated crash landings by quarterbacks in the pocket, or ballcarriers going out of bounds. It’s not something that happens as a natural course of the game, and as such is something that any sports league should be trying to rid itself of.
The soccer people came after me on social media for my criticism of it happening in the World Cup, and that’s fine; it’s their right to be defensive of the sport. But I have been critical of players in the sport I cover for doing it, and I think you should want it out of your sport, too.
I think the first step would be flags and/or fines, and I do think this can be a reality, hard as it is to judge intent, with the expedited replay system. The league doesn’t want to admit it, but it’s been working toward the sort of sky-judge system that the coaches have been calling for since the 2018 NFC title game debacle. And if they have that sort of eye-in-the-sky coverage, they’ll be able to pick up on these sorts of things.
Grass fields
From PhxJaeT (@JaeT1015): Will the attention on the World Cup move the NFL owners to install grass across all stadiums?
Phx, I don’t think so.
I feel like a broken record explaining this, but I’ll take you through it one more time. The cost of stadiums escalated to a point where having just 10 football games a year in them made no sense, so owners try to cram a million events in them, which makes it hard and costly to maintain grass, so they make things easier (and cheaper) on themselves by throwing down the fake stuff.
I’d encourage you to read what NFLPA executive director JC Tretter told me about this over the weekend. He’s right. It’s a choice the NFL is making, based on cost. There are solutions to accommodate top-shelf grass surfaces, but those are expensive and labor-intensive, and the owners have shown no appetite for taking on those costs simply because it’s the right thing to do. It seems as if they’d want the players to share in the costs.
We’ll see what happens with that. But I don’t think you’re going to see a light bulb flicker on here and have the teams do it out of the goodness of their hearts.
Caleb Williams
From jermaine jones (@jermaine611): How much does Caleb have to improve for the Bears to be consistently in the playoff picture?
Jermaine, we can start with the facts on Caleb Williams. In his second year, and first under Ben Johnson, he threw for 401 more yards and seven more touchdowns than he did as a rookie, and upped his yards per attempt by more than half a yard. He also won six more regular-season games than he did in 2024, and his first playoff game. And in doing all that, perception of Williams among NFL people flipped completely.
Not bad for a year’s work.
Now, the encore, to me, will come down to efficiency. Williams was still raw from an NFL perspective last year, two years into his career, and I see the challenge he faces now as similar to where Josh Allen was at a similar juncture: He has to learn to take the layups.
The more difficult stuff he can do. The spectacular, he has covered. Now, it’s going to be about picking his spots with those things. The more he can, the more dangerous he’ll become, because that’ll be where defenses have to account for so much more, and be so much less certain when Superman’s coming out of the phone booth.
Marvin Harrison Jr.
From MC (@Menobrown): This one is in your wheelhouse. Why has Marvin Harrison Jr, once heralded as the best WR of this era of Ohio State WRs, been the worst one in the NFL among the first-round picks?
MC, I think there are a number of reasons for it.
First, the situation in Arizona the past couple of years wasn’t an ideal one for a young receiver. They had Kyler Murray’s health situation, a coaching staff hanging by a thread and a team that was out of contention before Christmas in 2024 and before Thanksgiving in 2025.
Second, and this was pointed out to me by people there—bigger receivers are a little slower to become dominant in the NFL than their smaller, shiftier counterparts. Julio Jones, Larry Fitzgerald, Dez Bryant and Demaryius Thomas are all examples of bigger wideouts that took a minute to evolve into what they’d become as pros. Harrison conceded to me last summer that there was an adjustment, in trying to just go out and play fast and free.
So, yeah, he’s just been O.K. (103 catches, 1,493 yards and 12 touchdowns in two seasons), and nowhere close to living up to his draft status (the No. 4 pick and first non-QB off the board) through his first two years as a pro. But he’s too talented, and too smart, and too driven to give up on this quickly. I’m excited to see what Mike LaFleur and his staff can do with him.
Brendan Sorsby
From NeedCoffee (@moises_fabela): Now that Goodell said no supplemental what's next for Sorsby?
Need Coffee, things now boil down to whether Brendan Sorsby has the stomach to go through with a lawsuit. You had to figure all along that the NFL wanted to keep Sorsby out, given the thorny nature of his violations at the NCAA level. I just thought, from the start, the league was on shaky ground legally, and wouldn’t want to go through the potential court case that could accompany shutting him out.
Instead, the league drew a line in the sand with Sorsby on Tuesday, and has shifted the decision making to Sorsby, who will have to figure out if it’s worth it to sue.
I’m not a lawyer, but I think he has a solid case. The NFL is a trade association. Sorsby is not a member of its union. I’m not sure, legally, if a trade association can deny employment this way—especially given the rules of the supplemental draft, which has for decades been where players who lose their eligibility go, be theirs a drug case (Josh Gordon), an NCAA rules case (Terrelle Pryor) or an academic case (Ahmad Brooks and many others). I’d think they’d have to leave his employability up to their companies (the teams).
The flip side here is the piece of case law that would favor the NFL, and that’s the Maurice Clarett suit against the league. In that one, an appeals court ruled that the NFL could enforce its three-year rule on Clarett, a star Ohio State running back, and USC WR Mike Williams, and keep them out of the 2004 draft, despite neither being members of an NFLPA that negotiated the rule.
Brandon Aiyuk
From JedAmosT (@PRHH1974): Do you think the 49ers let Brandon Aiyuk free before the season starts?
Jed, I’d think, on the surface, that the 49ers would cut him the minute he reports to the facility, not wanting to have him around—which is why it’s sort of confusing to me that he didn’t just show up in the spring and force them to do it then. I suppose San Francisco could suspend him and drag this thing out. But I don’t know that you’d want to do that if you’re Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch, and you’re trying to get camp off on the right foot.
Certainly, if I were Aiyuk, I’d be doing what I can to accelerate the conclusion of this bizarre deal, so everyone can move on (and he can, presumably, try to go to Washington).
Sam Darnold
From Dan Viens (Seahawks Forever Podcast) (@SeahawksForever): Hey, Albert! What's your sense on the kind of deal Sam Darnold will be able to commend next spring when he’s up for an extension in Seattle?
Dan, I think it’ll be instructive to watch Baker Mayfield’s negotiation in Tampa, because the trajectories of the former Panthers teammates and 2018 draft classmates have been eerily similar—traded from their original teams to Carolina, stabilize as a backup with California NFC West teams for a bit, then go to start on one-year deals, before turning those deals into mid-market contracts with the opportunity to become a franchise’s long-term answer.
Mayfield’s in the final year of a three-year, $100 million deal with the Buccaneers now, likely, I’d say, to get something close to the top of the quarterback market with Tampa before Week 1. And if he gets $55 million or $60 million per year, then that would frame where Darnold would be going into his contract season next year with a Super Bowl already under his belt.
Bears’ stadium
From (Bear emoji) (@ChiCity3451): The Bears and Bills both announced new stadium initiatives around 2021. And yet, the Bears still haven’t finalized a location for theirs when the Bills had a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday? Why has it been so much more difficult for Bears ownership to get this done?
None of these are the same, as there are different challenges in different cities. But I’d start with the actual land element of this. The Bears have been playing in a city park, which meant they’d either be renovating or looking for a new plot of land (which is why they bought the racetrack in Arlington Heights), while the Bills were playing on land that had enough around it for the team to simply build across the street.
That doesn’t mean it was easy for the Bills to get the new Highmark Stadium done. But it did mean one potential hurdle—where to put a stadium—was cleared right away.
Draft day trades
From Jason Wang (@jasonarecwang): When teams trade up in the draft, does the team trading up usually have to disclose who they plan on picking if the main picks in the transaction are relatively close together (i.e., 1–3 picks apart)? This seemed to be the case between Philly and Dallas when Lemon was picked.
Jason, I think it depends, but a lot of times if there is an ask, it’s more vague than Who are you taking? You’ll hear a GM ask if the team is picking offense or defense pretty routinely. Or routinely enough to deduce where that question wouldn’t be a faux pas.
Preseason games
From Grant Rasch (@GrantDRasch): Is there anything at all to NFL teams playing their preseason opponents in the regular season? Most teams do not play their preseason opponents, so for the handful that do is there an advantage or disadvantage? Maybe it’s just minuscule either way.
Usually, preseason games are scheduled with convenience in mind—no one wants to make cross-country trips in the middle of camp. And oftentimes, yes, you schedule around whom you play in the regular season. But there are plenty of annual preseason games (Giants-Jets, Rams-Chargers) that run into it as part of the schedule rotation, and it’s pretty manageable. Maybe you have that as the last preseason game in a given year, so your starters aren’t playing. Or maybe you just choose the week you play that team as when to sit those guys.
Either way, the game’s not that complicated.
What it can get in the way of is scheduling joint practices with a team you’re going to play a preseason game against. And given the value coaches place on joint practices, I’d say that’s a relatively notable annoyance with running into this particular circumstance.
Video mailbag
From Clayton Anderson | HTX Sports (@Clay_HTXSports): Which AFC powerhouse is most primed for regression in 2026?
I answered this one in the video mailbag—so subscribe to SI’s YouTube page for all my video content and check out my answer there!
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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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