I’ll be on a plane to Indianapolis later today for the NFL scouting combine. And so the 2025 offseason begins …
Matthew Stafford
I’m not sure how the Los Angeles Rams and Matthew Stafford put this whole thing back together, but it’s going to take some work this week. And that, as I see it, is because Los Angeles, at this point, is working with a quarterback who knows what his value is to the other teams.
During the week leading up to Super Bowl LIX, Stafford’s camp got permission from the Rams to talk to other teams—so his reps have already had two weeks to test the market and see who’d be willing to give up trade compensation and a big, new contract to land the 37-year-old star. It’s only steeled belief that, given the changing conditions of quarterback cost, he should be among the nine signal-callers now on deals averaging over $50 million per year.
The teams you’d suspect would have their hat in the ring have, indeed, thrown their hats in the ring. The New York Giants, Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, Las Vegas Raiders and others have shown interest.
What’s hard to know now, though, is what the Rams would be willing to take to part with Stafford. If it’s a first-round pick, would the aforementioned teams still be willing to do a deal at more than $50 million per year? And if that first-round pick is in the top 10, as is the case with three of the aforementioned four teams, would the Rams be willing to take a 2026 pick instead of one this year? And if not, how in the world do the Rams fix this with Stafford?
Here’s the reality—last year’s Stafford-Rams compromise was a result of months of failed negotiations on a market correction to his existing contract. So the $5 million “raise” the Los Angeles brass gave him to get him to show for camp was really more of an adjustment. The sides agreed to borrow $4 million from 2025 and another $1 million from ’26 to fund it.
Just about any time you see a team do that, it’s basically an acknowledgment from both sides of the table that the agreement is a Band-Aid, and it’s awfully unlikely that the player will agree to play on the lowered number in the future year.
Why do it this way? Teams do it like this to avoid the precedent of adding new money to a deal without adding new years. The trouble in this case is the Rams did that already for Aaron Donald in 2022. And while anyone could easily argue that a once-in-a-generation talent deserves that sort of exception (and Donald did), it’s just as easy to see why the quarterback that won a Super Bowl with that generational talent would ask for the same treatment.
So here we are now, with Stafford having knowledge on what other teams are willing to pay him, and the Rams sitting there with a strong, young roster, and a timeline that doesn’t quite match up with Stafford’s, and a lot of water under the bridge.
Can the toothpaste go back in the tube after letting a guy look around? Will the Rams be willing to go to a financial level they didn’t before? Or would Aaron Rodgers coming on a cheaper deal (and he may be willing to take one to play in L.A.) or Sean McVay’s ability to maximize, say, Jimmy Garoppolo or Kirk Cousins at a cut rate, appeal to the team when combined with the picks coming back and extra money to spend on the rest of the roster?
It’s a fascinating situation, to say the least.
Still, Stafford really likes Southern California. McVay likes having Stafford. And over the next week or so, we’ll probably get a better idea on whether that’ll be enough to push a marriage that’s worked out really well for four years into a fifth season.
Jacksonville Jaguars
The reimagination of the Jaguars is going to be fascinating to watch. Liam Coen, 39, is the coach. James Gladstone, 34, is the general manager. EVP of football operations Tony Boselli is 52, but like Coen and Gladstone, he has no experience in the role he’s about to fill.
The idea, for Jacksonville, was to do something different. These hires accomplish that.
So to start on the logic here behind pairing Gladstone, who’ll be introduced as GM at a press conference Monday morning, you have to roll through his connections. He had plenty to the Jaguars’ present and future, including ….
• Sharing a high school alma mater, St. John Vianney in St. Louis, with Jaguars president Mark Lamping.
• Having Rams GM Les Snead, a former Jaguars scout, as a mentor.
• Having worked with Coen from 2018 to ’20 and again in ’22 with the Rams.
• He and Coen share an agent, ex-Rams player engagement boss Jacques McClendon.
These, of course, are important points, because they explain how a relative unknown such as Gladstone, who hadn’t so much as interviewed for a GM job before, landed on the team’s radar. That said, my understanding is the Jags went into their search for a GM, after the abrupt firing of Trent Baalke two weeks ago, with an open mind—and Gladstone legitimately won the job from there.
It started with the Jags digging into different coach-centric models, such as the Rams’ model and the Niners’ model, after owner Shad Khan declared publicly, after the Doug Pederson firing, what he was looking for. As part of that, Boselli reached out to Snead, who he’d been friendly with as a player when Snead was a young scout; and McVay, who’d connected previously with Boselli in 2017 through mutual friend Joe Barry (McVay’s assistant head coach at the time, and Boselli’s college roommate from USC).
What was unanimous from those two, on Gladstone, was that the young exec, who Snead hired off the coaching staff at Clayton (Mo.) High (where Snead’s son Logan was playing), carried both an exceptional football IQ and EQ. That showed in Gladstone’s capacity, the Rams’ folks said, to take in information, understand it, distill it, and then communicate it.
Coen echoed that to both Boselli and Khan without knowing what McVay and Snead had told them—the new Jags coach said he’d never seen anyone who had the ability to communicate with coaches and scouts in a way that got everyone aligned like Gladstone.
So it was an easy call to bring him in—as one of 10 candidates—for the three-hour virtual interviews the Jags set up for the first round. The team brass set it up so the first 30–45 minutes of that interview was really not football talk, with more focus on who the candidate was, and how he’d set up a culture. In that setting, Gladstone was comfortable, and without ego or pretense or an agenda for the interview.
He focused on how he’d built trusting relationships with McVay and Snead, which was important to Boselli and Khan, knowing how lacking alignment on the football side had cost the Jaguars in the past. And that, plus his knowledge and evaluation of the roster, was enough to get him through to the second round, and the four-hour, in-person sessions the Jaguars had set up for their finalists.
Once there, Gladstone showed total command of where the Jaguars were, and had a clear, concise, detailed plan for free agency and the draft he presented to the bosses. He also quickly showed the connection he had with Coen from Los Angeles. And as Gladstone navigated the interview, it became clear that the Jags had their guy.
Part of it, for sure, went back to one of the first things Snead told Boselli about Gladstone—that for a young guy on the rise, he had a lot of humility. That was confirmed repeatedly during the process, but maybe most so during the virtual interview, when Gladstone told Boselli and Coen how, in his mind, in working with scouts and coaches, it’d never be about winning an argument, but making meeting people where they are the starting point.
That was, really, a great sign that Khan would get his coach-centric model by hiring Gladstone, in that Gladstone and his department’s first focus would be building out the vision that Coen and his staff set for them.
As for how this will all look logistically, I’m told Boselli, Gladstone and Coen will all report directly to Khan. Gladstone will oversee the draft, free agency, and all facets of building the roster. Coen will be in charge of everything, and everyone, on the grass (players, coaches, etc.). Boselli, meanwhile, will oversee areas such as strength and conditioning, medical, travel, facilities and PR, which, the Jags hope, will allow for Gladstone to focus on building the roster, and Coen to focus on coaching the team—which is what they were hired to do.
Will it work? I don’t know. This is very different.
But I will say it’s intentionally that way. The Jags see a changing environment in the sport, and not just at the NFL level, and wanted a forward-thinking, adaptable group to lead them through it. They’re betting that Boselli, Coen and Gladstone will give them that, and doing it without the safety net of having previous experience underneath them.
Like I said, it’ll be really interesting to see how it plays out.
New Orleans Saints
I think Brandon Staley’s going to wind up being a really good hire for Kellen Moore in New Orleans. To be clear, it is about his acumen—remember, in his sole year as an NFL defensive coordinator, he made the Rams defense the NFL’s best, and did it despite all the obstacles that COVID-19 created in 2020. But it’s not just that.
Maybe even moreso, it’s the experience he’s had at just 42 years old.
Too often, I think guys become head coaches and don’t brace themselves enough, with staff hires, for what’s ahead. The job is different than being a position coach or a coordinator, and without someone that’s been in that seat on hand, and in a prominent role, to help navigate it, even the best and brightest can get a little lost.
So the fact that Staley was in Moore’s shoes, as a fast-rising 30-something becoming a head coach for the first time, is invaluable. Most challenges Moore will see, Staley’s already experienced, and either succeeded or failed with, and had to examine in the aftermath of being fired.
And then, there’s where he went through that process of examination after the Los Angeles Chargers let him go—over the past year in San Francisco. As assistant head coach/defense, Staley got to work closely with Kyle Shanahan, and see how Shanahan has created an unmistakable style of play and standard for the Niners, and how he’s unapologetically himself. He also got to connect with Shanahan on some of his failures, with Shanahan relating his own bumps along the road to becoming a head coach in Washington and Cleveland.
Staley also got to work with and learn from the personnel staff in San Francisco, with GM John Lynch and his directors, Tariq Ahmad, RJ Gillen and Josh Williams, and EVP of football operations Paraag Marathe. And he got to know Mike Shanahan, too, who went through a similarly short first shot at being a head coach. All of which adds to the experience Staley had in 2020 with the Rams.
Moore will get the benefit of all that, with a guy he knows really well, who runs the scheme that was opposite his in 2024 for the Philadelphia Eagles’ run to a world title (Vic Fangio’s system is the foundation for what Staley’s defense does).
At the start, Staley will help Moore in mapping out the weeks and months ahead, and what to prioritize when a million things are coming at the new head coach, with the Super Bowl having created the sort of shorter timeline on the offseason that Staley’s close friends Kevin O’Connell and Jonathan Gannon dealt with in recent years. Over time, a lot of other things will come up in which Moore can lean on Staley.
In the end, I think all that makes the hire a really solid, self-aware one for Moore. And one that should give the Saints a better shot at hitting the ground running in his first year.
Atlanta Falcons
I don’t see why Kirk Cousins would be motivated to facilitate a trade for the Falcons, nor do I believe that Atlanta is going to keep him on the roster as a backup. The key date in this saga remains St. Patrick’s Day. That’s because, on March 17, a $10 million roster bonus for 2026 vests as fully guaranteed.
So while you could look at this now and say the team has already paid $62.5 million for 2024, and will be on the hook for most of the $27.5 million (minus whatever another team will give him for ’25) either way, the extra $10 million isn’t a necessary cost for Atlanta. In simple terms, you’d be looking at either footing a bill at a touch over $26 million and turning the page to Michael Penix Jr., or hanging a held-hostage quarterback over the ’24 first-round pick at a cost of $37.5 million (minus what a team would give him in ’26).
Cousins, of course, can see the math there the same as the team can, so all he really has to do is wait for the Falcons to cut him loose. And that’s what I expect him to do, because if he’s cut, he’s more attractive to other teams than he would be as a trade target—both because they wouldn’t have to give up anything to get him, and because he’d likely come for the veteran minimum of $1.3 million.
In that circumstance, a team such as the Cleveland Browns or Rams, both of whom have head coaches who were with Cousins as offensive coordinators, could see very real opportunity in not just landing Cousins, but the opportunity getting him at that number would provide to build around. I’d imagine that idea would appeal to Cousins himself, as well.
So, yeah, there’ll be some saber rattling between now and mid-March here, and I’d expect the Falcons, as they should, to see creative ways to trade him, and get anything back for him.
But even if they find one, Cousins has a no-trade clause.
Which means they’d need his cooperation. And I don’t think they’ll get it.
Sean Payton
The Super Bowl always has an absolute mess of sponsored interviews with very little substance, but Sean Payton dropped a valuable little piece of information to Kay Adams during the week. And that was that he felt like the Denver Broncos needed to find a “joker” for the offense—which, in short, means a queen on the chessboard that can be moved around to mess with the defense at will.
In New Orleans, he spent his first draft pick on one, taking Reggie Bush second in 2006. Two years after that, he traded second- and fifth-round picks for another one in Jeremy Shockey. Two years after that, the Saints took Jimmy Graham in the third round, and the former Miami hoops star grew into that type of player. Then, in 2017, he found another one in the third round in Tennessee running back Alvin Kamara.
Looking at those guys illustrates the vision—that it doesn’t have to be a guy at a certain position, but rather someone who can be moved all over the place, and matched up, and used to create headaches for the defense from the moment the huddle is broken.
So I wanted to have some fun with this, and looked at the veteran market, and didn’t really find a guy who could be that sort of player. And that brought me to the draft class.
I think there are a handful of guys who, under Payton’s tutelage, could be that type of guy. The one that’s most obvious, to me at least, would be Michigan tight end Colston Loveland, who can play all over the formation, and grow into the focal point of an offense. Miami tight end Elijah Arroyo is another in that genre, big, long, athletic, and toeing the line between his listed position and just being a supersized wideout.
Ohio State tailback TreVeyon Henderson would be in the Bush–Kamara category—a do-everything back who can turn a routine play into an explosive play on a dime. And Mizzou receiver Luther Burden III hasn’t fully tapped into his potential yet, and may have some growing up to do. But he’s explosive with the ball in his hands, and got it a lot of different ways in college.
Anyway, Payton looking for that sort of weapon is a cool story line to keep an eye on over the next two months. Shoutout to Adams for getting that out of him.
Philadelphia Eagles
Kevin Patullo was the right offensive coordinator hire for the Eagles. Let’s start here—he’s been ready for a little while now. Two years ago, when Shane Steichen landed the Indianapolis Colts job, it was between Patullo and Brian Johnson to replace him, and Patullo was also considered as an option to be Steichen’s OC in Indy. After the way 2023 ended, and Johnson was let go, the Eagles, for obvious reasons, didn’t feel like they could go with another internal OC hire.
And with all that, I’m sure there was some frustration.
But Patullo gets points for being a loyal soldier, and for the strong relationships he’d built that carried him through that. Moore—who wound up being the external hire last year to replace Johnson—would tell you himself that Patullo was integral in melding systems and making the new Eagles offense easy for players who were going through another coordinator change. And for Nick Sirianni, who brought Patullo with him from Indianapolis back in 2021, the new OC was a valuable sounding board throughout.
Which brings us to the other element of this that shouldn’t be overlooked. The players, and especially Jalen Hurts, deserve some consistency. For Hurts, specifically, the 2025 hire would be his fifth offensive coordinator in six seasons, and potentially the sixth play-caller he’d work with. Add to the three OCs he had in as many years at Alabama, plus the season at Oklahoma, and that’s 10 play-callers in a decade as a college player and pro.
Hurts would tell you there’s been some benefit to playing in so many systems, but there’s also the mental toll it takes, on both the quarterback and everyone around him, to go through so much change. Patullo’s offense, of course, won’t be exactly the same as Moore’s, but it should be good for everyone not to have to start from zero again in the spring.
And this is another nod to one of Sirianni’s great, understated strengths—he’s usually got a pretty good idea of what his players need in the moment. It sure feels like, in this case, hiring Patullo was just what the doctor ordered.
Los Angeles Chargers
The Chargers’ edge rusher situation bears watching. Khalil Mack turned 34 over the weekend and is a free agent. Joey Bosa hits 30 this summer, has missed 23 games the past three seasons, last made it through a full season without missing time in 2019 and has $25.36 million in nonguaranteed cash on his contract for ’25. Tuli Tuipulotu is just 22 and had 8.5 sacks last year, emerging as a nice piece for the future. And Bud Dupree is a solid, affordable player for next year, but is now 32 years old.
So the first question is whether Mack will be back. The second is whether a compromise can be reached with Bosa, with $12.36 million of that $25.36 million due on March 12 in the form of a roster bonus. If both are gone, the third question would be whether the team would then look for a younger program fit, like maybe Philly’s Josh Sweat—who’s had his own injury issues, but doesn’t turn 28 until next month.
It’s an interesting spot to be in for a team that made major strides in Jim Harbaugh’s first year, and a defense, under Jesse Minter, that found its foundation in establishing tough, hard edges for its front seven.
The good news? These are high-end problems to have coming out of a coach’s first year.
Kansas City Chiefs
The franchise tag structure puts the Chiefs in a tough spot with two free agents. This is something we’ve brought up over the years—the way the NFL classifies players for tags isn’t exactly equitable. And this year, the quirks associated hit the AFC champions head on.
First, you have guard Trey Smith. Because offensive linemen are grouped together in the tag calculation, rather than broken up by individual positions (the way defensive linemen are), guards and centers have the benefit of being assigned what’s essentially a tackle number—which would be like if safeties were grouped with corners. As a result, Smith’s tag number will likely be over $25 million, which is well past the market for top guards.
Then, you’ve got linebacker Nick Bolton. Because of the proliferation of 3–4 defenses—which play defensive ends from a two-point stance on early downs, and call them outside linebackers—the linebacker number is based on what top edge rushers make, rather than what traditional off-ball linebackers get. So Bolton is grouped together with guys such as T.J. Watt, Brian Burns and Rashan Gary, and his tag number will likely top $27 million—way, way over what the top off-ball linebackers make.
In the end, as I see it, that leaves Kansas City with little choice but to negotiate in good faith with those guys, knowing there’s little stopping them from getting to the market, and knowing that those guys’ best move probably is to go to the market.
Which is just another thing that makes an already challenging offseason for this era’s dynasty a little more difficult.
College coach pipeline
One interesting dynamic to watch as draft season ramps up is the connections/edges coaches coming from college to the pros will have. Last year, the Chargers mined those in a very big way. Junior Colson and Cornelius Johnson were with Harbaugh and Minter at Michigan, safeties coach Chris O’Leary (who’s since left) was with Joe Alt and Cam Hart at Notre Dame, and linebackers coach NaVorro Bowman was with Tarheeb Still at Maryland.
This isn’t a new thing, either. A generation ago, Pete Carroll used his institutional knowledge from coaching nine years at USC to help GM John Schneider build a loaded roster in Seattle. A generation before that, Jimmy Johnson did the same, coming from Miami and constructing the powerhouse 1990s Dallas Cowboys.
So who could have that sort of advantage in this year’s draft?
New Raiders OC Chip Kelly spent last year at Ohio State, and the six before that at UCLA, giving him intimate knowledge of players through the Midwest and West Coast, starting with the guys he coached. The national champion Buckeyes have more players invited to the combine (15) than anyone else, so the new Carroll–John Spytek regime in Las Vegas should be well-positioned both with that group, UCLA players, and those who played against Ohio State and UCLA over the last two or three years.
Similarly, new Cincinnati Bengals DC Al Golden returns to Cincinnati after three seasons running Marcus Freeman’s defense at Notre Dame. The Irish play a national schedule, and Golden had to game plan against the Georgia, Penn State and Ohio State offenses in the playoffs. So his own guys—such as cornerback Benjamin Morrison, safety Xavier Watts, linebacker Jack Kiser and defensive lineman Howard Cross III—will be well-scouted for Cincinnati, as will Notre Dame opponents such as Penn State tight end Tyler Warren, Ohio State’s Egbuka and Georgia running back Trevor Etienne.
To me, these are the sorts of things that can help make and break draft classes, in the knowledge these coaches have on who the players are, and not just who to go all-in on, but also who to avoid. Along those lines, come the end of April, it’ll be fun to dive into what the Bengals and Raiders did—and maybe even what they chose not to do.
Quick-Hitters
We’ve got your quick-hitting takeaways, as the offseason ramps up, with 2025 now fully underway for all 32 teams …
• We’ve all discussed the amount of cap space teams such as the New England Patriots, Raiders and Washington Commanders have. One team I think is in an interesting spot? The Green Bay Packers, with nearly $40 million to work with, and maybe more if Jaire Alexander is gone. GM Brian Gutekunst has been more aggressive than Ted Thompson was (the Za’Darius Smith–Preston Smith splurge was an example), and has room to make a splashy move or two.
• That said, there is a lack of difference-makers on the free-agent market, and that is the result of an exploding salary cap. With the recent escalation, and the expectation it lands around $280 million in 2025, most teams don’t have any issue getting their core players signed. So the guys that make it to the market generally, with few exceptions, aren’t at that top level. And if there’s a chance one does, he’s usually traded ahead of time.
• That’s why the Commanders’ 2024 spending is a good example of how to creatively approach a changing marketplace. Washington hit the middle of the market hard, with hits coming on players who had backgrounds with coaches Dan Quinn (Tyler Biadasz, Dante Fowler Jr., Dorance Armstrong, Bobby Wagner), Kliff Kingsbury (Zach Ertz), Anthony Lynn (Austin Ekeler) and Shane Toub (Nick Allegretti). Washington didn’t get stars, but it filled holes and created a foundation off which the new staff could work.
• Along those lines, new coaches in New England and Las Vegas could use connections on their staffs similarly. Between Josh McDaniels, Thomas Brown and Terrell Williams, plus head coach Mike Vrabel himself, there are ties to the Raiders, Rams, Carolina Panthers, Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions and Tennessee Titans in New England. On Carroll’s staff, guys such as Chris Beatty, Bob Bicknell and Joe Woods, the Raiders have links to the Chargers, Bears, Patriots, Bengals, Saints and Browns.
• The news, via my buddy Mike Garafolo over at NFL Media, on Nolan Smith Jr. playing through a torn triceps in the Super Bowl is another good example of what these guys go through to compete. I don’t know what that particular injury feels like, but I’d imagine it’d be one that would be pretty tough for an edge player to manage in-game.
• This story out of Western New York is right up there with the 2021 Waffle House sanction among the best fantasy-football punishments I’ve ever seen.
• We’d mentioned on Super Bowl Sunday the likelihood that Moore would bring Staley and Doug Nussmeier to New Orleans as his coordinators. And the Nussmeier story is pretty cool in that it’ll get the Saints new OC close to his son Garrett, who’s returning to LSU for a second year as starting quarterback next year. I’ve spoken with scouts who believe Nussmeier would’ve been the first quarterback taken this year had he declared.
• The James Cook contract situation is a tricky one for the Buffalo Bills, especially with the way deals for Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs and Derrick Henry worked out last year—making the positional-value argument a little less hard and fast. On one hand, Cook played fewer than half the Bills’ offensive snaps last year. On the other, he became perhaps their most impactful skill player with a team-high 239 touches.
• The Sam Darnold situation still merits watching in Minnesota. And in a weird way, I could see J.J. McCarthy’s weight being a factor—he lost a bunch going through the knee surgeries of the past six months, and so returning to his fighting weight will play an element in the Minnesota Vikings’ confidence (and there is confidence there) that they can go forward with him.
• Speaking of linemen, all the best to Zack Martin as he retires after 11 years as a Cowboy. It’s amazing that he came into the league as the guy Stephen Jones convinced Jerry Jones to pass on Johnny Manziel for, and now he’s leaving it as quite possibly the best guard of his era, and a nine-time All-Pro. His wait for Canton shouldn’t be any longer than it takes him to become eligible for induction.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Takeaways: Rams Entering Critical Window With Matthew Stafford.