HEADLINES

Month: November 2024

Browns Release TE Darren Fells

March 10th, 2019 at 2:05pm CST by Dallas Robinson

The Browns have released tight end Darren Fells after failing to trade him, according to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk (Twitter link). The Jets were mentioned as a possible suitor for Fells after reports emerged Saturday that he was on the trade block, but no deal came to fruition.

Fells, 33 next month, signed a three-year, $12MM deal with Cleveland just last offseason. He’d been scheduled to earn a base salary of $2.65MM in 2019, and would have carried a cap charge of $3.7MM. Instead, the Browns will now take on a dead money hit of $1.4MM by cutting Fells.

In his lone season in Cleveland, Fells appeared in all 16 games, but played on just 38.5% of the Browns’ offensive snaps and managed only 11 receptions. While he wasn’t given many opportunities behind starting tight end David Njoku, Fells was effective when targeted. Among tight ends with fewer than 25 catches, Fells finished third in Football Outsiders’ DVOA, meaning he was productive on a per-play basis.

While Fells has historically been praised as a blocking tight end, 2018 wasn’t a banner year for him in that regard, at least according to Pro Football Focus. PFF assigned Fells a 72.9 pass-blocking grade, which put him near the middle of the pack among his position group, but a 55.9 grade in the run game, a mark which ranked near the bottom of the league.

Lions To Release Nevin Lawson

March 10th, 2019 at 11:44am CST by Rory Parks

The Lions are releasing cornerback Nevin Lawson, per Ian Rapoport of NFL.com (via Twitter). The move saves the Lions $4.675MM against the cap and leaves the club with just $1.125MM in dead money. 2019 would have been the final year of the two-year, $9.2MM pact that Lawson inked last March.

Although ESPN’s Josina Anderson appeared to confirm the news as soon as RapSheet reported it (via Twitter), Detroit beat writers were a little less certain. Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press said that the Lions have not yet notified Lawson that he is being cut, and that the club is “working through some things” with the sixth-year pro (Twitter links). It could be that the Lions were asking Lawson to accept a pay cut or perhaps delay the $1.25MM roster bonus that he was due later this week.

Likewise, Justin Rogers of the Detroit News tweeted that he has not received any confirmation of the Lawson release. But Michael Rothstein of ESPN.com, citing ESPN’s Adam Schefter, says that the release is a done deal.

Given the cap savings and Lawson’s impact on the team’s defense, the decision is not surprising. Lawson started 14 games for the Lions last year, 15 games in 2017, and all 16 in 2016, but he has yet to record an interception in his NFL career. He is a decent member of a DB rotation, but he is not a top-flight starter. Rothstein speculates that the Lions could use their cap space (up to about $45MM after the Lawson release) to pursue a high-profile free agent like Trey Flowers or Landon Collins.

Lawson will likely be scooped up in the second wave of free agency, and he may even return to Detroit at a reduced rate. The Lions selected the Utah State product in the fourth round of the 2014 draft.

Jets Want To Re-Sign Andre Roberts

March 10th, 2019 at 11:22am CST by Rory Parks

After a few years of bouncing around the league, Andre Roberts made a big splash with the Jets last season, earning First Team All-Pro honors for his excellent work as New York’s return specialist. And, as Rich Cimini of ESPN.com tweets, Gang Green wants Roberts to come back in 2019.

The Jets, armed with over $100MM in cap space, have already indicated that they want to re-sign defensive lineman Henry Anderson, which Cimini reiterated, and the club re-upped offensive lineman Jonotthan Harrison yesterday. The team still has a boatload of unrestricted free agents, but it appears that Roberts is next on the priority list.

Roberts, 31, started his career with the Cardinals and has also suited up for the Redskins, Lions, and Falcons. His high-water mark as a receiver came in 2012, when he caught 64 passes (albeit on 114 targets) for 759 yards and five scores. He has always been utilized as a return man even when he was a more regular presence as a wideout, but he was outstanding in the return game in 2018, as he led the league in yards per return as a punt returner (14.1) and in overall yardage as a kickoff returner (1,174). He ran back one punt and one kickoff for scores, and he also added a receiving touchdown.

It may be difficult for him to replicate that success at this stage in his career, but given the Jets’ cap room and their recent track record with return specialists, it would not be surprising to see the Citadel product secure a multiyear pact with an AAV of $3MM-4MM.

Vikings Ask Kyle Rudolph To Take Pay Cut?

March 10th, 2019 at 10:26am CST by Rory Parks

The Vikings have virtually no salary cap space at the moment, with Ben Goessling of the Star Tribune reporting that the club is expected to have just $5.24MM in room when free agency opens on Wednesday. Goessling takes a position-by-position look at some of the difficult decisions Minnesota will have to make in order to free up some cash, and one of the most notable names involved in his piece is tight end Kyle Rudolph.

Per Goessling, it is believed that the Vikings are in talks with Rudolph about taking a pay cut in 2019, the final year of his current contract. Rudolph is due a $7.275MM salary, and roster/workout bonuses would increase the club’s cash outlay and corresponding cap hit to $7.625MM. The Vikings could shed that entire figure from its books by cutting Rudolph and would absorb no dead money by doing so, but there is not much by way of proven talent behind Rudolph on the depth chart.

Rudolph has started all 16 regular season games for the Vikings in each of the past four seasons, but he will turn 30 in November and had offseason ankle surgery last year. He earned Pro Bowl nods in 2012 and 2017, and he has been a solid contributor and redzone threat throughout his career, but his raw statistics have never been particularly eye-popping (though he did have 840 receiving yards in 2016, from 132 targets). Nonetheless, his overall body of work and his recent run of durability suggest he could at least match his 2019 pay if he were to hit the open market — especially since blocking tight end Nick Boyle just earned a three-year pact paying him $6MM per year from the Ravens — so he may choose to refuse a pay cut. Either way, the Vikings will be in the market for a pass-catching tight end, either in free agency or the draft.

Goessling’s entire piece is worth a read, as it includes his thoughts on the Minnesota futures of other notables like Everson Griffen, Mike Remmers, and Laquon Treadwell.

Fallout From Antonio Brown Trade

March 10th, 2019 at 8:57am CST by Rory Parks

Now that the Raiders have agreed to acquire Antonio Brown from the Steelers, you can be sure that more news about the deal (and the deals that were discussed, but never came to be), will be trickling in. We will monitor the AB fallout here throughout the course of the day, as the football world continues to process the conclusion of the biggest storyline of the offseason:

  • The Eagles did discuss Brown with the Steelers, but as ESPN’s Adam Schefter tweets, those talks never got serious. Instead, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were simply doing their due diligence.
  • Eliot Shorr-Parks of 94WIP.com suggests it was the new contract that Brown was demanding, rather than the draft picks, that scared the Eagles away (Twitter link).
  • Ian Rapoport of NFL.com (via Twitter) agrees with Shorr-Parks’ theory, saying that plenty of teams were willing to give up the third- and fifth-round picks that ultimately got the job done, but the Raiders were the only team that was willing to tear up Brown’s existing contract and give him a new one.
  • Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports tweets that the Bills were willing to swap 2019 first-round picks with the Steelers (No. 9 for No. 20) and trade away two mid-round picks, but it was Brown’s contract demands that proved to be the undoing of that potential deal.
  • La Canfora adds in a separate tweet that the Redskins were still engaged with the Steelers after the Bills deal fell through earlier in the week, but it is unclear how serious the Pittsburgh-Washington talks became.
  • Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com concedes that the Raiders easily got the better of the Steelers in this trade, but he reviews what Pittsburgh’s options were, and none of them were good (Twitter link). The Steelers could have cut Brown and received no trade compensation — which also would have allowed Brown to sign with any team he wanted, including a major conference rival — or they could have kept him, fined him when he didn’t report to camp, and hoped that he wouldn’t retire because he would have had to pay back $11MM if he did so.
  • Fowler also passes along a couple of Raiders-related notes in a separate tweet. A source close to Brown said the wideout was excited about joining the Raiders in part because of the presence of head coach Jon Gruden and quarterback Derek Carr. Brown is also intrigued by the Raiders’ collection of high draft picks and young talent, and Raiders defensive coordinator Paul Guenther — who had to devise many a game plan for Brown when he was the Bengals’ DC — strongly endorsed Brown’s game.
  • Plenty of people have been wondering why the Steelers didn’t demand one of the Raiders‘ three first-round draft picks before agreeing to deal Brown to Oakland, and NFL Insider Adam Caplan says the Raiders simply refused to do so (Twitter link). Although the Raiders would of course have preferred to give up one draft choice instead of two, the club was adamant about holding onto its three first-rounders and one second-rounder.
  • Although the Steelers‘ $21.12MM cap hit that they will have to absorb for Brown in 2019 is a killer, the trade does save the club $15MM in cash that can now be spent on other players, as Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk observes.
  • Brown’s contract with the Raiders has set a new benchmark for players like Julio Jones, Tyreek Hill, and Michael Thomas, who will all cash in shortly.
  • Bill Barnwell of ESPN.com takes an excellent in-depth look at the saga and what it means for both teams.

Steelers To Trade Antonio Brown To Raiders

March 10th, 2019 at 7:59am CST by Rory Parks

Hallelujah, the great storm is over. The Steelers have agreed to trade Antonio Brown to the Raiders in exchange for a third- and fifth-round pick in this year’s draft, per Ian Rapoport of NFL.com (Twitter links). The news has since been confirmed by other major outlets, but Brown himself was (fittingly) the first to break the story, having posted a Photoshopped picture of himself in a Raiders uniform and a picture of himself and Oakland QB Derek Carr at the Pro Bowl (via Scott Bair of NBC Sports Bay Area on Twitter).

RapSheet also tweets that Brown will get a new deal from the Raiders, which does not add any more time onto the three years he had remaining on his contract with the Steelers, but does make him the highest-paid receiver in the game from an AAV standpoint. Brown’s new pact with Oakland will pay him $50.125MM over the next three seasons, plus $4MM in incentives, for an AAV of $19.8MM. Plus, Brown gets $30.125MM in guarantees, and his contract with Pittsburgh had no guaranteed money left.

New Raiders GM Mike Mayock appears to have come out quite well in his first trade as the (figure)head of the Oakland front office, and the Steelers’ return has been universally panned. But as Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette observes (via Twitter), and as we have expected for some time, Brown’s erratic behavior and demand for a new contract torpedoed the Steelers’ bargaining position. Also, the fact that Pittsburgh was willing to accept such a low return suggests that the club was never going to bring Brown back and that it was more concerned about ridding itself of Brown’s antics, as Dulac tweets.

The Raiders played the long game, per Jerry McDonald of the Bay Area News Group (via Twitter). The Raiders have long coveted Brown but believed they were out of the running for him as of Wednesday. However, they did not get desperate and try to up their offer, and in the end they got their man for their price. And the fact that they did not have to add any years onto Brown’s deal to convince him to sign off on the trade makes it even more of a coup.

So the Raiders get a dynamic wideout to assist in their rebuild and their transition to Las Vegas in 2020, but what about the Steelers? The trade adds some legitimacy to the speculation that the team is trying to appease quarterback Ben Roethlisberger at all costs — perhaps to stop him from retiring — and that the relationship between Brown and Big Ben had become truly untenable. Of course, the club has an excellent track record of finding top-tier receiver talent all over the draft, and they now add a second third-round choice to their 2019 draft capital along with a fifth-rounder to replace the one they sent to Oakland last season to acquire Ryan Switzer.

However, the trade is devastating from a salary cap perspective. As ESPN’s Field Yates tweets, Brown will now count for more against the Steelers’ cap in 2019 ($21.12MM) than any other WR will count for his own team. It is a tough pill to swallow, but as with every transaction of this magnitude, the passage of time may ultimately change everyone’s perspective.

AFC Notes: Brown, Steelers, Chargers

March 9th, 2019 at 9:47pm CST by Andrew Ortenberg

It’s been more than a full day since the report that a deal was “close” to being done for Antonio Brown, but the Steelers haven’t moved yet. We still don’t have any word yet on where he’s heading, and it’s become clear that part of the holdup with trade negotiations is the fact that Brown wants a pricey new contract wherever he goes. After Odell Beckham Jr. signed his record-breaking deal last year, Brown “took note of the new money hitting the receiver market” and wanted to get in on it, writes Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com.

While Brown has apparently been plotting on how to get a new contract for a while, Fowler does caution that the “notion that Brown sought a trade and publicly criticized his team solely over a new deal is misguided.” In his article, which is worth a full read, Fowler breaks down how Brown is “working the system” to get a huge new deal while he still has three years left on his current one with the Steelers.

Here’s more from around the AFC with the start of free agency right around the corner:

  • Speaking of Brown’s contract, we have more clarity on what exactly he’s seeking. Yesterday we heard he was looking to become the highest paid receiver in the NFL, and now we have more on his demands. Brown wants between $18 and $20MM per year on any new deal, Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports hears (Twitter link). That explains why things have been taking so long. Beckham got $18MM per year on his deal, and Brown will have a hard time getting more than that. Beckham was 25 when he signed his deal, and Brown is 30. If any team is going to pay him quarterback money, they’re not going to want to give the Steelers any compensation for the right to do it. If that’s really what Brown is holding out for, it might be a while before this is resolved.
  • Denzel Perryman and the Chargers agreed on a new two-year deal yesterday, and now we have the details. The inside linebacker will earn $12MM over the course of the two years, according to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network (Twitter link). Perryman, who was set to be an unrestricted free agent, has been a good run-stuffer for the Chargers when he’s been able to stay healthy. The 2015 second round pick out of Miami has missed 16 games over the past two years. If he can stay on the field next year, it’ll be a huge boost to Los Angeles’ talented defense.
  • In case you missed it, tight end Martellus Bennett could come out of retirement to join his brother with the Patriots.

Minor NFL Transactions: 3/9/19

March 9th, 2019 at 8:33pm CST by Andrew Ortenberg

Here are today’s minor moves:

New Orleans Saints

The Saints gave Banjo a three-year extension, which Ian Rapoport tweets is worth up to $9MM. However, Josh Katzenstein of NOLA.com hears the $9MM figure “might not be completely accurate” (Twitter link). Banjo doesn’t play much on defense, he played just 5% of the team’s defensive snaps on defense, but he’s a key contributor on special teams. Banjo was an undrafted free agent in 2013, and spent the first three-plus years of his career with the Packers. He’s been with the Saints since mid-2016.

Browns Shopping Darren Fells, Jets Interested

March 9th, 2019 at 6:58pm CST by Andrew Ortenberg

The Browns have showed a strong willingness to make trades under new GM John Dorsey, most recently sending guard Kevin Zeitler to the Giants in exchange for defensive end Olivier Vernon. He isn’t done yet, as the team is shopping tight end Darren Fells in trade talks, a source told Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com (Twitter link).

Fells signed a three-year, $12MM deal with the Browns in March of last year, but they’re apparently looking to move on just one year into that pact. Fells has never offered much in the passing game, and is much more of a blocking tight end than anything else. He was an occasional redzone threat for the Browns last year, catching three touchdowns. He had just 11 receptions for 117 yards overall, although he did start 11 games.

With David Njoku the future at the position for Cleveland, the Browns don’t have too much of a need for an expensive blocking tight end. They can find a decent blocker on the open market for a cheaper price. Fells has only been in the league for five seasons, but he turns 33 in April. He never played college football, and made the leap to the NFL after playing professional basketball overseas for several seasons.

As for teams that might be interested, the Jets “have had internal discussions about trading for” Fells, sources told Manish Mehta of The New York Daily News (Twitter link). Mehta adds that New York “is in the market” for a blocking tight end. Fells did receive slightly above average marks from Pro Football Focus last year. If they can’t find a trade partner, it’s definitely possible the Browns could just release Fells outright.

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