A few transactions on the first day of the postseason:
Dallas Cowboys
Indianapolis Colts
New England Patriots
Bailey and Jones’s suspension was lifted today by the Patriots. In addition, free agent tight end Chris Herndon and Packers offensive lineman Sean Rhyan‘s suspensions were lifted by the league.
Chris Herndon has been hit with a significant ban. The free agent tight end has been suspended for eight weeks, reports ESPN’s Field Yates (on Twitter). That means Herndon will be banned from taking the field for the rest of the 2022 campaign.
We’ve yet to hear a reason for Herndon’s latest suspension. The tight end was previously banned for four games during the 2019 season for violating the league’s policy on substances of abuse.
Herndon was a fourth-round pick by the Jets back in 2018. He had his most productive professional season as a rookie, finishing the year with 39 receptions for 502 yards and four touchdowns. That aforementioned suspension (plus a hamstring injury) knocked him out for the beginning of the 2019 campaign, and he only got into one game that season before landing on injured reserve with a broken rib.
He managed to return for the 2020 season and got into all 16 games (13 starts) for the Jets, finishing with 31 receptions for 287 yards and three scores. Prior to the 2021 season, Herndon was packaged with a sixth-round pick and sent to the Vikings for a fourth-round selection. The tight end started five of his 16 games for Minnesota in 2021, hauling in only four catches for 40 yards and a touchdown.
Herndon joined the Saints this past August but was cut before the end of the preseason. The 26-year-old hasn’t had any reported workouts during the 2022 season.
Chris Herndon‘s latest bounce-back bid left him on the outside looking in as the Saints made their second round of cuts. They released the fifth-year tight end Tuesday, Katherine Terrell of ESPN.com tweets.
The Saints’ move down to 80 players also included the placement of wide receiver Kevin White on IR. White, who played six games for a receiver-depleted New Orleans squad last season, signed a reserve/futures deal to stay with the team in January.
New Orleans added Herndon just after the start of training camp, but the former Jets starter has not shown too much since his rookie-year breakout. A 2019 suspension and an injury soon after stalled Herndon’s momentum after his 502-yard rookie year in New York. He has not topped 300 yards in a season since and only caught four passes while with the Vikings last year.
Injuries have defined White’s NFL career. While the former No. 7 overall pick has done well to hang around this long, he has been an afterthought since multiple major injuries wrecked his Bears run. White, 30, missed all of his 2015 rookie season and only played five Bears games from 2017-18. He has since caught on with the 49ers and Saints, suiting up as a backup.
Chris Herndon will make his way to a third NFL team. The former Jets starter and Vikings contributor will join the Saints, according to Ian Rapoport of NFL.com (on Twitter).
This will be another new start for Herndon, whose market was quiet after his lone Minnesota season. The Jets shipped Herndon to the Vikings, who had recently lost Irv Smith Jr. for the season, prior to Week 1 last year. Herndon, 26, caught just four passes for 40 yards in 2021, seeing Tyler Conklin — whom the Jets signed this year — take over as the team’s top tight end.
A former fourth-round pick, Herndon is best known for his productive rookie season with the Jets. The Miami alum caught 39 passes for 502 yards and four touchdowns, helping fellow rookie Sam Darnold in 2018. But Herndon has not been able to follow that up.
The 6-foot-4 pass catcher began the 2019 season suspended for a personal conduct policy violation and suffered a hamstring injury while preparing for that truncated slate. In Herndon’s one 2019 game, he suffered a fractured rib. In 2020, Herndon struggled to find the form of his rookie year, totaling just 287 receiving yards.
The Saints have ex-third-rounder Adam Trautman (263 receiving yards in 2021, most among Saints tight ends) going into his third season and have moved Taysom Hill out of the quarterback conversation. The ex-starter is still expected to factor in on gadget plays as a QB, but his primary position will be tight end. Juwan Johnson, who led Saints tight ends in TDs last year with four, is also on the roster.
New Orleans also considered another former Viking, MyCole Pruitt, with Aaron Wilson of ProFootballNetwork.com noting the veteran tight end worked out for the team (Twitter link). Pruitt’s Minnesota days came back in the mid-2010s, however. He spent the past four seasons with the Titans, working more as a blocking tight end.
Here are Tuesday and Wednesday’s activations from and placements on the reserve/COVID-19 lists:
Arizona Cardinals
Atlanta Falcons
Baltimore Ravens
Carolina Panthers
Chicago Bears
Cincinnati Bengals
Cleveland Browns
Dallas Cowboys
Denver Broncos
Detroit Lions
Green Bay Packers
Houston Texans
Indianapolis Colts
Jacksonville Jaguars
Kansas City Chiefs
Las Vegas Raiders
Los Angeles Chargers
Minnesota Vikings
New Orleans Saints
New York Giants
New York Jets
Philadelphia Eagles
Pittsburgh Steelers
San Francisco 49ers
Seattle Seahawks
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Tennessee Titans
Washington Football Team
In the wake of Irv Smith Jr’s knee injury, the Vikings are making a significant move at tight end. Minnesota is making a trade for the Jets involving draft pick compensation for tight end Chris Herndon. The Jets are sending Herndon and a 2022 sixth-round pick to the Vikings for a 2022 fourth-round pick (via Tom Pelissero on Twitter).
Smith was supposed to take over as the team’s starter after the offseason departure of longtime starter Kyle Rudolph, but we heard just a couple of days ago that Smith was having surgery for a meniscus injury that will sideline him for the early part of the season.
The depth chart got pretty thin after that, so some sort of move was always likely. Herndon was a fourth-round pick of the Jets in 2018, and he flashed major potential as a rookie. In his first year as a pro he put up 502 yards and four touchdowns, very impressive numbers for a rookie tight end.
Unfortunately he was suspended for the first four games of 2019 for a substance abuse policy violation, and then played in only one game that year after hurting himself. He returned to play all 16 games last year, but had only 287 yards as the Jets’ whole passing game struggled.
He’s still only 25 and has always been talked about as a potential breakout guy, so the addition makes a lot of sense for the Vikings. It’s also a big opportunity for Herndon as he’s set to hit free agency for the first time next offseason. The Jets will now move forward with Tyler Kroft as the unquestioned starter at tight end.
On a quiet Tuesday afternoon, we’ve got news on a couple of Jets position battles to pass along. New York just signed tackle Morgan Moses on Friday, and the initial assumption was that he might compete with George Fant to be the Jets’ right tackle opposite Mekhi Becton.
Apparently, it won’t be much of a competition. “Even if the Jets tout this as a competition, Moses is the starting right tackle,” Brian Costello of the New York Post writes. He says the team “might try to sell this as a competition in training camp to soothe Fant’s ego and also avoid the embarrassing questions about paying a backup tackle an $8.5 million salary,” but that Moses will be the starter when it’s all said and done.
Moses got a $3.6MM base with incentives up to $5.3MM on his one-year deal. He was cut by Washington last month after not missing a start in six straight seasons for them. Meanwhile, Costello writes in a separate piece that Tyler Kroft may end up as the team’s starting tight end.
He says Kroft “has been one of the bigger surprises of the spring,” has received plenty of reps with the first-team in practices, and “could beat out Chris Herndon for the job if Herndon does not shake out of the funk he was in last year.”
The Jets didn’t get much from the position last year, (Herndon had 31/287/3 in 16 games), so it’s not shocking they’re considering other options. Kroft didn’t do too much with Buffalo the last couple years, but he had 42/404/7 when he was last a starter with the Bengals in 2017. He signed a one-year deal with the Jets back in March.
Saints head coach Sean Payton has said his team has no interest in trading star receiver Michael Thomas, though Thomas’ camp was recently said to be looking for potential deals. There has been no movement towards a Thomas trade, and whether that’s because New Orleans has no interest in dealing him or because the club has not received an offer it likes, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com says Thomas will stay put.
With the trade deadline two days away, let’s round up a few more rumors on players who could be on the move:
Patriots QB Tom Brady will play against the Cowboys this afternoon, but as Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network (video link) notes, the team will need to closely monitor Brady’s elbow moving forward. Brady was unable to finish practice on Friday due to elbow pain, and while he was able to take all necessary reps on Saturday, he will continue to get work on the elbow as the season goes on.
Now for more from the AFC East:
Today’s minor moves:
Arizona Cardinals
Cleveland Browns
Detroit Lions
Houston Texans
Los Angeles Rams
New York Jets
San Francisco 49ers
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Tennessee Titans