It’s Friday, so here comes your weekend tip sheet …
• Joe Burrow played very well in Arizona last week.
But that’s not the best news to come out of his 317-yard, three-touchdown breakthrough in the Bengals’ 34–20 win over the Cardinals. The best news, for the coaches and Burrow’s teammates, is there was plenty of reason to believe that flourish was just the start.
“He was a different player,” one staffer said.
And that showed up on some of his biggest plays against the Cardinals, both in how he was moving and the confidence with which he was moving. Adding to it was that it came after he told coaches the whole week he was good with the calf and gave them the green light to move him around more than they had over the season’s first four weeks.
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The first in-game sign that a big day was on the way arrived early—on a third-and-goal from the 3-yard line about eight minutes into the game. On the play, Cardinals outside linebacker Zaven Collins bull-rushed right tackle Jonah Williams into Burrow’s lap. Burrow sidestepped right to buy time, and with Collins’s bookend, Dennis Gardeck, in his face, he fired the ball across his body to the back of the end zone, where Ja’Marr Chase had separated on the end line for a two-yard touchdown.
Another came on his second touchdown throw of the day, a first-and-10 from his own 37. Burrow took a deep drop and, upon setting his feet, Arizona’s Victor Dimukeje disengaged from Williams. Burrow sensed it, climbed the pocket and let go of a bomb that hit Chase in stride more than 55 yards downfield for a 63-yard touchdown.
Then there was the third touchdown connection between the old LSU teammates. That was on a first-and-goal from the 3 with 7:55 left. Burrow took the snap, felt pressure to his backside and shuffled right. As he did, Dimukeje shed tight end Mitchell Wilcox’s block and came free toward Burrow. But Burrow found Chase streaking down the end line for the two-yard score.
And then there was the 10-yard scramble on the final play of the third quarter, followed by another four-yard run, and it sure looks like the Bengals have their quarterback back.
As for this week, the topic of his calf hasn’t even come up much, and when it has, he’s told his coaches and teammates he feels good (same as he did last week).
Obviously, that doesn’t mean the Bengals won’t still be careful with Burrow. But he came out of the game in good shape—even after taking a few big shots—and practice this week has gone to plan, too. So Cincinnati and Burrow might be close to getting out of the woods in this one. Now if they can get a win over the Seahawks this week, and with the bye coming next week, this could again be one of the NFL’s very best operations.
• The trade deadline is coming, and after what Sean Payton said the other day—conceding that the Broncos would listen to offers for their players—Denver is a team to watch.
Denver will listen, as Payton said, on pretty much anyone, and that puts receivers Jerry Jeudy and Courtland Sutton in the spotlight. The price to start a serious discussion on Jeudy predraft was a first-round pick, and on Sutton it was a second-round pick. Sutton is due the prorated remainder of his $14 million base for this year (there’s $9.33 million left now) and is under contract for $27.5 million over the next two years. Jeudy, meanwhile, has $1.79 million left this year and is owed a guaranteed $12.887 million for next year.
Left tackle Garett Bolles, who’s voiced his dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in Denver, is another one on offense who could elicit calls.
On defense, both safety Justin Simmons and linebacker Josey Jewell have value. The former is making a prorated chunk of $14.4 million this year ($9.6 million left), and has a nonguaranteed $14.5 million coming in the final year of his deal. Jewell, a tough, smart off-ball linebacker, has less than $3 million left this year, plus some nominal per-game roster bonuses, and is a free agent in March.
Then, of course, there’s Patrick Surtain II. The Broncos have already gotten calls on him, of course. It’s pretty unlikely that Denver would trade (arguably) the best corner in the league, who has a year and a half left on his rookie deal, plus a team option for 2025, and doesn’t turn 24 until April.
But the whole thing is the Broncos simply need picks to build up their roster after consecutive drafts stripped them of selections due to the Russell Wilson trade. And with their second-round pick in 2024 gone as part of the Sean Payton trade (which also cost Denver the first-rounder it got from Miami for Bradley Chubb). Which is why my sense is Denver is going to at least be in on everyone.
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• The Panthers (0–5), obviously, would be another team to watch with a number of valuable assets on the roster.
Conversation there starts with Brian Burns. He’s up after this year and owed more than eight figures for the remainder of the season (prorated portion of his $16.01 million). But he’s also just 25 and plays a premium position. Last year the Panthers turned down an absolute haul (a 2023 third-rounder and first-rounders in ’24 and ’25) to get him. And the Panthers and Burns haven’t gotten close to striking a long-term deal.
A team trading for him could, of course, do a new deal with him, or franchise him in 2024.
After that, there are three guys I’ve heard are available—safety Jeremy Chinn, receiver Terrace Marshall Jr. and corner Donte Jackson. Chinn is an interesting hybrid linebacker who’d fit some teams better than others, has lost playing time in the switch to Ejiro Evero’s scheme and is in a contract year. Marshall’s a second-rounder who has talent but has yet to really find his footing as a pro. And Jackson’s a really good corner who’s signed through 2024 at a reasonable price (about $4.2 million for the rest of this year and $10.6 million next year).
Carolina is in a similar spot to Denver, in that it has an incumbent general manager working with a new coaching staff and could really use some picks (Carolina’s first-rounder belongs to Chicago as part of the Bryce Young trade).
• The Vikings would be a third team on the trade-deadline radar. And while Kirk Cousins is the name talk shows can’t stop talking about, Danielle Hunter is the player you probably should pay the most attention to. He already has six sacks and, as his second contract winds down, is only 28 years old. A team acquiring him would take on the prorated portion of his $10 million base for this year, which should help to goose his value a bit.
The Lions, to me, would be a fascinating landing spot. And normally I’d say there’s no way he’d get moved in the division. But, remember, those two teams executed the Jameson Williams draft-day trade and T.J. Hockenson in-season deal with each other over the past 18 months, so nothing should be ruled out.
If Harrison Smith is open to leaving after signing a reduced deal to stay, he could be of interest to another team. And if I’m another team and have a receiver need, I’d at least ask about K.J. Osborn, the Vikings’ excellent young slot. Osborn is up after this year, and Minnesota has to pay Justin Jefferson and just spent a first-rounder on Jordan Addison, so it seems unlikely he’d be back as a Viking in 2024 (which is why Minnesota might move him now).
• Looking back at the Chiefs’ tepid pursuit of DeAndre Hopkins and how Kansas City’s going through some growing pains at the position, I think it’s important to mention how the team essentially took the money it had earmarked for Hopkins and spent it on veteran left tackle Donovan Smith. Smith has, for sure, had his ups and downs. That said, without him, they’d have Jawaan Taylor at left tackle and probably would have had to spend a high pick on a tackle to put on the other side of him, and that wouldn’t have been a great situation.
And the truth is it’s a lot easier to mask an issue at receiver—particularly when you have Travis Kelce as your top target—than it is at tackle.
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• The Puka Nacua–Cooper Kupp dynamic with the Rams is really interesting to me, in that those guys do have a bunch of similarities, and yet the staff there is pretty excited about how the two could complement each other. The reason? As they see it, Nacua is more of what you’d call a “collision separator,” an Anquan Boldin type of slot, where Kupp is a bit more of a space player.
As such, the role they’ve put Nacua in is Robert Woods’s old spot in the offense. And because the Rams run so many stacks and bunches and have a third receiver (Tutu Atwell) who is so vastly different from those two, the fact that both would be classified as inside receivers isn’t really an issue. Which is to say as Kupp gets his feet wet and his stride back, I wouldn’t look for Nacua to fall off much.
And while we’re there, an interesting fact that I didn’t realize until this week: Jimmy Lake’s presence on Sean McVay’s staff and his input were one reason the Rams really liked Nacua ahead of the draft. Lake was Nacua’s coach at Washington before the receiver transferred to his home state to play at BYU.
• For whatever it’s worth, and as weird as the situation’s been, Deshaun Watson’s approach and attitude the past few weeks with the Browns’ offensive coaches has been consistent. The other thing I know is that when it comes to a quarterback’s injured throwing shoulder, the cautious path is almost always the right one.
• The turf at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London will be under scrutiny with the Ravens-Titans game Sunday after the injuries in the Bills-Jaguars game last week and after what Buffalo’s players said in the aftermath. One important point that’s been missed some places, though: The NFL did replace the playing surface during the offseason after data on slit-film turf became available. And the grass that the stadium has for soccer traditionally hasn’t held up well for American football.
• Sneaky big game Sunday: Lions at Buccaneers. Tampa comes in at 3–1 off its bye, with a proud, confident roster (and a lot of players still left from the title team of 2020) and a quarterback who seems to be getting his swagger back in Baker Mayfield.
• For all the noise, Stefon Diggs is still a well-liked guy in the Bills’ building, which I believe was reflected in Josh Allen’s impassioned defense of his star receiver.
