The Lions unveiled new uniforms on Thursday, including black jerseys that they’ll wear for some home games. Coach Dan Campbell is pleased.
Lions President Rod Wood revealed that Campbell has been lobbying for the Lions to bring back black jerseys — which Campbell himself wore when he played for the Lions — since he was hired. Wood shared a story of discussing it with Campbell during the 2021 NFL draft, shortly after Campbell was hired.
“We’re in the draft room literally months into his tenure — and he wore the black when he was here — and he said, ‘Rod, when can we get the black jerseys back?’ I said, ‘I’ll make a deal, when you win the division I’ll bring the black jerseys back.’ So I went out on a limb, and thankfully, he delivered. That’s a true story,” Wood told reporters.
Wood said that Campbell and his teammates were big fans of the black jerseys during his tenure as a tight end for the Lions.
“He loved them. When he was here he wore them, and it was the team’s favorite at the time, and he pined for it again, and for him it’s a throwback to when he was a player,” Wood said.
The Lions’ division title last year was their first in three decades, and Campbell appears to have the franchise on firmer ground than it’s been on at any point since the 1950s. What Campbell wants he gets, and that includes black jerseys.
It seems a given that three quarterbacks will go in the top-three picks. The Cardinals hold the fourth pick, and they could trade the choice to a quarterback-needy team.
Either way, whether the Cardinals use the choice or trade it, at least one of the top receiver prospects — LSU’s Malik Nabers and/or Ohio State’s Marvin Harrison Jr. — will be there for the Chargers at No. 5.
The Chargers are in need of a receivers, having moved on from their top-two receivers, Keenan Allen and Mike Williams, earlier this offseason. Quentin Johnston, the team’s first-round draft pick last year, currently is atop the Chargers’ depth chart at the position, but he did not show during his rookie season that he’s capable of being a No. 1 wideout.
Chargers General Manager Joe Hortiz was asked the importance of the receiver position to building a championship roster.
“I think it’s important. I do,” Hortiz said, via Daniel Popper of TheAthletic.com. “But I don’t place an increased importance on any position other than, obviously, the quarterback position.”
The Chargers will address the position at some point in the draft, and likely more than once, but will they use their first pick on a wideout? Hortiz mentioned a best-player-available approach more than once Thursday.
So, it’s a good thing for the Chargers that the best players available at No. 5 likely will be the receivers, which is the biggest need for Los Angeles. But good receivers will be available later, too.
The Rams selected receiver Puka Nacua in the fifth round last year.
“I can promise you wide receiver is going to be a deep position in the draft every year,” Hortiz said. “It’s just the way the game has evolved and changed.”
The odds, they are a-changin’.
Two days ago, LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels had emerged as the clear favorite over North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye to be the second overall pick in the 2024 draft, -275 to +215. Now, DraftKings has both at -115.
At FanDuel, Daniels was at -250 and Maye was at +185. Now, they’re both -110.
The development comes after the Commanders brought Daniels, Maye, J.J. McCarthy, and Michael Penix Jr. in for a visit on the same day. Daniels’s agent reacted on X, and word is now spreading that perhaps Daniels doesn’t want to go to the Commanders.
The odds reflect the possibility that the Commanders will take Maye at No. 2 or trade out of the spot to a team that would take Daniels in that spot.
Look for more movement as bettors place action based on their best guesses as to what will happen. For now, and as the odds suggest, it’s anybody’s guess as to who will go second.
Everything old is new again.
When the Lions began working on new uniforms during the 2022 offseason, they worked with Nike to adopt a richer tone of Honolulu Blue, hearkening back to the Lions’ early 1990s look. True silver also is back in the uniform, featured in various outlines and stripe elements, as well as in the team’s traditional pant.
The franchise unveiled the full uniforms Thursday night at Ford Field, seven hours after an online leak.
They introduced black as alternate uniform with a black jersey featuring Honolulu Blue lettering encased in a silver outline and an all-black alternate pant option. It can be paired with an alternate blue helmet introduced
“We are excited to launch a new era of Lions football,” Lions president Rod Wood said in a statement. “Honolulu Blue and Silver has defined the Detroit Lions for generations, and I am proud that we found a way to continue to evolve the look with a nod to the past and a focus on the future. The traditional look of our primary jerseys combined with the bold attitude of our alternate jerseys capture the essence of Detroit and the multi-generational fans base that supports us.”
The Lions said they were influenced by Ford Motor Company’s relaunching of the Bronco in 2021 as a modernized classic.
The Lions came as close to the Super Bowl in 2023 as they ever have. Detroit, which blew a big lead to the 49ers in the NFC Championship Game, is among the 12 teams never to win a Super Bowl.
Lions General Manager Brad Holmes doesn’t want to hear about a Super Bowl “window.”
They want to have sustained success as the Patriots did and the Chiefs are doing, rather than going “all-in” for one title as the Rams did in 2021.
“I understand the question because you’re like, ‘OK, all right, the roster’s at a certain point. OK, you guys should be contenders headed into the season, so, OK, how do you operate this way?’” Holmes said, via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. “But again, I just think if we just keep improving every single year through doing it through our process, that’s what we’ve been doing and that’s what we’ll continue to do. And I think when you start getting into, ‘Well, we’ve got this window, so we’ve got this and we’ve got to pivot,’ that’s when I think you kind of get into a little bit of trouble.”
The Lions have built through the draft, with offensive lineman Penei Sewell, receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson, defensive tackle Alim McNeill, Kerby Joseph, running back Jahmyr Gibbs and tight end Sam LaPorta among the homegrown talent.
Quarterback Jared Goff was obtained in a trade with the Rams in 2021, and the Lions added defensive back Carlton Davis, defensive tackle D.J. Reader and offensive guard Kevin Zeitler this offseason.
They own the 29th pick in next week’s draft, and Holmes said it’s important the team “stick to the same process.” He conceded the Lions could trade out of the first round and jokingly said he hopes fans will forgive them if they do.
The Vikings waived offensive lineman Coy Cronk with a non-football injury designation, the team announced Thursday.
Cronk’s injury was undisclosed.
Cronk, 26, signed with the Vikings’ practice squad Nov. 4 but did not play a game for Minnesota last season.
He entered the league as an undrafted free agent out of Iowa in 2021, signing with the Jaguars. He bounced between the practice squad and the active roster for two seasons plus part of 2023.
His only game action came in three games with the Jaguars in 2022 when he played six offensive snaps and 15 on special teams.
The month began with the Chiefs’ failure to secure public funding for a renovation of Arrowhead Stadium. Speaking this week at the CAA World Congress of Sport, team president Mark Donovan reiterated that the Chiefs will be considering their options for the future.
“We’ve done this twice, and the last two times we’ve done it with either eight years or seven years left on a lease,” Donovan said, via Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal. “We’re down to six right now. We’ve got the World Cup in 2026. We’ve got to get through that. So it’s a bit of a tighter time frame, but we’ll look at options and we’ll create a good solution.”
Donovan’s comments follow an SBJ report that the failed Jackson County vote “was never about the Chiefs or team owner Clark Hunt,” but that it was “always about downtown baseball” for the Royals.
That report cites unnamed sources. If those sources were in any way tied to the Chiefs, the report is a little suspect and self-serving, frankly. The Chiefs have every reason to sell the idea that it wasn’t their fault that the vote failed — and that the defeat wasn’t a referendum on the team or Hunt.
Even if the team’s fingerprints aren’t on that reporting, they still look foolish for hitching their wagon to the Royals, and for trying to so hard to boost a measure that lost so badly.
As the Chiefs repeatedly said, they were simply seeking the extension of an existing sales tax. But it didn’t fail by a razor-thin margin. It was a landslide. And if the Chiefs believe they would have won if they’d broken themselves out from the baseball proposal, well, why didn’t they?
All around, the effort was a failure by the Chiefs. In every way. The sooner they accept it and learn from it, the better off they’ll be in whatever their next effort is to shake taxpayer dollars from the K.C. trees.
Broncos receiver Courtland Sutton is not participating in the team’s voluntary offseason program.
Sutton has two years left on the four-year, $60 million extension he signed in November 2021, and he wants a new extension. He has only $2 million of guaranteed money left off the $27.6 million total remaining money.
The Broncos, though, aren’t sweating Sutton’s absence from the offseason program.
“It’s 100 percent voluntary,” Broncos General Manager George Paton said Thursday, via Gabriel Parker of the Denver Post. “It’s the first week of the offseason program. Sean [Payton] has talked to Courtland. I’ve talked to Courtland. He’s in a good place and we’ll just leave it at that.”
It is unclear whether the sides are negotiating.
The Broncos’ No. 1 receiver led the team with 59 catches for 772 yards and 10 touchdowns last season.
He has been working out daily in Florida and rehabbing from offseason ankle surgery.
Paton said the team has had “great” turnout for the offseason program, with 98 percent participation.
The Broncos begin organized team activities on May 21.
Cardinals General Manager Monti Ossenfort said last month that calls were starting to pick up from teams that might be interested in trading for the fourth overall pick and one imagines the phones have continued to ring pretty steadily over the last few weeks.
With a number of quarterbacks expected to draw interest at the top of the draft and the Cardinals set with Kyler Murray, Arizona has long been seen as a potential trading option for teams that may be looking for a signal caller like the Giants, Vikings, Broncos, and Raiders. Some of that interest may be predicated on what the Bears, Commanders, and Patriots wind up doing with the top three picks and Ossenfort said at a Thursday press conference that he will “have popcorn ready” to watch how that unfolds.
Ossenfort also said that he’s prepared to listen to offers for the pick right down to the wire.
“The way I look at it is . . . I love my house. I love where I live,” Ossenfort said, via the team’s website. “My wife loves where we live. If all of a sudden I’m at my door and someone is going to offer me something, I’m going to look and see what they are offering me. If I open that up and it’s something I’m not expecting? ‘Hey Shannon, pack up, it’s time to roll.’ That happens beforehand, it happens on the clock, but I think different teams have different motivations and we’ll see how that plays out.”
The Cardinals traded down from No. 3 to No. 12 last year and netted a 2024 first-round pick from Houston in the process. They then moved back up from No. 12 to No. 6 to draft tackle Paris Johnson while holding onto that extra first, so trading down might just be the start of the moves the well-stocked Cardinals make next week.
The NFL confirmed Thursday that Walt Anderson is leaving his post as senior vice president of officiating.
Anderson, though, isn’t departing from the NFL.
He will remain with the league as an NFL Rules Analyst & Club Communications Liaison.
“I will focus on communicating with the clubs during the week and with our broadcast partners on gamedays,” Anderson, 71, said in a statement. “While I will no longer be making officiating decisions, together with a variety of stakeholders I will continue to look for new and better ways to promote excellence in officiating performance. I welcome this challenge and look forward to the opportunity to support the men and women who do such a tremendous job officiating our game at every level.”
Anderson’s departure as the head of officiating allowed the league to hire his son, Derek Anderson, as an on-field official, something the league’s human resources department disallowed last year. The NFL announced the additions of Derek Anderson and four other officials on Thursday.
Walt Anderson spent 24 seasons as an NFL official, including 17 as a referee, before moving upstairs at the end of the 2019 season. He was hired to be the league’s senior vice president of officiating development under Al Riveron and Perry Fewell.
Riveron retired after the 2020 season, leading to Anderson’s promotion.
During his three seasons on the job, Anderson rarely appeared publicly much to explain calls or non-calls. He did make a surprising appearance on Monday Night Football last season to explain a non-call of roughing the passer in a game between the Raiders and the Lions.
Officiating analysts hired by the networks instead provided most of the explaining or second-guessing of rules decisions during Anderson’s term.
It will be interesting to see whether Anderson will be more visible in his new role.