News: Scores, Stats, Headlines, Injury Updates, Transactions & More (2024)

The circ*mstances under which Brady would be willing to return are about what you’d expect. Brady said if a team in contention were to have lost its quarterback late in a season, he would be open to a return. Now a full year removed from the game and set to begin a broadcasting career this upcoming season; it’s hard to imagine Brady, who will be 47 in August, stepping in after more than a year away to help a hypothetical contender. As Brady also pointed out, he’s hoping to become a minority owner of the Raiders, and he doesn’t know if the league would allow him to return if he were holding a stake in another team.

Teams will now be able to make trades until Tuesday following Week 9 games. The deadline had previously been the Tuesday after Week 8. The one-week change could make a big difference for teams whose seasons are circling the drain and leave the front office looking to deal valuable players as part of a rebuild. It could also benefit teams coming on around mid-season and looking for ways to shore up weaknesses headed into the season’s second half.

Twenty-nine of the league’s 32 teams approved of the change, with the Niners, Packers, and Raiders voting against the rule adoption. Under the new rules, any kickoff that ends up in the “landing zone” — between the goal line and the 20 yard line — must be returned. The changes will essentially stop touchbacks, which would award the ball at the 35 yard line. Once implemented, the hybrid kickoff will make kickoffs a far more important part of the game. NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero said NFL officials hope the rule change can “will yield what it wants: fewer injuries and more returns” in 2024 and beyond.

According to Pelissero, the use must be “purely objective” and can be used in manners such as to determine whether or not a quarterback was hit in the head, in or out of the pocket on an intentional grounding, etc. This should help with correcting calls that can result in a significant gain/loss of yards for both the offense and defense. The review of these calls will be done by the replay assistant and should not require a challenge flag from a coach to be reviewed.

Shortly after Pelissero posted that the league voted to ban the now infamous tackle, Ian Rapoport chimed in to report the ban received a unanimous vote from the competition committee. The movement to ban the tackle picked up steam in recent years after several players suffered devastating injuries as a result of the hip drop. Pelissero said we can “expect more fines than flags as the league and coaches work to remove the technique.”

The league made the leap to a 17-game season in 2021 but could soon be pushing to add an 18th game. As Florio points out in his article, an 18th game “likely won’t come until the next labor deal,” but his “first hint” of the possibility came when Browns GM Andrew Berry mentioned the Browns and other teams are proposing delaying the trade deadline by two weeks in anticipation of an 18th game being added. The current CBA isn’t set to expire until March 2030, so this isn’t expected to happen anytime soon, but it sounds like the league adding an extra game is all but a done deal — even if years away.

According to Battista, the Competition Committee “discussed at length the XFL kickoff” and added that the NFL wants to keep kick returns in the game, but there were “too few returns this season.” While some of this may be due to returners being concerned for their own health, the lack of returns can probably be more connected to the number of kickoffs being pinned deep into/out of the end zone by kickers. Regardless, the XFL’s kickoff rule has been proven to reduce high-impact collisions in recent years and could help further the NFL’s initiative to enhance player safety. The idea of the league adopting the XFL’s version of the kickoff has been floated around since the XFL returned in 2020 and appears to be gaining steam. It wouldn’t be surprising to see it (or something similar) adopted in the near future.

That’s a shocking uptick from what most NFL analysts believed the cap would be for the upcoming year. Even the teams themselves were reportedly expecting the cap to be in the neighborhood of $242 million and $243 million. The cap figure does not include the additional $74M per club for player benefits either. Player benefits include Performance Based Pay and benefits for retired players. This surprise should afford some of the teams that were likely to struggle to get under the cap some extra wiggle room this offseason.

With that said, Florio also said another source told him the number could be higher than the suggested amount of $242 to $243 million. Regardless of the final amount, it sounds like the cap is set to increase by nearly $20 million after it topped out at a record $224.8 million last season. According to Florio, “There’s a thought that the league wants to avoid a massive spike in cap,” with TV deals and gambling money increasing. The league has seen a steady increase in cap space every year since 2014, with the exception of 2021, when it was attempting to bounce back from a 2020 season that was impacted by COVID-19. We’re only three years into the league’s salary cap exceeding $200 million, with another record-setting number appearing to be on the horizon.

Per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the game will take place in Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, the home of Real Madrid. This is the latest in a line of international games that have expanded the reach of the NFL. The most recent addition came with the NFL playing in Germany for the first time in 2022 followed by two more games in 2023. The next country to get an NFL game will be Brazil when the Eagles act as the home team on Friday night of the opening weekend of the 2024 season. Their opponent has yet to be announced and it could be a while before we learn who will take the field in Spain.