NFL - NEWS & NOTES

Titans sign Johnathan Joseph



Veteran cornerback Johnathan Joseph has found a new home and he’ll be staying in the AFC South.

Joseph told Josina Anderson of ESPN that he has agreed to a contract with the Titans. Joseph became a free agent in March after playing out his contract with the Texans.

Joseph spent the last nine seasons in Houston and was a fixture in the starting lineup for almost all of that time. He had 51 tackles and an interception during his final season with the team.

Joseph opened his career with five seasons in Cincinnati, so he brings a lot of experience with him to Tennessee. He joins a cornerback group that includes Adoree' Jackson, Malcolm Butler, Tye Smith and a pair of 2020 draft picks. The Titans picked up Kristian Fulton in the second round and Chris Jackson in the seventh round.

NBC

 

Joseph has been around that long? Wow he is on his last leg

 

Terence Newman was around for 15 years, lol, it started to show at time with the Vikings.

 

He took time off from football to get his life in order.

Apparently it didn’t work.

 

Bengals are releasing Andy Dalton. Some teams just dont know how to do business. Bengals, Jaguars, Texans.

 

I wonder who scores a job first, Dalton or Newton?

 

That is a bit of a head scratcher. They better hope Burrow can play on a less than perfect team.

Not to mention the timing.

 

Dalton

 

DeCosta: Ravens want to use all four RBs next season

A surplus of talent is never a bad thing to have in any arena of life.

But with any surplus comes a lack of usage of all available resources, simply because it isn't needed. Take the Ravens' running back room, which now goes four deep after the selection of Ohio State star J.K. Dobbins in last weekend's draft.

The choice came as a surprise, considering the Ravens already have Pro Bowler Mark Ingram, Justice Hill and Gus Edwards in their backfield. The Ravens aren't worried about having too much talent -- coming off a 14-2 season, that's precisely what they want -- and are instead offering what might be an unorthodox, if not unrealistic idea for a solution.

"I would equate it to us last year having the tight ends that we had -- the three tight ends," Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta told the team's official site. "(Offensive coordinator) Greg (Roman) did an amazing job of taking those tight ends and really creating something special that made us very tough for defenses to play. And now we've got the four running backs and they all do different things well. It just makes us, I think, a really, really well-rounded team that's tough to defend."

Mark Andrews was undoubtedly the face of the TE position in Baltimore last year, catching 64 passes for 852 yards and 10 touchdowns in 15 games. In fact, he led all pass catchers in both yards and receiving. Surprisingly, a look down the tight end list reveals that yes, the Ravens really did use all three tight ends.

Nick Boyle caught 31 passes for 321 yards and two touchdowns, while former first-round pick Hayden Hurst caught 30 passes for 349 yards.

Baltimore traded away one of those tight ends after the 2019 season.

This is where we enter the bartering phase of the surplus. There's no better way to improve your team than by offering some of your abundance to address a deficiency elsewhere. And this couldn't have worked out better for this example.

Baltimore's trade, which sent Hurst to Atlanta, netted the Ravens an extra second-round pick in the 2020 draft. With that pick, Baltimore selected Dobbins.

Dobbins provides burst, power and a relentless motor that seems to fit perfectly in Roman's offense, which led the NFL in rushing last season by a wide margin. He's also bringing a hefty amount of miles traveled in his prolific career at Ohio State, where he rushed 725 times for 4,540 yards and 38 touchdowns. Dobbins set the freshman rushing record at Ohio State in 2017, struggled to cross 1,000 yards in 2018 and then exploded for 2,049 for the nation's No. 2 team entering the College Football Playoff. Their run ended prematurely, and Dobbins wasn't able to finish his final game in scarlet and gray, suffering an ankle injury that knocked him out of the Buckeyes' Fiesta Bowl loss to Clemson.

He's seen a lot. He won't have to run as much in Baltimore -- at least not in 2020.

Of course, this very well could be a move made in preparation for Ingram's departure. The running back's three-year, $15 million deal includes a potential out after 2020, when his dead cap number drops from $3.16 million to $1.3 million and his actual cap hit jumps by $1 million. Dobbins is a similar back who is talented enough to replace Ingram with little difference in production.

"We were ecstatic to get J.K.," DeCosta said. "He was by far -- by far -- the highest-rated guy that we had on the board. We kind of felt like he fell out of the sky right to us, the type of team that we are to get a running back like that.

It might just be best for business at that point -- early 2021 -- to move on from Ingram. But for now, Baltimore will be loaded at running back, and that's before we even include the running capabilities of quarterback Lamar Jackson -- you know, last year's MVP and the man who broke Michael Vick's rushing/passing yard record in 2019.

With each rush, the Ravens will be able to send out a different back. Hill brings a top-end burst of speed that will make onlookers question what they just saw, while Edwards can serve as a taller strider who runs with power.

"These guys can all do different things, they should be fresh for four quarters," DeCosta said. "I think we protect ourselves in case of injuries or things like that. It fortifies us, it makes us stronger, and it gives us a guy with home run potential."

Ingram's injury hurt Baltimore in the postseason, leading to an upset loss at home to the Titans. Hedging against such an outcome is wise. However, it's just not common to see a team enter a Sunday with four running backs active. Perhaps Baltimore moves one of these runners -- we'd bank on it being Edwards -- in order to address a need elsewhere.

Right now, the reigning AFC North champions aren't showing many deficiencies anywhere.

NFL.com

 

Id sure be excited if I were a Ravens fan... that team is stacked/loaded. Better keep Lamar healthy tho, which goes without saying for any team, but damn they are talented.

 

I'm still not shocked that the Bears drafted a TE. Saying the Bears didnt need a tight end is like saying the Patriots dont need a QB since they had a bunch already.

 

So I have passed 30,000 posts and have been rewarded with the long-awaited downgrade from HOF to assistant coach.

 

I was a little surprised they didn't go IOL, but the Bears need a lot of work on offense, so the pick wasn't shocking. I think Chicago was 29th in total offense last year, so at least they had focus on the right side of the ball. It did seem like there were some potentially more explosive targets available when they took Kmet.

 

lol! Looks like Will got the same.

 

I don't have to worry about that. I'll be a curmudgeon forever.

 

The Bears are signing safety Tashaun Gipson to a one-year deal, according to a PFT source.

The Texans cut him earlier this week, a year after signing him to a three-year, $22.5 million contract.

He started 14 games for Houston last season, going on injured reserve late in the regular season with a back injury.

Gipson, 29, spent his first four seasons with the Browns, and the next three with the Jaguars.

In eight seasons, Gipson has 450 tackles, 23 interceptions and 47 pass breakups.

NBC

 

Dolphins cut Taco Charlton



The only tacos in Miami today are to go.

The Dolphins announced the release of defensive end Taco Charlton.

That takes care of the question as to whether they’d pick up his fifth-year option, though that probably was never much of a question.

They claimed the former Cowboys first-rounder off waivers in September, and he led the team with five sacks in 10 games, but was also a healthy scratch late in the season.

They signed defensive ends Emmanuel Ogbah and Shaq Lawson during their busy free agent shopping.

NBC

 

Troy Vincent: NFL won’t take coronavirus tests that could be used by the general public

The NFL plans to proceed with the 2020 season. But the NFL also intends not to hog coronavirus tests that could be used by the general public. Given the ongoing issues with the availability of widespread testing, something will have to give.

NFL executive V.P. of football operations Troy Vincent told Rob Maadi of the Associated Press that the league won’t use tests that could be utilized by the American citizenry.

“General public safety is first and foremost,” Vincent said.

It’s unclear whether sufficient testing will be available. For now, the NFL apparently will be operating under the assumption that enough testing will be in place to satisfy the needs of the public and of the league — or that, at a minimum, the NFL will buy its own separate set of tests from a source that otherwise wouldn’t be providing them to the American government.

“The schedule will come out as normal, but we’re doing reasonable and responsible planning as we always do, inside of game operations,” Vincent said, confirming that the regular-season schedule is still on track to be released by May 9, despite a report that the issue currently is being debated. “Based off of what we are learning from the medical community and how people are handling this domestically and abroad, we are being deliberate with reasonable and responsible planning about what can work in our environment and what we can incorporate to protect the health and safety of all involved.”

Vincent acknowledged that the league’s planning includes the possibility of empty stadiums, neutral sites, the elimination of bye weeks, and a delayed start to the season.

NBC

 

Von Miller announces he's tested negative for COVID-19

Two weeks after it was announced that he tested positive for COVID-19, Von Miller shared some good news on Thursday.

The Denver Broncos star pass rusher shared on Twitter that he received a "negative" test after being re-tested for the virus.