Dan GrazianoMay 12, 2026, 06:10 AM ETCloseDan Graziano is a senior NFL national reporter for ESPN, covering the entire league and breaking news. Dan also contributes to Get Up, NFL Live, SportsCenter, ESPN Radio, Sunday NFL Countdown and Fantasy Football Now. He is a New Jersey native who joined ESPN in 2011, and he is also the author of two published novels.Follow on XMultiple Authors
play1:04What’s next for George Pickens after signing franchise tag?Todd Archer explores the options for George Pickens and the Cowboys after the Pro Bowl WR finally signed his franchise tag.
play1:14Why Schrager isn’t buying Rodgers to Steelers as a done deal yetPeter Schrager joins “The Pat McAfee Show” and details why he isn’t sold on Aaron Rodgers staying with the Pittsburgh Steelers just yet.
play1:48Darlington: Deshaun Watson deal is ‘worst contract and transaction’ in sports historyThe “Get Up” crew discusses whether starting Deshaun Watson would be a mistake for the Browns.
Are Cowboys or Giants in a better position to make a statement in Week 1? (1:51)Damien Woody and Dan Graziano discuss the Giants’ matchup vs. the Cowboys on the first Sunday night game of the season. (1:51)
What’s next for George Pickens after signing franchise tag?Todd Archer explores the options for George Pickens and the Cowboys after the Pro Bowl WR finally signed his franchise tag.
Todd Archer explores the options for George Pickens and the Cowboys after the Pro Bowl WR finally signed his franchise tag.
Why Schrager isn’t buying Rodgers to Steelers as a done deal yetPeter Schrager joins “The Pat McAfee Show” and details why he isn’t sold on Aaron Rodgers staying with the Pittsburgh Steelers just yet.
Peter Schrager joins “The Pat McAfee Show” and details why he isn’t sold on Aaron Rodgers staying with the Pittsburgh Steelers just yet.
Darlington: Deshaun Watson deal is ‘worst contract and transaction’ in sports historyThe “Get Up” crew discusses whether starting Deshaun Watson would be a mistake for the Browns.
Why didn’t the Cowboys want to extend George Pickens?
Why didn’t the Giants draft Caleb Downs with the 10th pick?
Why didn’t the Steelers try harder to upgrade at quarterback?
Why didn’t the Seahawks reward Sam Darnold with a new deal after winning the Super Bowl?
Why didn’t the Rams do more in the draft to help their 2026 team?
We follow the NFL offseason very closely, and it has this concentrated feel to it. The Super Bowl ends, and we basically go immediately into the combine, free agency, the trade market and the draft — one right after the other.
Then we get to the middle of May, and fans look up and start to reconsider everything. “Wait, wasn’t my favorite team supposed to address wide receiver?” … “Hold on, wasn’t this guy supposed to get a new contract?”
This annual piece is for those unresolved questions — the stuff we were pretty sure would happen but still has not (at least not yet). Some of those questions have answers, and we have endeavored here to provide some reasoning to 10 of them. Let’s start with a team that traded or cut basically everyone amid a transition … except for its star running back?
Miami is clearly in rebuild mode, having pared its roster of big salaries, taken on $99 million in dead money by cutting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and traded top wide receiver Jaylen Waddle to the Broncos before the draft. Achane has one year left on his rookie contract at $5.767 million, and to this point the Dolphins have not extended him. Achane has averaged 1,445 scrimmage yards and 12 touchdowns per season in his first three years in the league. He also doesn’t turn 25 until October.
In a market where Kenneth Walker III got over $14 million per year and Breece Hall got over $15 million per year, one would think Achane at less than $6 million would be an appealing trade target for teams … and that a team looking to amass draft picks would listen.
In his first season in Dallas, Pickens was one of the best wide receivers in the NFL. He caught 93 passes for 1,429 yards and nine touchdowns. The Cowboys got him for a third-round pick around this time last year, and he more than delivered on that investment. Pickens was eligible for free agency, but the Cowboys used their franchise tag to keep him off the market.
Just before the draft, they announced publicly that they would not work on a long-term contract with Pickens this offseason and that they expected him to play on the franchise tag, which will pay him a fully guaranteed $27.298 million in 2026. Shortly after the draft, Pickens signed his franchise tender, indicating that he intends to do just that.
What’s next for George Pickens after signing franchise tag?
The Giants had Ohio State star Arvell Reese fall into their laps at No. 5 in the draft. Then at No. 10, Downs was sitting right there. The Cowboys had tried to trade up to No. 9 to get Downs, fearful that the Giants would take him. New York could have come out of the first round of the draft feeling like it had locked down two defensive cornerstones for a decade to come.
Instead, the Giants drafted offensive tackle Francis Mauigoa. Dallas exhaled and moved up one spot to make sure it got Downs. And now the Giants will have to play against him twice a year.
They’re far from the only team that operated this way. Tennessee and New Orleans — both of whom are building around promising second-year quarterbacks — drafted Tate and Tyson, respectively, with their first-round picks. Teams try to maximize young quarterbacks’ chances to succeed whenever they can, and picking Mauigoa over a second defensive standout was the Giants’ way of doing that.
The 2025 season was a massive flop for McCarthy, the No. 10 pick in the 2024 draft. The Vikings let Sam Darnold leave in free agency after a 14-win season and handed the starting quarterback job to McCarthy, who looked overwhelmed from the start. His injuries and ineffectiveness doomed the Vikings to missing the playoffs, and as he heads into his third season, McCarthy now has to contend with 2019 No. 1 pick Kyler Murray, who signed with Minnesota after being released by the Cardinals.
The expectation is that Murray was brought in to start. If he does so and plays well, it’s hard to envision much of a future in Minnesota for McCarthy. This is his third NFL season, which means the Vikings have to decide next May whether to pick up McCarthy’s fifth-year option for 2029. A good, healthy season from Murray that results in a return to the postseason for the Vikings likely means McCarthy won’t have played in Year 1 or Year 3 of his rookie deal.
People I’ve talked to who are close to this situation insist that the Vikings haven’t given up on McCarthy — that part of their hope is bringing in Murray sends some sort of shock to McCarthy’s system and gets him refocused on whatever they think he got away from last year. It’s probably a long shot, but again, there doesn’t seem to be much they would gain from trading him at this point.
Murray is signed for one year, and his deal prohibits the Vikings from franchise-tagging him next offseason. There’s a world in which Minnesota gets to the end of this season believing that McCarthy has figured some things out and can still be what it thought he would be. If not, maybe then the Vikings cut bait. But there’s no reason to do it now.
Why Schrager isn’t buying Rodgers to Steelers as a done deal yet
What irks Steelers fans is the recent inability to rise above the status quo. Pittsburgh hasn’t won a playoff game since January 2017. It hasn’t won more than 10 games in a season since 2020. It hasn’t been to the Super Bowl in 15 years and hasn’t won it in 17. It might be time for the Steelers to get outside of their comfort zone and try to find a quarterback solution that isn’t just a bandage.
Maybe Will Howard or Drew Allar ends up being the solution. But if that happens, it won’t be because the Steelers stretched to get them. Maybe the Steelers finally have a lousy season and find their solution at the top of the 2027 draft. But if that happens, it would be because their plan didn’t work. For now, they’re once again willing to wait on a 42-year-old who hasn’t been a top-20 quarterback by QBR since 2021 because he’s competent enough to keep them afloat.
This could have been a question in this article in any of the past three offseasons, and the answer would have been pretty much the same each time: because they have to pay him anyway. This will be, at long last, the final year of the five-year, fully guaranteed contract Watson signed with the Browns as a condition of the trade they made with Houston in March 2022 to acquire him. He will be paid a fully guaranteed $46 million, whether he’s on the Browns or not.
Now, I want to be clear: I do not think there’s a world in which Watson plays well enough this season to convince the Browns to re-sign him and move forward with him as their franchise QB of the future. He turns 31 in September. The contract has been a complete catastrophe in every possible way. And the team’s owner has admitted as much publicly.
Darlington: Deshaun Watson deal is ‘worst contract and transaction’ in sports history
The “Get Up” crew discusses whether starting Deshaun Watson would be a mistake for the Browns.
The Texans picked up Stroud’s fifth-year option for 2027, which was a no-brainer because it means they’ll pay him a total of $31.6 million over the next two seasons. But it appears the Texans want to wait to see another year before committing long-term quarterback money.
Add in the fact that there aren’t currently any big quarterback extensions on the horizon anywhere else that would scare Houston into trying to get ahead of the market. Carolina doesn’t seem in a huge hurry to do a Bryce Young extension. Lamar Jackson isn’t rushing to do an extension with the Ravens. In turn, the Texans aren’t at risk of having to pay a ton more next offseason than they’d likely have to pay this offseason to get Stroud under contract long term. They can afford to wait.