19 Things We Learned: Jennings' Fit, McDaniel-Herbert Marriage and a Crazy Colts Idea

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3:31Welcome to NFL Daily, where we're big fans of Roddy White, just like Anthony Edwards. I'm Greg Rosenthal. We're here Monday morning on the West Coast, and Nick Shook is going to run through a lot of big news. Yeah, including the fact that Anthony Edwards of the Timberwolves dropped a great player comp you don't normally hear, comparing his teammate Ayo Desunmu to the great Falcons receiver, Roddy White, with his catch late in that game. I feel like we don't give Roddy White the credit he deserves because those Falcons teams never really achieved anything of, like, like that you could really remember.

4:09He was a hell of a football player for quite some time with the Falcons. So he reminds me a little of a, of the line I said about Alec Pierce a lot throughout last season, which was no matter how good you think Alec Pierce is, he's better. Now, Roddy White was another level of player, certainly to Alec Pierce. He's the truth. Ball players know at the, at the very best, a little overshadowed there by Julio Jones, kind of like Reggie Wayne was by Marvin Harrison for a minute, but he, he was that good at his very peak. Just not as long of a peak. This is going to be like the Roddy White of shows, Nick, because people think the haters are saying, oh, there's not much going on in the NFL these days.

4:46I was one of those haters. And yet. Since we last taped, I have found 19 different items of news that we've learned just since last Thursday that you got to know. Shooks, are you ready for just a nuts and bolts news rundown? I think it's a little juicier than you would expect. Yeah, I mean, look, even if you don't consider yourself a sicko, if you listen to NFL Daily long enough, you're going to become indoctrinated to becoming a sicko. And we're going to get you there with shows like this. Let's do it. Sneaky amount of news over the last couple of days, including a bunch of veteran signings. We'll get to Juwan Jennings, Brees Hall had a new contract, but we'll start with David Njoku because it's the freshest one.

5:26Signing with the Chargers for up to$8 million. We'll see what the real money is. My guess is it's up to eight. It's probably more like five. so they're not paying too much money for a year of David Njoku. You're a Browns fan, famously, Shook. What do you think Njoku has to offer the Chargers at this stage of his career? I would say more, unfortunately, than famously. Well, it's interesting because they have kind of gone all in on tight ends. They made the big signing of Charlie Kolar basically right at the start of free agency to give themselves a dynamic tight end group. We know what they have in Rondé Gadsden, a guy that I think you and I both really like and can't wait to see what else he can do.

6:05the joke who kind of fits somewhere in between which is a super athletic player whose hands are like hit or miss he either makes spectacular one-handed grabs of the game on the line or he drops routine passes um a guy that some people say doesn't block as well as you would like him to but when he does block he's still pretty consistent it's just more about effort than anything and i think at that money that makes sense so it gives them options this is still a team that i think is going to want to pound the run as much as possible and use multiple tight ends to their advantage. So adding him in there makes some sense.

6:34And it's good for him to get another opportunity after he sat out there in free agency for a while. It's funny because they were attached to Kenyan Sadiq as a possible landing spot, which people were surprised by. But Daniel Jeremiah, our friend, threw that out there. He covers the Chargers very closely. And that made me realize, OK, Sadiq is high on their board. And, you know, a younger David Njoku, not dissimilar. And it just makes me think, look, they're going to use two tight ends quite a bit. So you really need three tight ends if you're going to use two. Gadsden is more of a pass catcher.

7:03He did lead all tight ends with plus 20 yard catches last year, which is crazy. But I actually think they needed this move. As excited as I am that they bring in a blocking tight end and that they get their tackles healthy, I just felt like they need just a little more on offense. But now you're giving me Gadsden, Njoku, you got Kohler as a blocker, and then at receiver you have Ladd, Quinton Johnston, Trey Harris as your third. You added Brennan Thompson, a speedster, who Mike McDaniel likes as your fourth round pick. Like, okay, that's enough. I felt like they needed one more thing, and this was it.

7:36Speaking of Mike McDaniel, he spoke, and so if we can get some sound into the show, we're going to do it. Mike McDaniel spoke over the weekend at their rookie minicamp, but about his guy, Justin Herbert, trying to maximize Justin Herbert entering year six. his expectations are the highest for himself and which is a great thing for the chargers organization team fan base everybody so i i would say that we're looking to master and be be a lead at everything that we do and being able to own the position in a new way own a for him to own the position in a way he never has and ultimately for it to be obvious to everyone around.

8:20He's playing the best football of his career. Ooh, I like that very specific goal there, that it'd be obvious even to simpletons like us that he's playing his best ball. I'm more excited about this partnership than almost anything in the 2026 season, Chuck. And it's interesting those words, because if you think about Herbert's career, I think it's fair to say, and he's coming off a year where he finished, what, fifth in your QB index. I went and checked where the the first three first three years of his career were better than the next two years of his career, I would say, which is very rare. And then last year you saw that that growth in your late 20s that you want to see.

9:02Now you get McDaniel. What do you think about him with Njoku added and then this whole group around him with McDaniel? Well, first off, I love the idea of Mike McDaniel, offensive coordinator of the Chargers, because he goes from Miami where he was like kind of this trendy looking head coach, but it never really felt like he maybe on the outside was the typical head coach. Now he's back in, I think, his perfect spot, which is as the offensive mastermind equipped with a quarterback who is supremely talented and can actually maximize what Mike McDaniel wants to do schematically. It's just about whether they can protect him.

9:33That's been the story for a while. Well, a good way to protect him is to be able to be dynamic enough offensively that you're unpredictable. And that's been Mike McDaniel's offenses with the Dolphins, and now I think it's going to be with the Chargers. and they have, there's a multiplicity to this team now with multiple tight ends with the receivers that we already talked about. I think they're going to be one of the more entertaining offenses as long as they can stay healthy up front. Because if they can, you can't give me any reason that they can't be one of the more explosive units in the NFL and really start to take advantage of what Justin Herbert brings to the table, which is why it's good that he sets that expectation for him at this point in the offseason.

10:05It's funny. I've actually been hesitant to be too high on the Chargers in the Harbaugh era, at least last year. And yet they have hit their over-under like two years in a row. They've won two seasons, 11 games in a row. 11 wins, two seasons in a row. It's early. I don't want to be predicting the season, but they might be reeling me back in for some sort of big prediction. There's kind of a clash too, if you think about it. The way that Harbaugh likes to coach his teams and the style that he likes to play and what McDaniel likes to do. So that's what's going to make it fascinating is how can they balance that?

10:39Does he kind of just give the offensive keys to McDaniel and lets him kind of go wild? Or does he have more oversight over it? We'll see. Right, but are they different? Because ultimately, McDaniel does his best work, in theory, in the running game, and that very much lines up with what Arbaugh does. But the style has been different. But you also can't disconnect Harbaugh from Greg Roman for all those years, because that style has meshed for so long. So that's really the identity switch. It's not super different, but it's different enough to make me really interested to see what happens. Well, considering they let him bring in Brennan Thompson, who's a very McDaniel-coded fourth-round receiver who it was clear that was his guy.

11:14And then they let him bring in Cole Strange, who was with him in Miami, to kind of be more of a zone blocking. I think it's going to be a lot of McDaniel. And it's crazy. I said year six for Herbert before. It is year seven. It's go time. It's year three of the Harbaugh era. Like, this is when the 49ers team took off. People are going to get sick of Harbaugh soon. Like, if they're not going to do it this year, when are they going to do it? All right, that's two nuggets. We got 17 more to go. The schedule release coming out Thursday, officially. We'll be on the NFL channel live. We'll be dropping a podcast right when the schedule release comes out as well.

11:51Little drips and drabs throughout the week are going to happen. The Cowboys and the Giants will be the week one Sunday night football game. It's a couple days after the 25th anniversary of 9-11, so that I think could impact it. I also think you want to get the Giants into primetime plenty, but maybe early in the season just in case it doesn't go well. So you got Jackson Dart, hopefully Malik Neighbors. You got Dak. We've seen that exact week one matchup on Sunday night plenty of times. It also means those two teams will not be facing Seattle in the kickoff game. My pick weeks ago was the Bears in that game.

12:24And so I wouldn't be surprised if that's the pick. But I promise I do not know. Speaking of the Giants, that's item number three. Number four is that we had rookie camps over the weekend. Shook, rookie camps are over. And John Harbaugh got to talk about his two rookie first-round picks in front of a podium. They were in uniforms. I get excited about this stuff. Let's listen to John Harbaugh talking about Arvel Reese, the linebacker. I thought he moved well. You know, he's 6 '4", plus, about 240-some pounds. And yet he moves like a smaller guy. You know, he moves his feet. He can flip his hips.

12:58very natural looking mover off the ball which was something we saw on tape we thought we saw but now we saw it in the practice field so we feel better about it you know and picks things up really quick very serious minded very diligent about the assignments I don't think he got one assignment wrong throughout the two days which is great to see this makes me so happy back in mock draft season I didn't think this was going to happen I thought he was already going to be gone now that it's only May, but hearing John Harbaugh talk about Arvel Reese in this fashion makes me think this is the perfect fit team-wise for him.

13:35I was so worried that a team was going to draft him and just box him in an edge and not let him play off ball because he's just such a good athlete. And this is exactly what he looked like at Ohio State. So to hear that it's carried over, rookie minicamp's different because you're just out there with the rookies. You don't really have the comp with the veterans and the real level of play that you're going to encounter in the NFL. But it's always good to hear that he's on top of his P's and Q's from the start. It's just a good way to start. And I cannot wait to see what he can do in this defense this year.

14:02And I've seen you people out there clowning on Reese's interviews. Hey, he's not going to give you a great quote. I care about what he does on the field. And I'm excited. No assignments missed. I mean, is it stupid that I'm getting excited about this? Of course it's stupid. One thing that was cool, though, was they did the reveal of all the cameras and the documentary during the draft and they had some celebrations from the Giants they really were just hoping Reese would fall to them it happened and then Harbaugh actually said to Reese on the phone we said God would make this happen and it did so yeah heaven sent God made it happen by the way a divine draft board intervention I mean they they were fired up also in that documentary was really interesting.

14:50Pretty soon after they drafted Maui Noah, or actually after they made their second round pick, Harbaugh immediately says to Joe Shane, all right, let's start figuring out how we can move up to go get Malachi Fields. So it just shows you the type of influence Harbaugh has. Now they didn't move up, did they? I think they just sticked and picked, but they got Malachi Fields and it shows how important Harbaugh specifically is to the entire process. Let's talk about some big free agent signings. We had some. We had Njoku and we had Juwan Jennings. We've been talking about what team's going to get Juwan Jennings.

15:24On my short list of the best fits was Minnesota Vikings. So I'm really excited to see him land there. $8 million base salary. They're not paying too much money. Up to$13 million in incentives. I think Jennings' agent did not do him any favors this offseason. He's definitely settling for less than maybe he could have gotten in the first day or two if he if he wasn't trying to get paid between 15 20 million dollars and definitely less than i think the 49ers were offering like last year so that's unfortunate for the player but it's fortunate for me shook because i want to see kyler with some fun weapons and what a great trio that is uh that kyler can throw to now with addison number two behind justin jefferson and it gives you some insurance because we've seen times when addison hasn't been on the field it's just been justin jefferson and then basically tj hawkinson so it gives you some insurance against that and also just expands the the ability to have you know multiple receivers that you can throw to the variety of it just gives defenses more to account for and it gives Kyler Murray a higher chance of success in what we expect to be his first season as the Vikings starter and it brings this is gonna be a great clash I think it brings the NFL's established heel from 2025 Jawan Jennings to one of the nicer regions in the United States which is in Minnesota and we'll see how those two mix and whether he can continue to be the heel for his new team they'll love it because he plays so hard that's what Kevin O 'Connell said at the press conference he said Minnesota fans are going to fall in love with how he plays football because of his blocking and then he pointed out look you need someone who can do something after making a play at the catch point we love Jennings after the catch I saw the most ridiculous thing from some Vikings fan that said is this better than Moss Chris Carter and Jake Reed no what are you talking about of course It's not, but it's one of the better one, two threes in the NFL.

17:10I think I can say that I'd have to go through the list and I don't think it's number one, but it's up there. I mean, it's a really good number three and a really good number two in terms of Addison and maybe the best at number one. Yeah. Hopefully you know, they can kind of avoid the pit. I mean, look, if we look at the Vikings from last year, they were a quarterback away from, and they still won nine games with a team that didn't have a quarterback for most of the season. If they get that figured out, then who knows? Maybe the sky's limit. They did have some, you know, departures and some changes the offseason because of cap restrictions but yeah i like it i'm excited to see what happens there i think they had a sneaky great offseason considering how they had to get rid of salary they were so over the salary cap i don't know why they couldn't get more for jonathan grenard or that like why did you did you have to trade him i guess you did but considering their limitations i think you look at their roster i think it's i think it's one of the better rosters in the nfl and by better i mean like a top 10 roster as long as kyler murray can can play well they do say this is a open competition with jj mccarthy not sure yeah we'll see we'll see about that reese hall thought he was going to be playing for a contract this year and instead the jets extended him he gets three years 45 million dollars on the extension i think the key number is 29 million dollars in guarantees i haven't seen the exact specifics but my strong guess is this is closer to a two-year you know 30-ish million dollar contract which is good business for Brees Hall.

18:36He said it's the first time he cried since he suffered that devastating knee injury a couple of years ago. So I think a smart move actually by the Jets to lock in one weapon when you have such a young group there and a lot of uncertainty over the next couple of years. This was a team that, you know, the whole narrative on him and the idea that maybe they would trade him last season just didn't really feel like it made a ton of sense given what he'd done in his previous seasons. what's good though is that a they keep him and i think it makes the most sense for them to keep him as a key part of this offense especially as they continue to cycle through quarterbacks and now it's geno's team right but it's also a win for him because his franchise tag number was going to be right around the same range and instead you're getting 15 a year over three hopefully he gets the end of the three but i mean if you look at the money when comparison to other running backs you're top five per year right now so now the pressure's on now you got to go deliver here's the thing, though.

19:33It's basically a two-year contract, and it gives him that extra year of security, and they can't franchise him a second time. And if you're the Jets, how I think of it, you're like, do the Jets really need to be playing a running back? You got to pay someone, okay? And if you look at their roster, it is so young. Obviously, Garrett Wilson is a big dollar guy, but with Membu and with Fashanu and all the players that they've just drafted, and then they've got these old guys on defense that are going to be gone. You have to pay someone, and this contract won't have any guaranteed money by the time you have to pay all these younger players money.

20:09So I think it really fits in with the timeline. And the point is to try to win games, and I think he will help you do that. So good on the Jets and Brees Hall. I actually like the offseason that they've had. Let's see if Aaron Glenn can take advantage of it. Another man, and this is our seventh point. Brees Hall was six, Juwan Denning's five. Here's the seventh thing you need to know. George Payton. I mean, in a world where there's not many guaranteed contracts, Chuck, you know, in football, in media, I mean, that's thinned out to 2030. George Payton, whom people might not know who that is, that's the Broncos general manager, not spelled the same as Sean Payton, and he preceded Sean Payton in Denver and promptly traded for and gave Russell Wilson a massive contract and gave up picks for that.

20:54He somehow has survived that, And he's signed through 2030 now with Sean Payton. What do you think about that partnership that the Paytons has really borne fruit? I think it's really funny how one season of success can completely change the narrative of a guy in the front office. They made the playoffs in Bo Nix's rookie year. That's pretty good. I know, but this season was significantly better than that first season. And I think it's a weird dynamic. make anytime you have a coach with a strong of a presence as Sean Payton does that oftentimes the GM is left in the shadow I think that that's probably going to happen in New York too probably for better than worse with what the way the Giants have been over the last five or so years with John Harbaugh but it felt like he was a holdover from a previous regime he was a guy who got his job partially because John Elway promoted himself out of potentially getting fired as GM of the Broncos back in the day.

21:49And the Russell Wilson move was the biggest stain on his resume, but he made up for it in tandem with Sean Payton by drafting Bo Nix, a pick that a lot of people will credit to Sean Payton, not George Payton. Now he gets rewarded because they have that successful season. They were one game away from the Superbowl and everybody optimism is running as high as possible in Denver with these Broncos right now. But I do think it's interesting because when he was first hired, it was a five-year deal. Now it's a five-year deal again. Does he make it to the end of the second five-year deal. We know this league, NFL ends up not being, you know, not for long for a lot of people.

22:22Okay. We'll see if he gets there. We'll see if he gets there. Now they have really good line play on both sides of the ball. And George Payton was involved in drafting some, certainly not all of those, but he, he had the free agency move, like bringing in Zach Allen, for instance, from Arizona. So a lot of good moves by George Payton. And then I did see the thing where he was floated as a candidate in Minnesota, which is where he came from. So maybe you're using that a little bit as leverage. But the number one takeaway is he just works well with Sean Payton. You're absolutely right. Sean Payton's the most important person in the organization.

22:53He's also in his 60s. He doesn't want to be doing everything. And he said he's been blessed to have these relationships with his GMs, Mickey Loomis. And how I read into that is these relationships where they know their place and we work really well together. And that's what you want. You want continuity and it's okay. Take that long-term money, George Payton. And that's point number seven. For points eight through 10, we're gonna do something where we go around the rookie minicamps. We're calling this rookie minicamp corner. Just gonna give you some nuggets of what happened over at the rookie minicamps.

23:28You can't take too many takeaways here. Jordan Tyson, top 10 pick for the Saints. Apparently look great day one. Then wasn't to be seen day two. But then the Saints said, this was a planned absence. We're working him back slowly off the hamstring. Who knows? If it wasn't a planned absence, I would kind of expect them to lie about it. But I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say it wasn't a lie. They're just being careful with their young player, Jordan Tyson. So he sat out the second day, but that's fine. The Vikings gave a little more clarity to where their first round picks, Caleb Banks, is at.

24:05If you remember, they took the defensive tackle in the first round. Kevin O 'Connell said they hope to see him back on the field in late July. So he's still a while from being healthy coming off that foot injury. That was a big risk that they took with Caleb Banks. Just some perspective there. And then finally, Mike McCarthy reported to be extremely, that's a quote extremely from The Athletic, hands-on with Drew Aller in the rookie minicamp. That's what Mike McCarthy loves to do, is coach up some rookie quarterbacks. Any thoughts of those three nuggets from the minicamps this weekend? I'm going to work back to front here.

24:41I am not at all shocked that Mike McCarthy would be extremely hands-on with Drew Aller because this felt like a Mike McCarthy can make him into something pick when they spent the third rounder on him. So, of course, his first opportunity to work with him, he's going to be very hands-on. He has the history of successful quarterback play. It makes sense. We'll see if it actually produces anything, but it doesn't surprise me at all. Banks, that was a risk. It's his guy, though. It's like he has to prove that it's his guy in a way that maybe Will Howard is not his guy. And that's why I didn't believe the whole.

25:10We love our sixth round pick that didn't see the field last year. Will Howard, no offense to Will Howard, but I wasn't buying that Steelers. Banks, yeah, it's an associated risk. You never liked that idea, and I think that's part of why he was a surprise when they made that pick. But look, if that's your guy and you believe that this is just going to be a short-term thing and the investment's worth it, then you make the investment. But the Tyson thing, that's where the investment didn't make sense to me at the time when the Saints spent that pick on him. And to hear this already, I'm not sounding any alarms.

25:36I just know that when a receiver has an injury history and when it deals with hamstrings, which let's look at Mike Evans' career. Fantastic player. Going to be a Hall of Famer. All that's great. Hopefully Jordan Tyson has the same career. It would be an incredible success if he did. But the consistent thing with him over the years was that his hamstring always kind of popped up every year or two. And it cost him time. And the Saints could not afford to draft another player who couldn't stay on the field all the time after they have Chris Alave and his struggles to stay on the field. So hopefully they're managing it now so that it's not a problem in the future.