Hours after making sure Matthew Stafford remained with the franchise, the Los Angeles Rams made sure another key piece of their offensive line remained. Per multiple reports, the Rams and offensive tackle Alaric Jackson agreed to a three-year, $57 million deal with $35 million guaranteed (per Fox Sports).
Jackson, who was set to hit free agency (and the No. 20 overall free agent on Pete Prisco’s Top-100 list), will remain in Los Angeles for the next several seasons. The 27-year-old Jackson, formerly an undrafted free agent, played under a salary of $4.89 million last season under the restricted free agent tender.
Jackson had a career-best season as a pass blocker in 2024, having a career-best 4.7% pressure rate allowed per dropback. He allowed three sacks and 22 pressures in 467 pass-blocking snaps — playing 14 games )starting them all) at left tackle.
With Jackson off the board, one of Prisco’s top free agent offensive tackles is off the board. Here are the top free agent tackles remaining:
Ronnie Stanley (No. 5 overall) Prisco: Injuries have been a problem for Ronnie Stanley in his career, but he played a full season in 2024. Was that because of the pending free agency? He is 31, so age is starting to be a factor. But he is a good pass protector at left tackle, which brings value on the market.
Cam Robinson (No. 17 overall) Prisco: Cam Robinson, 29, was traded by the Jaguars to the Vikings during the 2024 season and took over as the starter at left tackle for the injured Christian Darrisaw. He won’t be back with the Vikings, and his starting ability will make him attractive on the market. He needs to be stronger in the run game and has lapses in pass protection.
Teven Jenkins (No. 25 overall) Prisco: Drafted as a tackle, Teven Jenkins has made a solid transition inside to guard. He turns 27 in March, so he has the youth that teams want when signing free agents. He has missed time with injuries, including three games last season, but he has 40 starts in his career.
Dan Moore Jr. (No. 42 overall) Prisco: It’s not often that a 26-year-old left tackle with 66 career starts hits the market. But Moore will likely be doing just that as the Steelers have taken tackles in the first round the past two seasons. Moore has been ripped at times in his career for his play, but improved last season, although he did struggle some down the stretch.
Jedrick Wills (No. 84 overall) Prisco: Jedrick Wills was a top-10 pick in 2020, but he clearly hasn’t played to that level. Early on, he looked like a solid left tackle after converting from the right side in college. But the past two years have been awful. He’s battled injuries and was benched. Plus, he had the “business decision” comment after missing a game with injury. He turns 26 in May, so maybe a team can sign him and move him back to right tackle.
Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl, but the Miami Dolphins legend and Hall of Fame quarterback did win an AFC title against his childhood team — the Pittsburgh Steelers — who immediately regretted not selecting him in the previous year’s NFL Draft.
In fact, many Steelers fans of a certain age (including my father) still haven’t gotten over the fact that Pittsburgh passed on Marino, who in the 1984 AFC Championship threw for 421 yards and four touchdowns while leading the Dolphins to a 45-28 win.
“Tell him not to let it go,” a smiling Marino said in a 2024 interview with CBS Sports when told of the still-upset Steelers fan who has never forgiven his team for passing on Marino.
Marino recently took it a step further, saying that he would have won it all if his childhood team selected him in the 1983 NFL Draft.
“Looking back at their teams, I probably would have won a couple Super Bowls,” Marino recently said on current Steelers defensive tackle Cameron Heyward’s podcast. “I really do, because of the defense they had.”
Pittsburgh’s decision to pass on Marino is by far the biggest mistake in the franchise’s history. It was a mistake that then-Steelers president and future Hall of Famer Dan Rooney tried to stop from happening.
After initially passing on Marino, Rooney (who passed away in 2017) said during a 2014 interview that longtime NFL reporter John Clayton advised him to trade quarterback Cliff Stoudt for a draft pick that would have given the Steelers a second chance to draft Marino. Rooney liked the idea and pitched it to the team’s brain trust.
“I went into the room and I gave them the idea,” Rooney recalled. “They said, ‘Who’d you talk to?’ And I was so dumb, I said, ‘John Clayton.’ Well, that immediately was the end of that. That would have been a great trade.”
Rooney didn’t get Marino, but he made sure that his team didn’t make the same mistake twice when Pittsburgh was in position to draft another top QB prospect two decades later. In 2019, longtime Steelers orthopedic doctor Jim Bradley told Ben Roethlisberger what had Rooney told him inside the Steelers’ draft room in 2004 when Pittsburgh was allegedly leaning towards drafting Philip Rivers.
“Nope, that’s not our guy,” Bradley recalled Rooney telling him, via The Athletic. “I want the kid Roethlisberger from Miami. The kid’s a leader, that kid’s a winner. … You just wait and see, that’s our guy.”
The Steelers did draft Roethlisberger after he fell to them with the 11th overall pick. Pittsburgh, with Roethlisberger as their quarterback, won two Super Bowls, three AFC titles, eight division titles and went to the playoffs 12 times during Roethlisberger’s 18-year career that one will day be immortalized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Why didn’t the Steelers draft Marino in ’83? The story goes that then-Steelers coach and future Hall of Famer Chuck Noll wanted to rebuild his team with defense, similarly to how the 1970s Steelers’ dynasty was started with the selection of future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Joe Greene in 1969, Noll’s first draft as Steelers coach. Pittsburgh followed suit in 1983 when they selected Texas Tech nose tackle Gabe Rivera. Rivera recorded two sacks in his first six games, but his career game to a quick and tragic ending after he was paralyzed in a car crash.
Marino was ultimately selected by the Dolphins six spots after the Steelers drafted Rivera. He led the Dolphins to a Super Bowl at the end of his second second, but Miami fell to a superior 49ers team that was led by future Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana. It would be the first and last Super Bowl during Marino’s Hall of Fame career.
As Marino alluded to during his interview with Heyward, the Steelers had good defenses for the majority of his 17-year career, which was spent entirely in Miami. Pittsburgh’s defense was especially good in the 1990s, as the unit spearheaded six consecutive playoff appearances that included three AFC title game appearances over a four-year span.
The Steelers appeared in one Super Bowl during that period, too, but fell to the Cowboys largely because of the team’s quarterback play. Pittsburgh out-gained the heavily-favored Cowboys, but two interceptions set up both of Dallas’ second half touchdowns. The Steelers lost, 27-17, despite out-gaining the Cowboys and holding future Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith to just 49 yards rushing.
Would Pittsburgh have won multiple Super Bowls had it drafted Marino? We’ll never know for sure, but it’s safe to assume that the Steelers’ odds of winning a championship during that time period would have been considerably better, and Marino may not be known today as the greatest quarterback to never win a Super Bowl.
JJ Watt has been out of football for two years, but there’s a chance the former NFL star could be coming out of retirement in 2025 and it’s all because of a bet he made.
Watt and his wife, Kealia, own a stake in Burnley FC, a soccer team that plays in the English Football League’s (EFL) Championship division. The goalkeeper for Burnley is James Trafford, who just happens to be a huge fan of the Cincinnati Bengals, which is a very notable aspect of this story.
Back in December, Trafford asked Watt if he’d be willing to come out of retirement to play for the Bengals and Watt half-jokingly responded that he would do it, but only if Trafford went the rest of the EFL season without surrendering a single goal.
The tweet above is from January, but the two had the text message exchange on Dec. 28 and up to that point, Trafford had allowed just nine goals in 22 league starts, which is impressive. But to win the bet with Watt, the 22-year-old Trafford would have to finish the season by recording 24 shutouts (clean sheets) in a row.
Considering the all-time English record by any keeper is 14 shutouts in a row, this didn’t seem like anything Watt would have to worry about, but that’s suddenly changed, because Trafford is now on one of the hottest streaks of any goalkeeper ever in England: Trafford has recorded 12 straight clean sheets for Burnley, which is the second-most by ANY keeper in English soccer history.
The Burnley social media team has made sure to remind Watt of how well Trafford is playing.
Trafford has been so good that he was named the EFL Championship player of the month for January.
Although no one has been able to get a goal past Trafford since his streak started on Dec. 26, Burnley has conceded a total of four goals since then. They surrendered one goal during a 3-1 win over Reading in the third round of the FA Cup, but Trafford didn’t play. On March 1, Burnley lost to Preston North End 3-1 in the fifth-round of the FA Cup, but once again, Trafford wasn’t in goal for the Clarets (Vaclav Hladky was the keeper for Burnley in the loss).
The 3-1 loss ended Burnley’s team streak of nine straight clean sheets, but Trafford’s personal streak of 12 straight shutouts is still going, so the bet is STILL alive. Burnley’s next EFL match is scheduled for March 4 against Cardiff City and that’s the next time Trafford will likely be putting his streak on the line.
With Trafford now more than halfway to pulling off a feat that once seemed impossible, you might be wondering whether Watt will actually come out of retirement if Trafford wins the bet and the answer is yes. Although Watt seems to love his job as a studio analyst on “The NFL Today” here at CBS Sports, he said he’ll absolutely return to the NFL if Trafford keeps up his hot streak.
In June, the Houston Rockets made a trade that appeared, at least in theory, to be a prelude to a second, bigger one. When the Brooklyn Nets sent Mikal Bridges to the New York Knicks, they also looped in the Rockets and swapped control over a handful of future draft picks they owned originally belonging to the Phoenix Suns (and one from either the Nets or Dallas Mavericks) for control of their own picks back in 2025 and 2026. Those Nets picks, at least in the moment, looked like some of the most valuable draft assets in basketball.
But the Rockets, based on reporting at the time, held a specific interest in those Suns picks as a sort of short against Phoenix’s future. The Suns were coming off a disappointing first-round sweep and held limited flexibility to improve because they had traded most of their draft picks and were above the second apron. As ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported at the time, the Rockets wanted to be in a position to give Phoenix its own draft picks back and, with them, the ability to tank and rebuild had they ever decided to trade Kevin Durant or Devin Booker. Phoenix has thus far resisted all overtures, but as recently as Sunday, Marc Stein called Durant Houston’s “dream target.” While Stein also reported a widespread belief around the league that the Rockets want to wait until the offseason to make a big trade, even having a dream target suggests a willingness to jump should the right star become available.
And that made The Athletic’s Kelly Iko’s reporting on Wednesday so confusing. While he’s not as versatile as Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo, at least on paper, feels like much more of a dream target for a team ready to swing a blockbuster than Durant is. Antetokounmpo is more than six years younger than Durant and has beaten him in MVP voting a staggering eight years in a row. Virtually every metric tells us that Antetokounmpo is the superior player today. Last season, for instance, Antetokounmpo more than doubled Durant up in terms of BPM (9.0 to 4.0), came close in VORP (7.2 to 4.3) and Win Shares per 48 minutes (.246 to .129). Antetokounmpo has had a few minor injuries but has never missed 20 games in a season. Durant has done so in four of the past five seasons.
Yet, according to Iko, the Rockets are not interested in breaking up their young core to land Antetokounmpo in a trade should the flailing Bucks ever decide to move him. It’s a confusing stance on the surface because, well, who wouldn’t want Giannis? He has a real case for the title “Best player in the NBA, not named Nikola Jokic.” He’s a tricky fit on certain rosters, sure, but he’s good enough to warrant further changes. If your team doesn’t make sense for a two-time MVP in his prime, your team is the problem, not him. So what’s happening here?
Let’s race through the simplest answers here. This might just be posturing. It’s easier to trade for a player when their current team doesn’t think you’re desperate. Ask the Los Angeles Clippers what happens when you really are desperate to land a specific player. It’s also possible that there isn’t an organizational consensus. ESPN’s Tim MacMahon said as much in regards to the Durant interest in July during an appearance on the Lowe Post podcast. It’s possible, for instance, that Durant is a favored target of head coach Ime Udoka, who was an assistant in Brooklyn when Durant was a Net and reportedly the 2014 MVP’s preferred choice to replace Steve Nash in 2022. But the organization needs alignment for a trade of this magnitude to take place. If that’s not there, it’s hard to imagine Houston breaking the bank for anyone.
But the logical answer here has less to do with Antetokounmpo, Durant, Booker or any player on another team’s roster and more to do with what Houston already has. The Rockets, in short, don’t quite know what they have yet.
It’s still early, but the 2024-25 Rockets look like a playoff team. They are 11-5 with a plus-8.5 net rating. Ironically, a missed out of bounds call on Antetokounmpo is the only thing keeping them out of a three-way tie with the Golden State Warriors and Oklahoma City Thunder for the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed. And they’ve done this, amazingly, without an obvious All-Star-caliber player. Alperen Sengun made a real run at a selection a year ago, but his scoring numbers have declined meaningfully. Nobody on the roster is averaging 20 points. Meanwhile, five of the seven players that represent the core of this year’s rotation are 23 or younger. That doesn’t include No. 3 overall pick Reed Sheppard or the promising 20-year-old Cam Whitmore. The Rockets have so much talent right now that they can’t even find playing time for everyone.
That’s a good problem to have, but it’s a problem nonetheless, and one that impacts the Rockets on several levels. On a practical level, it’s impossible to pay everyone. Houston has managed its finances very well. Next summer, for example, both Jalen Green and Sengun are set to kick off expensive new rookie deals. The Rockets are prepared for that, though, because they can clear almost $53 million off of their books just by declining Fred VanVleet’s team option and waiving the non-guaranteed Jock Landale. A rookie extension for Amen Thompson would kick in right as Dillon Brooks’ four-year deal expires. One for Sheppard would kick in right as Green’s rookie extension ends. Rafael Stone is one of the best cap strategists in basketball. That doesn’t make the aprons any more forgiving.
This informs the logic of a consolidation trade as much as the talent upgrade would. Superstar salaries are capped through max contracts. Antetokounmpo, for instance, is making less this season than Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez combined. Any team would rather have Antetokounmpo, but paying multiple high-level players is almost always going to be more expensive than paying one great one. Those sub-star level players create a death-through-depth scenario where a team has no great players and is capped with expensive good ones.
The Rockets have years before that would become a real problem, but in a perfect world, they’d likely prefer to sidestep it entirely. One of the benefits of playing all of this youth right now, before landing a big-name veteran, is that it gives those young players to create an organic hierarchy. If there’s a budding star in the mix here, he has room to prove it. Right now, the Rockets are still figuring out which of these young players they need to prioritize and, perhaps just as importantly, which ones make sense next to whichever stars they might one day target.
That is no guarantee that they will ever choose to do so. The Rockets are playing so well right now that there are certain scenarios in which they decide to simply let it ride with this group, use those Suns picks to add cheap upside down the line and call it a day. One of the benefits of winning this much with such a young team is that it makes such a scenario plausible. One day, the Rockets may determine that they don’t have a superstar in this group and need to trade for one. Today? Their record alone creates more leverage than media posturing ever could. They don’t have to trade for Durant or Antetokounmpo or anyone else right now. They can afford to be patient and choosy, a luxury they didn’t have at the bottom of the standings.
If Antetokounmpo did become available, it would be irresponsible of the Rockets not to at least check in. The wording of Iko’s reporting is that Houston isn’t interested in breaking up its young core for Antetokounmpo, not that it isn’t interested in trading for him at all. Right now, the Rockets are figuring out who exactly their young core is, and given how much incumbent talent, youth and draft capital there is here, it’s entirely plausible that the Rockets could construct a future star trade that doesn’t cost them everything they’ve already built. That, in all likelihood, is the goal here: to build on what’s happening now, not to tear it down for the first big name that hits the market.
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Let’s say you’ve got a great Christopher Walken impression. You do it once during a work Zoom meeting, get a good laugh. Do it a couple times at a holiday party — hey, all in fun. But if you break that thing out too often, suddenly you’ve gone past a cool little quirk and you’ve full-on become “the guy with the Christopher Walken impression.” Next time you’re at a function, you’ve got 12 different people dragging you around asking you to do it for their friends. There’s just no going back.
The same is true for losing. Some is expected and tolerable but, if you consider yourself a contender, you have to be careful how much you allow it to creep in. Otherwise, sooner or later, you just become a loser.
The Philadelphia 76ers are going through this battle right now. As they’ve waited for health and a return to form for their stars, they find themselves at 2-12 — the WORST record in the NBA — and land in the penultimate spot in this week’s Power Rankings. How far is too far gone? The Sixers are on perilous, shaky ground, particularly with the news that Paul George re-injured the same leg he hurt in the preseason. On paper, should they be at the bottom of the NBA ledger? Of course not. But here they are, and things have to turn around fast.
Speaking of losing, the Cleveland Cavaliers finally got a taste of what that feels like, dropping their first game of the season to the Boston Celtics after tying for the second-best start in NBA history. Our memory isn’t that short, however, so they maintain their No. 1 ranking despite the loss. But Boston certainly sent a message, and is breathing down Cleveland’s neck for the top spot.
Enough about losing — how about some winners? The Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks find themselves just outside the top five after winning streaks of six and four games, respectively. They’re right behind the Houston Rockets, who have been one of the most impressive and surprising (OK, not to Rockets fans who absolutely lambasted me for ranking them 12th in the West in the preseason Power Rankings) teams in the NBA.
Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic will miss at least one week with a right wrist sprain, according to Shams Charania. Doncic was sporting a wrap on his wrist during his press conference following the team’s last game, a win over the New Orleans Pelicans on Tuesday.
Asked what happened with his wrist, Doncic said, “I don’t know, honestly. Started feeling it in the first quarter.” He added that it was “nothing serious.” Despite his claims, the team’s medical staff decided that he needed to give his wrist some time to heal.
This has been a frustrating season for Doncic and the Mavericks, who are coming off a trip to the NBA Finals. They’re just 8-7, which has them in 11th place in the crowded Western Conference, and while Doncic has put up his usual gaudy numbers — 28.1 points, 7.8 rebounds and 7.6 assists — he has not looked great in the process. He’s shooting just 43.5% from the field overall, which is his worst mark since his rookie season, and 32.4% from behind the arc, which is his worst since his sophomore campaign.
Perhaps the clearest sign of Doncic’s struggles this season is that he has not been a free throw machine. In the last three seasons, he finished third, fourth and sixth in the league, respectively, in free throw attempts per game. This season, he’s 17th at a career-low 6.6. Meanwhile, his free throw rate — the number of free throw attempts per field goal attempt — is down to .290. His previous career low was .349.
The Mavericks will be back on the court again, without Doncic, against the Denver Nuggets on Friday. They’ll then head to the East Coast to take on the Miami Heat and Atlanta Hawks before returning home to host the New York Knicks next Wednesday. Per Charania, Doncic will not take part in any of those games.
That’s not the toughest stretch ever, but it’s also not the easiest, especially with three of the four games coming on the road. Even though Doncic has not been at his best thus far, the team has still been markedly better when he plays. They have a plus-8.3 net rating with Doncic on the court and a plus-2.4 net rating when he sits.
