Green Bay Packers advised to sign three-time Pro Bowl defender
But as any coach will tell you, what happened last year doesn't matter now that a new season is around the corner. While Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst has worked hard to upgrade the roster, some NFL analysts still believe there is room for improvement.
Advertisement
Specifically, Bleacher Report's Matt Holder believes the Packers should sign three-time Pro Bowl pass-rusher Jadeveon Clowney.
'Lukas Van Ness hasn't lived up to his predraft billing so far, yet he's scheduled to be the Packers' starting defensive end opposite Rashan Gary this season. It wouldn't be a bad idea for the Packers to add Clowney to create competition for Van Ness during training camp.'
Bleacher Report on Jadeveon Clowney to Green Bay Packers
Clowney was set to play a second season with the Carolina Panthers, but they released him earlier this summer. Now the former No. 1 overall pick is seeking his seventh NFL team.
Yet, he's still productive. Last season, he recorded 5.5 sacks across 14 starts. That may not be top-tier production, but it's clear that Clowney can still get sacks. Plus, there's always the chance that he has a bounceback season, like when he had 9.5 sacks in 2023 with the Baltimore Ravens.
Clowney, 32, will eventually find a new home before the season starts, and the Packers would be a good fit for everyone involved.
Advertisement
Related: NFL defense rankings 2025: Evaluating all 32 defenses
Related Headlines
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani Carry MLB Into the All-Star Break
ATLANTA — As Major League Baseball breaks for Tuesday night's annual All-Star Game, it's already been a tumultuous season for a number of teams facing high expectations. One thing that hasn't changed coming into the break: Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani are still the headliners of the season. While their teams, the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, have been struggling recently, the superstars still have them at or near the top of their respective divisions. Advertisement More from The Yankees have straightened out after a six-game losing streak and remain only two games behind the Toronto Blue Jays in the AL East. They released veteran infielder D.J. LeMahieu this week, eating the final $22 million owed on his contract, and moved Jazz Chisholm Jr. back to second base from third. Judge goes into Tuesday night's game with a first half for the ages: 35 homers, 81 RBIs and a gaudy 1.195 OPS. His batting average has dropped from .402 on May 21 to .355, still handily leading the Major Leagues. The 6-foot-7, 282-pound Judge is on pace to break his AL record of 62 homers set in 2022. He hit his 350th career homer on Saturday, the fastest of any player in MLB history to do so, 182 games earlier than Mark McGwire. 'Please appreciate what you're seeing with Judge,' Tony Clark, the executive director of the players' union, said Saturday in an on-field interview prior to the annual Futures Game at Truist Park. 'Hitters that size don't do what he's doing. Trying to keep all your moving pieces in the same place day in and day out is difficult enough, let alone when your levers are as large as his are.' Advertisement The Dodgers, meanwhile, had suddenly lost seven in a row through Friday and had watched their lead over the San Francisco Giants in the NL West shrink from eight games to four in a week before winning the final two games of the series. Perhaps it's coincidence, but their tailspin has coincided with Ohtani's return to pitching on June 16. Since then, Ohtani's batting average has dipped from .300 to .276 and his OPS from 1.039 to .987. His 32 homers have helped keep the Dodgers in first place, but he's hit just three of them during the month of July. Meanwhile, he's made five starts as a pitcher and thrown a total of nine innings, his max of three innings on Saturday when he allowed a hit, a walk, struck out four Giants, and tossed 36 pitches. Bringing him back to the mound after his second reconstructive right elbow surgery for the first time since Aug. 23, 2023, has turned Ohtani from one of the most prolific hitters in the game to a short-shift pitcher and, for now, a mediocre batter. Clark thinks it will be a short-term issue, once Ohtani gets used to preparing to pitch every five days while still hitting in the top spot every day. Advertisement 'He comes off the mound and has to immediately get ready to hit, to lead off,' Clark said, noting the problem is particularly acute at Dodger Stadium. 'I've never seen that before.' No one has. Clark said he expects Ohtani to figure it out. 'Of all my worries in baseball, Ohtani's not one of them,' he said. Try this one: Hitting is down overall in MLB, with a .245 average, three points lower than 2023, when new rules were invoked to speed up the game and eliminate defensive shifts. The drought has been particularly felt in the NL, which boasts right now only one .300 hitter—Dodgers catcher Will Smith at .323. Freddie Freeman has plummeted from .374 on May 31 to .297. Mookie Betts has never gotten it going offensively this season and is hitting .244, 47 points below his lifetime mark of .291. Is this what his relocation from right field to shortstop has wrought? Advertisement Players and franchises have been moved from once comfortable positions with the abandon this season. The Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays have played in minor league ballparks this season with all the accompanying financial and aesthetic problems. The teams are the lowest drawing in MLB, with the Rays averaging 9,852 and A's 9,799 at parks that seat 11,000 (Steinbrenner Field), and 14,000 (Sutter Health Park), respectively. The A's are one of six teams in either league at this point with no shot at making the playoffs. The Rays held their own until playing 16 of their last 19 games on the road prior to the break. They were a half a game out on June 28 and are now 5.5 games back after losing 10 of their last 14. How this all has skewed the playoff races is still a matter to be determined, Clark said. Advertisement 'I'd like to be able to wait until all the games are played and then take the numbers and look at them,' he said. And that leaves us with the All-Star host Braves, who because of injuries and other issues, are among the teams playing way below expectations. They opened 5-13 and have yet to be able to straighten it out. They're still 11 games under .500 at the break, 12.5 games behind the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL East and 9.5 games in arrears of the third NL Wild Card spot with eight teams ahead of them. This, despite having the 10th-highest payroll in the league at $232 million. 'We're just going up and down like a roller coaster,' Marquis Grissom, the former Braves centerfielder and manager of the American League in the Saturday's Futures Game, said of the Braves. 'We get going one minute, the next minute, we don't.' The disappointment is palpable in a team that won the World Series as recently as four years ago and has veteran skipper Brian Snitker, in the last year of his contract, looking toward retirement. Advertisement 'I'll never say never, because I always felt if I had a say-so, coming down the stretch, that we were going to have a chance,' Hall of Famer Chipper Jones, who managed the National League in the 2025 MLB All-Star Futures Game on Saturday, said. 'I'd agree it's going to be tough. Obviously.' But while the All-Star break is always a time to take stock of the present, it's also a chance to look ahead, which is what Grissom was doing in Atlanta. His son, Marquis Grissom Jr., played for the National League futures team. This is just another example of how the game continues to pass from generation to generation, a la Fernando Tatis to San Diego Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr., the latter having had two hits in the 2018 Futures Game, and ex-Braves star Andruw Jones to Druw Jones, an Arizona Diamondbacks product who knocked in a run in last year's Futures contest. 'With the coaches I have like my father, I'm still old-school, doing hard work,' Grissom Jr., a Triple-A pitcher in the Washington Nationals organization, said. 'I still try to learn analytics and do certain things. But the game ain't changed. I'm still trying to play the same game.' The All-Star Game itself will offer two of its top kids as starters: Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates representing the NL for the second year in a row, and Tarik Skubal of the Detroit Tigers opening for the AL. Advertisement Perhaps in a sign of the times, Ohtani will not pitch, but he'll start at DH, his Dodgers manager and the NL manager Dave Roberts said Sunday. Best of Sign up for Sportico's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
MLB Draft 2025: Signing Bonus Slot Values for First Round Picks
The Washington Nationals selected high school shortstop Eli Willits with the No. 1 overall pick in Sunday's MLB Draft. Willits, who doesn't turn 18 until December, is the youngest player selected first since the Seattle Mariners took Ken Griffey Jr. in 1987. Washington was in position to select Willits after winning the draft lottery in December, despite having only the fourth-best odds to do so—Miami and Colorado had the best odds but fell to seventh and fourth, respectively. The top pick came with a draft slot value of $11,075,900. Advertisement More from Baseball's slot values offer some wiggle room, unlike rookie contracts in the NFL and NBA, where first-round picks are tied to those leagues' salary caps and are largely set in stone. NFL teams have the option to sign first-round picks below their draft slot amount but never do. NBA teams can sign first-rounders to contracts that range from 80% to 120% of their slot value, but the agreements are almost always at the max level. Cam Ward signed a four-year, $48.4 million contract with the Tennessee Titans. Cooper Flagg's contract with the Dallas Mavericks is worth $62.7 million over four years, although only the first two years are guaranteed. Compare those to Travis Bazzana, last year's top pick by the Cleveland Guardians, who received an $8.95 million bonus, 15% lower than the $10.57 million slot value. The Pittsburgh Pirates gave Paul Skenes a $9.2 million bonus, 5% below his slot in 2023. A year before that, Jackson Holliday received an $8.19 million bonus from the Baltimore Orioles, 10% lower than the $9.05 million slot value. Advertisement Every pick in the first 10 rounds is assigned a slot value, and a team's total bonus pool is the sum of those slot values. The Orioles have the highest pool this year at $19.1 million, followed by the Mariners ($17.1 million), Los Angeles Angels ($16.7 million) and Nationals ($16.6 million). The New York Yankees rank last at $5.4 million after MLB lowered their top pick 10 spots for exceeding the second surcharge threshold of the luxury tax, and they also forfeited their second-round pick for signing free agent Max Fried. When teams sign players below their slot values, it frees up more room to go over slot to sign a high school player who might choose college over a smaller signing bonus. Those negotiations sometimes happen before draft night. Willits was a surprise pick at the top of the draft, as the consensus top two picks were high school infielder Ethan Holliday and LSU pitcher Kade Anderson. They went third and fourth. Last week, the Nationals fired general manager Mike Rizzo, who led their baseball operations for 17 years. Manager Davey Martinez was also fired last week. Players selected after the 10th round can be signed for up to $125,000 without the bonus being applied toward the pool allotment, but anything over $125,000 is part of the pool. Last year, the Angels gave 11th-round pick Trey Gregory-Alford a $1.96 million bonus. The total 2025 bonus pool for the 30 teams is $350 million, up 4.8% from the prior year, which is tied to the growth of MLB revenues. Teams often exceed their bonus allotment but never by more than 5%; up to 5%, the penalty is simply a 75% tax on any overage. Teams face a steeper penalty at higher thresholds, including the loss of draft picks. Spending 5% to 10% above the bonus pool threshold costs a first-round pick, and the penalty reaches two first-round picks at 15%. Advertisement In the minor leagues, rookie-level minimum salaries are $20,430 this year, while Triple-A is $36,590. The minimum annual salary in the majors is $760,000 in 2025. The draft continues Monday afternoon with rounds four through 20. Best of Sign up for Sportico's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
USA Today
11 minutes ago
- USA Today
The NFL is still vastly underrating Lamar Jackson (and overrating this AFC QB)
The NFL at large still doesn't nearly respect Baltimore Ravens superstar Lamar Jackson as much as it should. Despite two MVP awards, three First-Team All-Pro selections, and a firm stranglehold on the title of greatest dual-threat quarterback of all time, he somehow remains underrated in some league circles. This, quite frankly, boggles my mind. On Monday, ESPN revealed the first part of its annual positional rankings survey, which focused on the best quarterbacks right now. Per ESPN's Jeremy Fowler, the voters in the process include various executives, coaches, and scouts, and the final tallies and rankings are a composite average. It's a way to gauge the current landscape of the league in a (somewhat) scientific manner (even though we don't know precisely who was polled or what kind of research and interviews were conducted). TRAINING CAMP CONCERNS: 1 big question for all 32 NFL teams ahead of 2025 When you rifling through the list of elite offensive signal-callers, it starts off without a hitch. Unsurprisingly, even with the Kansas City Chiefs' defeat in Super Bowl 59, Patrick Mahomes remains the king of the hill. Coming off arguably the best individual season of his career, the Buffalo Bills' reigning MVP, Josh Allen, tags in just behind Mahomes. All chalk for the most part. No harm, no foul. After that, the conversation gets a bit more ... contentious? Dubious? Heck, I'll be kind and say arguable. Let's do that. On the one hand, I don't necessarily have any huge qualms with the Cincinnati Bengals' Joe Burrow and Jackson coming in at No. 3 and No. 4, respectively. They're division rivals. As far as I'm concerned, they're kind of neck and neck. However, I have significant issues with the small revealed tidbits of the process and the later parts of the rankings. For example, who on Earth gave Jackson a No. 6 ranking while also putting statistical darling Justin Herbert at No. 3? For the time being, Jackson should never leave the top four. Ever. And why is Herbert, among others, above guys like defending Super Bowl champion Jalen Hurts (No. 9)? I mean, c'mon now. I'm not a Herbert hater, unlike some irritating loudmouths in the sports media industry, but there is no way, shape, or form he is a top-three NFL quarterback or someone any reasonable mind would take over Hurts, at least at this specific moment in time. At a certain point, actual accomplishments have to mean something. Jackson (and Hurts) are much more accomplished than their peer from the Los Angeles Chargers. Also, didn't anyone learn their lesson from C.J. Stroud's sophomore slump last season? I love Jayden Daniels. I think he's got a tremendously bright future. But he is not a top-five quarterback after one good season in the NFL. I'm sorry. We need to have standards in that sort of hallowed company. Let him replicate his success with the Washington Commanders for at least two consecutive seasons before we start breaking out the anointing oils. It's really hard to maintain consistency as an elite young quarterback. Everyone eventually experiences some valleys. Daniels will likely be no different. Stroud's story is a prime example. Ultimately, these are subjective opinions from NFL people who, in some cases, are paid a lot of money to illustrate their thought processes for their teams, the media, and otherwise. And, you know, it's summer, so (mostly meaningless) rankings season is upon us. Nonetheless, I'm starting to believe that they really overthink certain aspects of their own because they can't see the forest for the trees about what and who actually matters in pro football.
