Jets officially done with Aaron Rodgers, plus five NFL teams that could take step back in 2025

Welcome to the Thursday edition of the Pick Six newsletter! 

You know the NFL offseason has officially started when Pete Prisco releases his list of the top 100 free agents, which means the offseason has officially started. We broke down part of Prisco’s list on Wednesday and we’re back today to break down even more of it. To be honest, we’ll probably be breaking down parts of it for the next month. 

February can be a slow month once the Super Bowl is over, so here’s a quick reminder of what’s coming in up in the NFL:

Feb. 14: Eagles Super Bowl parade
Feb. 18: Franchise tag window opens
Feb. 24: First batch of players report to the NFL combine in Indy

Someone at Hallmark needs to get on the ball and make a movie about the fact that the Eagles are holding their parade on Valentine’s Day. Alright, let’s get to the rundown. 

As always, here’s your daily reminder to tell all your friends to sign up for the newsletter. To get them signed up, all you have to do is click here. 

1. Prisco’s top 100 free agents: Ranking the 10 best defensive players

After the Super Bowl ended, I thought for sure that Pete Prisco would take a vacation for six months, but I was wrong. Instead, he got to work on his list of the top 100 free agents. We covered the top of the list in yesterday’s newsletter, so today, we’re going to take a look at another part of the list by going over the top five defensive free agents. 

One think you’ll notice based on this top five is that the Eagles are likely going to lose some key starters on defense. 

1. Eagles OLB Josh Sweat (third overall). “Josh Sweat led the Eagles in sacks during the regular season with 8.0, didn’t get any in the playoffs, then lit up the Super Bowl with 2.5. At 28, he is a long, active edge player who should command a big market with his age and production.”

2. Eagles DT Milton Williams (sixth overall). “Williams was one of the most underrated players on the Eagles defense. He is a smaller defensive tackle, but he plays with quickness and an ability to penetrate. He had five sacks during the regular season and flashed big time in the playoffs and Super Bowl. He is 26 and ready to make big money.”

3. Jets CB D.J. Reed (eighth overall). “Reed might be considered the top cornerback on the market, but there are some league personnel who think he might be a tad overrated. He’s a good player who will get great-player money. He’s a feisty corner who doesn’t back down, which is a good quality.”

4. Dolphin SS Jevon Holland (ninth overall). “Jevon Holland is coming off a down season by his standards, some of it because of injury, but at 24 he is still a valuable back-end player. He is a good run player, but his coverage suffered some last season. Age and history say he will get a good contract on the market.”

5. Eagles MLB Zack Baun (10th overall). “After signing a one-year deal with the Eagles, Zack Baun moved from outside to inside linebacker and became a big part of their defense. He had 150 tackles and showed an ability to run to the football and do a lot of things. He gambled on the one-year deal and won.”

Prisco ranked the top 100 free agents and we only unveiled five of them here, which means there are 95 other names to check out. If you want to see those 95 other names, you can do that here. If you want to check out just the top defensive players on the list, we’ve got that for you here. 

2. Jets officially moving on from Aaron Rodgers

It was reported over the weekend that the Jets would be moving on from Aaron Rodgers, and now, it’s actually happening. The team announced on Thursday that Rodgers won’t be returning to New York for the 2025 season.

• Jets met with Rodgers before the Super Bowl. “Last week we met with Aaron and shared that our intention was to move in a different direction at quarterback,” Jets head coach Aaron Glenn and general manager Darren Mougey said in a joint statement. “It was important to have this discussion now to provide clarity and enable each of us the proper time to plan for our respective futures. 
• Cutting Rodgers won’t be cheap. With the Jets now expected to cut Rodgers, that means they’re going to have to take a $49 million dead cap hit. They can either take that entire hit in 2025 or they can designate Rodgers a post-June 1 release, which would allow them to split over two seasons. If they go that route, they’d take just a $14 million dead cap hit in 2025 followed by a $35 million hit in 2026. 
• Possible landing spots. We listed a few possible landing spots in Monday’s newsletter and you can check those out here. The Steelers, Titans or Raiders could all be intriguing destinations for Rodgers as long as he doesn’t end up retiring. We also broke down the pros and cons of several landing spots and you can check that out here. 

You can read our full story here on Rodgers’ pending exit from New York. 

3. Five teams that could take a step back in 2025

One of the biggest shockers of the 2024 season was the downfall of the 49ers. After going 12-5 and reaching the Super Bowl in 2023, the 49ers got ravaged by injuries on their way to a 6-11 season.

Every year, there are multiple teams that fall off a cliff after a somewhat successful season, and our Jeff Kerr is trying to pinpoint which teams those might be in 2025. Here are five teams that Jeff thinks will take a step back next season: 

1. Vikings (2024 record: 14-3)
2. Commanders (12-5)
3. Steelers (10-7)
4. Broncos (10-7)
5. Colts (8-9)

The Vikings being at the top of this list makes a lot of sense because it would be a total shock if they were to win 14 games again. Going 11-6 next year would still be solid, but it would be a three-game regression, so it seems like a lock that Minnesota will take a step back. 

As for the why the other four teams on this list might take a step back, you’ll have read Kerr’s full explanation for his rankings and you can do that here. 

4. Breaking down the Super Bowl MVP vote

Although Jalen Hurts was voted Super Bowl MVP this year, you could have easily made the argument that the award should have gone to someone on the Eagles defense due to the way that they were able to shut down Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. 

The Eagles sacked Mahomes six times with 2.5 of those coming from Josh Sweat, who feels like he got snubbed in the MVP vote. 

“I should’ve had it,” Sweat said this week, via Philadelphia Inquirer. “I could’ve had it. It’s all good, though.”

If it makes Sweat feel any better, the vote wasn’t close: Hurts ran away with it. 

There are a total of 20 votes and although the NFL doesn’t release the voting total, PFT’s Mike Florio tracked down each vote and here’s how the tally ended up: 

• Jalen Hurts: 12 votes
• Josh Sweat: 4.5 votes
• Cooper DeJean: 3.5 votes 

There are 20 total votes, but 25% of that total comes from a fan vote, which means fans get to hand out four votes. NFL fans vote online and after all their votes are tallied, the player who receives the most votes from the fan gets 2.5 of the four votes. The second-place vote-getter than earns 1 of the the four votes and the third-place vote-getter is given 0.5 of the four votes.

DeJean won the fan vote, which means 2.5 of this 3.5 votes came from the fans (It also means that of the 16 writers who voted on the award, only one voted for Dejean). No defensive player has won Super Bowl MVP since Von Miller did it with the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 50. 

Although Sweat would have loved to win the award, Hurts won handily and unlike the regular-season MVP where Josh Allen barely beat out Lamar Jackson, there doesn’t seem to be any controversy here. 

Sweat didn’t win MVP, but he likely just made himself millions of dollars. The Eagles star is set to be a free agent in March and he’ll almost certainly have a hot market after his impressive Super Bowl performance. 

5. Deebo Samuel landing spots: Commanders or Chargers could make sense

One thing we kind of glossed over this week is the fact that the receiver has been granted permission to seek a trade, which means we could see a deal go down before the start of free agency on March 12. 

So where might Deebo end up? Glad you asked. Garrett Podell came up with a few possibilities.  

• Steelers: “Samuel fits the profile of a player that offensive coordinator Arthur Smith loves to feature. Smith has long had an infatuation with Cordarrelle Patterson since their time together with the Atlanta Falcons, and Samuel is a higher end all-purpose threat than Patterson as an offensive player.”
• Commanders: “Washington was a few pieces short of reaching the Super Bowl in Year of 1 of Daniels’ career, losing to the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC Championship game, and Samuel could give the Commanders young quarterback another Pro Bowl-caliber talent to free up No. 1 option Terry McLaurin.”
• Chargers: “Los Angeles has two developing wide receivers in 2023 first-round pick Quentin Johnston and 2024 second-round pick Ladd McConkey, but they could use a veteran, Pro Bowl-caliber option to supplement the two youngsters.”

If you want to see our full list of landing spots for Samuel, you can do that here. If you’re scoring at home, that means we’ve now seen Myles Garrett and Samuel request a trade over the past 10 days and let’s not forget that the Rams will likely be trading Cooper Kupp (or releasing him if they can’t find a trade partner). Not to mention, Aaron Rodgers is now going to be hitting free agency. It’s going to be a wild offseason, so you might want to go ahead and buckle up.  

6. Extra points: Lions star wants to play Eagles in Thursday opener

It’s been a busy 24 hours in the NFL, and since it’s nearly impossible to keep track of everything that happened, I went ahead and put together a roundup for you. 

• Amon-Ra St. Brown has message for NFL. The Lions star receiver has his own podcast and during an episode this week, he let the NFL know that he’d love to see the league send the Lions to Philadelphia for the Thursday night opener. You can check out St. Brown’s quotes here. 
• James Cook wants $15 million per year. Cook is going into the final year of his rookie deal and if the Bills want to keep him after that, it’s going to be expensive. Cook hinted on social media this week that he’s going to be seeking a deal worth up to $15 million per year. It he got that, it would make him the second-highest-paid running back in the NFL, behind only Christian McCaffrey. 
• Two-time Super Bowl winner arrested. Former Chief receivers Kadarius Toney was arrested earlier this month on counts of aggravated assault and obstructing/harassing 911 calls. Toney played for the Browns this year, but was released in December. His Feb. 6 arrest stems from an incident that happened in January. You can read more about the details here. 
• Nevada sportsbooks earn record payday off Super Bowl LIX. There’s a reason they say that the house always wins and that’s because the house always win. Sportsbooks in Nevada pulled in $22.1 million in gambling revenue during Super Bowl LIX, which is a state record. You can read more about the state’s big win here.