The NFL combine is now in the rear view, and free agency is a week away. With that, here are the takeaways on our way out of Indianapolis …
The quarterback’s hat was tugged low, his beard cut tight, his old trademark mullet now long gone, and his voice a little low—where, amid the dinner crowd at Goodfellas Pizza a mile North of downtown Indy, you had to lean in a little to hear Quinn Ewers talk.
If you were at another table in the small, lively restaurant, you’d never know that one of the most ballyhooed high school football recruits ever was sitting nearby.
But that he was so unassuming played right into the point he was trying to make.
Quinn Ewers
As much as he’s been in the spotlight over the past half-decade, for so many different reasons, Ewers is still fighting some misperceptions, with just seven weeks left until he, finally, becomes a pro. And so, with his dinner done Saturday night, and his combine experience nearly complete, the soft-spoken Texas star dove into what you might have heard about him—and, then, what you should know.
“We’re human beings at the end of the day, and you see what other people say,” he says. “It’s a human’s nature to want to make everybody feel good about us, and who we are as people—we want the situation that we’re in to feel right. For sure, I have a great group of people around me that support me enough, more than enough, and they taught me a lot about not focusing on what everyone else is saying. …
“Sure, it gets pretty annoying, but at the end of the day I know who I am, and my loved ones know who I am.”
There’s a lot of uncertainty, in general, affixed to the quarterback draft class of 2025.
That’ll mean, over the weeks to come, you’ll hear about the potential that one guy could rise, another could fall—and that makes Ewers a pretty intriguing figure.
Let’s start, for the uninitiated, with his story in a nutshell. Ewers was pegged as a prodigy in middle school, offered a scholarship by Ohio State after attending a camp in Columbus as an eighth-grader. Three years later, he flipped his commitment from Texas to Ohio State. By then, he was the top recruit in the class of ’22 ranked by every major recruiting service.
Soon thereafter, he was offered a reported seven-figure NIL deal by Holy Kombucha, but couldn’t accept it because Texas law prohibited it. So he reclassified, graduated high school early, skipped his senior year at Southlake Carroll, and enrolled in the summer of 2021 at Ohio State. Four months after that, after a season sitting behind C.J. Stroud, and with Steve Sarkisian now at UT, he made the decision to return to Texas.
Since, he’s become one of the most prolific quarterbacks in Longhorns’ history.
But there’s a lot more to this than just that. Things, for sure, haven’t gone exactly as planned for a kid who was earmarked to be a high draft pick before he could drive.
What he thought would happen over the past four years when he was the confident, sought-after 18-year-old kid—“Yeah, it was, Nothing’s gonna go wrong”—is one thing. The way things have turned out is another thing entirely. And one reason this past week in Indy was so important to Ewers personally is it gave him the chance to tell his story to NFL teams.
“I just wanted to give them an idea of who I am, because I’m sure they hear a lot of different things about me—and most of it’s hearsay or just not true,” Ewers says. “I wanted them to know about the resiliency I show in-game, the mental toughness I have to to go through all that stuff I went through in the three years I was at Texas, and be back-to-back playoff contenders, and in the semifinals, and continue to lead my team …. and continue to be there for my teammates day in and day out.
“That’s the biggest thing I wanted to come across.”
So that was the message for the Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Jets, Las Vegas Raiders, New Orleans Saints, Tennessee Titans, Jacksonville Jaguars and Indianapolis Colts in formal interviews, and for others in informals, with Ewers’s third and final season as the Longhorns’ starter providing the ultimate testament to it.
That, too, was imperfect. He strained his oblique in Texas’s rout of Michigan in Week 2, then injured it again, more significantly, the next week against UTSA. He returned for the Red River Rivalry game against Oklahoma, with the pain manageable, but not gone. Then, on Nov. 23, he suffered a high-ankle sprain against Kentucky, and played through it. But he kept answering the bell, and did it with Arch Manning, nephew of Peyton and Eli, sitting second on the depth chart, as the young, former belle of the recruiting ball that Ewers was once.
After the oblique, he compensated by relying more on his lower body and wrist to generate torque. That was a struggle, which showed up in a brief in-game benching during the first Georgia game in October. After the high-ankle sprain, he couldn’t bend on his back knee as much, and couldn’t turn his front foot in, as he preferred, because some of the bruising on the ankle, which caused some pain in the Achilles, forced him to keep his heel down.
“With the oblique, I had to learn different ways to put the ball where it needed to be, just because I wasn’t able to rotate as much,” he says. “And then I deal with the ankle, where I was getting some of that help off the oblique, and then I get the ankle, and I have to find another way to throw the football. It was like, again, the resiliency, I’m always going to find a way, and I’m always going to be a consistent worker, no matter what.”
The end for Ewers at UT came with a strip-sack at the wire of the Cotton Bowl delivered by his old Ohio State roommate Jack Sawyer. That was Jan. 10. Since, his oblique has finally healed. His ankle—it was diagnosed between a grade 2 and grade 3 sprain—still isn’t perfect.
But that wasn’t going to stop him from throwing here, even with the option to wait until his pro day to do. So there he was Saturday, in his words, “Because I wanted to show them, again, I’ll go back to it—I’m always going to find a way.” And, in this case, it was about finding a way to show teams that he still is what everyone made him out to be when he was a teenager.
“I think I’m the best [in the class] and the most-ready for the NFL because of what I’ve been through,” Ewers said.
Which goes back to the misperceptions. That, because of the NIL deals, he’s driven by money. That, because of his soft-spoken nature and calm play style, he lacks urgency. That, because he changes speed on his ball, he lacks velocity at times.
The hope, for Ewers, is by taking all comers this week, he’d take all those narratives on.
But there is one criticism he’s heard he won’t fight. He’ll concede, now, that he might’ve been a little entitled four years ago, as the kid coming out of a storied Texas high-school program. That, of course, was one transfer, one benching, many calls from fans for his backup to play and a lot of injuries ago. And now, with all those experiences in tow, he has little doubt that he’s prepared for what’s next—perhaps more so than anyone could be.
“I think I’m the most ready for the situations that occur in the NFL, injuries, playing through injuries, having a big name behind you, continuing to play through that amount of pressure, continuing to be confident after being benched—it’s hard to do,” Ewers said. “I wouldn’t trade anything I’ve done, skipping my senior year to go to Ohio State, wouldn’t trade that for anything, because I learned so much about not only myself but the game of football. I matured a lot. Not to say I was immature, but I’m much more mature because of that.
“And then all the injuries I had to deal with and come back from, I wouldn’t trade it. … It’s the reality of the position. Stuff’s gonna go wrong. And I have a plan of attack for pretty much any situation that can arise.”
For now, that means telling his story to the teams that are evaluating him. And selling someone on the idea that this unassuming kid, anonymously hanging in the pizza joint, can become the star everyone was projecting him to be.
Matthew Stafford situation
Give Sean McVay credit for navigating the Matthew Stafford situation with a lot of self-awareness. When word spread in Indy on Thursday night that the Los Angeles Rams had scheduled a Friday meeting (at 6:30 a.m. local) no less, with their quarterback, there was plenty of speculation that they were bringing Stafford in, more or less, to break up with him.
It turned out the reverse was happening. And in large part because of the head coach.
A larger contingent started that meeting and, after going through some particulars, Stafford and McVay were given some face-to-face, one-on-one time. The result was a renewal of vows for 2025 after a very difficult, grinding negotiation that lasted for about a year.
Through it, the Rams did the Band-Aid deal—that moved $4 million from 2025 and another $1 million from ’26 into ’24—to get Stafford to camp in July, actually got trade calls on Stafford at the deadline and gave Stafford’s people permission to talk to other teams about a new contract more than three weeks ago just before the Super Bowl.
Here are a few other nuggets I gathered from the whole ordeal …
• The deal isn’t done yet, but the parameters agreed to will bring Stafford a very significant raise for 2025, and they won’t add any new years to his deal (obviously, there could be some adjustments as the sides work to finalize the agreement). And while the Rams are rewarding Stafford, he’s taking less than the Giants and Raiders proposed paying him as part of a trade.
• The Giants have been in on Stafford for a while, engaging right after the season, with word out there that he could become available. In the few trade discussions there, the feeling was a potential deal would’ve been centered around the 34th pick. The third pick was never in the equation for the Giants, and my sense is the Raiders never considered moving the sixth pick in a trade for Stafford, either.
• One interesting figure in all this: Rams team doctor Neal ElAttrache. The renowned orthopedic surgeon did Aaron Rodgers’s Achilles, and is close with Rodgers. Through that grapevine, Stafford would hear stories of how Rodgers’s appreciation for what he had in Green Bay had grown over the two years he’d been away. Which I’d bet probably brought some grass-isn’t-greener perspective to Stafford’s position in this whole thing.
• Along those lines, as we said Friday, Stafford loves Southern California, and loves playing for McVay, and those two things were the simplest, yet biggest factors. He’s made the playoffs in all three of his healthy years as a Ram, and came close to leading the team to a win in Philly in a snowstorm against the eventual champions. And he did it with a lot of young, ascending players, which means more from Stafford in L.A. may be yet to come.
• For what it’s worth, I’m hearing Stafford’s return doesn’t change anything with Cooper Kupp, who may have gone with the quarterback to New York or Vegas had he been traded.
Where does this leave the Rams and Stafford? As I see it, with a young team, ready to contend in the NFC, and a chance to make some waves over the next couple weeks.
So credit to the Rams brass, and McVay in particular, for riding this situation out, and putting the team back in this spot.
Giants
The New York Giants aren’t done being aggressive at the position, not by a long shot. Of course, the conversation publicly here is going to revolve around the availability of Rodgers. And there is, for sure, real interest in the idea of bringing him down I-80 from the Jets to Giants.
That said, the Giants are really doing their due diligence on all their options at quarterback, and there’s a likelihood that they add a veteran and draft one in the first two or three rounds, if not within the top five picks. So just as they’ve touched base with the Rodgers camp, they’ve also reached out to the Titans on what a trade up to No. 1 would cost—Tennessee has told teams that, at this point, it isn’t yet to the point in its evaluation of the process to engage in those discussions.
On paper, though, the Giants do make a bunch of sense as a Rodgers destination.
Why? Start with what’s on hand. Andrew Thomas should be full-go at the start of training camp, and the Giants will likely add a guard and maybe a swing tackle to supplement what was a really banged up line last year. They also have Malik Nabers, the third pick (which could be Travis Hunter), and could bring in Davante Adams, which would be part of the Rodgers allure. And then on defense, there’s the foundation of something pretty good with Dexter Lawrence, Brian Burns and Kayvon Thibodeaux along the front.
Then, there’s the spite factor. No athlete at Rodgers’s level would go through two years like Rodgers did with the Jets and not have a chip on their shoulder. And in Rodgers’s case, that chip may be the size of Montana. Which is to say there’d be no better place for him to stage his final late-career revival than a few exits down from the Jets’ facility, where such a renaissance would be most visible to all the people he used to work with.
And if it does happen, I still don’t think the Giants will be done. Their plan is to do what they did last year and have a traveling party go to the big quarterback pro days, bring all the top quarterbacks into East Rutherford, N.J., for 30 visits, and then do private workouts with them.
Maybe that means the answer is Rodgers and a trade up for Cam Ward. Maybe it’s Rodgers and then Jaxson Dart in the second round. Maybe it’s another vet and Ward.
Regardless, the Giants aren’t planning to be passive at quarterback this time around.
Cam Ward
While we’re there, it seems pretty clear to me that Ward is the top quarterback in the draft class. I know a lot of folks are grouping him and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders. And to be clear, saying there’s a separation is not giving you any definitive word on who’ll be a better pro, or even a better rookie.
It just seemed, talking to teams all week, that there’s acknowledgment that in this year’s draft class, it’s Ward and then everyone else.
The main reason, as I can ascertain, is that Ward’s ceiling is the highest of the quarterbacks available. There are questions about Sanders’s athleticism and arm strength, to the point where Dart, I believe, will be ahead of him for some teams. And the concern with those guys, and most others in the class, would be figuring whether they’ll ever be good enough, even if you maximize them, to compete with Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, etc.
With Ward, teams can see the potential for something spectacular. They may have to squint hard, get through a lot of tape and use their imagination a bit, but the talent is in a place where, with NFL-level development, he could make jumps like the one he made going from Washington State to Miami, in raising his stock from being a probable Day 3 pick to contending to be the first pick.
As such, my guess is Ward’s gone within the first half-hour of the draft on April 24.
Deebo Samuel trade
The San Francisco 49ers/Washington Commanders trade was a logical win-win sort of deal. It also can give you a good lesson on NFL economics—and the initial reaction to the transaction shows to me that a lot of people still need it.
The main thing: If you’re trading a player, you’re trading his contract, too.
Now, a lot of people used Washington GM Adam Peters’s ability to land Deebo Samuel for a 2025 fifth-round pick as an opportunity to dunk on their teams, or other teams. I’ll use the Jonathan Mingo example here, since I saw folks pointing out how the Dallas Cowboys gave up a fourth to get him.
So at this point, Samuel is three years removed from his last 1,000-yard season, he’s missed at least two games in each of the three seasons since that 2021 campaign, and his per-game production was at a career low last year. He’s also due $17.55 million this year. And if he kills it this year for you? Well, then he’s a free agent next year, which limits the upside of doing a trade for him.
Mingo, conversely, was acquired at midseason last year, with two-and-a-half years left on his rookie deal. He came into the league as a high second-round pick. And he’s under contract for 2025 and ’26 at a total of just over $5.2 million. Which means if you hit, you spent a fourth-rounder on a second-round talent, and have him cheap for two additional years at a premium position, allowing you to allocate resources elsewhere.
They simply aren’t apples for apples.
Alright, then, we can dive into the actual nitty-gritty of this one, and that’s two teams, with strong ties, doing a deal that makes sense for two teams in very different spots. The Commanders have their quarterback on a rookie deal, and are positioned to be aggressive in adding guys around him, and Samuel should pair great with Terry McLaurin. The Niners, conversely, have a bottleneck of big contracts on their books, and another one coming with Brock Purdy’s deal being negotiated. They get flexibility. Washington gets a player.
It's a good risk for Washington, with Peters’s institutional knowledge of Samuel being what it is—he was part of drafting Samuel in 2019.
It’s good business for San Francisco, and business that’s been part of the plan for months.
Free agency value pieces
The teams that crush free agency this year will be the ones that play the mid-level of the market right. That doesn’t mean there won’t be guys who get rewarded, rightfully, for the way they played over the past couple years. Those types—guys such as the Philadelphia Eagles LB Zach Baun, DE Josh Sweat and DT Milton Williams, Cowboys DT Osa Odighizuwa, Jets CB D.J. Reed, and Steelers OT Dan Moore Jr.—will get theirs.
After that? The trick will be avoiding landmines in a relatively barren market, and finding value with meat-and-potatoes pieces (like the Commanders did last year).
Of course, if it was easy to identify who those guys will be, then everyone would do it. But in scanning the lists of guys who’ll be available, I look at two guys who’ve had injuries, and I think have high ceilings, in 49ers LB Dre Greenlaw and Raiders DE Malcolm Koonce, as names to watch. Greenlaw is 27 and Koonce is 26, so there could be more meat on the bone with both. I also see Kansas City Chiefs DT Tershawn Wharton, Los Angeles Chargers WR Josh Palmer and Minnesota Vikings S Cam Bynum as guys that have been good, reliable players, and have some upside.
(That’s all with the disclaimer that I’m no scout, and it takes serious chops to pull off what Washington did during the 2024 offseason).
Free agent surprises
There will be a few players that, I think, will surprise people with what they bring home. Last year, I believe we gave you then-Dolphins G Robert Hunt as one of those guys, and he got $20 million per year in Carolina.
This year, I think we’ll at least get a few cases like that one. Some names to file away for you on that front …
• Indianapolis Colts DE Dayo Odeyingbo. He has 16.5 sacks over four seasons, but the 6’ 6”, 285-pound 25-year-old has shown potential to do a lot more. I think there’s a good chance he gets a deal like, say, Bryce Huff did a year ago.
• Giants WR Darius Slayton. In six NFL seasons, he’s never even posted an 800-yard campaign, but he brings the element of speed, is still just 28, and could be a solution for a team that doesn’t like what’s widely seen as a so-so draft class at the position.
• Cowboys DT Osa Odighizuwa. He’s undersized, but can be a disruptive menace in the right scheme, and has consistently improved since the Cowboys got him in the third round in ’21. And that’s why Dallas tagged him at $25.1 million, to set up the prospect of a long-term deal averaging more than that.
• Raiders S Tre’von Moehrig. Miami’s Jevon Holland is clearly the top guy at the position, and Moehrig might be next—he grew into a Swiss Army knife of a safety when Vegas DC Patrick Graham started playing him closer to the line.
We, of course, got a whole lot more coming on the free agent class over the next week or so.
Kirk Cousins
The Kirk Cousins situation remains one worth watching. Cousins doesn’t want to be in Atlanta. The Falcons have been resolute in messaging that they’re planning on keeping him on the roster alongside Michael Penix Jr. And a deadline is coming.
That deadline is St. Patrick’s Day, when $10 million of Cousins’s money for 2026 vests.
Simply put, if the Falcons truly plan on having Cousins around in 2025, having him on the roster on March 17 would prove it. Because at that point, not only are the Falcons on the hook for it, it also would make what’s already unlikely, pulling off a trade to get something back for him, even more difficult. And even before we get there, free agency starts a week before that, so holding him on the roster through that week would make it tougher for him to find another starting job, since those will be filling up over that time.
It's a tough situation for everyone. On Cousins’s end, it’s simple—he wants to go start somewhere else. For Atlanta, it’s more complicated. Their logic is saying they want to keep him, which is, essentially, saying we’d rather pay $100 million for two years of Cousins, rather than just chalk $90 million for 2024 as a sunk cost on a failed signing makes some sense. But there’s also what’s best for Penix to consider, and it might not be great for a young quarterback to have the accomplished veteran he replaced around.
Either way, I think we’ll hear more about this one this week. Because if Cousins feels like he and his camp have to start getting pushy, now’s the time to do it.
College vs. NFL
College programs’ needs for guys with NFL experience is only going to grow. Ex-Cleveland Browns GM Michael Lombardi followed Bill Belichick to North Carolina. Notre Dame hired Lions scout Mike Martin to be its GM. And just this week, Nebraska poached Patriots director of pro personnel Patrick Stewart to be its GM, and Oklahoma hired Senior Bowl executive director Jim Nagy to be its GM.
The reality is the structure of the college game, as we’ve discussed, is moving closer and closer to what’s been everyday life in the NFL for a long time.
You can equate all of it. The transfer portal is free agency. High school recruiting is the draft. NIL is the salary cap. And while all those things are challenging in their own right, finding the right way to meld them together can be even more difficult—and so it makes sense that major college programs are now looking for guys with experience synthesizing all those different elements of a football program.
Another thing here that’s at least interesting is how much these new college GMs are getting paid—close to or at $1 million per year. That’s significant because it could affect NFL economics, where pay for scouts and personnel folks has long lagged way behind what coaches make. Simply put, NFL teams might have to up the ante if they’re going to stop big college football programs from stealing assistant GM, VPs and scouting directors.
Quick-hitters
And to wrap up the combine, we have your weekly quick-hitters. Right here, right now …
• I like the Rams’ signing of Alaric Jackson at $19 million per year. He may never be a top-five left tackle, but he’s homegrown and developed to the point where it was clear by midseason last year that he’d passed incumbent Joe Noteboom, even if Noteboom hadn’t been fired. And the number that Jackson got was reasonable based on the scarcity of tackles on the market.
• Speaking of that, Baltimore Ravens LT Ronnie Stanley’s positioned nicely because of that. With Jackson off the board, the next tackles after Stanley would be Pittsburgh’s Dan Moore Jr., Minnesota’s Cam Robinson and Cleveland’s Jedrick Wills. There’s a dropoff there, for sure.
• Count South Carolina’s Nick Emmanwori as one of this week’s biggest winners. At 6’ 3” and 220 pounds, he became the first safety ever to go under 4.4 in the 40-yard dash (4.38), hit a 43-inch vertical and broad jumped 11’ 6”. I’ll be interested to hear, in the weeks to come, how teams see a guy who’s built like Derwin James or Kam Chancellor.
• Another winner we mentioned earlier in the week was LSU OT Will Campbell, who crushed his meetings. He added to that in the workout Sunday, running under 5.0 in the 40 at 319 pounds. Even with the arm length concern, I could, again, see him going in the top five. Another linemen who I heard blew folks away in meetings—Alabama OG Tyler Booker. I had one veteran exec tell me Booker’s was the best combine interview he’d ever had with an offensive lineman.
• Texas WR Matthew Golden is in really solid shape leaving Indy. His football makeup is considered to be outstanding, and now his speed is verified at 4.29. I think there’s a shot he leapfrogs Arizona’s Tetairoa McMillan as the first receiver picked. He and Ohio State’s Emeka Egbuka (who’s waiting until his pro day to run, with his season having ended Jan. 20) are both considered smart, safe prospects who project to be Amon-Ra St. Brown-type weapons.
• TCU WR Jack Bech has a really tragic story, of course. And a lot of fans here—people who’ve interacted with him say he’s been great to be around, and is acquitting himself well.
"That day changed their lives forever."
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) February 9, 2025
Tom Rinaldi introduces us to the Bech family, who have turned tragedy into triumph. pic.twitter.com/fFmVKqTzGk
• The Trey Smith contract won’t be easy to negotiate. But I think the way the season ended for the Chiefs left the team little choice. How Kansas City addresses the tackle position gets even more interesting now, with so much invested in the guards (Smith, Joe Thuney) and center (Creed Humphrey).
• The $279.2 million salary cap figure is a pretty good indicator of the growth of the league. Ten years ago, for the 2015 season, the cap was barely half that, set at $143.28 million. Twenty years ago, it was $85.5 million, or less than a third of where we are now.
• I hope Abdul Carter runs at his pro day. Penn State is a notoriously fast track, and word on the street is Carter can run in the 4.3s. I want to see it.
• And, finally, the 2030 Hall of Fame class is going to be pretty O-line heavy, with both Zack Martin and Jason Peters set to become eligible that year.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Takeaways: Quinn Ewers Is Counting on His Resilience to Prove He's NFL Ready.