Bills

The Bills promoted Joe Brady from offensive coordinator to head coach after initially hiring him as a quarterbacks coach in 2022. Buffalo QB Josh Allen thinks the relationship he’s built with Brady over the years will be a “big, beneficial factor for us.”

“He’s heard my gripes in the past, right?” Allen said, via Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated. “And a quarterback coach is kind of your confidant in the building. It’s like, What are we doing here? Explain this to me. Help me understand what’s going on here. And to have that relationship with him and to know that he’s been the play-caller, to know that he knows that I don’t like certain things and vice versa, it just helps. I understand why he’s calling certain plays. He knows I want him to stay away from certain concepts that I might not love myself. So, yeah, that’s a big, big, beneficial factor for us.”

Brady said that he needs to hold Allen to the same accountability as the rest of the roster and make sure there is no preferential treatment around the facility. 

“You have to hold one [Allen] to the same level of accountability as you hold, right now, 90,” Brady said. “And even if it pisses them off, you have to do that. If people start to realize I’m getting on this guy for this mistake, but not that guy? That is a problem. So, I like pointing out more so when DJ Moore or James Cook or Bradley Chubb or Josh Allen mess up, because then they’re like, All right, we’re holding these guys to that standard; I have to live up to it.”

Allen is confident that Brady’s experience as their quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator will help elevate their offense going forward. 

“Absolutely,” Allen said. “I think when you’re the head coach and the play-caller, in certain situations, you know exactly what the next play is going to be. Like if you’re in third-and-short, you’re not sure sometimes, if you’re an offensive coordinator, if the head coach is allowing you to go for it on fourth down. But now as a head coach and play-caller, you’re obviously trusting your analytics department. You’re trusting your coaching staff. You’re trusting your players. But at the end of the day, it’s your call. So, if you feel compelled to do something, do it. And he’s going to learn extremely quickly; that’s what he’s always done. But to say that he’s been a quarterback coach, OC and now the head coach, I think we forget, too, that he was the OC on one of the greatest college teams of all time.”

Jets

Back in February 2025, the Jets received the NFL’s worst grade on the NFLPA’s report cards, which included poor marks for the team’s facilities. Since then, owner Woody Johnson has renovated the team’s locker room, sauna, weight room, and entire performance center. New York DT Harrison Phillips said he has been “blown away” by the support from ownership. 

“I’ve been blown away at how much our owner wants to support our players,” Phillips said, via Zack Rosenblatt of The Athletic.

Jets WR Garrett Wilson said Johnson has been extremely supportive of their players, which makes the roster feel a responsibility to perform. 

“Since I got here, he’s asked questions and tried to figure out: What do y’all need to take that step?” Wilson said. “Every stone he can turn over he’s turned over, and I appreciate the hell out of that… As players, it’s on us. The weight room is awesome. That thing will help us stay buff, but the reality is on Sundays we gotta go out and play good football, and then all of a sudden the weight room is a great weight room because it helped us kick ass.”

Phillips also described how the team’s medical facilities have improved.

“The data that we have — we’re taking heat images on people to see inflammation, we’ve got millions of dollars of facilities and we’ve got all these body work people and we’ve got wellness surveys and we’ve got trackers and we’ve got force plates,” Phillips said. “We’re making sure we can do everything we can to make sure we put ourselves in the best position physically to be recovered and be at our best so we can be the best version of ourselves. Maybe getting 10 percent bigger, faster, stronger helps 1 percent at football. But if we can find any of that 1 percent, we’re going to try to do it.”

Patriots

• Andrew Callahan of the Boston Herald explains one of the things that held up negotiations between the Patriots and CB Christian Gonzalez is the role of VP of football administration Matt Groh.
• Callahan says there have been rumblings that Gonzalez’s camp is frustrated with the team because Groh, who has worked for the front office since 2011, is the main point of contact for negotiations, but does not have the ability to approve changes or alterations to the contract himself. He has talking points from higher-ups like ownership or EVP Eliot Wolf, but no authority to negotiate directly. 
• That creates distance between decision-makers and the agents and bogs down the process. Callahan says agents who have worked with the Patriots and other teams believe this is intentional to try and wear down players and their reps during negotiations. 
• Regarding the off-field controversy that embroiled Patriots HC Mike Vrabel and his relationship with former Athletic reporter Dianna Russini this offseason, players told ESPN’s Ben Strauss and Kalyn Kahler that, for them, the issue was squashed when Vrabel owned up to creating a distraction in the first team meeting off the offseason, about two weeks after the first report broke.  
• New England provided two players to speak on the record about the situation, including RB Rhamondre Stevenson: “He feels like he did wrong by us…None of the team was really even worried about specifics.” 
• Another player said off the record to ESPN: “It’s difficult to explain to people outside the building how he approached it and how players took it. Of course players care about [what happened]. Vrabel is a great leader. Sometimes you have to mess up to become an even better leader.” 
• That player added: “His leadership was never tied to how he lived his personal life. Ultimately football players care about respect, they care about accountability, and they care if you can make them better. And if you can do those things, you can be the weirdest person or you can be a stone-cold killer and they won’t care.”