NFL Notes: Josh Gordon, Jets, Packers

Josh Gordon

Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reached out to NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy about suspended Browns WR Josh Gordon and his status.

“We do not have an update,” McCarthy told Florio.

Earlier in the week, former Olympian Tim Montgomery, who has been working with Gordon, said he expects him to return at some point during the 2017 season.

“He’s coming,” Montgomery told Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “I think he’s going to be there this season.”

Gordon is still in rehab but he is hoping to have his suspension lifted soon after he’s released on Sept. 21.

“He’s been clean, so we’re hoping after 90 days he’s reinstated and they put him back in the league, which it looks like they’re going to do that,” said Montgomery.

Montgomery believes Gordon was denied reinstatement this past May because he missed his mandatory drug tests.

“It’s my understanding that Josh was clean, but that he wasn’t answering his phone,” said Montgomery. “Josh would go somewhere and he wouldn’t tell anyone he was going out of town and he wouldn’t pick his phone up. He didn’t want to tell his people ‘I can’t come out there because I’ve got to stay here and answer the phone for drug tests.’”

Jets

• Sources tell Rich Cimini that there was a small segment inside the Jets including QBs coach David Lee who felt that Derek Carr was a potential franchise quarterback.
• However, Cimini’s sources mentioned that then-GM John Idzik and his scouts had doubts about Carr because of a lackluster bowl game and the belief that he’d turn out like his older brother.

Packers

Packers GM Ted Thompson surprisingly shifted gears this year and brought in seven veteran free agents to bolster the team’s roster at a number of positions.

A longtime NFL executive familiar with Thompson tells Rob Demovsky that this really came down a realization that they had to get better.

“It’s the realization that they needed to get better,” the executive said of Thompson’s philosophical shift.

The executive added that Thompson is leaning more on director of football operations Eliot Wolf, director of player personnel Brian Gutekunst and senior personnel executive Alonzo Highsmith, which explains the free agent additions.

“He’s listening to Alonzo, Brian, and Eliot,” the NFL executive said.