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Could Ezekiel Elliott be back in a Dallas Cowboys jersey next season? There is mutual interest between the two parties, according to ESPN.

A deal to make the reunion happen has not been finalized, but Elliott and the Cowboys are both willing to make it happen.

In 2023, Elliott played his first season in a different jersey, after spending the first seven seasons in Dallas. With the New England Patriots, he finished with 184 rushes for 642 yards, both team highs, with an average of 3.5 yards per carry, with three touchdowns in 17 games. He also had 51 receptions, a team high, for 313 yards and two touchdowns in the air.

Elliott had career lows in multiple categories, including rushes, yards and touchdowns, but when Patriots lead rusher Rhamondre Stevenson went out with an injury toward the end of the season, his involvement in the run game increased. The Cowboys liked how he concluded the 2023 season, according to ESPN.

The veteran was released by the Cowboys last offseason and signed with the Patriots in August on a one-year deal worth $3 million.

He was selected at No. 4 overall in the 2016 NFL Draft and lead the league in rushing in two of his first three years with the Cowboys. The 28-year-old is a three-time Pro Bowler, with 8,904 rushing yards, 71 touchdowns on the ground, 356 receptions for 2,649 yards and 14 touchdowns in the air.

One of the more surprising moves that came out of free agency occurred in Green Bay where the Packers effectively swapped veteran Aaron Jones for former Raiders running back Josh Jacobs. The club went out and signed Jacobs to a four-year, $48 million contract after having failed negotiations with Jones, who was subsequently released.

“It kind of caught me off guard, to be honest with you,” LaFleur said of the running back swap from the NFL Annual League Meeting last week, via the Wisconsin State Journal. “There were some other things in play, obviously with Aaron Jones, and I didn’t quite know how everything was going to go. It just happened really fast on that Monday.”

Jones had a $17 million salary cap charge for the upcoming 2024 season. The club reportedly went to Jones to ask for a pay cut to reduce that number, which his side declined and ultimately led to the end of his time in Green Bay.

“We asked him to take a pay cut, and as we went through that process, we kind of realized it wasn’t going to probably come to fruition,” said GM Brian Gutekunst. “Obviously, we had to do what’s in the best interest of the football team — and that’s what we did.”

While Gutekunst does run the personnel department, it is a bit curious to see LaFleur seemingly out of the loop when it comes to getting rid of a player who rushed for over 100 yards in each of his last five games to end the 2023 season.

“It happened really fast, so I don’t know all the details of that,” LaFleur said. “I’m not involved in those types of conversations. But we were super excited (to get Jacobs).”

Jones did land on his feet following his release from the Packers as he quickly signed on with the rival Minnesota Vikings, meaning he’ll remain in the NFC North and take on his former club twice during the regular season.

One of the busiest teams throughout this offseason has been the New York Jets, who have been adding pieces to their offense as they head into Year 2 of the Aaron Rodgers era. They brought in Tyron Smith, Morgan Moses, and John Simpson along the offensive line, and they brought in Mike Williams to give Rodgers a new wide receiver.

Williams, of course, spent the first seven years of his career with the Los Angeles Chargers, working alongside Keenan Allen as the top wide receivers for Philip Rivers and then Justin Herbert. He has been a very good contested-catch winner and deep ball threat for most of his career, which should make him a good complement to Garrett Wilson on the opposite side.

However, Williams is coming off a torn ACL that cut his 2023 season short after just three games. According to Williams, though, he’ll be on the field for the start of the season.

“I’m like four-and-a-half months out, five months out. So I should be ready — I will be ready for Week 1 of the season,” Williams said during an appearance on The Adam Schefter Podcast. “That’s my goal and (it’s) looking good. I’ve got a meeting with my doctor here next week; so, take some more steps, keep building, make my way up there.”

Head coach Robert Saleh indicated that Williams is on a similar recovery path that running back Breece Hall was on a year ago, but also cautioned that he is still early in the recovery process. “Mike, he’s got a long way to go,” Saleh said last week, per SI.com. “He’s on the same timeline that Breece had. They’re very similar injuries, same time frame. He knows he’s got a road to trek, but at the same time, if he does it the right way, we’re very confident we’ll have him ready for Week 1.”

As for what he’d like to accomplish in New York, where he signed on a one-year deal, Williams has a pair of very specific goals in mind.

“My goals is to get healthy and, I mean, I’m going on Year 8; I want to win a Super Bowl,” he said. “I want to win a Super Bowl, so whatever it takes to do that. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to be the kind of last team standing, holding that trophy up at the end. And I want to be available for every game. Those are my goals for the season.”

Williams has played every game of the season only once in his career, way back in 2018. He did stay on the fieeld for 15, 15, and 16 games in 2019 through 2021, but he missed four games in 2022 and 14 in 2023. If he can stay healthy throughout his age-30 season this upcoming year, and if he can maintain the kind of production he’s had for most of his career, there should be a solid market for his services in 2025.

March Madness has been full of surprises, as usual, and without question the biggest surprise is that the No. 11 seed North Carolina State Wolfpack — who only made the tournament in the first place because they surprisingly won the ACC Tournament — have crashed the Final Four by winning the South Regional. NC State is headed to the national semifinal for the first time since 1983, when the program, guided by legendary coach Jim Valvano, won the title by defeating heavily favored Houston with a last-second dunk in what is considered one of the most famous games in college basketball history.

This year’s team is led by big man DJ Burns Jr., who transferred two years ago from Winthrop and who checks in at 6-foot-9 and 275 pounds. The big lefty has averaged 18.3 points, 5.0 rebounds, and 3.5 assists in the Wolfpack’s four tournament games, and poured in 29 pounds in the team’s Elite Eight upset of Duke.

But as he has captivated basketball fans during his team’s run, Burns has also begun to generate real interest from NFL scouts due to his combination of size and agility. Senior Bowl director Jim Nagy posted over the weekend that he could not help but think about Burns “kick-sliding in pass pro or getting out on pulls,” and a few days later, noted that he has received text messages from multiple general managers and assistant general managers and a director of college scouting confirming that there would indeed be interest in Burns should he decide to pursue a path to the NFL.

On Monday, Fox Sports and NFL Media’s Peter Schrager noted that he, too, had spoken with multiple scouts and general managers over the weekend about Burns’ potential as a tackle prospect, and indicated that Burns would “get big turnout and potentially $ if he participated in a Pro Day/workout the week after the Final 4.”

Burns would of course be far from the first college basketball player to pursue an NFL career. Tony Gonzalez, Antonio Gates, and Jimmy Graham were famously basketball-to-football stars, and Julius Peppers played both basketball and football at North Carolina before deciding on football as his full-time pursuit.

Donovan McNabb, Antwaan Randle-El, Connor Barwin, Terrell Owens, Vincent Jackson, Martellus Bennett and Julius Thomas, among others, also played college basketball at one time or another before landing in the NFL. Most of those players landed at one of the offensive skill positions, though Barwin was a linebacker and Peppers was a defensive end. Burns’ size and body type lend themselves more to being an offensive lineman, though, and there is apparently a potential path for him to the league, if he wants to give it a go.

It’s been a busy offseason for Kirk Cousins. Not only has he been rehabbing from a torn Achilles that he suffered back in October, but after recently signing with the Falcons, he now has to move his entire family from Minnesota to Atlanta.

Although he’s been busy, Cousins still found some time to meet with Kevin Hart to help the comedian kick off his 10th season of “Cold as Balls.” If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s pretty simple: Hart interviews a guest while the two of them sit in their own cold tub.

During his interview with Hart, Cousins was asked who he would put on his Mount Rushmore of NFL quarterbacks and based on his answer, you can tell how much he respects Patrick Mahomes. Even though Mahomes has only been in the NFL for seven seasons, Cousins thinks the three-time Super Bowl winner is definitely deserving of being in the conversation for best quarterbacks of all-time.

“Tom Brady, and then it gets kind of murky from there,” Cousins said when listing off his Mount Rushmore. “Peyton Manning, five MVPs, tough to beat. I love Drew Brees. Joe Montana probably has to be there. In that fourth spot, you can go anywhere from Bart Starr to Mahomes today.”

Considering what Mahomes has already accomplished, it’s definitely fair of Cousins to put him on his list of best ever. Not only does the Chiefs QB have three Super Bowls wins, but he has three Super Bowl MVP awards to go along with that, plus he’s also been voted the MVP of the NFL twice.

After Cousins mentioned Mahomes, Hart asked him if he’s the best active quarterback and Cousins didn’t hesitate to answer that question.

“Patrick’s No. 1,” Cousins said. “I think it’s Patrick and there’s kind of a drop off to everyone else.”

So who else would made the cut on Cousins’ list of best active quarterbacks? We’ll never know, because he gave up on answering it after he mentioned Mahomes.

“I’m just going to keep punting until we move to the next topic,” Cousins said.

If Mahomes decided to retire tomorrow, you could easily make the case that he’d go down as one of the best quarterbacks of all-time, but he’s not retiring tomorrow (at least that we know of), which means he’s only going to add to his legend and by the time he’s done playing, he might be remembered as the best ever.

If the New York Jets have told us anything this offseason, it’s that they are going all in on the 2024 campaign. The club has acquired a litany of veteran players on one-year deals in hopes of maximizing its chances of contending this season with Aaron Rodgers, who’ll be 41 in December. And the next step in squeezing every drop they can into putting themselves in a position to hoist a Lombardi Trophy by this time next year could come in the NFL Draft.

Currently, the Jets hold the No. 10 overall pick. One school of thought could be for the team to address its quarterback position at that selection and bring aboard a young signal-caller to develop behind Rodgers. However, ESPN’s Rich Cimini relays that is an unlikely route New York goes down. Instead, he notes that the Jets would like to receive a trade proposal from the QB-needy teams behind them. That would give them an opportunity to acquire another top-100 pick that could be another piece to help them in 2024. At the moment, the Jets only have two picks inside the top 100 (No. 10 and No. 72).

Good news for the Jets is that there are plenty of teams directly behind them that are said to be in the market for a young quarterback. After the Jets, the Minnesota Vikings (No. 11), Denver Broncos (No. 12) and Las Vegas Raiders (No. 13) have all been teams rumored to want to move up the board for a QB.

The big question for New York is whether or not a quarterback that would warrant being a top-10 pick would still be available by the time they are on the clock at No. 10. Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye have all been earmarked as top-five picks, and J.J. McCarthy has also been gaining steam to go in that range as well. If those four are gone, the Jets would need a prospective trade partner to be in love with someone in that next tier, which consists of Michael Penix Jr. and Bo Nix.

Thanks to the team addressing its offensive line in free agency, GM Joe Douglas noted last week at the NFL Annual League Meeting that the Jets “now have great flexibility to go in any direction that is best for us. It opens the door to a lot of possibilities at No. 10.”