Morning briefing: 17-Nov-24 - Giants don’t miss Saquon Barkley and are “just fine at running back”

NFC East linksNFL.com Texans WR Nico Collins (hamstring) off injury report, set to play vs. Cowboys on Monday night Though there was discussion over whether he could make his return last week, in the end Collins was not able to ramp up fast enough to play in Houston's Week 10 loss to the Lions, having to wait another week for an opportunity to get back on the field.

Collins was a limited participant in Wednesday's practice, but was upgraded to full participation for the final two sessions heading into this week's prime-time showdown.

Before the injury Collins had accumulated a then-NFL leading 567 receiving yards, along with three touchdowns. He arrives back in the lineup just in time to assist his team in their effort to break a two-game losing streak.

Pro Football Talk CeeDee Lamb questionable to play Monday night Wide receiver CeeDee Lamb is dealing with a back injury and he's now listed as questionable to play against the Texans on Monday night. Lamb was a limited participant in practice on Saturday.

Tackle Chuma Edoga (toe), right guard Zack Martin (shoulder), and linebacker Nick Vigil (foot) are also listed as questionable. Fullback Hunter Luepke (calf) is listed as doubtful and cornerbacks Jordan Lewis (neck) and DaRon Bland (foot) have been ruled out.

Big Blue View Despite Saquon Barkley's greatness, the Giants are fine at running back without him What Barkley does in Philly really shouldn't matter as the Giants try to build their own team

Barkley is having a great season, the best of his career to date. No one should be shocked by that. I don't believe the Giants are.

Barkley ran for 176 yards on just 17 carries against the Giants in Week 6, mercifully taking the fourth quarter off.

He is averaging a career-best 113.7 yards rushing per game and leads the league through 10 games with 1,137 rushing yards. If he keeps up that pace, he will end up with 1,933 rushing yards and a career-high 2,289 total yards from scrimmage.

Eagles fans were all over social media trolling the Giants after Barkley ran for 146 yards and caught two passes for 52 more, giving him 198 total yards on Thursday as the Eagles beat the Washington Commanders to improve to 8-2.

Regardless of the optics, Barkley's great year and all of that I think this situation turned out the right way. Barkley is in a place where he can be a difference-making, finishing piece on a team with championship aspirations.

The Giants weren't, and aren't that. They probably won't be for a while. No matter the kind of success Barkley has, Schoen and the Giants did the right thing by not spending big money for a back who had shown over six seasons that there was one thing he couldn't do, that no running back can do.

Turn a bad team into a good one.

Despite his brilliance, the Giants had one winning season in Barkley's six years. Schoen, who did not draft Barkley, re-prioritized. That was his right, and popular or not, the right decision. It was time to stop trying to build a team around a running back, especially a high-mileage one with an injury history.

The Giants are 2-8. Would they be significantly better with Barkley? Probably not. He almost certainly would not be putting up the numbers for the Giants that he is for the Eagles. Their future wouldn't look any brighter, either. Without Barkley, an argument can be made that they are better positioned for the future.

Schoen used that money to successfully improve the offensive line .

Schoen and the Giants also leaned into the belief that if you block well you can run the ball without a star running back, and that if you scout well you can find good backs in the middle to late portions of the draft.

NFL league links Dallas Cowboys Lead Parade of Cash-Rich, Win-Poor NFL Teams So far this season, the Cowboys have produced one win for every $266 million of 2023 local revenue. The New York Giants (one win per $163 million), Las Vegas Raiders ($151 million) and New England Patriots ($115 million) have also not had the on-field results to match their financial heft. In contrast, teams with six of the seven best records this year have below average revenue. The Buffalo Bills ($19 million), Detroit Lions ($20 million) and Kansas City Chiefs ($22 million) have all racked up wins relative to their revenue.

The NFL's economic system gives teams one through 32 the ability to compete on an equal footing. It provided more than $400 million last year in equally shared league revenue, largely based on its blockbuster TV deals. The league check more than covered the $225 million salary cap, meaning that no team needs to cut corners on signing players because of cash flow considerations.

In the NFL, everyone is a winner off the field. The least valuable NFL team (Cincinnati Bengals) is worth $4.7 billion, and every team earned more than $70 million in operating profit last year. All 32 NFL teams rank among the world's 50 most valuable sports franchises .

The Dallas Cowboys have built the best economic machine in team sports since Jerry Jones bought the team for $150 million in 1989. America's Team posts the NFL's highest sponsorship, premium seating and merchandise revenue year after year. Local revenue of nearly $800 million last year was twice as much as the next highest-grossing team, the Los Angeles Rams.

Yet, the massive wealth gap can't help Dallas on the field this year, as it stumbled to six losses in its first nine games and has a bleak outlook for the rest of the year after quarterback Dak Prescott underwent second-ending surgery Wednesday on his hamstring.

Pro Football Talk Week 11 makes history with three matchups featuring teams having seven or more wins As you might have heard, Sunday's game between the Chiefs and Bills will be only the fifth time since 1970 that two teams with eight or more wins will meet in Week 11 or earlier. There's another nugget that demonstrates the divide between the great and not-great-Bob teams in 2024.

For the first time since 1970, three games in Week 11 feature teams with seven or more wins.

In addition to the 9-0 Chiefs facing the 8-2 Bills, the 7-3 Ravens play the 7-2 Steelers and, on Thursday night, the 7-2 Eagles beat the 7-3 Commanders.

Front Office Sports Netflix's Tyson-Paul Failures Raise Huge NFL Game Questions Netflix's botched Tyson-Paul event highlights major streaming flaws as Amazon emerges as the live sports leader.

If I'm Netflix and the NFL, I'm going to a DEFCON 1 state of urgency after the disaster that was the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing match Friday night.

Let's start with the good news: Paul said an amazing 120 million worldwide streamed the event online from AT&T Stadium. That's a testament to the enduring appeal of Tyson and the sweet science. On Saturday afternoon, the media and technology company said its total audience count peaked at 65 million concurrent viewers. For context, last season's NFC championship game between the 49ers and Lions had an average viewership of 53.6 million (over a much longer period) and peaked at 59 million.

But to call Netflix's production a trainwreck would be an insult to trains. Netflix's glitchy stream was plagued with buffering issues, freezes, long lag times, and poor screen quality. The stream lost audio at times and was slow to reload. Viewers were livid and had every right to be. There were over 88,000 reports of streaming problems, according to the website Downdetector .

In short, Netflix's biggest live sporting event was a technical flop. That doesn't bode well for the giant streamer's upcoming showing of two NFL games on Christmas Day, including the Super Bowl champion Chiefs vs. the Steelers. Not to mention its upcoming coverage of WWE Raw starting in January.

That was just the technical issues.

On a commentary level, the team of play-by-play announcer Mauro Ranallo, boxer Roy Jones Jr., and actress Rosie Perez added little to the production. Before the main event, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis joined Kate Scott for an interview. But Holyfield couldn't hear Scott's questions. So Lewis had to comically relay them to the former champ to get his answers. Naturally, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was on hand for an interview from Jerry World. But Jones's mic didn't work. That's entertainment.

Amazon Prime Video: Somewhere Jay Marine, Prime's sports boss, is yukking it up with Jeff Bezos. While Netflix is getting creamed, Prime is enjoying its most successful season so far with the NFL's Thursday Night Football. Prime's stream of Eagles vs. Commanders on Thursday averaged 14.42 million viewers, up 11% from last season's comparable game. Through 10 games this season, Prime is averaging 13.20 million viewers, up 7% from the same point last season. Prime seems to have largely solved the buffering and lagging issues that make the streaming experience inferior to linear television. If Netflix is serious about getting into the NFL game, they're well behind Prime.Netflix: Memo to Netflix: It's later than you think. The tech giant must fix its technical issues before streaming two NFL games on Christmas Day. If Netflix's livestream glitches while Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes is leading a game-winning drive, NFL fans will go nuts. It will be the modern-day equivalent of the infamous "Heidi Game" in 1968 when NBC broke away from the Raiders' comeback win over the Jets to show a movie about an adorable Swiss orphan. The Raiders scored two touchdowns in the final minute to beat the Jets 43–32. But NFL viewers on the East Coast were left in the dark. Outraged football fans bombarded the NBC switchboards.The Athletic (paywall) Russini's what I'm hearing: This NFL coach hiring cycle is going to be huge Seven head coaches were hired last winter; many across the NFL expect that number to be higher this year. The most coaches hired in a cycle is 10, most recently after the 2021 season. This upcoming coaching cycle might not hit double digits, but it will be close. It's not even Thanksgiving week, there is still so much football to be played, yet conversations about the next wave of coaches are already brewing among owners and their front-office staffs. Search firms are collecting information, agents are making calls, and, most importantly, teams that know they want a change are already meeting internally to discuss the possibilities. From what I gather, flirting season is in full swing.

• Coach Prime isn't landing at The Star. The 57-year-old University of Colorado coach and Pro Football Hall of Fame cornerback has said publicly he wants to stay in college football, despite some theories that Jerry Jones is targeting his former star. Sanders holds an 11-10 record over two seasons with the Buffaloes, and as of now, I have not spoken to a team decision-maker interested in bringing Sanders in as an NFL head coach. (A real shame; his sunglasses would be perfect for that glaring sun in Dallas .)

• For now, the former player-turned-coach getting the most hype around the league is former Titans head coach and current Browns consultant Mike Vrabel. He wants to coach in 2025 and I expect him to have his pick of available jobs.

Jets in limbo Both the NFL and the Jets are operating as if owner Woody Johnson will leave the organization again when (or if) he's nominated the ambassador to the United Kingdom by President-elect Donald Trump. In 2017, Johnson was nominated for that position in January but didn't leave until the summer, once he was confirmed. Christopher Johnson, his brother and the vice chairman of the Jets, took over in his stead.

It appears headed that way again, and plenty is hanging in the balance for the organization — the Jets will need to decide on their quarterback, head coach and possibly general manager this offseason. I'm told no decisions have been made on any of the above, but let's be clear: There is no guarantee Aaron Rodgers will be back in a Jets uniform in 2025.

Rodgers, who turns 41 in December, said this week that he wants to play next year , and while Woody Johnson hasn't been thrilled with his star QB's performance, Rodgers has a strong relationship with Christopher Johnson. The next month-and-a-half will help shape the team's decision.

The Jets do not owe Rodgers any guaranteed money in 2025. They would need to pay him a $35 million option bonus plus his $2.5 million salary if they decide to bring him back. Rodgers has a cap hit of $23.5 million. They are projected for a top-10 pick — No. 8, per Tankathon — which could put them in a position to draft a quarterback too.

A Daniel Jones decision to come The New York Giants, on a bye week, have yet to inform their quarterbacks who will be starting Week 12 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Both GM Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll left the door open in their latest media availabilities, but this could be it for Daniel Jones.

The team is sitting at 2-8 and the organization faces significant financial implications tied to Jones' contract: $23 million of his 2025 salary becomes guaranteed if he suffers a season-ending injury. That financial risk is one reason the Giants might decide to bench him if their playoff hopes remain dim; the backup options are Drew Lock and Tommy DeVito.

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