Albert Breer’s Takeaways: With Fernando Mendoza Signed, the Raiders’ Positive Momentum Continues

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Las Vegas Raiders
Rookie contracts
Kyle Shanahan
Cornerback contracts
John Harbaugh
Packers/NFLPA
Aaron Donald
Carolina Panthers
Suspension of Cardinals exec
Jordan Devey
Quick-hitters

Camp takeaways from my annual training camp tour begin this week! In the meantime …

Las Vegas Raiders

All 257 draft picks are now signed, and the fourth-to-last one to put pen to paper was probably the most significant. That would be the first one picked, Raiders quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who finalized his four-year, $57.27 million contract Thursday.

That’s significant, of course, because the first pick is always an important precedent-setter.

It’s significant, too, because of what it means for the Raiders specifically.

This offseason was a pivotal one for the storied franchise. They have a new coach for the fourth time in five offseasons. They had the No. 1 pick in a draft that had a quarterback worthy of being picked that high. They traded their best player only to have him returned to them like a shiny new car with faulty brakes sent back to the dealership. They spent big in free agency. Through it all, the offseason program gave them a little (much-needed) momentum.

If Mendoza had held out into training camp, it may not have killed all that, but it would’ve put a dent in all the progress new coach Klint Kubiak and his staff have made thus far—and that wasn’t worth continuing to haggle over the details of a slotted rookie deal.

“Contracts are always more complicated than what people think,” second-year GM John Spytek told me Monday. “There was always a way to work through that, and we just wanted to do good deals for everybody and we wanted everybody to be here at the same time, and that’s easier said than done. But in the first run with Klint and me here, we didn’t want any distractions. We didn’t want to be talking about other things outside of football.”

Spytek then co-opted longtime Michigan coach Bo Schembechler’s famous line that served as a foundation for his own alma mater’s program: The Team, The Team, The Team. Having all 10 draft picks under contract now was essential for keeping the focus there, as it was through the spring.

That’s where the aforementioned momentum has been coming from, and it’s essential, again, specifically because of where the Raiders sit right now, that it stays there.

The roster has 30 rookies on it and 16 new veterans. The team projects, as it stands right now, to have newcomers in nine of 22 starting positions. So there’s a lot to bring together there for Kubiak and his staff.

“Watching Quay Walker and Nakobe Dean and Kwity Paye on defense mold with Maxx [Crosby], and with Jeremy Chinn, Malcolm Koonce, Eric Stokes, guys that have been here, has been cool,” Spytek said.

But there’s also a lot to keep together.

Kolton Miller and Crosby, to name two guys, could be slow to trust the team, given all they’ve been through, playing for Jon Gruden, Rich Bisaccia, Josh McDaniels, Antonio Pierce and Pete Carroll. And Crosby, especially, given the offseason he just had.

Instead, Crosby has set the tone for Kubiak’s program while working to come back from meniscus surgery.

“He reported on Thursday with everybody else and you didn’t see his name pop up on the PUP list, so that should be pretty indicative of what we’re trying to accomplish here,” Spytek said. “I mean, he could have easily said, ‘I’m gonna nurse this and I’ll be back mid-training camp or late August.’ But he wasn’t on the PUP, so yeah, that’s what we want. We want guys that want to be here, want to be in this building, want to work, want to be a part of building a team and being on the field as soon as they can.

“And we accomplished that. We didn’t have anybody on the PUP or NFI [non-football injury list] or any of it, at least with the guys returning from injury. And I don’t have any expectations on Tuesday when the rest of the group gets here that we’ll have that. I think we’re gonna have 91 guys on the grass.”

Which is a start.

Rookie contracts

The nugget of the week came from my buddy Mike Garafolo of NFL Network, who pointed out that, finally, a decade and a half after the rookie salary slotting system went into effect, Sam Bradford’s 2010 deal has been topped by a draft pick. Or three, actually.

Bradford signed a six-year, $78 million deal at the doorstep of training camp in 2010, just seven and a half months before the owners locked out the players. As the first pick in that year’s draft, he got $50 million guaranteed, an $18 million signing bonus, upside to $86 million and his deal was considered another tipping point in the owners’ desire to overhaul the way rookies were paid, a desire they would have satisfied in the CBA negotiations to follow.

Anyway, Bradford’s deal was worth $13 million per year. Mendoza’s deal checks in at $14.32 million per year. Second pick David Bailey is getting $13.67 million per year from the Jets, and third pick Jeremiyah Love is at $13.26 million per year in Arizona.

Now, these aren’t apples-to- apples comparisons. Bradford’s deal gave the team six years of contractual control, while these new deals are for four years with bigger payments looming in a potential fifth-year option in 2030. As such, this isn’t any sort of sign that the NFL has gotten back to paying rookies the way that it used to.

If anything, it shows the economic growth of the league with simple math.

Bradford’s rookie year was an uncapped year, so you must go back another year to do the calculation. In 2009, quarterback Matthew Stafford’s rookie deal with the Lions came in at $72 million over six years. That’s an average of $12 million or 9.4% of that year’s $128 million salary cap. The year before that, tackle Jake Long got a five-year, $57.5 million deal as the Dolphins’ first pick; that’s an average of $11.5 million, or 9.9% of that year’s cap.

Mendoza, by comparison, is making 4.8% of this year’s $301.2 million salary cap, which puts him at roughly half of where Stafford and Long were. And remember, that sort of growth of the cap is a true reflection of how much the league’s revenue has grown, since the cap is simply based on percentages of what the owners are making on football.

Either way, the Raiders have their guy now, and they believe, with due respect to the negotiation, it was probably always going to be that way because of who he is.

“I think that stuff really matters to him. And I think … well, I know his love of football is way up there and the idea of missing anything is not what he’s about,” Spytek said. “It’s not who he is, it’s not in the fabric of who he is. So there’s that balance in there, too. It’s not like we counted on that as part of the negotiation, it’s just who he is. It’s who we drafted, the guy that we scouted for all those years.”

If he really is that guy, of course, then the system will, soon enough, go to work for him.

But the numbers, for now, show how all this continues to work for teams.

Kyle Shanahan

Thoughts are with Kyle Shanahan, as they should be. A fair amount of detail is out there now on the 49ers coach’s July 14 car accident, one that was really bad and seemingly could’ve been worse. Shanahan suffered a broken nose, three ribs and a hand along with a severe concussion. He needed more than 40 stitches across his face.

His face and body are healing. Recovery from the concussion hasn’t happened as quickly, and that, for now, is what is going to limit his involvement in training camp.

Statement from the San Francisco 49ers. pic.twitter.com/13ugQr94bQ
— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) July 25, 2026

So the good news is, first and foremost, that the husband and father of three is going to be, by all accounts, fine. GM John Lynch even said that the team’s information doesn’t hold that Shanahan will miss even a single regular-season game. Lynch said that the plan is for the doctors to borrow from the players’ concussion protocol in handling Shanahan’s recovery and return. That said, I’ve learned that with concussions, there’s a layer of unpredictability, especially for someone preparing to go back to a taxing, high-stress job.

The other silver lining here would be that Shanahan’s staff is well-stocked. Assistant head coach Chris Foerster—yes, his past is a little checkered—wasn’t named the interim coach explicitly, but the Niners have positioned him to fill that role. This will be his eighth season working for San Francisco, his 12th season together with Shanahan and his 33rd season in the NFL. That’s a lot of experience, and he has a seasoned group of players and two former head coaches in Raheem Morris and Matt Eberflus on his staff.

Now, the flip side would be that there are few head coaches that are as in the weeds with all the details of their team as Shanahan. This is his 10th season, and the football operation there is very much his show, and acting as if it’ll be turnkey in the moments where he can’t be fully engaged would be ignoring how much he does on a daily basis.

So that’s the landscape. The story stinks, of course. But the Niners can work through it.

Cornerback contracts

Optimism appears to be abounding in New England and Seattle on the team’s talks with their top-end corners. We covered the intertwined negotiations of Pro Bowl corners Christian Gonzalez and Devon Witherspoon at length of late, and the start of training camp loomed all along as a big date to watch. Because the two teams start the season early—against each other—that date came earlier for both and neither avoided the topic.

In Seattle, coach Mike Macdonald deferred to GM John Schneider on the specifics of Witherspoon’s negotiation but did offer that, “I couldn’t have any more confidence in our process and all the people involved in the whole operation. So I think that’s the best way to describe it—really confident right now in where we are and ’Spoon and all his people and the way we do business.”

Meanwhile, almost simultaneously in New England, Patriots owner Robert Kraft said that the team had made an offer to Gonzalez that would make him the highest-paid corner in NFL history and the highest-paid player in team history.

Perhaps the best sign of all, though, was that both guys practiced, too.

So what to take from all this? First, I think it’s clear that the goal of the two corners, both repped by agent Reggie Johnson, is to do more than get a dollar more than Trent McDuffie did after he was traded to the Rams. The cornerback market is, indeed, due for an uptick after the market for receivers and pass rushers blew up over the past couple of years. Second, I’d reiterate what I said last week: It sounds like Witherspoon will go first, then Gonzalez.

Regardless, the positive tone and practice availability of the two is a good sign that deals are on the horizon, with the next real checkpoint coming later this week when the pads go on.

John Harbaugh

John Harbaugh’s speech to the Giants that went viral last week was very much a window into who he is. If you missed it, the team released footage of its new coach addressing the players at the start of the offseason program in April, with Harbaugh going right in on the history of the franchise.

Harbaugh started by asking if the players were a little nervous coming in.

“Standing up here in front of the New York Giants … the New York Giants … this is the New York Giants sitting in this room! The New York Giants,” Harbaugh said, raising his voice. “Wow. It’s an honor. It’s an honor to stand in front of this room right now. I know as coaches, they all feel the same way, right, coaches? It’s an honor. And we’ve been working, haven’t we? We’ve been working early, we’ve been working late, to get ready for today.”

Fired Up 🔥

Giants Life: The Offseason drops tomorrow 👀 pic.twitter.com/sgE6OE1JXF
— New York Giants (@Giants) July 22, 2026

Predictably, he got roasted on social media, because social media is a cynical place.

But, again, this is in line with who Harbaugh is and what he built over 18 years in Baltimore. It reflected his reverence for the game’s history and, obviously, the Giants’ place in it—and that was indeed a real factor in why he picked New York over the other options he had in January. It also showed what he wants his players to establish, which is almost a college-like pride in the program they’re about to build.

Bottom line, over 18 years, it wasn’t tough to identify what his Ravens were. My fourth-grader could spell it out. Big, tough, rugged, resourceful and smart. And it matches, in many ways, what the Giants’ best teams over the past half-century or so have been.

So passing that mantle of Giants history on to the players in an effort to build a program that resembles the type he had in Baltimore makes all the sense in the world.

Was the delivery of the message a little old-timey? Maybe. But that’s how the Harbaughs talk, and it’s genuine. And I’d bet, contrary to what people on X think, it works.

Packers/NFLPA

Packers president Ed Policy said something interesting last week that, I think, could be seen as a bit of a warning shot for the union. Green Bay released its annual financial report for the 2026 fiscal year, with Policy coming up on the one-year anniversary of his promotion to president and CEO. He said this: “It’s like other teams have access to this ATM machine that we just don’t have right now.”

The Packers had $753 million in revenue over the past year and $754.1 million in expenses, with the former up 4.7% and the latter up 18.7%. Policy immediately pointed to a $130 million jump in player cost as the team reported an operating loss for the first time since 1990, save for the COVID-19 year. Part of that, to be sure, was the blockbuster trade in August for Cowboys edge rusher Micah Parsons, who got a four-year, $188 million extension.

So why is this relevant?

The last work stoppage, in 2010, happened for these reasons, with owners claiming the economic system no longer worked for them, and that they couldn’t reinvest in the sport the way they needed to in order to grow it with player costs bulging. That was amid a five-year period (2005–09) when the cap went from $85.5 million to $128 million.

By comparison, over the past six years (2021–26), the cap has gone from $182.5 million to $301.2 million, a significantly bigger jump both by percentage and the raw number.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think Policy said what he did as part of a larger strategy to squeeze the players. The reality is that the Packers don’t have some man behind the curtain who can just make money appear for the team at his convenience—which is to say, yes, the Packers are flush with cash, but there are limits to it. And if the Packers are feeling that squeeze, other owners are, too, and my guess is they’re going to do something about it.

Which leaves me with two thoughts. One, it looks like the CBA wasn’t as bad for the players as some people think. And, two, shouldn’t the league get rid of the ridiculous funding rule now, given that it creates unnecessary expenses for teams just to create a red herring to prevent guaranteed contracts? (I think you know the NFL’s answer to that one.)

Aaron Donald

Rams coach Sean McVay gave you plenty on the Aaron Donald situation in his camp-opening press conference. So let’s lay it all out here …

“He’s very diligent,” McVay told the media. “Anything he does, he does all-in. And so he’s going through a very strict, regimented process that’s similar to what he did when he played. If he feels good, then you guys know he’s going to be ready to rock. … We’ll see how his body’s responding to some of the training and the way he puts himself through the paces to know what it looks and feels like to be ready to take on what the rigors of an NFL season entail.

“But this is his decision. He’s earned the right to be able to do it on his terms. And that’s why I think you guys are seeing us take this approach. … But I’m not going to sit here and act like I’m not excited about the possibility of it."

We can then reiterate a little of what we said on this last week. The Rams aren’t going to push because, as McVay said, this is Donald’s decision. And what Donald’s trying to figure out now is whether or not he can feel like himself out there—and the bar for that is high.

If he gets there, of course, then there’d have to be a plan for the year, and how they’d lay that out, since there’s not really a precedent for this, though Eric Weddle’s emergency comeback during the 2021 playoffs does give the staff some applicable experience. The closest I could come to a comp for this was actually Michael Jordan returning to the NBA with the Wizards three years after he retired from the Bulls.

So there are still hurdles to clear.

But I’m with McVay—the mere idea this might happen is pretty exciting.

Carolina Panthers

Nic Scourton (ACL tear) is a tough loss for the Panthers. We had our first big casualty of the summer this year before most teams even reported to camp, with Carolina’s promising second-year pass rusher, who had five sacks as a rookie, going down in practice Thursday.

Last year, Scourton was one of the guys who was often raised as symbolic of what the team’s new power troika—Dan Morgan, Brandt Tilis and Dave Canales—were looking to build.

Seen as tough, edgy and relentless coming out of Texas A&M, Scourton became a real factor in Ejiro Evero’s defense down the stretch. And months later, the Panthers broke the bank to put Jaelan Phillips opposite the 21-year-old, creating a vision that, unfortunately, will have to wait until 2027 to come to fruition.

Some of the spotlight will now shift to another second-year rusher, Princely Umanmielen, a 2025 third-rounder who was taken 26 picks after Scourton.

Suspension of Cardinals exec

The situation involving Cardinals college scouting director Ryan Gold has an easy fix. Last week, the NFL suspended Gold indefinitely, with a league investigation having determined that the Arizona exec disclosed confidential inside information on the team’s 2026 draft. The league didn’t say whom Gold passed the info along to.

I don’t know if Gold’s guilty or not. What I do know is that it seems like betting on things that may already have been determined by teams—like who a team is taking in the draft—probably isn’t worth whatever amount of money it brings in. I feel the same way, by the way, about betting on awards that are voted on by humans (I, full disclosure, am an AP awards voter).

The beauty of the games is we don’t know what’s going to happen within those three hours.

In cases like this one, there are people who know certain outcomes ahead of time, which cuts right through what sports gambling is supposed to be about: wagering on a result that hasn’t taken place yet. And to be clear, I’m fine with most sports betting. But we don’t have to have the freedom to bet on absolutely everything.

Jordan Devey

Finally, RIP, Jordan Devey. There are simply too many cases like his, a former football player taking his own life. Devey tragically leaves behind a wife and four kids behind.

Devey’s family told FOX 13 in Salt Lake City that, due to the nature of his death, it will be impossible to test his brain for CTE, the neurodegenerative disease that’s often found in pro football players but can be tested for only after they pass. His mother told the television station that she believes he might’ve suffered from CTE.

Devey played eight NFL seasons for six teams, winning Super Bowl XLIX with the Patriots while also having stints with the Ravens, 49ers, Chiefs, Raiders and Bills.

We send all our best to everyone who loved him.

Quick-hitters

Let’s wrap up with a few more notes before I attend my first training camp practice.

• Salute to Jacoby Brissett.

Earlier in the offseason, I thought he was out of his mind to hold out, thinking it’d open the door for Gardner Minshew II or even Carson Beck to pass him on the Cardinals’ depth chart. I figured he wouldn’t be able to get Arizona to budge off the $5.44 million number for 2026, and risking losing the starting job that Mike LaFleur had given him could have reverberated in his earning power for years to come.

I stand corrected. Brissett stood his ground and got a $10 million raise, with a chance to get past $20 million if he can hit his incentives.

Brissett is headed into his second decade as an NFL player, and will turn 34 in December. He had more leverage than I thought, he used it, and now he will get another shot at being a starter in the league, and will be paid handsomely to do it. I’m always for guys getting what they can while they’re still playing. Good for Brissett.

• You can see now why the Chiefs feel good about Patrick Mahomes’s recovery from his torn ACL and LCL in his left knee.

It wasn’t hard to see the sort of shape the 10-year vet was in reporting to camp on Friday, and the fact that he’s been cleared to practice is great news. They’re going to be judicious ramping him up. And there’s always the reminder that there’s an acclimation period that comes with quarterbacks coming off an injury in real game action, which can be bumpy.

But since the Dec. 14 injury and Dec. 15 surgery, Mahomes has checked virtually every box. And the obvious next date circled for everyone is the Monday Night Football opener against the Broncos on Sept. 14.

• We already mentioned Nic Scourton above. And the Panthers’ loss of right tackle Taylor Moton to blood clots, with left tackle Ikem Ekwonu already on the shelf, is just as big. It likely means first-round pick Monroe Freeling, who is talented but raw, just had the date of his first start moved up.

• The Buccaneers’ first practice is just a couple of days away, so the time is now for negotiations with Baker Mayfield to pick up. He’s said he doesn’t want to negotiate after practice starts. The Bucs have done deals with vets during camp the past few years. We’ll see where they are in a few days.

• My assistant coach to watch in camp: New Cowboys defensive coordinator Christian Parker. His name has been circled for a while as a guy with a shot to become a head coach, and his work under Vic Fangio coaching the back end of the defense in Denver and Philadelphia has been an important piece to those puzzles. Now, we’ll get to see if he can put the whole thing together with so much personnel turnover on that unit over the past two years in Dallas.

• I hope Brandon Aiyuk has people around him who are willing to tell him what he needs to hear. His story gets more bizarre by the minute, and people who were concerned about him before the 2025 season appear to have been justified.

• This weekend’s flag football bonanza on ESPN is the latest piece of proof of just how committed the league is to pushing that version of the sport. There are a bunch of reasons why. The big one: to get more people playing some iteration of the sport, especially after the league’s concussion reckoning of the past 15 years or so. That includes boys in the states whose parents won’t let them play tackle, it includes women, and it includes folks in foreign countries that the NFL is trying to mine for new customers.

• Devonte Wyatt’s new deal in Green Bay means four of GM Brian Gutekunst’s first six first-rounders have signed second contracts with the team, with Jaire Alexander, Rashan Gary and Jordan Love being the first three. Meanwhile, the other two, Eric Stokes and Quay Walker, got nice mid-level deals in free agency from the Raiders. That’s a pretty good track record for a first-time GM, particularly considering how deep in the round Green Bay usually picks.

• Puka Nacua’s contract status is one to watch between now and the opener. He’s had his issues off the field, and was in rehab for part of this offseason, but on the field has been everything the Rams could ask for. One question I’d have is whether adding Myles Garrett’s contract to the 2026 budget late makes it tougher for the team to take care of Nacua now. Of course, they still have control over Nacua for 2027 with the franchise tag.

• And you’re getting this dispatch from the road. I’m already in Seattle and ready to roll. The first stretch of camp for me: the Seahawks today, the Cardinals tomorrow, the 49ers on Wednesday, the Cowboys on Thursday, the Rams on Friday, the Chargers on Saturday, the Raiders on Sunday, the Broncos next Monday and the Chiefs next Tuesday. I’m excited to get going, and we’ll be coming to you with stories from every camp, both in print, and on video on SI’s YouTube page and social.

Got anything you want to see in our coverage? You know where to find me.

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