NFL Insider Mike Garafolo Talks Owners Meetings, Raiders, Eagles, More w/Rich

The video link from Mike Garafolo opens with a roast. Rich pulls up the photo Garafolo filed from the NFL annual meeting in Arizona, the one where 30 head coaches sit for the league's group portrait, and the framing is a disaster. There's a giant light stand in the middle. To hide it, Garafolo cropped out John Harbaugh, who, as Rich gleefully notes, is now in his backyard. "We need to get off on the right foot," Garafolo deadpans. He throws his outgoing NFL Network colleague Alex Vergola under the bus for handing him the camera, then watches Rich back the bus over her again for sport.

The ribbing gives way to a real piece of reporting. Sean McVay and Todd Bowles aren't in the photo. McVay, Garafolo says, was "extremely upset" to miss it. The meeting broke up earlier than expected, the coaches got herded over around 11:40 instead of noon, and McVay was off doing something else. Bowles, who broke down at his opening press conference talking about the road to becoming a head coach, wanted in too. Garafolo vouches that this wasn't a Belichick-style snub. It was bad timing trying to corral 30 head coaches before lunch.

On rules, today's docket is officiating. Two changes. First, the New York office can now eject a player even when there's no flag on the field, the kind of moment that came up in the Super Bowl when Josh Jones threw a punch and the league had no mechanism to act. Garafolo calls it a toe forward toward New York having more in-game authority. Second, there's a contingency plan for a referees' work stoppage that would let New York backstop replacement officials on Hail Mary moments. Translation: leverage in the negotiation ahead of a May 31st deadline.

Then the meat. Max Crosby is staying a Raider. Garafolo says the original trade conversation was less a demand and more a mutual recognition that Vegas wasn't competing for a Super Bowl. The Ravens deal collapsed because the team physicians who consulted, including Dallas's Dan Cooper, all landed in the same place on Crosby's knee. That closes the door on a re-trade.

On A.J. Brown, Garafolo doesn't pretend the rumors are noise. Howie Roseman could have shut it down in Phoenix and didn't. Neither did Nick Sirianni. The Rams were intimately involved, the Patriots too, and the holdup was a pre-June 1st cap hit Roseman wouldn't take without his asking price. Post-June 1st, the math changes. The deeper issue, Garafolo says, is the relationship between Brown and Jalen Hurts, two guys whose kids share godfather duties and who have, per his sources around both, simply grown apart.

Rich sends him off with a Christmas Vacation Underhills reference and a suggestion to expense the night to Tom Pelissero's room.