5/11 MON
HAPPY DAY OFF TO ME! (I think it’s my second one of 2026)
(4:44amET)
Today/tomorrow
-- DRD rankings will now settle into once a week (min.) publishing the DRD top 300+ updates and adding/updating commentaries, etc. Likely every THU or FRI the rest of the preseason.
-- SuperFlex/2QB Mock DRD 12-part series underway 5/4-5/16, 5/11 off).
-- Miscellaneous reports on things that come my way and more scouting reports to come. I have a backlog of them to get published already.
This Week’s/Month’s Agenda…
-- 2026 Draft Guide studies and commentary writing is about to start...all month of May. More info on timings of the first reports to hit, etc., coming 2nd-half of May.
-- DRD valuations/rankings top 300+ board updates/adds to everyday post-NFL Draft week and every week through the entire offseason.
-- Prospect grades by position and rookie rankings boards are being debuted, updated and added to daily/weekly up to kick off 2026.
-- Dynasty and Best Ball rankings audits/updates daily/weekly. IDP studies/projections may not hit until early May.
-- Holy series QB and RB done. Holy RB Handcuffs underway (on hold for draft, since we’re this close)
-- Full scouting reports on various prospects from now until the NFL preseason. Deeper looks at De’Zhaun Stribling, Jam Miller, Cyrus Allen all on deck.
-- Any FFM News & Notes or Special Reports during the day as I get them.
-- New coaching staff hire’s analysis series...going through the entire staff...I am working on the framework of how I want to present that. This will be a first ever series (for me) where I go beyond ‘just the new head coaches’. ETA in May/June to start it up.
== NEWS & NOTES & Xs ==
-- I’m taking the day off today!
I think it is my second day off of the calendar year. Which is crazy considering how sick and tired I was for 8 weeks of radiation, as I was thinking about it. I think I took the bell ringing ceremony day in Jacksonville off when all my family came in, so I believe this is my next day off of 2026.
There’s been little chance for time off in 2026 since I’ve had to sleep a lot or been sick a lot most every day of 2026 due to the radiation months and then the post-radiation recovery, so when I was awake I needed to work diligently because I never knew when the next wave of sickness and/or tiredness would hit.
I am going to take some time off for the next week, actually. I’m going to try to take like a real vacation of sorts, which for me is only working 4-6 hours a day.
It’s not a vacation, per se, but more of an ‘RC Gratitude World Tour’/vacation. I am driving to various places to thank various family and friends for their support of my 8-week radiation stint in Jacksonville. And I mean ‘support’ in all the kinds of ways that the word means/infers. So much went into that financially and otherwise. I don’t know how we did it. I’m visiting a lot of the people/family that aren’t geographically close to me, so it’s hard to just drive over real quick and honor them and head home. It’s a purposefully laid out trip that I crafted while I was in Jacksonville in the middle of the hardest days there.
I will share with you the where and what and why that I did a thing the day prior here on RC’s notes...a travel log...a record for me to look back on later in life. If you’re not interested in reading it, it’s cool. I just don’t want to forget all these beautiful moments and people who went above and beyond for me, so I am chronicling it of sorts. I will also likely vent at/record and report any stupidity I see on the road as well.
I love driving on the open road and just listening to music or podcasts (anything but football, hopefully the new cycle stays slow...until the schedule hits) and just peacefully thinking up new ideas and whatever. A lot of driving is coming up this week+, on purpose. I am taking it slow to not overburden myself. So, lots of stops along the way. Not gonna be a long-haul trucker about things, like I did in my younger days...I’m just gonna drive and veg out and experience life. Also, I need to have extra overnight stops to get midday sleep and get football work done all night on the road!
There’s also gonna be fun things on this trip! A first of its kind thing/trip that I have been invited to do in the past but never seemed to have the time (cue *Cat’s in the Cradle*)...but now I am making time. Because midweek I arrive in Houston to meet up with my boys flying in and we’re getting an AirBNB and visiting my Dad/my boy’s grandpa and he and his wife are taking us all to several Astros games (they are long-time season ticket holders) and taking us to various Houston eateries and things-to-do downtown pre-game and/or post-game. I am so looking forward to some time away from the day-to-day and just getting some downtime and chillin’ watching baseball, which is the BEST sport to just chill and enjoy at a leisurely pace.
We’ve got some good material/reports written up ahead to release during my heavier time off periods in a day, and I’ll work early morning and then again late into the night at a minimum, so I will be staying on top of any breaking news things. And Mr. Ross is working his butt off to have more scouting reports, etc., for the days that are more busy/(chillin’) for me.
I will be doing/starting the Faux 2026 regular season version 1 computer simulated series starting the day or two after the schedules are released. So, like 5/15 or 5/16 the series begins and runs for like a week+.
Tomorrow, I am departing kinda early (if all goes well)...like 6am or prior to head to go see my Mom in Alabama to take her to dinner for her Mother’s Day and to thank her for what she did for me while I was in Jacksonville.
I’ve never had a planned ‘lots of relaxing’ week like this basically in over a decade, probably two...no make that three decades I’d say. I was always working or the kids had events...or I had no money/job to do such a thing. I am so looking forward to half-unplugging for a week...but I am also afraid I’ll hate it and get football/work withdrawals (which I usually do 2-3 days into a vacation and end up working in the room while everyone else relaxes). We shall see!
You can follow my adventure (or descent into madness) here every day on RC’s Notes. I never miss a day of RC’s Notes (knock on wood). Even through gallbladder surgery, kidney stones, Covid, and cancer scans and radiations...I show up, a ‘No Days Off’ workhorse.
Not this week. I’m going into ‘chill mode’ a bit, if that’s even possible. I don’t know if my programming comes with a ‘chill mode’.
-- HEADLINE: Mike McDaniel on Quentin Johnston: “I think he’s a guy that has some traits in his game that are similar to some very powerful, explosive, productive receivers that I’ve had in the past, namely like Julio (Jones) and Andre (Johnson) and so we’re pushing him.”
Well...it’s May 11th, and I am already fully sick of Mike McDaniel as the Chargers O-C. I thought Jim Harbaugh was over the top with ‘positivity’, but he can’t reach the bullshit meter that McDaniel has hit.
So, like in the past week, McDaniel has claimed Quentin Johnston is a Julio Jones equivalent and rookie Brenen Thompson is a Tyreek Hill.
I’m waiting for Ladd to be compared to Jerry Rice and Tre Harris to Calvin Johnson. If you follow along all the players McDaniel is hyping and he has said this past week something like the whole WR room was gonna have career years, well then Ladd’s gonna be a top 3 FF WR...QJ and Thompson might just be top 10-15 FF overall WRs. I guess Tre Harris hype has him as a WR2...and Derius Davis and KeAndre Lambert-Smith will be sneaky WR3s. And then just wait until they sign Keenan Allen back!
I assume all this is true because Mike McDaniel would never overpromise and underdeliver.
And if it is all true -- then Justin Herbert is about to go on the most epic statistical season a QB has ever had in the history of football, so he’s got that going for him.
I don’t pay one second of attention to Mike McDaniel, from the perspective of playing my FF cards around what he says. He runs off at the mouth and hopes fans and the players themselves will lap it up. I’m all for praising players to motivate, but Brenen Thompson’s career is almost sunk already as McDaniel has linked him to Tyreek Hill, which is an insult to everyone’s intelligence. And if McDaniel really means it (in his own head), after being able to coach Tyreek personally and now getting to see Thompson up close and compare them...if he thinks their the same, then this whole LAC situation is going to underperform because McDaniel is a loon.
I’m starting to wonder if the Chargers are about to kill the Golden Goose.
Ben Johnson is like...we gotta get better, we didn’t do as well as we could have...players and coaches need to step up!
Hype man McDaniel is like...everybody we have is gonna have a career year (subtext...because I’M HERE)!!
We’ll see which team lives up to their promise between LAC and CHI.
== QUOTES & QUOTABLES (pulled from an internet A.I. search, I try to make sure it’s accurate but some of it is ‘trust in AI’) ==
-- (PFT) A year after the Browns used a fifth-round pick on quarterback Shedeur Sanders, they took a sixth-round flier on quarterback Taylen Green.
Green is undeniably a high-level physical talent. The first order of business in Cleveland is to get to work on his fundamentals as a passer.
“Well, first thing was . . . footwork,” coach Todd Monken told reporters on Saturday. “Cadence — getting used to our cadence early on, and he was better today, but [Saturday] morning and [Friday], choppy with his cadence. So just getting our guys into a rhythm at the line of scrimmage, I think that was the second thing he needed to work on.
“He did a nice job today of working through his progressions. I did like that part of it. We’re gonna have to be really diligent in trying to tighten down his release. When you’re talking about check downs taken from as long of his release or long release he has, to really just being able to dart it to get it quickly out of his hands into the hands of whether it’s a running back or a tight end. But I’ve been super impressed with his ability to really learn, process and take it to the field and then getting through his progressions, really impressive.”
-- (PFT) “They envision it being a true competition: Kyler Murray versus J.J. McCarthy,” Tom Pelissero of NFL Network recently said on The Rich Eisen Show, via NFL.com. “And both these guys are going to go into this believing they’re gonna win this job. I don’t know frankly how friendly that quarterback room is going to be. It’s going to be a very competitive quarterback room. “From everything that I’ve understood, it is truly wide open. They’re keeping an open mind as a coaching staff.”
-- Payton was then asked what 2nd-year TE Caleb Lohner is doing better this year compared to last year. He simply said “everything”.
“Everything. In fairness to him, remember [he] was a basketball prospect that had limited snaps of a year. So, one year into the program, and how he’s moving, what he’s doing, everything looks entirely different. That learning curve and growth curve was greater for someone who had far less experience maybe than others, if that makes sense. It’s entirely noticeable, and he’s in great shape. You see his athleticism. I would say the one thing that you don’t know is… [Pro Football Hall of Fame Coach] Bill [Parcells] used to say, ‘If they don’t bite when they’re puppies, they’re probably never going to bite.’ There’s a physical aspect to the way he plays. Even on look team last season, he’d play an outside linebacker rushing our tackles. He’s 6’7”, 265 pounds and he’s not afraid of the contact. So, it’s been good to see him in Year 2. You knew there was going to be a developmental upside, but that was encouraging.”
-- In an interview with Full Measure, President Donald Trump was asked if he thinks the NFL is engaged in “price gouging” by putting games on paid platforms, and whether the federal government should do something about it.
So, does he think the government will intervene?
“I don’t know,” Trump said. “But I don’t like it. I don’t like it. They’re making a lot of money. They could make a little bit less. They could let the people see. You have people that live for Sunday. They live — they can’t think about anything else, and then all of a sudden, they’re gonna have to pay $1,000 a game. It’s crazy. So, I’m not happy about it.”
Reporter’s edit/add: Obviously, no one is paying $1,000 per game. He likely meant to say that it costs nearly $1,000 per season to watch all games.
Your moment of Zen for this day...
Someone play this video at my funeral.
You want an inspirational story AND another glimpse at how ridiculous the NFL system is, please take out of your day to watch this one...
https://youtu.be/a1-UAM1c224?si=A9BASvfYenxODra2
== New Daily Series ==
Let’s rank The Best players/The Most Important players in the NFL!
The NFL does that series each summer where the players (and maybe others?) vote on the top 100 for the prior season, and the outcome (to me) is like a voting by people who never watch football besides highlights and people without a clue voting in very bizarre ways. You know this series, right?
Well, I was wanting to do a kinda top 100 type thing myself, but I am going to tone it down to the top 64...but using two players from each team, so it may be more of a true top 40-50(?) with some forced stragglers on there for the player’s after 40-50+...but it should be ‘close enough’ and ‘interesting enough’, and I guarantee my rankings will be way different than the NFL voting.
I’ll do a team a day, two players from it and when we get enough you’ll see 4-5 tiers develop. I’ll go alphabetical order, but to switch up my usual pattern...I’ll do a reverse alphabetical order. We start with Washington and add two more each day until we get to Arizona.
*When I have an offensive lineman, I’m going to add their overall grades from PFF last year for some context...XX Overall Grade/rank at their position...XX/x, XX/x Pass/Run Block grade with the rank at their position for 2025.
Trent Williams (92/3rd OT...80/12th, 93/2nd), Tristan Wirfs (93/2nd OT...85/4th, 92/3rd), Matt Stafford, Baker Mayfield, Cam Ward, Jaxson Dart, Jayden Daniels, Puka Nacua, Andrew Thomas (90/4th OT...87/3rd, 85/7th), Justin Jefferson, Drake Maye
Jordan Mailata (88/6th OT...82/6th, 82/6th), Laremy Tunsil (85/6th OT...89/2nd, 75/21st), Grey Zabel (From Wk14 on, the SEA march to SB: 82/8th OG...79/10th, 82/5th...9 grades in the playoffs), Brock Purdy, Quinyon Mitchell, Christian Gonzalez, Sam Darnold, Aaron Brewer (87/2nd OC...71/10th, 92/1st), Christian Darrisaw (healthy...he’s top tier, but injuries are killing him), Aaron Rodgers, Peter Skoronski (79/5th OG...85/2nd, 73/10th)
Joey Porter Jr., Armand Membou (73/31st OT...74/31st, 72/27th), Kelvin Banks (74/29th OT...70/41st, 76/19th), Malik Willis, Breece Hall, Erik McCoy (68/16th OC...84/1st, 62/25th)
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