Rob Walton

Plus, answering your mailbag questions on Aaron Donald's contract, Odell Beckham Jr., Drew Lock, three rookies ready to make an impact and more.

And I get the concept of getting a little simpler in a day and age in which young players are coming from play-fast offenses in college. Yes, in the past, and in particular in the Brady years, New England’s scheme was a challenge for even the most experienced veterans coming in (and obviously for younger players, too) from the outside to assimilate into. First of all, the process of taking complications out of an offense that had become very specific to Tom Brady, and geared toward leveraging his know-how and brainpower, has been ongoing for a couple of years. But if he does, then I think there’ll be a workable solution that’ll show the benefits from having gone through all this (since receiver deals for A.J. Brown, Davante Adams, and Tyreek Hill have gotten done in the interim). The difference now is that, in the 2020 CBA, the NFL ceded the initial decision-making on discipline to a neutral arbitrator. Scott, the temperature on the situation has surely escalated this week, with the 24th lawsuit being filed and a new report from The New York Times surfacing Tuesday. Ordinarily, in the past, I might have said these sorts of things could cause the league to move. McDuffie also started all three years at Washington, getting on the field right away as a true freshman, which can be an indicator of how a guy handles the transition to the pros. And I’m laying that out to make this point: If Donald wants to finish up with the Steelers in 2024 at age 33, he’ll have the leverage to do it. The good news is that Beckham should be a closer approximation of himself when he returns this time around. That he didn’t have time to is all Donald (and Donald, remember, also forced the game-sealing pick in the NFC title game). The real tell on Donald’s ability to wield this leverage, by the way, came in the summers of 2017 and ’18, when he staged consecutive holdouts through an era in which few players do. And while it’s not a huge television market (16th in the U.S.), the team’s footprint is massive.