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Morning Edition

March 6, 2025

Trades, cuts, and contract restructuring are coming fast and furious this week. It’s all part of a collective effort by NFL teams to comply with the league’s salary cap before free agency begins. We examine the process—and the repercussions.

— David Rumsey [[link removed]], Eric Fisher [[link removed]], Ryan Glasspiegel [[link removed]], and Colin Salao [[link removed]]

Cap Crunch: NFL Teams Slash, Shuffle Rosters Before Free Agency [[link removed]]

NorthJersey

NFL franchises are beginning to make roster moves with major financial implications ahead of the new league year starting next week.

The 2025 salary cap has been set at $279.2 million, and teams cannot exceed that number when free agency begins March 12 at 4 p.m. ET. Clubs can begin negotiating with players and agents at midnight on March 10, also known as the “legal tampering” period.

As of Wednesday evening, five franchises still needed to cut cash [[link removed]] to become salary-cap compliant, according to Spotrac: the Dolphins, Falcons, Bills, Browns, and Saints.

The Saints are a league-high $46 million over the cap, leaving them with plenty of work to do ahead of next week. The Browns are second-highest, needing to shed nearly $23 million, and are dealing with Deshaun Watson’s $72.7 million cap hit in 2025. Cleveland’s superstar pass rusher Myles Garrett, who has requested a trade, is set to count $19.7 million against the cap next season.

Money Moves

On Wednesday, the Chiefs agreed to trade guard Joe Thuney to the Bears, which freed up $16 million of cap space, almost exactly how much they needed to become cap-compliant, despite the move leaving Kansas City with a $10.9 million dead-cap hit.

The Cowboys freed up $56.6 million in 2025 cap space by restructuring the contracts of quarterback Dak Prescott and receiver CeeDee Lamb.

Meanwhile, the Seahawks released veteran receiver Tyler Lockett to create $17 million of cap space, and the Jets cut Davante Adams, saving the team $29.9 million.

Expect the financial moves to continue throughout this week and early next week, as the NFL’s free-agency frenzy ramps up once again.

Dana White Wants to Break Boxing Down, ‘Build It From the Ground Up’ [[link removed]]

USA TODAY

UFC president Dana White and WWE president Nick Khan say the new boxing venture from parent company TKO Group Holdings is designed to fundamentally rebuild boxing “from the ground up.”

Speaking to Front Office Sports shortly after Wednesday morning’s unveiling of the new boxing promotion [[link removed]] formed with the aid of Saudi Arabia–based entities, White and Khan intend to reinvigorate a sport that has lost significant luster over the past generation.

“You have to break the sport down and build it from the ground up,” says White, who will lead the boxing effort along with TKO colleague Khan. “Everybody involved here realizes that you can’t keep going on the same model that boxing has been on.”

Though rumors have swirled for years regarding White, UFC, and boxing, the still-unnamed initiative creates a direct competition with other boxing promoters such as Top Rank that have long been an object of White’s scorn.

White, however, insists he will operate with “blinders on” as he and Khan develop their own circuit. Similarly to how UFC and WWE operate, individual boxers will be contracted to compete exclusively within the TKO circuit, and a key element again will be to create a much more active and regular cadence of competition than what has been common in boxing in recent years.

“Before, the best fighters continued to fight the best fighters, and then boxing went full into the one-night, going-out-of-business-sale model,” Khan says. “Boxing has been great maybe once every five years. The greatness of UFC is that it’s great at least once every four weeks. We’re at the starting line, but that’s what we’re aspiring to.”

White and Khan confirmed a comment last week from TKO president and COO Mark Shapiro that TKO itself will not supply any start-up cash to the boxing venture. Rather, they said their primary initiation contribution will be “sweat equity” as they build out the business plan and initial operations.

A key early step in that will be to strike a media-rights deal, and the range of possibilities is wide open between linear networks, streamers, and even perhaps non-traditional outlets that don’t otherwise carry sports.

Market Reaction

Investors were enthused with the boxing news, sending TKO shares up by nearly 4% in Wednesday trading, closing at $152.30 per share. While recent months have been something of a roller-coaster ride for the shares given broader economic turbulence, TKO stock is still up by more than half since hitting the market in September 2023.

“I don’t care about any of that stuff. I don’t watch that stuff,” White says. “I just get in there and do what we do. As long as you do what you do and you do it well, all that shit will take care of itself.”

Trump Ties

White has been closely tied to U.S. President Donald Trump. It’s not expected, though, that Trump or any senior political leaders will be involved in this boxing venture, like they currently are for the LIV Golf–PGA Tour negotiations that also involve Saudi entities. The new boxing circuit, however, is seen as a tool for national pride, like it was in the sport’s prior heyday.

“They’re fans,” White says of the Trump Administration. “Whenever our fighters win and they go back to their home countries, they usually meet with the president or whoever the ruler is. All over the world, people are interested in who the toughest person in the world is.”

FRONT OFFICE SPORTS LIVE

What’s Next in Sports Media?

We’re in a golden age for sports media. Live games are the most-watched programs on TV. Women’s sports are exploding. Giant streamers are joining the party. And sports documentaries have never been hotter properties.

But the landscape is shifting beneath our feet. The cable TV bundle that supported national and local sports TV media rights for decades is under severe pressure. The NFL could opt out early from its $111 billion media deals. And talent like Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee are launching their own companies, demanding more autonomy.

Join us in New York City this September for Tuned In [[link removed]], where we’ll sit down with leaders in sports media—from athletes and on-air talent to media moguls and league executives—to discuss where we are heading in the world of sports media.

Register now [[link removed]].

Pat McAfee Rips NFL ‘Middle Management,’ Says Show Won’t Be at Draft [[link removed]]

Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Pat McAfee says he will not be taking his show on the road for the NFL Draft after being treated with what he says was insufficient respect by “middle managers” at the Scouting Combine in Indianapolis last week.

Speaking on his eponymous show—which is simulcast on YouTube and ESPN—on Monday, McAfee said that the show will not be making the voyage to Green Bay for the draft, instead broadcasting from its “Thunderdome” headquarters [[link removed]] in Indianapolis.

“The NFL’s making it very easy for us to do stuff,” McAfee began, speaking sarcastically. “It’s really very kind of them. It’s very cool. I’m very appreciative of the opportunity to showcase your shit.”

Cohost A.J. Hawk chimed in, asking, “No red tape? No hoops to jump through?”

“No, middle management’s doing exactly what they don’t normally do. They’re making it easy. It’s awesome. Those people matter for sure. You guys are really good at your jobs! Thank God they’re there. Without them, could you imagine? Nobody would watch the NFL if it wasn’t for these people being there.”

McAfee proceeded to play a slideshow of him measuring out different locations around Lucas Oil Stadium to determine whether there was enough space for his show’s set, seemingly implying that the logistics of where his team would broadcast from were not sufficiently addressed beforehand.

He continued to deadpan to the middle managers who’d drawn his ire. “We were invited by you guys to do this—by people above you. Thank you so much for making everything so easy.”

McAfee has never been one to let perceived disrespect quietly slide by, and the revenge for these apparent inconveniences is that the former Colts punter and his crew will do their NFL Draft show remotely instead of on-site.

McAfee’s show was live from the draft in Detroit last year. There would’ve been natural excitement for it to be in Green Bay because of its general resonance with football fans, compounded with the fact that Hawk is the Packers’ all-time leading tackler.

While McAfee was chiding the league’s middle managers, it’s relevant to note that he’s generally had a good relationship with the league over the years. This past season, he joined NFL Network’s Sunday GameDay Morning pregame show weekly as an analyst beginning in late September.

Sinner’s Ban Looms Over Indian Wells Despite Record $19M Purse [[link removed]]

Desert Sun

The BNP Paribas Open doesn’t have the gravitas of one of the four tennis Grand Slams, but it’s the closest among the ATP Masters 1000 and WTA 1000 tournaments.

The event, known colloquially as Indian Wells because it’s hosted in the Southern California city, started Wednesday and runs until March 16. It comes with a record purse of about $19 million, up 7% from last year, and a first prize of $1.2 million [[link removed]] for each singles champion.

Like the Grand Slam tournaments, prize money for the men and women is the same. The WTA announced in 2023 that it aims to attain equal prize money for all WTA 1000 and 500 combined events by 2027 [[link removed]].

Suspended Superstar

Looming over the tournament is the absence of men’s world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, who received a three-month suspension [[link removed]] in February after testing positive for doping last year. Sinner’s punishment was much less than the two-year ban he could have faced—and the timing meant he wouldn’t miss a single Grand Slam.

The Sunshine Double—which combines Indian Wells and the Miami Open later this month—comprises the two big tournaments that Sinner will miss.

The 23-year-old, who has won three of the last five Grand Slams, was eliminated in the semifinals at Indian Wells for the last two years by eventual champion Carlos Alcaraz. Speaking to reporters Tuesday at Indian Wells, Alcaraz said nothing has changed despite the absence of Sinner.

“Jannik’s not playing, but there are a lot of the best players in the world [who] are playing here,” Alcaraz said. “For me, coming here to approach the tournament, it doesn’t change at all. I’m just focused on my things, on myself, and I try to play good tennis here.”

Security for Raducanu

Emma Raducanu, the 2021 US Open champion, is competing at Indian Wells after she faced a stalker at the Dubai Tennis Championships last month. Raducanu said Tuesday she was “distraught” during her second-round match with Karolína Muchová in Dubai and that she “couldn’t see the ball through tears.”

The man, who was removed from the arena and detained by Dubai police, had reportedly approached Raducanu multiple times [[link removed]] before the match and was even present in other tennis tournaments of the 22-year-old in Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and Doha in recent weeks.

BBC and Sky Sports reported last week that Raducanu will have extra security at Indian Wells.

LOUD AND CLEAR Ball Over Bank

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

“Well, that was kinda the one I had to juggle with.”

—Travis Kelce, on choosing to return to the Chiefs [[link removed]] for the 2025 season, despite acknowledging that retiring would likely be a more lucrative decision. On Wednesday’s episode of the New Heights podcast [[link removed]], Jason Kelce asked his brother: “Why are you playing another season? Why are you going to go out there, risk injury, and make less money than you can make not playing football? Why are you doing this?”

In addition to wanting to avenge last month’s Super Bowl loss, Kelce said he feels a responsibility to fulfill the final year of his contract, which is set to pay him $17 million [[link removed]] next season. The Kelce brothers are reportedly receiving $100 million over three years [[link removed]] from the Amazon-owned Wondery, which bought their podcast. If Kelce retires, he could cash in with more media and entertainment ventures that he doesn’t have time for as a full-time NFL player.

Conversation Starters Texas Tech has opened the Womble Football Center, its $242 million football facility that features a barbershop, new locker and weight rooms, and a Patrick Mahomes walk-through room. Check it out [[link removed]]. The Portland Diamond Project, the group looking to bring an MLB team to Portland, released renderings of a proposed waterfront ballpark. Take a look [[link removed]]. The 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup final will have a Super Bowl–style halftime show [[link removed]] at MetLife Stadium. Editors’ Picks NCAA Piles Up Three Wins in Baseball Eligibility Lawsuits [[link removed]]by Dennis Young [[link removed]]One case was dropped despite lawyers alleging a conflict of interest. Saudis Reportedly Considering $600 Million Track Deal [[link removed]]by Alex Schiffer [[link removed]]The PIF’s sports arm is exploring a commercial deal with World Athletics. How Ski Brand Salomon Hit $1B in Sneaker Sales [[link removed]]by Lisa Scherzer [[link removed]]Rihanna wore Salomons for her 2023 Super Bowl halftime show performance. Question of the Day

Do you watch non–Grand Slam tennis?

YES [[link removed]] NO [[link removed]] I DON’T WATCH TENNIS [[link removed]]

Wednesday’s result: 74% of respondents think giving 28-year-old RB Saquon Barkley a record deal through age 32 is a smart move.

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