8 Biggest Distractions Facing NFL Teams in 2024

Chasing success in the NFL requires an intense amount of focus. What starts with the daily grind of training camp in the summer doesn’t get completely rewarded until someone hoists the Lombardi Trophy the following February.

There are plenty of things that can cause distractions in a locker room and on the field, though. From messy contract situations to trade demands, there are lots of things that can take attention away from the business of winning games on the field.

While this is generally a time for optimism, it’s also not too hard to envision some of the situations across the league that could become distractions. It’s up to the various coaching staffs and front offices to do what they can to mitigate the dangers of these.

Here’s a look across the league at the eight biggest potential distractions for the 2024 season.

A quarterback’s ability to garner the trust of the coaching staff and his teammates is paramount to success. The relationship between the signal-caller and his team is unlike any other in sports.

So, when reports start coming out that a front office has lost faith in its quarterback, it’s not something to be brushed off.

Diana Russini told The Athletic Football Show (h/t Jared Durbin of CBS Sports) that trading up for a QB in the 2024 draft was a “tough sell to ownership” after giving Daniel Jones a four-year, $160 million contract last offseason.

That was after Rich Eisen noted after the combine that he was hearing the Giants had “buyer’s remorse” for giving the 27-year-old his new deal.

The Giants didn’t trade up in the end and selected Malik Nabers with the No. 6 pick while Michael Penix, J.J. McCarthy and Bo Nix were all on the board.

Jones’ ACL tear makes all the uncertainty even worse. The latest update is that he’s expected to be ready for training camp on July 24, but that has left him unable to participate in 11-on-11 drills at OTAs and mandatory minicamp.

This is a crucial season for Brian Daboll and Jones. The Giants went 9-7-1 with a minus-6 point differential en route to a playoff birth in the coach’s first year, but they went 6-11 and were outscored by 141 points last season.

The Giants signed Drew Lock in free agency, and Daboll has already had to restate to media that he is coming in as the backup, not competition to be the starter.

If Jones gets off to a slow start coming off his ACL injury, the potential push for Lock and a move for Daboll to stay off the hot seat could quickly become a distraction.

There are a whole lot of eggs in the Aaron Rodgers basket for the New York Jets this season. Otherwise, there might be a new coaching staff already in place in the Big Apple.

In November, Jason La Canfora of The Washington Post passed along the thoughts of an NFL general manager after the Jets’ 4-7 start to the season.

“If they weren’t stuck with Rodgers for next year, absolutely, he’d be firing everyone,” the executive said.

In January, La Canfora had more from NFL front-office executives with one saying, “It’s set up to fail. The quarterback is somehow even more empowered now, and he only played four snaps.”

Saleh’s Jets have been characterized by strong defensive units and tepid offense. The coaching staff and the entire organization are placing a sizable bet on Rodgers being able to fix that.

Nathaniel Hackett’s exploits without the 40-year-old have not gone well. His time as the Denver Broncos head coach was doomed from the start, and his work as the Jets’ offensive coordinator without Rodgers last season was uninspiring.

If Rodgers comes in and looks like his former self or at least orchestrates wins, then things will go smoothly in New York. But if there are growing pains early in the season, it’s going to be hard for Saleh to keep things on track.

Starting out on the hot seat in one of the league’s toughest markets is not a good recipe for a focused season.

The Atlanta Falcons have received a lot of scrutiny for their approach to the quarterback position this offseason. Their decisions to hand Kirk Cousins a four-year, $180 million contract and draft Michael Penix Jr. with the No. 8 pick were both fine in a vacuum. It’s just hard to reconcile them in the aggregate.

There’s a path forward where the Falcons end up proving everyone wrong. Cousins could give them up to four years of great QB play before Penix comes in and carries the torch.

There’s also a scenario in which the whole thing becomes a distraction quickly.

Cousins is still working to get back to 100 percent after tearing his Achilles last season. He participated in OTAs this month, but he acknowledged he’s still having to listen to his body daily.

“You’ve just got to let your body tell you when,” he told reporters. “I’ll be able to feel that, OK, the strength is there fully or I’m not feeling anything in the ankle or Achilles. You just kind of let your body tell you.”

The question is whether the injury is going to impact his ceiling. He’ll be 36 years old when the season starts and is coming off a major injury with a new team and coaching staff.

He now has a high-profile backup if he doesn’t look the part right away. If Penix looks good in the preseason and Cousins struggles early, there’s going to be a lot of second-guessing.

Head coach Raheem Morris will have a problem on his hands if that seeps into the locker room.

It’s bad enough when a team has one major contract extension on the horizon, but the Dallas Cowboys have a trio of big-money deals that are bound to continue making headlines.

CeeDee Lamb, Dak Prescott and Micah Parsons are integral to the team’s success, but all three have potentially uncomfortable contract negotiations ahead.

Lamb is set to play on the $17.9 million fifth-year option of his rookie contract this season. After Justin Jefferson signed a four-year, $140 million extension with the Minnesota VIkings, the pressure is on to get the Dallas star on a similar deal.

The 25-year-old has already sat out mandatory minicamp. If a deal doesn’t get done ahead of training camp, the situation could become a real distraction.

If or when the Cowboys get something done with Lamb, the attention will immediately pivot to Prescott and Parsons.

The quarterback is on the final year of his contract with a cap hit of $55.4 million. An extension earlier in the offseason would have freed up some immediate space to spend in free agency.

Jerry Jones and Co. elected not to do that and now have the possibility of Prescott playing the 2024 season with no deal in place. That’s a recipe for a constant barrage of speculation about his future with each win and loss.

Then there’s Parsons. The three-time All-Pro expects to be the highest-paid defender and non-quarterback in the NFL. He showed up to mandatory minicamp, but he’s extension-eligible and will become a news story if and when the Prescott situation is resolved.

That’s a lot of accounting and contract speculation for one of America’s most high-profile teams.

There’s something special about the successful beginning of a new era, and the Houston Texans were the embodiment of that last season.

With a rookie head coach and quarterback in DeMeco Ryans and C.J. Stroud, respectively, they didn’t have any expectations and enjoyed a 10-7 season and a wild-card playoff win over the Cleveland Browns.

It was quite the accomplishment for a franchise that had won 11 games in the previous three seasons combined.

One of the most fun aspects of the Texans’ season was the development of an offense whose passing attack was led by rookies Stroud and Tank Dell with third-year receiver Nico Collins.

Veteran tight end Dalton Schultz played a role too, but Collins and Dell were the most productive receivers by yards and touchdowns. Stroud obviously built strong chemistry with all three of his top targets.

There’s a lot of excitement surrounding what the offense will look like this year, but the Texans have dropped in a wild card in the form of Stefon Diggs.

Houston made the aggressive move to trade for the four-time Pro Bowler and then reworked his contract to get rid of the final three years of his deal and make it a one-year contract, per Adam Schefter of ESPN.

That means the Texans should get a motivated version of the 30-year-old receiver. But Diggs has now been traded by two teams and had to combat rumors of tension with his quarterback before.

The contract situation also adds pressure to get Diggs targets so he can prove he’s worthy of a long-term extension. In other words, it’s hard to know what impact he is going to have on the special vibes the Texans offense gave off last season.

Tee Higgins finally put pen to paper on his franchise-tag contract tender, but that doesn’t mean the drama and distractions are done.

Jeremy Fowler of ESPN provided an update on SportsCenter (h/t B/R’s Tyler Conway):

“Higgins, highly unlikely he gets a long-term deal. I was told that talks as of late are all but non-existent. So, they talked before, made an offer and didn’t come to any sort of agreement. It’s been pretty quiet. And so, Higgins is in a situation now where he’s all but relenting that, ‘I’m going to play on a one-year deal with the Bengals and then I’m going to go kill it in free agency in 2025.'”

It’s just the latest update in a contract situation that continues to drag on. Ben Baby of ESPN reported that contract negotiations between the receiver and the Bengals had little to no movement even before the 2023 season.

Baby also reported that Higgins formally requested a trade when the Bengals applied the tag to the 25-year-old.

Higgins’ 2023 campaign certainly didn’t help matters. He dealt with a hamstring injury and wasn’t as productive as previous seasons. He played in 12 games and had 42 receptions for 656 yards and five touchdowns.

In a Madden world where teams didn’t have to worry about chemistry and how players will react to decisions, it’s easy to say the Bengals should get one more year out of Higgins and move on after the season.

Unfortunately for them, the resolution to this situation isn’t that easy.

Higgins has motivation to push for security after dealing with an injury last season. The Bengals have an impetus to put off or avoid a deal with Ja’Marr Chase also due for a new contract.

How Cincinnati addresses the situation could determine whether this boils into a conflict that impacts the 2024 season.

Every time a quarterback extension is announced, it feels like a new team is put on the clock. It’s an exploding market that continues to balloon every time a signal-caller gets paid.

The latest example can’t be one that sat well with the Miami Dolphins. The Jacksonville Jaguars handed Trevor Lawrence a five-year, $275 million contract that matched Joe Burrow’s $55 million annual average value, which is the highest in the league.

That’s for a quarterback who was fourth in the league in intercepted passes, per PlayerProfiler, threw 14 interceptions to 21 touchdowns and is 20-30 as the starter over the last three years.

Tagovailoa has gone 32-19 as the Dolphins’ starter over the first four years of his career, threw 29 touchdowns to 14 interceptions and was 10th in total QBR compared to Lawrence’s 17th-place finish.

By just about any metric, Tagovailoa has been more productive than Lawrence. However, Mike McDaniel and the fastest skill group in the league deserve some of the credit for that and the Alabama product’s injury history could be another factor.

After Lawrence’s deal was announced, Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reported the Dolphins and quarterback “aren’t there” on a new deal that would pay him like Lawrence.

That’s a tension that’s going to be tough for Tagovailoa and the front office to manage. With Jaylen Waddle getting paid and Tyreek Hill potentially looking to get more money, the Dolphins have some contract situations that could become hard to ignore.

Sean Payton has earned a reputation as a future Hall of Fame head coach for his time with the New Orleans Saints. That, and his strained relationship with Russell Wilson, bring a lot of attention to the second season of his Denver tenure.

Payton was known for working plenty of offensive magic alongside quarterback Drew Brees. Now he’s taking on the challenge of molding a young signal-caller to his liking. They drafted Bo Nix with the 12th overall selection.

The Broncos made the costly decision to part ways with Wilson this offseason. With a quarterback and coach that couldn’t co-exist, the Broncos decided to stick with the coach.

Nix was ranked 61st overall on the B/R Scouting Department’s final big board. Still, his strengths, accuracy and ability to play on-time are logical fits in a Payton offense.

The coach’s track record and the use of a first-round pick on Nix are going to create quite the microscope for the Denver offense.

Courtland Sutton’s contract situation could add another layer of complexity for the franchise. Jeff Legwold of ESPN reported they are at a “stalemate” on a contract extension and a holdout could be coming in July.

The Broncos have put a lot of faith in Payton to get the Broncos trending in the right direction after seven consecutive losing seasons. Nix is currently competing with Jarrett Stidham and Zach Wilson for the starting QB job.

Payton’s ability to prepare Nix for success and get the most out of the Broncos offense is something that could become a distraction if not handled properly.