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Jamison Hensley, ESPN Staff Writer
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — It didn’t take long for Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh to fear for the safety of his quarterbacks in training camp. So, after Odafe Oweh disrupted another player in the backfield, Harbaugh pulled his outside linebacker off to the side.
“I had to pull the reins in on him a little bit,” Harbaugh said.
Last season, the Ravens defense made history when it became the first team to lead the league in fewest points allowed (16.5), most sacks (60) and most takeaways (31) in a single season. This year, under new defensive coordinator Zach Orr, the Baltimore defense has made life miserable for the Ravens’ offense, creating havoc this summer.
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• Ravens cornerback Humphrey dropped 10 pounds this year. But it wasn’t until Jackson returned from illness that it was evident that Humphrey was a different player. Humphrey intercepted Jackson four times in the quarterback’s first three practices of camp. Jackson provided a humorous explanation for Humphrey getting the better of him. “I told Marlon he needs to get his hands right,” Jackson said. “That is why I’m throwing interceptions to him; he dropped a few last year. So I’m hoping that’s helping him out.” Humphrey, 28, is coming off a season in which he recorded career lows in tackles (26) and passes defensed (five). Foot surgery during last year’s training camp sidelined him for the first four games of the season, and a calf strain forced him to miss two more games later that season. Humphrey’s goal entering this season was to lose weight. He looked at his better seasons and noticed he was lighter in those years. Humphrey is 190 pounds, which is down from his playing weight of 200 the past couple of seasons. “Ever since I tore my [pectoral] — around 25 [years] old — I got my grown-man weight on me, and it just never went off,” Humphrey said. “It’s a young man’s game, so I decided to get a little lower.” The Ravens drafted cornerback It seems like no one has enjoyed putting the pads on more than new starting inside linebacker Simpson. On the first day of hitting in camp, Simpson slammed into Henry on a screen pass and later knocked running back Best of NFL Nation
• Oweh decided to train this offseason in Atlanta, where he worked out with defensive tackle Top stories of the week from Get exclusive access to thousands of premium articles a year from top writers.An intense Trenton Simpson
A confident Odafe Oweh
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Kevin Seifert, ESPN Staff Writer
The Minnesota Vikings signed free agent Fabian Moreau on Wednesday, the fourth defensive back they have acquired in the past eight days as they have worked to maintain depth in the position group.
Moreau, 30, has played 16 games and started 11 at cornerback last season for the Denver Broncos. He has also played for the New York Giants, Atlanta Falcons and Washington.
The Vikings lost cornerback Mekhi Blackmon to a torn ACL on the first day of training camp. The next day, starter Shaq Griffin went down with a hamstring injury, from which he has not yet recovered, and third-year safety Lewis Cine has missed three consecutive days of practice because of a lower leg strain. Earlier this month, rookie cornerback Khyree Jackson was killed in a car accident.
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As a result, the Vikings have signed veteran cornerbacks Duke Shelley, Cobi Francis and now Moreau. They also acquired veteran safety Bobby McCain. Shelley has worked with Byron Murphy Jr. and Akayleb Evans when the team has been in its nickel defense during practice.
Save for a few late-season bobbles, Moreau was a steadying influence for the Broncos opposite Pat Surtain II in the secondary last season. He finished with 46 tackles, knocked down seven passes and had an interception as he ended up playing the third-most snaps (740) among the team’s defensive backs during the 2023 season.
Moreau had been a late addition to the Broncos. He was signed to a one-year, $1.3 million deal during training camp after rookie Riley Moss suffered a core muscle injury that eventually required surgery.
ESPN’s Jeff Legwold contributed to this report.
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Adam Teicher, ESPN Staff Writer
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — The Kansas City Chiefs went all-in and failed “pretty badly” as an April vote for a renovated Arrowhead Stadium fell flat, team president Mark Donovan said.
Now, the Chiefs are continuing discussions with officials from both Kansas and Missouri to figure out the team’s future location after their lease at Arrowhead expires following the 2030 season. Donovan said they’re looking at the failed vote as an opportunity to consider what makes the most sense for fans and the future of the franchise.
“This is a generational decision,” Donovan said. “This is going to impact the future of this franchise for generations. We’ve got to get it right and we are going to do the due diligence.”
The Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals went to voters in Jackson County, Missouri, in April hoping to extend an existing three-eighth-cent sales tax for two facilities: a renovated Arrowhead for the Chiefs and a new stadium for the Royals. The measure failed, with more than 58% of voters rejecting it.
That defeat led the Chiefs to broaden their search for a new plan. Donovan said the team staying in a renovated Arrowhead is “very much an option” and building a new stadium at the Arrowhead site is in play too.
“We have to look at a new building,” Donovan said. “We’re open to it. We’re open to a new building on the complex, we’re open to a new building somewhere else. We’re open to a dome or an outdoor [facility] as a new building. We’re also very open to renovating GEHA Field at Arrowhead because I think it’s iconic. It’s something that’s unique. We’d love to be able to do that.
“It’s just going to come down to what makes the most sense and I want to reiterate the factors that go into that decision are what’s best for our fans, what’s best for the franchise for the next few decades.”
Donovan said the Chiefs have no firm deadline for a decision and will remain at Arrowhead, which opened in 1972 and was renovated almost 15 years ago, until 2030. But he acknowledged the team doesn’t have long if it wants to be in a new facility or a renovated Arrowhead by 2031.
“Six months from today, we’re going to have to have a really good idea of where we are,” Donovan said. “It may not be done done, but we need to have good idea.”
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Adam Teicher, ESPN Staff Writer
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — The Kansas City Chiefs accomplished all of their goals in the 2023 season, including a second straight Super Bowl championship. But Patrick Mahomes said the unusual way they arrived there, with an inconsistent offense that usually didn’t resemble its recent predecessors, left the Chiefs with “a weird feeling.”
The idea at training camp, which begins at Missouri Western State University on Wednesday with a three-day camp for quarterbacks and rookies, is to work out any offensive problems and be at full efficiency when the regular season begins, according to Mahomes.
“We’re back at St. Joe,” Mahomes said. “It’s time to get better. Every season starts differently. You’ve got to come in with that same mentality you had the year before, even with a higher intensity and even though we won the Super Bowl last year, we felt like we didn’t play our best football, especially offensively. So it’s our goal to be better that way and coming in with that mentality every single day.
“The end result [last season] was awesome, but I think a lot of us still have a weird feeling in our mouth . . . It wasn’t fun every single week having to try to just continue to get better and better and the results not paying off the way you wanted to. It wasn’t a lot of fun. We have a lot of those same guys back and they know how that felt and so we’re going to try to prepare ourselves better this year so that we can play better throughout the season and obviously try to end with the same result.”
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Full team training camp begins for the Chiefs on Sunday.
The Chiefs, in an effort to improve their passing game and get more big plays, added two fast wide receivers in free agent