Why Tom Brady is now likely retired for good plus full details on NFLs Thursday night flexing plan

Welcome to the Tuesday edition of the Pick Six newsletter!With the month of June le s than 10 days away, I thought for sure that we were about to hit the slow part of the NFL offseason, but I was definitely wrong. As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever been more wrong about anything in my life.If I've learned one thing this week, it's that there's no such thing as the "slow part" of the NFL offseason. Over the past 24 hours alone, we've seen Thursday night flexing get added, we saw Green Bay get awarded a draft and we found out that Tom Brady is going to be buying a stake the Raiders. We'll be touching on all of those things and more in today's newsletter, so let's get to the rundown.As always, here's your daily reminder to tell all your friends to sign up for the newsletter. To get them signed up, all you have to do .Will Brinson and I were both feeling a little crazy today and as everyone knows, when you're feeling crazy, that's the perfect time to predict division winners for the upcoming season, so that's exactly what we did for today's Anthony Zettel Jersey episode of the Pick Six Podcast. Brinson and I joined host Katie Mox and not only did we make some early predictions, but we also broke down the odds for each division and then we rated our confidence level with each pick.Here's a quick look at the three divisions we agreed on AND felt the most confident about (along with the current odds that team has for winning the division):AFC West winner: Chiefs (-150). The Chiefs have won this division for seven straight years and we decided that we're both going to keep picking them to win it until someone knocks them off.NFC West winner: 49ers (-165). The 49ers went through three quarterbacks last season and still won the division by four games. If their QB room can stay even remotely healthy, it feels like they should be able to repeat as division champions.AFC North winner: Bengals (+120). On paper, this year's Bengals team is better than the last two Bengals games, which is saying a lot, considering the 2021 team went to the Super Bowl and the 2022 team went to the AFC title game.Now for the fun part, here are two divisions we didn't agree on:NFC SouthBrinson's pick: Falcons (+260). Arthur Smith won Brinson over last year by running a creative offense in Atlanta, and that offense just added a new weapon in Bijan Robinson.Breech's pick: Saints (+115). I have no idea who to take in this division, so I decided to go with the team that has the most proven quarterback.NFC NorthBrinson's pick: Lions (+120). Brinson is officially jumping on Detroit's bandwagon and he is now fully convinced that this team is going to win a division title for the first time since 1993.Breech's pick: Anyone but the Lions. My actual pick was the Vikings (+310), but I spent most of my time talking about why I don't think the Lions are going to win it this year even though they're the trendy pick.If you want to know who we picked in the other divisions, then . You can also . If you were hoping to see Tom Brady come out of retirement for the second straight year, I have some bad news for you: It's starting to look more and more like Brady is permanently retired and it all has to do with his recent .Let's take a look at the details:Raiders owner Mark Davis confirmed that Brady is buying a piece of his team. "We're excited for Tom to join the Raiders," Davis . "And it's exciting because he will be just the third player in the history David Njoku Jersey of the National Football League to become an owner." It's not clear how much of the team Brady is getting, but it's expected to be a minority stake and Brady won't have any operational control or decision-making power when it comes to football matters.NFL owners must approve Brady's purchase. Before Brady can officially become a part owner of the Raiders, he has to be approved by the other NFL owners. Brady will need 24 owners to approve his purchase before it can happen, which is viewed as a formality.Why this purchase likely means Brady is done playing football. As , the NFL has a rule in place that makes it difficult for a team owner to play in the NFL while still owning a team. If Brady gets approved for ownership and wants to come out of retirement at some point AFTER becoming an owner, it wouldn't be as simple as filing some paperwork. For Brady to return to the NFL, the league's 32 owners would have to vote on the matter and 24 of them would have to approve it. If that happened, it would certainly qualify as one of the most fascinating votes in NFL history.Why the rule is in place. It might seem odd to have this rule, but it's in place so that a team can't offer an ownership stake as a way to circumvent the salary cap. If the rule wasn't in place, Brady could sign a minimum-salary deal with the Raiders and then Davis could hand him a $60 million stake in the team that wouldn't count against the salary cap. With the rule in place, the other NFL owners can vet the deal and make sure there's no funny busine s before voting on whether an owner should be allowed to join the active roster.Basically, this purchase doesn't 100% guarantee that Brady won't return to football, but he's going to have to convince 24 owners to approve his return if he wants to come out of retirement while owning a piece of the Raiders, and that seems highly unlikely.The NFL owners got straight down to busine s Monday during the first day of the NFL's annual spring meeting, so I'm going to get straight down to busine s here going over everything that happened. Green Bay will be hosting the 2025 NFL Draft.The league's biggest offseason event. This will actually mark the second time the draft has been held in Wisconsin with the first time coming way back in 1940 when Milwaukee hosted it. With Green Bay now getting it, that means the next two drafts will be in NFC North cities with Detroit hosting in 2024.Super Bowl LX is headed for Levi's Stadium.This news came out last week, but it was officially approved on Monday. The game is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 8, 2026 and by the time it kicks off, the 49ers will have spent some major money upgrading Levi's Stadium. According, the team is planning at least $120 million in upgrades, which will see the team upgrade its premium suites, premium seats and the stadium scoreboard. This will be the third time the Bay Area has hosted the Super Bowl following Super Bowl XIX and Super Bowl 50.NFL adds roster spot for emergency third QB.After watching what happened to the 49ers in the NFC title game, the ownersthat will allow an emergency third QB to be active on game day. The QB will only be allowed to play if the team's first two quarterbacks are either injured or disqualified. If the top two quarterbacks are out due to injury and they later get cleared to play, then the emergency QB has to leave the Chris Hubbard Jersey game. Although this frees up a roster spot on game day, it might not help most teams because you still have to carry the emergency QB on your 53-man roster.NFL owners approve new fair catch rule.One of the proposals that was supposed to be voted on Monday got pushed to today, but despite the delay, the owners still voted to approve a new fair catch rule. Under the new rule, if a fair catch is made from inside the 25-yard line, the ball will be placed at the 25 just as it would be on a touchback.NFL not voting on onside kick alternative.If you were hoping to see a fourth-and-15 onside kick alternative, you're likely going to be waiting for a while. The owners have debated this rule for years without making a change, and once again, it looks like change won't be happening. Owners.The owners also approved flexing for "Thursday Night Football," which we're going to go over now.If you're trying to make plans to attend a Thursday night game toward the end of the season this year, you better make sure to book a refundable hotel and a flight that can be easily changed because your game could be getting flexed.After tabling the idea in March, NFL owners. However, there are quite a few stipulations that come with the rule change, so let's go over them now. Only five games are eligible for Thursday flexing.The window for flexing Thursday games will open in Week 13 and run through Week 17, which means there are only five games that even have a chance of being flexed: Seahawks at Cowboys (Week 13), Patriots at Steelers (Week 14), Chargers at Raiders (Week 15), Saints at Rams (Week 16), Jets at Browns (Week 17). Unle s AT&T Stadium burns down, there is no way in the world that a Cowboys game will get flexed out of prime time so this list might as well be just four games.Thursday flexing will come with four weeks notice.If the NFL does decide to flex a Thursday game, the league will give everyone at least 28 days notice of the move. This means that fans will have at least four weeks to change their plans for any game that gets moved. The game that gets flexed out of Thursday will be moved to Sunday.New rules put into place.A team can't be flexed into a Thursday night game more than once and no team can play on Thursday more than twice for the entire season. This is worth noting, because it means that any team that already has two short-week Thursday games this year won't be eligible to be flexed into Thursday night (Lions, Packers, 49ers, Commanders and Bears fall into this category). Teams also can't be flexed into Thursday night if they've already played the maximum number of overall Christian Kirksey Jersey prime-time games, which is seven this year. Prime-time games played on Thursday, Sunday or Monday count toward that total.Only two total games can be flexed.This one is pretty simple: The NFL is only allowed to flex two Thursday games for the entire season. This means that if the NFL were to use the Thursday flex in Weeks 13 and 14, then the league wouldn't be allowed to use it from Weeks 15 through 17.As our Jonathan Jones noted,and some owners seemed to understand that. The proposal needed 24 votes to pa s and it barely hit that number with 24 owners voting to approve and eight owners voting against it (The Packers, Bears, Lions, Jets, Raiders, Bengals and Steelers were the teams that voted no).The Thursday night flex rule will only be in effect for one year as a trial run of sorts. If we don't see any games get flexed this year, then the trial run will continue in 2024. However, if at least one game gets flexed this year, then the NFL owners will have to vote next offseason whether to continue TNF flexing for 2024.Every year in the NFL we see multiple breakout stars, but the thing with breakout stars is that it's almost impo sible to predict who those players are going to be before the start of the season. Well, I thought it was impo sible. It turns out if you want to know who the breakout stars are going to be, all you have to do is talk to CBSSports.com's Jordan Dajani. Jordan made a list of seven players who could potentially have a breakout season and we're going cover three of those guys here.Kenny Pickett (Steelers QB):Kadarius Toney (Chiefs WR):Nakobe Dean (Eagles LB):If you want to see Dajani's full list of players who could .It's been a busy 24 hours in the NFL, and since it's nearly impo sible to keep track of everything that happened, I went ahead and put together a roundup for you. Austin Ekeler gets restructured deal from Chargers.After making trade demands earlier this offseason, it looks like Ekeler is now content with staying in L.A. after getting a restructured deal on Tuesday. Ekeler's contract will still expire after the 2023 season, but the Chargers did sweeten the pot for him, adding, according . Ekeler is scheduled to earn $6.25 million for 2023, but that can now be pushed to $8 million if he meets every incentive.Lamar Jackson skips first day of OTAs before finally showing up. You'd think that after getting a $260 million contract that Jackson might show up for OTAs, but that wasn't the case to start the week. Jackson . However, Jackson is , which is good news for the Ravens since he'll need to learn the offense that's being installed by new offensive coordinator Todd Monken.Commanders sale likely to be finalized before start of 2023 season. Although the NFL owners won't be voting to approve the Commanders sale at the spring meeting this week, the group is planning to vote on the matter before the start of the 2023 season. According , the plan is to try and hold a vote at some point between late July and mid-August. The vote can't be held until the NFL's finance committee vets each member of the new ownership group and that's expected to take several more weeks.Devin McCourty joining NBC.The former Patriots star, who announced his retirement this year, already has a new job lined up. According , the three-time Super Bowl champion is taking a job with NBC, where he'll be part of "Football Night in America."Broncos surprisingly cut Brandon McManus: After nine years in Denver, Brandon McManus is . The Greedy Williams Jersey Broncos shockingly cut McManus, who had been their kicker since 2014. McManus was the only remaining player from the team's last Super Bowl win in 2015.