Morning briefing: 15-Dec-24 – Keeping you up-to-date on happenings in the NFC East and other NFL news

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Big Blue View

New York Giants roster moves: G Jon Runyan placed on injured reserve

Giants keep losing starters to injury

The New York Giants on Saturday added starting left guard Jon Runyan Jr. to their rapidly-growing injured reserve list.

Runyan suffered an ankle injury last week against the New Orleans Saints. He had already been ruled out of Sunday’s game against the Baltimore Ravens, and head coach Brian Daboll had indicated Runyan could miss multiple weeks. With only four games remaining in the season, putting Runyan on IR seemed inevitable.

NFL.com

Cowboys CB Trevon Diggs expected to undergo season-ending knee surgery

Trevon Diggs is done for the year.

The Dallas Cowboys cornerback is expected to undergo season-ending knee surgery, NFL Network Insider Tom Pelissero reported Saturday, per a source.

Pelissero added that Diggs is dealing with cartilage issues and will get a second opinion, but the expectation is that his 2024 season is over. An exact timeline for his recovery has yet to be determined, per Pelissero.

The Cowboys announced on Saturday that Diggs wouldn’t travel with the team for Sunday’s game against the Carolina Panthers while downgrading him to out on the injury report.

Blogging the Boys

NFC East update: The streak continues

Do you think the NFC East will ever have a repeat champion again?

While nobody’s clinched the NFC East just yet, the 2024 champion definitely won’t be the Dallas Cowboys. That means the division’s streak of no repeat winners continues for an amazing 20th season.

It was Philadelphia who last repeated as NFC East champs when they reigned over the division from 2001-2004. Since then, nobody has been able to pull off consecutive titles.

Philadelphia can make their 2024 division crown official with a win this Sunday over Pittsburgh, plus a Washington loss to New Orleans. Both are favored in their matchups, but the Commanders have been shaky recently and will be on the road against an unpredictable Saints team. The Eagles certainly won’t have it easy against the 10-3 Steelers in what should be one of the week’s best games.

While the Cowboys can no longer win the division, they’re technically still alive for the NFC’s final wild card spot. If Washington wins and Dallas loses, they’re officially eliminated from playoffs. But in the hearts and minds of most Cowboys fans, that is already our accepted reality.

One thing’s for sure about 2025; either the Eagles or Commanders will enter it with the goal of finally giving the NFC East another repeat winner.

Blogging the Boys

Cowboys third visit to Panthers since 2018 inspires very little excitement

The Cowboys have played their way into making this week’s game in Carolina feel pretty irrelevant.

For the second consecutive season, the Dallas Cowboys will visit the Carolina Panthers for a late season matchup that feels like a bit of a footnote. The year-to-year nature of the NFL will be on full display this Sunday in Charlotte, as the home Panthers are actually favorites to beat the Cowboys for just the sixth time in franchise history. Both teams come into this game with a losing record with Dallas at 5-8 and Carolina 3-10, but even the three wins the Panthers have so far is progress from the 1-8 record they had coming into last season’s Week 11 date with the Cowboys.

Dallas is four games away from having to decide the fate of a fifth-year head coach and second-year play-caller. Based on the futility this team has gone through from the start, the expectation is that a mass exodus of coaches starting with McCarthy at the top is the first thing the front office can do to show they’re serious about proving the 2024 performance is below standards. It will be a change of pace from the long leash the Garrett and Linehan regime received, with the 2018 Amari Cooper season going a long way in at least saving their jobs past that season. The disappointing playoff loss to the Rams in 2018 was the end of Linehan’s time with the team, and missing the playoffs entirely the next season marked Garrett’s last as head coach. The Cowboys must shorten the amount of time it takes them to learn such lessons, with 2024 being a very long lesson in how to set up a team for failure from the jump.

The Cowboys are still vying to surpass McCarthy’s worst record with the Cowboys which came in his first year at 6-10 in the “Covid season”. They may very well tie the wins in technically upset fashion against the Panthers, but face a much harder task in getting over the six-win mark to end the season against the Buccaneers, Eagles, and Commanders. All three teams are currently in playoff positions.

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Pro Football Talk

Deion Sanders denounces “lie” that Shedeur would refuse to play for Giants or Browns

Deion Sanders went on social media today to dispute a tweet claiming that his son “would refuse to play if he was drafted by either the Giants or Browns.”

“A Lie don’t care who tells it. Please stop trying to become relevant by misrepresenting my son. God bless you,” Deion Sanders wrote.

Shedeur Sanders is currently the betting favorite to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL draft. Based on the current draft order, the Raiders would have the first pick, with the Giants right behind them based on the tiebreaker, and the Patriots, Panthers, Jaguars, Titans, Jets and Browns next in order.

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Awful Announcing

Made-up Shedeur Sanders report shows how useless X has become

We begin with the X account NFL Rookie Watch (handle @NFLRookieWatxh). While it has a blue checkmark, which no longer has any value or means anything, that still appears to the untrained eye to infer notability to the account.

The account, which has just shy of 160,000 followers, posted Saturday morning about Colorado Buffaloes quarterback Shedeur Sanders, sharing a series of quotes from reports that claim he is “prepared” to be selected by the Las Vegas Raiders or Dallas Cowboys in the 2025 NFL Draft and that there is a “high likelihood” he would refuse to play for the Cleveland Browns.

The account does not cite any sources for the quoted reports and there does not appear to be any notable reports these quotes could have been pulled from. By all accounts, anyone who has spent a modicum of time on social media should be able to suss out that these quotes are erroneous and the account has a pattern of making up quotes without attribution to create viral posts.

However, between the lack of checks and balances and our inability to take a step back and think critically for a moment, this kind of post is catnip just waiting for someone with a large following to pounce, react, and draw further attention to it.

That’s exactly what happened as Deion Sanders, Jr., Shedeur’s brother, quoted the post, saying “Bro is completely lying about everything he just tweeted.”

And then Colorado coach and Shedeur’s dad Deion Sanders chimed in, refuting the post as a “lie” and asking the account to “Please stop trying to become relevant by misrepresenting my son.”

While everyone probably assumes they did the right thing here, all of the responses and reactions merely attracted more attention to the initial post. The truth is that this kind of interaction loop is exactly what Musk and X want. They’re more than happy to sacrifice accountability and moderation for virality. The rules on X are now set up to favor an account like NFL Rookie Watch. Whatever engagement is given to them is positive, even if its intention is negative. They have all the incentive in the world to keep making up fake reports that you will react to and share.

At the very least, do yourself a favor and block NFL Rookie Watch. Then, go touch grass for a bit.