NFL training camp tour 2025: From Cowboys to Bengals, check out our stories from the road

NFL training camps are finally open leaguewide, and Yahoo Sports senior NFL reporters Charles Robinson and Jori Epstein are taking their annual camp tours. Over the next few weeks, each will be visiting with different teams and hitting the biggest stories. We’re collecting them all right here, ordered from most recent on down.

LOS ANGELES — Realistically, everyone believes – including inside the Rams – that Matthew Stafford is deeply into the sunset portion of his NFL career. So much so, there’s a feeling inside the franchise that if the Rams win the Super Bowl this season, Stafford is going to use that opportunity to retire, a la John Elway with the Denver Broncos in 1999, after he’d secured the second Super Bowl title that would ensure he was a first-ballot Hall of Famer. According to a team source, even Stafford himself has joked with staff that the Rams’ acquisition of a second first-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft from the Atlanta Falcons is a sign that L.A.’s brass expects him to hang it up after the 2025 season.

But does that mean the Rams are also exploring Stafford replacements?

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It’s a complicated question. First and foremost, Stafford is still operating inside a Super Bowl window open for the Rams. The leadership both in the coaching staff and front office is steadfast in his ability — if fully healthy — to lead Los Angeles to one more title in the next two seasons. That said, it’s clear there is a fixed vantage on the horizon, with Rams decision-makers knowing the next offseason is where they have to start moving toward a succession plan. Most likely toward a very young player who can grow with Sean McVay and spend an elongated period attached at the hip.

One prominent name that surfaces inside this ideology is Texas quarterback Arch Manning. — Charles Robinson

CINCINNATI — The Bengals’ contract dispute with Hendrickson is within the realm of standard contract disagreements. Hendrickson is coming off consecutive 17.5-sack seasons, leading the league in sacks last year even as he turned 30 in December.

Club and player agree that Hendrickson has earned a raise from the $16 million cash payout he’s due on the final year of his existing deal. The value of that deal is trickier, particularly for a franchise that has long resisted multi-year guarantees.

The Bengals broke that trend with Burrow and again gave multiyear guarantees to receiver Ja’Marr Chase this spring. Quarterbacks tend to encounter different extension parameters, so Chase’s deal is more relevant to Hendrickson’s case. Hendrickson and his camp will argue: Did you see those league-best 35 sacks in two years? The Bengals, meanwhile, will argue that Chase, 25, is the best at his position in the prime of his career … and even as they value Hendrickson, they don’t consider him in his prime age nor the best at his position.

Chase diagnosed the acrimony a year after his own training camp hold-in.

“It was a lot of feelings involved, even though it’s not supposed to be involved,” Chase told Yahoo Sports on Wednesday. “I feel like feelings are definitely involved when they’re giving away their money.” — Jori Epstein

ALLEN PARK, Mich. — Amon-Ra St. Brown understands the public perception.

The wide receiver doesn’t agree with it, but he doesn’t expect it to change.

Jared Goff, the 2016 first overall draft pick whom the Los Angeles Rams would later trade to the Detroit Lions, is underrated.

St. Brown believes it.

“I think he’s been underrated his whole career and I don’t think that’ll ever go away,” St. Brown told Yahoo Sports from training camp practice. “You look at a guy like Josh Allen: He’s big, can run, crazy arm strength. You look at a guy like Lamar [Jackson]: fast, one of the best running quarterbacks you’ve ever seen, does stuff on the field that only he can do.

“You look at Patrick Mahomes: His arm angles, the throws he makes, just unconventional, his ability to win big games.”

And Goff?

“You look at a guy like Jared, I mean he’s not too flashy,” St. Brown says of his quarterback. “But he’s consistent.” — Jori Epstein

OXNARD, Calif. — At 11:04 a.m. Pacific Time and beneath an uncharacteristically cloudy Southern California sky, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones gradually ambled down a corridor toward his annual training camp-opening microphone. Trailed by parts of the team’s brain trust — including his son Stephen and new head coach Brian Schottenheimer — Jerry walked his long, straight path toward the dais until the journey to his seat necessitated a left turn.

And boy did he ever take it.

In what struck a chord as one of the more strained and seemingly unnecessary laundry list of sideways comments about several of his core players, Jerry took an unquestionably hard left turn to start a season — taking a sliding scale of passive-aggressive digs at edge defender Micah Parsons, quarterback Dak Prescott, cornerback Trevon Diggs and offensive tackle Terence Steele.

Along the way, Jerry and son Stephen also revealed that neither has spoken to Parsons’ agent David Mulugheta about a contract extension, with Jerry at several points seeming to suggest he had already worked out a deal directly with his star edge rusher during a face-to-face meeting last March. — Charles Robinson

ALLEN PARK, Mich. — Success, rather than complacency, was the demise of the 2024 Detroit Lions. The Chicago Bears hired Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson as their head coach while the New York Jets hired defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn to lead their franchise.

Early in the summer, the Lions also lost four-time Pro Bowl center Frank Ragnow to retirement.

No one disputes the talent and foundation each of the three brought the club, or the work it will take to replace them.

But the think tank mentality means the Lions aren’t starting from scratch building new schemes and playbooks to match their play-callers.

The play-callers aren’t starting from scratch, either.

“It’s not like we’re going from Ben and AG to some coaches that don’t know anything,” wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown told Yahoo Sports. “Don’t act like we’re bringing in a scrub.

“These coaches know ball.” — Jori Epstein

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — A week into the Los Angeles Chargers’ training camp, an unexpected hole has quickly become a coaching staff and front office focal point. It’s a void that measures 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds, was previously inhabited by veteran wideout Mike Williams, and now needs a sizable presence to step into an opportunity.

That was the primary takeaway after visiting Chargers camp Saturday, just days after Williams abruptly retired on the first day of practice and pushed the franchise to start mulling limited options. It’s a roster concern that exacerbates an early — but somewhat typical — camp theme for many teams: The defense is ahead of the offense; the installation process is just now getting traction; and conversations are intensifying behind closed doors about roster questions that will need to be answered from inside the current depth chart or supplemented with an outside addition.

For the Chargers, nothing represents that reality more than the starting “X” receiver spot, which not only lost Williams’ prototypical size and strength at the position, but also his baked-in chemistry with quarterback Justin Herbert, whom Williams played with from 2020 to 2023. All of that drove Los Angeles to reunite with Williams in free agency last March, bringing some important depth and options to the position alongside rising young star Ladd McConkey. Unfortunately, with Williams battling lingering health issues from the spring, the reliable free-agent signing ended up being the least reliable development in the first week of camp.

So what now? — Charles Robinson