The NFL is keeping the Philadelphia Eagles in primetime for Week 8.

According to Rob Tornoe of The Philadelphia Inquirer, the league has decided against flexing the Eagles’ game against the Washington Commanders out of NBC’s Sunday Night Football window, even after giving serious consideration to a Cleveland Browns-Pittsburgh Steelers matchup between the two 4-2 AFC North teams, which will now stay in the 1 p.m. ET window on CBS.

Eagles-Commanders didn’t look much like a Sunday night game a week ago, when Tornoe first reported that the league was weighing its options with Philadelphia coming off a third straight loss and below .500 for the first time under Nick Sirianni. The NFC East has done the game a favor since then, though, as the Eagles and the 1-4-1 Commanders could both be playing for first place in the division when they meet if each team wins this week.

The league didn’t have many other places to turn, either, because a scheduling rule guarantees CBS at least one AFC divisional rivalry game and Fox at least one NFC divisional rivalry game each season. As our Tyler Lauletta noted last week, those protections left Rams-Chargers as one of the only realistic candidates for the window.

Keeping the Eagles on NBC also fits with how heavily the league leaned on Philadelphia when it built this year’s schedule, as the Eagles had seven more standalone games left as of last week, including four in primetime, a Thanksgiving game against the Dallas Cowboys on Fox and a Christmas Eve bout with the Houston Texans.

They’ll play all of those games without Jalen Hurts, starting with Monday night’s game against Dallas, after the team ruled him out for the season when tests found multiple blood clots in his lungs about a week after it let him play against the Jaguars in London with a superficial clot in his leg. CBS’s Leger Douzable called the handling disturbing, and ESPN’s Jeff Saturday ripped the Eagles for sending Sirianni out to field medical questions, while the NFLPA demanded a full investigation Tuesday, just hours after NFL Chief Medical Officer Allen Sills defended how the league and team handled it.

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Does Field Yates replace Justin Herbert with Chargers’ No. 1 pick in ESPN mini-mock? appeared first on ClutchPoints. Add ClutchPoints as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

The Los Angeles Chargers have been a disaster so far during the 2026 NFL season, currently sitting at 0-6 after a recent road loss vs the Kansas City Chiefs. The Chargers’ offense, led by quarterback Justin Herbert, has been abysmal, falling well short of expectations under new offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel.

Some have wondered whether the Chargers might consider moving on from Herbert altogether after this season, especially if they end up with the top pick in a quarterback-loaded 2027 NFL Draft.

However, one person not on board with this idea is ESPN analyst Field Yates, who instead projected the team to take wide receiver Jeremiah Smith if they end up with the number one overall pick next year, per his account on X, formerly Twitter.

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Smith has established himself as one of the top wide receiver prospects in recent college football history for the Ohio State Buckeyes, and likely would have been a first-round pick had he been able to leave for the NFL after just his freshman season.

While Herbert has certainly made plenty of mistakes this year, he hasn’t had a ton of help from his wide receiver room, which continues to be among the worst in the NFL in terms of drops and an overall lack of dynamic playmaking. Smith would immediately help solve those problems if he were to join the fold, and drafting him would seemingly let the Chargers give things another go with Herbert and McDaniel next season.

While Chargers fans likely didn’t envision themselves being in contention for the number one overall pick this year, adding a player like Smith certainly wouldn’t be a bad consolation prize.

Related: Chargers’ biggest problem to fix during 2026 bye week

Related: Chargers rumors: Mike McDaniel is first in firing line, but Jim Harbaugh buzz is getting louder

The Independent Football Regulator (IFR) David Kogan has criticised the ridiculous amounts of money that Newcastle United and other clubs are spending on agents’ fees.

The IFR declaring that he would rather the money went to the players instead.

The 2025-26 season saw English clubs (Premier League, English Football League and National League) pay agents a combined £547.8million. This represented a 13 per cent increase on the £483.6million that the clubs spent the season before.

When you factor in that 94 per cent of these same clubs in England lost money last season, the £547.8million they paid to agents in 2025-26 looks even worse.

Looking at just the top tie, the spending across the 2025-26 season was £460,300,308 by the 20 Premier League clubs, compared to the 2024-25 figure of £409,137,387, so actually just over £51m more this time.

Newcastle United paid agents over £20million last (2025-26) season but that was only tenth highest amongst Premier League clubs.

Chelsea were top with a staggering £65m+ spent on agents fees across the 2025/26 season. Aston Villa second highest with £38m+. Then third Man City £37m, fourth place Liverpool £33m, Arsenal fifth with £32m.

Newcastle United (£20.2m) were also lower than Man U (£31m), Wolves (£25m) Tottenham (£21m) and Bournemouth (£20.8m).

(The previous 2024-25 season, the top five for agents’ fees were Chelsea £60m, Man City £52m, Man U £33m, Aston Villa £25m, Newcastle United £24m)

Newcastle United, with a spend on agents fees of £20,284,806 in 2025-26, compared to £24,366,737 the previous (2024-25) season. So United spending some £4.1m less in 2025-26 than in 2024-25.

The decision was made a while ago by the authorities that all agents’ fees paid by top English clubs had to be made public in the need for transparency. This club by club breakdown (see below) for the 2025-26 Premier League season covers the two transfer windows (Summer 2025 and January 2026) and also represents all other intermediary and agents’ fees paid by Premier League clubs during the specified period via the FA’s clearing account.

Remember, this is money paid to the middle men, that is not just necessarily when buying players, plenty of clubs using agents to help sell players as well. Agents fees also generated when players agree new contracts

Many people have claimed that the only way to make English football clubs more sustainable is to introduce a hard salary cap for players (which is common in North America sports).

However, The Independent Football Regular David Kogan is not convinced that limiting how much players can earn is the right solution.

Speaking on The Rest is Football podcast, David Kogan: “We are not in support of a salary cap and we certainly don’t have the power to implement one. One of the things that’s so interesting about all of this is people always ask me about a salary cap. What they don’t ask me about is agents’ fees. Agents’ fees are ridiculous. Over £500million. It’s half a billion pounds. Frankly, would I object to that money being spent on players rather than agents? Hell, I’d much prefer to see it being spent on players.”

The official FA amounts for agents’ fees for each club in this Premier League season – 2025-26. All intermediary and agents’ fees paid by Premier League clubs (Including the Summer 2025 and January 2026 transfer windows):

For Newcastle United, the progression on money paid to agents has been £10.7m (2022-23), £18.8m (2023-24), £24.3m (2024-25) and £20.2m in 2025-26. With so many transfers in and out of Newcastle United this past summer, as well as new contracts for (young and old) existing players, difficult to imagine that the 2026-27 NUFC pay out to agents is going to significantly reduce, more likely heading in the other direction.

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Under-fire head coach Michael Carrick insists he retains the support of the Manchester United board as he takes his depleted side to Como searching for a much-needed Champions League victory.

Pressure continues to mount on the former midfielder following United’s poorest start to a league season in 40 years, with just two wins from 10 matches in all competitions.

The Red Devils enter Wednesday's clash against Cesc Fabregas’ side without a win in six matches, following pre-match focus on comments from former boss Erik ten Hag.

In an interview with The Athletic two years after his dismissal, the Dutchman accused the club of broken promises, though Carrick claims he has no position concerns.

"I don’t need any reassurance," the United head coach said. "It’s pretty clear. I know the role, I know my responsibilities. I don’t need anyone else to tell me that or tell me when it’s going well or when it needs to be better. I know that myself.

"I know the realities and I’ve got no problem with that. It’s pretty clear. There’s not much I can really elaborate on that. I know we’ve got to win football games for everything to flow and everything to fit into place. That’s the great thing about it. We can do something about it.

“Since I came back, the players and the staff have given us everything that they could give. We’ve had some good performances. We’ve had some performances that we want to do better and we can improve on. We’ve made some mistakes.

“But I have to say, the type of performance put into the weekend and for large parts against Atlético, there’s a lot of togetherness there. There’s a lot of will and determination to do better and wanting to do it for each other, which is important.”

Asked if he feels backed, the United boss said: "Yeah. Why wouldn’t I? I’m in this position, I have a good relationship – a really good relationship with everybody at the football club.

"There’s really no issues and no problems with any of that side. We’ve got to win games of football and that’s what we’re striving to do."

Ten Hag had said that Man United “are continuing the toxic culture. They fuel it, they give the power to the players. Rashford is an amazing player, if his mindset is right. I always showed my trust in him, played him. But when you show these standards, sometimes you have to make corrections.”

Without a win since beating Sabah 4-0 in September’s Champions League opener, Carrick’s hopes of halting that run against an improving Como side face major selection issues.

Eight squad members are sidelined through illness or injury, while Leny Yoro is suspended following his red card in last week’s 2-0 defeat at Atletico Madrid.

"Bit of a mixed bag, to be honest," Carrick said. "We have quite a few who are missing. Licha (Lisandro Martinez) is not too bad, but he is not with us. We will have to see if he’s ready for the weekend (against Bournemouth) or not.

"Kobbie (Mainoo) we’re probably maybe looking at another 10 days or so but not exact. Luke (Shaw) a little bit longer than that.

"Ayden (Heaven) is ill and Marcus (Rashford) is still feeling a little bit of a hip issue that we are trying to overcome. Hopefully that’ll be soon as well."

Benjamin Sesko, Patrick Dorgu and Manuel Ugarte are also injured for United, who were greeted by steady rain on landing in Italy on Tuesday evening.

Over 6cm of rain is forecast in the 24 hours before kick-off, with an orange warning for "severe weather" issued by the Italian Air Force National Meteorological Service.

Asked if he had any concerns about the surface or even the match being impacted, United boss Carrick said: "No, nothing immediate for me. We’re kind of used to the rain, so we’ll make the most of it."