Nelson Agholor, who had 31 receptions for 362 yards and two touchdowns last season for the Patriots, has agreed to a free-agent deal with the Ravens. Matt Ludtke/Associated Press
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — The Baltimore Ravens agreed to a contract with wide receiver Nelson Agholor.
The team announced Friday that it had reached an agreement in principle with the 29-year-old, who caught 31 passes for 362 yards and two touchdowns with the New England Patriots last season.
Agholor played his first five NFL seasons with the Eagles, then one with the Raiders and two with the Patriots.
Baltimore could use some help at receiver after tight end Mark Andrews was the only Raven to surpass 500 yards receiving last season.
Of course, the quarterback spot is also uncertain after Baltimore put the nonexclusive franchise tag on Lamar Jackson. He can negotiate with other teams, although the Ravens would have a chance to match any agreement.
RULES: The NFL will consider significant changes to the kicking game with the competition committee proposing that the league adopt the college rule that allows touchbacks on fair catches of kickoffs and moving the touchback spot on punts to the 25-yard line.
NFL executive Troy Vincent said that the competition committee looked at various rules on kickoffs in college and the spring leagues to try to reduce injuries on what is one of the more dangerous plays.
Vincent said the league needs more data from an XFL rule that reduces high speed collisions by lining up coverage players 35 yards ahead of the kicker and 5 yards apart from blockers, but said that the college rule that allows fair catches to be treated like touchbacks will reduce injuries about “20 to 25%”
“It may not be perfect. I think it will warrant some good discussion on the floor,” Vincent said.
“The one thing that we all agreed upon was you can’t leave that play as it is, not with the injury rates at what we saw. You can’t leave it as is.”
Rich McKay, chairman of the NFL’s competition committee, said the league looked at several ideas to change the punt play, which currently has the highest rate of injuries and penalties.
But for now, the committee is proposing a simple approach of moving touchbacks from the 20 to the 25-yard line in hopes of reducing the number of punts.
PANTHERS: Carolina agreed to a deal with free-agent wide receiver DJ Chark, the team said.
The 26-year-old Chark, a five-year veteran, had 30 receptions for 502 yards and three touchdowns for Detroit last season.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the NFL Network reported it was for one year.
Chark joins veteran Adam Thielen, who agreed to deal with Carolina on Sunday, as part of a revamped receiving corps for the Panthers, who traded their best wideout, D.J. Moore, to the Chicago Bears as part of a package for the top overall pick in the draft.
The Panthers intend to draft a quarterback at No. 1, and whoever they choose will have two veteran targets on the outside. Carolina also brought in pass-catching tight end Hayden Hurst and running back Miles Sanders as it revamps an offense that ranked near the bottom of the league last year.
Chark was a 2018 second-round pick by Jacksonville out of LSU. His best season was 2019, when he had 73 catches for 1,008 yards and eight touchdowns for the Jaguars.
Injuries have limited him to 28 games over the past three seasons.
TRADE: The San Francisco 49ers have found their potential replacement for longtime kicker Robbie Gould after agreeing to acquire Zane Gonzalez from the Carolina Panthers.
The teams will exchange a conditional swap of late-round picks in the 2025 draft to complete the deal which will be finalized once Gonzalez passes a physical.
Carolina re-signed kicker Eddy Piñeiro on Thursday and planned to release Gonzalez before reaching the deal with San Francisco.
The Niners had been seeking a kicker since deciding not to bring back Gould as a free agent. The 40-year-old Gould joined the 49ers in 2017 and made 87.5% of his field goals over six seasons.
MEDIA: Jerry Green, a Detroit sports writer who covered 56 consecutive Super Bowls, has died at 94, The Detroit News said.
Green retired as a columnist at the News in 2004 but continued to attend the Super Bowl for the newspaper until this year. His streak began with Green Bay’s 35-10 victory over Kansas City in the first Super Bowl in 1967.
“Jerry Green is part of the very fabric of the Super Bowl!” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told the News in January.
Green, a native of New York City, died Thursday night, the News reported. He was a sports writer in Detroit for The Associated Press before joining the News in 1963.
“I’ve never wanted to do anything else,” Green said earlier this year about a career covering a variety of pro and college sports.
News editor and publisher Gary Miles said Green was an icon.
“And he was unabashedly proud of the paper, his contributions and his colleagues. He gave us his all and we’ll miss him,” Miles said.
Before the Super Bowl era, Green covered the 1957 NFL championship game, which was won by the Detroit Lions. The Lions still haven’t played in a Super Bowl.
“I don’t think I’ll last that long,” Green jokingly told Crain’s Detroit Business in 2019.
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