The Texans have acquired wide receiver Ben Skowronek from the Los Angeles Rams in a trade. In exchange for Skowronek and a 2026 seventh-round selection, the Texans gave the Rams a 2026 sixth-round pick. Skowronek was selected in the seventh round of the 2021 draft and is entering the final year of his contract. In three seasons, he has 575 receiving yards and one score.
Skowronek’s offensive playing time dropped from 82% in 2022 to 19% last season, where he finished with 66 yards on eight catches. He made the majority of his contributions on special teams, accounting for 71% of the Rams’ kickoffs. Skowronek’s best productive season was 2022, when he had 39 receptions for 376 yards. The former Notre Dame standout will join a receivers group that already includes four-time Pro Bowler Stefon Diggs, Nico Collins, Tank Dell, and Robert Woods.
What was hailed as “the greatest roast of all time” proved to be anything but for Tom Brady, who expressed sadness about the effect it had on his three children. “I loved when the jokes were about me,” Brady remarked on Tuesday’s “The Pivot” podcast with Ryan Clark, Fred Taylor, and Channing Crowder. “I thought they were really fun. I did not like how it affected my children. “So it’s the hardest part; the bittersweet aspect of when you do something that you think is one way and all of a sudden you realise ‘I wouldn’t do that again’ because of the way it affected, actually, the people I care about the most in the world.”
Brady’s comments came at the close of the 56-minute podcast, when Taylor — his New England Patriots teammate in 2009 and 2010 — asked him if the roast taught him anything about himself.
Taylor’s question was more about his relationship with teammates and how it seemed to mirror the relationships they had developed in the locker room over time, but Brady instead focused on his children Jack, Benjamin, and Vivian. “It makes you, in some ways, a better parent going through it,” he stated. “Sometimes you are naive. You don’t know, or you say something like, ‘Oh s—.’ “I loved it when people made fun of me. I just wanted to laugh, so I decided to perform the roast. You don’t always get the complete picture. So I believe it’s a valuable lesson for me as a parent. “I’m going to be a better parent as a result of this.”
Brady added: “At the same time, I’m happy everyone who was there had a lot of fun. And I do think for me, outside of that, it always is good ‘if we’re not laughing about things, we’re crying.’ I think we should have more fun. We loved laughing in the locker room. Let’s do more of that and love each other and celebrate other people’s success. That, to me, gives everyone a lot of hope.”
Part of the podcast focused on how May is Mental Health Awareness month, with Brady acknowledging how he is doing in that area.
“I’m just doing my best to check in with myself as often as possible — with my physical health, my mental health, my emotional health,” he said. “It’s something I’m working on. Every year I think I start something a little different.
“I think this last year I wanted to kind of rebuild my body because I lost a lot of weight in my last season. It was challenging. This year is a lot of work stuff. I think next year I’m really going to settle in to a better, more sustainable rhythm to life between all of our responsibilities. When is it too much? When is it not enough? You’re juggling all these balls in the air, and certainly for former athletes, we never know how it’s going to go when we retire.”
Brady revealed another aspect of retirement that has challenged him.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m a little bit in a washing machine right now, not quite sure where you’re going, what the schedule looks like. The structure, the habits, are positive for us at different times; when you don’t have that, you bounce around – you’re like a ping-pong ball, too,” he said, acknowledging he is “not really in my center right now.”
“I feel like, naturally as a quarterback, I was in control. I loved flying the plane, being the operator. I think what you realize in life is that you’re not in control that much. What do I need to do more in my life? I need to be better with less control. I need to be better operating in that gray area. I can’t be so anxious when things aren’t going exactly the way that I want.”
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