NFL News

[jaadam4]

I miss what she's saying because I'm trying to read the damn jersey to see what team she is spoofing. By the time I get that figured out, she's on to the next.

You'd think she could fix the mirror image, unless that is part of the schtick, I guess

Kind of funny, but kind of tough to watch too. Ha!

You're old as f*ck

[El Axe]

Anonymous NFL player poll 2023: Best player? Biggest trash talker? Most annoying fans?


The Athletic NFL Staff
Nov 21, 2023

Spoiler alert: Players around the NFL think Patrick Mahomes is pretty good.

<snip>

A few interesting takeaways for me:

- Jared Goff got 2% of the vote for league MVP. (2 of the 84 votes). Probably both Lions players, but still more than I expected. I'm a big Goff fan, but even I don't consider him an MVP candidate
- Ford Field, being turf, probably hurts some of our FA negotiations
- The comments on the RBs having contracts revisited was a little concerning, but it's good to see that over 50% of the players recognize that the RBs are screwed by the current CBA. That the CBA won't expire until 2030 says to me that they should make a special negotiation for this. It wouldn't hurt the bottom line for owners

[froot loops]

The turf is new but I'm sure a lot of the 84 players haven't played on it

[chemiclord]

The problem with RBs is that they have (relatively) shorter careers at a position that the current preferred strategies don't find as vital and more easily replaceable.

There's not much that can be done about that until strategies change that make your traditional HB more important or RBs find a more important niche in the current strategies.

[whatever_gong82]

Two days after JFK’s assassination, the NFL played on

Nick Pietrosante and Wayne Walker.jpg

Posting 2 days late, but a day after the 60 year mark of the incident.

By Frederic J. Frommer
November 21, 2023 at 9:15 a.m. EST



Like tens of millions of Americans, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle was distraught about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on a Friday in late November 1963. But he compounded his troubles by making a fateful decision — to play that Sunday’s slate of games just two days later.



“It has been traditional in sports for athletes to perform in times of great personal tragedy,” Rozelle said in a statement Nov. 23, the day after JFK was assassinated in Dallas. “Football was Mr. Kennedy’s game. He thrived on competition.”

Rozelle, who was 37 at the time and known for his astute PR skills, took a beating in the media for a decision he would later call his worst as commissioner.



New York Herald Tribune columnist Red Smith wrote that Rozelle “hung up the business-as-usual sign within hours of Mr. Kennedy’s death. For that exercise in tasteless stupidity there is neither excuse nor defense as nothing could illustrate more clearly than the banal, empty phrases with which Rozelle sought to justify the decision.”

Rozelle knew Kennedy personally and had shepherded a bill through Congress that provided the NFL (and other pro sports) a crucial antitrust exemption for broadcasting that Kennedy signed into law in his first year as president. When Rozelle heard the news about the assassination, he tracked down White House press secretary Pierre Salinger, a friend from their days as University of San Francisco students.



“We’ve got planes with the players ready to get in the air, and I don’t know when the services will be. What can you tell me?” Rozelle asked Salinger on the day of JFK’s assassination, as he related in a New York Times interview in 1994, two years before his death at 70.

“I think you should go ahead and play the games,” Salinger replied, according to Rozelle.



Rozelle recalled that he thought more about it after hanging up.

“I discussed it with everyone in the office,” he said. “Late that afternoon, I made the decision. I had to — our teams were calling; they wanted to know what to do.”


‘We’ve got to cancel the games’


The NFL wasn’t the only entity that faced a decision. Some leagues — such as the NFL’s rival, the American Football League — shut down out of respect. Other leagues, such as the NBA and NHL, went forward with at least some of their games that weekend, including a few contests the day after the assassination. But Rozelle’s decision got an outsize reaction because football was far more popular than basketball or hockey and was on the verge of eclipsing baseball as the country’s most popular sport.

College football, for the most part, took a different route than the NFL.



“President Kennedy’s alma mater, Harvard, led the way yesterday in the postponement and cancellations of sports events scheduled for this weekend,” The Washington Post reported Nov. 23. “The traditional Harvard-Yale football game, a sports spectacle dear to the heart of the sports-loving late president, was called off just minutes after JFK’s assassination.”

The paper reported that Michigan State turned down a request from Gov. George Romney — a Republican and the father of future GOP Sen. Mitt Romney — to postpone its game against Illinois. But the game wound up being postponed, along with more than 75 percent of major college football games, the Times reported the following day.





Some NFL owners disagreed with Rozelle’s decision.

“I think we’ve got to cancel the games,” Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney told him before Rozelle spoke with Salinger, Rooney recounted in a 2013 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.



About an hour later, Rozelle called him back.

“He said Pierre said that Jack would have liked for us to play and that he felt this would be good for the nation and for the people, to get a diversion,” recalled Rooney, who died in 2017. “I said I thought this was too big a story, that what happened was just too big. Too big of an historical fact. I just felt we shouldn’t do it. We talked more, and he said he was leaning toward playing and finally I said, ‘Okay, look, I disagree with you, but I’ll back you, whatever you do.’ ”



The Washington Redskins and Philadelphia Eagles requested that their game in Philadelphia be postponed. The mayor of Philadelphia also urged a postponement. There wasn’t much at stake: The Redskins had a 2-8 record, and the Eagles were 2-7-1.

But Rozelle said no.



“He told me he had made his decision and he was sticking with it,” Redskins vice president C. Leo DeOrsey said, The Post reported at the time.

DeOrsey added: “President Johnson has proclaimed Monday as the day of mourning but President Kennedy’s body lies in state in the nation’s capital where we are citizens. I think our situation is different.”



Eagles President Frank McNamee said he would bow to “orders” but that he wouldn’t attend the game — the first home game he would miss in 15 years. Instead, he said he would attend a Kennedy memorial service at Independence Hall.

In a Washington Post column headlined, “A.F.L. Shows Maturity, Shames N.F.L.,” Shirley Povich wrote that the NFL was saved from “an even more embarrassing decision” with the Redskins on the road.



“Suppose the Redskins were scheduled to play in Washington that day, instead of Philadelphia, and only 20 blocks from the Capitol rotunda where, at the game hour, the nation’s leaders were in public bereavement before the coffin of the late President, with millions glued to television?” he wrote. “How unseemly would have been a pro football game with its sounds echoing from nearby.”

In his book, “America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation,” Michael MacCambridge argued that Rozelle couldn’t have predicted the role that TV would play during that weekend of national grieving.



“The previous cataclysmic events that had been touchstones for most American lives — the attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR’s death or the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — had been experienced through radio reports,” he wrote. “… But on that weekend of November 22-24, a nation sat in front of the television, watching itself mourn, and gaining a sense of itself in a way it never had before.”

Dallas Cowboys at Cleveland Browns_11-24-1963.jpg

Packed stadiums, mixed opinions


“Everyone has a different way of paying respects,” Rozelle said at Sunday’s game between the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Giants at Yankee Stadium in New York. “I went to church today, and I imagine many people here at the game did, too. I cannot feel that playing the game was disrespectful, nor can I feel that I have made a mistake.”



But three decades later, Rozelle conceded to the Times, “Obviously, it was a mistake.” He also said he had “brooded” over his decision the entire game.

“You have to understand, I was more than depressed over the assassination,” Rozelle recalled. “I had lost someone whom I’d respected as the leader of our country, but I was also a close friend of the Kennedy family.”


In his book, MacCambridge described an encounter between Smith and Rozelle in the Yankee Stadium press box before the game.

“I think you’re doing the wrong thing,” Smith said.



“Why?” asked Rozelle.

“Because it shows disrespect for a dead president of the United States who isn’t even buried yet.”



That afternoon, as a horse-drawn caisson took JFK’s coffin from the White House to the Capitol Rotunda, where he lay in state, a sellout crowd of nearly 63,000 packed Yankee Stadium for the Giants-Cardinals game. In fact, even though many fans were upset about the NFL’s decision to play that weekend, thousands of others wound up filling seats from New York to Los Angeles. Four of the seven games were sellouts — including the battle for last place in the Eastern Conference between the Redskins and Eagles in Philadelphia. But the league’s broadcast partner, CBS, didn’t televise any of the action.

In Los Angeles, the Rams offered fans refunds on unused tickets — a first since the franchise moved from Cleveland, the Los Angeles Times reported. Owner Dan Reeves told the newspaper: “If we have offended anyone by playing today, we sincerely apologize. We meant no disrespect to President Kennedy’s memory.”


America’s (most hated) team


There was anger at Dallas because that’s where JFK had been killed, and the Dallas Cowboys were the target of some of that hatred. After the team arrived in Cleveland for a game against the Browns, airport baggage handlers and hotel employees refused to handle the Cowboys’ bags, MacCambridge wrote, citing a recollection by Cowboys defensive tackle Bob Lilly.



“We were [viewed as] killers, [as though] we had killed the president,” Dallas tight end Pettis Norman later said, according to a 2021 History.com story. “It was amazing. I just could not believe that.”

Even some Browns players shared that view.



“This city, Dallas, killed our president,” Browns offensive lineman John Wooten told NBC’s Bob Costas in 2013. “That was the feeling that we had. We wanted to get after Dallas.”

Before the game, there was more shocking news from back home: Jack Ruby had shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the presidential assassin, live on national TV.



“There was a tiny television in the visitors’ locker room at Cleveland Stadium,” Cowboys quarterback Eddie LeBaron told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2008. “We had just come back in from [pregame] warmup when we saw Oswald get shot by Jack Ruby.”

He advised his teammates: “Put your helmets on — and keep ’em on.”



Browns owner Art Modell told the public address announcer to refer to the visiting team as simply the Cowboys, leaving out the city, and ordered extra security to protect them.

Five years later, JFK’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, would also be slain by an assassin, just moments after winning the 1968 California Democratic presidential primary. Like the NFL, Major League Baseball blundered ahead and went forward with games the weekend of his funeral. That sparked a mini-rebellion among some players who refused to play.



In 1963, there were football players who doubtless felt the same way. But the early part of the decade was a far different era than the more activist late 1960s. There was no NFL player walkout.

In a Sports Illustrated piece 20 years ago, Charles P. Pierce wrote that “players around the league began to rebel, in their hearts if not on the field.”



On the morning of Sunday, Nov. 24, The Post published a story about the effort by the Redskins and Eagles to postpone their game. It quoted a member of the “official Redskin party” expressing his lack of power.

“You know what they say about big business,” the person said. “I’m just a little man trying to make a living. I can’t say anything.”


Frederic J. Frommer, a writer and a sports and politics historian, is the author of several books, including “You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals.

[wcfwtf]

Same day WCF took total control of Lions. Two things died, a President and a Detroit Lions football team known for winning.

[whatever_gong82]

The NFL’s brief, forgotten experiment with Thanksgiving in St. Louis



By Frederic J. Frommer
Updated November 22, 2023 at 6:55 p.m. EST | Published November 22, 2023 at 9:15 a.m. EST

Miami Dolphins at St. Louis Cardinals_1977.jpg

For nearly a half-century, Americans have watched the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions host games on Thanksgiving — it’s as etched into the holiday as the Macy’s parade and sweet potatoes.

But if things had turned out differently during a mid-1970s scheduling test run, St. Louis could have supplanted Dallas as one of those Thanksgiving hosts. Back then, the St. Louis Cardinals were one of the NFL’s most dynamic teams, routinely storming back to win games behind a highflying offense that earned them the nickname “Cardiac Cards.”



Commissioner Pete Rozelle sought to take advantage of the Cardinals’ popularity by giving them a national platform at home on Thanksgiving in 1975 and 1977, as the Arizona Republic reported in 2017. But they got blown out both times, quickly putting an end to the experiment. The second of those games, a 55-14 drubbing at the hands of the Miami Dolphins on Nov. 24, 1977, also marked the implosion of a once-great team. Not only did it snap a six-game winning streak, but it launched a 12-game skid that extended into the next season.


The Cardinals never made the playoffs again in St. Louis, except for the strike-shortened 1982 season, when a 5-4 record was good enough to reach an expanded postseason that included more than half the league’s teams. (The Cardinals promptly lost by 25 points to the Green Bay Packers in the first round.) The franchise moved to Phoenix following the 1987 season.



Spectacular ’70s


Mostly forgotten today, the mid-70s Cardinals were a terrific team under Coach Don Coryell, who helped revolutionize the sport with his “Air Coryell” offense. St. Louis won consecutive NFC East Division titles in 1974, when it went 10-4, and in 1975, improving to 11-3, although the Cardinals lost their first playoff game both seasons. They just missed another playoff berth in 1976 despite a 10-4 record. Over the three-year period, the Cardinals posted a .738 winning percentage.



Quarterback Jim Hart led a high-octane offense that featured standouts such as wide receiver Mel Gray, running backs Terry Metcalf and Jim Otis and offensive linemen Dan Dierdorf and Conrad Dobler. The coaching staff included a young Joe Gibbs, the offensive backfield assistant, who would go on to lead Washington to three Super Bowl titles.

But it was Coryell who set the tone with his aerial attack mind-set.



“Air was his ally,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports columnist Benjamin Hochman wrote in an appreciation in August, after Coryell was belatedly and posthumously inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “Football was a run-first game — and definitely a run-on-first game — until Coryell started tinkering with the sport’s parameters and possibilities.”

St. Louis hosted its first Thanksgiving game in 1975 and got crushed by the Buffalo Bills, 32-14. When the Cowboys beat the Giants three days later, Dallas and St. Louis were tied for first place at 8-3. But the following week, the Cardinals thumped Dallas, 31-17, which proved to be the decisive game for the division title.



The Cardinals played on Thanksgiving again the next season, but this time as visitors in Dallas, losing, 19-14. They finished a game behind the Cowboys in the division (along with Washington, which also finished 10-4 and took the wild-card spot).

Leading up to their 1977 Thanksgiving game, the Cardinals had been on a roller coaster of a season. They started 1-3, but then stormed back with six straight victories, including two mid-November wins that seemed to reinforce Rozelle’s instincts to feature the team on Thanksgiving. The first took place in Week 9, when the 5-3 Cardinals took on the 8-0 Cowboys in a “Monday Night Football” showdown in Dallas. They rallied from a 17-10 fourth-quarter deficit to stun the Cowboys, 24-17.



The next week, they fell behind the Eagles 16-0 but came back to win, 21-16. In those days, there was only one wild-card berth per conference, and had the season ended that day, St. Louis would have claimed it in the NFC. The Cardinals, who were just one game behind the 8-2 Cowboys, also had a shot at the division title. Two decades before the St. Louis Rams’ “Greatest Show on Turf,” the Cardinals led the league in offense heading into their Thanksgiving showdown with the Dolphins.

As Sports Illustrated put it in a 1977 postmortem, the Cardinals “had a right to be dreaming Super Bowl on Nov. 20 after they had beaten Philadelphia 21-16 for their sixth straight win. Their record was 7-3, they had defeated Dallas, and the NFC’s wild-card playoff berth seemed a cinch.”


That all came to a screeching halt four days later against the Dolphins, who were also 7-3.

“On Thanksgiving Day in St. Louis, Miami quarterback Bob Griese did for eyeglasses what Clark Gable did for ears. He made them quite fashionable,” Harry Kalas recounted for NFL Films in a dated reference to a movie star over an equally dated groovy ’70s soundtrack. “Peering through windshields, all Mr. Griese did was throw six touchdown passes in leading his team to a 55-14 romp over the Cardinals, who were busy giving up the most points in their 58-year NFL history.” The Dolphins amassed 34 first downs, eight touchdowns and 503 yards.



“The Miami Dolphins sent shock waves through the National Football League today with an incredible 55-14 upset of the St. Louis Cardinals,” The Washington Post reported.



It was the Cardinals’ third Thanksgiving defeat in three seasons, including two at home as part of Rozelle’s plan to showcase St. Louis. That embarrassing 1977 performance apparently soured Rozelle on the city. He asked the Cowboys — who had hosted a Thanksgiving game every season from 1966 to 1974 — if they would host games again, Dallas GM Tex Schramm recounted years later.

“It was a dud in St. Louis,” Schramm told the Chicago Tribune in 1988. “Pete asked if we’d take it back. I said only if we get it permanently. It’s something you have to build as a tradition. He said, ‘It’s yours forever.’ ”



After the ’77 Thanksgiving fiasco, the Cardinals and Cowboys went in opposite directions. The Cardinals didn’t win another game that season, while the Cowboys never lost again, culminating with a victory in Super Bowl XII. The next season, NFL Films dubbed them “America’s Team,” a nickname that has stuck over the past 45 years. Within a decade, the Cardinals wouldn’t even be St. Louis’s team.

Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day.jpg

A steep decline


Two weeks after their 1977 Thanksgiving embarrassment, a 26-20 home loss to Washington extinguished the Cardinals’ postseason chances. Coryell went off on ownership and the fans after the game, ensuring he wouldn’t return the next season. It was a family affair — his wife left during the game because she couldn’t take the abusive comments fans made about her husband, and his 16-year-old daughter tried to punch a fan who had criticized her dad.



“I’m not staying in a place I’m not wanted,” Coryell said. “I’d like to be fired. Let me have a high school job.” He complained that owner Bill Bidwill wasn’t willing to invest in the team and predicted the team would win just four games the next year. (Several stars wound up leaving after the season, such as Metcalf, who signed with the Canadian Football League’s Toronto franchise, while Dobler, dubbed the NFL’s “dirtiest player,” was traded after saying he wouldn’t return the next season.)

After their loss to Washington, the Cardinals traveled to Tampa for a meaningless game against the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who had just won their first game after starting out 0-26. In the final indignity of the season, St. Louis lost, 17-7, to finish with a .500 record just four weeks after looking like a Super Bowl contender.



Early in 1978, the team announced that through “mutual agreement,” Coryell wouldn’t be returning. He went to the San Diego Chargers, where he arguably had more success. Coryell’s coaching tree includes Gibbs and John Madden, both of whom worked as Coryell assistants.

For the ’78 season, the Cardinals hired legendary former Oklahoma coach Bud Wilkinson, who once won 47 games in a row. So it must have been quite jarring when he started his NFL coaching career with eight straight losses. By the time the Cardinals finally won on Oct. 29, 1978, it had been nearly a calendar year since their previous victory — one game before their final turn as Thanksgiving hosts. Wilkinson lasted less than two full seasons and finished with a pro record of 9-20.



Before moving to Phoenix, the Cardinals did play twice more on Thanksgiving, but as the road team in Dallas. They lost both games by a score of 35-17. The Thanksgiving jinx continued in Arizona, when the visiting Cardinals got creamed by the Philadelphia Eagles, 48-20, in 2008.

The team’s 1977 Thanksgiving loss proved to be a turning point for a franchise that looked to be on the ascent. Had the team won that game, the Cardinals would have had an 8-3 record with three games left and probably would have made the playoffs. And a victory might have convinced Rozelle to stick with St. Louis as a Thanksgiving showcase city. Since then, St. Louis has lost two NFL franchises — first the Cardinals, then the Rams, who moved back to Los Angeles after the 2015 season.



The Cardinals have made the playoffs a few times since moving to Arizona, but they lost their only Super Bowl appearance, following the 2008 season. The franchise, which started in Chicago, has the longest championship drought of any team in the four major North American sports leagues, at 76 years. The last one came when the Chicago Cardinals won the 1947 NFL championship game.

And as another Thanksgiving arrives, things don’t look great for them. The Cardinals are 2-9.


Frederic J. Frommer, a writer and a sports and politics historian, is the author of several books, including “You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals."

[whatever_gong82]

Three imperfect NFC contenders will get a Thanksgiving audition


Perspective by Jerry Brewer
Columnist
November 23, 2023 at 5:05 a.m. EST

Jared Goff, Dak Prescott and Brock Purdy.jpg

In this mediocre sport that Tom Brady left behind, the traditional Thanksgiving NFL slate looks more like a tryout than a showcase. It just happens that every prominent contender to disrupt the Philadelphia Eagles’ redemption tour plays Thursday, providing a national audience the opportunity to evaluate the strength of a suspect conference during an all-NFC trio of games.

At 9-1 and full of savvy, the Eagles are a threat to become the first NFC team since the 1974 Minnesota Vikings to return to the Super Bowl after finishing as the runner-up the previous season. The Eagles aren’t as dominant this time, but quarterback Jalen Hurts remains a relentless winner. And they reside on the dilapidated side of the NFL. The AFC overflows with big-name quarterbacks, despite a few major injuries, and it features an overall level of depth that will create a dramatic late-season playoff race. By comparison, the NFC is in transition, with future Hall of Famers such as Brady and Drew Brees having retired and Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson switching conferences.



Standing in Philadelphia’s way are three teams that will be featured on this holiday: the Detroit Lions (8-2), who host the Green Bay Packers (4-6); the Dallas Cowboys (7-3), who host the Washington Commanders (4-7); and the San Francisco 49ers (7-3), who visit the Seattle Seahawks (6-4) in the only matchup that doesn’t look lopsided on paper.


In theory, a January divisional playoff round with Philadelphia, Detroit, Dallas and San Francisco would be wonderful. You can put together a compelling NFC championship game with any combination of those teams, and the winner would be a high-caliber Super Bowl representative. If this is the NFC in a down year, perhaps its struggles are overblown. Or rather, the concept of a weak NFC should be reframed to note that it is severely top-heavy.



Eleven AFC teams have records of .500 or better. In the NFC, there are seven. Philadelphia has a five-game lead over the 11th-best NFC team, while only two-and-a-half games separate the first and 11th teams in the AFC. Unless there is an NFC wild-card team destined to finish below .500, you can almost write most of the conference’s playoff field in ink with seven weeks to go: Philadelphia, Detroit, Dallas and San Francisco only have a little work left to do. Seattle is amid a tough four-game stretch, but the Seahawks are a fairly safe bet. Minnesota (6-5) has more work to do, but the Vikings are in decent shape.

It seems only the NFC South division winner is in serious doubt. There is enough season left for one of the five NFC teams with four wins — Green Bay, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, the Los Angeles Rams and Washington — to get hot and enter the wild-card picture. But what reason exists to trust any of those flawed squads?



At the same time, there are trust issues at the top. When considering the hopes of the Eagles, Lions, Cowboys and 49ers, it takes a lot of history defiance to pick any of them.

The Eagles are easy to believe in, except for that persistent hex on Super Bowl losers. Since the 1972 Miami Dolphins went undefeated a season after losing in the big game, only the 2018 New England Patriots have gone from runner-up to champion the next season. No NFC runner-up accomplished that since the 1971 Cowboys avenged a Super Bowl V loss by defeating Miami in Super Bowl VI, setting up the Dolphins’ drive for perfection.

Jalen Hurts vs. KC_11-20-2023.jpg

With new offensive and defensive coordinators this season and opponents more familiar with their tactics, the Eagles have had to grind. Seven of their 10 games have been decided by a touchdown or less; they won six of them. They earned three signature victories in their past four outings, beating Miami and Dallas and then rallying in the second half for a 21-17 win over the Kansas City Chiefs in a much-hyped Super Bowl rematch Monday. Philadelphia doesn’t create separation in games as it did last season after adding wide receiver A.J. Brown, but in some ways, this team is just as scary because it is so tested. Still, the historical mountain the Eagles must climb is as formidable as the competition.

The Lions are fresh and exhilarating, but they’re also an untested bunch closing in on the franchise’s first division title in 30 years. Detroit has won one playoff game since 1957. It seems like ancient history, until it isn’t. In January, carefree joy over this breakthrough will become more stressful for Coach Dan Campbell’s squad.


For all the Cowboys’ tradition, they’ve had a nasty playoff habit over the past 27 years of losing in the most heartbreaking or humiliating fashion. If Dallas, which trails Philadelphia by two games in the NFC East, can’t win the division, the Cowboys will be no better than a No. 5 seed required to win on the road during the postseason.


Then there is San Francisco, the most talented and physically imposing team in the NFL. If healthy enough, the 49ers are capable of a dominant championship run. But their bruising and athletic style of play makes them susceptible to injuries. Maybe this is the year they get lucky (enough) and win it all. But their track record of misfortune under Coach Kyle Shanahan suggests the 49ers — who just lost all-pro safety Talanoa Hufanga to a season-ending ACL injury — will have to overcome something devastating.

Whether judging the AFC or NFC, there’s a consistent theme: plenty to like, very little to love. It’s so worrisome that Brady, who retired for a second time in February, apparently has trouble watching.



“There’s a lot of mediocrity in today’s NFL,” Brady said Monday during an interview on Stephen A. Smith’s YouTube show. “I don’t see the excellence that I saw in the past.”

Brady went from an ageless wonder to a grumpy old man in record time. But he’s not wrong. If you can take a step back from the NFL obsession, you don’t need Brady’s trained eye to notice all the quality-of-play flaws.



But parity covers most of the league’s blemishes, its unpredictability fueling the interest of die-hard fans and gambling addicts. At the end of every discussion about who can’t win, there’s the inevitability that some team will, and the margin figures to be too close to ignore. In this sense, what the NFL is not triggers appreciation of what it is.

And so the NFC — the land of dubious contenders — figures to have stashed away something that resembles excellence in all that mediocrity.


Jerry Brewer is a sports columnist at The Washington Post. He joined The Post in 2015 after more than eight years as a columnist with the Seattle Times.

[whatever_gong82]

NFL Thanksgiving primer: No permanent host expected for new Friday game


By Mark Maske
November 23, 2023 at 6:06 a.m. EST

John Madden tribute.jpg

The NFL’s first Friday after Thanksgiving game is expected to become an annual staple, but the league has no plans to designate a fixed host, while it sticks with Detroit and Dallas as the sites for its Thanksgiving afternoon games.

“I think the exciting part is we’ve had multiple teams reach out and ask if they could be the annual host for the game,” Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution, said in a video news conference this week. “I think that’s less likely in the near term. … We love the historical 60-year tradition of Dallas and Detroit. That’s awesome. That’s part of Thanksgiving. But we’ve seen the value and the excitement we bring to a market … with what we do on Thanksgiving prime time.”



The NFL has no permanent host for its Thanksgiving night game. This year, the Seattle Seahawks will play at home against the San Francisco 49ers on Thursday night, and the New York Jets will host the Miami Dolphins on Friday afternoon.


“Our focus is much more on the opportunity to rotate this [and] give another NFL market the opportunity to host a really unique and exciting thing like a tentpole,” Schroeder said. “You’ve started to see us do it with [the NFL] draft, like we’ve done with [the] Super Bowl. We love bringing the NFL to more markets on some of these tentpole events. And we think Black Friday probably falls more into that bucket with how we look to the future sitting here today.”



Amazon gets the Friday game in its second season of being the exclusive national carrier of the Thursday Night Football package, as part of the NFL’s increasing commitment to streaming its games. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

Amazon is averaging nearly 12.3 million viewers per game this season for the Thursday night games, up 26 percent from last season. NFL leaders have said the jump in Amazon viewership is justifying the league’s decision to put games on digital platforms, which continued this year with the NFL Sunday Ticket package being carried by YouTube.


Overall, viewership of NFL games is up about 6 percent this season.

The expectations will be raised this week. Last year, the Cowboys’ game on Thanksgiving against the New York Giants drew 42 million viewers on Fox, an NFL record for a regular season game. Amazon declined to set a target for Friday’s viewership.



“I wouldn’t want to speculate,” said Jay Marine, the vice president of Prime Video and global head of sports for Amazon. “I would say it’s a new window. We’re optimistic because people are home. … But we’ll just have to see. It’s a new window. And so I expect it’ll continue to grow year after year in the same way we’ve grown Thursday Night Football in Year 2. … We look at it as building a decade-long-plus franchise, a valuable franchise for the NFL and for us.”


The Jets-Dolphins matchup appeared particularly appealing when the game was scheduled. The Jets were supposed to be a marquee team after acquiring quarterback Aaron Rodgers from the Green Bay Packers in the offseason, but the four-time league MVP suffered a torn Achilles’ tendon four snaps into the season. Trying to keep their playoff hopes from dwindling further, the Jets will start Tim Boyle at quarterback Friday, after benching Zack Wilson, against the division-leading Dolphins.

The Thursday slate features the Lions and Cowboys. The Lions, who host the Packers in the early-afternoon game, lead the NFC North at 8-2. They’re a game behind the Philadelphia Eagles in the chase for the NFC’s top playoff seed. The Cowboys, who face the Washington Commanders in the late-afternoon game, trail the Eagles by two games in the NFC East and currently are the conference’s No. 5 seed.



The 49ers lead the NFC West and are two games behind the Eagles for the No. 1 seed. The second-place Seahawks trail the Niners in the division race by a game, but quarterback Geno Smith is coping with a triceps injury in his throwing arm.


Mark Maske covers the NFL for The Washington Post. He has covered the NFL and the Washington Football Team since 1998. He previously covered baseball, the Baltimore Orioles, the effort to bring a major league team to Washington, and colleges.

[whatever_gong82]

The NFL’s stunt doubles

For out-of-work lefty punters, tryouts with teams are more about impersonation than earning a contract


By Alex Prewitt
November 21, 2023 at 12:00 p.m. EST

Brock Miller try out with NFL.jpg

On a Monday in September, as the NFL season was wrapping up its first week, Brock Miller was home in San Diego when he received an urgent summons. It was from the Denver Broncos, wondering if the free agent punter could hop aboard a flight the following afternoon to attend a private workout at the team’s training facility.

Despite the short notice, Miller packed his bags and drove to the airport feeling prepared. In fact, the 32-year-old had expected this very call for one crucial reason: Like the punter the Broncos would face in Week 2 — the Washington Commanders’ Tress Way — Miller also kicks footballs with his left foot.



Including Way, only four left-footed punters have lined up deep in the NFL in 2023, which is half the tally of two years ago and the fewest of any season since 2000. Even smaller in ranks is an anonymous group of out-of-the-league lefties, such as Miller, whom teams call when they are about to play one of the few active-rostered lefties and want a sneak peek of the real thing.

“It’s giving their returners a chance to catch a counterclockwise, left-footed spiral off a live leg instead of a machine,” Miller said. “That’s the common denominator with these quote-unquote ‘workouts.’ ”


Officially, the NFL’s transaction wire lists these events as free agent workouts, the same as countless others that teams hold each month, whether for the purpose of finding injury replacements, fixing poor performance or simply keeping tabs on potential options. Unlike hopefuls at different positions, however, Miller and his ilk hold no illusions about their chances of earning a contract when the phone rings.

“Usually it’s a turn-and-burn trip,” Miller said, and his Broncos visit was no exception. “They put me up in the team hotel, picked me up in the morning, did some medical clearance stuff, and then, boom — I’m on the field after practice. I hit probably 25 to 30 balls, got their returners comfortable for Tress Way, shook some hands and grabbed the next flight out. Standard lefty workout process.” Indeed, the only noteworthy deviation was the $60 per diem Denver gave Miller for his return journey.



“That covered the exact price of my gas and parking at the airport for a night, which was appreciated,” said Miller, a 2014 graduate of Southern Utah of the Football Championship Subdivision. He has had brief stints on the practice squads of the San Francisco 49ers, New York Giants and Los Angeles Rams (twice) but has never appeared in a regular season game. “It sounds silly, but to guys like us, it truly does go a long way.”

On one hand — or, if you prefer, one foot — these lefty scout punters are little more than the gridiron equivalents of Hollywood stuntmen, resigned to uncredited roles and tabbed only for their ability to seem like someone else. It is a life at once paradoxical — good enough to give a look to an NFL team’s returners but not good enough to get a longer one from its front office — and purgatorial.


“You do 10 workouts in the season, [but] if you don’t get signed, you’re essentially not making any money,” said Miller, who has spent the past two springs with the USFL’s New Jersey Generals between gigs valeting cars and providing personal training to high school kickers and punters. “But you can’t really advance your career and go get a real 9-to-5 in the meantime [while] hoping for the phone to ring.”



The fact that these extra-special teamers have come to exist in the NFL ecosystem at all, bopping and booting their way around the league’s fringes, speaks to the value of their uncommon footedness — and to the universal truth it symbolizes. As CBS Sports analyst Phil Simms said, parroting a hypothetical general manager’s thought process: “Let’s cover every base, every scenario, because we don’t want our punt returner to drop a d--- ball because the spin is different.

“Now, if that doesn’t tell you everything about the NFL, what does?”

Tress Way of the NFL.jpg

Man vs. machine


To many football insiders, the concept of lefty scout punters is hardly new. Simms, for instance, became familiar as a young quarterback for the Giants in the early 1980s, when on certain game weeks he found himself unwittingly roped by then-special teams coordinator Bill Belichick into an anxiety-inducing auxiliary duty.

“I punted some in college and I’m left-footed, so anytime we [were playing] a lefty, he would walk up and say, ‘Hey, Simms, when practice is over, you think you can punt a few to my guys?’ ” Simms recalled, deepening his voice to mimic Belichick’s classic gruffness. “Hell, that was more pressure than playing in the Super Bowl. I’m sweating just thinking about it.”



Simms’s attempts paled in comparison to the kicks Belichick’s returners were fielding in games. “Some of them were friggin’ awful, like 20 yards,” Simms said. “Every once in a while, I’d hit one and turn it over and go: ‘Finally! I did it!’ ” Regardless, Simms continued to reluctantly moonlight throughout many of the 12 seasons he and Belichick spent with the Giants together. “It must’ve been good enough, because he kept asking me,” Simms said. “Or maybe I was his only choice.”

It is difficult to trace the history of teams going out of their way to prepare for lefty punters, given the lack of publicity such efforts have historically received. (Even today, the most reliable source for chronicling workouts is a 5,000-follower Instagram account, @kickercentral.) But NFL coaches have been concerned with the unique challenge that lefties pose for at least half a century. Among the earliest references in newspaper archives, from August 1973, detailed how then-Washington coach George Allen had brought in an air compressor-powered device “that simulates punts” to help his returners at training camp.


“Because we don’t have any left-footed punters and we have to play the [St. Louis] Cardinals twice,” Allen explained to reporters. “Their punter, Donny Anderson, punts with his left foot, and with the reverse spin, the ball is hard to handle because players are not familiar with that type of spin. The machine can duplicate the left-foot spin, and it might help us win a game.”

Beginning in the mid-1980s, the practice of tapping humans for lefty simulations became increasingly common; heading into a November 1986 showdown with the San Diego Chargers’ Ralf Mojsiejenko, the Los Angeles Raiders went so far as to bring in four of them, according to the Los Angeles Times. In 1999, after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers muffed three lefty punts in a preseason game, Coach Tony Dungy lamented to local media: “I think the next time we face a lefty like that, we’ll either import a practice squad punter for the week or we’ll get the [JUGS] machine going that way. Either that or we’re going to be like baseball people and rest [our returner] against the lefties.”


Miller, for his part, didn’t quite grasp the effect his left-footedness had on certain returners until he was amassing clips for a highlight reel of his junior season. “In an 11-game season, there were five or six where the returner was muffing the punt,” he said. “No one bats an eye at a lefty in really any other sport, but that’s when I went, ‘Huh, there may be something here long-term.’ ”

Brock Miller try out with NFL-1.jpg

As the ranks of left-footed punters receiving regular work in the league swelled throughout the 21st century — from four in 2000 to a high of 10 in 2017 — so did opportunities for their free agent counterparts. Miller estimated that he traveled for 13 of these quote-unquote workouts during the 2018 season alone; another lefty, Ryan Anderson, pegged the same total for himself in 2019. Their packed itineraries suggest the widespread belief that nothing beats a live leg.

Now in his sixth year of pecking around pro football after leaving Rutgers in 2018, Anderson, like Miller, has signed a handful of practice squad contracts but never kicked in an NFL game. Most recently, he was waived by the Chicago Bears in late July after just three months on the payroll. “Brock and I can both attest to this,” said Anderson, who pays the bills through his day job as a sales manager for Vertical Raise, a youth sports fundraising platform. “We want to be more than just the workout guy. But everyone’s path is different.”



The 28-year-old and his agent have honed a response to calls they get during the season.

“We ask the teams to be honest,” Anderson said. “Like, ‘Hey, are you bringing me in to work me out as a lefty or to actually get a look?’ ”

Former Rutgers punter Ryan Anderson.jpg

A blessing and a toll

Assuming the answer is the former, Anderson has his packing process down pat. “Typically it’s two nights of clothes,” he said. “My cleats are the first things. … Always bring a band, a small roller and a Theragun. … A couple of footballs so I can do drops in the room. Ideally you get one night in a hotel to get your legs loose, but sometimes I’m four hours off the plane, working out that same day, and back in less than 30 hours.”

Teams usually handle travel logistics, from booking flights to providing airport rides. “Sometimes they send a scout or an intern — the low-end-of-the-totem-pole front-office guys, I guess,” Miller said. “The 49ers are different. They send a security guard from Levi’s [Stadium] because their practice field is on-site there.”



Hotels and meals are covered, too; after landing in Denver this season, Miller fueled up for his workout with free room service. “I got a dessert — nothing extreme,” Miller said. “Tried not to run up the bill.”

The workouts also follow a predictable format. “As the team’s finishing [practice], we’ll go out there, get warmed up, then the returners, the special teams coaches and some of the scouts will pop over to the other field,” Anderson said. Often there won’t even be a long snapper to hike the ball. Miller named his two biggest need-to-knows: “Are they underhanding or are they snapping, and how many am I hitting?”


The amount of punting these lefties actually do varies depending on the whims of not only their on-the-ground hosts but also Mother Nature. “I’ve hit as little as 10 [footballs] before because the weather was horrible,” Anderson said. At the other extreme, Miller said, he has hit upward of 60 or 70 balls. “I always like that,” he added. “If I flew all the way from San Diego to Jacksonville, I want to kick more and get my money’s worth.”

After showing off their hang time, however, lefty punters aren’t left with much time for hanging. “There are trips where I shower and not even an hour later I’m on a flight,” Miller said. If any talk happens, it comes with a purpose. During the 2019 season, when Anderson twice worked out for the 49ers, Dante Pettis approached him at the end of each session. Pettis holds the NCAA record for punt return touchdowns, and he wanted to pick Anderson’s brain about the spin and draw of a left-footed ball. “Some returners are super inquisitive,” Anderson said.

Former Rutgers punter Ryan Anderson - A.jpg
Former Rutgers punter Ryan Anderson - B.jpg


The whirlwind nature of these workouts can be taxing on the punter’s body. “Sitting on the plane sore after kicking 60 to 70 balls is not the most fun thing to do,” Miller said. Harder still for the lefty scout punter is the mental toll. “The younger me was just so excited to be in the building,” Miller said. “Then, as time went on, it was like: ‘Okay, I’ve been doing this basically for two full seasons — and doing well — but nothing’s coming of it. This kind of sucks.’ ”

The challenge has only gotten tougher given the relative lack of left-footed peers in the league. Only Way, the Cleveland Browns’ Corey Bojorquez and the Giants’ Jamie Gillan have logged at least a dozen punts through Week 11. (A fourth, Brad Wing, punted 11 times over two weeks as an injury replacement for the Pittsburgh Steelers, returning from a six-year NFL absence during which the 49ers brought him in to serve as a pre-Super Bowl LIV stand-in for the Kansas City Chiefs’ Dustin Colquitt.) Even the New England Patriots and Belichick, who for decades famously employed almost exclusively lefty punters, now start a righty.


Aside from Miller’s workout with the Broncos, according to @kickercentral, only four other lefties have been called in for workouts this fall, each just once: Wing with the Steelers in Week 2, Matt Haack with the 49ers in Week 6, Jake Gerardi with the Eagles in Week 8 and Julian Diaz with the Raiders in Week 9. “You talk to any special teams coach, they all know there’s a different type of punt with a lefty ball,” Anderson said. “So you would think there would be more of us out there right now.”



As it is, Anderson and Miller reconcile their winding paths with the reality that each pit stop puts them closer to breaking through and signing an ever-elusive contract. “They wouldn’t just bring us in because we’re lefties,” Anderson said. “We have to give them a good look.” Miller did just that with the Rams last year before their Week 17 game against Broncos lefty Corliss Waitman, parlaying what he initially assumed to be a “standard lefty workout” into two weeks on their practice squad, the paycheck for which served as a welcome holiday bonus.

“It’s allowed me to keep doing what I love,” Miller said. “If I was born right-footed instead of left, I would’ve retired a long time ago. It’s been such a blessing to be a left-footed punter.”



Alex Prewitt worked for The Washington Post's sports desk. He left The Post in October 2015.

[whatever_gong82]

NBC to highlight John Madden-Darryl Stingley friendship that long endured out of the public eye



By Chad Finn Globe Staff,
Updated November 22, 2023, 5:24 p.m.

John Madden in 1978.jpg

John Madden’s kindness toward Darryl Stingley after the Patriots receiver was paralyzed in an August 1978 preseason game against Madden’s Raiders has been well-known for at least 40 years. A 1983 Sports Illustrated profile of Madden revealed, among other details of his generosity, that he visited Stingley daily in the Bay Area hospital where he remained for weeks after suffering the injury.



In his autobiography, Stingley said simply of Madden, “I love that man.”

But few knew the depths of the friendship, which sustained until Stingley’s death in April 2007 and extends across the Madden and Stingley family trees. In a wonderful piece that will air at halftime of the Thanksgiving night matchup between the Seahawks and 49ers on NBC and Peacock, the bond is explored.


The story is told through interviews with Madden’s widow, Virginia, and his son, Mike, as well as Tina Stingley (Darryl’s widow), Derek Stingley Sr. (his son), and Derek Stingley Jr., a Houston Texans cornerback. The segment includes Derek Sr.’s visit to California last month to meet Virginia and Mike for the first time.


“He became like family, because of him always being there,” said Derek Sr. “There were times when no one was there, but John Madden showed up.”



Fred Gaudelli, the head of NBC’s NFL coverage, produced the piece along with David Picker and Rob Hyland. Gaudelli, who was Madden’s producer on “Monday Night Football,” said his friend kept the details of his connection to the Stingleys private.

“All the years I worked with Madden and then when we were friends afterwards, he never really wanted to talk about it,” said Gaudelli. “I tried to raise it a couple of times, but he didn’t want to talk about it. All he would do was express his frustration that the Patriots just left [Stingley] there [in the hospital].”

When Madden — whom the NFL began honoring during Thanksgiving week last year — died in December 2021, Mike’s eulogy mentioned the Stingleys.



“He’s talking about the relationship with the Stingley family and how the Stingleys spent some time at the house when they were kids, and I was like, ‘Wow, I’ve never heard that,’ " said Gaudelli.

Gaudelli called his agent, Sandy Montag, who had also represented Madden, and asked if the family might be willing to talk about it. Montag was initially skeptical, noting that John never really wanted to, but Montag reached out, and they were open to it.



“Mike had told him, ‘Everybody knows about my dad’s football exploits, broadcasting, but this is a side they don’t know about him,’ ” said Gaudelli.

Madden would make gestures both small and large through the years to be there for the Stingley family. When he was in Stingley’s hometown of Chicago for a broadcast, he would make sure to invite him to a game. Sometimes, he would just swing by to drop off the “Madden” NFL video game for the Stingley kids.



In the feature airing Thursday, Tina Stingley talks about visiting the Maddens in California years ago.

“He kept that relationship going, through all those years,” said Gaudelli. “John never forgot Darryl and his family. He was a truly caring guy.”



Chad Finn can be reached at chad.finn@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeChadFinn.

[-Deborah-]

The Panthers have fired coach Frank Reich.

[chemiclord]

"I need to cover my ass for picking the wrong QB, so I'm gonna pretend you've been out to sabotage Bryce." - Carolina's GM (inner thoughts)

[Mainevent]

Well, the word on the street is that Tepper was the driving force behind taking Young. I'm sure that word is coming from the GM and coaching staff's people trying to get the word out, but that doesn't mean it is inaccurate.

[wcfwtf]

Drafting a QB is a crapshoot. The other variable is front office and coaching.