What an outlier this week was. So many crummy, non-competitive games. Average margin of victory Sunday: 16.5 points. Just three one-score games in the early, late and night windows. Really just one outstanding game (Dallas-New England), then a bunch of interesting stories: • Win one for Bisaccia! The Raiders, post-Gruden (still seems weird to type [more]
There was a play Sunday night in the rain in Kansas City that encapsulated the 2021 version of Josh Allen perfectly. If you stayed up till midnight, you saw it. Bills up 31-20 at the Chiefs’ 24-yard line, driving for insurance, seven minutes left in the game. Allen took off running up the middle, his [more]
FOXBORO, Mass. — Just before he left Gillette Stadium this morning, a few minutes before 1, Tom Brady ducked into the foyer of his team’s locker room, away from the madding crowd of former teammates, coaches, Patriots employees and curious media in the concourse he’d walked 10,000 times. “I’m tired,” Brady told me in a [more]
Now that was one crazy Sunday. But aren’t they all? Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes lost NFL games on the same day for the first time ever. Two of the nuttiest special-teams plays of all time happened 90 minutes apart—longest field goal ever (with a shtoink included for extra drama), and a tie for the [more]
After enduring a horrible loss last Monday in Las Vegas, and landing in Baltimore at 7 a.m. Tuesday, and adjusting to more devastating injuries, and having a short week of prep for the toughest team on the schedule, and taking a 36-35 lead late in the Sunday night game against mighty Kansas City, the Ravens [more]
In many ways, Sunday was the biggest game of Jameis Winston’s athletic career. At 27, he has plenty of NFL life left, but only if he cuts out the turnovers that were so ruinous in his five Tampa seasons. He didn’t try to make the day too big, but three hours before the Saints played [more]
Quarterbacks and Covid. That’s what I found myself thinking about trying to pick the Super Bowl LVI participants. First a word about Covid, which you’re all tired of hearing about, I’m sure. I am too. But one coach of a playoff contender told me after dismissing his players for a long weekend—most teams are returning [more]
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — When you report at NFL training camps, interviewing people is often a balancing act, with 80 or so players and all the coaches coming off the field at nearly the same time. Last Monday morning around 11:15, the Ravens’ PR staff and I had a four-man weave going as the team [more]
TAMPA, Fla. — The story about the Bucs this summer is whether they can be the first NFL team in 16 years to win consecutive Super Bowls. The quarterback back then, for Super Bowls 38 and 39, was Tom Brady. The quarterback trying to win a second straight title now, almost a generation later, sweating [more]
GREEN BAY, Wis. — One word to describe Aaron Rodgers right now, at this moment, at 37, after five months of tumult, entering a Packers season he had serious doubts that he’d be part of a month ago: Zen. You thought I might say blunt, or vindictive, or, if using a compound word, told-you-so. No. [more]
ST. JOSEPH, Mo.—Patrick Mahomes, with a throbbing turf toe on his left foot and assorted bruises from the beating he’d just taken from the Bucs, was dispirited walking off the field after the 31-9 Super Bowl loss six months ago. For the first time in 54 NFL starts, Mahomes hadn’t led his team to a [more]
IRVINE, Calif. — There was a telling moment in Rams practice Saturday, though barely perceptible. The best defensive player in football, defensive tackle Aaron Donald, walked up to Matthew Stafford, mid-practice, and hugged him. This is not done, a defensive player hugging the quarterback, during a competitive period of practice. But here it was, under [more]
There are three teams, at least, in the NFL as of this morning that are in the upper 90s in percent of players vaccinated, with zero unvaccinated coaches and key team staff members. In this day and age, that seems incredible, to have maybe one to four holdouts on a 90-man roster, given where we [more]
Peter King is on vacation until July 26, and he lined up some guest writers to fill his Monday spot on Football Morning in America. Today, it’s Mike Tirico, a veteran sportscaster who has 30 years of experience in front of the camera and has hosted some of sports’ biggest events from the Indianapolis 500 to [more]
Peter King is on vacation until July 26, and he lined up some guest writers to fill his Monday spot on Football Morning in America. Today, Peter returns briefly to introduce a special column. Recently, Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt surprised Terez Paylor’s parents and his fiancée with the news that the late sports journalist [more]