BROOKLYN — In 2017 and 2018, when Colin Kaepernick couldn’t find a job because he kneeled in protest during the playing of the national anthem, the refrain inside the league office was clear: Teams are free to hire who they want. We can’t force anyone to sign Colin Kaepernick. This spring, the NFL was faced [more]
For late May, normally a slow time in the NFL, the league’s really busy. A couple of significant rules—adding a full-time Sky Judge to every officiating crew, and revolutionizing the onside kick—will come up for votes in a special videoconference session Thursday. The league last week began directing the opening of team facilities shuttered for [more]
Last month, Matt Rhule gave the speech he’d been preparing, one way or another, since he knew he wanted to be a football coach back in sixth grade, growing up in New York City. Rhule didn’t actually give the speech live, which of course he hoped to do, seeing as it would be the first [more]
Toward the end of a 20-minute telephone interview Saturday evening with America’s COVID-19 expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, I asked a question about testing, and about NFL teams playing football this fall. “Suppose,” I asked, “you test a team of 53 players on a Saturday night and four are positive. Is there a level at which—” [more]
So what’s next? The unknown is what’s next. And the unknowable. In the last month, I’ve tried to explain how different life is in the NFL is these days. A month ago, the NFL was getting used to working at home, with GMs and scouts fumbling with Zoom and stomaching the hard truth that they’d [more]
What the 2020 NFL Draft would have been like, Vegas style: Roger Goodell, from a luxe podium next to Caesar’s Palace on the Strip in Las Vegas, announces to the crowd of 750,000 and to America: “With the 24th pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, the New Orleans Saints select Cesar Ruiz, center, Michigan.” . [more]
I am, by nature, a hopeless optimist. (After you see my 2020 NFL Mock Draft 2020 below, you’d think the more apt description is hopeless masochist.) So I am glad the draft is going on despite the pandemic. It’s a pain for teams, of course, but competitively, it’s the same for everyone. The Chargers’ Tom [more]
Ten days till the strangest draft in NFL history kicks off, and there’s some interesting news coming later in the column. (For instance: Roger Goodell will announce the first-round picks from his basement in Westchester County, N.Y.) But for the first time this crazy spring, let’s focus on round one of the NFL draft rumors, [more]
The draft continues to be a moving target in plans by the NFL, but with the first round 17 days away, a very different 2020 NFL Draft is taking shape. What I know this morning: • Momentum is building for ESPN and NFL Network to do a combined draft telecast. Over the weekend I spoke with [more]
NFL life, March 30, 2020: THE DRAFT The other day, I was told that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell could kick off the 2020 NFL Draft in 24 days from a remote-controlled camera in his home in Bronxville, N.Y., a village 15 miles north of NFL headquarters in Manhattan. But, a source with knowledge of draft-logistics [more]
Sean Payton, coronavirus patient, self-quarantined in his house in New Orleans on Sunday night, ordered a cheesesteak for delivery from a favorite eatery. “I am blessed for many reasons,” the Saints coach said over the phone just after the food arrived. He sounded chipper. “Unfortunately, this disease hasn’t cost me my appetite.” The delivery people [more]
A week or so after the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks in 2001, New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani appealed to those who lived in the area to come back into New York to support the caving local economy. Go to Broadway shows, go to ballgames, eat in Manhattan restaurants. Live, people. Live! I lived in [more]
Something profound for football’s future will happen this week. The league’s 2,500 players (anyone who had a contract with any team for any part of the 2019 season is eligible to vote) will decide whether a controversial Collective Bargaining Agreement between the players and owners will pass muster. • If it’s approved, the league will [more]
INDIANAPOLIS — Four days in hallways, bars, restaurants, hotel rooms, hotel lobbies, Lucas Oil Stadium (and did I mention bars?) at the NFL Convention, also known as the NFL Scouting Combine, yielded 30 tidbits. Topics include: • The most impressive player in Indy • The best quote of the combine • Three guys who caught [more]
Too much happening for the last week of February. • The new-look, prime-time 2020 NFL Scouting Combine kicks off in Indianapolis. Will Joe throw? Won’t be surprised if Mr. Burrow doesn’t. • While prime college quarterbacks and receivers, and most NFL coaches and GMs, are meeting the press Tuesday in Indy, 32 NFL player reps [more]