Before you start perusing my 2022 NFL power rankings (my annual rating of the teams 1 to 32, after free agency and trades and the draft), a bit of a warning. I’m not great at this.Now that’s a great sales tool to get people to read this column. But I want to be honest as [more]
Tom Brady coming out of retirement and the Russell Wilson trade and the explosion of wide receiver salaries and Kansas City trading Tyreek Hill and one quarterback picked in the top 70 draft picks and the insane coverage of the release of the schedule. And new Drew Brees drama, just in the past few hours. [more]
In the wake of the NFL’s 87th player selection meeting, catching up on the stories that resonate a week later …“We all wear the scars,” Rich Eisen said, speaking for New York Jets fans across the universe. “The Buttfumble scar, the fake-spike scar, and the NFL Draft scar. Or scars.”1980: Lam Jones drafted ahead of [more]
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — “We’re on the clock,” Ravens GM Eric DeCosta said to the 36 scouts, coaches, analytics staffers and club officials in the Baltimore draft room at 12:16 p.m. Saturday. Day three, round four of the 2022 NFL Draft was four picks deep, with the 110th overall selection upcoming. “We’ll wait till there’s three [more]
Truest statement about the 2022 NFL Draft, from NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah: “If this draft was an emoji, it’d be 🤷♂️.”I have Bernhard Reimann and Arnold Ebiketie going in the first round, and Malik Willis not. I don’t have a quarterback going till the 20th pick. I have Kayvon Thibodeaux, the first pick in mockland [more]
It’s a different year in the draft. It’s too early to say who’s going where, and too early to know who’s trading with whom, because most teams are in the final days of stacking their boards and placing values on players. But there are two things in the NFL’s 87th draft that stand out, from conversations [more]
Bill Belichick turns 70 on Saturday, with no end in sight to his transcendent coaching tenure in New England. It’s so hard today to figure out how big a deal that is, because modern life has changed what age means.Most of the greatest coaches of all time, in all sports, have been gone long before [more]
It’s the first Monday in April. You know what that means. In the spring, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of the draft.That is one bad mauling of a poem. But we’re 24 days before round one, and I have not given you Kiperians any red meat on the biggest moment of the NFL’s [more]
Add this to the craziest, newsiest NFL offseason in modern league history: Bruce Arians, who coached the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl LV victory less than 14 months ago, is stepping aside to take a front-office role with the team effective immediately.Tampa Bay will install Arians’ preferred successor, defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, as the new [more]
We could be looking at one of the all-time sleepy NFL meetings if the one thing that matters this week—the proposal to make overtime fair—doesn’t pass when it comes to a vote in Palm Beach, Fla.I canvassed a few people at the meetings over the weekend. Some are sure the vote to mandate at least [more]
I am not going to write about the difference Deshaun Watson makes in the Cleveland Browns as a football team. There will be time for that—five years. Five obscenely expensive years, in which the Browns will pay a question mark $2.7 million per game to play football.I am going to write about the Browns selling [more]
This was already The Week That Shook The NFL To The Core. A player was suspended for a year for gambling on NFL games. Two hours apart, Aaron Rodgers stayed and Russell Wilson left. Carson Wentz was traded to his third team in 14 months. Deshaun Watson took a giant step toward being traded. Khalil [more]
INDIANAPOLIS — “I don’t know why I did it,” Aidan Hutchinson said Saturday night after his NFL Scouting Combine workout, sitting in his room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, a few long spirals from Lucas Oil Stadium.“I just DM’d Mel Kiper.”Hutchinson was recalling a spring day in Ann Arbor in his sophomore year, May 2020. He [more]
On Saturday evening, I downloaded NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah’s brain for one hour. I’d have loved four. The week-long NFL Scouting Combine starts Tuesday in Indianapolis, and as Jeremiah walked me through the good, the bad, and the meh, five truths became evident:1. Bad QB draft. Only once in the 21 drafts of [more]
For two straight years, in the last game of the season, cameras caught Aaron Donald crying after a game and telecast the images to tens of millions. He’s not much of a crier, really. But for him, opposite ends of his football life almost required tears.“Last year,” Donald told me, “the thing about the Green [more]