Saturday will be the 50th start of Jimmy Garoppolo’s San Francisco career. He will be at Lambeau Field, trying to beat the once and probably future MVP in the second weekend of the NFL playoffs.Whatever happens, it’ll be hard to beat this 49er’s 49th start for drama, for lows, for highs, for triumph, for agonizing [more]
I don’t root for outcomes. I root for stories. While watching the end of Pittsburgh-Baltimore, I thought: After the last seven days, with the gauzy Ben Roethlisberger Monday night goodbye, and Carson Wentz spitting the bit and the Colts losing a gimme to Jacksonville, and opening the playoff door for the Steelers, and the Steelers [more]
In the locker room when one of the most dramatic games of this or any NFL season had ended, Tampa Bay coach Bruce Arians told his players—all except the most famous former one, Antonio Brown—how proud he was of them.“You’re either with us or against us,” Arians said after the Bucs outscored the Jets 18-0 [more]
NFL 2021, in Omicronland:Last Friday, a robotic NFL Films camera in the Indianapolis Colts quarterback room caught the unvarnished real of this NFL season. NFL Films for the first time is doing an in-season “Hard Knocks” show on HBO every Wednesday night, and this debut series is with the Colts. Last Friday, a few hours [more]
It’s crazy to top this column with this #%&@#$ virus again, but I promise it will be brief.Nobody is clicking on this column to read about this pervasive, crazy, very mild variant of Covid-19. “I swear to you I’m not sick, at all,” said one of those players who has tested positive, and who is [more]
CINCINNATI — “That was a damn playoff game out there,” said George Kittle, still fired up in his John Lennon yellow-tinted sunglasses, in the tunnel of Paul Brown Stadium on Sunday night, an hour after Niners 26, Bengals 23. Overtime.“I mean, every game’s a playoff game these days, right?” he said.We’re in the final month of [more]
With the flightiness of NFL greatness (outside of New England), one of the sport’s oxymoronish phrases is “enduring rivalries.” There is only one that truly endures at the highest level of the game, year after year. Ray Lewis comes, Hines Ward goes. Billick/Cowher out, Harbaugh/Tomlin in. It never changes. The games I’ve covered in this [more]
When the calendar turns to December, we should know the lay of the land in the NFL, right? Of course.Take last year. After 12 weeks, the Steelers were 11-0, the clear number one team in the league. Tampa Bay, on a two-game losing streak with some internal grousing about the dysfunctional offense making the rumor [more]
There was still time for the Bills to come back Sunday in sleety Orchard Park, N.Y., down 24-7 to the Colts early in the third quarter. Indianapolis had the ball, first down at the Buffalo 31, and coach Frank Reich loved this play-action call, and he called it. Incomplete. Penalty. The Colts got pushed out [more]
The key for Patrick Mahomes to be Patrick Mahomes again? To not think the sky is falling.“The last few weeks,” Mahomes said after playing like Mahomes again Sunday night in Kansas City’s 41-14 rout of the reeling Raiders, “motivated me more to come in and work and practice even better. I mean, whenever you’re not [more]
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The consolation for the Raiders after stinking up the Meadowlands on Sunday? The NFL day was filled with good teams stinking on Sunday. Buffalo not scoring a touchdown against the Jaguars. Dallas getting smoked at home by Denver. (When I say “smoked,” I mean down-by-30 smoked.) Colt McCoy slapping around the Niners [more]
This is what I really love about the NFL: West Virginia Big 20, 85 Delta Go.I love it because it’s absolutely preposterous. Trevor Siemian, who hasn’t been an NFL starter for four years, throwing to Kevin White, who hasn’t caught an NFL pass in three years. Siemian, who is rarely asked to throw deep, throwing [more]
I know what I’d be thinking if I were either Mike Tomlin or John Harbaugh today.Uh-oh.The Bengals were competitive with Andy Dalton, but did the power teams of the AFC North ever really fear the Bengals of the past decade? No. How do you fear a team that never got out of the wild-card round [more]
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 that), [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]