Updated, 9:12 a.m. So this is what it’s come to in the NFL in 2020: As I pressed the button to finish writing this column at 3:32 a.m. Monday, with one of the intriguing games of the early season due to kick off early this evening in Kansas City, we wait for a couple of [more]
Can the pantheon of great young quarterbacks fit another one? Wilson, Mahomes, Jackson, Prescott, Watson. Maybe Newton. In the first three weeks of this season, Josh Allen, the bucking bronco from Wyoming, is kicking down the damn door to greatness and forcing his way into that pantheon. Through three weeks of his third NFL season, [more]
So we all know about the weird Russell Wilson’s-never-gotten-an-MVP-vote story. (It’s not an outrage, by the way, which I’ll explain.) But have you noticed something about the first two weeks of this strange NFL season, as it pertains to Wilson? He’s playing like he’s trying to put the MVP case so far out of reach [more]
Football 2020: Weird and glorious and argumentative and ticked-at-the-officials and fulfilling and full of stories and the same old Browns and Trubisky the Magnificent and Brady down and Cam up and did I mention weird? Average attendance in the 13 NFL Week 1 games Sunday in Pandemic America: 1,085. Attendance in Foxboro: zero. “This felt [more]
“Do you believe,” I asked Roger Goodell on the eve of the most unpredictable NFL season of our time, “that you may have to play a season where every team does not play a full 16-game schedule?” “I don’t know,” Goodell said Friday afternoon. “We’re prepared if we have to do that. We’ve obviously gone [more]
NASHVILLE — The Ryan Tannehill story has not gotten enough run. Everything about it is amazing. The Arthur Smith story has not gotten enough run. Everything about it is amazing. To acquire Tannehill 17 months ago cost Tennessee 1 percent of its 2019 salary cap and the 135th pick in the 2020 draft. He ended [more]
KANSAS CITY — Royals outfielder Whit Merrifield, the reigning American League hits leader, is a buddy of Patrick Mahomes. When Mahomes bought a chunk of the baseball team that plays across the parking lot from Arrowhead Stadium, the new owner sent his All-Star employee a cute text. So it seemed logical to ask Merrifield (via [more]
TAMPA — At mid-morning Friday, anticipation was heavy in the air at Bucs training camp, as heavy as the stifling humidity. Heat index: exactly 100 degrees. GM Jason Licht, in a Bucs-orange mask dotted with team logos, walked near (not within six feet) a camp visitor and said quietly: “The defense has been secretly scouting [more]
Opening night: one month from tonight. The Houston Texans likely will be significant underdogs at Super Bowl champion Kansas City, and rightfully so. But the important thing in 2020 is something else, on the weekend we passed 5 million documented COVID-19 cases as a country. It’s actually whether Houston-Kansas City, and the 268 NFL games [more]
Lamar Jackson did not watch the Super Bowl. The game was on his home turf in south Florida for the first time in 10 years, and Jackson loves football, but he couldn’t bring himself to watch. Not the biggest surprise, really; players who think they should be playing in the game often don’t watch it—just [more]
When the deal to open training camps on time got done Friday, a call was organized for all the football people, coaches and GMs, in the NFL. Super Bowl champion coach Andy Reid was asked to speak. He’s become a sort of United Nations secretary general, a bridge to all constituencies—speaking to union reps, advising [more]
EAGAN, Minn. — The head coach lost his parking space. COVID-19 casualty. There’s a 40-foot BioReference Laboratories trailer in space 136 in the Minnesota Vikings’ players/coaches parking lot just outside the entry where every essential Vikings employee will arrive to work this year. The trailer has four COVID testing bays, with certified testing agents ready [more]
Texans safety Michael Thomas steps in for Peter King this week to lay out why Colin Kaepernick should be playing in the NFL, what’s next for social justice and the league and more. [more]
Peter King is on vacation until July 20, and he lined up some guest writers to fill his Monday spot on Football Morning in America. Today, it’s Kim Pegula, president and co-owner (with husband Terry Pegula) of the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Sabres. Previous guest columns: Michael MacCambridge (June 15) • Front-Line Workers (June 22) • Joe [more]
Peter King is on vacation until July 20, and he lined up some guest writers to fill his Monday spot on Football Morning in America. Today, it’s Joe Browne, the all-time longest-serving employee in the NFL office who was honored by the Pro Football Hall of Fame with the Ralph Hay Pioneer Award for his [more]