Raphael Stevens

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    Kyle Pitts Is Set to Be the N.F.L.’s Next Revelation at Tight End

    After he is drafted Thursday, Pitts is expected to join the N.F.L.’s top-shelf tight ends: Rob Gronkowski, George Kittle and Travis Kelce, big-bodied pass catchers who are coveted by contending teams.In the first quarter of a game against Kentucky last November, the University of Florida coaching staff called a favorite play for a favorite player.Kyle Pitts, the bruising and balletic tight end forecast to be among the earliest selections in N.F.L. draft this week, had returned to the field that day, three weeks after being concussed on an illegal hit in a game against Georgia. The Gators’ first drive of the Kentucky game had just begun gathering momentum, nudging to Florida’s 35-yard line, when Coach Dan Mullen dialed up a “snake” pattern — a route traditionally assigned to slight, fast-twitch receivers, not to players who check in at 6 foot 6 and 245 pounds, as Pitts does.“It’s an amazingly athletic route,” Tim Brewster, Florida’s tight ends coach, said. “Really good receivers can struggle with the route.”Pitts came off the left end of the line at full speed, tilted his shoulders toward the sideline and — so quickly that video of the play seems to skip a frame — veered back inside, leaving the cornerback who covered Pitts whirling his hips and grabbing at air. Quarterback Kyle Trask hit Pitts in stride, and he did the rest, opening up to a gliding sprint. The play went for a 65-yard touchdown, the first of three for Pitts that day.“The kid freakin’ ripped it,” Brewster said. “I mean, it was absolutely gorgeous.”Pitts’s game, a blend of rare physicality and even rarer grace, tends to inspire such double-barreled language. He is poised to join the ranks of the N.F.L.’s top-shelf tight ends, players like Rob Gronkowski, George Kittle and Travis Kelce, who have given recent Super Bowl contenders offensive options that are nearly impossible to cover.Pitts and those other big-bodied pass catchers epitomize what N.F.L. teams seek in “unicorns” — parlance borrowed from a similar positional evolution in the N.B.A. These players not only excel at a given job description but also pair attributes long considered disparate. Pitts gets open like a small man and brings the ball down like a big one, high-jumping along the sideline or shoving through pairs of defenders to wrangle passes. He makes possible a new version of the sport.“It really is mismatches,” Mike Renner, a draft analyst for Pro Football Focus, said of modern offensive philosophy. “Offensive coordinators are realizing it’s not necessarily their scheme; it’s about getting the right guy on the right defender. You’re seeing more and more of that — those guys that have multiple skill sets are the ones that are more coveted.”Running backs who might once have been considered too small to carry the every-down load, such as the New Orleans Saints’ Alvin Kamara, have stepped to the position’s vanguard, catching passes almost as often as they take handoffs. Receivers who don’t fit the traditional profile — the Seattle Seahawks’ D.K. Metcalf was once thought to be too bulky to run effective routes — have become game breakers.Tight ends George Kittle (left) and Travis Kelce have helped transform the position with their combination of size, speed and balletic catches.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesJamie Squire/Getty ImagesNowhere has the shift been more pronounced than at the tight end position, once the province of dutiful blockers and complementary receiving targets. Kittle is the muscle of the San Francisco 49ers’ ground game, cracking into linebackers to clear space for outside runs, and the focal point of its aerial attack, amassing a team-high 1,053 yards during the 2019 season, which ended with the 49ers in the Super Bowl.Kansas City’s Kelce is a less renowned blocker but a bigger vertical threat; until late in the 2020 season, he led all N.F.L. players, not just tight ends, in total receiving yards. In trying to re-establish their championship bona fides, the New England Patriots added a pair of tight ends this off-season, Jonnu Smith and Hunter Henry, giving the team a chance to recreate the offensive confusion that made the pairing of Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez so successful in the early 2010s.To defend against such threats, “what you need is for someone like me to go play linebacker,” said Tony Gonzalez, the Hall of Fame tight end who in the 1990s and 2000s prefigured this age of rangy receiving threats. “But we don’t want to play linebacker; we want to score touchdowns.”At Florida’s pro-day workout for N.F.L. scouts in March, Pitts flashed the attributes that make him what Renner terms “a true modern tight end weapon,” registering a wingspan of nearly 7 feet and a 33½-inch vertical leap and running his 40-yard dash in 4.44 seconds — faster than some All-Pro wide receivers.Shortly thereafter, Pitts laid out professional aspirations that extend beyond going in the top five of this year’s draft, as many analysts predict he will: “Start at a high level and keep increasing every year and being able to do other things that other tight ends aren’t doing,” Pitts said. “I feel like I’ll be the best to ever do it.”When Pitts arrived in Gainesville in 2018 as a 17-year-old freshman, the challenge for Florida coaches lay in convincing him of all that his body could do. “It was just a learning process of him understanding how to play in his frame,” said Larry Scott, Pitts’s tight end coach for his first two years with the Gators and now the head coach at Howard University. Scott marveled at Pitts’s catch radius — his ability to adjust to passes close to his shoe tops or high above his helmet — and taught him when to outrun defenders and when to invite contact and create leverage.“Just because a guy’s on you doesn’t mean you’re not open,” Scott told Pitts. “You’re always open.”Pitts caught just three passes his freshman season, but he built a habit of studying the N.F.L. players who will soon become his peers. He watched film of Kittle and of Las Vegas Raiders tight end Darren Waller, eyeing nuances of footwork and positioning. He drilled line-of-scrimmage releases and blocking technique incessantly.Larry Scott, Florida’s tight ends coach for Pitts’s first two seasons, told his 6-foot-6, 245-pound charge, “Just because a guy’s on you doesn’t mean you’re not open. You’re always open.”Sam Craft/Associated PressAt Archbishop Wood High School outside Philadelphia, Pitts had played defense as well as tight end and receiver, once registering a pair of interceptions in a state championship game, and he grew adept at reading complex coverages and knowing how to settle into open zones.The practice-field and film-room work helped Pitts produce the finest season by a tight end in recent college football history in 2020. Lining up wherever he was needed in Florida’s formations, Pitts caught 43 passes for 770 yards and a dozen touchdowns — despite missing the better part of three regular-season games because of the concussion and a fourth with an unrelated injury, and also sitting out the Gators’ Cotton Bowl game to prepare for the draft.His 17.9 yards per reception eclipsed the 15.9-yard average of DeVonta Smith, the Alabama receiver who won the 2020 Heisman Trophy; Pitts finished 10th in the voting, higher than any other tight end in more than four decades.Even top draft prospects tend to get typecast, as talent evaluators look for skills that can reliably transfer to the next level. Coaches talk about Pitts, though, in the language not of production but of possibility.After Pitts’s pro-day workout, Mullen described a straightforward on-field calculus: If Pitts has a corner on him, he will come inside and play through contact. If he is matched up with a linebacker, he will flex out and win with speed and route running. “What are you going to do at that point?” Mullen asked.Unlike his predecessors, Pitts won’t take the league by surprise. In 2013, the Chiefs nabbed Kelce in the third round of the draft after he amassed fewer than 900 receiving yards over three seasons at the University of Cincinnati. Coming out of Iowa with just 22 catches his senior year, Kittle was not picked until the fifth round in 2017. But college offenses have become more elaborate in recent years to showcase talent like Pitts’s, on the rare occasions it comes along.“You saw him run routes like a wide receiver, you saw him block in line, you saw him run the seam, you saw him make contested catches,” Renner said. “You’ve seen everything that the guy is going to do in the N.F.L.”In the draft, N.F.L. teams divulge the skills they most value; one can trace the trends of the game in the ever-increasing glut of quarterbacks taken at the top of the first round and in the falling out of favor by running backs. If Pitts is the highest non-passer selected, he could be the first tight end chosen in the top five since Riley Odoms in 1972. (Atlanta, holding the fourth pick, may look to Pitts to replicate, and expand, Gonzalez’s role there.)“He’s pretty much an unsolvable problem,” Brewster said.Asked what Pitts might become in his N.F.L. prime, Brewster thought back to the game against Georgia, which was ranked fifth in the country at the time. Before getting hurt, Pitts was the locus of the action, throwing blocks at the burly Bulldogs front and catching two passes for 59 yards. The first was a vaulting, pirouetting snag over the sideline, the second a sheer outmuscling of his defender in the end zone. He did enough, over a quarter and a half of play, to dig No. 8 Florida out of an early two-score hole; the Gators would go on to an upset win, 44-28.“He was on a whole ’nother level,” Brewster said. “There was everybody on the field — you had Florida and you had Georgia. And above the field, you had Kyle Pitts.” More

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    Urban Meyer’s Renewal in Jacksonville

    They filed into the first few rows of TIAA Bank Field, 120 staffers from the Jacksonville Jaguars’ business side, sitting there like so many college boosters and alumni Urban Meyer had addressed over the years. He gathered them there on a sunny afternoon in early March, nearly two months after being hired to revive one of the N.F.L.’s more forlorn franchises, to deliver a speech similar in spirit and substance to ones he’d given as the coach at college behemoths like Ohio State and Florida.After retiring from coaching in 2018, Meyer, 56, had a cushy television gig and a secure legacy as one of the best, and most polarizing, coaches in recent college football history. But he was still unfulfilled. He wanted to coach again, and despite the N.F.L.’s history of conquering celebrated college coaches trying to recreate their glory in the pros, Meyer determined his best fit was with the worst team of the last decade.Tabbed to try to reorient this wayward organization, Meyer conjured his past as an ace recruiter. Wearing white shorts and a gray Jaguars pullover, he urged the assembled employees to “own it,” a call to action he also used at the Jan. 15 news conference introducing him as Jacksonville’s new coach. He implored them to take pride in every facet of the organization, right down to the team logo.“This, right now, is not the most respected logo in the N.F.L. — it’s not,” Meyer said that day. “If in three years it still doesn’t mean much, then you’re probably looking for a new coach and we’ve not been very successful. That’s how personally I’m taking it.”Meyer’s rah-rah message underscored that his competitive drive to own anything and everything about a program, a compulsion that produced three national titles — two at Florida and one at Ohio State — remained fierce, even after a two-year layoff.That self-imposed time away from coaching came after a string of scandals and stress- and health-related issues helped cause him to resign or retire three times in his career. Meyer’s college teams were 187-32 (.854) while, at Florida, there were 31 arrests of players during his tenure, and, at Ohio State, he protected a longtime assistant with a history of domestic abuse.As he weighed whether to re-enter a culture that glorifies workaholics, Meyer did not choose any of the more visible (and venerable) franchises that also wanted him. Instead he pursued the top job in one of the N.F.L.’s smallest markets with a team that perennially has to quell speculation that it will move to London.Jacksonville is poised on Thursday to select Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, one of the best quarterback prospects in decades, with the first overall pick in the N.F.L. draft. After years of disarray, the Jaguars, as desperate for an identity as they are for victories, have arrived at the most critical juncture since their inception in 1995, an inflection point that the team owner Shahid Khan called “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in football.” The union between Meyer and Khan is meant to make good on it.“Now, we get a fresh start,” Khan said in an interview in mid-April. “Everybody gets that this isn’t rebuilding. I mean, we need to win now.”Jaguars fans at a Bold City Brigade tailgate during the 2019 season. The 2020 season, the worst in franchise history, yielded its most promising moment: the right to draft Trevor Lawrence. Dustin HegedusSince Khan’s first season as owner in 2012, no team has a worse record than the Jaguars (39-105), who until last year’s 1-15 debacle somehow never managed to be quite putrid enough to earn the No. 1 draft pick. They have outspent every other team in free agency over that period, but recorded only one winning season, in 2017, during which they lost the A.F.C. title game at New England. Since that apex, Jacksonville is 12-36.John Caputo, the president of Bold City Brigade, a Jaguars supporters club with chapters around the country and overseas, likes to say that fair-weather Jacksonville fans cannot exist. For years, they have endured taunts about their team, their city, their own perceived apathy, and still they fork over discretionary income to watch bad football in person.The darkness lifted in December when the worst season in franchise history yielded its most promising moment: The winless Jets beat the Los Angeles Rams in Week 15, vaulting one-win Jacksonville ahead on tiebreakers for the right to draft Lawrence. “The last month of the season was the most fun we’ve had since 2017 even though we were setting a franchise record for being terrible,” Caputo said. “Because of the Trevor watch.”As the Jets edged Los Angeles, Caputo sat, riveted, at a bar near his home in Jacksonville Beach. Patrons chanted, “J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets!” Afraid the Jets would lose if he left, Caputo stayed until the end.“For the last 10 years all we want is for the Jaguars to win, but they lose,” Caputo said in a video call. “And so now we’re actually cheering for them to lose, which was kind of liberating.”His friend Pat Donnell, the Brigade’s vice president, chimed in: “And they didn’t let us down.”In light of the team’s rebuilding fortune, fans are rallying to newfound ambitions. Since Meyer arrived, deposits for season tickets have poured in so fast — and from so many new customers — that the Jaguars hired 20 new sales representatives. Traffic on the team’s website and social media accounts has soared, with much of it coming from locations outside Florida, including the Midwest, where Meyer last coached.Coach Urban Meyer, far right, watched Trevor Lawrence, foreground, work out at Clemson’s pro day in February.David Platt/Clemson Athletics, via USA Today Sports, via ReutersA bonanza of fan-designed apparel has cropped up. “Urban Renewal” merchandise is for sale along with T-shirts blaring “Hope,” beneath Lawrence’s photo, a nod to the popular Shepard Fairey-designed poster for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.Scores of Jaguars fans contributed $9.04, a homage to Jacksonville’s area code, and bought Lawrence and his new wife, Marissa, a $299.95 toaster from their wedding registry. The fans’ gifts, combined with $20,000 Lawrence said he’d chip in and other donations, added up to more than $54,000 that will be given to charities. “Thanks again, we hope to be a part of your community soon,” Lawrence responded on Twitter.Lawrence’s pending arrival has reinvigorated a franchise that has tried and failed to find a quarterback to outshine Mark Brunell, who started eight playoff games for Jacksonville in the late 1990s. But Meyer’s hiring has given the Jaguars immediate credibility as a team that might also responsibly manage a talented star’s rise.Khan and Meyer had chatted at a few functions over the years, but it wasn’t until Khan bumped into Meyer at an invitation-only N.F.L. party before the Super Bowl in February 2020 in Miami Gardens, Fla., that they shared an extended conversation. As they discussed each other’s backgrounds, Khan found that Meyer’s leadership traits were similar to those he’d acquired immigrating to the United States from Pakistan at age 16 and becoming a global auto parts magnate: relentless ambition, a hands-on temperament, trust in his staff.Though Meyer fielded interest from other teams, he was drawn in by Khan’s offer to remake the franchise in his image. If he succeeds, Meyer can become only the fourth coach to win both a national college championship and a Super Bowl, after Jimmy Johnson, Barry Switzer and Pete Carroll.“If you know Urban, I mean, he doesn’t do much on quick decisions or on a whim,” said Florida Coach Dan Mullen, a close friend and former assistant of Meyer’s. “Everything he does is extremely well thought out with a very detailed plan of why he would do it.”Prepping for coaching interviews, Meyer had canvassed his former players in the N.F.L. and contacted, among others, Johnson to learn how he rebuilt the Dallas Cowboys three decades ago after leaving the University of Miami.The conversations with Khan moved swiftly, and Meyer called his decision to accept the job — and the bounty of benefits that accompanied it, from the weather to the lack of state income tax to Jacksonville’s swell of Florida Gators fans — an easy one.“They got the first pick, a chance to start fresh, start with some salary-cap advantages,” Meyer said in an interview. “Really, if you look at the team, there’s some very good core players here.”Khan, after having experimented (and failed) with various front office power-sharing models, reworked the organizational hierarchy to give Meyer maximum leeway and a big role in the general manager search.“This, right now, is not the most respected logo in the N.F.L. — it’s not,” Meyer said in an address to team personnel, vowing to change that.Jacksonville JaguarsN.F.L. owners have long been fascinated with innovative or triumphant college coaches, and although some flourished at the pro level, many, including Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier, struggled to adapt. In the N.F.L., recruiting prowess is neutralized. Motivational tactics that might work with 19- and 20-year-olds might not work on grown men. Roster limitations and the salary cap, intended to foster parity, wrest control from control freaks. So can injuries and meddlesome owners.Spurrier was 56, same as Meyer now, when he — regrettably, he says — rushed into accepting a head coaching job in Washington, where he came to learn that the owner, Daniel Snyder, would be rather involved in personnel matters. In their first year together, in 2002, Snyder pushed Spurrier against his objections to play the rookie quarterback Patrick Ramsey, and the next year released the second-stringer Danny Wuerffel, who played for Spurrier at Florida. Unable to pick even his backup, Spurrier later told his wife, Jerri, that he’d be done after that season.“I was offered a bunch of money, and I did not use an agent, and I wasn’t probably as careful as getting things in writing as I should have,” Spurrier said. “I did a poor job also, and I’ll admit to that. But the situation ran me out.”Neither Spurrier nor Saban — nor any of their college brethren, really — inherited a situation quite as favorable as Meyer’s in Jacksonville, where he can develop a franchise quarterback while continuing to stockpile talent with four other 2021 draft selections in the top 65.Khan’s words might teem with optimism, but the Jaguars are still going to lose — more often, perhaps, than Meyer, whose worst season as a college head coach was 8-5, ever has. Meyer’s ability to cope with defeat may determine his longevity in the N.F.L.“That’s the first thing I talked to him about when he took the job,” Mullen said. “I mean, ‘How are you going to handle that?’ Ten-and-six is a great year, and I don’t know if he would ever view 10-6 as a great year.”Meyer had far more success than the last two N.F.L. hires plucked from the college ranks, Matt Rhule (hired by the Panthers) and Kliff Kingsbury (Cardinals), but he recognizes that he must adapt on a number of fronts.Already he seemed to misjudge the extent of the backlash generated by the hiring of a strength coach, Chris Doyle, who left Iowa’s staff after several current and former players said he had promoted a culture of bullying and racism. Within hours of the Fritz Pollard Alliance’s condemning the decision, calling it “simply unacceptable,” Doyle resigned.Recruiting players is one of Meyer’s strengths, but unlike in college, where he often had several face-to-face conversations with potential players, he didn’t speak with any prospective free agents until after they signed. The Jaguars signed more than a dozen free agents, including several veterans who played for Meyer and his coaches, like running back Carlos Hyde, who said it was a “no-brainer” to rejoin him.“We’ve been lucky,” Meyer said. “A lot of guys are here training. But we haven’t had a team meeting yet. In college, you probably would have had 50 by now.”But as he is fast learning, Meyer is not in college anymore. More

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    A Minneapolis High School Football Team and Its Coach Move On

    Charles Adams, a former police officer, and the Minneapolis North team are warily moving forward after the Derek Chauvin verdict offered a rebuke to one police killing in their community.Third-degree murder. Guilty.Second-degree murder. Guilty.Second-degree manslaughter. Guilty.As he heard a judge hand down verdicts at the Derek Chauvin murder trial last week, Charles Adams, a high school football coach and former Minneapolis cop, did not celebrate. There is no reviving George Floyd, Chauvin’s victim, and much to change in the culture of law enforcement.Adams couldn’t stop thinking and worrying about his team, the Polars of Minneapolis North.“The streets of my city don’t need more unrest,” he recalled thinking, as we spoke last week. “And my players, they don’t need more violence. What they need is relief from all the pressure they are constantly under.”Adams, 40, has a unique view of that pressure.Known as a pillar of the city’s economically depressed, predominantly Black north side, he is one of Minnesota’s best high school football coaches, responsible for turning a moribund team into a perennial power and state champion.He also served 20 years on the Minneapolis police force, a Black cop working the neighborhoods in which he was raised and following the footsteps of his father, a precinct chief who has served nearly four decades on the M.P.D.Just like his father, Adams made it a point to work with residents instead of lording power over them. As I chronicled in a column last October, he has always been focused on helping his community’s youth.“With the verdicts done, people need to know what it’s been like for kids who’ve grown up in this city like the players on my team,” he said. “They’ve lived through so much trauma.”And not just over the past year of the coronavirus pandemic. Adams said all of his players were well aware of the long string of deadly police shootings of Black men that have racked Minneapolis throughout their adolescence, even beyond Floyd in 2020.There was Jamar Clark, shot to death by the police blocks from Minneapolis North in 2015.And Philando Castile, shot to death by the police in a nearby suburb in 2016.And Daunte Wright, shot to death this month by a suburban police officer who is said to have thought her gun was a Taser.Those killings and the long history of tension between law enforcement and Minneapolis’s Black community have given the Polars an understandable wariness of the police. The team’s tight bond with Adams and his assistant coaches, many of whom are Black police officers, allows the players to heed their coaches’ advice on how to act when confronted by cops.North football players lined up to walk to the stadium for their first home game of the season in October 2020.Tim Gruber for The New York Times“For us, it’s kind of like we are always in a pickle,” Tae-Zhan Gilchrist, 17, an offensive lineman on the team, said when we spoke after the Chauvin trial. “We got to watch out for the crime in our neighborhood but avoid the police, too. Everywhere you go, there is always this tension. Even though you might be smiling and having a good time, danger and worry are always in the back of your head.”Gilchrist paused.“It’s heartbreaking,” he said, “but it is life. There are certain things in life you can’t avoid.”Every player I’ve talked to from Minneapolis North’s football team over the last year has expressed similar sentiments.The players also told me how their team has been a refuge.“The way the coaches care about us and understand what we’re going through, being with the team is like therapy for us,” said Azrie Yeager, 15, a freshman who plays on the offensive line. “After a long day of hearing about all the troubles, it’s been great to know that there’s a place where I can open up. It just clears the mind.”When I spoke to the team last October, it was early in a season truncated by the pandemic. North had been favored to make it to the state small school championship game for the second year in a row. It finished with a 6-1 record and a section title, but high school officials canceled the state tournament, cutting off any championship run.Adams and his team didn’t complain about the decision, though. At least they’d had a football season. Through fall and winter, Minneapolis North held classes virtually. Businesses and community centers closed. In the aftermath of Floyd’s murder, with so much of life shut down and so much despair and tension in the air, violence spiked. It touched the team in a searing way: A player from the 2016 state champion team came home from college and was shot to death near the high school.The players needed an outlet. For many of them, football was the only option.“Where would we have been without football this year?” Adams wondered aloud as we spoke. “In serious trouble. We needed it this year more than ever.”He needed the ballast as much as his players did. After 20 years, Adams left the M.P.D. last October for a better-paying job as director of security for the Minnesota Twins. He wouldn’t have taken the position if the Twins had said he would not be given the time to keep coaching North.Being a Minneapolis police officer is still deep in his bones, though. Adams said that as the Chauvin trial wore on and the verdict neared, it was hard for him to let go of the fear that if Chauvin received anything less than guilty on all charges destructive protests would again occur.Adams shuddered at the memory of the night last year, not long after Floyd’s murder, when protest raged in Minneapolis, and he dressed in riot gear to head to the front lines.That evening he spoke to his players over videoconference to tell them he loved them and that he wasn’t sure he’d live through the night to see them again.The memory, he said, caused something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder.Deep pain. The coach knows what that’s like.So do his players.With the Chauvin trial over, Adams and his team are warily moving forward.“There’s still so much to be done and we have to continue to be aware and fight for our rights,” Gilchrist said. “The trial is over, but every morning here you still wake up and wonder, ‘What terrible thing is going to happen next?’” More

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    After Trevor Lawrence, Pick Another Quarterback

    With no shortage of teams looking for a passer to build around, Zach Wilson, Justin Fields, Trey Lance and Mac Jones figure to shape the draft’s top 10 picks.There is no drama as to who will be the No. 1 pick in this year’s N.F.L. draft. The only question had been which team would get the chance to draft Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence. The Jacksonville Jaguars secured that honor by way of the Jets’ seemingly not understanding that they were supposed to keep losing.So with the knowledge that Lawrence, a Peyton Manning-like sure thing of a quarterback prospect, is going to Jacksonville to be paired with Coach Urban Meyer in a college-meets-pros marriage, here is a look at the other four quarterbacks likely to go in the top 10 of this year’s draft, which will begin on Thursday with the first round held in Cleveland.Zach Wilson: The GunslingerZach Wilson’s devil-may-care attitude and prolific numbers endeared him to college fans and to the Jets, which pick second in Thursday’s N.F.L. draft.Steve Conner/Associated PressCollege: Brigham Young (two-plus seasons as a starter)Size: 6 feet 2 inches, 214 pounds2020 Passing: 3,692 yards, 33 touchdowns, 3 interceptions, 196.4 rating2020 Rushing: 254 yards, 10 touchdownsThe reason Wilson is considered the consensus No. 2 pick: Aaron Rodgers. The reason the Jets, who hold the selection, might want to show at least a little caution: Johnny Manziel. Wilson has a strong and accurate arm, improvises well outside the pocket and has off-the-charts confidence — all the charisma and competitiveness that Rodgers and Manziel have in common.But that approach yielded different outcomes for those two gunslingers in the pros, where Rodgers’s size and off-field steadiness were among the traits that made him more successful. Wilson’s daring did not work all that well against top competition in college, where he went 2-4 against top-25 teams, and it’s an open question whether it will work against disciplined N.F.L. defenses.Wilson, 21, missed games in 2019 for surgeries on his shoulder and thumb, but if his 2020 season was a true reflection of his skill, the team drafting Wilson is getting a truly special quarterback.Outlook: The Jets traded Sam Darnold to the Carolina Panthers in early April and it is considered nearly certain that they are set on Wilson as his replacement.Justin Fields: The Dual ThreatJustin Fields led Ohio State’s romp over Clemson in the Sugar Bowl. He and Alabama’s Mac Jones are both rumored to be the target of the San Francisco 49ers, which traded up to the No. 3 pick.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesCollege: Ohio State, transferred from Georgia (two seasons as a full-time starter)Size: 6-2, 228 pounds2020 Passing: 2,100 yards, 22 touchdowns, 6 interceptions, 175.6 rating2020 Rushing: 383 yards, 5 touchdownsFields grew up a few towns over from Lawrence in Georgia and has been in his shadow at each step along the way, especially after Lawrence won the national championship as a freshman. Fields transferred from Georgia to Ohio State for his sophomore season in 2019 and was a Heisman Trophy finalist (Lawrence didn’t make the cut). Lawrence and Clemson beat Fields and Ohio State in that season’s College Football Playoff semifinal, but Fields got his revenge the next season as the Buckeyes trounced the Tigers in another semifinal matchup.Now Fields’s easiest comparison is to the Cowboys’ Dak Prescott, another big-bodied pocket passer who can surprise with his running if there’s an opening. There is no question that Fields regressed in 2020 compared to his breakout 2019 season, when he threw for 3,273 yards with 41 touchdowns against three interceptions. His labored release and tendency to hold onto the ball resulted in his taking sacks, but his arm strength and versatility, along with his strong effort against Clemson in a pressure-packed game, have turned the volume down on any questions. So did his head-on handling of publicly detailing his epilepsy diagnosis, which he has managed since his childhood.Outlook: While not in the mix for the top two picks, Fields is the overwhelming favorite to be the third quarterback drafted Thursday, as his accuracy, his arm strength and his ability to run all make him an ideal fit for Coach Kyle Shanahan’s system in San Francisco.Trey Lance: The Unproven StarAfter a breakout sophomore season, North Dakota State’s Trey Lance played in only one game in 2020.Bruce Kluckhohn/Associated PressCollege: North Dakota State (one season as a full-time starter)Size: 6-4, 226 pounds2019 Passing: 2,786 yards, 28 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, 180.6 rating2019 Rushing: 1,100 yards, 14 touchdownsLance hasn’t lost a football game since Nov. 10, 2017, when his Marshall (Minn.) Tigers were topped by the South St. Paul Packers in Minnesota’s high school state quarterfinals. He hasn’t thrown an interception in a game since Oct. 13, 2017. After throwing only one pass at North Dakota State in his freshman year, he won the Walter Payton Award as the top player in the Football Championship Subdivision and led North Dakota State to an undefeated championship season in his lone year as a starter.N.D.S.U. played its only fall game on Oct. 3, 2020, before Lance declared for the draft, meaning six months have gone by since anyone has seen him throw a competitive pass. Little matter for the right team. Lance is known as a film room addict with atypical passing mechanics abetted by a quick-enough release. His array of devastating play fakes, combined with his speed and power as a runner, give Lance a skill set that should translate at the pro level.Outlook: Seemingly assured of being a top-10 pick, Lance is the fourth quarterback off the board in most mock drafts. His back story of people doubting his ability to handle the quarterback position is reminiscent of Lamar Jackson, his style of play is a little closer to Josh Allen, and Carson Wentz has proved that a player from N.D.S.U.’s program can succeed in the N.F.L. That is good company to keep.Mac Jones: The Question MarkMac Jones quarterbacked Alabama to a 13-0 record and the national championship with an offense that boasted an embarrassment of riches at every position.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesCollege: Alabama (one season as a full-time starter)Size: 6-3, 217 pounds2020 Passing: 4,500 yards, 41 touchdowns, 4 interceptions, 203.1 rating2020 Rushing: 14 yards, 1 touchdownsHaving come to Alabama in the same recruiting class as Tua Tagovailoa, and with Jalen Hurts entrenched at starter upon his arrival, it took a while before Jones got onto the field. It didn’t take Jones long to prove himself. As a fill-in starter in the 2019 season he led the Crimson Tide to a 2020 Citrus Bowl win, and in his lone season as the full-time starter he set a Football Bowl Subdivision single-season record for completion percentage with an eye-popping 77.4 percent.Jones’s accuracy, his strong-enough arm and his ability to move around in the pocket (even if he almost never runs) make him an attractive prospect. There are questions, though, about the frantic nature of his play, his slow release, how he will improvise when his first option isn’t available and how much of his success was a result of his team having been comically loaded at every position on offense.Outlook: Jones, 22, has been linked in some reports to San Francisco, which traded up to the No. 3 pick in late March. Shanahan watched his second pro day workout, as did New England’s Bill Belichick. The Patriots (who have the No. 15 pick) would have to trade into the top 10 to grab Jones before the quarterback-coveting Panthers (No. 8) and Broncos (No. 9) are on the clock. More

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    English Soccer Announces Social Media Boycott to Protest Online Abuse

    The boycott, set to begin on Friday, is the most direct effort yet by a sport to pressure social media companies like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to take action against abuse.English soccer officials said Saturday that they would conduct a social media blackout next weekend to protest “the ongoing and sustained discriminatory abuse received online by players and many others connected to football.”The boycott has the support of a coalition of groups, including the Premier League, the richest and most high profile soccer league in the world, but also England’s soccer federation; the top two professional tiers of men’s and women’s soccer; referees; the country’s players union, and others.The action is the most direct effort yet by a sport to pressure social media companies like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to take action against online abuse, and comes after a season in which players, clubs, team executives, referees, female commentators and others have been the targets of abuse.The social media boycott also follows a week of fury and street protests against top clubs and their owners who tried — and failed — to create a breakaway European Super League that would have walled them off from many of the structures, including the pay system, that have sustained soccer for a century. At each of the protests, there were vitriolic demands for the owners of teams to sell.Cases of harassment have been well documented online. In February, Arsenal striker Eddie Nketiah posted a picture on Twitter with the caption “Working with a smile!”The tweet was met with racist abuse from a Twitter user who told Nketiah, who is Black, to leave the club. Twitter responded by permanently suspending the user’s account, Sky Sports reported.Karen Carney, a former footballer and current sports pundit, deleted her Twitter account after she received waves of online abuse.Peter Cziborra/Action Images via ReutersSuch harassment has been instigated not only by fans, but also by club social media accounts. In December, the commentator and former soccer player Karen Carney deleted her Twitter account after she received a wave of online abuse.After a 5-0 win by Leeds United over West Brom, Carney on Amazon Prime Video Sport wondered whether Leeds would “blow up at the end of the season.” A clip of her commentary was shared by the Leeds team Twitter account, which invited a slew of hateful messages toward Carney.Many on Twitter defended her and criticized the team’s social media folks, including the former Leeds captain Rio Ferdinand, who called for the tweet to be deleted.Bethany England, a forward for Chelsea, called out Leeds’ social media team for “atrocious behaviour.”“Cyber bullying a female pundit and opening her up to mass online abuse for DOING HER JOB AND HAVING HER OPINION!” England said.In February, the top executives of the Football Association — English soccer’s governing body — the Premier League, and other organizations wrote an open letter to Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, and Mark Zuckerberg, the C.E.O. of Facebook, calling for the leaders to put an end to “the levels of vicious, offensive abuse” coming from users on their platforms.“The reality is your platforms remain havens for abuse,” the soccer executives wrote. “Your inaction has created the belief in the minds of the anonymous perpetrators that they are beyond reach.”In the past, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter have taken steps, such as banning users temporarily or permanently, but the issues of online abuse have persisted.In a news release announcing the social media boycott, which will take place from Friday afternoon through Monday, English soccer called on the United Kingdom to “bring in strong legislation to make social media companies more accountable for what happens on their platforms.”In the statement, Richard Masters, the Premier League’s chief executive, said the league would continue to push social media companies to make changes to prevent online abuse.“Racist behaviour of any form is unacceptable and the appalling abuse we are seeing players receive on social media platforms cannot be allowed to continue,” Masters said. “Football is a diverse sport, which brings together communities and cultures from all backgrounds and this diversity makes the competition stronger.”It’s not the first time soccer has tried to shine a light on racism.Players and coaches in the Premier League and other top leagues, for example, have been kneeling before kickoffs all season in a show of support for the Black Lives Matter movement — at the encouragement of the league’s team captains and with the support of league officials.But some players and even entire teams, frustrated with a lack of concrete progress on racial issues and feeling the gesture has become more performative than productive, have recently stopped taking part.Crystal Palace forward Wilfried Zaha said he had come to see the kneeling as “degrading,” and said he would stop doing it and would focus his efforts elsewhere. Brentford, a team in England’s second-tier Championship, in February stopped taking a knee before games. While the players said in a statement that they still supported antiracism efforts, they said, “We believe we can use our time and energies to promote racial equality in other ways.”The social-media blackout will take place while an entire slate of games in multiple leagues will be played, including one between Manchester United and Liverpool, the Premier League’s defending champion.Edleen John, director of international relations for the Football Association, said English soccer will not stop pressing for change after next weekend.“It’s simply unacceptable that people across English football and society more broadly continue to be subjected to discriminatory abuse online on a daily basis, with no real-world consequences for perpetrators,” John said. “Social media companies need to be held accountable if they continue to fall short of their moral and social responsibilities to address this endemic problem.” More

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    The Short, Unhappy Life of Europe’s Super League

    A timeline of the Super League, which was designed to reshape European soccer and instead rained only grief on its 12 clubs in the two days before it imploded.The 48-hour history of European soccer’s long-discussed, hastily arranged, belatedly announced, much-derided and quickly abandoned Super League was short on chapters but long on drama.The battle for control of soccer’s billion-dollar economy — a fight that Rory Smith of The New York Times referred to on Friday as The Sunday-Tuesday War — began with rumors of a blockbuster new league, then burst into the open with talk of lies, deceptions and betrayals; prompted street protests in several countries; and produced threats of official government action and sporting excommunication in many others.And then it all ended, only two days after the news broke, with a cascade of humbling reversals by half of its member clubs.If you weren’t paying attention, you missed quite a bit. Here’s a recap.The president of European soccer’s governing body, Aleksander Ceferin, was working to thwart the Super League even before it was announced.Yves Herman/ReutersThe PlanThe idea of a superleague of top European soccer teams had been discussed for decades, but never with the detail and the concrete plans that emerged on Sunday morning.After months of secret talks, the breakaway teams — which included some of the biggest, richest and best-known teams in world sports — confirmed that they were forming a new league, unmoored from soccer’s century-old league systems and Continental organizational structure. They declared that the soccer economy no longer worked for them, and that their new project would create a shower of riches that would reach every level of the game.European officials, national leagues and the clubs left out — not to mention fans, who smelled greed as the prime motivation — recoiled.The league they have agreed to form — an alliance of top clubs closer in concept to closed leagues like the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. than soccer’s current model — would bring about the most significant restructuring of elite European soccer since the 1950s, and could herald the largest transfer of wealth to a small set of teams in modern sports history.Read more from Tariq Panja, who broke the news.Real Madrid’s Florentino Pérez, the first, and likely last, chairman of the Super League.Javier Soriano/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHigh StakesRory Smith noted not only what soccer would lose with the play by the big clubs, but also why fans (and sponsors, and TV broadcasters, and the news media) bore some of the blame for the idea’s coming to fruition.And it is here that those who hope to benefit from shutting the door, from fixing the rules of engagement, cannot take all of the blame. Many of those who spent Sunday spitting fury at the greed of the conspirators have been complicit, over the last 30 years or so, in making this — or something very much like it — the only conclusion possible.That is true of the Premier League, which waved in money from anyone and everyone who could afford to buy a club, which took great pride in its “ownership neutral” approach, which never stopped to ask whether any of it was good for the game. It is true of the Spanish authorities, who made it clear that the rules did not really apply to Real Madrid or Barcelona.It is true, perhaps most of all, of UEFA, which has grown fat and rich on the proceeds of the Champions League, from bowing to the demands of its most powerful constituent clubs, giving more and more power away just to keep the show on the road. It is true, even, of the rest of us in soccer’s thrall — the news media and the commentariat and the fans — who celebrated the multimillion-dollar transfers and the massive television deals and the conspicuous consumption of money and did not stop to ask where it would all go.A wall in Barcelona. Outrage among fans was not limited to England.Nacho Doce/ReutersThe Fight BeginsBy Monday morning, the battle to stop the Super League was on. Governments and heads of state weighed in. So did FIFA, which often views itself as an independent nation. Secret intelligence was shared, frantic phone calls were made, and shouts of “Judas!” and other insults, like “snakes” and “liars,” added to the tension.By first light, the fight was on. In a letter written by the breakaway teams, they warned soccer’s authorities that they had taken legal action to prevent any efforts to block their project.A few hours later, Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, used his first public appearance to denounce the group behind the plan and vowed to take stern action if it did not reverse course. He raised the possibility of barring players on the participating teams from events like the World Cup and other tournaments, and threatened to banish the rebel clubs from their domestic leagues. Sunday’s announcement, he said, amounted to “spitting in football fans’ faces.”How was the Super League different from the Champions League? Let us explain.Pool photo by David RamosWait: What’s a Super League?Still not sure what the Super League even was? We can catch you up really fast right here.Rival players mocked Super League opponents with shirts and social media posts.Clive Brunskill/Agence France-Presse, via Pool/Afp Via Getty ImagesThe Tide TurnsWith prominent players, respected coaches, everyday fans, and sponsors and television networks adding their voices to the opposition, Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, was persuaded to pull out the biggest threat in the arsenal of those fighting for the status quo: In a speech at the congress of European soccer’s governing body, he reiterated FIFA’s threat to ban any players who took part in an outside competition from the World Cup:“If some elect to go their own way then they must live with the consequences of their choice, they are responsible for their choice,” the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, said in an address to European soccer leaders at their congress in Montreux, Switzerland. “Concretely this means, either you are in, or you are out. You cannot be half in and half out. This has to be absolutely clear.”By Tuesday, even Liverpool’s dogs had turned against the Super League.Jon Super/Associated PressIt All Falls ApartTuesday was a blur. First, whispers, then street protests, and then news: Manchester City was out. Chelsea was looking for ways out of its contract. Arsenal, Spurs and Manchester United walked away. Liverpool followed.Forty-eight hours after it began, it was all over.The denouement was a stunning implosion for a multibillion-dollar proposal that had prompted howls of outrage from nearly every corner of the sport since it was announced on Sunday, and the culmination of a frantic 48 hours of arguments, threats and intrigue at the highest levels of world soccer.Chelsea fans took to the streets on Tuesday to protest the club’s Super League membership. Within hours, the club had dropped out.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat Were They Thinking?How, Rory Smith asked, could the founders have been so blind? How could they not have seen this coming? Where was the people backing this idea? And do we ever have to take their threats seriously again?By Monday, less than a day into their brave new world, they had lost the governments, and they had lost the European Union. Not long after, they lost the television networks that, ultimately, would have had to pay for the whole thing.Then they lost the players and the managers, the stars of the show they were hoping to sell around the globe so that they might grow fatter still on the profits: first Ander Herrera and James Milner and Pep Guardiola and Luke Shaw and then, in a matter of hours, dozens more, whole squads of players, breaking cover and coming out in opposition to the plan.By Tuesday, there was scarcely anyone they had not lost. They had lost Eric Cantona. They had lost the royal family. They had even lost the luxury watchmakers, and without the luxury watchmakers, there was nothing left to lose but themselves.Street art in Italy titled “Il Golpe Fallito,” or “The Failed Coup.”Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Tick TockThe back story, reported in rich detail by Tariq Panja, was even richer, though. How Barcelona tipped everyone’s hand. How Paris St.-Germain and Bayern — after receiving offers to join — turned down the league and instead helped to kill it. How an olive branch tucked into a speech in Switzerland gave England’s clubs a way out.The full, definitive story reads like a movie thriller:Still, the drumbeat of rumors continued, and Ceferin felt he needed to be sure. So as he slid into the front seat of his Audi Q8 on Saturday to start the eight-hour drive from his home in Ljubljana to his office in Switzerland, he decided to get to the bottom of things. He placed a call to Agnelli. His friend did not pick up.Ceferin — the godfather to Agnelli’s youngest child — texted the Italian’s wife and asked if she might get the Juventus president to call him urgently. He was three hours into his journey when his cellphone rang. Breezily, Agnelli reassured Ceferin, again, that everything was fine.Ceferin suggested they issue a joint communiqué that would put the issue to rest. Agnelli agreed. Ceferin drafted a statement from the car and sent it to Agnelli. An hour later, Agnelli asked for time to send back an amended version. Hours passed. The men traded more calls. Eventually, the Italian told Ceferin he needed another 30 minutes.And then Agnelli turned off his phone.Would Real Madrid fans accept a few lean years as their club cut costs? Would the fans of any Super League club? Would you?Jose Breton/Associated PressWhat Now?By Friday, even the bankers were apologizing. But soccer’s problems were not over.The plan hatched by Europe’s elite clubs was wrong on almost every level, but its architects got one thing right: Soccer’s economy, as it stands, does not work.Now it is gone. It is possible that, by the end of this weekend, as either Manchester City or Tottenham celebrates winning the League Cup, as Bayern Munich inches ever closer to yet another Bundesliga title, as Inter Milan closes in on a Serie A crown, all of this will feel like a fever dream. On the surface, it will be behind us. The insurrection will have been defeated, condemned to the past. Everything will be back to normal.But that is an illusion, because though the Super League never had a chance to play a game — it barely had time to build out a website — it may yet prove the catalyst to the salvation of soccer. It has, after all, stripped the elite of their leverage. They played their cards, and the whole thing became a bluff. Now, for the first time in years, power resides in the collective strength of the game’s lesser lights.They will need to use it. More

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    What Happened to Europe's Soccer Super League?

    A timeline of the Super League, which was designed to reshape European soccer and instead rained only grief on its 12 clubs in the two days before it imploded.The 48-hour history of European soccer’s long-discussed, hastily arranged, belatedly announced, much-derided and quickly abandoned Super League was short on chapters but long on drama.The battle for control of soccer’s billion-dollar economy — a fight that Rory Smith of The New York Times referred to on Friday as The Sunday-Tuesday War — began with rumors of a blockbuster new league, then burst into the open with talk of lies, deceptions and betrayals; prompted street protests in several countries; and produced threats of official government action and sporting excommunication in many others.And then it all ended, only two days after the news broke, with a cascade of humbling reversals by half of its member clubs.If you weren’t paying attention, you missed quite a bit. Here’s a recap.The president of European soccer’s governing body, Aleksander Ceferin, was working to thwart the Super League even before it was announced.Yves Herman/ReutersThe PlanThe idea of a superleague of top European soccer teams had been discussed for decades, but never with the detail and the concrete plans that emerged on Sunday morning.After months of secret talks, the breakaway teams — which included some of the biggest, richest and best-known teams in world sports — confirmed that they were forming a new league, unmoored from soccer’s century-old league systems and Continental organizational structure. They declared that the soccer economy no longer worked for them, and that their new project would create a shower of riches that would reach every level of the game.European officials, national leagues and the clubs left out — not to mention fans, who smelled greed as the prime motivation — recoiled.The league they have agreed to form — an alliance of top clubs closer in concept to closed leagues like the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. than soccer’s current model — would bring about the most significant restructuring of elite European soccer since the 1950s, and could herald the largest transfer of wealth to a small set of teams in modern sports history.Read more from Tariq Panja, who broke the news.Real Madrid’s Florentino Pérez, the first, and likely last, chairman of the Super League.Javier Soriano/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHigh StakesRory Smith noted not only what soccer would lose with the play by the big clubs, but also why fans (and sponsors, and TV broadcasters, and the news media) bore some of the blame for the idea’s coming to fruition.And it is here that those who hope to benefit from shutting the door, from fixing the rules of engagement, cannot take all of the blame. Many of those who spent Sunday spitting fury at the greed of the conspirators have been complicit, over the last 30 years or so, in making this — or something very much like it — the only conclusion possible.That is true of the Premier League, which waved in money from anyone and everyone who could afford to buy a club, which took great pride in its “ownership neutral” approach, which never stopped to ask whether any of it was good for the game. It is true of the Spanish authorities, who made it clear that the rules did not really apply to Real Madrid or Barcelona.It is true, perhaps most of all, of UEFA, which has grown fat and rich on the proceeds of the Champions League, from bowing to the demands of its most powerful constituent clubs, giving more and more power away just to keep the show on the road. It is true, even, of the rest of us in soccer’s thrall — the news media and the commentariat and the fans — who celebrated the multimillion-dollar transfers and the massive television deals and the conspicuous consumption of money and did not stop to ask where it would all go.A wall in Barcelona. Outrage among fans was not limited to England.Nacho Doce/ReutersThe Fight BeginsBy Monday morning, the battle to stop the Super League was on. Governments and heads of state weighed in. So did FIFA, which often views itself as an independent nation. Secret intelligence was shared, frantic phone calls were made, and shouts of “Judas!” and other insults, like “snakes” and “liars,” added to the tension.By first light, the fight was on. In a letter written by the breakaway teams, they warned soccer’s authorities that they had taken legal action to prevent any efforts to block their project.A few hours later, Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, used his first public appearance to denounce the group behind the plan and vowed to take stern action if it did not reverse course. He raised the possibility of barring players on the participating teams from events like the World Cup and other tournaments, and threatened to banish the rebel clubs from their domestic leagues. Sunday’s announcement, he said, amounted to “spitting in football fans’ faces.”How was the Super League different from the Champions League? Let us explain.Pool photo by David RamosWait: What’s a Super League?Still not sure what the Super League even was? We can catch you up really fast right here.Rival players mocked Super League opponents with shirts and social media posts.Clive Brunskill/Agence France-Presse, via Pool/Afp Via Getty ImagesThe Tide TurnsWith prominent players, respected coaches, everyday fans, and sponsors and television networks adding their voices to the opposition, Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, was persuaded to pull out the biggest threat in the arsenal of those fighting for the status quo: In a speech at the congress of European soccer’s governing body, he reiterated FIFA’s threat to ban any players who took part in an outside competition from the World Cup:“If some elect to go their own way then they must live with the consequences of their choice, they are responsible for their choice,” the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, said in an address to European soccer leaders at their congress in Montreux, Switzerland. “Concretely this means, either you are in, or you are out. You cannot be half in and half out. This has to be absolutely clear.”By Tuesday, even Liverpool’s dogs had turned against the Super League.Jon Super/Associated PressIt All Falls ApartTuesday was a blur. First, whispers, then street protests, and then news: Manchester City was out. Chelsea was looking for ways out of its contract. Arsenal, Spurs and Manchester United walked away. Liverpool followed.Forty-eight hours after it began, it was all over.The denouement was a stunning implosion for a multibillion-dollar proposal that had prompted howls of outrage from nearly every corner of the sport since it was announced on Sunday, and the culmination of a frantic 48 hours of arguments, threats and intrigue at the highest levels of world soccer.Chelsea fans took to the streets on Tuesday to protest the club’s Super League membership. Within hours, the club had dropped out.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat Were They Thinking?How, Rory Smith asked, could the founders have been so blind? How could they not have seen this coming? Where was the people backing this idea? And do we ever have to take their threats seriously again?By Monday, less than a day into their brave new world, they had lost the governments, and they had lost the European Union. Not long after, they lost the television networks that, ultimately, would have had to pay for the whole thing.Then they lost the players and the managers, the stars of the show they were hoping to sell around the globe so that they might grow fatter still on the profits: first Ander Herrera and James Milner and Pep Guardiola and Luke Shaw and then, in a matter of hours, dozens more, whole squads of players, breaking cover and coming out in opposition to the plan.By Tuesday, there was scarcely anyone they had not lost. They had lost Eric Cantona. They had lost the royal family. They had even lost the luxury watchmakers, and without the luxury watchmakers, there was nothing left to lose but themselves.Street art in Italy titled “Il Golpe Fallito,” or “The Failed Coup.”Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Tick TockThe back story, reported in rich detail by Tariq Panja, was even richer, though. How Barcelona tipped everyone’s hand. How Paris St.-Germain and Bayern — after receiving offers to join — turned down the league and instead helped to kill it. How an olive branch tucked into a speech in Switzerland gave England’s clubs a way out.The full, definitive story reads like a movie thriller:Still, the drumbeat of rumors continued, and Ceferin felt he needed to be sure. So as he slid into the front seat of his Audi Q8 on Saturday to start the eight-hour drive from his home in Ljubljana to his office in Switzerland, he decided to get to the bottom of things. He placed a call to Agnelli. His friend did not pick up.Ceferin — the godfather to Agnelli’s youngest child — texted the Italian’s wife and asked if she might get the Juventus president to call him urgently. He was three hours into his journey when his cellphone rang. Breezily, Agnelli reassured Ceferin, again, that everything was fine.Ceferin suggested they issue a joint communiqué that would put the issue to rest. Agnelli agreed. Ceferin drafted a statement from the car and sent it to Agnelli. An hour later, Agnelli asked for time to send back an amended version. Hours passed. The men traded more calls. Eventually, the Italian told Ceferin he needed another 30 minutes.And then Agnelli turned off his phone.Would Real Madrid fans accept a few lean years as their club cut costs? Would the fans of any Super League club? Would you?Jose Breton/Associated PressWhat Now?By Friday, even the bankers were apologizing. But soccer’s problems were not over.The plan hatched by Europe’s elite clubs was wrong on almost every level, but its architects got one thing right: Soccer’s economy, as it stands, does not work.Now it is gone. It is possible that, by the end of this weekend, as either Manchester City or Tottenham celebrates winning the League Cup, as Bayern Munich inches ever closer to yet another Bundesliga title, as Inter Milan closes in on a Serie A crown, all of this will feel like a fever dream. On the surface, it will be behind us. The insurrection will have been defeated, condemned to the past. Everything will be back to normal.But that is an illusion, because though the Super League never had a chance to play a game — it barely had time to build out a website — it may yet prove the catalyst to the salvation of soccer. It has, after all, stripped the elite of their leverage. They played their cards, and the whole thing became a bluff. Now, for the first time in years, power resides in the collective strength of the game’s lesser lights.They will need to use it. More

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    JPMorgan Apologizes for Its Role in Super League

    The bank that was to provide billions of dollars in financing for a breakaway European soccer league said it “misjudged” how fans would react.JPMorgan Chase apologized on Friday for its role in arranging billions of dollars in financing for a breakaway European soccer league, admitting in a statement that it had “misjudged” how the project would be viewed by fans.JPMorgan Chase had pledged about $4 billion to underwrite the new league, but the American investment bank did not end up issuing it or losing any money: The league collapsed only 48 hours after it was announced, after more than half of its 12 founding clubs changed their minds and announced they would not take part.Like the 12 clubs involved in the breakaway group — which included European giants like Real Madrid and Barcelona, Manchester United and Liverpool, Juventus and A.C. Milan — JPMorgan had come under intense criticism from fans and others merely for participating in the plan.Designed as a 20-team league with 15 permanent members, the Super League would have severely cut in to the revenues of dozens of national leagues, imperiled the finances and values of the hundreds of European clubs who were left out, and upended the structures that have underpinned European soccer for a century — all while funneling billions to a few elite teams.In a corporate statement rare for its contrition and self-criticism, JPMorgan admitted it had been a mistake to finance the proposal without considering its effects on others.“We clearly misjudged how this deal would be viewed by the wider football community and how it might impact them in the future,” a company spokesman said. “We will learn from this.”But in an interview with Bloomberg TV, the bank’s co-president, Daniel E. Pinto, also sought to distance JPMorgan from the blowback that is still buffeting the clubs.“We arranged a loan for a client,” Pinto said. “It’s not our place to decide what is the optimal way for football to operate in Europe and the U.K.”“We were expecting this to be emotional, we were expecting people to have different opinions,” Pinto added, “and that is what is happening.”Top debt financing executives at the bank had been involved with the group for months, trying to put in place the equivalent of a mortgage that would underwrite the start of the new competition, which organizers hoped to pay down with one of the richest television deals in sports history.Instead, the majority of the Super League’s members pulled out within 48 hours of its creation.JPMorgan was not the only powerful institution to offer an apology for its involvement. The majority of the English teams, some of the most popular in world soccer, issued humbling explanations for their decisions to join the failed project. But it was sight of billionaire Liverpool owner John W. Henry, an infrequent public speaker, taking personal responsibility for the fiasco that brought home how catastrophic the endeavor had been.“I’m sorry, and I alone am responsible for the unnecessary negativity brought forward over the past couple of days; it’s something I won’t forget,” Henry said in a video posted on Liverpool’s website. In it, he apologized not only to the club’s fans, but also to the team’s players, to the club’s manager, Jürgen Klopp, and to other top team executives who were not consulted on the club’s decision.Joel Glazer, the billionaire co-chairman of Manchester United, also issued rare public comments. “Although the wounds are raw and I understand that it will take time for the scars to heal, I am personally committed to rebuilding trust with our fans and learning from the message you delivered with such conviction,” Glazer wrote in a letter to fans that acknowledged the club had made a mess of things.“We got it wrong,” Glazer wrote, “and we want to show that we can put things right.”No one connected with the project was able to escape being contaminated by the criticism, including the bank that financed it. JPMorgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, found himself under attack on social media and from within banking circles.“How on Earth did such an experienced C.E.O. that is so good at connecting with the real world, how on Earth did they let themselves let this proposal get to where it got?” a former Goldman Sachs economist, Jim O’Neill, told Bloomberg.The criticism was particularly sharp for Dimon, who in recent years has been eager to position the bank as a good social and corporate citizen.But even as it sustained an immense reputational hit, JPMorgan has been able to walk away from the deal without suffering financial losses.That might not be true for the teams that walked away after signing contracts that bound the 12 founding members to the breakaway concept.The Super League is not, in fact, officially dead. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus are still signed up, and continue to strategize.One reason they may not have walked away could be financial. The contracts signed by the 12 founding members included penalty clauses worth millions of dollars. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus, whose mounting debts and fears of rising costs led them into the project in the first place, could be positioned — by staying in — to extract tens of millions of dollars in punishments out of their former partners for walking away from it. More