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    Rangers, Celtic and the Perils of a Zero-Sum Game

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerOld Rivals, New Ideas and Why Some Clubs Are Reluctant to TryRangers and Celtic are so focused on beating one another that they may have lost sight of the future. In Brazil, two rivals enter the Copa Libertadores final toying with a new concept: coaching stability.Is it possible Rangers and Celtic are too tangled up in their rivalry for their own good?Credit…Russell Cheyne/ReutersJan. 29, 2021Updated 12:04 p.m. ETNobody wants to say it is over. Steven Gerrard, the Rangers manager, will not tempt fate. He will only believe the title is won, he has said, when the math says so. Neil Lennon, his counterpart at Celtic, similarly cannot concede defeat. His team, he has said, will keep going, keep fighting, while there is still some small glimmer of hope.But both must surely know that it is over, and has been for some time. It was over long before this last, toxic month, when Celtic staged a winter training break in Dubai in the middle of a pandemic and flew back into a coronavirus-infected storm.It was over before two Celtic players duly tested positive, before pretty much the whole first-team squad had to go into isolation, before criticism rained down on the club from the Scottish government and even its own fans. It was over before Lennon gave a startlingly bellicose news conference defending the trip only a few days after Celtic’s hierarchy had admitted it had been a mistake.All of that has served to foster a sense of crisis around Celtic, created an impression that the club was falling into disarray as its dream of a 10th straight league title disappeared, but the narrative does not quite match up to reality.Rangers has been clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership for some time, stretching further and further ahead of its great rival, the gap spooling and yawning until it became a chasm. Its lead currently stands at 23 points. Rangers needs to win only eight more games to be crowned Scottish champion again. Or, to put it another way: Rangers needs to win eight more games so that Celtic cannot be crowned Scottish champion again.It is hard to pinpoint, precisely, when the idea of Celtic’s winning 10 titles in a row was first touted as an ambition, or floated as a possibility. A mixture of instinct and memory suggests it was after the club had won three or four straight, in the early years of the last decade.It is easy, though, to see why it appealed. The power tussle between Rangers and Celtic — the twin, repelling poles of Scottish soccer — has long provided the driving animus in that country’s sporting conversation. With only occasional exceptions — particularly in the 1980s, when Hearts, Dundee United and Aberdeen all had their moment in the sun — the story of the former has felt like the story of the latter. Seasons turned on their head-to-head meetings. Trophies were a zero-sum game: the more won by one, the fewer by the other.Celtic has led Scotland in trophies, and confetti, for a decade.Credit…Russell Cheyne/ReutersIn 2012, though, the rivalry disappeared — if not as a sentiment, then certainly as an event. Rangers, after years of mismanagement, went into liquidation and was forced to start life again in Scotland’s semiprofessional fourth tier. Unmoored from its counterweight, Celtic effectively found itself in a league of its own, its financial firepower vastly superior to any of its putative rivals’, any challenge to its hegemony entirely theoretical.In lieu of an opponent, it set out to play against history. Celtic’s great team of the 1960s and 1970s had won nine league titles in a row. So, too, had the Rangers teams of the late 1980s and the 1990s. But nobody had ever made it to double figures. Celtic was in need of a target, and Scottish soccer in need of a plotline.And so, for the better part of the last decade, the quest for 10 in a row has consumed both sides of the Old Firm: for Celtic, the chance to outstrip its rival once and for all; for Rangers, an almost existential urgency to prevent it from happening.For several years, though, the achievement seemed inevitable. Even after it was restored to the top flight in 2015, Rangers was operating at such a vast financial disadvantage that the prospect of overhauling Celtic seemed fanciful. Under Brendan Rodgers and his successor, Lennon, Celtic completed the quadruple treble: winning all three of Scotland’s senior domestic competitions, four years in a row.And then, this season, it happened. Under Gerrard, now in his third season in his first managing job, Rangers has an air of invincibility. It has only conceded seven goals. At the same time, Celtic has all but collapsed. Though Lennon has pointed to the fact that his team has only lost twice in the league, he also has confessed that he does not know where his all-conquering players of the last few years “have gone.”Celtic has dreamed of 10 titles in a row for almost nine years. All of that work, all of that hope, has evaporated over the course of a few months. The race is over. The story is, too. And while one side of Glasgow will greet that with delight and the other with despair — happiness in soccer is a zero-sum game, too — that may be a good thing, for both teams.Steven Gerrard and Rangers can clinch the league as early as April.Credit…Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesScotland occupies a strange, outsize place in soccer’s landscape. By most measures, it is a small country: five and a half million people or so, roughly the same size as Slovakia, a little smaller than Bulgaria, half the size of Portugal.But partly because of its historical significance to the sport — it is the place that invented passing, inspired professionalism, produced some of the game’s most celebrated players, and for a considerable period of time quite likely possessed the best or second-best national team in the world — it does not judge itself like a small country.The fact, for example, that until it qualified for this summer’s postponed European Championship, Scotland had not been to a major tournament since 1998 was a source of the sort of embarrassment and disquiet that, in all likelihood, would not really happen in Slovakia (though, in fairness, Slovakia has been to major tournaments much more recently).The nature of the Old Firm, too — both the size and scope of its clubs, with their vast stadiums, global fan bases, rich histories and unyielding enmity — distorts the reality of Scottish soccer.What matters to Celtic and Rangers, at all times, is winning — to garland their own reputation and to dent that of their rival. It leads to a form of thinking in which tomorrow must necessarily be sacrificed for today, because losing today is unfathomable.That logic has been on full display as the thought of 10 in a row consumed both clubs. Celtic has failed to refresh its squad, fearful of the consequences of getting it wrong. Rangers has had to invest heavily, often in players in their peak years, in order to catch up as quickly as possible.But that approach is out of step with the most forward-thinking clubs in leagues of comparative size: places like Belgium, Denmark, Austria and, to an extent, even Portugal.There, even the most dominant clubs have accepted that they are no longer a destination, but a way-point on a journey. Teams like Club Bruges, Genk and Red Bull Salzburg may not have the history of the Glasgow clubs, but they are not without pride. Still, though, they have embraced the idea of being steppingstones and have made it work for them.They have worked to scour specific markets for players, offering them the chance to hone their craft in a Western European league before making the jump to one of the big five. They have focused almost exclusively on either recruiting or developing young players. In doing so, they have found not only domestic success but often European relevance, too.For fairness, this is a picture of Rangers celebrating.Credit…Mark Runnacles/Getty ImagesAnd this is a picture of Celtic celebrating.Credit…Russell Cheyne/ReutersThanks to the geographical and stylistic proximity of the Premier League — as well as their almost guaranteed places in European competition — Celtic and Rangers should be well-placed to do the same. Celtic, indeed, was the first point of arrival in Britain for the likes of Virgil van Dijk and Victor Wanyama.But the obsession with today, with outdoing each other, mitigates against it. Celtic has lost two of the stars of its academy to Bayern Munich in recent years; both should have been able to see a more viable pathway to first-team soccer in their homeland than at one of Europe’s superclubs.Though Celtic sold defender Jeremie Frimpong to Bayer Leverkusen this week, only three more of Lennon’s regulars are 23 or under. Only one, the French striker Odsonne Edouard, is likely to catch the eye of the Premier League. The Rangers squad is older still: Gerrard has fielded only one under-23 player, Ianis Hagi, regularly. His most salable asset is the controversial Colombian forward Alfredo Morelos.Rangers, of course, needs only to point at the league table to justify its approach, just as Celtic has done for the last nine years. But now it is over. There will be no 10 in a row. And as both teams ask themselves what comes next, they must determine whether it is enough to have eyes only for each other, or whether, perhaps, it is time to shift their horizons.Read This Before You Send That Angry NoteCan’t we all get along, at least in this newsletter?Credit…Russell Cheyne/ReutersTwo more Rangers-Celtic points before we move on:A NOTE ON NAMES Some Celtic fans, perhaps even a majority, reject the use of the term Old Firm. That was a rivalry, they say, between Celtic and Rangers, and it ended in 2012. The team that replaced Rangers, in their mind, is not that Rangers. It is just another team that plays in blue, in Glasgow, at Ibrox, called Rangers.ON THAT OTHER WORD From experience, the exact meaning and nature of the term liquidation, at least as it applies to the demise and revival of Rangers, is contested by Rangers fans. It is effectively impossible to write about this subject without transgressing some minor, semantic point of difference. When you don’t have a horse in the race, it is almost too much trouble to bother with.Now, onward.Long-Term Thinking and Short-Term RewardsFans turned out to see off Palmeiras as it departed for Saturday’s Copa Libertadores final.Credit…Amanda Perobelli/ReutersEven by the standards of Brazilian soccer managers, Cuca’s résumé is pretty remarkable. Not just for the successes it contains — half a dozen regional trophies, a national title, a Copa Libertadores — but for the sheer length of it. Cuca is 57. He has been coaching for 23 years. He is currently on his 27th job.All but one of those roles have been in his native Brazil. He has taken charge of Flamengo, Fluminense and Botafogo twice each. He coached Cruzeiro and Atlético Mineiro — fierce crosstown rivals in Belo Horizonte — back to back. Grêmio and São Paulo are on the list, too. In August, he was appointed coach of Santos for the third time.Five months later, he has steered the club to its first Copa Libertadores final since 2011. Whether or not Santos beats its local rival, Palmeiras — quick check; yep, Cuca has coached there too, twice — at the Maracanã on Saturday is unlikely to make much of a difference to Cuca’s long-term prospects. He led Atlético Mineiro to the biggest trophy in South American club soccer in July 2013. It was the first Copa Libertadores title in the club’s history. He was fired that December.Name a Brazilian club, and chances are good that Cuca has coached it.Credit…Pool photo by Alexandre SchneiderBrazilian soccer has been this way for some time, and its managers are accustomed to its volatility. Indeed, in some ways, both Cuca and his counterpart on Saturday — Abel Ferreira — are advertisements for its benefits. Ferreira has only been in his post since October. Cuca, by contrast, has almost had time to get comfortable: He rejoined Santos last August.And yet there are signs that this cycle may be changing. Palmeiras’s rationale for appointing Ferreira, a 42-year-old Portuguese, rather than plucking a name off Brazilian soccer’s endless carousel was that it wanted to build for the long term, rather than seek yet another short-term fix.In the context of Brazilian soccer, that makes sense. Each of Saturday’s finalists boasts a cadre of bright young things: Gabriel Menino, Gabriel Veron, Danilo and Patrick de Paula at Palmeiras; Kaio Jorge and the Venezuelan Yeferson Soteldo at Santos. What players at that stage of their development need is stability, a clear pathway, a long-term vision.Changing coaches is not in their interests, or those of their clubs, which rely on the transfer fees they can generate to compete. A second continental crown would be ample reward for Cuca’s long, circuitous journey. But so too would be the thought that it might buy him time to settle into a job for once.The Danger of Too Much, Too YoungAt Chelsea, all eyes have turned to Thomas Tuchel, who coached his first game Wednesday.Credit…Pool photo by Neil HallManagerial instability is, of course, not unique to Brazil. A few months after leading a young Chelsea team to a creditable fourth-place finish in the Premier League, and on the back of a career in which he became one of the greatest players in the club’s history, Frank Lampard was fired on Monday morning. His replacement, Thomas Tuchel, was in position by Tuesday afternoon.There has been an abundance of wailing and gnashing of teeth in England in the days since about what that might mean for the young players — Mason Mount, Reece James, Tammy Abraham and the rest — who flourished under Lampard’s aegis, but in truth those worries are misplaced.Tuchel, after all, has a background in youth coaching, and he made his name at Borussia Dortmund, a club that draws its very identity from the dynamism of youth. More tellingly, Tuchel took that approach with him to Paris St.-Germain, where he blooded a host of academy products in the superstar-infested first team.More interesting is what it means for Lampard. A few months ago, the Manchester City player Raheem Sterling questioned whether high-profile white players were more readily given opportunities in management than high-profile Black players.Lampard did not disagree with the general assertion, but resented the suggestion that he might be a living example of the phenomenon. “I certainly worked from the start of my career to try to get this opportunity,” he said. “And there’s a million things along the way that knock you, set you back, that you fight against.”At the time, it felt a little like Lampard had misunderstood the point — the difficulties he has faced are not equivalent to structural discrimination — and had also misinterpreted his own journey. His first managerial job was at Derby County, in the Championship. His second, a year later, was at Chelsea, in the Champions League. He had not, as a coach, experienced any setbacks at all.Now he has, and how he responds will be telling. It is fair to assume that he would have regarded Chelsea as the pinnacle of his managerial ambitions, the club he wanted to coach above all others. Will he now be prepared to work his way back up? How low will he be ready to drop to do so? And most of all: Will he be willing to undertake the journey without a clear destination in mind?CorrespondenceMesut Ozil’s move to Fenerbahce is a fresh start, not a swan song.Credit…Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA valid concern from Steve Marron over last week’s column on Mesut Ozil: “You make it sound like he’s retired,” he wrote. “Just because he’s not playing in the Premier League any more doesn’t mean he’s suddenly irrelevant.” No, of course not — and he may have a wonderful grandmother’s summer in Turkey — but it is legitimate, I think, to look back on his Arsenal career at this point, and ask whether he is remembered there as he should be.The issue of Inter Milan’s forthcoming rebranding, though, seemed to exercise more of you than expected — enough, in fact, that it is probably worth a more thorough investigation. The current crest “was designed by Giorgio Muggiani,” Gavin MacPhee, a man of exceptional musical taste, wrote. “It’s a testament to his craft that the crest, 113 years later, remains classic and modern at the same time. One wonders if Juventus’s ‘J’ will stand the test of time.”I think I know the answer to that. It is: “No.”Some looks never age: Ronaldo in 1998.Credit…Luca Bruno/Associated PressRomelu Lukaku on Tuesday.Credit…Matteo Bazzi/EPA, via ShutterstockCallum Tyler, meanwhile, wonders if the crest is not the most iconic component of Inter’s jersey. “To a certain generation, the Pirelli logo is arguably far more synonymous with Inter, its history, and personality. It’s been on the shirt since 1995. It has outlived four versions of the crest itself.”Pirelli, Inter’s sponsor for a generation, is likely to go in the rebranding, too — the Chinese company Evergrande is the favorite to replace it — and, weirdly, it will feel strange to see those blue-and-black stripes promoting something other than tires.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Reeling Texans Set to Hire David Culley as Head Coach

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyReeling Texans Set to Hire David Culley as Head CoachCulley, who is Black, is one of only two nonwhite N.F.L. head coaches hired in this cycle. His task: leading a Houston franchise that has alienated its star players.David Culley, 65, takes over the Houston Texans, whose 4-12 record last season almost belies the bleakness of its circumstances: limited draft capital, no elite receivers, a forbidding salary-cap situation. Credit…Scott Galvin/USA Today Sports, via ReutersJan. 28, 2021Updated 7:11 p.m. ETAs their tumultuous season bleeds into a tumultuous January, the Houston Texans have reportedly chosen the Baltimore Ravens assistant David Culley to help foster their revival, making him the first — and only — Black head coach hired after the 2020 regular season.Culley, 65, has a long and distinguished N.F.L. résumé, but this will be his first head coaching job at any level, and he joins the organization at a fraught time, as it strategizes how to proceed with disgruntled players, a star quarterback, Deshaun Watson, who is reportedly seeking a trade, and without many draft assets after trades gutted the supply.Culley, the Texans’ first full-time head coach of color since their inception in 2002, is the second head coach from a nonwhite background hired by a team this winter. Romeo Crennel, who is Black, had been interim head coach since October 2020 when the team fired Bill O’Brien, the coach and general manager, after starting the season 0-4. The Jets hired Robert Saleh, believed to be the league’s first Muslim Arab American head coach, earlier this month.The league, which has long been scrutinized for lacking diversity across its coaching positions, updated its interview processes last May, increasing the minimum number of interviews teams were required to conduct with external head coaching candidates from nonwhite backgrounds from one to two. But the guideline, the Rooney Rule, does not require teams to hire coaches of color, and the league will enter the 2021 season with only one more nonwhite coach than it started with last year. Three-quarters of the league’s players are people of color, but the vast majority of top coaches and player personnel executives are white men.“They are trying, but they are struggling,” Nellie Drew, director of the Center for the Advancement of Sport at the University at Buffalo School of Law, said of the N.F.L. in an interview Thursday. “The results to date have not been impressive, especially given the number of people of color who play in the league.”Saleh and Culley join Ron Rivera of the Washington Football Team, Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Brian Flores of the Miami Dolphins as head coaches of color. In 2011, the N.F.L. had, for the first time, eight nonwhite head coaches among its ranks, a peak it reached again in the 2017 season.The Ravens will get two third-round draft picks, one in 2021 and one in 2022, as compensation for losing a nonwhite staff member who became a head coach as part of the N.F.L.’s incentive system that was ratified by league owners in November. The new measure was criticized by some, including African-American coaches and players.“I just have never been in favor of rewarding people for doing the right thing,” Tony Dungy, a former head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts, said in May 2020. “And so I think there’s going to be some unintended consequences.”Culley filled several roles for the Ravens across the last two seasons — assistant head coach, passing game coordinator and wide receivers coach — helping to establish the league’s leading rushing offense in 2020, but one that ranked last in passing. In 2019, Culley helped bolster the Ravens to No. 1 in scoring with an average of 33.2 points per game.Noted for his ability to develop creative schemes that improve players’ weaknesses and complement their strengths, Culley cultivated a reputation as an excellent teacher and communicator across his 27 seasons as an N.F.L. coach, most of which have been spent assisting Andy Reid, first in Philadelphia and then in Kansas City.“David will do a good job,” Reid said after practice Thursday. “He’s a people person. He’ll bring energy to the building.”Ravens Coach John Harbaugh overlapped nine seasons with Culley as assistants in Philadelphia and has said that he tried multiple times to hire him in Baltimore. When Harbaugh finally succeeded in 2019, luring Culley from Buffalo, where he coached the Bills’ quarterbacks, he called it a “coup.”Culley was an athlete growing up in Sparta, Tenn., about 90 miles east of Nashville, where he played football, baseball and basketball at White County High School. He was a quarterback at Vanderbilt and went on to coach at several colleges before entering the N.F.L. in 1994 as the receivers coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.It came as no surprise to Harbaugh that Culley would be picked up this year — by the Texans.“I do believe that David Culley would be a tremendous hire for any team; maybe, especially, the Texans with Deshaun Watson,” Harbaugh said on Jan. 11.But the opportunity to coach Watson may not come, as the quarterback reportedly requested a trade after a series of disagreements with the Texans’ upper management. He reportedly became disgruntled when the team hired a new general manager, Nick Caserio, without his consultation this year and felt the team had been inattentive to social justice causes, including diversifying their hiring practices.Watson had signed a four-year, $156 million contract extension in September 2020 that included about $75 million guaranteed, a $27 million signing bonus and a no-trade clause, meaning that he will have a say in where he ends up next, if the Texans pursue a deal. Culley’s hiring will not have an effect on Watson’s decision, according to ESPN.Culley takes over a team whose 4-12 record last season almost belies the bleakness of its circumstances: limited draft capital, no elite receivers, a forbidding salary-cap situation. After finishing 10-6 in 2019 and winning the A.F.C. South for the fourth time in the previous five seasons, the Texans flopped last season. O’Brien had reportedly argued with players, including the star defensive end J.J. Watt, who later ranted about the team’s “trash” season in a postgame news conference.“We need a whole culture shift,” Watson told reporters in a videoconference after the regular season ended. “We need new energy. We need discipline. We need structure. We need a leader so we can follow that leader as players.”Culley will have to be that person, with or without Watson.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Chad Wheeler Charged With Felony Assault in Domestic Attack Case

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyChad Wheeler Charged With Felony Assault in Domestic Attack CaseThe N.F.L. lineman was arrested Saturday after a violent assault on a woman in his home.Chad Wheeler, 27, was arrested early Saturday morning on suspicion of felony domestic violence. He is facing two felony charges and one misdemeanor charge.Credit…Stephen Brashear/Associated PressJan. 28, 2021Updated 5:32 p.m. ETChad Wheeler, an N.F.L. offensive lineman who played five games with the Seattle Seahawks this season, is facing three criminal charges after his arrest last week on suspicion of felony domestic violence.Wheeler was released by the Seahawks on Wednesday, soon after prosecutors formally charged him with first-degree domestic violence assault, a felony; domestic violence unlawful imprisonment, a felony; and resisting arrest, a misdemeanor. In their charging papers, prosecutors in King County, Wash., said Wheeler “viciously attacked the victim” and choked her.Wheeler, 27, was arrested early Saturday morning and released from King County Jail on Tuesday after posting a $400,000 bond. Wheeler will be arraigned on Feb. 9 in Kent, Wash., where he lives. Prosecutors asked that Wheeler wear a GPS tracking device on his ankle.According to the prosecutor’s charging papers, Wheeler attacked his girlfriend in her bedroom, choking her at times with both hands until she lost consciousness. After she awoke, he choked her again until she became unconscious. She told the police that when she tried to roll away from Wheeler, he grabbed her left arm and ripped her body back toward him.When she awoke the second time, the woman told the police, Wheeler returned to the bedroom and said, “Oh, you’re still alive.” She then said she went into the bathroom, locked the door and sent text messages to her family, friends and Wheeler’s father, asking that they call 911. The woman also called 911 and told an operator she was being “killed.”When the police arrived, Wheeler refused to be detained. Unable to put him in handcuffs, officers used a Taser. According to the charging papers, Wheeler said, “I don’t beat women,” and yelled to the woman that he loved her.After the woman was taken to the hospital, doctors determined she had a fractured arm and a dislocated elbow. Her face was swollen in a way that doctors believed was the result of choking. The woman also had lesions on her neck, some in the shape of fingertips.According to prosecutors, Wheeler is 6 feet 7 inches and 310 pounds and the woman is 5-foot-9 and 145 pounds.The woman told the police she believed Wheeler had bipolar disorder and had not been taking his medication.The N.F.L. said it was reviewing the case. After the league completes its investigation, Wheeler could be suspended or fined, if he was found to have violated the league’s personal conduct policy. If Wheeler is signed by another team before the investigation is completed, the league could put him on the commissioner’s exempt list, which would prohibit him from taking the field until the league’s investigation is complete.“The Seahawks are saddened by the details emerging against Chad Wheeler and strongly condemn this act of domestic violence,” the team said in a statement Wednesday. “Our thoughts and support are with the victim.”On Wednesday, Wheeler apologized via social media for what he called “a manic episode” and said he was leaving football.“It is time for me to walk away from football and get the help I need to never again pose a threat to another,” he wrote on Twitter. “I cannot express my sorrow or remorse enough. I am truly ashamed.”Wheeler was set to be a free agent in March, but by waiving him now, the Seahawks have cut ties with him. Wheeler started 19 games with the Giants in the 2017 and 2018 seasons.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Is the Salary Cap a Myth?

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Pro FootballIs the Salary Cap a Myth?A Super Bowl matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers should not be fiscally possible on paper, but here we are.Important role players, like Chiefs receiver Sammy Watkins, right, signed one-year contracts made possible because quarterback Patrick Mahomes will be paid the bulk of his 10-year, $477 million contract in 2023 and beyond.Credit…Jamie Squire/Getty ImagesJan. 28, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETKansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’s listed base salary for the 2020 season is $825,000, a princely sum for ordinary folks but $85,000 less than the base salary of his teammate James Winchester, a valuable but obscure long snapper.Tom Brady’s 2020 base salary of $15 million for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is more in line with expectations for an N.F.L. quarterback, if not for a six-time Super Bowl champion and era-defining player. For example, Jimmy Garoppolo, Brady’s backup when they played for the New England Patriots, earned a base salary of $23.8 million for an injury-plagued and disappointing 2020 season for the San Francisco 49ers, while Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Derek Carr had a base salary of $18.9 million for another season of his established late-model family sedan caliber play.This season’s Super Bowl matchup should not be fiscally possible on paper. The N.F.L.’s salary cap was supposed to have torn the Chiefs’ roster apart after their Super Bowl victory last season; Mahomes’s performance would command a contract that by itself had the potential to force the team into receivership. Similarly, the Buccaneers’ star-studded lineup of Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Ndamukong Suh, Antonio Brown and Jason Pierre-Paul — each a market-setter at his position at some point in his career — should be so prohibitively expensive as to force the team to fill the lower half of its roster with temps and interns.The fact that the Chiefs and the Buccaneers kept their rosters intact appears to support the popular theory that the salary cap is a myth, a fiction used by franchises as an excuse to cut unwanted veterans, pinch pennies and fall short of expectations. The cap is in fact very real, but its arcane rules about bonuses, incentives and proration make N.F.L. cap management more like sorcery than an art or a science. And the voodoo economics the Chiefs and the Buccaneers are dabbling in could someday come with a steep price.Mahomes, as you may recall, signed a reported 10-year, $477 million contract extension in July. It was the sort of contract that would force a mortgage lender to accept a plea bargain — full of deferred bonuses, staggered guarantees and balloon payments designed to forestall Mahomes’s biggest paydays until 2023 and beyond. As a result, his 2020 compensation (base salary plus bonuses) counted for just $5.34 million against the salary cap, which allowed the Chiefs to re-sign important players like the Pro Bowl defensive tackle Chris Jones despite little apparent maneuvering room in their theoretical budget. Even Mahomes’s future compensation will come mostly in the form of bonuses instead of salary, allowing for further feats of accounting magical realism.Mahomes can afford to wait on his $40-plus million paydays because he is in high demand as an advertising pitchman, and successful quarterbacks are all but guaranteed long, lucrative careers. Brady is also a brand unto himself (and, as the spouse of an international celebrity, Gisele Bündchen, he brings in his household’s second income), but he has taken the opposite approach throughout his career by accepting short contracts full of guaranteed money. Lesser quarterbacks earn more than Brady in any given year, but he is always near the top of the N.F.L.’s wage earners and rarely more than a year away from another renegotiation and raise.Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady is always near the top of the N.F.L.’s highest paid players in part because of the strength of his brand.Credit…Scott Eisen/Getty ImagesThe Brady and Mahomes situations illustrate that salary cap alchemy typically boils down to compensating the superstar quarterback first, then fitting the rest of the budget around him. With a relatively affordable Brady in the fold, the Buccaneers could extend one-year offers to Brown, Gronkowski and Suh, veterans willing to sign for less than their market value to join forces with Brady and pursue a championship.Similarly, important role players like Sammy Watkins and Bashaud Breeland, who re-signed with the Chiefs, and Le’Veon Bell, who signed as a free agent, were given one-year contracts made possible because Mahomes is being paid in tomorrow bucks. The appeal of a likely Super Bowl run couldn’t have hurt, either.Even the cleverest cap model can backfire if a team cannot use success to sustain success. The Saints used reverse mortgage “die broke” tactics to pay Drew Brees through many years of Super Bowl near misses. With Brees’s retirement imminent, the Saints are so deep in deferred cap debt (an estimated $112 million) that they may be forced to pad their 2021 roster with season-ticket holders. The Philadelphia Eagles and the Los Angeles Rams overpaid quarterbacks Carson Wentz and Jared Goff (plus other top veterans) after trips to the Super Bowl in the 2017 and 2018 seasons. The Eagles are now facing an existential crisis, while the Rams are subsisting on the cap equivalent of maxed-out credit cards.After the Super Bowl, a long list of in-house free agents (including starters like Lavonte David, Shaquil Barrett and Chris Godwin, plus the aforementioned mercenaries) will be vying for the Buccaneers’ very limited cap space while Brady, who turns 44 in August, prepares to once again plays chess with his own mortality. Even with all of their finagling, the Chiefs will enter the off-season an estimated $18 million over the cap, meaning that next season’s Chiefs probably won’t be as good as this season’s Chiefs. Both teams in this Super Bowl needed to get there to justify their efforts to stay one step ahead of the collection agency.There is much more to “salary cap-enomics” than finding innovative ways to squeeze a Mahomes or a Brady into a budget — from extending in-house contracts before valued veterans reach free agency to avoiding spending sprees at positions like running back, where talent is plentiful and replaceable. Mostly, however, there’s no mystery to cap management, just the question of whether a team chooses to pay for its Super Bowl run today, tomorrow or by tacking almost a half-billion dollars onto the back end. Age and deferred debt eventually catch up to everyone. Even Tom Brady. Someday. Probably.All cap data comes from OverTheCap.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Jennifer King Becomes First Black Woman to Coach N.F.L. Full-Time

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Washington Coach Reaches a First for Black Women in the N.F.L.Washington promoted Jennifer King to assistant running backs coach, making her the first Black woman with a full-time N.F.L. coaching job, amid increasing scrutiny on the diversity of the league’s hiring.The wild-card playoff game between Washington and Tampa Bay on Jan. 9 was the first N.F.L. playoff game with women in coaching roles on both sidelines: Lori Locust, a Bucs assistant defensive line coach, and Jennifer King, right, a Washington intern who was promoted to assistant running backs coach on Tuesday.Credit…Daniel Kucin Jr./Associated PressVictor Mather and Jan. 26, 2021Updated 6:22 p.m. ETThe Washington Football Team promoted Jennifer King to assistant running backs coach on Tuesday, making her the first Black woman to become a full-time coach in the N.F.L.King’s promotion accentuates the importance the Washington franchise has placed on diversifying after a tumultuous year in which its longtime logo and nickname, widely perceived as racist, were dropped. The move also comes as the N.F.L. faces increasing scrutiny because of its paucity of Black head coaches.King, 36, was a coaching intern with the team this past season and previously served as an intern with the Carolina Panthers and as an offensive assistant at Dartmouth College.“She earned this opportunity with hard work,” Washington Coach Ron Rivera said in a statement. “The sky truly is the limit for her.”The number of female coaches in the N.F.L. has grown, slowly but steadily, over the past five seasons, with eight women on staffs in 2020. According to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, which tracks racial and gender demographics of coaches in five professional sports leagues, the N.F.L. trails only the N.B.A., which has nine female assistants.Yet while about 70 percent of N.F.L. players are Black, only two of the current head coaches are, and just four — including Rivera — are people of color, according to the league’s measure of diversity.Of the seven head coaching jobs that became available in the past four months, only one has been filled by a nonwhite candidate — the Jets’ Robert Saleh, who is a Muslim Arab American. The Houston Texans’ head coaching position is still open.Three minority candidates were hired as general managers in the past two weeks — Terry Fontenot in Atlanta, Brad Holmes in Detroit and Martin Mayhew in Washington — swelling the leaguewide total to five. The general manager hirings are significant, because their roles enable them to hire, and recommend, more people of color to join their organizations. But they are less visible than coaches.In most instances, the pipeline to N.F.L. coaching and scouting positions is stocked with men who have played college football, diminishing chances for women interested in pursuing careers in professional football. But in recent years, the league has made stronger efforts to enhance opportunities for women, particularly those of color.It established the Women’s Careers in Football Forum, an annual event held in conjunction with the league’s scouting combine that since 2017 has given women with entry-level roles in college programs a chance to learn from, and network with, N.F.L. general managers, coaches and executives. At last February’s session, 26 of the league’s 32 teams participated, and Samantha Rapoport, the N.F.L.’s senior director of diversity and inclusion, said that with a virtual format next month, she is hoping for full representation.In 2019, 55 percent of the participants at the forum were women of color. Among all the women who attended the most recent gathering, in February, 15 were hired for full-time positions or internships, either in the N.F.L. or for a college program, for the 2020 season, bringing the total to 118 such jobs since the forum’s inception.“People that are marginalized or disenfranchised, if you give them a shot, an opportunity to have a conversation with someone who can potentially hire them, that’s how they land on the short list,” Rapoport said.In 2015, Jen Welter became the first woman added to an N.F.L. staff, as an assistant coaching intern with the Arizona Cardinals. Kathryn Smith became the first woman to hold a full-time assistant coaching position the following year, when she was named special teams quality control coach under Rex Ryan with the Buffalo Bills, and after the 2019 season Katie Sowers, who worked mostly with the 49ers’ wide receivers, became the first woman to coach in a Super Bowl.(Sowers, after four seasons with San Francisco, announced a few weeks ago that she would not return in 2021.)Another breakthrough came in November, when Callie Brownson of the Cleveland Browns was elevated to tight ends coach on a brief interim basis, becoming the highest-ranking female coach in league history.“What we’re hoping for is normalization,” Rapoport said, adding: “We’re not looking for firsts. We’re not putting on a schedule for the first female head coach or the first female general manager. That’s not our focus. Our focus is really the ubiquity of women in football.”King, like many of the women who have coached in the N.F.L., has played football and other sports. She was on the basketball and softball teams at Guilford College from 2002 to 2006 and was the head basketball coach at Johnson & Wales University Charlotte from 2016 to 2018. King has also played in the Women’s Football Alliance with the Carolina Phoenix, the New York Sharks and the D.C. Divas.“The way she’s worked with the guys, she’s just Coach King to us,” Randy Jordan, Washington’s running backs coach, told The Washington Post in December. “Her input throughout the game, there are things I may not see, and she’ll point it out to me.”“Her input is very, very important not only to me,” he continued, “but to the entire staff. She’s been doing a heck of a job.”Amid an organizational overhaul led by Rivera, the Washington Football Team has hired people of color for significant roles over the past 13 months. The team announced last week that Mayhew, who is Black, would become its general manager, filling a position that has been vacant since 2016. In September, the team added Jason Wright, the first Black team president in the N.F.L., to its front office.Gillian R. Brassil contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Could Tampa Bay Be the New Titletown?

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.Will the Harden Trade Work Out?The N.B.A. Wanted HerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCould Tampa Bay Be the New Titletown?The success of the Buccaneers, Lightning and Rays — pro sports punch lines turned finals contestants — is a run that rivals past glory years in Boston, New York or Los Angeles.Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans waved flags and cheered as they watched their team win the N.F.C. championship game against the Green Bay Packers at a bar in St. Petersburg, Fla.Credit…Eve Edelheit for The New York TimesJan. 26, 2021, 9:31 a.m. ETTwenty-six straight losses in football. Acres of empty seats at Tropicana Field. A court order to seize the local N.H.L. team’s skates and other equipment if needed to pay a debt. Let’s just say Tampa Bay had not earned a reputation as a hub of professional sports excellence.Until now. In a purple patch to rival the best of them in Boston, New York or Los Angeles, Tampa’s three top-level men’s pro teams have all made their league’s finals over the last five months. The amazing run was capped on Sunday by Tom Brady leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a victory over the Green Bay Packers, clinching the first home stadium Super Bowl.Tampa Bay as Titletown? It just might be so.Tom Brady transformed the Buccaneers.Tom Brady helped lead the Buccaneers to an upset of the top-seeded Packers Sunday. Tampa Bay won three straight road playoff games to earn a Super Bowl berth.Credit…Dylan Buell/Getty ImagesThe Buccaneers became a symbol for futility in the N.F.L. when they debuted in 1976 and lost 26 straight games over two seasons before their first win. “I couldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” said Richard Wood, a linebacker on those teams. Even a run to the N.F.C. championship game in the 1979 season couldn’t shake the impression for most fans that “Buccaneers” was synonymous with “futility.”And the team lived up to that reputation for some time, posting three 2-14 seasons in the mid-1980s. Since the Buccaneers’ only Super Bowl title, after the 2002 season, they have put up a two-win season (2014), a three-win season (2009) and three four-win seasons (2006, 2011, 2013). The Bucs had gone 12 seasons without a trip to the playoffs until the franchise ended that drought this year.When Brady, 43, decided to play quarterback for the team after 20 seasons in New England some assumed it would be a sinecure in the sun. Not at all. Tight end Rob Gronkowski came out of retirement to join his old teammate, and the Buccaneers also added running back Leonard Fournette to a loaded offense. A young defense looked consistently good. The signs were there for a better season.But an 11-5 regular season? Three road playoff wins, including upsets of the second-seeded New Orleans Saints and the top-seeded Green Bay Packers? A trip to the Super Bowl? Few saw that coming.The Rays had a small budget and few fans, but claimed a World Series spot.The Tampa Bay Rays upset the Houston Astros in a seven-game American League Championship Series in 2020.Credit…Orlando Ramirez/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe Tampa Bay Rays started their first Major League Baseball season in 1998 as the Devil Rays. They promptly posted 10 straight seasons of 70 or fewer wins, notably finishing with a 55-106 record in 2002 that plumbed the depths of ineptitude for a modern professional sports team.Failure and the Rays seemed to go hand in hand, especially because the team’s average attendance at Tropicana Field nearly always ranked at the bottom of the league — even when the team performed well — providing bad optics for fans tuning in on TV. And the Rays worked with a much smaller budget than the behemoths of the game, making sustained contention difficult.The team emerged from its doldrums to earn an unlikely World Series trip in 2008 (their first season as merely the Rays), losing to the Phillies in five games, and it’s been pretty good in the years since.Still, the signs did not point to a return to the World Series in 2020. The Rays were 0-4 in playoff series in the 11 years between World Series appearances.But Tampa Bay beat the Yankees in the 2020 division series, then eliminated the defending American League champion Houston Astros in the A.L.C.S. As World Series underdogs again last October, they took the Dodgers to six games before falling just short of the big prize. Brandon Lowe hit 14 homers in the abbreviated 60-game season and reliever Nick Anderson had an 0.55 ERA in 19 appearances, but the team got this close to the championship mostly without stars, and continued to have one of the five lowest payrolls in the league.The Lightning put their skates and pucks to good use.Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov kissed the Stanley Cup following Tampa Bay’s finals-clinching win over the Dallas Stars. He led all players in playoff points.Credit…Bruce Bennett/Getty ImagesThe Tampa Bay Lightning started slowly when it began N.H.L. play in the 1992-93 season, and hit rock bottom from 1997 to 2000 when they couldn’t manage 20 wins in an 82-game schedule even once. Financial losses and debt piled up, leading to a court order in 1998 allowing seizure of the team’s sticks, pucks, nets, uniforms and skates if the team couldn’t meet its debts. (The team paid up.)But in more recent times, the Lightning have been carrying the banner for Tampa sports, with a Stanley Cup win in 2004, and a finals loss in 2015.In the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season, most figured the Lightning as a contender, and they delivered, tying for the third-highest points percentage with a 43-21-6 record and ripping through playoff series against the Columbus Blue Jackets, Boston Bruins, Islanders and finally, in September, the Stanley Cup finals against the Dallas Stars. Tampa Bay lost just six games over the four playoff series. Brayden Point led all playoff scorers with 14 goals, and defenseman Victor Hedman won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the postseason’s most valuable player.Now comes a hometown Super Bowl.The Buccaneers will become the first N.F.L. team to play in a Super Bowl at their home stadium when Tampa Bay hosts the Kansas City Chiefs at Raymond James Stadium on Feb. 7.Credit…Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesThe recent success of some of the area’s pro teams, which each began as expansion-era punch lines, has raised the question: Who’s next?While Tampa has been mentioned as a possible expansion city for both the N.B.A. and M.L.S., other cities seem to be ahead in the queue.Because of coronavirus concerns in Canada, the Toronto Raptors of the N.B.A. began the 2020-21 season playing its home games in Tampa. Given the area’s current sports magic, it may be too soon to dismiss the possibility of them making a championship run.Tampa Bay’s current enchanted run of sporting success will culminate on Feb. 7 at Raymond James Stadium, when the Buccaneers will become the first N.F.L. franchise to play in a Super Bowl in its home venue. And when The Weeknd takes the stage at halftime, he’ll be performing, improbably, in what is now the sports capital of the country.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    The Packers Kicked a Field Goal With 2:09 Left. Why?

    The Packers Kicked a Field Goal With 2:09 Left. Why?Ben Shpigel🏈 Reporting on the N.F.L. playoffsFrank Frigo, a co-founder of EdjSports, which provides predictive tools to several N.F.L. teams, said LaFleur’s decision wasn’t mathematically defensible.“It’s about a 3 percent error, which may not seem like a lot, but the issue is that their win probability is already so low because of the situation they’re in, down 8,” Frigo said Sunday night. “What they’re really doing is dropping from 10 or 11 percent down to 7 or 8 percent, which is pretty significant.”Even if the Packers did not score a touchdown, he said, they would have pinned the Bucs in poor field position. More

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    Chelsea Fires Frank Lampard as Manager

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHoping to Salvage a Troubled Season, Chelsea Fires Frank LampardLampard, a title-winning player, failed to draw out the same type of success from his team as a manager. The German Thomas Tuchel is expected to replace him.Frank Lampard’s job security vanished as Chelsea slipped down the Premier League standings.Credit…Pool photo by Andy RainRory Smith and Jan. 25, 2021Updated 8:50 a.m. ETLONDON — Lying ninth in a congested Premier League table and with only two wins in its last eight league games, Chelsea confirmed on Monday morning that it had fired Frank Lampard, one of the club’s greatest players, from his post as head coach after 18 months in the role.Chelsea’s recent slide, despite a handful of expensive summer signings, had not only dashed any remaining hopes of contenting for the Premier League title but also imperiled the club’s chances of qualifying for next season’s Champions League, Europe’s richest club competition. Chelsea’s board said in a statement that an immediate change was the only option “to give the club time to improve performances and results this season.”Such is Lampard’s standing at Stamford Bridge — where he spent 13 years as a player, winning three Premier League titles, four F.A. Cups and the Champions League and establishing himself as Chelsea’s career goals leader — that Roman Abramovich, the club’s reclusive Russian owner, took the rare step of explaining his departure to the team’s fans.“This was a very difficult decision for the club, not least because I have an excellent personal relationship with Frank,” Abramovich, a largely silent presence in his 17 years at the club, said in a statement on Chelsea’s website. “I have the utmost respect for him. He is a man of great integrity and has the highest of work ethics. However, under current circumstances we believe it is best to change managers.”Lampard took the job in the summer of 2019, on the back of a single season’s experience as a manager at the Championship team Derby County. In his first year at Chelsea, he guided the club to a creditable fourth-place finish in the Premier League, despite the club’s losing his star, Eden Hazard, to Real Madrid and working under the restrictions of a FIFA-imposed transfer ban.The stakes this season were always likely to be higher: Chelsea spent $300 million on new players last summer, despite the economic uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic, with a view to challenging Liverpool and Manchester City for the Premier League title.Under those increased demands, Lampard has struggled. Two of the most expensive summer signings, Timo Werner and Kai Havertz, have made little impression, and the club has dropped out of the title race at the season’s halfway point.Fearful that qualification for next season’s Champions League was at risk, the club felt it had no choice but to act. Chelsea is expected to appoint Thomas Tuchel, the former Paris St.-Germain and Borussia Dortmund coach, as Lampard’s replacement.“We are grateful to Frank for what he has achieved in his time as head coach of the club,” the club said in a statement confirming his firing. “However, recent results and performances have not met the club’s expectations, leaving the club mid-table without any clear path to sustained improvement.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More