Raphael Stevens

The setting was familiar: Tom Brady, facing a long field and a short clock, and a chance to lead a fourth-quarter comeback.The result was not.Brady, who built his reputation for late-game heroics with dozens of fourth-quarter comebacks as the New England Patriots’ quarterback, appeared to lose track of downs while trying to lead another with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Thursday night. Instead of his 38th fourth-quarter comeback, Brady headed home from Chicago with a loss.The stage for a trademark Brady moment had been set. The Buccaneers took over the ball trailing the Bears by 20-19 with 1 minute 13 seconds left. After a quick short pass for a first down, Brady had the ball at his 37.Here’s what happened next.Brady threw a short incomplete pass intended for Mike Evans.He completed a pass for 4 yards to Ke’Shawn Vaughn.A short pass to Rob Gronkowski was incomplete.DeAndre Houston-Carson of the Bears broke up a pass intended for Cameron Brate.OK, did you count the downs there? Four, right?Brady apparently got three.A closeup TV shot of Brady just after the incomplete pass to Brate showed him looking to the sideline and holding up four fingers and appearing to mouth “fourth down.” Even though the Bucs had lost the ball on downs, Brady stayed on the field, apparently thinking he still had another play.Brady, 43, seemed frustrated after the series, throwing a clipboard and slamming his helmet. Asked afterward what had happened, Brady pivoted to the result of the play.And his coach, Bruce Arians, denied Brady had not realized it was fourth down. “Yeah, he knew, he knew,” Arians said.Brady focused instead on the play call. The fourth-down pass to Brate was an effort to get his team into field-goal range, rather than just grab the six yards needed for a first down. That, Brady acknowledged, was his mistake.“I knew we had to gain a chunk, so I should have been thinking more first down instead of chunk,” he said.Brady finished 25 for 41 for 253 yards and a touchdown.The Buccaneers and their newly signed legendary quarterback are still off to a good start, 3-2 and in first place in the NFC South. The Bears are a surprising 4-1, but have not quite established themselves as an elite team: Their wins are by 4, 4, 4, and 1 point, and before Thursday’s win their victories had come over the Lions, the Giants and the Falcons, teams that have only one win among them.The Bears’ starting quarterback, Mitch Trubisky, was benched in the middle of Game 3, despite the team’s 2-0 record at the time.That conveniently meant that his backup Nick Foles got to play against the Bucs. Foles’s only other meeting with Brady came in the Super Bowl in 2018, when he beat Brady and the Patriots to give the Philadelphia Eagles their only Super Bowl title.Foles finished Thursday night’s game 30 of 42 for 243 yards, one touchdown, one interception and no forgotten downs. More

For the second consecutive week, the N.F.L. has shuffled its schedule to accommodate teams that have had players and staff members who have tested positive for the coronavirus.The league announced on Thursday that the Tennessee Titans — who have had the league’s worst outbreak, with nearly two dozen players, coaches and staff members testing positive — would play the Buffalo Bills on Tuesday at 7 p.m. Eastern time, instead of on Sunday, assuming that the team reports no more positive tests. The Titans reported two additional positive tests in their organization on Thursday.If Tennessee and Buffalo play as now scheduled on Tuesday, the Bills’ following game, against the Kansas City Chiefs, would be moved back three days from Thursday, Oct. 15.The league had already postponed the Titans’ game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, scheduled for this past Sunday, by three weeks because of the Titans’ outbreak.The league also on Thursday moved the New England Patriots-Denver Broncos game, scheduled for Sunday, to 5 p.m. Eastern on Monday, after Stefon Gilmore, New England’s star cornerback, was reported yesterday to have tested positive. Last week, the Patriots’ Sunday game was moved to Monday because their quarterback, Cam Newton, had tested positive.The postponements are part of the N.F.L.’s effort to manage confirmed infections, which it has said for months were expected to occur.This week, the N.F.L. said it would use video surveillance to ensure that players and coaches were wearing proper protective equipment at team facilities.The league is also investigating whether the Titans have violated league rules by working out after the club’s facility was shuttered because of the outbreak in the locker room. The team may be facing penalties that include fines and revoked draft picks. In the worst case, Tennessee could even be forced to forfeit a game.The league chose not to construct a closed community or a bubble — as the W.N.B.A. and N.B.A. did — for players and coaches to live in during the season, as a way to reduce the risk of infection.Instead, protocols were put in place to enforce physical distancing and other safety measures while the players and the team’s staff members were together. But at the end of each day, all team personnel are allowed to return home, increasing their chances of being exposed to the virus.This strategy relies on the avoidance of unnecessary risks by players, coaches and other team employees. The league has fined coaches tens of thousands of dollars for failing to wear face masks properly. Ten players on the Las Vegas Raiders have been fined as much as $30,000 each for attending an indoor charity event where most people, including the players, were not wearing masks.m. More

A weapons possession charge against Quinnen Williams, a defensive lineman for the Jets, stemming from the discovery of an unloaded gun in his baggage at La Guardia Airport has been dropped, his lawyer said on Monday.“This case was nothing more than a technical issue with the storing of the firearm, which is why the government gave Mr. Williams nothing more than a ticket,” the lawyer, Alex Spiro, said.A representative from the Queens district attorney’s office said Williams pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in satisfaction of all charges, paid a fine of $250 and forfeited the firearm.Williams, 22, was charged in March with a felony count of possession of a weapon after trying to board a flight at the airport.He was taken into custody at a Delta Air Lines check-in counter after he was found to have a Glock 19 pistol, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police said at the time. The gun, which was found in his checked baggage, was unloaded, officials said.The authorities said that Williams had a permit for the weapon in Alabama, where he was a standout player for the University of Alabama, but he did not have one for New York. His lawyer said Monday that he had been in the process of getting his permit in March.In March, Spiro said there was “allegedly a technical issue with the manner in which the lawfully owned firearm was stored.”Representatives for the Jets could not be immediately reached on Monday.Williams recorded 15 tackles and two and a half sacks in his rookie season. He signed a four-year, $32.5 million contract with the Jets, according to the salary tracking website Spotrac.Williams has an older brother, Quincy Williams, who plays for the Jacksonville Jaguars. More

The idea of “tests” in the N.F.L. is usually a figurative one — how will Team X respond to the test of So-and-So’s defense? Until this week, pro football had been blissfully unencumbered by the scrambling and rescheduling to deal with positive coronavirus tests that other leagues have dealt with.But in the wake of an outbreak among the Tennessee Titans organization, where upward of 12 members of personnel — including at least 9 players — returned positive tests, and Saturday’s news that Patriots quarterback Cam Newton and Jordan Ta’amu, a quarterback on the Chiefs practice squad, were added to their teams’ reserve/Covid-19 lists, the league has been busy remaking the schedule, testing players known to have been in contact with infected parties, and rethinking how it polices its coronavirus health protocols.The Patriots-Chiefs game, originally scheduled for Sunday is tentatively planned for Monday or Tuesday. The Titans, who were supposed to face the Steelers this week, will instead face Pittsburgh on Oct. 25.Despite the highly anticipated Cam Newton vs. Patrick Mahomes matchup being delayed, much of the N.F.L.’s Week 4 slate will go on, as scheduled. After Saints fullback Michael Burton tested positive for Covid-19 on Saturday, his re-test and a rapid test reportedly came back negative, keeping the New Orleans-Detroit game on pace to play. Elsewhere, the league’s unbeatens will try to stick with what’s working.Ranking the likelihood that teams can get to 4-0 on Sunday.With Tennessee and Pittsburgh inadvertently idle, Green Bay playing on Monday and Kansas City having to wait for their game until Monday or Tuesday, just three teams have a shot at improving to 4-0 on Sunday. Here is a ranking of the likelihood that each of them gets there.1. Seattle — The Seahawks are setting N.F.L. records on offense, and doing absolutely nothing to help on defense. It’s an issue as far as the team’s Super Bowl prospects, but it is unlikely to matter against Ryan Fitzpatrick and the Miami Dolphins (1-2), even on the road.2. Buffalo — The Bills have a lot to work out before they can truly be considered a contender, but quarterback Josh Allen is loving life with wide receiver Stefon Diggs. That dynamic duo gives the team a solid shot at victory in a road game against the Las Vegas Raiders (2-1), but Buffalo’s defense will need to play far better than it has this season if they want to continue their winning streak.3. Chicago — There is no reasonable explanation for the Bears being 3-0 other than luck. The team’s defense is not terrible, but it’s hardly good enough to make up for an offense in such turmoil that they had a quarterback controversy without ever losing a game. They are hosting the 2-1 Indianapolis Colts, and while anything is possible, Chicago won’t want to bank on the Colts simply handing them a victory like Detroit and Atlanta did. More

The N.F.L. has postponed Sunday’s highly anticipated game between the New England Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs to Monday or Tuesday after Cam Newton, the Patriots’ star quarterback, and the practice squad quarterback on the Chiefs tested positive for the coronavirus.“In consultation with infectious disease experts, both clubs are working closely with the N.F.L. and the N.F.L.P.A. to evaluate multiple close contacts, perform additional testing and monitor developments,” the league said in a statement. “All decisions will be made with the health and safety of players, team and game day personnel as our primary consideration.”The delay of one of the marquee matchups of the young season raises fresh questions about the league’s efforts to play a full slate of games ending with the Super Bowl in February, and to do so without a closed community for teams, like the N.B.A. used, to reduce the risk of infection substantially.The league has followed Major League Baseball and relied instead of frequent testing, reconstructed team facilities to encourage social distancing, and protocols for how players, coaches and teams can interact in locker rooms, team planes and sidelines on game day.The success of the strategy relies heavily on players, coaches and team personnel self-policing their behavior by returning home after work and not engaging in risky activities. Still, even the most cloistered players are allowed to interact with their families and others outside the N.F.L., increasing the odds of becoming infected. More

As the N.F.L. grapples with its first coronavirus outbreak of the season, it has agreed with its players’ union to continue daily testing indefinitely — including on bye weeks.The N.F.L. informed organizations of the updated protocols on Friday in a memo, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. The update came as the Tennessee Titans were trying to contain an outbreak that is known to have infected at least 13 members of the organization — seven players and six team staff members — forcing a postponement of the team’s Week 4 game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Two more Titans players were found Friday to have tested positive, according to multiple news reports.In the memo, the league notified organizations that players and coaches are prohibited from leaving their team’s city on bye weeks. Those who are exempt from testing are still required to report to the team’s facility for daily screening and temperature checks.As before, any player who misses a test without permission will be fined $50,000. He will be suspended one game without pay for a second missed test and subject to further discipline, including additional suspensions, for further missed tests. Any player or coach who misses a test will be mandated to have five negative tests, 24 hours apart, before being allowed to enter their team’s facility.The Titans have yet to be cleared to return to team headquarters, and since transmission rates have yet to abate it is unclear when the team will do so. Tennessee’s scheduled game against Pittsburgh on Sunday, which the league originally expected to be delayed by only one or two days, has now been rescheduled for Week 7 — Oct. 25 — the league announced Friday. To accommodate the change, the Steelers’ game at Baltimore, scheduled for Oct. 25, has been moved to Nov. 1. More

Thursday’s game between the Denver Broncos and the Jets was close right up until the end. It had some huge plays. It had an exciting finish.But to say the game — a 37-28 victory that gave the Broncos (1-3) their first win and has the Jets a quarter of the way to 0-16 — was good would be to ignore the quality of the competition, and all of the sloppy play that happened between the various highlights.With that in mind, here is the game condensed into the parts of it that were truly worth watching. You can watch them all, including replays, in about 2 minutes 51 seconds, with some commentary mixed in from LeBron James and Patrick Mahomes.Can’t get over this Sam Darnold run. #TakeFlight📺: #DENvsNYJ on @NFLNetwork📱: NFL App // Yahoo Sports App: https://t.co/jQ6nvOCVqi pic.twitter.com/K0ke2AcMZj— NFL (@NFL) October 2, 2020
As for the rest of the game, it wasn’t pretty. But, as Coach Vic Fangio of the Broncos said after his team held on, “Winning has cured more ills than penicillin.” More