At least, it seemed, the Dutch had made a decision. Alone among Europe’s soccer leagues, they now had some clarity about what the immediate future held. On Friday morning, the Netherlands became the first country in Europe to call off its soccer season. There would be no champion crowned, no teams condemned to relegation. It […] More
Harland Svare, who played linebacker in the celebrated defense that helped take the Giants to three N.F.L. championship games in the 1950s and became, at the time, the youngest head coach in the N.F.L.’s modern history when the Los Angeles Rams hired him in 1962, died on April 4 at a nursing home in Steamboat […] More
When sports do come back, leagues will be trying to pack in as many revenue-generating games as possible. At the same time, many of the players coming out of quarantine may not exactly be in tiptop shape. That combination could prove troublesome. International soccer has proposed a solution: allowing five substitutions a game instead of […] More
As the A.F.C.’s top seed last season, the Baltimore Ravens charged into the postseason as Super Bowl favorites with a gaudy 14-2 record built on a distinct run-first offensive mentality. The Ravens rushed the football 57.5 percent of the time, easily the league high. But in their opening playoff game, the Ravens were upset at […] More
N.F.L. teams are sometimes criticized for drafting kickers, particularly if they take them as early as the fifth round. That did not deter the New England Patriots from selecting Justin Rohrwasser, a kicker from Marshall, on Saturday with one of their two fifth-round picks. The choice was controversial for another reason: Rohrwasser has a tattoo […] More
Six days before the first round of the N.F.L. draft, Chris Slade, the head football coach at Pace Academy in Atlanta, took a phone call from someone in the Giants organization who wanted to know if there was any reason the team should not select Andrew Thomas, a former Pace player. The Giants had good […] More
The A.F.C. was already where the fresh-faced cool kids hung out: Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Deshaun Watson. If the N.F.L. were a high school cafeteria, the A.F.C. table would be the popular one. Maybe they would let Gardner Minshew or Baker Mayfield stop by occasionally. (The quiet presence in the corner is brilliant but brooding […] More
There he was in his basement, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell, like a mirage in a sports-starved desert, to announce that the first pick of the 2020 league draft would be Louisiana State quarterback Joe Burrow, joining the Cincinnati Bengals. It was one of a handful of events to have summoned sports fans en masse since […] More
