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    Spain Plans to Play Soccer Again … Very Carefully

    LONDON — Daily tests for coronavirus. Only two people in the gym at a time. Players dressing for practice at home. Those are just some of the protocols La Liga, the organizer of Spain’s top two soccer leagues, deems necessary to allow even practice to take place before games resume, with a new target date […] More

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    How N.F.L. Draft Day Began the End of My 22-Year Football Career

    I stared at the TV screen in disbelief. My replacement had just been chosen. I could hear it in the echo of these words: “With the 36th pick of the 2015 N.F.L. draft, the Jacksonville Jaguars select T.J. Yeldon, running back from Alabama.” Just a year earlier, the Jaguars had signed me as their starting […] More

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    N.F.L. Draft 2020: Joe Burrow Goes First … Then What?

    For the past five years, the N.F.L. has turned its college draft into a movable sports feast, taking it from New York, where it had been hosted for nearly a half-century, to Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas and Nashville. Television broadcasters loved the new scenery, as fans across the country tuned in to witness the pageantry and […] More

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    Giants and Jets Scream for Help With Early N.F.L. Draft Picks

    The Giants and Jets, both selecting early in the first round once again, plan to use the N.F.L. draft to keep rebuilding. The Giants pick fourth overall after compiling a 4-12 record in 2019, a season that ended the era of Eli Manning at starting quarterback. They fired Coach Pat Shurmur and replaced him with […] More

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    In Airing Benfica’s Secrets, a Hacker Angered Its Fans. His Trial Judge Is One of Them.

    The judge’s allegiance to Benfica, the biggest soccer club in Portugal, hardly made him an outlier. Benfica often boasts that it can count more than half of Portugal’s population as supporters, and judges, prosecutors, top police officials and even the country’s prime minister are regular guests in the directors’ box at the team’s matches. One […] More

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    For Joe Burrow, the N.F.L. Draft Offers a Path Home

    The Cincinnati Bengals’ tiger stripes run deep for the Luehrman twins, Adam and Ryan. Growing up near Athens, Ohio, they shared Carson Palmer and Chad Johnson jerseys and had a passing chance of correctly spelling T.J. Houshmandzadeh. They know of the playoff pratfalls, the crushing injuries, the ownership’s tightfisted ways and the decades of rotten […] More

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    Gronkowski’s Amazing ‘Retirement’: W.W.E., CBD and Talk of a Return

    With the announcement that Rob Gronkowski will reunite with his longtime teammate Tom Brady on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, one of the most talented players and colorful characters in football returns to the N.F.L. It seemed as if we had seen the last of Gronkowski’s 6-foot-6 frame lining up at tight end when he retired […] More

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    Only Bill Belichick Knows What’s Next for the New England Patriots

    Even the tight-lipped Bill Belichick admits that this week’s N.F.L. draft, and this year’s off-season, will be vastly different from any other for the New England Patriots in this century. “Over the last two decades, everything we did, every single decision we made in terms of major planning, was made with the idea of how […] More