At noon in the parking lot outside a Carolina Panthers game in November, Dean Nass, 64, pressed a button on his laptop. “The Star Spangled Banner” began to play. His friends and family — 15 in all — put down their barbecued chicken, potato salad and cans of beer and stood at attention. The Nass […] More
Seventeen weeks of preamble led to this. Eight N.F.L. teams will fight for a chance to move on from a wild-card round that features the winners of the last three Super Bowls and that has one game in which the road team is favored. Here are our predictions for how the games will sort out, […] More
BRESCIA, Italy — No matter where his career has taken him, Mario Balotelli’s home has always been here, in an apartment block sandwiched between a Volvo dealership and the campus of the University of Brescia. The bottom floor is taken up by a bicycle shop, a piadina joint and an interiors showroom. Balotelli has the […] More
The N.F.L. coaching carousel revolved again on Tuesday, as the Washington Redskins hired Ron Rivera, according to multiple reports. A spokesman for the team declined to comment. Rivera had been dismissed in early December by the Carolina Panthers after eight and a half seasons. During his tenure there, he took the Panthers to four playoff […] More
As the 2010s come to an end, there is one unmistakable N.F.L. trend: Quarterbacks are a lot more proficient than in decades past. But the funny thing is that 10 years ago an article recapping the decade could have begun with the same statement. A steady improvement of quarterback statistics has been a theme going […] More
In late June, the sleepiest part of the N.F.L. calendar, several of the sport’s most prominent minority coaches and executives gathered at Morehouse College in Atlanta to try to dispel a persistent football myth: that there are not enough qualified candidates of color for the league’s coveted offensive coaching jobs. At the event, known as […] More
The New York Times Sports department is revisiting the subjects of some compelling articles from the last year or so. Here is our June report on a deadly incident that followed the N.F.L. draft. When the difficult moments come, and there have been a number of them over the past eight months, Corey Ballentine often […] More
The Giants, a storied N.F.L. franchise that for decades prized patient, stable management, began its third overhaul in five seasons after firing Coach Pat Shurmur on Monday. While the dismissal of Shurmur, who compiled a 9-23 record in two seasons, was expected, the move nonetheless left the team in unfamiliar territory yet again as it […] More
