Football

Prosecutors in Florida who accused Robert K. Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, of solicitation of prostitution have dropped the misdemeanor charges after losing several key court cases, ending a nearly two-year high-stakes legal and political battle.The decision, expected after a string of legal defeats weakened the prosecution’s case, marks a definitive victory for Kraft, who claimed that his constitutional rights were violated when police videotaped him in a spa in Jupiter, Fla., where he got a massage on two consecutive days in January 2019.After a Florida appeals court last month upheld a lower-court ruling that threw out the video evidence in the case, the state’s solicitor general determined that the state Supreme Court was unlikely to hear a further appeal. Continuing to try the case “could have broader, negative implications beyond the limited facts of this case, which could affect law enforcement efforts in the future,” the state attorney general, Ashley Moody, said in a statement on Tuesday.On Thursday, the state attorney Dave Aronberg, who filed the charges against Kraft and two dozen other men, said he agreed with the attorney general’s decision. He added that there was no way to successfully continue trying the cases without video evidence, and that receipts and other evidence were not sufficient.“Without the videos, we don’t have a case we can prosecute,” he told reporters. As a result, “we are ethically compelled to drop all the charges.”Kraft declined to comment.In their decisions to throw out the video evidence in the case, several judges chastised the police for the way they procured warrants to install hidden video cameras in the Orchids of Asia Day Spa, where Kraft, 79, and other men were filmed allegedly paying for sex.Four of the men pleaded guilty and settled their cases. None of them served time in jail.While Kraft apologized in a statement for his actions, he pleaded not guilty and hired lawyers to fight the charges. He successfully persuaded a judge to block the video recordings, which are the only known evidence that the men paid for sex, from being made public. This week, Kraft’s lawyers filed a motion asking that the recordings be destroyed so they could never be released.Aronberg said a judge would have to decide whether the footage should be destroyed. But for now, the recordings may still be needed because felony charges against the owner and manager of the spa, as well as a class-action case against Aronberg, are still pending.Kraft and the other men were charged in February 2019 as part of a multiple-county investigation of massage parlors and potential human sex trafficking. Aronberg said that while evidence in the case was thrown out, he stood behind his decision to file charges. The Orchids of Asia Spa, he said, was a “notorious brothel” where “rich guys” went to buy sex.He said that there was also evidence of human trafficking at a spa in Vero Beach, where one woman, he said, was forced to commit sex acts against her will.But he reiterated that Kraft and the other 24 men charged with misdemeanors were not accused of human trafficking and did not have any knowledge of its existence at the spas.Aronberg said the case “was never about one individual.” But in a veiled shot, he said that there are “economic inequities” in how cases proceed and that wealthy people can hire expensive lawyers to poke holes in cases.While the charges against Kraft have been dropped, Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the N.F.L., can still fine or suspend him for conduct detrimental to the league. More

This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.Charles Peterson, a high school sports star in South Carolina who played minor league baseball for 14 seasons before becoming a professional baseball scout and a volunteer football coach, died on Sept. 13 in Columbia, S.C. He was 46.His sister-in-law Missy South said the cause was complications of Covid-19.Mr. Peterson brought a charismatic, gregarious style to his work as both a defensive line coach at Spring Valley High School in Columbia and a scout for the St. Louis Cardinals. In June he signed the team’s top draft pick, Jordan Walker, a third baseman.“He had a real infectious presence,” Randy Flores, the Cardinals’ assistant general manager and scouting director, said in a phone interview “He was everything that’s fun about scouting. And he did a great job forging a relationship with the Walker family.”His travel schedule as a scout did not leave Mr. Peterson much time to coach football until mid-August. This year, as the coronavirus delayed the start of practices, Mr. Peterson was already sick, and he was hospitalized for several weeks before he died. His son Charles III, known as Trey, plays for the team.“Charles was the most humble guy; he never talked about his athletic accomplishments,” Robin Bacon, the team’s head coach, said. “He never said ‘No’ if somebody asked him for help.”In June, Mr. Peterson opened a facility in Columbia, Carolina Playmakers, to train young baseball, football and softball players.“At a very young age, he set a standard for me, him being a hometown hero, not only just in sports but how he treated people within the community,” his daughter Alexis Peterson, who played basketball at Furman University, told a local television station in Columbia after her father’s death.Charles Edward Peterson Jr. was born on May 8, 1974, in Laurens, S.C. His father was a mason; his mother, Carolyn (Lattimore) Peterson, worked outside the home.Charles was a receiver for his high school team in rural Laurens in 1991 when he reached over the sideline in the end zone to catch a touchdown pass in his fingertips, with four seconds left, to win the state championship game.“We try that play all the time,” he told The Greenville News. “This is the first time it ever worked.”The next year, as a senior, he switched to quarterback, excelling enough to be named to Parade magazine’s 1992 High School All-America Team. His coach, Bobby Ivey, called Charles his best player ever.Despite being recruited to play college football, he chose baseball. In 1993, after batting .429 as an outfielder for the Laurens Raiders and pitching to a 4-1 record, he was selected by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first round of baseball’s amateur draft. He played at various levels in the Pirates’ system, for independent minor league teams and in Mexico and Taiwan, but never reached the big leagues.After his playing days, he began working at the Major League Baseball Scouting Bureau; six years later, the Cardinals hired him. He was named a special assistant to Mr. Flores last year.“His playing career created the lens through which he evaluated players,” Mr. Flores said. “He knew how hard it was to get to the big leagues.”In addition to his mother, his daughter Alexis and his son Trey, Mr. Peterson is survived by his wife, Karen (Andrews) Peterson; his brothers, Deron and Chris; another daughter, T’Keyah Peterson, a high school volleyball player; and Keegan Kolesar, whom he raised and who is a minor-league hockey player. A previous marriage ended in divorce. More

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Even without fans in the stands, cheerleaders on the sidelines or the national anthem performed live, some N.F.L. traditions have proven pandemic-proof. Like this one: Two games into the season, and the Jets are already making their fans wish football hadn’t returned.The Jets revisited their annual rite of autumn (and winter, too) on Sunday at MetLife Stadium, where a bad football team did lots of bad football things. In their latest venture into the tragicomic, the Jets’ accumulation of missed tackles, foolish penalties and general clumsiness conspired to doom them against the San Francisco 49ers, who mustered enough healthy players to complete a 31-13 victory.On other days, against more competitive teams, the 49ers, already missing a flock of starters, might have struggled to withstand the losses of four critical players — a group that included their quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, who missed the second half with a high ankle sprain, and the league’s top defensive rookie last season, Nick Bosa, whom they fear tore his anterior cruciate ligament — to injury.Not against the Jets, who followed a somnolent performance last week at Buffalo with a forgettable one Sunday that afterward prompted their beleaguered coach, Adam Gase, to splice an answer with an expletive before saying, “We need to get better fast.”That assessment might as well have been appended with an “or else.” The Jets do not have the roster quality or depth to compete with A.F.C. behemoths Kansas City or Baltimore or division rivals Buffalo or New England, even with the conference’s playoff field expanding to seven teams. The general manager, Joe Douglas, has been afforded a modicum of time to transform the roster to his specifications, and the team’s chief executive, Christopher Johnson, told reporters last week how much confidence he has in Douglas’s ability to do so.While calling Gase “a brilliant offensive mind,” Johnson also expressed a desire to see progress this season. Such progress might not be measured in wins and losses but the over all direction of the team, of the offense, of quarterback Sam Darnold, who has presided over a unit that, yet to score a first-half touchdown, has trailed by 21-3 at halftime in consecutive weeks. Everyone has a threshold for humiliation and despair, and it’s unclear whether a similar first-half fiasco to last season — the Jets started 1-7 before finishing 7-9 — could imperil Gase’s job security.Unlike last week, when the Jets forced and recovered a fumble on Buffalo’s opening series, there wasn’t even a brief flirtation with competence. In fairness, they did win something Sunday: the coin toss. Deferring possession to the second half, the Jets kicked off to San Francisco, which, thanking them for their generosity, scored on its first offensive play, when Raheem Mostert — who later left with a knee injury — took a pitch from Garoppolo and darted down the right sideline for an 80-yard touchdown.Seven-point deficits with 59:43 remaining are hardly insurmountable, but consider the state of the Jets’ offense Sunday: They played without running back Le’Veon Bell and two receivers Denzel Mims and Jamison Crowder — a third, Breshad Perriman sustained an ankle injury — which is sort of like trying to start a car without a key.Gase said he liked how the Jets moved the ball early, but they do not earn points with 7-yard gains. They combusted in the red zone, failing to score touchdowns on both chances, and all but lost the game in the first half when the 49ers stoned Josh Adams on fourth-and-1 from the San Francisco 20.The 49ers rampaged 80 yards in part because the Jets forgot how to tackle, forgot it wasn’t wise to incur a personal foul penalty for roughing Garoppolo after stopping them on third down, forgot that tight end Jordan Reed merits elite coverage in the red zone. In the waning seconds before halftime, Reed all but yanked the ball away from safety Marcus Maye for a 4-yard score, his second touchdown of the game, to extend the 49ers’ lead to 21-3.By then, the 49ers — who entered the game without tight end George Kittle, cornerback Richard Sherman and defensive end Dee Ford — had lost Bosa and defensive lineman Solomon Thomas, and Garoppolo had sustained the ankle injury that would knock him out. The culprit driving these injuries, the 49ers suspected, was as much the new synthetic turf at MetLife — where they play next week, too, against the Giants — as the occupational hazard of playing a dangerous sport.Coach Kyle Shanahan said players discussed how “sticky” it felt all game, and defensive end Arik Armstead afterward tweeted at the N.F.L.’s official account to “fix this trash met life turf. 2020 is so wack.”No disputing the latter assertion there, though every season seems to unspool in a wack fashion for the Jets, who haven’t made the playoffs since the 2010 season.Despite the result and the margin of defeat, despite plunging to 0-2 heading into next weeks’ game at Indianapolis, the Jets could take comfort in a small measure, that a lack of crowd noise allowed their defenders to better hear Mostert sprint away from them on San Francisco’s first offensive play, an 80-yard touchdown 17 seconds in.Without any immediate feedback from the fans, the Jets, then, were left to only guess whether boos would have cascaded then; or after, trailing by 24-3 late in the third quarter, they attempted a field goal on fourth-and-7 rather than go for it (“There’s not a ton of great plays on 4th-and-7 when you’re playing a great defense,” Gase said); or, really, after any or all of the 10 drives Darnold led before he tossed his first and only touchdown on the 11th, with 83 seconds remaining.It was a cosmetic enhancement of a game — but not a season, the Jets hope — that had long been decided. 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CHICAGO (AP) — The Chicago Bears were happy with another close win, while the Giants have greater concerns than their 0-2 record: a potentially serious injury to star running back Saquon Barkley.Mitchell Trubisky threw two touchdown passes and the Bears hung on to beat the Giants, 17-13, on Sunday.The Bears (2-0) chewed up the Giants early on, grabbing a 17-0 halftime lead, and withstood a big push a week after rallying from 17-down at Detroit for their first season-opening win in seven years. It is Chicago’s best start since the 2013 team won their first three games.“Like, 2-0 is not a bad situation,” Bears defensive tackle Akiem Hicks said. “I don’t care how you get it. Two-and-0 is delicious. I’ll eat that every day of the week.”The Giants (0-2) refused to go quietly even though they lost Barkley to a right knee injury on the opening play of the second quarter.Barkley had been limited to 6 yards on 15 attempts against Pittsburgh on Monday night, after which he was criticized by former Giants running back Tiki Barber for his pass-blocking skills. Barkley, 23, came up clutching his right knee when he was dragged down by Bears safety Eddie Jackson at the end of a run. The 2018 offensive rookie of the year was taken for X-rays after being helped to the sideline and will be examined further on Monday.Giants running back Dion Lewis made it a 7-point game when he plowed in from the 1-yard line in the opening minute of the fourth quarter.James Bradberry then intercepted Trubisky when he ripped the ball out of Bears receiver Allen Robinson’s hands, leading to a 37-yard field goal by Graham Gano that cut the score to 17-13 with 7:43 remaining.The Bears caught a break on fourth down at the New York 36 with just under four minutes left. New York’s Blake Martinez deflected a pass intended for Jimmy Graham, and the ball ricocheted to tackle Bobby Massie for a first down. Cairo Santos missed wide left on a 50-yard field goal attempt, giving New York the ball on the 40 with 2:02 remaining.The Giants drove to the 10-yard line before Golden Tate got called for pushing off against Jackson near the goal line on an incomplete pass from Daniel Jones as time expired.“We did a good job overall as far as moving the ball systematically down the field,” Giants Coach Joe Judge said. “Look, we’re standing at the 10-yard line with one play to go. That’s really what you’re working for in the two-minute drill. Just give yourself an opportunity.”“We came out in the second half and we responded as a team,” said Jones, who threw for 241 yards and an interception. “I thought we were able to play some complementary football with the defense coming up for us, making big plays and the offense, you know, able to move the ball and score some points. So, you know, ultimately, we ran out of time there at the end, but we responded and we certainly got to start better.”Trubisky completed 18 of 28 passes for 190 yards, with two interceptions, and was sacked four times. He hit David Montgomery for a 28-yard touchdown on the game’s opening possession and added a 15-yarder to Darnell Mooney in the closing seconds of the first half to give the Bears a 17-0 lead.“The way it went with scoring no points in the second half, it certainly doesn’t feel as exciting as it was last week when we won with a comeback and scoring all our points in the fourth quarter,” coach Matt Nagy said. “But I also told our guys, now listen, it is not easy to win in this league. I don’t care who you’re playing and we’re 2-0.” More

The Falcons, who play in the home city of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., are making voting rights a priority this season. More

After an opening week filled with shocking upsets, the league’s expected contenders will try to return things to normalcy. More

The Saints and the Vikings became the latest teams to invest in the run, signing Alvin Kamara and Dalvin Cook to five-year deals. They are likely to experience buyer’s remorse sooner rather than later. More

A team that has scraped together only 12 wins in their last three seasons, combined, started this one with another loss. More