Football

After an off-season of social and political turmoil, N.F.L. players made it clear on the night of the season opener that they will continue to shine a light on social injustice and police brutality against African Americans.The Houston Texans, who were in Kansas City, Mo., on Thursday to face the Chiefs for the first game of the year, remained in their locker room during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which is known as the Black national anthem. After the protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May, the league said the song would be played before every game in Week 1 of the season.The Texans stayed inside to avoid having to decide whether to kneel or stand during either or both songs. The Chiefs lined up along their sideline while “The Star-Spangled Banner” played. One player, defensive end Alex Okafor, knelt and raised an arm. A teammate put his hand on Okafor’s shoulder. Many other players linked arms.NBC Sports did not show the Texans’ empty sideline.After the anthem was played, the Texans ran on to the field to a smattering of boos from the crowd, which had been reduced to 22 percent capacity because of the coronavirus. Both teams then were booed as they linked arms in the middle of the field for a moment of silence. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson, who were both outspoken this summer about on the need for change, were at the center of the line, arms linked. The protests at the N.F.L. opener were the latest in a wave of demonstrations by professional athletes that began late last month with the widespread postponement of games as players in the N.B.A., the W.N.B.A., Major League Baseball and other leagues chose to walk out in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.Even though about 70 percent of its players are Black, the N.F.L. has wrestled for several years with how to react to player protests and calls to address systematic racism and social injustice. The league largely ignored quarterback Colin Kaepernick when he knelt during the national anthem throughout the 2016 season to protest police brutality against African Americans.But after President Trump in September 2017 called on teams to fire players who did not stand for the anthem, the league and its owners tried to tamp down protests while also pledging tens of millions of dollars to groups fighting social injustice. The league backed off trying to ban protests during the anthem after the players’ union filed a grievance.Only a handful of players protested the past couple of seasons. But the issue was reignited this summer with nationwide protests after Floyd’s death. In early June, Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for not listening to the concerns of African-American players earlier. At the same time, President Trump renewed his attacks on the league.Broadcasters, who pay the league billions of dollars for the rights to show games, have largely tiptoed around the protests. But in a sign of the new attitude, Cris Collinsworth, a former player who was one of the announcers calling Thursday’s game for NBC Sports, lent his support to the protesters.“I stand behind these players 100 percent. 100 percent,” he said before kickoff. “What they’re trying to do is create positive change in this country that frankly is long, long overdue.”The bulk of the N.F.L. games will be on Sunday, and it is already clear there will be more protests. About an hour before the Chiefs and Texans kicked off, members of the Miami Dolphins took aim at the league’s efforts to address systematic racism and said they, too, would remain in the locker room during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”In a video they posted on Twitter, and which was first reported by ESPN, the players said they did not appreciate the league’s empty marketing slogans, which they called “fluff and empty gestures.”“We don’t need another publicity parade, so we’ll just stay inside until it’s time to play the game,” the players said, referring to their game against the New England Patriots on Sunday.Playing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” before games, they said, “is just a way to save face.”“We need changed hearts, not just a response to pressure,” they added.The video ended with Dolphins Coach Brian Flores, one of just three African-American head coaches in the league, repeating the message, “We’ll just stay inside.”The league this summer approved a plan for players to wear decals on the backs of their helmets with the names of victims of racist violence. Teams are stenciling the words “End Racism” in the end zones, and the N.F.L. has encouraged teams to use their stadiums as polling centers on Election Day.Some of the league’s biggest stars are getting messages across in advertisements. Mahomes, who in July signed a 10-year contract worth as much as $500 million in July, appeared in an Adidas ad in which he said: “We’re gonna be playing sports. But at the same time we’re gonna be taking action, and we’re gonna be making change in the world.”Mahomes has been a vocal supporter of voter registration initiatives and fighting voter suppression.Like Goodell, some N.F.L. team owners have said they support the players’ right to protest. Last week, John Mara, co-owner of the Giants, said he preferred that players stand for the national anthem, but that he would back those who did not.“I’m going to support your right to do that because I believe in the First Amendment, and I believe in the right of people, especially players, to take a knee in silent protest if that’s what they want to do,” he said. More

The N.F.L. season kickoff is giving the advertising industry reason to rejoice after months of disruption related to the pandemic and civil unrest.Media companies and marketing executives are looking forward to a boost in TV ratings amid uncertainty in other professional and college sports leagues over how their seasons will proceed. NBC said it sold out of ad space for the season-opening game on Thursday night, between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans, with revenue up substantially from last year and an average 30-second commercial costing nearly $900,000.Football tends to be far more attractive to advertisers than basketball, baseball and hockey combined, according to the research firm Kantar. The 2019 football regular season, playoffs and Super Bowl generated an estimated $4.3 billion in ad revenue for CBS, Fox and NBC, with nearly $200 million coming in the first week.With broadcast rights contracts expiring starting next year, analysts from the research firm MoffettNathanson predicted in an investor note on Thursday that the league would be able to command “gigantic increases for the upcoming cycle of new N.F.L. contracts,” with some networks paying up to 75 percent more for their packages. Current media partners “all seemingly are eager to extend their current relationships,” the analysts wrote, estimating that the total annual N.F.L. price tag will rise to $8.82 billion from $5.62 billion.ESPN, which suffered an advertising slump in its most recent quarter because of a dearth of N.B.A. and other sports programming, celebrated the N.F.L.’s return with a commercial set to Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” Other new N.F.L.-theme commercials include a Progressive spot featuring Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield, a Subway ad poking fun at New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick’s unemotional personality and a Lowe’s ad inspired by the Carolina Panthers’ home stadium.Frito-Lay tapped the “Friday Night Lights” director Peter Berg to helm a commercial called “’Twas the Night Before Kickoff,” featuring appearances by Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski and other football luminaries. The spot was filmed in California, Florida and Texas with 90 percent of the crew working remotely.“This year, the return of the N.F.L. matters more than ever,” Rachel Ferdinando, the company’s chief marketing officer, said in a statement.With the Big Ten and Pac-12 college football leagues postponing their seasons, and a shortage of new scripted entertainment, many clients have shifted ad spending to the N.F.L., media buyers said.Tom McGovern, president of the sports marketing agency Optimum Sports, said that companies saw the N.F.L. as a “safe haven” and a “beacon of hope.” After ad spending slumped in the pandemic, football will capture “a greater share of a smaller pie,” he said.“We are directing clients to the N.F.L. as a very viable place to spend dollars for people who need to reach mass audiences,” he said. “The N.F.L. is the first sport that is returning in its comfort zone — in its regular time frame in its regular season.”In addition to commercials, some companies are trying to reach customers through digital experiences designed to make viewers feel closer to the game. With stadiums sitting largely unoccupied, Bud Light worked out a deal with the N.F.L. and Twitter that gives fans a chance to interact with players during matches through its so-called Showtime Cam.While health restrictions are forcing many brands to divert funds from in-person events, marketing executives are finding that switching to virtual versions allows them to include more people than would physically fit on a field and offers better access to fans’ data.“If we brought this proposition to the N.F.L. during a normal season, I don’t know that there would be the same level of partnership or willingness to try it,” said Nick Kelly, a vice president at Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bud Light’s parent company. “But in the future, all the broadcasters are going to try to monetize this sort of thing.” More

Mahomes and Lamar Jackson headline an exciting new era of the N.F.L., which is on track for an on-time return to the field, just as planned. More

BEFORE THE EVER AFTERBy Jacqueline WoodsonZachariah Johnson Jr. (ZJ) is living a 12-year-old boy’s dream: His father is a star professional football player, he lives in a comfortable home in the suburbs with a half basketball court upstairs, he has a trio of friends who always show up at the right times and his budding songwriting talent seems destined to take him far.He is also living a nightmare.Jacqueline Woodson’s new novel, “Before the Ever After,” is not a work of horror (despite the haunting title), but a creeping, invisible force is upending ZJ’s world and slowly stealing away his father — known as “Zachariah 44,” for his jersey number — before his and his mother’s eyes.The father’s hands have begun to tremble uncontrollably. He stares vacantly. He forgets basic things, most achingly the name of the son who bears, and at times is burdened by, his name. He’s prone to angry outbursts, to the point that ZJ’s friends no longer want to come by the house.He is suffering the effects of a degenerative brain disease that, while not named, bears a strong resemblance to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., which has been found in scores of former N.F.L. players. Until 2016, the league for years denied any connection between brain trauma on the field and hundreds of players’ crippling neurological ailments and, in many cases, deaths.“My dad probably holds the Football Hall of Fame record for the most concussions,” ZJ says, relating how his mother has grown bitter about the game. “Even with a helmet on.”Although you can envision fretful parents handing this book to young boys eager to play, it’s not a stern lecture. It’s an elegiac meditation on loss and longing told, like Woodson’s seminal memoir, “Brown Girl Dreaming,” mostly in verse.This approach, and Woodson’s evocative language (“the night is so dark, it looks like a black wall”), helps pull us through the foreboding and gives us much to contemplate; leitmotifs such as trees and song deepen the story and provoke reflection on childhood, change and remembrance.The story is set in 1999-2000, when the cost of brain injury in the sport was just starting to come to light. The uncertainty over what has happened, and what might be coming, bewilders ZJ and his mother.“Sitting there with my mom and my dad snoring on the couch and the doctors knowing but not knowing,” he says, “I feel like someone’s holding us, keeping us from getting back to where we were before and keeping us from the next place too.”This is largely a father-son tale, leaving ZJ’s mother in the background, revealed in the occasional tender scene — Zachariah 44 drapes his arms around her in a moment of clarity — but mostly in quiet anguish.“I think they’re not telling the whole truth,” ZJ overhears his mother telling a friend. “Too many of them —”ZJ is so disillusioned that he gives away one of his father’s coveted footballs to his friend Everett, in a scene that reminds us of the staying power of the sport: “Everett’s eyes get wide. This is Zachariah 44’s ball? I nod. For real?”ZJ finds solace in the music, literal and symbolic, that he and his father have made together. “Until the doctors figure out what’s wrong, this is what I have for him,” ZJ says. “My music, our songs.”Woodson has said she seeks to instill optimism and hope. ZJ’s patient and supportive mother and his group of friends who are always buoying him up serve that purpose here. Yet at times this striving for hope feels strained, given a condition that so often offers no Hail Mary. ZJ may not fully realize it, but we all know what’s coming. The nightmarish, seemingly irreversible decline of the once mighty and strong has broken the hearts and wills of football families. A lyrical portrayal of a player’s fade and a boy coming to terms with it doesn’t change that. More

Some high schools have postponed football seasons. Some are forging ahead. And others are in limbo, with young athletes desperate to find a way to avoid a lost season. More

Members of Congress questioned whether the racial benchmarks used to settle dementia claims were consistent with discriminatory economic practices like redlining. More

Teams in the N.F.L. and other leagues believe performance on a tablet can predict success in a real game. More

Years of mismanagement have left Jacksonville with a thin roster and $44.8 million in dead cap space. The front office, however, remains intact. More