Subterms
It’s been roughly a month and a half since the last pro basketball or hockey game. March Madness was canceled. Baseball never started. For my group of childhood friends and me, and surely for plenty of others, this year’s N.F.L. draft has become the most important sporting event since the Super Bowl. We make a […] More
Live, from Roger Goodell’s basement, the first round of the N.F.L. draft offered something of a surprise gift on Thursday night: A chance to focus on selections over spectacle with a smooth run through the top 32 picks. Sure, the evening generated plenty of questions to keep sports fans engaged, despite the almost universal shutdown […] More
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
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
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
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
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
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
