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      Urban Meyer to Make N.F.L. Jump With Jacksonville Jaguars

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyUrban Meyer to Make N.F.L. Jump With Jacksonville JaguarsMeyer coached Florida and Ohio State to national championships before retiring in 2018. He agreed to take over the Jaguars, who are expected to draft Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence first over all.Urban Meyer has not coached since retiring in 2018, citing health problems. That year an investigation revealed he had protected a longtime assistant with a history of domestic abuse.Credit…Jeff Gross/Getty ImagesVictor Mather, Ken Belson and Jan. 14, 2021Updated 7:30 p.m. ETUrban Meyer, the former Ohio State and Florida head coach who retired in 2018, will return to the sidelines as the coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, his first N.F.L. job.“Urban Meyer is who we want and need, a leader, winner and champion who demands excellence and produces results,” Shad Khan, the team’s owner, said in a statement. “While Urban already enjoys a legacy in the game of football that few will ever match, his passion for the opportunity in front of him here in Jacksonville is powerful and unmistakable.”Meyer, 56, was a spectacularly successful and highly paid collegiate coach, winning national titles with Florida in 2006 and 2008 and Ohio State in 2014. He previously had successful stints at Bowling Green and Utah.In 2018, Meyer retired from the Ohio State job, citing health concerns, including headaches related to a congenital arachnoid cyst.Meyer had been suspended for three games earlier that year after an investigation revealed he had protected a longtime assistant, Zach Smith, with a history of domestic abuse. One trustee of the university said the punishment was too lenient.Meyer defended his actions and moved to another job in Ohio State’s athletic department.“I believe I will not coach again,” he said at the time.With Thursday’s announcement, Meyer is set to take over a Jaguars team that won its first game of the 2020 season against the Indianapolis Colts, then lost the following 15 games. When the season ended, Khan dismissed head coach Doug Marrone, who had taken the team to the A.F.C. championship game in 2017, but was 12-36 since.The Jaguars’ abysmal record will give them the top pick in this year’s draft, a selection they are likely to use on quarterback Trevor Lawrence of Clemson. That could quickly bring an end to the starting job of Gardner Minshew, the colorful but erratically performing starter for most of the last two seasons.Meyer already has a big following in Jacksonville, where many college football fans root for the Florida Gators, who play in Gainesville, just over an hour’s drive away. Meyer is the seventh coach of the Jaguars, who played their first N.F.L. game in 1995. The team has made the postseason only once since 2007.Few coaches have enjoyed greater dominance over the college game, where Meyer was 187-32 over 17 years as a head coach and won national championships at Florida and Ohio State with his spread offenses that included quarterback Tim Tebow, the winner of the 2007 Heisman Trophy, and Aaron Hernandez, the star tight end whose pro career ended after he was accused of murder. At Utah, where Meyer was 22-2 in two seasons, he coached Alex Smith, the top pick in the 2005 N.F.L. draft who now plays for the Washington Football Team.But health troubles publicly trailed Meyer in the last decade of his career in the college ranks. In 2009, he announced that he would resign as Florida’s coach, only to reverse his decision a day later. At the time, he suggested “self-destructive” work habits were having a detrimental effect on his health. After a leave of absence, he went 8-5 the next season and exited Florida, saying it was “what’s best for the University of Florida, my players and myself and my family.”He was absent from the sideline for just one season before Ohio State hired him and set a proud program toward another stirring run, including a championship in the inaugural season of the College Football Playoff era.It was at Ohio State, though, that Meyer’s career took its greatest scar. The university suspended Meyer for several games in 2018 after he failed to properly report domestic abuse allegations against an assistant coach and misled reporters about his knowledge of the assistant’s history. When Meyer retired from coaching at the university later that year, he again cited his health.Still, Meyer remained a deeply appealing prospective coach. He was linked to openings, or potential vacancies, at the University of Southern California and the University of Texas, reportedly resisting the latter in recent months because of his health.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Dee Rowe, UConn Basketball Coach and Fund-Raiser, Dies at 91

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesA Future With CoronavirusVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storythose we’ve lostDee Rowe, UConn Basketball Coach and Fund-Raiser, Dies at 91He coached the Huskies for eight seasons, taking them to the N.C.A.A. tournament, before spending decades raising money for campus athletic facilities.Dee Rowe being honored in 2019 at the Gampel Pavilion on the University of Connecticut campus. He raised $7 million in donations to build the arena.Credit…Hartford CourantJan. 12, 2021, 4:58 p.m. ETDee Rowe, a revered figure at the University of Connecticut for a half-century as the men’s basketball coach and athletics department fund-raiser, died on Sunday at his home in Storrs, Conn. He was 91.His son, Donald, said that the cause was Covid-19, but that he had also received a diagnosis of Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia, a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.Rowe (his given name was Donald, but he got the nickname Dee in childhood, and it stuck) coached the Huskies for eight seasons, compiling a 120-88 record as he guided the team twice to the National Invitational Tournament and once to the N.C.A.A. men’s tournament, in 1976.After defeating Hofstra in the first round of that tournament, Connecticut lost, 93-79, to Rutgers. “We lost because of the way Rutgers makes you play,” he said after the game. “ We just let them play too fast for us. A team like that, that plays that fast, they ultimately wear you down.”Following the 1976-77 season, when he led the Huskies to a 17-10 record, he retired because of pancreatitis. “I got to the point in coaching where I felt I was the lone matador,” he told The Hartford Courant in 2004. “I suffered too much. I got out at 48. I was burned out.”Rowe embraced Coach Dave Gavitt of Providence College in 1976 after Connecticut defeated the Friars in a New England conference championship game that sent the Huskies to the N.C.A.A. tournament. Credit…Hartford CourantWithin a year, he started as the athletics department’s fund-raiser. “He had been offered the athletics director job at Middlebury, and along the way he pursued others, but he was committed to UConn,” his son said in a phone interview. “He wanted to be around it. He was very passionate and was a great salesman. At UConn, he sold from the heart.”In his 13 years as fund-raiser, an official role, Rowe was best known for collecting about $7 million in private donations to build the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion, the Storrs campus arena. Named after the lead donor, a real estate developer and alumnus, the pavilion is home to the men’s and women’s basketball team and the women’s volleyball team.After retiring in 1991 he remained a special adviser and helped raise money to build the Werth Family UConn Basketball Champions Center, where the basketball teams practice.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Mike Tomlin Reaches Another N.F.L. Postseason With Fewer Black Peers

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMike Tomlin Reaches Another N.F.L. Postseason With Fewer Black PeersThe Pittsburgh Steelers’ coach hasn’t had a losing season in 14 years. His acumen and approach have stabilized the team even amid player controversies and as the N.F.L. has struggled with race.“I think whenever you’re a Black coach in his position, that other people put so much pressure on you to do everything,” Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey said of Mike Tomlin. Credit…Scott Taetsch/Getty ImagesJan. 8, 2021Updated 7:59 a.m. ETMaurkice Pouncey, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Pro Bowl center, has been around Mike Tomlin long enough to decipher his coach’s body language.“You see him, and then the next thing you know, he’s so locked in,” Pouncey, a Steeler since 2010, said during a recent telephone interview. “You’re like, ‘Dang. I know not to mess around.’ ”Most players under his leadership came to respect Tomlin’s ability to wed football acumen with a sense of fairness and a consistency, engendering a behind-the-scenes kinship and historic success on the field.He has not had a losing campaign in his 14 seasons as a head coach, navigating the Steelers through controversies that could capsize other franchises. Through it all, Tomlin’s stone-cold facial expression has been as much of constant as the Steelers’ postseason berths — Pittsburgh hosts the Cleveland Browns in the first-round of the playoffs on Sunday evening — even as the N.F.L. has evolved greatly since he became the youngest head coach and second African-American coach to win a Super Bowl after the 2008 season at age 36.“He’s never lied to anyone,” Pouncey said. “And I think sometimes people get it misconstrued that he’s somewhat of a player’s coach. And I get it. He’s really cool with the players, but then when he comes in there, it’s all business.”In public, Tomlin is full of scowls and digestible platitudes showcased throughout games and in news conferences, a vastly different demeanor than his players see.“If you just listen to Coach T talk, he going to spit nothing but game at you,” said Ike Taylor, a cornerback who played a dozen seasons for Pittsburgh before retiring in 2015. “You just got to listen. He’s something like a pastor or a preacher or an evangelist. He just got a way with words where he can just reach out to anybody without even trying to.”Pastor Vernon Shazier occasionally accompanied his son, Ryan, to the Steelers’ facility before Ryan’s career-ending spinal injury in 2017. Tomlin, Shazier said, could tell someone that his play is unacceptable and warn the player that he’d soon be “going shopping” for a replacement if it continued, and then laugh with the player at his locker all in the same day.That candor allowed players like Taylor to forge what he described as an ongoing big-brother relationship with Tomlin.While Taylor was still active, Tomlin learned that he harbored aspirations of one day working in a team’s front office. Tomlin occasionally allowed him to eavesdrop on personnel discussions to gain a deeper understanding of the league’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering.Ike Taylor forged what he described as a big-brother relationship with Tomlin as a cornerback with the Steelers.Credit…Nick Cammett/Diamond Images, via Getty Images“Until it was time for them to really do business, I had to get out,” Taylor said. “I was probably one of the only active players who could sit in draft meetings and sit in on draft day with the organization. He gave me the green light to do a lot of things active players usually couldn’t have done, but that was the relationship him and I had.”Tomlin’s steadiness has been felt especially this seesaw season amid the pandemic. Pittsburgh began the season by reeling off 11 straight wins before its pursuit of a perfect season evaporated with three straight losses, as defenses started encroaching on the aging Ben Roethlisberger’s short-passing game. The Steelers capped their season with another loss to Cleveland in Week 17, though Roethlisberger did not play.Tomlin declined to speak for this article and he’s rarely gone into depth on his background the way he did during a round table discussion this summer with Vernon Lee and Carl Francis, co-founders of the Hampton Roads (Va.) Youth Foundation.Tomlin has been involved with the organization since he started as an N.F.L. assistant in Tampa Bay, helping to mentor the area’s youth. “Carl and I have considered him a partner in this endeavor,” Lee said. “Not just someone who’s coming back as a guest. It still shocks me to be quite honest with him being the head coach for the Steelers, how hands-on he is.”The three men, all natives of coastal southeast Virginia, discussed familiar streets, high schools and area legends. Tomlin eventually discussed the one motto that drives him.“Young people don’t care what you say,” Tomlin said in the talk. “They watch you move.”Tomlin should know. In the round table, he detailed growing up in Hampton, Va., with his older brother, Ed, “a product of a broken home. My parents separated before my first birthday and myself and my brother, we moved back in with her parents,” he said, referring to his mother’s parents.People looked out for their own in the 757, the area code for the seven cities that make up the Hampton Roads community. Adults steered Tomlin. His stepfather, Leslie Copeland, was a large influence. Tomlin followed Ed’s path into football, joining a league at age 7. Coaches of other teams showed genuine interest in the well-being of the young wide receiver, proving to Tomlin that if it took a village, he had found the correct one.Tomlin envisioned a career playing football by the time he arrived at Denbigh High in Newport News, Va. He doodled plays in class to the chagrin of his freshman geometry teacher, Gail Gunter. She warned him before calling his mother, Julia, after he failed to turn in a couple assignments.Gunter challenged Tomlin. Two years later, Gunter served as a counselor for the students competing in Odyssey of the Mind, a scholarly competition. The other students had recruited Tomlin to participate in constructing a vehicle but Gunter could not locate him when it was time to start.“Mike would come moseying on in after all the football players had left because he didn’t want them to see him coming into something that was academic,” Gunter said.The team finished second in the state. Tomlin had asked the other students not to disclose his involvement, which coincided with him asking Julia not to display his honor roll sticker on her car’s bumper.At the College of William & Mary, Tomlin continued drawing a distinction between football and his other pursuits. “I’ve referred to him before as a bit of a closet nerd even though he tries to downplay how smart he is,” said Terry Hammons, a fellow receiver and one of Tomlin’s closest friends at the university.As a student at the College of William and Mary, Tomlin trash-talked opponents on the football field but engaged with tough questions in the classroom.Credit…Cal Sport Media, via Associated Press ImagesDavid Aday, a professor of sociology and American studies, taught Tomlin in a criminology course. Tomlin sought to understand the racial, social and class links between mass incarceration, topics, Aday said, that are typically difficult to discuss.“The fact that he was a young Black man, some of the implications were a little more threatening, distressing,” Aday said. “There are a couple of ways you can deal with that. You can put your head down and say, ‘We’ll get through this conversation and move on.’ Or you can ask, ‘What’s going on here? What do we know that could help us to understand this?’”On the field, Tomlin talked trash to opponents and teammates alike, teetering the difference between inspiring his sideline and infuriating the other. He’d slyly caution Hammons to be safe before receiving punts — in essence, daring Hammons to return the ball.“Mike knew I had a bit of a Napoleon complex and he knew how to get me going,” Hammons said.Tomlin debated for more passes. He took over meetings with Hammons. During film reviews, Zbig Kepa, their receivers coach, sometimes dropped the remote on the table and told his boisterous crew to figure out the tape for themselves.“He was comedy on the field,” Kepa said. “Then, he would really keep that energy level going and communicate and ask questions in meetings.”His hopes of an N.F.L. career fading, Tomlin became the wide receivers coach at Virginia Military Institute in 1995, carving a path to stay involved with the game and using the intellect he had gained from studying it since his youth.He quickly worked his way up the college ranks with stops at Memphis, Arkansas State and Cincinnati, along the way learning the benefits of meticulously planning and documenting his days and charting goals in old Franklin Planners.“I got this Franklin Planner and I bought these cassette tapes, right?” Tomlin said during the round table. “And I committed to a day of watching these cassette tapes and organizing my life through this Franklin Planner. Just thoughts, quotes of the day, appointments, critical notes, call backs, et cetera, et cetera. I needed that organization because I was drowning in life at that time.”That propensity for planning paid off in 2007 when, after six seasons as an assistant in Tampa Bay and Minnesota, he interviewed to replace Bill Cowher as the Steelers’ head coach. Pittsburgh offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt and assistant head coach Russ Grimm were the favorites to win the job but Tomlin impressed owner Dan Rooney and team president Art Rooney II in his interviews by presenting a detailed plan for the franchise over the next calendar year.Tomlin in his first year as Steelers head coach in 2007. He inherited Hall of Fame quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who is now in the twilight of his career.Credit…Joseph Sargent/Icon SMI, via Getty ImagesThe Steelers appointed Tomlin as the franchise’s third head coach since 1969 on the same day that two Black coaches, Tony Dungy’s Indianapolis Colts and Lovie Smith’s Chicago Bears, met for the first time in the Super Bowl.“Mike ended up getting his job at a time when there was a lot of discussion about African-Americans being able to get a job, being able to hold it if you got it and who was qualified,” said Terry Robiskie, a longtime N.F.L. assistant coach. “It was always the discussion that they could never find anyone that was qualified.”Tomlin’s hiring was viewed as a success of the Rooney Rule, named after Dan Rooney, the former owner of the Steelers, that requires teams to interview minority candidates for high-profile vacancies. Tomlin joined six other Black men with N.F.L. head coaching jobs the year he was hired; with the Los Angeles Chargers’ recent dismissal of Anthony Lynn after the 2020 regular season, the number of Black N.F.L. head coaches is down to just two — Tomlin and Brian Flores of the Miami Dolphins — in a league where nearly 70 percent of players are African-American.Tomlin is now a veteran coach. The career of Roethlisberger, the Hall of Fame quarterback he inherited, is winding down. Members of the stingy defense passed down to him are long retired. Tomlin’s reputation as a player’s coach was dinged through running back Le’Veon Bell sitting out the 2018 season while seeking a new contract and Antonio Brown’s cycles of drama.Change has swept the broader N.F.L. landscape, too. As the N.F.L. has struggled with its place in the national reckoning on race, Tomlin last year came to the defense of backup quarterback Mason Rudolph, who is white and was accused of using a racist slur toward Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett, who is Black, during a brawl between the two teams.“He brings the perspective as a Black man with children, but he doesn’t try to force his view on his players and that’s what he’s done from the beginning,” Hammons said.Instead, Tomlin allows his players to deliberate issues collectively to land on a unified response, “allowing them to have a vested interest in the ultimate decision,” Hammons said.That was the goal in 2017. Tomlin allowed his players to debate on whether they would stand or kneel for the national anthem to draw awareness to racial injustice and abuse. The roster did not reach a consensus and decided to stay in the locker room before a game against Chicago. Alejandro Villanueva, an offensive lineman and Bronze Star Medal recipient, stood by himself in the tunnel as the song played.Alejandro Villanueva of the Pittsburgh Steelers stood by himself in the tunnel for the national anthem before a game against the Chicago Bears in 2017.Credit…Joe Robbins/Getty Images“I think whenever you’re a Black coach in his position, that other people put so much pressure on you to do everything,” Pouncey said. “And he’s not here for that. And if you really know Coach Tomlin, he’s a football coach. That’s what he loves. That’s what he dedicates his whole entire life to.”Decades ago, Robiskie met Dungy when the pair roomed together for the East-West Shrine Game, a postseason college showcase. Their paths paralleled. They became friends as part of a small number of Black N.F.L. coaches and sometimes vacationed together with their wives.After dinners, Dungy, by then Tampa’s coach, often brought up the name of a young coach on his staff, full of potential, learning by the day. “Mike who?” Robiskie, then an assistant coach with the Browns, would say. “Tomlin? I’m going to get him just like I get you.”Years later, Robiskie, now a running backs coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars, estimates that his teams are 0-19 against Tomlin.To Robiskie, Tomlin has extended the legacy of coaches like Dungy, Smith, Dennis Green and Art Shell while staying true to himself.The others, Robiskie said, were low-key personalities. “Mike was going to laugh and joke and scream and if he had to get upset and cuss and fuss, he was going to get upset and cuss and fuss,” Robiskie said.He added. “We’ve all got to tip our hats off to him. He’s brought that trophy there once before and I, for one, I get on my knees and pray he brings them another one.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Coronavirus Will Keep Browns Coach Out of Long-Awaited Playoff Game

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccination StrategiesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCoronavirus Will Keep Browns Coach Out of Long-Awaited Playoff GameCleveland announced that Coach Kevin Stefanski, two members of his staff and two Browns players’ positive tests will keep them out of Sunday’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.Browns Coach Kevin Stefanski led Cleveland to its first playoff appearance in 17 seasons, ending the N.F.L.’s longest postseason playoff drought.Credit…Terrance Williams/Associated PressJan. 5, 2021Updated 3:31 p.m. ETThe Cleveland Browns have seen their share of highs and lows over the decades, including the past 17 years, when they won less than one-third of their games and failed to reach the playoffs.Misery turned to elation on Sunday, though, when the Browns beat the Pittsburgh Steelers to qualify for the postseason for the first time since the 2002 season and end the N.F.L.’s longest playoff drought. The Browns’ championship aspirations took a severe hit on Tuesday when the team said its head coach, Kevin Stefanski, two other coaches and two players tested positive for the coronavirus, the latest additions to a growing outbreak that has hampered the team the last few games.All five people will miss the Browns’ matchup against the Steelers on Sunday night in Pittsburgh. Special teams coordinator Mike Priefer will take over as head coach in Stefanski’s absence. The Browns have shut their training facility in Berea, Ohio, in the meantime.Offensive lineman Joel Bitonio is one of the two players who tested positive. Bitonio has been with the Browns his entire seven-year career, which has included the 2016 and 2017 seasons, when the team went 1-15 and 0-16. Stefanski gave Bitonio, the longest tenured player on the team, the game ball after Sunday’s win. Now Bitonio will miss his first chance to play in a postseason game.“This is just a terrible scenario for him,” J.C. Tretter, a center on the Browns and the president of the N.F.L. Players Association, said after the team’s announcement.The number of players, coaches and staff who tested positive picked up noticeably starting in November as the virus raged through communities around the country. In the week that ended Jan. 2, the N.F.L. said there were 34 new confirmed positive tests among players and 36 new confirmed positives among other personnel. The 70 combined cases was up from 58 positive tests the week before and 45 cases the week before that.Since August, 256 players and 432 coaches and staff have tested positive for the virus. There are at least 6,000 people regularly being tested throughout the league, including about 2,500 players on rosters and practice squads.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Adam Gase, Hired to Spark Jets’ Offense, Is Out After Two Seasons

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAdam Gase, Hired to Spark Jets’ Offense, Is Out After Two SeasonsGase sputtered to a 9-23 record in a tenure during which star players left disgruntled and the franchise quarterback, Sam Darnold, went underdeveloped.Adam Gase, right, was tapped to revitalize the Jets’ offense. Two seasons later, quarterback Sam Darnold has regressed and the team owns the N.F.L.’s longest playoff drought.Credit…Charles Krupa/Associated PressJan. 3, 2021, 9:13 p.m. ETOn the day the Jets introduced Adam Gase as their next head coach, their chief executive, Christopher Johnson, heralded an organizational shift. After hiring defensive-minded coaches for more than two decades, it was time for the Jets, Johnson said, to align with league trends.“To paraphrase Wayne Gretzky,” Johnson said of Gase, “he’s coaching where football is going.”That assessment was hardly prescient. Gase’s failure to oversee a capable offense resulted in one of the worst seasons in franchise history and precipitated his dismissal Sunday, hours after a Week 17 loss to the Patriots dropped the Jets’ record to 2-14 and less than two years after Johnson appointed him in January 2019 to replace Todd Bowles.Instead of revitalizing the Jets and developing quarterback Sam Darnold, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2018 draft, into a star, Gase departs as yet another caretaker of the team’s postseason drought, the longest in the league, 10 seasons and counting.“While my sincere intentions are to have stability in our organization — especially in our leadership positions — it is clear the best decision for the Jets is to move in a different direction,” Johnson said in a statement. “We knew there was a lot of work that needed to be done when Adam joined us in 2019. Our strong finish last year was encouraging, but unfortunately, we did not sustain that positive momentum or see the progress we all expected this season.”As the Jets lost their first 13 games, careening toward winless infamy until they upset the Rams in Week 15 and outlasted Cleveland in Week 16, their struggles recalled another woeful era: their clumsiness under Rich Kotite — before Gase, the last offense-oriented coach the Jets had hired — who coached the team to its 1-15 nadir in 1996. In two seasons under Gase’s stewardship, the Jets went 9-23, Darnold regressed and the team’s offense ranked either last or next-to-last in points and total yardage each year. They finished last in both categories this season.“If there’s one side of the ball that I want to make sure is right — that one — it has not happened and that’s on me,” Gase said last week.Gase, 42, was a successful coordinator with Denver and Chicago, calling offensive plays for Peyton Manning in his record-setting season with the Broncos in 2013. Manning emphatically endorsed Gase to Johnson during the search process. Much as the Jets were motivated to acquire Tim Tebow in 2012 because he had led a late comeback to defeat them, team executives were also intrigued by Gase, in part, because he won five of six games against the Jets in his three seasons coaching the Dolphins, who fired him the day after the 2018 season ended. Gase went 23-25 with Miami.The Jets’ job opened at the same time, an inflection point across the N.F.L. landscape: Quarterbacks threw the most touchdown passes, and teams combined to score the most touchdowns, in a single season to that point.The aerial revolution prompted teams with vacancies to identify head coaches who could revamp desultory offenses and, though in 2018 the Jets actually scored more points and gained more yards than Miami did under Gase that season, the Jets believed he was the right person to mold Darnold at quarterback, the position that has vexed them like no other.What followed instead were spells of ineptitude and irreconcilable rifts. Four months after Gase was hired, the Jets fired their general manager, Mike Maccagnan, despite letting him run the two most critical parts of the 2019 off-season: the draft and free agency. Gase later dismissed the perception that he had won a power struggle between the two men.Then, after reportedly opposing the Jets’ decision to sign running back Le’Veon Bell in March 2019, Gase angered him by not deploying him to what Bell perceived was the best of his capabilities. The team wound up releasing Bell in October 2020. In that, Bell became the latest player alienated by this edition of Jets leadership, fronted by Gase and the new general manager Joe Douglas. Bell joined the star safety Jamal Adams, who was dealt to Seattle in July, and Quincy Enunwa and Kelechi Osemele, who had been upset with the way the team handled their injuries.The Jets, after closing the 2019 season by winning six of their final eight games, offered a smidgen of hope for a franchise that hasn’t made the playoffs since 2010 under Rex Ryan.It was a mirage. They were non-competitive in most games, and though teams generally aspire to peak in late December, the Jets’ late-season victories might have done more harm than good. To Gase’s credit and perhaps to the detriment of the franchise, his players did not quit on him. His coaching legacy will be rallying his players enough to win twice in the last three weeks, victories that cost the Jets the No. 1 overall selection in the 2021 draft because they no longer had the league’s worst record. Instead, they will choose second, behind Jacksonville.Almost certainly the Jets would have used that top pick to take Trevor Lawrence, the consensus top quarterback prospect, should he elect to skip his senior season at Clemson. Now, just three years after drafting Darnold out of Southern California, the Jets must decide whether to continue building around him; pursue a veteran stopgap in free agency or via trade; or draft a successor, perhaps Justin Fields of Ohio State or Zach Wilson of Brigham Young.Gase, like Ryan and Bowles before him, focused on his specialty, giving the deposed coordinator Gregg Williams — fired after his disastrous call in Week 12 led to the Raiders’ scoring the winning touchdown with five seconds left — autonomy over the defense, and the entire operation suffered: The Jets allowed 457 points, the most in franchise history.While teams around the league this season scored points and touchdowns at an unprecedented rate, surpassing the standard set in 2018, the Jets most definitely did not. They entered Week 17 last in most offensive categories, including yards, passing yards, points and first downs per game; yards and points per drive; and red-zone efficiency.That impotence doesn’t seem to track with something else Johnson said back in mid-September.Gase, Johnson said, had a “brilliant offensive mind.” With the Jets no closer to a playoff berth, no closer to where football is going, now it is time for Gase to use that mind somewhere else.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Paul Westphal, N.B.A. Hall of Famer and Coach, Dies at 70

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPaul Westphal, N.B.A. Hall of Famer and Coach, Dies at 70Drafted in the first round by the Celtics, he played for 12 seasons before leading teams in Phoenix, Seattle and Sacramento.Paul Westphal, left, drives past Bobby Wilkerson during a game against the Denver Nuggets in 1978.Credit…Mark Junge/Getty ImagesJan. 2, 2021Updated 6:58 p.m. ETPaul Westphal, the Basketball Hall of Fame guard who played for the Boston Celtics’ 1974 N.B.A. champions, became a four-time All-Star with the Phoenix Suns and coached them to the league playoff final in 1993, died on Saturday. He was 70. Westphal, whose death was confirmed by the Suns, was found to have brain cancer in the summer of 2020.Westphal was an outstanding shooter with both hands and a fine playmaker and defensive player. He played in the N.B.A. for 12 seasons, also with the Seattle SuperSonics and the Knicks. He was a head coach for all or part of 10 seasons, with the Suns, Seattle and the Sacramento Kings, and an assistant coach with the Dallas Mavericks and the Brooklyn Nets.He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., as a player in 2019.The Celtics selected Westphal in the first round of the 1972 N.B.A. draft, the 10th player chosen over all.One of his finest games with Boston came in the 1974 N.B.A. championship finals against the Milwaukee Bucks.Westphal scored 12 points in Game 5 and played stifling defense against Oscar Robertson, one of the N.B.A.’s greatest players, who made only 2 of his 13 shots. The Celtics won, 96-87, on the Bucks’ court and captured the series, four games to three.But Westphal was mostly a reserve in his three seasons with the Celtics, since they had outstanding guards in Jo Jo White and Don Chaney. They traded him to the Suns in May 1975 for Charlie Scott, the future Hall of Fame forward, and draft picks.Westphal was back in the playoff finals in 1976, this time playing for Phoenix against Boston. He scored 25 points in Game 5, though the Suns were beaten, 128-126, in triple overtime in what has been called “the greatest game ever played.” The Suns lost the series, 4 games to 2.Westphal played for the Suns from 1975 to 1980 and again in his final season, 1983-84. He played with the SuperSonics in 1980-81, when he gained his fifth All-Star selection. The Knicks signed him midway through the 1981-82 season, though he was still recovering from a stress fracture of his right foot incurred when he played for Seattle.Westphal was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.Credit…Elise Amendola/Associated PressIn November 1982, Westphal got a taste of the New York-based television world when he had a small role as a police officer on ABC’s daytime drama “The Edge of Night.”“I’ve never had any acting experience, except for trying to draw fouls during basketball games,” he told The New York Times. But, as he put it, “since basketball players and actors are both pampered and spoiled, I think I would have no trouble making the change to acting.”He never did pursue an acting career, but he won the N.B.A.’s Comeback Player of the Year Award for 1982-83, when he helped take the Knicks to the second round of the playoffs, appearing in 80 of their 82 games and averaging 10 points a game, having recovered from his injury with Seattle.Westphal averaged 20.6 points a game in his six seasons with the Suns and had career averages of 15.6 points and 4.4 assists per game. He won 318 games and lost 279 as an N.B.A. head coach.After his playing days, Westphal coached at several western colleges, including Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, taking the school to the 1988 NAIA national championship.He was an assistant coach with the Suns for four seasons before he was named head coach in 1992-93, when they posted the N.B.A.’s best regular-season record at 62-20, led by Charles Barkley, the league’s most valuable player, along with Dan Majerle, Kevin Johnson and Danny Ainge. But the Suns lost to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in a six-game championship final.Westphal coached several outstanding Suns team afterward but was fired in January 1996 when the Suns, riddled with injuries, were playing poorly.He coached the SuperSonics and the Kings for all or parts of three seasons each and closed out his coaching career as a Nets assistant from 2014 to 2016.Paul Douglas Westphal was born on Nov. 30, 1950, in Torrance, Calif., a son of Armin and Ruth Westphal. His father, an aeronautical engineer, and his older brother, Bill, shot hoops with him in the family’s driveway when he was a youngster.He was a basketball star at Aviation High School in Redondo Beach, then played for the University of Southern California for three seasons. He averaged 16.4 points a game and was voted as a second-team all-American in The Associated Press poll for 1971.Westphal’s survivors include his wife, Cindy; their daughter, Victoria, and a son, Michael. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.“In training camp, he told us his greatest asset would be his ability to relate,” Kevin Johnson told The Seattle Times in February 1999 when Westphal was in his first season as the Sonics’ coach. “He was a rookie, he was an All-Star, he was a free agent, he got waived, he was traded, he got old. He’s been through every possible experience.”“I hoped to be a player, but always planned on being a coach,” Westphal said. “I was able to play for 12 years and postpone my coaching career.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      K.C. Jones Never Got His Due in Boston. Race Played a Part.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonThe Warriors Are StrugglingVirus Upends Houston RocketsMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Pro BasketballK.C. Jones Never Got His Due in Boston. Race Played a Part.Jones, who was Black and won eight championships as a player and two as a coach with the Boston Celtics, was underappreciated as one of the N.B.A.’s most successful coaches.K.C. Jones head coach, of the Boston Celtics talks with his team during a timeout an NBA game in 1986.Credit…Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE, via Getty ImagesDec. 29, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETIn early December 1990, K.C. Jones sat in a hotel suite overlooking the New Jersey Meadowlands before a game with the Nets, trying to explain why a coach who won 75 percent of his games and two N.B.A. titles with Boston, and who reached four league finals over five seasons, had been shoved upstairs into a toothless front-office position before ultimately departing his beloved Celtics to coach in Seattle.His new team, whose roster featured the very young Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp, had lost the previous night by 33 points to Larry Bird and the Celtics, with eight Celtics scoring in double figures. On the bench, Jones pointed out the opponents’ superior ball movement, hoping his players might learn something from the drubbing.“See that — there’s no N-E-G-A-T-I-V-E,” he recalled telling the Seattle wannabes, who may or may not have appreciated that Jones’s selfless, unpretentious approach to the game was still as much a part of the Celtics as their parquet floor.Teachable moments, those obvious or subtle, were not to be wasted. At one point during the hotel interview with two reporters, Jones excused himself to dial another room. “Quintin, what time is the bus tonight?” he asked. After a pause, Jones replied, “OK, see you there.”The two reporters looked at each other, confused. What kind of coach needed to call Quintin Dailey, a player known for, shall we say, poor conformity habits to ask about when the bus would be leaving for the arena? Then it hit them — this was classic K.C., tactfully checking on Dailey, purposefully understated.Jones returned to his seat and said, “Where were we?”He was, as it turned out, nearing the end of a decades-long love affair with the game that was best defined by championship celebrations.With Bill Russell, he won two N.C.A.A. titles at the University of San Francisco and an Olympic gold medal. With Russell in Boston, as a point guard specializing in defense, he won eight N.B.A. titles. As an assistant coach to his former Celtics teammate Bill Sharman in Los Angeles, he sprinkled championship dust on the Lakers in 1971-72. He won another ring in 1980-81 as Bill Fitch’s assistant in Boston and two more as the head coach during the prime years of the Bird era.Sad to say, to the day he died at 88, on Christmas last week, Jones never got the credit he deserved.Or put it this way: In a sport that defines its champions by the superstars who drive them, Jones never had the self-promotional skills or ego-driven desire to muscle his way onto a pedestal. He never overcame the news media stereotype of him as some hybrid shepherd/spokesman for the collective genius he sent onto the floor each night.Consider that in the five years Jones coached the Celtics to a higher winning percentage, regular season and playoffs, than Red Auerbach, Russell, Fitch or anyone else, Jones never was voted coach of the year. His 1985-86 team won 67 games and went 40-1 at home — that wasn’t good enough.“People saw him as this nice, quiet guy,” Danny Ainge said after Jones left the Celtics. “But he’s so intense, so competitive.”It wasn’t as if Jones hadn’t played a winning coaching hand before replacing Fitch on the Celtics bench in 1983-84 (and promptly beating Pat Riley’s Lakers in the finals): In 1974-75, he coached Washington to a 60-22 record, a 13-game improvement over the prior season, beat the Celtics in the playoffs and made the finals. He lost the coach of the year vote to Phil Johnson and his 44 wins in Kansas City.Of course, racial typecasting was part of this. Just one Black head coach won the Coach of the Year Award in its first 28 years — none in the 1980s. In those days, the N.B.A. was only marginally better at developing and honoring Black coaching talent than other professional sports. The most reliable path for a Black man to the hot seat was, by and large, being a brand-name star in his playing market — a Russell in Boston, a Willis Reed in New York, a Lenny Wilkens in Seattle.K.C. Jones, right, wasn’t given as much credit as he deserved for coaching the Boston Celtics to four N.B.A. finals and two championships in five seasons during the 1980s.Credit…Mike Kullen/Associated PressJones was certainly no headliner as a player — an unreliable shooter who averaged 7.4 points and 4.3 assists per game over nine years. He was a Celtics loyalist, however, and that got him the job, in part because Fitch sometimes objected to Auerbach’s heavy front-office hand. Jones was hired with such fanfare that he learned of the appointment from a flight attendant. Auerbach confirmed it later and told him: “Come in tomorrow — and don’t bring an agent.”That made Jones something of a precedent-setter, for this was how the network served so many white journeymen players, even Riley, who, like Jones, was handed a team that had already won a title (under Paul Westhead). And while Riley didn’t win coach of the year until the 1989-90 season, his last in Los Angeles, he parlayed his excellent work with the Lakers into best-selling motivational books and lucrative banquet speaking fees.Before long, rare was the assertion that all Riley had to do was hand the ball to Magic Johnson, enjoy the view from the bench, as was the case with Jones and Bird in Boston.Jones was no doubt obscured by the rise of the celebrity coach, on the pro and college levels. By men who had polished nightly monologues and celebrated systems. If they won, they were hailed as brilliant. If they lost, the players didn’t fit the system. Some wise old heads considered this to be self-serving nonsense. Red Holzman was one of them. While Hubie Brown lectured the world with a bullhorn (on his way to a sub .500 career record) as Holzman’s replacement with the Knicks, Holzman quietly admired Jones’s work in Boston.Jones’s teams, he would say, played beautiful situational ball, exploiting the weaknesses of their opponents. His players weren’t fast, but they ran perfect positional fast breaks. Like Holzman with the championship Knicks of the early 1970s, Jones was good with them getting all the credit. He was a company man who accepted, without public rancor, the front-office plot to replace him with Jimmy Rodgers, a longtime Celtics assistant.Jones’s last season in Boston, when injuries and age were taking a toll, produced 57 wins and a conference-finals loss to the rising Detroit Pistons. It was his first failure there to make the finals. Letting the reporters come to their own conclusions in that New Jersey hotel, he said, simply: “And here came Jaws.”Under Rodgers, the Celtics didn’t make it out of the first round for the next two years. But sharks leave reputational scars, too. Though Jones made the playoffs in his one full season in Seattle, he was fired in early 1992 with an 18-18 record, as management brought in George Karl as its preferred teacher for Payton and Kemp.Draw your own conclusions on that.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More