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      Tampa Bay’s Pass Rush Would Like Your Attention

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021Chiefs Fans’ Generational DivideReconsidering Tom BradyToned Down TV CommercialsLuring Online Sports BettorsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTampa Bay’s Pass Rush Would Like Your AttentionShaquil Barrett, Jason Pierre-Paul and Ndamukong Suh found a home with the Buccaneers after being discarded elsewhere. On Sunday, their mission is clear: Get Patrick Mahomes.Shaquil Barrett of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had one sack and one quarterback hit in Tampa Bay’s Week 12 loss to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.Credit…Jason Behnken/Associated PressFeb. 4, 2021, 8:14 a.m. ETThey’re big. They’re fast. Sometimes they can seem a little mean. Each one has Super Bowl experience and, come Sunday, they just might be Tampa Bay’s best chance of stopping Patrick Mahomes from winning a second consecutive championship.But the most surprising thing when you watch Shaquil Barrett, Jason Pierre-Paul and Ndamukong Suh dominate for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is the realization that each of them, at one point in their career, was deemed expendable.You would hardly guess it — particularly after watching them torment Aaron Rodgers throughout an upset of the Green Bay Packers in the N.F.C. championship game — but each of them also came to Tampa Bay with metaphorical hat in hand, looking for a fresh start.Suh, a five-time Pro Bowler, was three seasons into an enormous contract with the Miami Dolphins when he was released in 2018, and after helping the Los Angeles Rams make that season’s Super Bowl, Los Angeles made no attempt to re-sign him. Pierre-Paul, with a laundry list of big moments and scary injuries, was coming off an uneven 2017 season when the Giants, as part of a move to a 3-4 defense, decided he was a bad fit and traded him to the Buccaneers for a third-round pick. And Barrett, ever the understudy to stars like Von Miller in five seasons with the Denver Broncos, walked away from a team that never found a role for him.Over the past two seasons, those three players — along with linebacker Devin White and the mammoth defensive tackle Vita Vea — have powered the Buccaneers to an average of just under three sacks a game. Barrett, who had 14 sacks in five seasons with Denver, has 27.5 in two years with the Buccaneers. Pierre-Paul, who adjusted just fine to a role as an outside linebacker in a 3-4 scheme, has 18 sacks in the last two seasons despite missing six games.In the Bucs’ win over Green Bay two weeks ago, Barrett and Pierre-Paul accounted for all five of Tampa Bay’s sacks.Ndamukong Suh’s impact in the N.F.C. championship game did not show up on the stat sheet, but he played a huge role in ruining Aaron Rodgers’s day.Credit…Jeff Haynes/Associated PressThe group has gone from being discarded by their old teams to becoming the savvy veteran leaders of a defense that is particularly young in the secondary. And beyond the group’s obvious talent on the field, Barrett, Pierre-Paul and Suh have also proved to be leaders by sharing their life experience with the team’s younger players.“Without question,” Suh said when asked if there were things to learn from past struggles. “The tough times leave a lasting impression of something you don’t ever want to revisit again.”For Pierre-Paul, those struggles have included back surgery, the loss of his right index finger in a fireworks accident in 2015, and a car accident in 2019 that left him with a fractured vertebra in his neck.Pierre-Paul recounted his various comebacks with some lighthearted banter. He said growing up with a blind father gave him an excellent role model for resiliency, and he chastised the voters for not putting him in the Pro Bowl in 2019 after he came back from a broken neck to record 8.5 sacks in 10 games.“With all the things that I’ve been through, I’m overachieving,” he said. “I’m letting everybody know that no matter what you go through, you can do whatever.”Coach Bruce Arians said Pierre-Paul’s obstacles had made him an ideal leader.“He plays with a heart that is as big as a lion and high, high energy,” Arians said. “Guys just love playing with him. He doesn’t speak a lot because he lets his play do the talking, but when he speaks, everybody listens.”Tom Brady, who lost to Pierre-Paul and the Giants in the Super Bowl after the 2011 season, said he liked being the star defender’s teammate rather than his opponent. And he agreed with Arians about Pierre-Paul’s leadership.“J.P.P. is absolutely like a ringleader in that group,” Brady said. “When he’s going, everyone is going.”The question now is if all of that life experience, and all of that talent, can translate into Tampa Bay’s front seven creating the disruptions necessary to slow down Mahomes.While he does not run the ball very often, Mahomes is evasive in the backfield, using his legs to create separation and his arm strength to make up for having moved outside of the pocket. He is rarely sacked, and his ability to throw under pressure negates any advantage of a blitz: To Mahomes, a blitz just means there is one fewer defender in coverage. So Tampa Bay’s best bet may be to go after him with a four-man rush, a point that was repeated several times by each of the defensive stars.“He’s just got it — he’s got it all,” Barrett said of Mahomes. “So we’re going to try to keep him in a pocket. That’s why the way we rush is perfect with me and J.P.P.”Helping matters is the Chiefs’ being without several offensive linemen. Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, a starting guard, opted out of the season. Right tackle Mitchell Schwartz hasn’t played since Week 6, guard Kelechi Osemele hasn’t played since Week 5 and left tackle Eric Fisher tore his Achilles’ tendon in the A.F.C. championship game. Center Daniel Kilgore has missed practice all week; he is isolating away from the team after a close contact with a person infected with the coronavirus, but he is expected to be cleared to play on Sunday.Coach Bruce Arians praised Jason Pierre-Paul for his ability to play through significant injuries. “He is a rolling ball of energy every single day,” Arians said.Credit…Jason Behnken/Associated PressA few injuries — not a broken neck among them — did not draw much sympathy from Pierre-Paul.“I don’t care; it don’t matter,” Pierre-Paul said. “This is the freaking Super Bowl. I’m going to do what I need to do. That’s a ‘you’ problem. They need to figure that out.”For as confident as they are, and for as much opportunity as they have to influence the outcome of Sunday’s game, Tampa Bay’s star defenders took plenty of time to praise Mahomes as a worthy opponent. Barrett went as far as to wade in on the GOAT vs. Baby GOAT debate, in which some have suggested that Tom Brady should share his Greatest of All Time nickname with Mahomes.Barrett thinks Mahomes is well on his way to earning that distinction, but he argues that the Buccaneers defense, with a pass rush led by him, Pierre-Paul and Suh, can help slow down the passing of that torch. While Mahomes is hoping to collect a second Super Bowl ring, Brady is one win from his seventh.“We’ve just got to tell him he ain’t ready to be the big GOAT yet, because we still got Tom Brady,” Barrett said. “So we’ve got to step it up and make sure Tom Brady gets another one.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      These Women Were N.F.L. ‘Firsts.’ They’re Eager for Company.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021Chiefs Fans’ Generational DivideReconsidering Tom BradyToned Down TV CommercialsLuring Online Sports BettorsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThese Women Were N.F.L. ‘Firsts.’ They’re Eager for Company.Two women will coach the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in this year’s Super Bowl, a milestone in the N.F.L.’s gender diversity efforts. Women in football hope their presence quickly stops being noteworthy.Maral Javadifar, right, an assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Lori Locust, a defensive-line assistant, will coach in Super Bowl LV. It will be the first time that two coaches who are women will work the title game.Credit…Julio Cortez/Associated PressGillian R. Brassil and Feb. 3, 2021Updated 4:56 p.m. ETThe football pioneers arrived quickly over the past year: the first woman to coach in a Super Bowl, the first woman chosen to officiate a Super Bowl, the first Black woman to be named a full-time coach in the N.F.L.They can’t wait to have a lot more company.“What is really going to excite me is when this is no longer aberrational or when this is no longer something that’s noteworthy,” said Amy Trask, who in 1997 became the Oakland Raiders’ chief executive and the first woman of that rank in the N.F.L. Few have followed in similar roles.The coaching ranks took much longer to welcome women — until 2015. Eight female coaches were on N.F.L. staffs this season, the first time there had ever be more than two women coaching simultaneously in the league, according to The Institute of Diversity and Ethics in Sport, which tracks hiring across a variety of roles in five major sports.Other professional sports had groundbreaking moments, as well, in the past year. The Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng as M.L.B.’s first female general manager and Becky Hammon became the first woman to serve as a head coach in the N.B.A. But the ascent of women to top sports jobs remains an aberration and not the norm, as it is for men to lead many women’s professional and college teams.Jen Welter, the first female to coach in the N.F.L., said that she initially turned down her first opportunity to coach a men’s team — in the Champions Indoor Football league — because she worried about feeling isolated.“I was a highly decorated women’s player — two gold medals, an eight-time Pro Bowler — also had a master’s degree in sports psychology and a Ph.D. in psychology, and my instinct was, ‘no,’ because there were no women,” Welter said recently in a telephone interview. “Representation matters.”Callie Brownson, the chief of staff for the Cleveland Browns, said players were unfazed when she had to fill in as coach of the tight ends for two games this season and the wide receivers for one, when the full-time coaches for those positions were out on paternity leave or placed on the Covid-19 reserve list.“I remember walking up to the tight ends at practice on Wednesday and saying, ‘Hey, just so you guys know, I got you guys this weekend, I got you on game day,’” she recalled in a phone interview. “And it didn’t faze them at all, like: ‘Cool, OK, great, looking forward to it, let’s roll.’ That was powerful to me as a woman.”But, Brownson said, she has encountered resistance elsewhere. She recalled that at least one job interview felt like “checking a box,” and said that she had heard insulting quips — including “It’s funny to hear a woman talk about routes” — from men inside and outside the game.Like Trask, Brownson said: “I look forward to the days where we stop talking about how ‘she’s the first this’ and we’ve accomplished all those things, and women can just naturally fit into these coaching roles, scouting roles and operational roles.”Trask, who left the Raiders in 2013 after nearly 30 years in various jobs with the franchise and now serves as an analyst for CBS, recalled only a few moments when people questioned her role because of her gender.Once, she said, a reporter called out to Gene Upshaw, a Hall of Fame offensive lineman, at the end of a long practice: “Hey Gene, what’s it like having a girl on the team?”Trask recalled that Upshaw, who became the longtime leader of the N.F.L. players’ union, spun around and replied: “She’s not a girl. She’s a Raider.”Al Davis, the Raiders’ former team owner who hired Trask, also hired Tom Flores, the league’s first minority head coach to win a Super Bowl, and Art Shell, the first African-American head coach in the N.F.L. since the 1920s.“This was someone who hired without regard to race, gender or any other individuality, which has no bearing on whether someone can do a job,” Trask said of Davis, who initially hired her as an intern in 1983, when the team was based in Los Angeles and she was a law student who cold-called the Raiders’ headquarters seeking a job. “And he was doing this decades and decades before this was discussed as a subject within the football world, the sports world and much of the world in general.”Mold-breaking employees seem to be concentrated in certain organizations, such as the Raiders and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who will face the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl on Sunday. The Bucs will have a two female coaches on the field — Lori Locust, a defensive line assistant, and Maral Javadifar, an assistant strength and conditioning coach — just a year after the San Francisco 49ers’ Katie Sowers became the first woman to coach in a Super Bowl. Also on Sunday, Sarah Thomas will become the first woman to officiate the title game.Buccaneers Coach Bruce Arians, who made history by hiring Welter as an intern for the Arizona Cardinals in 2015, also has the only staff in the N.F.L. on which the offensive and defensive coordinators are both Black.“We support each other unconditionally,” Locust said of the women coaching in the N.F.L. “We may talk a little bit of trash — just a little bit while we’re playing one another — but it never gets malicious.”Credit…Daniel Kucin Jr./Associated PressThe league itself has pushed a number of diversity initiatives aimed at getting women and people of color into coaching positions over the years, including the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship, which started in 1987, and the Women’s Careers in Football Forum, which began in 2017. Most of the N.F.L.’s female coaches were brought in through one of those programs.Some, like Jennifer King — recently promoted by the Washington Football Team to become the league’s first full-time Black female coach — have been supported financially by the Scott Pioli & Family Fund for Women Football Coaches and Scouts, named after the former longtime front office executive, and administered by the Women’s Sports Foundation.These pipelines have helped bring the handful of women coaching in the league together.“We support each other unconditionally,” said Locust of the Buccaneers. “We may talk a little bit of trash — just a little bit while we’re playing one another — but it never gets malicious.”Though the women hope their ranks keep expanding, the limited racial diversify in the league’s coaching ranks suggests a possibility of backsliding. The highest number of nonwhite N.F.L. head coaches at any given time has been eight — last reached in 2018, matching the current total of women with coaching jobs. Now, in a league in which about 70 percent of the players are Black, only three of the current head coaches are, and only two others meet the N.F.L.’s standard for diversity hiring. The N.F.L. did not respond to multiple interview requests for this article.Yet as women in the N.F.L. hope for the days when they are no longer groundbreakers, they appreciate the progress that this weekend represents. Thomas, the Super Bowl official, was part of the N.F.L.’s first pregame handshake involving two women: Her first game — a preseason matchup in 2015 — was also Welter’s debut with the Cardinals.“I always think about that handshake as basically like a deal or a promise,” Welter said recently, “that this is going to continue, that more women will have opportunities to have that handshake.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Is Len Dawson Better Than Patrick Mahomes?

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021Conference ChampionshipsBrady is BackIs Tampa the New Titletown?The N.F.L. and Black CoachesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn pro footballLen Dawson Is Better Than Patrick Mahomes: A Sentimental Dad’s ArgumentSure, Mahomes has more impressive numbers, a boundless future and the chance on Sunday to win his second Super Bowl. But sometimes, nostalgia beats reason by a touchdown.Len Dawson remains the author’s favorite Chiefs quarterback. Patrick Mahomes’s gaudy statistics haven’t yet changed his mind.Credit…James Flores/Getty ImagesFeb. 3, 2021, 9:46 a.m. ETMy son, Jack, is a teenager, so there is a lot we disagree on. Curfews. Sleep habits. The greatest rapper of all time. (He tells me Led Zeppelin doesn’t count.) The position I’m dug in on, unwisely, is this:Len Dawson is the greatest quarterback in the history of the Kansas City Chiefs.Jack, 15, is a Patrick Mahomes guy.Statistically, I don’t have a leg to stand on. Over 19 seasons, first in the N.F.L. and then the old A.F.L., Dawson threw for 28,711 yards and 239 touchdowns, and put up a quarterback rating of 82.6. Mahomes’s rating stands at 108.7. He is on track to surpass Dawson’s career output within three years, or in only his sixth season as starter.Championship-wise, Mahomes and Dawson are tied at one Super Bowl victory apiece.I give Dawson the edge because, well, I’m the father and I say so. Also, he was my own father’s favorite player. He was the quarterback I pretended to be when I was a boy and dropped back into the pocket to throw passes to receivers that were not there.Still, nostalgia will carry me only so far. If the Chiefs defeat Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday in Super Bowl LV, I will happily concede that Jack is the most knowledgeable Chiefs fan in the family. My late father eventually did so for me and my siblings.The truth is that I can barely argue with Jack now. Beyond Mahomes’s pin-ball-machine-on-tilt numbers, Gumby-like body control and rocket arm, the joy that he brings to an often-brutal game is refreshing.Joe Drape and his son, Jack, 15 at Super Bowl LIV in Miami.Credit…Drape familyMy son admires Mahomes for the camaraderie he shows with teammates like Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill. He devours the snippets of Mahomes’s pregame pep talks and sideline chats that find their way onto Snapchat and Instagram. He likes the way Mahomes shows off his sneaker collection and pours ketchup on almost any food.Jack’s unconditional fandom reminds me of what it was like for me when the strut of a sports hero — Dawson — was proof enough that all was right in the world. It’s different these days for sure, but that universal emotion remains intact.I’m as old as the Kansas City franchise and came of age when Dawson, Ed Podolak and Otis Taylor brought home the Chiefs’ first Super Bowl title in the 1969 season, defeating the Minnesota Vikings, 23-7.At barely 6 feet tall and a slight 190 pounds, Lenny, as he was known, looked more like a professor than a football player. Chiefs Coach Hank Stram understood this and invented the “moving pocket” to keep his quarterback safe as well as efficient.We watched at home as Dawson threw darts, not rockets, to win the game and earn the Most Valuable Player Award. His stat line is pedestrian by today’s standards: 12 of 17 passes for 142 yards and 1 touchdown, a 46-yard toss to Taylor to ice the game.You cannot watch the familiar NFL Films clip of Stram telling his players to “just keep matriculating the ball down the field, boys” without thinking of Dawson.My family had season tickets, first at old Municipal Stadium, then at Arrowhead Stadium. We have remained very much a part of the Chiefs Kingdom, so red is the only color that matters during football season, and subzero tailgating in Arrowhead’s parking lot is our favorite way to eat a meal. These days we try to make it home for a game each season, but mostly we express our fandom from the couch.The decades pass, but things stay largely the same. After watching away games on television, my brother, our neighbors and I played tackle football in the front yard. Now, it is two-hand touch for my son and his friends on the asphalt of a New York City park.Fortunately, Jack has not had to endure anything like the half-century of misery and heartbreak I suffered between that first Super Bowl victory and the Chiefs’ win last year over San Francisco, 31-20, in Super Bowl LIV.There was a 14-year span when the Chiefs posted an 89-136-3 regular season record, with only a single miserable appearance in the playoffs, a 35-15 loss to the Jets in the 1986 season wild-card game. With the help of Joe Montana, Coach Marty Schottenheimer revived the franchise and took the Chiefs to the A.F.C. championship game in January 1994, only to lose to Buffalo, 30-13.We were back — sort of. Over the next 22 seasons, the Chiefs won division titles, had three 13-win seasons and returned to the postseason seven more times, but they didn’t win another playoff game until the 2015 season.Through it all, even long after he was gone, Dawson remained my man. Not only did he win, he was one of us.In those days, being an N.F.L. great didn’t pay all that well. Most players held jobs in the off-season. After he retired, Dawson worked year-round as the sports anchor for a local station, often going from the practice facility to the studio to report the evening news.He was an unassuming sort. My brother worked at a popular pizza joint close to the station where Dawson ordered takeout.“You got an order for Dawson?” the legend would ask my brother each time, even though the retired quarterback, by then in the Hall of Fame, hardly needed to say who he was.Mahomes has endeared himself to Kansas City in similar fashion even though his $450 million contract makes him one of the highest-paid athletes on the planet, one who is perhaps more likely to have his pizza delivered.He is scoring good-guy points in his adopted hometown. He used some of his money to buy an ownership interest in the Kansas City Royals. He has a foundation that concentrates resources and attention in helping children. He helped pay the cost of having Arrowhead serve as a polling place in November’s presidential election.I know these things because Jack told me.Last year, he and I went to Miami and watched our team win its second Super Bowl. We will watch at home on Sunday.Dawson or Mahomes, it does not really matter.For three or so hours, all will be right with the world.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      What to Know About Covid-19 and the 2021 Super Bowl

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat to Know About Covid-19 and the Super BowlPlayers from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs are being tested for the coronavirus more often, and just 25,000 fans will attend the game.Super Bowl LV in Tampa, Fla., will be scaled down from the usual fanfare that surrounds the N.F.L.’s marque event.Credit…Eve Edelheit for The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2021Updated 7:21 a.m. ETThe Super Bowl is unlike any other American sporting event: A football game provides the anchor for parties, fanfare, and an eye-popping TV broadcast where the commercials and halftime show are just as much of an attraction for the more than 100 million fans who will watch.But like everything else in the year since the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe, Super Bowl LV in Tampa, Fla., has been adapted to Covid-19 health guidelines and scaled down, despite the excitement over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers becoming the first N.F.L. team to play in the championship game in its home venue — Raymond James Stadium.While the football being played on Sunday will look largely the same as in other years, nearly everything else surrounding the Super Bowl will be different.Super Bowl LV: Kansas City Chiefs vs. Tampa Bay BuccaneersSunday, Feb. 7, 6:30 p.m. Eastern, CBSPlayers are being tested for Covid-19 even more.Players, coaches and members of each team’s staff have been tested for Covid-19 daily throughout the season, including on game days. Since the Buccaneers and the Chiefs qualified for the Super Bowl on Jan. 24, team personnel have been tested for coronavirus twice daily.Anyone with a confirmed positive test must stay away from their team for a minimum of 10 days. The Buccaneers and the Chiefs have not had a positive test in more than three weeks.However, two Chiefs players — receiver Demarcus Robinson and center Daniel Kilgore — came in close contact with an infected person and must isolate for at least five days, Chiefs Coach Andy Reid confirmed Monday.Since the beginning of August, about 15,000 N.F.L. players, coaches and staffers have received nearly 1 million tests, far more than any in other United States-based sports league. More than 700 players, coaches and staff members tested positive during that time.Because of concerns about exposure to the coronavirus, the Buccaneers and Chiefs have departed from the normal Super Bowl itinerary. In most years, the two opposing teams would arrive in the Super Bowl city one week in advance of the game to conduct practices and scheduled interviews with media. This year, players and coaches will do those interviews via videoconferences, as was the case throughout the 2020 regular season.To further reduce the team’s chance of infection, the Chiefs are not scheduled to arrive in Tampa until Saturday. The Buccaneers won’t have to drive far.Fewer fans will attend the Super Bowl.Super Bowls typically sell out their seating capacity, even for tickets that cost $10,000 or more. Attendance has never dipped below the 61,946 who attended Super Bowl I in Los Angeles in 1967 and has in some years topped 100,000.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Is the Salary Cap a Myth?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Pro FootballIs the Salary Cap a Myth?A Super Bowl matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers should not be fiscally possible on paper, but here we are.Important role players, like Chiefs receiver Sammy Watkins, right, signed one-year contracts made possible because quarterback Patrick Mahomes will be paid the bulk of his 10-year, $477 million contract in 2023 and beyond.Credit…Jamie Squire/Getty ImagesJan. 28, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETKansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’s listed base salary for the 2020 season is $825,000, a princely sum for ordinary folks but $85,000 less than the base salary of his teammate James Winchester, a valuable but obscure long snapper.Tom Brady’s 2020 base salary of $15 million for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is more in line with expectations for an N.F.L. quarterback, if not for a six-time Super Bowl champion and era-defining player. For example, Jimmy Garoppolo, Brady’s backup when they played for the New England Patriots, earned a base salary of $23.8 million for an injury-plagued and disappointing 2020 season for the San Francisco 49ers, while Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Derek Carr had a base salary of $18.9 million for another season of his established late-model family sedan caliber play.This season’s Super Bowl matchup should not be fiscally possible on paper. The N.F.L.’s salary cap was supposed to have torn the Chiefs’ roster apart after their Super Bowl victory last season; Mahomes’s performance would command a contract that by itself had the potential to force the team into receivership. Similarly, the Buccaneers’ star-studded lineup of Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Ndamukong Suh, Antonio Brown and Jason Pierre-Paul — each a market-setter at his position at some point in his career — should be so prohibitively expensive as to force the team to fill the lower half of its roster with temps and interns.The fact that the Chiefs and the Buccaneers kept their rosters intact appears to support the popular theory that the salary cap is a myth, a fiction used by franchises as an excuse to cut unwanted veterans, pinch pennies and fall short of expectations. The cap is in fact very real, but its arcane rules about bonuses, incentives and proration make N.F.L. cap management more like sorcery than an art or a science. And the voodoo economics the Chiefs and the Buccaneers are dabbling in could someday come with a steep price.Mahomes, as you may recall, signed a reported 10-year, $477 million contract extension in July. It was the sort of contract that would force a mortgage lender to accept a plea bargain — full of deferred bonuses, staggered guarantees and balloon payments designed to forestall Mahomes’s biggest paydays until 2023 and beyond. As a result, his 2020 compensation (base salary plus bonuses) counted for just $5.34 million against the salary cap, which allowed the Chiefs to re-sign important players like the Pro Bowl defensive tackle Chris Jones despite little apparent maneuvering room in their theoretical budget. Even Mahomes’s future compensation will come mostly in the form of bonuses instead of salary, allowing for further feats of accounting magical realism.Mahomes can afford to wait on his $40-plus million paydays because he is in high demand as an advertising pitchman, and successful quarterbacks are all but guaranteed long, lucrative careers. Brady is also a brand unto himself (and, as the spouse of an international celebrity, Gisele Bündchen, he brings in his household’s second income), but he has taken the opposite approach throughout his career by accepting short contracts full of guaranteed money. Lesser quarterbacks earn more than Brady in any given year, but he is always near the top of the N.F.L.’s wage earners and rarely more than a year away from another renegotiation and raise.Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady is always near the top of the N.F.L.’s highest paid players in part because of the strength of his brand.Credit…Scott Eisen/Getty ImagesThe Brady and Mahomes situations illustrate that salary cap alchemy typically boils down to compensating the superstar quarterback first, then fitting the rest of the budget around him. With a relatively affordable Brady in the fold, the Buccaneers could extend one-year offers to Brown, Gronkowski and Suh, veterans willing to sign for less than their market value to join forces with Brady and pursue a championship.Similarly, important role players like Sammy Watkins and Bashaud Breeland, who re-signed with the Chiefs, and Le’Veon Bell, who signed as a free agent, were given one-year contracts made possible because Mahomes is being paid in tomorrow bucks. The appeal of a likely Super Bowl run couldn’t have hurt, either.Even the cleverest cap model can backfire if a team cannot use success to sustain success. The Saints used reverse mortgage “die broke” tactics to pay Drew Brees through many years of Super Bowl near misses. With Brees’s retirement imminent, the Saints are so deep in deferred cap debt (an estimated $112 million) that they may be forced to pad their 2021 roster with season-ticket holders. The Philadelphia Eagles and the Los Angeles Rams overpaid quarterbacks Carson Wentz and Jared Goff (plus other top veterans) after trips to the Super Bowl in the 2017 and 2018 seasons. The Eagles are now facing an existential crisis, while the Rams are subsisting on the cap equivalent of maxed-out credit cards.After the Super Bowl, a long list of in-house free agents (including starters like Lavonte David, Shaquil Barrett and Chris Godwin, plus the aforementioned mercenaries) will be vying for the Buccaneers’ very limited cap space while Brady, who turns 44 in August, prepares to once again plays chess with his own mortality. Even with all of their finagling, the Chiefs will enter the off-season an estimated $18 million over the cap, meaning that next season’s Chiefs probably won’t be as good as this season’s Chiefs. Both teams in this Super Bowl needed to get there to justify their efforts to stay one step ahead of the collection agency.There is much more to “salary cap-enomics” than finding innovative ways to squeeze a Mahomes or a Brady into a budget — from extending in-house contracts before valued veterans reach free agency to avoiding spending sprees at positions like running back, where talent is plentiful and replaceable. Mostly, however, there’s no mystery to cap management, just the question of whether a team chooses to pay for its Super Bowl run today, tomorrow or by tacking almost a half-billion dollars onto the back end. Age and deferred debt eventually catch up to everyone. Even Tom Brady. Someday. Probably.All cap data comes from OverTheCap.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      NFL Playoffs: What We Learned From the Conference Championship

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat We Learned From the N.F.L.’s Conference ChampionshipsThe Chiefs will try to defend their Super Bowl title against Tom Brady and the Buccaneers — who are playing at home.Patrick Mahomes is headed back to the Super Bowl. The 25-year-old has a chance to be the first quarterback to win the game in back-to-back years since Tom Brady did it after the 2003 and 2004 seasons.Credit…Jamie Squire/Getty ImagesPublished More

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      NFL Playoff Predictions: Our Picks in the Conference Championships

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyN.F.L. Playoff Predictions: Our Picks in the Conference ChampionshipsWith a trip to the Super Bowl on the line, Tom Brady leads Tampa Bay into Green Bay while Josh Allen and the Bills take on Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.The conference championship games have M.V.P. candidates on each team: Tom Brady of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers, Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs and Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills.Credit…Clockwise from top left: Brynn Anderson/Associated Press; Jeffrey Phelps/Associated Press; Jamie Squire/Getty Images; Jeffrey T. Barnes/Associated PressJan. 21, 2021Updated 9:42 a.m. ETA complicated and stressful N.F.L. season is nearing its conclusion, with four star-studded teams facing off on Sunday with a Super Bowl appearance on the line. Each of the remaining teams has a Most Valuable Player Award candidate at quarterback, stars at wide receiver and defenses that can make big plays. The questions for this weekend include which of the N.F.C.’s celebrated quarterbacks will make his return to the Super Bowl and whether the upstart Buffalo Bills can knock off the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs.Here is a look at the conference championship games. Unlike in the regular season, the picks in the playoffs are not made against the spread to emphasize which teams we believe will win.Playoff record: 8-8N.F.C. Championship GameTampa Bay has numerous receiving options, but Mike Evans, at 6 feet 5 inches, is a dominant force in the red zone.Credit…Brynn Anderson/Associated PressDavante Adams of the Green Bay Packers had a career year, with 1,374 yards receiving and 18 touchdowns.Credit…Jeff Hanisch/USA Today Sports, via ReutersTampa Bay Buccaneers at Green Bay Packers, 3:05 p.m. Sunday, FoxLine: Packers -3 | Total: 51More than a hundred players will suit up for this game, but the spotlight will fall on two of them: Tom Brady of the Buccaneers and Aaron Rodgers of the Packers. It isn’t unusual for quarterbacks to command most of the attention, but this matchup goes beyond that.Brady, with more career touchdown passes and more Super Bowl wins than any other player, had a terrific 2020 season, throwing 40 touchdown passes and ending Tampa Bay’s long postseason drought. Rodgers, a two-time winner of the Most Valuable Player Award and one-time winner of the Super Bowl, had perhaps the best season of his career, throwing 48 touchdown passes while leading the N.F.C.’s top team.The quarterbacks have combined to start 551 games, including in the postseason. But largely as a result of playing in different conferences for most of their careers, they have faced off as starters just three times. Two came in Brady’s time with the New England Patriots, with Brady beating the Packers in 2018 and Rodgers beating the Patriots in 2014. They faced each other in Week 6 of this season, with the Buccaneers winning, 38-10. It was the Packers’ lowest scoring game of the year.Brady, 43, has a career edge in accomplishments. Rodgers, who is six years younger, has a physical edge. After a few quiet seasons, by his standards, Rodgers in 2020 used wide receivers Davante Adams and Marquez Valdes-Scantling to shred defenses as the Packers led the N.F.L. in scoring and finished fifth in total yardage. Brady’s statistics were also impressive, but he is more physically limited than he was in the past, frequently relying on talented receivers like Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Antonio Brown and tight end Rob Gronkowski to turn short passes into long gains.In a more neutral environment, Tampa Bay could have counted on its young defense to shift the balance in the Buccaneers’ favor by pressuring Rodgers. In that scenario, the team would rely on Brady to put up points against a good defense that is not nearly as explosive. But in Green Bay, with snow showers in the forecast and a game-time temperature expected to be around 30 degrees, a team from Florida — even one with a New England icon at quarterback — will be out of its element.The Packers fought hard to secure home field advantage throughout the N.F.C. playoffs, and this game should reward them for that effort, ending the Buccaneers’ attempt to be the first team to appear in a Super Bowl in its home stadium. Pick: PackersA.F.C. Championship GameStefon Diggs was acquired by Buffalo in an off-season trade. He responded with the best season of his career.Credit…Rich Barnes/USA Today Sports, via ReutersTravis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs set an N.F.L. record with 1,416 yards receiving as a tight end.Credit…Reed Hoffmann/Associated PressBuffalo Bills at Kansas City Chiefs, 6:40 p.m. Sunday, CBSLine: Chiefs -3 | Total: 53.5The Chiefs’ pursuit of a second straight Super Bowl victory hit its first real speed bump last weekend when Patrick Mahomes had his neck twisted by a defender as he was dragged to the turf, putting him in the N.F.L.’s concussion protocol and forcing him out of Kansas City’s 22-17 win over the Cleveland Browns. The Chiefs iced that victory with key plays by the backup quarterback, Chad Henne, but Mahomes’s absence was palpable in a game Kansas City was expected to win in a blowout.Mahomes has practiced lightly this week while working to be cleared, but there is little fear he will miss the game. As a result, the A.F.C. will get a strength-against-strength matchup between the conference’s best teams of the regular season.The Bills had an offensive renaissance this season thanks to the development of quarterback Josh Allen and the arrival of wide receiver Stefon Diggs. They led Buffalo to the second most points in the league and its first division title since 1995. While the defense took a major step backward from a brilliant 2019 season, a strong performance last weekend against the Baltimore Ravens proved the unit could be great when needed.Buffalo might have to play a perfect game to compete with Kansas City. The Chiefs stormed back to win last season’s Super Bowl behind Mahomes’s brilliance, and lost only two games in the 2020 season — one a meaningless Week 17 game in which Mahomes and other starters were rested. The Chiefs will be at their best if running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire returns from a Week 16 hip injury, but the offense has plenty of options without him, including wide receiver Tyreek Hill and tight end Travis Kelce.The Chiefs are the clear favorites, particularly at home, but Buffalo should not be counted out. If its defense can play the way it did in the divisional round and Allen can avoid mistakes, the Bills can turn this into quite a fight. But the most likely result is a Kansas City victory, which would give the Chiefs the chance to be the first team since the Patriots in the 2003 and 2004 seasons to repeat as Super Bowl champions. Pick: Chiefs.All times are Eastern.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Is the N.F.L. Over Punting?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn FootballIs the N.F.L. Over Punting?Analytics-minded observers have long argued against punting, but what may finally persuade N.F.L. coaches to go for it on fourth down is another postseason with high-profile successes.San Francisco 49ers punter Mitch Wishnowsky punted during a game against the Dallas Cowboys during the 2020-21 N.F.L. season.Credit…Brandon Wade/Associated PressJan. 21, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETAs a tactic for winning football games, punting makes little sense. Basketball teams don’t stop rebounding and offer the ball to the opponent if they miss a few jumpers. Baseball teams don’t reach an 0-2 count with two outs and declare: “Oh well, the odds are against us. You’re up!” Yet football coaches, those self-styled battle-hardened generals, have been meekly surrendering on fourth downs for decades.The punt, a holdover from football’s rugby-related roots, has been part of the N.F.L.’s calcified conventional wisdom for generations. But the tactic has fallen on hard times in recent years. The events of this year’s playoffs could push the punt to the verge of extinction. When Chiefs Coach Andy Reid made the bold fourth-quarter decision in Kansas City’s divisional-round playoff victory over the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, he may have launched the meteor.Reid’s Chiefs appeared to be trying to lure the Browns defense offsides before an evitable punt on fourth-and-inches while protecting a narrow 22-17 lead. Instead, the Chiefs snapped the ball and surprised the defense with a short pass that allowed them to run out the clock instead of giving the Browns a chance to attempt a desperate final touchdown drive.Reid’s daring decision was the latest development in what has become a postseason referendum on punting. Moments earlier, the Browns had punted despite trailing in the fourth quarter, hoping their defense could stop a Chiefs offense missing the injured superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes. It could not.In the previous week’s wild-card round, both the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans punted in late-game, short-yardage situations while trailing, only to allow the Browns and Baltimore Ravens to score on the next possession, extend their leads and ultimately win both games.Punting has become far less prevalent in recent years. N.F.L. teams punted an average of 3.7 times per game during the 2020 regular season, the lowest figure in recorded pro football history. Teams averaged 4.8 punts per game as recently as 2017, a rate that had held more-or-less steady since the mid-1980s but has declined in each of the last four seasons.The sudden decrease in punting comes over a decade after the football analytics community began decrying the punt as a counterproductive strategy, particularly in short-yardage situations near midfield or when trailing late in a close game. It doesn’t take much number crunching to realize that if the average offense gains 5.6 yards per play (the 2020 rate), not only should a team be able to pick up a yard or two on fourth down, but it should also be wary of gifting the ball to an opposing offense capable of marching right back down the field 5.6 yards at a time.Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill made the catch on fourth down to end the Browns’ chance to come back on Sunday.Credit…Reed Hoffmann/Associated PressFans have become increasingly aware of the analytics of punting, thanks to social media accounts that provide real-time calculations of a team’s chances of winning based on various in-game decisions. However, it takes a long time for anything remotely scientific to gain acceptance in a league where coaches have been passing down both sacred tactical oral wisdom and tough-guy rhetoric since the days of George Halas.In the primordial N.F.L. of the 1920s, it was common for a superstar like Jim Thorpe to punt on first down if his team was pinned near its own goal line. The early-down punt disappeared at about the same time as the leather helmet, but punting on fourth down in most circumstances (when not in field-goal range) became the unquestioned norm at all levels of play. That made sense at the time. In the early 1950s, N.F.L. teams averaged less than five yards per play and committed well over three turnovers per game (the 2020 turnover rate was just 1.3 per game), so there was a decent chance that the punting team would quickly get the ball back.Offenses have grown steadily more efficient since the late 1970s. Yet most coaches remained convinced that even a fourth-and-inches conversion attempt was as nearly as risky as betting the deed to the farm on the hope of a royal flush.Conversion attempts gradually increased as mavericks like New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick (who has an economics degree) and then-Panthers coach Ron Rivera (whose nickname is Riverboat Ron) enjoyed success with fourth-and-short “gambles” over the last two decades. Doug Pederson, the former Philadelphia Eagles head coach, bucked conventional wisdom in Super Bowl LII with several high-risk fourth-down conversions, including the Philly Special (a goal-line trick play for a touchdown run in a typical field-goal situation) and a fourth-and-1 pass while protecting a fourth-quarter lead, which was similar to Reid’s decision on Sunday.A few high-profile anecdotes carry more weight in the N.F.L. than a mountain of statistical research, so it’s no surprise that punt rates began dropping precipitously after Super Bowl LII. The last two weeks of playoff results will likely further sour coaches on punting when they have no other viable options.There will always be a place for the punt on fourth-and-15 from the shadow of a team’s own goal posts. And in a league full of traditionalists who still chant mantras like “establish the run” and “defense wins championships,” no strategy is likely to disappear overnight. But gradually, coaches will begin to wonder why they are replacing their multimillion-dollar quarterbacks in high-leverage situations with the player most likely to walk through a parking lot tailgate unrecognized, and why they preach aggressiveness all week during practice, only to timidly, and voluntarily, give the ball to their opponents with the game on the line.As soon as the tough guys and mathematicians finally agree about punting, they can start debating in earnest about settling for field goals.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More