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      Vincent Jackson’s Brain Will Be Donated to C.T.E. Study

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyVincent Jackson’s Brain Will Be Donated to C.T.E. StudyJackson, 38, a retired N.F.L. wide receiver, was found dead in a Florida hotel room on Monday.Vincent Jackson’s family donated his brain to researchers at Boston University to determine if he had C.T.E., the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma. “It’s something his family wanted to do to get answers to some of their questions,” a spokesperson for the family said.Credit…Cliff Mcbride/Getty ImagesFeb. 18, 2021, 5:06 p.m. ETThe family of Vincent Jackson, the retired three-time Pro Bowl N.F.L. wide receiver who was found dead in a Florida hotel room on Monday, donated his brain to researchers at Boston University to determine if he had chromic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma.“Vincent being who he was would have wanted to help as many people as possible,” said Allison Gorrell, a spokeswoman for the Jackson family, in a phone interview Wednesday. “It’s something his family wanted to do to get answers to some of their questions.”Many unanswered questions, including his cause of death, remain about Jackson’s demise. While it could take weeks to finish an autopsy, Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a radio interview on Wednesday that Jackson, 38, had health problems associated with alcoholism, which Chronister said were cited in the unreleased autopsy report. He also said the Jackson family told him that they believed that concussions may have been a factor in his behavior.Gorrell said the sheriff did not speak for the family. C.T.E. can only be diagnosed posthumously and researchers at Boston University, which houses the world’s largest brain bank devoted to cases involving the disease, said that determination can take months. The severity of a player’s C.T.E. is related to the number of years that he played football and the number of hits he endured, researchers have found.The brain bank has received a growing number of donations harvested from players who were 34 years old or younger at the time of death. More than half of those athletes had C.T.E.A married father of four, Jackson was widely admired in and out of the N.F.L. for his community service and business acumen. A 12-year N.F.L. veteran who played with the San Diego Chargers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jackson was voted Tampa Bay’s nominee for the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, which recognizes community service, four years running during his five seasons there. He was a union representative in the N.F.L. Players Association and one of the named plaintiffs when the union sued the league’s owners during the 2011 lockout.After retiring from the N.F.L. in 2018 at 35, he continued to help military families through the Jackson in Action 83 Foundation. He had not played since the 2016 season. Jackson’s father served in the United States Army and Jackson and his wife, Lindsey, wrote a series of children’s books about growing up in military families. He won the Distinguished Community Advocate Award in 2018 from the Tampa Bay Sports Commission.He had been cited for his smooth transition from the N.F.L. into real estate development.According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, Jackson was found at the Homewood Suites in Brandon, Fla., just a few miles east of Tampa, where hotel staff said he had been staying since Jan. 11. Jackson’s family reported that Jackson was missing on Feb. 10. Two days later, sheriffs found him at the hotel and “after assessing Jackson’s well-being,” canceled the missing persons case.A housekeeper found Jackson dead on Monday morning.Jackson was a straight-A student in high school and majored in business at Northern Colorado University, where he graduated as the school’s career leading receiver. He was also a starter on the Bears’ basketball team for two seasons, leading the team in scoring both years.The Chargers drafted Jackson in the second round in 2005, and after an injury-filled rookie year, he quickly became a mainstay of the team’s pass-first offense. He was named to the Pro Bowl in 2009, 2011, and again in 2012, his first season with the Buccaneers. He still holds the Buccaneers’ record for most receiving yards in a game, 216.During his N.F.L. career, he caught 57 touchdowns and had six seasons with more than 1,000 receiving yards.According to NFL.com, Jackson was arrested twice, in 2006 and again in 2009, for driving under the influence. After the second arrest, he was sentenced to four days in jail and five years of probation and was suspended by the league for three games.James Lofton, the Hall of Fame wide receiver, coached Jackson in San Diego and remembered Jackson as exceptionally bright and motivated. He recalled, too, when Jackson called him at 4:15 a.m. to apologize for his 2006 arrest.“We are part of society, and the same ills that get people in society get us, too,” Lofton said of N.F.L. players. “He just didn’t seem like the person who would have met a tragic death.”Greg Camarillo, a former N.F.L. receiver, was roommates with Jackson at the Chargers’ training camp in 2005 and now has a student support role in the University of San Diego athletics department. Camarillo said he was shaken by Jackson’s death and posted to Twitter several messages Monday about professional football players’ struggles in retirement.Many players, Camarillo said, have difficulty coping after they leave the N.F.L. because lose their identity and find it difficult to forge a new path without it.“It could happen to me or any former player,” Camarillo said in a phone interview Thursday. “Vince is not drastically different than anyone else, including me.”Gillian R. Brassil contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jaguars' Hiring of Chris Doyle Called 'Unacceptable' by Fritz Pollard Alliance

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDiversity Group Calls Jaguars’ Hiring of Assistant Coach ‘Simply Unacceptable’The Fritz Pollard Alliance criticized the addition of Chris Doyle, who was accused of mistreatment of Black players at the University of Iowa, to Urban Meyer’s staff in Jacksonville.Chris Doyle in 2018 at the University of Iowa, where he was the football team’s strength and conditioning coach.Credit…Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressFeb. 12, 2021Updated 9:36 p.m. ETAn organization that promotes diversity in the N.F.L. on Friday criticized the Jacksonville Jaguars’ recent hiring of Chris Doyle, who left the University of Iowa’s football staff last year after a number of current and former Hawkeyes players said he had fostered a culture of bullying and racism.A statement from the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which is named for the first Black head coach in the N.F.L., said the Jaguars’ decision to make Doyle their director of sports performance was “simply unacceptable.”“Doyle’s departure from the University of Iowa reflected a tenure riddled with poor judgment and mistreatment of Black players,” Rod Graves, the executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, said in the statement. “His conduct should be as disqualifying for the N.F.L. as it was for University of Iowa.”Doyle, who was Iowa’s strength and conditioning coach, reached a separation agreement with the university in June, ending two decades of work there.The Jaguars announced on Thursday that Doyle had joined the staff of Urban Meyer, who was named Jacksonville’s head coach last month. Meyer, who won two college national championships as the head coach at Florida and one at Ohio State, has not coached since 2018 and has never worked in the N.F.L. before.The hiring of Doyle, who is white, comes at a time of intense scrutiny of the N.F.L.’s hiring practices and questions about whether minority candidates for coaching jobs have equal opportunities to be hired.“I’ve known Chris for close to 20 years,” Meyer said on Thursday when questioned about hiring someone who had been accused of mistreating Black athletes. Doyle was the strength coach at the University of Utah in the late 1990s, a few years before Meyer was hired as the head coach there.“Urban Meyer’s statement, ‘I’ve known Chris for close to 20 years,’ reflects the good ol’ boy network that is precisely the reason there is such a disparity in employment opportunities for Black coaches,” Graves said in the statement.Neither the N.F.L. nor the Jaguars responded to a request for comment on the Fritz Pollard Alliance’s statement.During a news conference last week, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said that he was not satisfied with the rate at which coaches of color have been hired in the N.F.L., which has 32 teams.“It wasn’t what we expected,” he said of the diversity in the round of hirings after the 2020 season, “and it’s not what we expect going forward.”Of the seven head coaches hired since the end of the regular season, just two were nonwhite. Last year one of five head coaching jobs went to a minority candidate, and the year before just one in eight.Over the last three years 80 percent of head coaching jobs have gone to white candidates, though players of color made up 69.4 percent of the N.F.L. this season, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.After the Jaguars hired Meyer and General Manager Trent Baalke, who are both white, last month, Graves praised the organization for interviewing several minority candidates and for seeking input from the Fritz Pollard Alliance.“I cannot argue that the process didn’t meet the standard of fair, open and competitive,” Graves told The Florida Times-Union.The hiring of Doyle, however, raised issues beyond the N.F.L.’s commitment to diverse hiring.Before Doyle left Iowa, Emmanuel Rugamba, a former Hawkeyes defensive back, gave multiple examples of the coach demeaning players with negative racial stereotypes. Rugamba said in a tweet that one day after a Black player walked away from Doyle, the coach said, “Why you walking wit all that swagger I’ll put you back on the streets.”James Daniels, a Chicago Bears offensive lineman and a former Hawkeye, tweeted over the summer: “There are too many racial disparities in the Iowa football program. Black players have been treated unfairly for far too long.”Doyle also presided over an off-season workout in 2011 that resulted in the hospitalization of 13 players.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Super Bowl Ratings Hit a 15-Year Low. It Still Outperformed Everything Else.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySuper Bowl Ratings Hit a 15-Year Low. It Still Outperformed Everything Else.The game between two marquee quarterbacks was not competitive. Still, the Super Bowl is expected to be the most watched television program this year.Television viewership for the Super Bowl was down 9 percent compared with last year.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFeb. 9, 2021Updated 4:20 p.m. ETSunday’s Super Bowl was watched by just 91.6 million people on CBS, the lowest number of viewers for the game on traditional broadcast television since 2006. A total of 96.4 million people watched when other platforms — like the CBS All Access streaming service and mobile phone apps — were counted, the lowest number of total viewers since 2007.Still, the Super Bowl will surely be the most watched television program of 2021, and the N.F.L. is expected to see a huge increase in television rights fees when it signs several new television distribution agreements over the next year.After peaking at 114 million television viewers in 2015, television ratings for the Super Bowl have declined in five of the past six years. The 9 percent decline in television viewership from last year’s Super Bowl is roughly in line with season-long trends. N.F.L. games this season were watched by 7 percent fewer people than the season before.Many of the necessary ingredients for a bonanza Super Bowl were present. The game featured an intriguing matchup between the two most popular quarterbacks in football, Tom Brady of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs. The weather Sunday was freezing across much of the country, which traditionally drives people inside to be entertained by their televisions. But the game itself failed to deliver, all but ending by the third quarter when the Buccaneers led, 31-9, with no fourth-quarter scoring or hint of a competitive game. Viewership is measured as the average of the audience watching at each minute of the game; the longer a game is competitive and viewers stay tuned in, the better.The hype and marketing machine surrounding the game was also changed by the coronavirus pandemic. The N.F.L. credentialed about 4,000 fewer media members for the Super Bowl compared with last year, meaning fans saw less media live from the Super Bowl ahead of the game. Fans were discouraged from gathering for parties, and instead of staying home and watching alone, it seems many just did something else. Just 38 percent of all households with a television were tuned to the game, the lowest percentage since 1969, according to Nielsen.The N.F.L. joins almost every other sport in seeing viewership declines over the past year. The pandemic shut down the sporting world for months in the spring, and when games resumed they frequently lacked energy with few or no fans in the stands. Games were often played on unusual days or at unusual times, disrupting the traditional sports viewership calendar.Viewership for the N.B.A. finals was down 49 percent and for the Stanley Cup finals was down 61 percent. It is not just sports. Compared to this time last year, viewership of all broadcast television — CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox — is down 20 percent during prime time. In that context, a 7 percent season drop and a 9 percent Super Bowl drop is a comparatively decent showing for the N.F.L.Importantly, it also won’t slow down the N.F.L.’s march toward lucrative new television contracts. All indications — including deals made by other leagues and the competitive demand among networks and streaming services — suggest that the league will sign new agreements over the next year with a significant increase in average annual value.Even in a world of fractured viewership that is quickly moving toward streaming, the N.F.L. remains king. Of the 100 most viewed television programs in 2020, 76 were N.F.L. games, according to Mike Mulvihill, an executive at Fox Sports. And while the 38 percent of households tuned to the game was a modern day low for the Super Bowl, the last time that number was beat by anything other than an N.F.L. game was the 1994 Winter Olympics, according to the website Sports Media Watch, when the figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding competed amid the scandal of Harding’s involvement in an attack on Kerrigan.The N.F.L. could become the king of streaming, too. According to CBS the Super Bowl averaged 5.7 million viewers streaming the game, 68 percent more than last year.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Marty Schottenheimer, 77, Winning N.F.L. Coach With Four Teams, Dies

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMarty Schottenheimer, 77, Winning N.F.L. Coach With Four Teams, DiesWith a running attack known as Martyball, his teams won 200 regular season games and reached the playoffs 13 times but never made it to the Super Bowl.Marty Schottenheimer coaching the  Cleveland Browns during the 1980s. He gained acclaim for turning around floundering teams. Credit…The Sporting News/Sporting News, via Getty ImagesFeb. 9, 2021Updated 3:01 p.m. ETMarty Schottenheimer, who won 200 regular-season games as an N.F.L. head coach, the eighth-highest total in league history, and took teams to the playoffs in 13 of his 21 seasons but never made it to the Super Bowl, died on Monday in Charlotte, N.C. He was 77. The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, said Bob Moore, a spokesman for the family. Schottenheimer died at a hospice facility near his home in Charlotte after being in its care since Jan. 30. He was first given a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s in 2014.Coaching four franchises with an often headstrong manner, Schottenheimer gained acclaim for turning around floundering teams, often emphasizing a power-running offense known as Martyball.At first, the tag was emblematic of his winning ways, at least in the regular season. But as the years passed, and Schottenheimer’s teams reached a conference final only three times and then lost all three games on that final rung toward the Super Bowl, Martyball became a term of derision, branding his offense as too conservative.Schottenheimer coached the original Cleveland Browns from midway through the 1984 season to 1988, the Kansas City Chiefs from 1989 to 1998, the Washington Redskins in 2001 (the team dropped that name last July) and the San Diego Chargers from 2002 to 2006.His teams went 200-126-1 over all, and he was named the 2004 N.F.L. coach of the year by The Associated Press when his Chargers went 12-4 after finishing the previous season at 4-12. But they were upset by the Jets in the first round of the playoffs.Schottenheimer’s squads had a 5-13 record in playoff games.In the run-up to the Chargers-Jets playoff game, Lee Jenkins of The New York Times, reflecting on Schottenheimer’s intensity, wrote how “anyone who watches Schottenheimer standing on the sideline Saturday night against the Jets, arms crossed and feet shoulder-width apart, will recognize him as that angry professor from Kansas City and Cleveland.”“He still wears his gold spectacles,” Jenkins wrote, “and sets his square jaw and roars his favorite football platitudes in a hoarse baritone that makes him sound as if he has been screaming for three and a half quarters.”Schottenheimer as head coach of the San Diego Chargers during a divisional playoff game in 2007. After the Chargers lost, he was fired.  Credit…Mike Blake/ReutersHue Jackson, an assistant to Schottenheimer with the Redskins and a future head coach of the Oakland Raiders and the second Cleveland Browns franchise, was struck by Schottenheimer’s football smarts coupled with an insistence on control.“My time with him, I watched one of the most passionate football coaches I had ever been around,” Jackson told ESPN in 2016. “I know everybody has the stories about Marty crying.”“He taught me a ton about the running game, being tough, just what it meant to be a part of a team,” Jackson recalled, adding, “Marty does not back down from anybody.”Martin Edward Schottenheimer was born on Sept. 23, 1943, in Canonsburg, Pa., near Pittsburgh, and grew up in nearby McDonald, a coal town, where his grandfather Frank, a German immigrant, had worked in the mines. His father, Edward, worked for a grocery chain, and his mother, Catherine (Dunbar) Schottenheimer, was a homemaker.Schottenheimer was considered one of the best high school defensive linemen in western Pennsylvania. He went on to the University of Pittsburgh, playing at linebacker from 1962 to 1964, and was named a second-team All-American by The Associated Press for his senior season.He was selected in the fourth round of the N.F.L.’s 1965 draft by the Baltimore Colts and in the seventh round of the American Football League draft by the Buffalo Bills.Schottenheimer, 6 feet 3 inches and 225 pounds, spent four seasons with the Bills and another two with the Boston Patriots.After working in real estate following his retirement as a player, he turned to coaching in the N.F.L. He spent two years as the Giants’ linebacker coach and then was their defensive coordinator in 1977. He coached the Detroit Lions’ linebackers for two seasons after that before becoming the Browns’ defensive coordinator. He succeeded Sam Rutigliano as the Browns’ head coach midway through the 1984 season, when they were 1-7.Relying on a power ground game featuring Earnest Byner and Kevin Mack and the passing of Bernie Kosar, Schottenheimer took the Browns to the American Football Conference final following the 1986 and 1987 seasons, but they lost to the Denver Broncos each time in their bid to reach the Super Bowl.The first time, the quarterback John Elway led the Broncos to a tying touchdown after they took over on their 2-yard line late in the fourth quarter, the sequence that became known as “the drive.” The Browns were then beaten on a field goal in overtime.The next year, in a play that became known as “the fumble,” Byner was stripped of the football just as he was about to cross the goal line for a potential game-tying touchdown with about a minute left. The Broncos took a safety and ran out the clock for a 38-33 victory.Schottenheimer’s 1988 Browns team went 10-6 and lost in the first round of the playoffs. At the time, his brother, Kurt, was the team’s defensive coordinator, and when the owner, Art Modell, insisted that he reassign his brother, Schottenheimer quit. He had also resisted Modell’s demand that he hire a new offensive coordinator, having filled that role himself when it become vacant that year.Schottenheimer was the first to admit that he was strong-willed.“Maybe I thought there was a pot of gold somewhere else to be found,” he said in his memoir, “Martyball!” (2012), written with Jeff Flanagan. “But I was stubborn, very stubborn back then. I’ve always been stubborn but much more so when I decided to leave Cleveland.”He then began a 10-season run as coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, taking them to the playoffs seven times.Before the 1993 season, the Chiefs obtained two of the N.F.L.’s marquee names, quarterback Joe Montana, in a trade, and running back Marcus Allen as a free agent. The team then went 11-5 and reached the A.F.C. final against the Bills. But Schottenheimer once again missed out on the Super Bowl. Montana left the game early in the second half with an injury, and the Bills rolled to a 30-13 victory.Schottenheimer as head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs in 1997. The team went to 13-3 in the regular season that year but lost to the Denver Broncos in the first round of the playoffs. Credit…Jed Jacobsohn/AllsportThe Chiefs were 13-3 in the 1997 regular season, only to lose to the Broncos in the playoffs’ first round. Schottenheimer was fired after the Chiefs went 7-9 in 1998, the only time one of his Kansas City teams finished below .500.After two years as an analyst for ESPN, Schottenheimer was hired as the Washington coach in 2001. He took the Redskins to an 8-8 record, then was fired once more.His last N.F.L. stop came in San Diego, where he twice lost in the playoffs’ first round, the second time following the Chargers’ 14-2 season in 2006 behind their brilliant running back LaDainian Tomlinson. In firing Schottenheimer after that season, the Chargers cited his feuding with the general manager, A.J. Smith, over control of roster decisions.Schottenheimer was coach and general manager of the Virginia Destroyers of the United Football League in 2011, taking them to the league title.He is survived by his wife, Pat (Hoeltgen) Schottenheimer; a son, Brian, who was a quarterback coach under him; a daughter, Kristen; his brothers Bill and Kurt; a sister, Lisa; and four grandchildren.Schottenheimer refused to second-guess decisions he had made in the playoffs or at any other time.“I’ve made calls that, by all reason, were perfect, and got nothing,” he once told The Boston Globe. “And I’ve made calls that were inappropriate to the situation and they’ve worked. So go figure. Pro football is a strange game.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      At the Super Bowl, the N.F.L.’s Social Message Is Muddled

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021N.F.L.’s Most Challenging YearGame HighlightsThe CommercialsHalftime ShowWhat We LearnedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Pro FootballAt the Super Bowl, the N.F.L.’s Social Message Is MuddledThe N.F.L. espoused racial unity and praised health care workers. But its inaction on racial diversity, its stereotypic imagery and its decision to host a potential superspreader event said something different.Masked fans paid tribute to front line workers and displayed messages of racial unity during the second quarter of the Super Bowl.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 8, 2021Updated 3:38 p.m. ETThe N.F.L. likes to project power and precision. Sideline catches are scrutinized with zoom lenses, first downs are measured in inches and Air Force jets fly over stadiums just as “The Star-Spangled Banner” reaches its peak.But when it comes to topics like race, health and safety, the league’s certainty dissolves into a series of mixed messages.That was the case on Sunday at the Super Bowl, the N.F.L.’s crowning game, which is typically watched by about 100 million viewers in the United States. The championship game provides the league a massive platform each year to promote itself as America’s corporate do-gooder, with the best interests of its enormous fan base at heart. That was harder to do this year as the country remained roiled by the deadly coronavirus pandemic, which has exacerbated festering political division and racial unrest, issues the N.FL. had to plow past to complete its season.On Sunday, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., the N.F.L. trumpeted its support for the fight against social injustice. The national anthem was performed by two musicians, one Black and one white. The poet Amanda Gorman, who wowed the country with her recitation at President Biden’s inauguration, read an ode to the three honorary captains — a teacher, a nurse and a soldier — frontline workers in different fields. The TV announcers spoke often of the work that the league and the players have done to battle racial inequities.Yet, moments later, when the Kansas City Chiefs took the field, the N.F.L. played a recording in the reduced capacity stadium of the made-up war cry that is a team custom. The prompt got fans to swing their arms in a “tomahawk chop,” an act that many find disrespectful and a perpetuation of racist stereotypes of the nation’s first people. Last week, the Kansas City Indian Center, a social service agency, put up two billboards in the city that read, “Change the name and stop the chop!”The Kansas City Chiefs took the field as the N.F.L. played the “tomahawk chop” on speakers inside Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York Times“At the start of the game it was all unify, unify, unify, and then there’s this racist chant,” said Louis Moore, an associate professor of history at Grand Valley State University who studies connections between race and sports. “Eight months after George Floyd, and you’ve done all this stuff, letting players put phrases on the backs of their helmets, giving workers a paid holiday for Juneteenth. They are putting a corporate Band-Aid on a problem instead of dealing with it.”Moore pointed to other inconvenient realities that were either dismissed, ignored or obscured by the relentless messaging.There was scant mention of Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who has not played since the 2016 season, when he began kneeling during the national anthem to shine a light on police brutality.That led to a sharp, viral rebuke on Twitter from the singer Mariah Carey.There was little talk of the league’s abysmal record hiring people of color as head coaches and general managers even as television cameras showed the Chiefs’ successful offensive coordinator, Eric Bieniemy, who is Black and has been unable to land a head coaching position in multiple hiring cycles.Before the game, CBS Sports showed a segment that featured Viola Davis, the Academy Award-winning actress, saluting Kenny Washington, a Black player who in 1946 reintegrated the N.F.L., which had an unofficial color barrier for 13 years.Yet there was no discussion of a lawsuit brought by two former N.F.L. players who accuse the league of rigging the concussion settlement to make it harder for Black players to receive payments.The league spent considerable time lauding nurses and other health care workers on the front lines who have been helping fight the coronavirus. It had invited 7,500 vaccinated workers to the game, a signal to Americans that if you, too, get inoculated, you will be able to safely attend big events like the Super Bowl.Not discussed was that just hosting the Super Bowl could lead to a spike in the number of infections. Sure, the N.F.L. provided fans at the game with face masks and hand sanitizer, but little if any contact tracing was done to monitor exposure. Tracking infected fans will be made all the more difficult as people return to their homes in all corners of the country.Many people flocked to Tampa the week of the Super Bowl, flooding bars and restaurants.Credit…AJ Mast for The New York TimesThe Super Bowl, American sports’ biggest party, is not confined to TV and phone screens. The week of events leading up to the game was a magnet for tens of thousands of fans who attended parties or flocked to Tampa’s bars and restaurants, often unmasked. In the aftermath of the home team’s victory, mask-less revelers took to the streets of Tampa, an utterly predictable scene that has followed other major championships. Many of the people who celebrated without regard to social distancing or other guidelines will expose others to the virus as they travel home.For all the N.F.L.’s feel-good words and gestures to this moment in American history at the Super Bowl, and its attempts to use football to try to bring the nation together, the league’s carefully crafted message risked being muddled by its actions.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Tom Brady's Super Bowl Win Is a Familiar End to an Odd Season

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021N.F.L.’s Most Challenging YearGame HighlightsThe CommercialsHalftime ShowWhat We LearnedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBuccaneers 31, Chiefs 9Tom Brady’s 7th Super Bowl Win Ends N.F.L.’s Most Challenging YearThe N.F.L. season persisted through challenges wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, political discord and a national reckoning on race to reach a familiar ending.Tom Brady celebrated with his children after winning the Super Bowl on Sunday in Tampa, Fla. “I think we knew this was going to happen now, didn’t we?” Brady said.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesPublished More

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      A Painful Lesson for the Chiefs: It’s Hard to Repeat as Champions

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021N.F.L.’s Most Challenging YearGame HighlightsThe CommercialsHalftime ShowWhat We LearnedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Painful Lesson for the Chiefs: It’s Hard to Repeat as ChampionsParity in the N.F.L. makes it difficult to build dynasties. Even the seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady has won back-to-back titles just once.Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was flat in the Super Bowl.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesKevin Draper and Feb. 7, 2021If the Kansas City Chiefs needed a reminder of how difficult it is to repeat as Super Bowl champions, they needed only glance across the field at Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady.Brady won a record seventh Super Bowl on Sunday night as the Buccaneers dominated Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs on their way to a 31-9 victory in Tampa, Fla.He has appeared in 10 of the last 20 Super Bowls. But he has won two in a row just once, in the 2003 and 2004 seasons. Like the New England Patriots in the 2017 season and the Seattle Seahawks in the 2014 season, the 2020 Chiefs failed in their bid to win a second straight title.“I think what makes it such a challenge is it is hard to win one Super Bowl,” Brady told reporters last week. “You cannot go buy a football team. You have to develop players.”The Buccaneers, coached by Bruce Arians, had a lot of young talent, but their roster was largely constructed in the off-season when they signed Brady, tight end Rob Gronkowski, running back Leonard Fournette and others.The Chiefs, though, seemed destined to repeat. They finished the regular season with an N.F.L.-best 14-2 record and were favorites heading into the Super Bowl. Their offense looked unstoppable with quarterback Mahomes, last year’s Super Bowl most valuable player, playing well.But before the game, Mahomes acknowledged that parity in the N.F.L. made it difficult for teams to repeat as champions.“I mean, literally, you could be the worst team in the league one year and work all the way up to the Super Bowl the next,” he said.The salary cap, which limits how much money teams can spend on player contracts, is a big reason for that parity. That wasn’t the case decades ago. The Green Bay Packers won the first two Super Bowls in the 1960s, and the Miami Dolphins and the Pittsburgh Steelers pulled repeat wins in the 1970s. (The Steelers did it twice.)Quarterback Joe Montana led the San Francisco 49ers to consecutive titles in the 1980s, and the Dallas Cowboys were repeat champions in the early 1990s. But since the N.F.L. introduced a salary cap in 1994, only the Patriots and John Elway’s Denver Broncos have repeated.Chiefs fans faced the inevitable Sunday night. Salary cap considerations will make it hard for Kansas City to keep the team together.Credit…Chase Castor for The New York TimesAs is often the case in the N.F.L., injuries can derail teams in an instant. The Chiefs struggled on Sunday, in part, because they were missing their two starting offensive tackles, including Eric Fisher, one of the best tackles in the game, who missed the Super Bowl after tearing an Achilles’ tendon two weeks ago.Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, an offensive guard who has a medical degree, opted out of the 2020 season to work in his native Canada to help combat the coronavirus. Tackle Mitchell Schwartz played only the first six weeks of the season before injuring his back.The Chiefs also faced a last-minute coaching change. Their outside linebackers coach, Britt Reid — the son of the head coach, Andy Reid — missed Sunday’s game after being involved in a car crash in Kansas City, Mo., on Thursday night.The Buccaneers took advantage. They sacked Mahomes three times and pressured him on 29 of his 56 drop backs, according to ESPN Stats & Info, the most in Super Bowl history. Mahomes spent most of the game scrambling from defenders behind the line of scrimmage. He threw two interceptions, no touchdowns, and needed 49 passes to accumulate just 270 yards, most of them late in the game.Retaining a roster that has made it to three consecutive A.F.C. championship games will be difficult. The Chiefs are almost $18 million over next year’s salary cap, according to Over the Cap, an independent site that tracks N.F.L. contracts and salaries. A number of key players are free agents, among them receivers Sammy Watkins and Demarcus Robinson, center Austin Reiter and defensive backs Daniel Sorensen and Bashaud Breeland.The Chiefs will face another hurdle: The salary cap, which is based on the league’s total revenue, was about $198 million this season. It could fall to as low as $175 million next season because the league lost billions of dollars in ticket sales during the pandemic.For their part, the Buccaneers will have an estimated $28.9 million in cap space, which will give them room to re-sign players and attract free agents.The Chiefs will, however, retain Mahomes, a transcendent quarterback who signed a 10-year contract last summer worth up to $500 million. At only 25, he has many years ahead — barring injury — to match Brady, Elway, Montana, Troy Aikman, Terry Bradshaw, Bob Griese and Bart Starr as quarterbacks who have won back-to-back Super Bowls.After the game, a downtrodden Mahomes acknowledged the difficulty of winning in the N.F.L. “When we joined together we knew it wasn’t going to always be successful and we weren’t going to be able to win a thousand championships in a row,” he said. “We knew we would go through times like this, through adversity.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Tom Brady, Defying Age, Heads to Another Super Bowl

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021Why the Chiefs Will WinTom Brady vs. Patrick MahomesA Super Bowl Trip Is Worth the Risk to Some Fans17 Recipes for Tiny TailgatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThrough Genetics, Luck or ‘Prehab,’ Tom Brady Endures at 43The mother of the opposing Super Bowl LV quarterback was a year old when Brady was born. What’s he still doing here?Tom Brady, seemingly defying nature at 43, is about to play in his 10th Super Bowl. Credit…Brett Duke/Associated PressFeb. 7, 2021Updated 9:11 a.m. ETFootball fans know what old quarterbacks look like as they fade away. It is not like Tom Brady.Old quarterbacks hobble around the field, propped on stiff hips and achy knees, their arms ragged and their faces craggy. They look like survivors, elevated in myth but diminished in stature.Vaults and minds are filled with clips of Johnny Unitas, Joe Namath, Brett Favre and all the other creaky quarterbacks who tempted the fates of time and tradition, shunning retirement until deep — maybe too deep — into Hall-of-Fame careers.When John Elway played his last game, winning a Super Bowl, he was 38. Peyton Manning did the same at 39. Rigid and worn, older quarterbacks usually move as if they might be unable to tie the laces on their cleats.Then there is Brady, a cyborg. He is 43. Does he have a wrinkle on his face? Is his arm bionic? Are his joints made of rubber? He probably can tie his own laces while doing downward dog.“You look at this guy and think, ‘Wow, it’s absolutely incredible,” said Gordon Lithgow, a professor and vice president of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, Calif. “Is he actually aging at a slower rate than other people?”That is the question football fans are asking ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl LV between Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs.The answer appears to be yes, at least in football terms. The hard question is why.“There’s no way that elite athletes are immune to aging,” Lithgow said. “You can see quite a precipitous drop-off in performance — even though they are way above average, it’s still happening at the same rates.”Brady, who is in his first season with Tampa Bay after 20 years with the New England Patriots, will be the oldest player to participate in a Super Bowl, at any position. He is the only quarterback to start a Super Bowl after age 40, and he is about to do it for the third time.Brady was born in 1977, the summer of “Star Wars,” Son of Sam and the death of Elvis (at 42, notably). Brady has been alive for every victory in Tampa Bay franchise history. (The Buccaneers were 0-14 in 1976, their inaugural season.)The 18-year age gap between him and Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes is the biggest ever between Super Bowl starting quarterbacks. When Brady was born, Mahomes’s mother was 1.Brady, who will face Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl, is a contemporary of Mahomes’s mother.Credit…Jason Behnken/Associated PressBrady was selected in the 2000 N.F.L. draft and has been a starting quarterback since New England’s second game after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Each of the 11 other quarterbacks drafted in 2000 (Brady was the seventh taken) has been out of the N.F.L. for at least nine years. This will be his 10th Super Bowl. He has won six of them and earned the game’s Most Valuable Player Award four times.“If anyone has any superlatives that haven’t been used yet, you know how to get in touch with me,” said Jim Nantz, the Super Bowl play-by-play announcer for CBS. “My reservoir is bone dry.”Sports fans are accustomed to the inevitability of late-career declines by stars. But this season Brady threw 40 touchdowns, the second-highest total of his career. Still mobile in the pocket, he was sacked at a lower rate than his career average. Hardly a weak-armed version of his past self, he recorded an average air distance on his throws, whether completed or not, that was longer (9.1 yards) than in the previous two seasons with New England.Brady looks more like his younger self than like a doddering old quarterback.Is he the best athlete ever? How can that be measured?Brady may not be the best football player, or even the best quarterback. But through an incalculable algorithm of excellence, consistency and time, Brady might come out No. 1.Peddling His PliabilityBrady, though, might not be No. 1 in the hearts of football fans. Age and accomplishment bring respect to older athletes, but Brady and the Patriots dynasty of the past two decades proved especially hard to adore for those outside New England. They won steadily behind their cranky coach, Bill Belichick, and the cool Brady, who long ago shed any underdog charm he brought into the league as a sixth-round draft pick.The Patriots rarely dazzled. They were seldom fun. They were respected in the way that steamrollers are. They swapped coordinators, shuffled the roster and got older, yet Belichick and Brady kept winning. It was hard to explain. Any awe came from their relentless efficiency.Controversies surrounding accusations of cheating — Spygate in 2007, Deflategate in 2015 — cling loosely to their championships, like dryer sheets on fresh laundry.Brady’s skills have never been obvious, but he was always there, smiling and holding the trophy. It could seem a bit much — his persistent winning, his sunny but vapid California disposition, his supermodel wife, his Uggs.Now he is recast with the Buccaneers, an innocuous franchise that elicits little emotional reflex, playing for an affable coach in Bruce Arians, an anti-Belichick. And Brady, wearing a new costume, performs like a carnival act — Come see the ageless man! — as audiences gather in wonder for another look, if not the last one.Nantz has twice thought he had broadcast Brady’s last game — two years ago in a Super Bowl victory, last season in a playoff loss. Will this Super Bowl be the end? It does not seem so. Brady talks of playing to 45, maybe beyond.His age is now his business. Brady has marketed his longevity, packaged it into something called the TB12 Method, and explained it in a 2017 book espousing muscle “pliability.” The goal is a spongy elasticity that can absorb all that life throws at a body, even that of an aging quarterback.Brady’s longevity is now his business. His company offers TB12 Performance Meals, “freshly frozen for your active lifestyle.”Credit…Maddie Meyer/Getty Images“Balderdash,” one physiology professor has said of the pliability theory.Brady’s long career is not just vital to the pitch. It is the pitch. The main headline on the TB12 home page reads, “Still Here,” mocking our amazement. The implication is clear: The elusive Fountain of Youth might come boxed in a “TB12 Immunity Gameplan Starter Kit” ($175).There are no N.F.L. logos, no mentions of the Patriots or Buccaneers — just the lure of youthfulness and positivity. Whenever he retires from football, Brady will still be in our lives, selling not cars, pizza or insurance, but aspiration and lifestyle — part Jack LaLanne, part Gwyneth Paltrow.Items for sale include TB12 Performance Meals, “freshly frozen for your active lifestyle.” Brady’s diet is mostly plant-based — but no strawberries, because he detests the smell of them, a trait that football opponents have somehow been unable to exploit. He fills his body with protein shakes, TB12-branded electrolytes and lots of water — “Drink at least one-half of your body weight in ounces of water daily,” he instructs on the site.TB12 also sells dietary supplements, exercise equipment (lots of stretchy bands and vibrating rollers and balls) and clothing (including shirts reading “20 Seasons” and “Tampa Brady”).Acolytes can make an appointment with a TB12 Body Coach, “your partner in performance and recovery,” either virtually or at one of several TB12 locations in Massachusetts and Florida. “Replacing injury and rehab with pliability and prehab” is a catchphrase. Sleep and mindfulness are also promoted at TB12 as key components to good health.The prevailing mood is calm, which feels counter to football’s grunting culture of power and testosterone. All that is missing are candles scented like Tom Brady.Does his philosophy work? Is that the key to his football longevity, or is Brady merely the beneficiary of great genes and luck?After all, he has not missed a game because of injury since 2008.“Genetics is probably less than 10 percent of the equation,” Lithgow, the aging expert, said. “That means that there’s a whole lot of stuff out there, in terms of environment, everything we’re exposed to, that actually plays a much, much larger part — which is kind of good news, actually. It means that maybe we have some ability to control our own rate of aging.”Brady and his “method” suggest that he has found the optimal blend of diet, exercise and sleep. Those factors certainly affect aging, Lithgow said.“But — and it’s a big but,” he said, “with any of these interventions or systems, we can’t say anything about them until they’re subject to a normal double-blind clinical trial.”“If you find something that works for you, that’s great,” Lithgow added. “That’s just looking after yourself, and it’s not science, and it’s not something you can necessarily recommend for your next-door neighbor because they may respond completely differently to it.”For someone so adept at selling himself, Brady has been shrouded in suspicion of his own making. In 2015, he was the focus of Deflategate, the N.F.L. investigation into whether Brady instructed team employees to reduce the air pressure in footballs below the league standard to gain some sort of advantage. (Brady was suspended in 2016 for four games, the only ones he has missed since 2008.) In recent years, a relationship with the controversial fitness guru Alex Guerrero has further cast Brady as someone trying to hide something.Alex Guerrero, a fitness guru who is Brady’s partner in TB12, is also the quarterback’s trainer, counselor and adviser, as well as godfather to one of his sons.Credit…Scott Eisen/Getty ImagesGuerrero, a purveyor of holistic medicine, was charged in 2004 by the Federal Trade Commission with deceptively marketing an herbal supplement called Supreme Greens. Infomercials starring “Dr. Guerrero” (he has no doctorate or license to practice medicine) claimed the product could prevent and cure cancer, diabetes and heart disease, among other maladies, and spur substantial weight loss. The case was settled in 2005, and Guerrero was required to pay $65,000 or to give up his 2004 Cadillac Escalade.That is about when Brady and Guerrero began working closely together. They founded TB12 in 2013. In 2015, a New York Times article referred to Guerrero as Brady’s “best friend” and “his spiritual guide, counselor, pal, nutrition adviser, trainer, massage therapist and family member.” He is a godfather to one of Brady’s sons.Guerrero’s constant presence around the Patriots reportedly caused friction with Belichick, who kept Guerrero off the team plane and limited his sideline access in 2017. In 2018, another player working with Guerrero, receiver Julian Edelman, was suspended for four games after testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance.Brady has made theater of not discussing Guerrero. During a weekly radio obligation in Boston in 2018, he refused to answer questions about Guerrero and hung up.After Brady’s contract expired last year, the Patriots reportedly did not offer a new deal. Only two teams, the Buccaneers and the Los Angeles Chargers, took serious runs at him. Brady left for Tampa Bay, taking Guerrero with him.In October, Brady posted birthday wishes to Guerrero on Instagram. “It’s not often in life we find people that share so many common beliefs,” he wrote, in part. “Love you big bro!!”A Merchandising PhenomenonWhatever Brady is doing, his ability to defy his age has captured the collective imagination of football fans.When the N.F.L. playoffs began, they seemed like a seniors tournament. Drew Brees (42), Philip Rivers (39), Ben Roethlisberger (38) and Aaron Rodgers (37) all led their teams into the postseason. Each is likely to end up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.Only the oldest of the elders, Brady, reached the Super Bowl — again.Last year, Mahomes merchandise (jerseys and numbered T-shirts) set sales records during the two weeks before the Super Bowl, according to Fanatics, which operates online stores for the N.F.L.Brady merchandise surpassed the two-week total for Mahomes items just three days after Tampa Bay won a spot in the Super Bowl, the company said.Buccaneers fans on Tampa’s Riverwalk. Brady has said he would like to play in the N.F.L. until he is 45 and perhaps beyond.Credit…Eve Edelheit for The New York Times“The greatest who ever walked,” said the former quarterback Tony Romo, who will be Nantz’s broadcast partner for the Super Bowl.Romo had a 14-year N.F.L. career, long by most standards. But he is three years younger than Brady, and he retired four seasons ago with a sore back.Fans know what old quarterbacks look like. They can see one in the broadcast booth on Sunday.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More