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      Giants Bumble Their Way Into a Win to Retain Playoff Hopes

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storygiants 23, cowboys 19Giants Bumble Their Way Into a Win to Retain Playoff HopesThe Giants’ topsy-turvy season had a fittingly odd ending. Now the team awaits the outcome of the Sunday night game between Philadelphia and Washington to learn its playoff fate.Giants running back Wayne Gallman’s late fumble against the Cowboys Sunday threw the game into momentary disarray. The officials ultimately ruled that Gallman picked up a key first down that would allow the Giants to run out the remaining clock in the victory.Credit…Robert Deutsch/USA Today Sports, via ReutersJan. 3, 2021Updated 9:30 p.m. ETPerhaps it is no surprise that a Giants regular season that began with five successive defeats, one victory in the first eight games and a startling late-season charge into playoff contention would not conclude with a routine, humdrum game. No, this topsy-turvy Giants season deserved to end with gripping drama, slapstick failure and ultimately gratifying perseverance.Sunday’s game against the Dallas Cowboys, with a potential postseason berth on the line, did not disappoint. In frantic fashion, the Giants spent nearly the entire second half desperately trying to cling to a tenuous 11-point first-half lead they had built.The tension built until the final 58 seconds of regulation, with the reeling Giants still ahead by 4 points, when the game officials huddled, and then turned to a video replay, to decide what had transpired at the bottom of a pileup caused by a shocking, bumbling fumble by running back Wayne Gallman at the Giants’ 39-yard line.Several players from both teams pounced on Gallman as he appeared to awkwardly sit directly on the loose football that had inexplicably slipped from his hands at the end of a crucial run. And when officials combed through the mass of contorted bodies atop him, there was only more confusion about the outcome as two officials initially pointed in separate directions — one awarded possession to Dallas, the other to the Giants. Moments later, the officials conferred and ruled that the Giants not only had retained the football, but that Gallman had picked up a key first down that would allow them to run out the remaining clock.Still, a last, agonizing replay review ensued, after which the call on the field was not reversed. The Giants (6-10) had earned a 23-19 victory that ended the team’s seven-game losing streak to Dallas (6-10) and temporarily kept their playoff hopes alive. If the Philadelphia Eagles defeat the Washington Football Team on Sunday night, the Giants, as champions of the N.F.C. East, would host a wild-card game next weekend against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (11-5).The fumble, and who recovered it, was not the only controversial late-game sequence in Sunday’s game. With about seven minutes left in the fourth quarter, Giants wide receiver Dante Pettis caught a 10-yard pass, which proved pivotal when Giants place-kicker Graham Gano booted a 50-yard field goal on the next play that extended the Giants’ lead to 23-19. But video replays of the Pettis reception appeared to show that the football contacted the turf in a way that would have ruled the pass incomplete. Even though an incompletion would have moved the Giants out of field goal position, Dallas Coach Mike McCarthy did not challenge the play.The Pettis catch, and the Gano field goal it set up, became meaningful on the subsequent possession when Dallas drove inside the Giants’ 10-yard line with less than two minutes remaining. While the Cowboys were pushed back when quarterback Andy Dalton was sacked by Giants lineman Leonard Williams, if not for Gano’s field goal, they could have played conservatively for a field-goal attempt that would have given them the lead. Instead, needing a touchdown, Dalton scrambled on a third-and-17, and again under pressure from Williams, flung a desperate pass into the end zone that was intercepted by the Giants rookie safety Xavier McKinney.McCarthy said he did not challenge the Pettis reception because it was “too close” and a “bang-bang type of situation.” He added: “The three timeouts were obviously of high value there.”Roughly 15 minutes after Sunday’s game, Giants Coach Joe Judge said he would not be idle as he waited for the result of the game between the Eagles and Washington. Judge planned to go to his office and begin preparing for Tampa Bay.His assessment of the Giants’ season considered other factors.“Our season showed we had a lot of growth,” said Judge, the Giants’ rookie head coach. “I found out more about our team when we were 0-5 and 1-7. We showed a lot of character in those moments.”Judge added: “I told the guys how proud I was of them today. We had a good year — we improved every game.”Judge also said he was not surprised by the tense final moments of Sunday’s game.“I knew it would go down to the wire, as all of our division games have,” Judge said.The game did not begin as if it would be hotly contested to the end. Early on, the Giants dominated, defensively and most surprisingly on offense.Despite scoring only 26 points in their previous three games, the Giants scored a touchdown on their opening drive when wide receiver Sterling Shepard dashed 23 yards around the right end on a reverse, although Gano missed the extra point attempt after the score. The Cowboys cut the Giants’ lead in half with a 38-yard Greg Zuerlein field goal, but Shepard was the star of another Giants touchdown drive, catching a 10-yard touchdown pass from Giants quarterback Daniel Jones late in the second quarter.Dallas stayed in the game with two more Zuerlein field goals in the first half, but the Giants continued to attack, building a 20-6 lead on a 33-yard touchdown pass from Jones, who completed 17 of 25 passes for 229 yards, to Pettis.Trailing by 11 points at halftime, the Cowboys climbed back into the game when Giants tight end Evan Engram, who was recently selected for the Pro Bowl, failed to catch an accurate Jones pass over the middle early in the third quarter. Engram’s misplay was more than a drop since he deflected the football backward where it was intercepted by Dallas safety Donovan Wilson. Ten plays after the interception, Dallas running back Ezekiel Elliott bulled into the end zone with a 1-yard touchdown that trimmed the Giants’ lead to 20-16.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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

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

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      2020 N.F.L. Playoff Picture for Week 17: Mapping All the Scenarios

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      Updated Sunday 9:27 AM ET For the most part, the Week 17 games have been scheduled such that those that matter most to one another are being played simultaneously. Unfortunately, these various scenarios can get quite confusing, even for the people trying to explain them to you live on television. The diagrams below are meant […] More

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      Randall Cunningham Is Back in the N.F.L. … as Raiders Chaplain

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Great ReadRandall Cunningham Is Back in the N.F.L. … as Raiders Chaplain“I want to preach myself into a Super Bowl ring.”Randall Cunningham spoke to the congregation from the pulpit at Remnant Ministries in Las Vegas last week.Credit…Saeed Rahbaran for The New York TimesDec. 31, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETDespite his best efforts, Randall Cunningham just can’t retire from football. A former quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings, he tried walking away from the game twice, dabbling in a variety of activities to fill the void.“Going golfing and going to the movies, and concerts or boxing matches,” Cunningham said. “It got boring.”After his second retirement from the N.F.L., in 2002, Cunningham settled in Las Vegas permanently, and became an ordained pastor two years later. With his wife, Felicity, the couple began their own church, Remnant Ministries, where Cunningham gives three services every Sunday to a small live audience and, he estimated, around 4,000 online viewers. In the meantime, he has also coached their two children: Vashti and Randall II are both Olympic team hopefuls in track and field.But this past summer, when the Raiders also settled in the city from Oakland, Calif., football came knocking once again. The team’s head coach, Jon Gruden, had an idea about luring Cunningham back — as the Raiders’ chaplain. “That guy warms my heart,” Gruden said. “He is special. He has a great way of spreading the Lord’s word, he is a great resource and great friend to all of us.”The newly built Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, where the Raiders play.Credit…Saeed Rahbaran for The New York TimesGruden, who was Philadelphia’s offensive coordinator in Cunningham’s final season there, said, “To be reunited with him at this point in life is really cool.”No other N.F.L. team has as its spiritual adviser a former superstar player, but both men insist that Cunningham, famed for being a progenitor of the modern game’s dual-threat quarterback role, maintains a singular focus in his new role. “I coach them in the spiritual aspects of life, and that’s it,” Cunningham said.The reality of Cunningham’s first season as Raiders chaplain has been plenty different from the hands-on pastoring and locker room camaraderie that have been made impossible this season because of the N.F.L.’s Covid-19 protocol.“I haven’t had the opportunity to slap Zay Jones a high-five, or hug Alec Ingold, or give a fist bump to Darren Waller,” Cunningham said. Instead, Cunningham stays in touch through phone calls and texts. He hosts a 7 p.m. Bible study on a video call the night before games where, sometimes, football seeps into the message.The night before the second game of the season, when the New Orleans Saints visited, Cunningham focused on the original underdog story — David’s battle with Goliath. “I said, ‘Man, here comes Goliath, the great champion from Gath, all the accolades and all the victories,’” Cunningham recalled. “Drew Brees is the man, so is the coach, but you have to take Goliath down.”As he spoke to the Raiders players on the video call that night, Cunningham was so focused on the story of young David knocking out the giant with a slingshot, that he kept accidentally calling Derek Carr, the team’s starting quarterback, David (the name of his older brother, who is a retired N.F.L. quarterback).The day after Cunningham talked to the team about the story of David and Goliath, Derek Carr threw three touchdowns to upset the New Orleans Saints in a September game.Credit…Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesThe next day, Derek Carr played like the biblical David, throwing three touchdown passes and leading the Raiders to a 34-24 victory in their first game at home in Las Vegas. “It felt like I had affected them in a way that gave them a little confidence,” Cunningham said. “Not false confidence, but to give them true confidence to go out and be who they are.”Carr talked to Cunningham on the phone on his drive home from the stadium after sustaining a serious groin injury in a loss to the Los Angeles Chargers this month. The Raiders starter left the must-win Thursday night game in the first quarter and watched his team lose in overtime from the sideline, their playoff hopes almost completely dashed. Together, they prayed for healing.The Raiders did not make any players available for comment, but Carr’s agent, Timothy Younger, said in an email to The New York Times that Carr and Cunningham have “an extremely close relationship, and Derek recognizes his own growth this year due in large part to Randall’s help.”In a text message via his agent, Raiders receiver Nelson Agholor said: “Randall is amazing. The same passion he played with, he preaches with.” In his playing days, Cunningham loved being a star and redefining what it meant to play quarterback with each mad dash. In the 1990 season, Cunningham passed for 3,466 yards and 30 touchdowns, and also rushed for 942 yards and five touchdowns.He drove a Porsche, buddied up with celebrities, and dressed in bold outfits that his Eagles teammate Keith Byars compared to Michael Jackson’s style.Cunningham regularly made headlines in Philadelphia for quotations that could come off as selfish and cast doubt on his leadership ability. After he evaded a Bruce Smith sack and threw an improbable 95-yard touchdown pass in a losing effort against the Buffalo Bills in 1990, Cunningham said, “Sometimes I do amaze myself.”Byars said he often had to act as a mediator between his quarterback and members of the defense who took issue with Cunningham’s comments. “When Randall first came into the league, he was in a cocoon and waiting to expand who he was,” Byars said. “You can’t help others until you help yourself, and get to know yourself. And so, that’s what Randall was going through early in his football career, still knowing who he was.”Cunningham grew up in Santa Barbara, Calif., going to church on Sundays, but it wasn’t until he came out of retirement for the first time in 1997, after spending a year away from the game following 11 seasons in Philadelphia, that he became serious about his faith.He had spent the time off running a building supply company and serving as an analyst for TV broadcasts. But on a vacation in Hawaii with his family, Cunningham realized he wasn’t cut out for a life of leisure.In his playing days in Philadelphia and Minnesota, Cunningham loved being a superstar athlete and redefining what it meant to play quarterback with each mad dash. Credit…Otto Greule Jr./Getty Images“It was beautiful, but there came a time when it was like, ‘Wow, is this what life is?’” he said. “Just drinking iced tea and having a nice meal and working out every day?”Cunningham returned to the league with Minnesota in 1997 and became involved with the Vikings’ team ministry. He said he started praying between plays and during commercial breaks: “Lord, I am about to launch this ball to Randy Moss. Please let him catch it for a touchdown.”After the 2001 season, his final one as a player, Cunningham went back to Las Vegas and continued to lead a Bible study he had started there a few years earlier.“He is one of the favorite sons here in Las Vegas,” Gruden said of Cunningham, who set passing records that still stand during his college career 40 years ago at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It didn’t take long for his ministry to take off.“The next thing you know, we had 90 people in the Bible study,” Cunningham recalled, “and my pastor said, ‘This is not a Bible study, it’s a church.’”Cunningham says he does not want to get into coaching or any front office roles, but he does confess to bigger ambitions for his work as team chaplain.A missed field-goal attempt stopped Cunningham from making it to a Super Bowl with the Vikings in the 1998 season, the best year of his career. He won just two of seven playoff games with the Eagles, never advancing past the divisional round. The Raiders are officially out of postseason contention this year, but now that he is back in the N.F.L., Cunningham has his eye on that elusive Lombardi Trophy.“I want to preach myself into a Super Bowl ring,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Quarterback Keeper? Jets, Browns and Bears Face Contract Decisions

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrend WatchQuarterback Keeper? Jets, Browns and Bears Face Contract DecisionsSam Darnold, Baker Mayfield and Mitchell Trubisky have all been marginally impressive at times. But is that enough for their teams to sign them to salary-cap-straining contracts?Jets quarterback Sam Darnold, right, and Baker Mayfield of the Cleveland Browns have each made their teams’ decisions about extending their contracts trickier by playing well — but not that well — over the last few weeks.Credit…Bill Kostroun/Associated PressDec. 30, 2020, 3:00 a.m. ETThe most pivotal decision an N.F.L. team must make is often not drafting the right quarterback but determining the right thing to do with the quarterback it drafted a few years ago.The Jets and Sam Darnold are reaching a crossroads. The Cleveland Browns and Chicago Bears are facing similar decisions with Baker Mayfield and Mitchell Trubisky. Should these teams offer their marginally impressive, often disappointing young starters budget-burdening contracts or send them away and start over again?There is no middle ground. If there exists a compensation package for a former first-round quarterback that lands somewhere between nine-figure golden handcuffs and bus fare out of town, N.F.L. front offices have yet to discover it.Darnold, Mayfield and Trubisky have all made their teams’ decisions trickier by playing well — but not that well — over the past few weeks. Darnold has led the Jets to back-to-back victories. Mayfield threw 10 touchdowns and just one interception in a four-game stretch that ended when a coronavirus outbreak left him throwing to scout-team wide receivers in Sunday’s loss to the Jets. Trubisky has completed over 70 percent of his passes and thrown six touchdowns while leading the Bears to three straight victories, albeit against a trio of scuffling opponents.All three quarterbacks could be showing signs of improvement at the end of their third (Darnold and Mayfield) and fourth (Trubisky) N.F.L. seasons. Or their warm streaks may simply be random fluctuations caused by the quality of their opponents, some lucky bounces and heavily tempered expectations.Trubisky is just a few weeks removed from being benched in favor of Nick Foles. Mayfield behaved as if he were his own internet troll at times last year and struggled against quality defenses early in this season. Darnold is graded on the Jets curve: Showing up and trying his hardest guarantees at least a C-plus.The contracts of first-round draft picks come with built-in fifth-year team options: The player gets a hefty raise (Darnold’s base salary, for example, would jump from roughly $920,000 in 2021 to around $25 million in 2022), while the team gets an extra year of evaluation/procrastination. So the Jets and the Browns could delay their final decisions on Darnold and Mayfield until 2022. But exercising a quarterback’s fifth-year option is like asking a fiancé to postpone the wedding until they finish graduate school: perhaps prudent, but an undeniable sign of one’s true feelings.Team politics also typically play a large role in determining a young quarterback’s fate. Newly hired coaches are rarely eager to repair the prospect who helped get the last coach fired.The Chicago Bears famously traded up in the 2017 N.F.L. draft to select Mitchell Trubisky, center, when Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson were still on the board.Credit…Steve Mitchell/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe next Jets head coach is likely to approach undoing Adam Gase’s handiwork the way Batman defuses one of The Joker’s time bombs: The safest bet is to just hurl everything into Gotham River. So if the Jets keep Darnold, it may be only as a lame-duck place holder while his rookie replacement learns the playbook. Under such circumstances, a trade or release could provide both the Jets and Darnold a much-needed fresh start.The Bears declined Trubisky’s fifth-year option last off-season, so he enters 2021 as a free agent, leaving the team with several expensive, suboptimal choices. Franchise tagging Trubisky would cost the Bears more than the nearly $32 million one-year salary that Dak Prescott earned from the Dallas Cowboys’ indecision this season. A long-term contract may cost around $118 million over four years, as indicated by Ryan Tannehill’s contract with the Tennessee Titans. The cap-strapped Bears would struggle to afford either choice, neither of which Trubisky has earned.Front-office politics could also play a role in the Bears’ decision. General Manager Ryan Pace famously traded a bundle of mid-round draft picks to the San Francisco 49ers in 2017 to select Trubisky when Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson were still on the board. An executive who admits such a huge mistake rarely gets the chance to make another one. All the more reason to pretend that Trubisky is a late-blooming Aaron Rodgers.Mayfield has outperformed Darnold and Trubisky, overcoming many youthful bad habits while leading the Browns to their first winning record since 2007. That makes the team’s next decision even more perilous. Mayfield appears to be in line for a contract in the $32 million to $40 million range per year, like those signed by Watson, Jared Goff and Carson Wentz in recent years. (Mahomes’s $500 million contract, like his entire career so far, belongs in its own category).The Eagles, of course, have benched Wentz in favor of the rookie Jalen Hurts. But Wentz’s huge contract will make trading him like trying to sell a Lamborghini with 48 remaining payments after it was hit by a train. And Goff is the football equivalent of a $40 hamburger. Watson has played well in hopeless circumstances, and not every mammoth quarterback contract brings instant regret. But if the Browns choose to overpay Mayfield for “good enough,” they are likely to get precisely what they bargained for.It’s easy to suggest that any team that is not completely satisfied with its young quarterback’s development should cut bait and dip instead into next year’s deep pool of can’t-miss rookies. But Darnold, Trubisky, Mayfield, Wentz and Goff all came from similar can’t-miss pools. If selecting and developing a franchise quarterback were easy, multiple teams would not face this predicament each year.Ultimately, the Jets will probably trade or release Darnold; Mayfield should get Goff/Wentz money from the Browns; the Bears will find a solution to the Trubisky conundrum that makes sense only to the Bears; and everyone will wish they had selected Mahomes when they had the chance. The whole cycle will just begin anew next year when the Giants try to figure out what to do with Daniel Jones.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Our Altered View of Sports After 2020

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonThe Warriors Are StrugglingVirus Upends Houston RocketsMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersCredit…By The New York TimesOur Altered ViewThe coronavirus changed sports. But it also changed us. Will our connection as fans always be divided into a before, and an after?Credit…By The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyIt was all taken for granted, wasn’t it?Before 2020, sports were the one thing we could rely on. There could be wars or disasters or depressions, storms and loss and grief, but there was always an escape hatch. There would be games.There would be games on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons and pretty much some sort of diversion at all other times of the week. It was just that easy.Things were so certain that they printed team schedules on little cards for your wallet and on posters for the barroom walls, and they were gospel. Fans could look at the schedules months in advance and think, yep, I know where I’ll be that day. I know what I’ll be doing that night.That was part of the allure, right? The certainty of it all? We think we watch sports because we don’t know what will happen. We mostly watch because we do.We knew that the teams would show up. We knew the best athletes would be there, all at the appointed time.There would be order. It could be 82 games or 162 games or 16 games, and it would somehow lead to a champion decided through a system only decipherable to the faithful. There would be 60 minutes or 90 minutes or three periods or four quarters or nine innings, because there are lives to plan around these games and life isn’t a test-cricket match.There would be rules and uniforms and officials to keep things fair.There would be things to complain about, because that is part of the ritual, too, and just enough hope to maintain devotion. It is the hope that binds the ritual.Cruel, these diversions, taken away just when we needed them most.But that is the lesson of 2020, isn’t it? The reminder that losing a game is not the worst kind of loss. Not even close.But where do sports fit in now? Is it the same place as before?Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesStrange how innocent, even reckless, things can look in hindsight. There was a Super Bowl in February, and J. Lo and Shakira had a halftime dance-off.The Chiefs came back to beat the 49ers. The stadium was packed. Millions watched on television.Any mention of a “mask” referred to helmet design. “Social distancing” was not a phrase that made any sense.By March, the N.B.A. and N.H.L. were in midseason form. College basketball was headed toward madness. Baseball was at spring training. The Summer Olympics loomed.Spring is the season of expectation, and expectation was in full bloom.Do you remember where you were or who told you? There were signs, smashed into about a week that feels like it’s still going on.Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesA tennis tournament at Indian Wells was canceled.An N.B.A. game was postponed, then another, then all of them. Basketball tournaments were halted between games.Baseball players were sent home. The Olympics said they’d try again next year.Just wait it out, like a storm. Give it a few days, a couple weeks. This will pass. Everything will soon be back to normal.It isn’t.It won’t be.Must the show go on?There were games to be played, money to be made. (People were dying.)Neville E. Guard/USA Today Sports, via ReutersPlans were concocted, undone and concocted again. (People were dying.)Maybe a short season here, a bubble there. (People were dying.) Everyone wear a mask and let’s get the players tested every day. (People were dying.)Sell cardboard cutouts of fans and pipe in some crowd noise. (People were dying.) Spare no expense and get it on television. (People were dying.)There will be playoffs and champions and winners and losers. (People were dying.)And when this season ends we will start the next season anew. (People are dying.)Where do sports fit in?If only the world were so simple. Fight a pandemic. Play the games, or not.But bubbles are not airtight from reality. There is violence on the streets. There are people bleeding, suffering, marching, dying.Yes, they matter.Pool photo by Phil NobleNow is the time. To kneel. To stand up. To speak. To hear. To vote.Wearing a mask does not mean hiding. Wearing a mask can be revealing.It can save lives.Or maybe change them.What does it mean to be a fan now?It is a simple question in a complex year.Maybe it means finding room for small pleasures. Maybe it means clinging to a sense of community. Maybe it means rituals that will not be broken. Not now.Do sports matter as much if the seats are empty?Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesCan the emotion and the meaning be pixelated and streamed into a million little devices and still bring people together?Cardboard cutouts and Zoom screens are two-dimensional stand-ins for the irreplaceable. What do we do now? Will we jam together in sweaty gyms and raucous arenas and huge stadiums again?Will there be crowded beer lines, hot dog vendors in the aisles, standing room only sections, side-by-side urinals?Will there be deafening roars and derisive chants and people insisting on doing the wave? Cap tips and curtain calls? Will there be those singular, unscripted moments when a building full of strangers, loosely knotted by rooting interest and colorful garb and jammed together between the cup holders, elbows to elbows, knees to backs, rise as one?Maybe. Maybe not like before. Maybe not again.There was a November game between two college football powers that encapsulated 2020 better than any other sports event. All season, including that weekend, games had been wiped out by coronavirus outbreaks and single positive tests. But not this one.Matt Cashore/USA Today Sports, via ReutersClemson played at Notre Dame. The Heisman Trophy favorite had tested positive for the coronavirus but still made the trip and stood on the sideline in a mask.About 11,000 fans were in the stands, because that somehow was deemed the right balance between safety and structure. The game went to double overtime. The home team won. And when it did, the fans rushed the field.It was familiar. It was galling.It was 2020.There’s always next year. That is what they say in sports when a team has run out of chances. It is part of the ritual, too, the grasp for hope that better days are ahead.There’s always next year. We probably said that last year, too, back when we took all this — the games, sure, but life itself — for granted.There’s always next year.Except this time, we know: Nothing is certain.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Opting Out of the N.F.L. Brings No Regret for This Jets Lineman

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus DealThe Latest Vaccine InformationF.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOpting Out of the N.F.L. Brings No Regret for This Jets LinemanLeo Koloamatangi says he misses his team, even in a dreadful season, and that he has wondered what he might have accomplished this year. But he finds comfort in knowing his family is at a lower risk.Leo Koloamatangi at his dining room table in Fontana, Calif., this summer.Credit…Christian Monterrosa for The New York TimesDec. 27, 2020, 1:00 a.m. ETThe New York Times Sports department is revisiting the subjects of some compelling articles from the last year or so. Here is our August report on N.F.L. players who opted out of the league during the coronavirus pandemic.Like so many people during these turbulent times, Leo Koloamatangi finds comfort in his routines. And so every Sunday and Monday — and in this upended N.F.L. season, most Thursdays, plus the odd Tuesday and Wednesday — he has watched other people do what he loves most.From his Southern California home, Koloamatangi, 26, cheers for his friends around the league, and for his team, the Jets, longing to be on the sideline with the men he calls his brothers. He had a choice. He could have joined them, practiced with them, prepared with them, muddled through 13 losses with them before they got their first win.But not this season.Not during a pandemic that had already killed two close relatives when he made his decision, and not when he had a young daughter, Aurora, and when his wife, Athena, was in the early stages of pregnancy. Along with 67 other players, Koloamatangi, an offensive lineman, opted out before the N.F.L. season, sacrificing career development and potential glory for his family’s well-being.When Koloamatangi spoke with The Times in August, he called that decision the hardest of his life. In early December, he called this year his hardest as a football player. He also said he had no regrets.“I have this overwhelming sense of accountability, to my family and myself personally,” Koloamatangi said. “I’m very grateful that I can play in the N.F.L. and compete at the highest level, and there’s nothing more that I’d want to do than satisfy my job. But because of what I must protect and who I have to look over and look after, my position was to sit out and watch the season play out.”Amid growing restrictions in California, he has hunkered down. Koloamatangi wishes he could have had a large Polynesian party for Aurora’s first birthday last month, and he wonders what might have happened if he had not opted out.Over three seasons, he had pinballed between the active rosters of the Detroit Lions and the Jets, never appearing in a regular-season game. He might have gotten his chance this season, as practice squads expanded to 16 players from 12 to account for Covid-related roster shortfalls.That is how Kendall Hinton, a practice-squad wide receiver for the Denver Broncos, got his first official N.F.L. snaps, stepping in to play quarterback in a game against the Saints after all four of the regular QBs were exposed to the coronavirus.“There are lot of guys out there who have opportunities in front of them because of Covid,” Koloamatangi said. “Times like this, it’s great for players like that. And quite honestly, players like me.”Koloamatangi in August feeding his daughter, Aurora, who was then 9 months old. Credit…Christian Monterrosa for The New York TimesAs transmission rates surge across the country, the number of positive cases in the N.F.L. has also swelled, but the season has continued, often in uncomfortable ways. Outbreaks rampaged through the Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens, sickening not only players and staff members but also family members. And although most players who were infected have returned, at least two have endured serious complications — Buffalo tight end Tommy Sweeney, who has the heart condition myocarditis, and Jacksonville running back Ryquell Armstead, who was reportedly hospitalized twice.League officials have maintained that no evidence exists of players transmitting the virus on the field. But when Koloamatangi opted out, he fully expected to contract the virus, in part because his position requires nearly constant close contact in games and at practices.“If somebody told me, ‘Covid’s going to have a huge impact on our schedule and our practicing and how we meet, but you and your family wouldn’t contract the virus,’ I think I would have went,” Koloamatangi said. “But because no one really had an answer, we didn’t know what to anticipate. There was no way for me to guarantee personal protection over my family.”As per an agreement between the league and its players’ union, Koloamatangi received a $150,000 advance on next year’s salary — not a small sum of money, but a fraction of the $750,000 he would have made.His family does not have an extravagant lifestyle — “we really only splurge on our kids,” he said — and has been able to manage the financial burden well enough. He and Athena give each other time to themselves every day, and Koloamatangi often spends his in their garage. There, he recently installed a deluxe gym, replete with weight machines, a full power rack and a force plate, and he is confident that, after the longest off-season of his career, he will return a superior athlete. That soothes him.He is not naïve enough to think that his presence on the Jets would have prevented them from hurtling toward one of the worst seasons in franchise history. But, he said, he feels as responsible for their swoon as anyone on the roster.So every week, when Koloamatangi watches the Jets play, he thinks about them and their families. He thinks about the pain they must be experiencing this season, and he thinks about how next season he hopes to see them again. Afterward, he sits with Athena and tells her how grateful he is for all their time together.“I’m just looking at her like, ‘I wish I could be there, I need to be there,’” Koloamatangi said. “It’s something that I’m definitely excited to rekindle once I get back. But it’s hard, you know?”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Kevin Greene, Master of Sacking the Quarterback, Dies at 58

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyKevin Greene, Master of Sacking the Quarterback, Dies at 58A charismatic player with seemingly inexhaustible energy, he recorded the third-most sacks in N.F.L. history and the most by a linebacker.The linebacker Kevin Greene in 1994, the year he led the N.F.L. in sacks for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He said that sacking a quarterback brought him relief.Credit…George Gojkovich/Getty ImagesDec. 22, 2020Kevin Greene, a relentless linebacker who attacked quarterbacks like prey on his way to recording the third-most sacks in National Football League history, died on Monday at his home in Destin, Fla. He was 58.The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced his death but did not provide a cause.Over 15 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams, Pittsburgh Steelers, Carolina Panthers and San Francisco 49ers, Greene used his speed and strength, mostly from the outside linebacker position, to hunt quarterbacks. His 160 regular-season sacks rank third behind the totals of the defensive ends Bruce Smith (200) and Reggie White (198).“I believed in my heart that I was unblockable,” Greene said in 2016 during his Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement in Canton, Ohio.Greene was a brash and charismatic performer on the field, possessed of long blond hair that flowed from beneath his helmet and seemingly inexhaustible energy.“He was an awesome force on the field and as a person,” Bill Cowher, the former Steelers coach, said in an interview. “When you coached him, he gave you everything he had. He was a man of tremendous energy, passion and respect.”Greene registered 16.5 sacks in both 1988 and 1989, then 13 more in 1990, while playing for the Rams. But he did not lead the league until he had 14 in 1994, with the Steelers, and 14.5 in 1996, with the Panthers. In 1998, his penultimate season, he had 15 sacksGreene said that sacking a quarterback brought him relief.“My teammates depended on me to do that,” he said in an undated interview on Steelers.com. “I contributed. I didn’t want to let my teammates down. I did something to stop that drive. Either I hit the quarterback at the right time and caused a fumble we recovered, or we got an interception.”He added: “A sack was different than making a tackle for a loss, or a tackle at the line of scrimmage. It was just me making a contribution and not letting my brothers down.”Greene (91) in action for the Los Angeles Rams in 1989. In his 15-year career he played for the Rams, Steelers, Carolina Panthers and San Francisco 49ers.Credit…Allen Dean Steele/Allsport, via Getty ImagesKevin Darwin Greene was born on July 31, 1962, in Schenectady, N.Y., to Patricia and Therman Greene. His father served in the Army for 30 years and retired as a colonel.When he lived on the Army base in Mannheim, West Germany, where his father was stationed, “football began to burn inside of me,” he said in his Hall of Fame speech. He played against other military youngsters — “the best that the athletic youth association had to offer.”His family returned to the United States in time for him to attend high school in Granite City, Ill., where he played football and basketball and was a high jumper on the track team.He entered Auburn University in 1980, but failed to make the football team as a punter. He played intramural football before joining the varsity in 1984 as a walk-on, playing defensive end.“He had the physical tools and ability, and he came with a vengeance,” the longtime Auburn coach Pat Dye said in a 2016 NFL Films documentary about Greene. “But the thing that set him apart is what he had inside of him. He played the game with every molecule in his body.”Greene was drafted by the Rams in the fifth round of the 1985 N.F.L. draft. He played defensive end at first before moving to outside linebacker, where he thrived in the 3-4 defensive scheme — three linemen and four linebackers — which suited him best. But he left for Pittsburgh as a free agent in 1993 after the Rams shifted to a 4-3 defense.“If you were going to play against Kevin, it was going to be a full day’s work,” Dom Capers, who coached Greene in a 3-4 formation as the defensive coordinator of the Steelers and the head coach of the Panthers, said in an interview. “He’d get sacks late in a down by outworking the other guy. He had that extra something, that ‘it,’ you were looking for.”Late in his football career, Greene wrestled occasionally for the World Championship Wrestling circuit, most notably teaming with Roddy Piper and Ric Flair to win a match at the Slamboree in 1997.After retiring from football in 1999, he pursued some business ventures and N.F.L. coaching internships. In 2009, when Capers was the defensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers, he brought Greene along as his outside linebackers coach.“There’s no better guy to teach young guys,” Capers said, “and Clay Matthews made the Pro Bowl four out of the five years Kevin coached him. Kevin lit a fire under Clay.”Greene left the Packers in 2013 to coach his son, Gavin, in high school football. In 2017 and 2018, he coached the Jets’ outside linebackers.In addition to his son, Greene’s survivors include his wife, Tara, and his daughter, Gabrielle.While coaching the Packers’ outside linebackers, Greene reflected on the differences between sacking quarterbacks and teaching others to pursue them.“It’s hard to replace sacking Joe Montana and the next week going to Denver and knocking around John Elway and Dan Marino the following week,” he was quoted as saying in Madison.com, the website of the Wisconsin State Journal. As a player, he said, “you’re in the flame and you get burned and you feel that.” As a coach, “you’re standing next to the fire and you feel its warmth. It feels good.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More