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Why Patrick Mahomes Lost Last NightDoug Mills/The New York TimesPatrick Mahomes didn’t look anything like himself during the Super Bowl, largely because Tampa Bay’s pass rush had him on the run all game — setting a fairly incredible record in the process.Here’s how the Buccaneers disrupted the Chiefs’ unflappable quarterback → More
#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 storyFrom a World Away, One Ageless Wonder Marvels at Another“Amazing!” Serena Williams said of Tom Brady’s seventh Super Bowl win. Of course, he’s never won a title while pregnant.Serena Williams dropped only two games in her first-round win at the Australian Open.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 8, 2021Updated 3:57 p.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — As fans fished for autographs by tying cords around oversize tennis balls and dangling them over the rail for Serena Williams, her mind drifted to the other side of the world.“How amazing!” Williams muttered, as much to herself as anyone else, while she scribbled her signature after her 6-1, 6-1 first-round victory against Laura Siegemund at the Australian Open on Monday. “Can you imagine winning the Super Bowl at 43?”In the lead-up to this year’s Open, Williams, 39, had repeatedly expressed her admiration for Tom Brady, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback who delivered his seventh Super Bowl title on Sunday night. His determination and excellence have inspired her “since when he beat Kurt Warner,” she said, referring to the New England Patriots’ victory over the St. Louis Rams in the Super Bowl in February 2002.Brady’s only misstep, Williams joked last week, was his choice of teams last year as a free agent. “I mean, he just should have come to the Dolphins, really,” said Williams, who owns a minority stake in Miami’s N.F.L. franchise along with her sister Venus.Williams sees in Brady a kindred spirit, someone whose appetite for competition and desire to succeed have not receded over time. “I look at Tom Brady, it’s so inspiring,” she said.With his latest title, his first outside New England, Brady brought to a boil the long-simmering debate about sports’ greatest athlete. That discussion must include Williams, a 23-time major winner whose next Grand Slam singles title will tie Margaret Court’s career record. And Williams may be the only member of the greatest-ever debate to have won one of her titles while pregnant. She delivered her daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian, via an emergency C-section on Sept. 1, 2017, nearly seven months after she won the Australian Open. She said they haven’t spent a day apart since.“Is that healthy?” Williams said Monday. She laughed. “Not at all. Not even close. But every single day I just want to be around her.”Williams’s choice to be a doting parent, come hell or hard quarantine, may be where her path most clearly diverges from Brady’s. Two weeks before the Super Bowl, Brady was reportedly alone in his Tampa mansion, having sent away his wife and three children so he could give his undivided attention to football for the 12 days leading to the big game.Two weeks before the Australian Open, Williams was finishing a mandatory 14-day self-isolation, which required her to hole up in a hotel for 19 hours a day with her husband, the tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, and their high-spirited daughter.Williams’s daughter, Olympia, with her father, Alexis Ohanian, at an exhibition match last week in Adelaide.Credit…Mark Brake/Getty ImagesWilliams acknowledged that Brady’s preparation made more sense, but said, “I wasn’t strong enough to do the banishment.”She added: “I would not have been able to function without my 3-year-old around. Not even close. I think I would be in a depression.”Elite athletes typically don’t do much in their downtime on the days or weeks in which they are competing, preserving their energy for the bursts of effort their sports demand. For Williams, the accelerating and downshifting processes are compressed. She’s a drag racer, going in a flash from mama to megastar.One of her matches at a tuneup event last week at Melbourne Park ended just after 8 p.m., leaving Williams caught in parenting territory similar to the terra incognita between the service line and baseline. Olympia’s bedtime was 8:30. Should she rush back to tuck in her baby or go through her usual postmatch paces and make peace with not seeing her daughter until the morning?Her instinct was to rush home. “But I’m a little torn,” Williams said in her postmatch news conference that day. “I’m like, maybe I should just let her go to bed so she doesn’t get too moody.”Williams added: “She’s too hyper. She needs her rest. She’s a busy kid. She has a fully booked schedule.”Like mother, like daughter. “She really is,” Williams said with a reflective sigh.Before another of Williams’s matches last week, Ohanian walked to his seat. In his arms he carried a squirming Olympia, who pointed to Williams on the court and said, “Hey, that’s my mama!”Williams said her daughter knows that the court is her office. But does she assume every working woman plays tennis? Williams isn’t sure. Sometimes when Olympia attends matches or practice sessions, she’ll freak out Williams by mimicking everyone else and calling her Serena.Williams said: “I’m like: ‘You can’t say Serena. You have to call me Mama.’”Williams’s second-round opponent will be a 24-year-old Serb, Nina Stojanovic, who was younger than Olympia when Serena won the first of her 73 WTA Tour titles. Stojanovic would do well to tune out the player introductions Wednesday since it requires a sizable chunk of the six-minute warm-up period to recite Williams’s achievements.“When the announcer said on the court, ‘23 Grand Slam titles, seven Australian Opens,’ he was like, ‘14 doubles titles,’ then he starts talking about mixed doubles, I’m like jeez,” Williams said last week.But none of what Williams has done matters as much to her as what is left to accomplish. When Brady said before the Super Bowl that his favorite championship is his next one, it resonated with Williams. “That would absolutely be my answer, for sure,” she said.Why?“Because otherwise you’re living off of what you already did,” she said.That mind-set is why Williams can conduct a tour of the trophy room in her house in Miami, as she recently did for Architectural Digest, and struggle to identify which trophies are from which tournament.It was why she is unbothered that one of her seven Wimbledon trophies disappeared after a party she threw with Venus several years ago. Or maybe it was one of Venus’s five that vanished. “Was that my Wimbledon trophy or was that her Wimbledon trophy?” Williams said. “The argument is still going on.”She added wryly, “Conversations in the Williams home.”Since her daughter’s birth, Williams has appeared in four Grand Slam finals but has yet to win one. With her next Grand Slam title, she can show everybody, as Brady did Sunday in Tampa, that she still has the power to amaze.“You can’t say it was the system he was at formerly,” Williams said, referring to Brady’s six Super Bowl titles under Coach Bill Belichick in New England. But she knows better. “It’s definitely Tom Brady.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
#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 storyBritt Reid, Son of Chiefs Coach, Drank Alcohol Ahead of Car CrashReid told the police he had “two or three drinks” before slamming into a car that carried two small children last week. One is hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.Britt Reid did not travel with the Kansas City Chiefs to Tampa, Fla., for the Super Bowl on Sunday.Credit…Mark Brown/Getty ImagesKevin Draper and Feb. 8, 2021Updated 3:41 p.m. ETBritt Reid, the outside linebackers coach for the Kansas City Chiefs and a son of the head coach, Andy Reid, told police officers he had “two or three drinks” before he was involved in an automobile crash Thursday night that left a child with life-threatening injuries, according to a search warrant filed in Jackson County, Mo., circuit court.The crash occurred just days before the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., on Sunday, when the Chiefs, the reigning N.F.L. champions, played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Chiefs flew to Tampa on Saturday, but Britt Reid, 35, did not make the trip.According to the search warrant, an officer could smell “a moderate odor of alcoholic beverages” on Reid after the crash. The search warrant said the police sought to draw Reid’s blood and test it for alcohol and other controlled substances.On Friday, in a statement, the team confirmed that Reid had been involved in a crash, but provided no details. “We are in the process of gathering information, and we will have no further comment at this time,” the statement said.In response to an inquiry about a possible car crash involving Britt Reid, a spokesman for the police department in Kansas City, Mo., said that a crash had occurred on Interstate 435, not far from the Chiefs’ training facility.The spokesman would not provide more details or identify anyone who was involved in the crash, citing a Missouri law that prohibits the police from releasing the names of people who have not been charged with a crime. But the details in the police incident report, such as the make and model of the cars involved and the description of what happened, matched the search warrant, which does name Reid.According to the police, a vehicle ran out of gas on a freeway entrance ramp less than a mile from Arrowhead Stadium. The driver stopped with his flashers on and called his cousins for help. When they arrived, the cousins parked in front of the disabled car and left their lights on, as the battery was dying in the disabled car.Reid entered the on-ramp driving a Ram pickup truck and hit the left front of the stranded car, according to the police incident report. The driver was sitting in the car and was not injured.Reid’s pickup then slammed into the rear of the cousins’ car. The driver and an adult in the front passenger seat were not injured. But a 4-year-old and a 5-year-old sitting in the back were both injured and taken to the hospital, the 5-year-old with life-threatening injuries.The 5-year-old was still in critical condition on Monday morning with a brain injury, according to a police statement.After the Super Bowl, which the Chiefs lost, 31-9, Andy Reid addressed his son’s car crash for the first time.“My heart goes out to all those that were involved in the accident, in particular the family with the little girl who’s fighting for her life,” Andy Reid said, adding that his “heart bleeds.”Britt Reid had non-life-threatening injuries, the police said, but complained of stomach pain and was also taken to a hospital after the crash.“Most serious-injury/fatality crashes take weeks to investigate, as do criminal investigations,” the Kansas City Police Department said in a statement released Monday, explaining why no arrests have been made and the names of those involved in the crash have not been released. “This is no different.”Reid has been a Chiefs coach since his father was hired as head coach eight years ago, and has spent the last two seasons as the outside linebackers coach. Before joining the Chiefs’ coaching staff, he spent three seasons at Temple University as a graduate assistant working with the offense.He was also an intern for his father with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2009.Britt Reid has been in legal trouble previously. In 2007, Reid, then 22, pleaded guilty to gun and drug charges stemming from a road rage dispute. He brandished a handgun at another driver in suburban Philadelphia on the same day his brother Garrett was arrested after a drug-related traffic crash. Andy Reid took a five-week leave of absence from the Eagles after his sons were arrested.Britt Reid also pleaded guilty to simple assault, possession of an instrument of crime and drug possession in the case. While out on bail before the case was decided, he was arrested after driving into a shopping cart in a parking lot and eventually pleaded guilty to driving under the influence.In 2012, Garrett Reid was found dead of an accidental overdose in his dormitory room at the Eagles’ training site in Bethlehem, Pa. He was 29.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
#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
#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
#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 storyHow Tom Brady and Tampa Bay Buccaneers Beat the Chiefs to Win the Super BowlBuccaneers Beat the Chiefs and Tom Brady Is a Champion AgainFeb. 7, 2021, 10:12 p.m. ETFeb. 7, 2021, 10:12 p.m. ETA nearly flawless Tom Brady claimed his record seventh Super Bowl title on Sunday, winning a duel with his young rival Patrick Mahomes and burnishing his legacy as the greatest quarterback in N.F.L. history by leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a 31-9 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.Brady’s Super Bowl title — coming at age 43 and in his first season with the Buccaneers — joins the six he won as a member of the New England Patriots (2002, 2003, 2005, 2015, 2017, 2018). He now has one more win than both the Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers, the two most decorated franchises in N.F.L. history.Congratulations to the greatest of all time.— New England Patriots (@Patriots) February 8, 2021
He finished 21 of 29 for 209 yards and three touchdowns, including two to his former Patriots teammate Rob Gronkowski, who joined him in Tampa this season. His three touchdown passes gave him 21 in his Super Bowl career, one more than the combined total of the two quarterbacks behind him, Joe Montana (11) and Terry Bradshaw (9).Tampa Bay, the first team to play a Super Bowl on its home field, became the first one to win on there, too. It is the Buccaneers’ second championship; the team won its first in 2002.“I think we knew this was going to happen, didn’t we?” he asked his teammates from the stage after being handed the Vince Lombardi Trophy.Mahomes, 25, a former league most valuable player and a Super Bowl champion last season, finished 26 of 49 for 270 yards, but he was intercepted twice and harried throughout the second half.Brady, in 10 previous trips to the N.F.L.’s championship game, had never enjoyed an easy win in one until Sunday. All but one of his six previous wins saw both teams within one score of each other at the end.The closest Brady ever came to a Super Bowl “blowout” was a 13-3 win by the Patriots over the Los Angeles Rams two years ago. And the last 3 points of that game came in the final minute and 16 seconds.The second-largest margin of victory in a Brady win was a 6-point victory in overtime of Super Bowl LI in February 2017, when James White scored a touchdown on a toss play to give New England the championship.With his three children standing by his side, Brady declined to compare this year’s Buccaneers to his Patriots teams but said the team came together at the right time and indicated they were loaded with confidence heading into the game.“Every year is amazing,” he said, “and this team is world champions forever, you can’t take it away from us.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
#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 storyWhat We Learned From Tampa Bay’s Super Bowl VictoryWith help from his team’s fearsome pass rush, Tom Brady reminded Patrick Mahomes that he could still control the N.F.L.’s biggest stage.At 43, Tom Brady of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won his seventh Super Bowl and his fifth Super Bowl Most Valuable Player Award.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesPublished More
#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 Key to Brady’s Super Bowl Success? Gronkowski of CourseThe duo set a record for postseason touchdowns, as the tight end who came out of retirement to join Tom Brady in Tampa helped defeat the Kansas City Chiefs.Rob Gronkowski caught two touchdown passes in the first half of Tampa Bay’s 31-9 win over Kansas City.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesPublished More
