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      In N.F.L. Free Agency, Your Team Either Goes Broke or Stinks

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn FootballIn N.F.L. Free Agency, Your Team Either Goes Broke or StinksG.M.s will have to work extra hard to add talent in a salary cap-crunched 2021. It’s still a bad way for most teams to improve.The Dallas Cowboys appeared to have a salary cap surplus until the moment quarterback Dak Prescott’s new $160 million contract was announced Monday. Credit…Ron Jenkins/Associated PressMarch 10, 2021, 5:28 p.m. ETWelcome to the start of N.F.L. free agency, one of the most exciting events of the league’s off-season.Many teams are either flat broke (read: no cap space) or so far from contention that splurging on big-name talent is more likely to hurt than help them. Several of the most coveted free agents were pulled from the market at the last minute. The reports of massive dollar figures doled out in new contracts over the next few weeks will mostly be accounting metafiction, not real money. And the best transactions will inevitably be the ones teams avoid making.Are you excited yet?Free agency officially begins on March 17, but thanks to a “legal tampering period” that begins two days before then, many of the splashiest transactions are announced several days early, making free agency an event that essentially ends before it begins. The N.F.L. instituted the window back in 2016, permitting teams to open talks with other teams’ soon-to-be-free agents a few days early. General managers and agents no longer wink and pretend that they negotiated eight-figure, multiyear contracts seconds after the start of the new league year. Now, they wink and pretend that they negotiated those contracts seconds after the start of the tampering period.This year’s overspending binge promises to be more chaotic than usual due to a rare dip in the N.F.L.’s 2021 salary cap. Each year’s cap is directly tied to the previous year’s league revenues, which partially include gate receipts that of course declined precipitously in 2020 because of pandemic restrictions. The salary cap dipped from $198.2 million in 2020 to anticipated $182.5 million this year. It would have fallen further if the league and the N.F.L. Players Association had not negotiated a sort of relief bill to spread 2020’s losses over multiple years; otherwise, some teams would have been forced to field teams consisting of guaranteed-salary quarterbacks surrounded by groundskeepers and equipment managers.This year’s cap crunch arrived just as the balloon payments came due for many teams that overspent in pursuit of past Super Bowls, forcing those teams to both cut veterans and resort to imaginative bookkeeping to achieve cap compliance. For example, the New Orleans Saints restructured Drew Brees’s contract in early February, even though Brees is expected to retire. The Pittsburgh Steelers restructured Ben Roethlisberger’s contract last week to make ends meet, even though Roethlisberger probably should retire. The Philadelphia Eagles incurred a $33 million cap hit when they traded quarterback Carson Wentz to the Indianapolis Colts in February. To get back under the cap, the team is attempting to perform the budget equivalent of ripping the copper wiring out the walls to sell for gas money.All the accounting sorcery in the multiverse won’t free enough cap space to make the Eagles, Steelers or Saints serious participants in free agency. Meanwhile, the ever-woeful Jacksonville Jaguars (an estimated $72 million under the cap, as of this writing) and the Jets ($67 million) have the most money to spend this year, as they do every few years, which neatly illustrates the folly of trying to build a quality football team via free agency.Some legitimate contenders appear to have money to spend, but again: it’s inadvisable to believe any of the numbers associated with N.F.L. free agency. The defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers entered the week with about $12 million in cap space, and are reportedly planning to clear more by extending Tom Brady’s contract until he’s nearly eligible to join the AARP. The Buccaneers then re-signed linebacker Lavonte David and applied the franchise tag to receiver Chris Godwin, temporarily placing them back in the red before they could address other in-house free agents like the pass rusher Shaquil Barrett or tight end Rob Gronkowski.Tampa Bay’s Shaquil Barrett, right, headlines a deep pool of pass rushing free agents. The Buccaneers entered the week with about $12 million in cap space on their ledger, and are reportedly planning to clear more by extending Tom Brady’s contract Credit…Jason Behnken/Associated PressThe Dallas Cowboys also appeared to have a cap surplus until the moment quarterback Dak Prescott’s new contract was announced Monday. Often, a team’s full bank account is just a sign that the bills haven’t been paid yet.Godwin and Chicago Bears receiver Allen Robinson were among the best players available before each received the dreaded franchise tag, a speed bump on the free market that allows teams to retain the rights to some would-be free agents for one year at a high-but-tightly-regulated salary. For Godwin, the franchise tag at least guarantees him a chance to catch passes from Brady and could perhaps mean a return to the Super Bowl. Robinson will be stuck celebrating the Bears’ 71st consecutive season of trying to replace Sid Luckman at quarterback.Even without Robinson and Godwin, there’s a free-agent talent glut at receiver, including up-and-comers Kenny Golladay, Curtis Samuel and JuJu Smith-Schuster; veterans like Larry Fitzgerald, T.Y. Hilton and A.J. Green, and many others. Barrett headlines a deep pool of pass rushers along with Melvin Ingram, Bud Dupree, and Justin Houston. There are more quality players at these positions than solvent potential employers, and the free-agent ranks are growing because teams are still shedding salaries. For example, the Seattle Seahawks released pass rusher Carlos Dunlap on Monday, adding another job applicant to an already crowded field.Supply and demand dictates that shrewd organizations will be able to sign quality players at deep discounts once the initial spending spree for big names like Barrett subsides. That is how the New England Patriots successfully operated from the dawn of the 21st century through last year’s signing of quarterback Cam Newton. The Jets are bound to figure out the secret one of these decades.The dollar values of the contracts that will be announced next week are widely known to be the most imaginary numbers in all of free agency. N.F.L. contracts are typically bloated with non-guaranteed back-end money that provides bragging rights for players and agents and proration lodestones for cap alchemists. Linebacker Kyle Van Noy signed a reported four-year, $51 million contract with the Miami Dolphins last March. The team released him last week after one year, paying him about $15.5 million. Van Noy is now yet another veteran pass rusher seeking work.As Brady and the Buccaneers illustrated last season, a judicious big-name signing or two can truly help a team that’s already stacked. Still, the best approach to free agency is typically to avoid it. In addition to bargain hunting for leftovers, successful franchises sign core players to extensions before they reach the market, then let veterans who have peaked sign elsewhere in exchange for the compensatory draft picks the N.F.L. doles out in its quest for perfect competitive balance.Organizations that overspend during this time of year end up trapped in a binge-and-purge cycle of cutting past losses to make room for their next round of mistakes. For fans of teams like the Jets and Jaguars, who have endured years of misplaced spring hope, a quiet free agency period would be a truly exciting free agency period.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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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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      Why Patrick Mahomes Lost Last Night

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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

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      Britt Reid, Son of Chiefs Coach, Drank Alcohol Ahead of Car Crash

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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 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

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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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      Buccaneers Beat the Chiefs and Tom Brady Is a Champion Again

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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 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

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      Super Bowl: What We Learned

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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 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

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      A Key to Brady’s Super Bowl Success? Gronkowski of Course

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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 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