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      Patriots, 49ers Among N.F.L. Free Agency’s Biggest Spenders

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      The 2021 N.F.L. salary cap has crunched some teams looking to shore up their rosters. Others have opened up their wallets.In an off-season characterized by a $182.5 million salary cap, down 8 percent from 2020, N.F.L. general managers are maneuvering the landscape carefully. With the official start of free agency underway, executives are looking at players to add — or keep — on their rosters, but only at the right price.Of course, some teams are already spending more aggressively than others, mostly on big contracts for proven defensive talent and one-year deals for a handful of high-profile names. In the coming days, teams with leftover cap room are expected to fill in the gaps with a loaded pool of free agent receivers who have taken a back seat with the crunched cap limit.So far, these are the teams that have set the market in free agency, investing millions of dollars in free agency for a better chance of hoisting the Lombardi Trophy next February (or throwing it to a teammate on another boat during the celebratory parade).New England PatriotsAfter missing the playoffs and finishing 7-9 in 2020, general manager/coach Bill Belichick strengthened his team by spending more than $268 million in contracts, the biggest free agent spree in the league so far, according to Spotrac. New England doled a sizable portion of that sum to the offense, which struggled in its first season without quarterback Tom Brady, who won his seventh Super Bowl after leaving for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers a year ago in free agency.Belichick went all in on tight ends, signing Jonnu Smith to a four-year, $50 million contract and Hunter Henry to a three-year, $37.5 million deal. By prying Smith away from the Tennessee Titans and Henry away from the Los Angeles Chargers, the Patriots are poised to use two-tight end formations, as they did from 2010-12 with Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez. The offense ranked in the top three in scoring each of those seasons. Smith caught 41 passes for 448 yard and eight touchdowns last season and Henry was the Chargers’ second-leading receiver with 60 catches for 613 yards and four touchdowns.While the Patriots re-signed quarterback Cam Newton to another one-year deal, it is still possible that New England adds another quarterback this off-season. Whoever’s under center should have at least two dependable targets.San Francisco 49ersOffensive tackle Trent Williams was selected to the Pro Bowl after the 2020 season, his first with the San Francisco 49ers.Rick Scuteri/Associated PressDecimated by injuries last season, the 49ers inked two major additions to its offensive front in an effort to quickly rebound as an N.F.C. contender.The team locked in eight-time Pro Bowl selection Trent Williams to a six-year, $138 million contract, making him the highest-paid offensive lineman in N.F.L. history. Williams had been traded to San Francisco last year after he held out the 2019 season over a claim that Washington Football Team doctors mishandled treating a cancerous tumor on his head. He joins center Alex Mack, a six-time Pro Bowler who the 49ers signed to a three-year, $14.85 million deal.A good chunk of the $164.9 million the 49ers spent in free agency went to adding two of the best blockers in football to protect quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo against the N.F.C. West’s aggressive pass rushers, Rams Aaron Donald and Arizona Cardinals’ J.J. Watt. An upright quarterback tends to have a positive effect on a team’s offense.Jacksonville JaguarsBy trading expensive players such as Jalen Ramey and Yannick Ngakoue in recent seasons, the Jacksonville Jaguars entered free agency with a bevy of available cap space. They have offered $144 million in total value for contracts. They focused primarily on defense, after finishing 1-15 with the league’s second-worst defense, signing cornerback Shaquill Griffin to a three-year, $40-millon contract, safety Rayshawn Jenkins to a four-year, $35-million deal and defensive end Roy Robertson-Harris to three years and $23.4 million.Offensively, the Jaguars’ rebuild starts with the draft, where the team will mostly likely use the No. 1 overall pick to select Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence. First-time N.F.L. head coach Urban Meyer, who team owner Shahid Khan said will have roster control, is using free agency to plug holes before the new face of the franchise arrives. But Meyer has already voiced his displeasure with some aspects of running an N.F.L. team, calling the league’s legal tampering period “awful.”Cincinnati BengalsA strong free agency market for defensive talent led the woeful Bengals (4-11 in the 2020 season) to prioritize that side of the ball with $122.75 million in free agent contracts. The team also signed Vikings tackle Riley Reiff to a one year, $7.5-million deal, the first step in fixing a weak offensive line charged with protecting Joe Burrow, who tied for ninth-most sacked quarterback in the league last season.Tennessee TitansDerrick Henry’s legs can only carry the Titans so far. Despite a season where the running back again led the league in rushing yards, Tennessee was bounced from the playoffs in the wild-card round. This off-season, general manager Jon Robinson bolstered the pass rush by adding former Steelers outside linebacker Bud Dupree on a five-year, $82.5-million contract. Dupree had eight sacks for the Steelers in the 2020 season. The Titans are paying him to help contain opposing quarterbacks with the potential to burn them on the ground as the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson did in key moments of that playoff loss to Baltimore.JetsFirst-year head coach Robert Saleh’s defensive background showed in free agency when the Jets signed defensive end Carl Lawson to a three-year, $45-million deal. It’s the largest the Jets finalized in free agency thus far, contributing to the $110.25 million in total contracts.Pairing Lawson, whose speed helped him to 5.5 sacks last season with the Bengals, on the edge should complement the power of third-year defensive lineman Quinnen Williams. The Jets hold the No. 2 overall pick in the draft, and are a rumored landing spot for Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson. Their roster could still see major additions.Tampa Bay BuccaneersShaquil Barrett, right, is a critical part of the Buccaneers’ pass rush and was a key contributor to Tampa Bay’s Super Bowl run. Ashley Landis/Associated PressThe 2020 Super Bowl champions faced serious questions on if they could keep the core group of key contributors — linebacker Shaquil Barrett, receiver Chris Godwin, and tight end Rob Gronkowski and others needed new contracts — with little available cap space entering free agency.With some slick accounting, Tampa Bay looks like it will keep most of the band together.General manager Jason Licht cleared cap space by placing the franchise tag on Godwin and Tom Brady contributed too, by reworking his contract and signing a four-year extension to lessen the team’s cap hit.The Buccaneers have spent $93 million so far in free agency, highlighted by a four-year, $68-million contact for Barrett, who shined at the end of the playoffs as part of the team’s phenomenal pass rush. Barrett sacked Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers three times in the N.F.C. championship game and hounded Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl.Still finessing the available cap space, the Buccaneers also retained tight end Rob Gronkowski on a one-year deal reportedly worth up to $10 million and can now turn their attention to receiver Antonio Brown, running back Leonard Fournette and defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh in the hope of making another championship run.Los Angeles ChargersRookie quarterback Justin Herbert came into the league without a traditional training camp, was thrust into the starting spot after a freak injury to the starter, and still completed a record-breaking rookie year.He did all that with a rotating cast of offensive lineman, who the Chargers have looked to upgrade in free agency by signing former Packers All-Pro center Corey Linsley to a five-year, $62.5-million deal and adding Pittsburgh Steelers tackle Matt Feiler on a three-year, $21-million deal.Under new head coach Brandon Staley, the Chargers have spent $89.5 million so far in free agency to make Herbert’s second N.F.L. season a bit more stable.Washington Football TeamThe most impactful of Washington’s signings was inking journeyman quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick to a one-year, $10-million contract to challenge Taylor Heinicke (who got a two-year, $4.75-million deal) at the position. It will be Fitzpatrick’s ninth team in his 17-year career.Fitzpatrick, who initially started last season for the Miami Dolphins last season before coach Brian Flores inserted rookie Tua Tagovailoa, should allow Washington to compete for a playoff berth in the wide-open N.F.C. East. He also buys the team time to find a long-term quarterback solution if Heinicke isn’t it.Kansas City ChiefsMahomes absorbed three sacks and nine hits in the Super Bowl, largely because starting tackles Eric Fisher and Mitchell Schwartz were out with injuries.The team released both long-tenured tackles and added Patriots lineman Joe Thuney on a five-year, $80-million contract. Kansas City re-signed tackle Mike Remmers to a one-year deal reportedly worth up to $7 million. More

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      Washington Football Team Will Replace Cheerleaders With a Coed Dance Team

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWashington Football Team Will Replace Cheerleaders With a Coed Dance TeamThe change came after many accusations of sexual harassment from the women on the cheerleading squad.The Washington Football Team’s cheerleaders during a 2019 game.Credit…Mark Tenally/Associated PressKen Belson and March 3, 2021Updated 9:29 p.m. ETThe Washington Football Team has scrapped its cheerleading program after many accusations of sexual harassment from the women on the squad, which will be replaced with a coed dance team next season.The cheerleading group, founded in 1962 as the Redskinettes, called itself the First Ladies of Football and was the longest-running cheerleading team in the National Football League.Petra Pope, a former manager of the N.B.A.’s Laker Girls dance team, was hired this week to overhaul the Washington team’s game day entertainment. In an interview on Wednesday, Pope said she wanted to create a more diverse and athletic team and move away from traditional all-female cheerleaders wearing short skirts and waving pompoms.“This will be an all-inclusive, diverse, super athletic team,” Pope said. “We’re looking at everything. These dancers will be highly respected for their skill set.”Some other N.F.L. teams — such as the Los Angeles Rams, the Seattle Seahawks and the New Orleans Saints — already have dance squads that include men.The former cheerleaders can try out for the new dance squad, which will most likely be made up of 36 men and women, Pope said, adding that she would not know how many men would join the team until auditions were completed in the coming weeks.The shift is part of a broad rebranding of the franchise that includes changes to the team’s nickname and logo, the personnel in the front office and the game day entertainment. In July, the team dropped its longtime name and logo after complaints from Native American groups and others who considered the name a racial slur.The move to coed dancers comes three years after several cheerleaders told The New York Times that the team had been “pimping us out” by forcing them to cozy up to sponsors. They complained that the team director had required them to attend gatherings and present themselves as sex symbols to please male fans or sponsors, which the cheerleaders did not believe should be a part of their job.On a trip to Costa Rica in 2013 for the cheer team’s annual calendar shoot, five cheerleaders said, male sponsors were invited to photo shoots where the women were scantily clad or, at times, naked.Those cheerleaders said many women on the team had long been afraid of coming forward with accusations of sexual harassment because they feared that the team would get rid of the program, as some other teams had done when cheerleaders spoke out about concerns like low pay. In 2014, Buffalo Bills cheerleaders sued the team for not paying them for all the hours they worked, and their squad was soon disbanded.“It’s like the women there have been brainwashed to think it’s OK to be treated like garbage,” Allison Cassidy, a former Washington cheerleader, said in a 2018 interview. “So many of them are afraid that pointing out injustices will lead to the program folding, or that will lead to the collapse of their social circle, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”Former cheerleaders for the Washington team said they had been expected to mingle and flirt with fans in the corporate suites and at tailgate parties on game days. Cassidy and others said they had been sent to promotional events where they were sexually harassed by men and generally felt unsafe.Last year, cheerleaders made similar harassment accusations against the N.F.L. team. Later in the year, the team reached a settlement with several former cheerleaders, according to a person with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.The Washington Post also published an investigation into the mistreatment of the team’s female employees, citing 15 former workers in the team’s front office as sources.The team’s owner, Daniel Snyder, fired several top executives who were connected to the harassment accusations, and he hired a Washington-based law firm, Wilkinson Stekloff, to look into the cheerleaders’ allegations. The N.F.L. took over the investigation, which is continuing.Pope has worked for 33 years with dance teams in the N.B.A., including those of the Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers. She said the Washington dance team would do more stunts and use more props, “merging the athleticism of cheerleaders with the athleticism of hip-hop, jazz and ballet dancers.”Whether the transition to coed dancers will lead to a thorough break from past traditions is unclear, but the N.F.L. franchise plans to review the dancers’ pay and the possibility of offering them benefits, said Carreen Winters, an outside public relations consultant working with the team.Pope said the new dance team would have new outfits that were “fashion forward.” She said the dancers would be involved in the community but was unable to say whether the dancers would continue to visit suites at the stadium and other venues where they would have close contact with fans. The dance team, though, will not be involved in any calendar photo shoots, she said.“All dancers will be respected,” she said, adding that her goal was “to create a really modern team that reflects where we are in 2021.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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

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

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      Jennifer King Becomes First Black Woman to Coach N.F.L. Full-Time

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Washington Coach Reaches a First for Black Women in the N.F.L.Washington promoted Jennifer King to assistant running backs coach, making her the first Black woman with a full-time N.F.L. coaching job, amid increasing scrutiny on the diversity of the league’s hiring.The wild-card playoff game between Washington and Tampa Bay on Jan. 9 was the first N.F.L. playoff game with women in coaching roles on both sidelines: Lori Locust, a Bucs assistant defensive line coach, and Jennifer King, right, a Washington intern who was promoted to assistant running backs coach on Tuesday.Credit…Daniel Kucin Jr./Associated PressVictor Mather and Jan. 26, 2021Updated 6:22 p.m. ETThe Washington Football Team promoted Jennifer King to assistant running backs coach on Tuesday, making her the first Black woman to become a full-time coach in the N.F.L.King’s promotion accentuates the importance the Washington franchise has placed on diversifying after a tumultuous year in which its longtime logo and nickname, widely perceived as racist, were dropped. The move also comes as the N.F.L. faces increasing scrutiny because of its paucity of Black head coaches.King, 36, was a coaching intern with the team this past season and previously served as an intern with the Carolina Panthers and as an offensive assistant at Dartmouth College.“She earned this opportunity with hard work,” Washington Coach Ron Rivera said in a statement. “The sky truly is the limit for her.”The number of female coaches in the N.F.L. has grown, slowly but steadily, over the past five seasons, with eight women on staffs in 2020. According to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, which tracks racial and gender demographics of coaches in five professional sports leagues, the N.F.L. trails only the N.B.A., which has nine female assistants.Yet while about 70 percent of N.F.L. players are Black, only two of the current head coaches are, and just four — including Rivera — are people of color, according to the league’s measure of diversity.Of the seven head coaching jobs that became available in the past four months, only one has been filled by a nonwhite candidate — the Jets’ Robert Saleh, who is a Muslim Arab American. The Houston Texans’ head coaching position is still open.Three minority candidates were hired as general managers in the past two weeks — Terry Fontenot in Atlanta, Brad Holmes in Detroit and Martin Mayhew in Washington — swelling the leaguewide total to five. The general manager hirings are significant, because their roles enable them to hire, and recommend, more people of color to join their organizations. But they are less visible than coaches.In most instances, the pipeline to N.F.L. coaching and scouting positions is stocked with men who have played college football, diminishing chances for women interested in pursuing careers in professional football. But in recent years, the league has made stronger efforts to enhance opportunities for women, particularly those of color.It established the Women’s Careers in Football Forum, an annual event held in conjunction with the league’s scouting combine that since 2017 has given women with entry-level roles in college programs a chance to learn from, and network with, N.F.L. general managers, coaches and executives. At last February’s session, 26 of the league’s 32 teams participated, and Samantha Rapoport, the N.F.L.’s senior director of diversity and inclusion, said that with a virtual format next month, she is hoping for full representation.In 2019, 55 percent of the participants at the forum were women of color. Among all the women who attended the most recent gathering, in February, 15 were hired for full-time positions or internships, either in the N.F.L. or for a college program, for the 2020 season, bringing the total to 118 such jobs since the forum’s inception.“People that are marginalized or disenfranchised, if you give them a shot, an opportunity to have a conversation with someone who can potentially hire them, that’s how they land on the short list,” Rapoport said.In 2015, Jen Welter became the first woman added to an N.F.L. staff, as an assistant coaching intern with the Arizona Cardinals. Kathryn Smith became the first woman to hold a full-time assistant coaching position the following year, when she was named special teams quality control coach under Rex Ryan with the Buffalo Bills, and after the 2019 season Katie Sowers, who worked mostly with the 49ers’ wide receivers, became the first woman to coach in a Super Bowl.(Sowers, after four seasons with San Francisco, announced a few weeks ago that she would not return in 2021.)Another breakthrough came in November, when Callie Brownson of the Cleveland Browns was elevated to tight ends coach on a brief interim basis, becoming the highest-ranking female coach in league history.“What we’re hoping for is normalization,” Rapoport said, adding: “We’re not looking for firsts. We’re not putting on a schedule for the first female head coach or the first female general manager. That’s not our focus. Our focus is really the ubiquity of women in football.”King, like many of the women who have coached in the N.F.L., has played football and other sports. She was on the basketball and softball teams at Guilford College from 2002 to 2006 and was the head basketball coach at Johnson & Wales University Charlotte from 2016 to 2018. King has also played in the Women’s Football Alliance with the Carolina Phoenix, the New York Sharks and the D.C. Divas.“The way she’s worked with the guys, she’s just Coach King to us,” Randy Jordan, Washington’s running backs coach, told The Washington Post in December. “Her input throughout the game, there are things I may not see, and she’ll point it out to me.”“Her input is very, very important not only to me,” he continued, “but to the entire staff. She’s been doing a heck of a job.”Amid an organizational overhaul led by Rivera, the Washington Football Team has hired people of color for significant roles over the past 13 months. The team announced last week that Mayhew, who is Black, would become its general manager, filling a position that has been vacant since 2016. In September, the team added Jason Wright, the first Black team president in the N.F.L., to its front office.Gillian R. Brassil contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Can’t Measure Heart? N.F.L. Teams Are Trying

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCan’t Measure Heart? N.F.L. Teams Are TryingChampionships can be won and lost when players’ competitive fire kicks in and they exhibit faster-than-normal speed to make a crucial catch or chase down a tackle.Cardinals safety Budda Baker’s interception looked to be a pick-six until Seahawks receiver D.K. Metcalf chased him down for a tackle in October.Credit…Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesJan. 14, 2021Updated 6:41 p.m. ETSometimes it is a primal skill that matters most in football.“If you’re chasing a guy, can you catch him?” said Bill Belichick, the six-time Super Bowl champion coach of the New England Patriots. “Or if a guy is chasing you, can you outrun him?”In the N.F.L., scouts, talent evaluators, coaches and general managers spend tens of thousands of hours every year in a quest to identify which players are best at these fundamental skills. Despite all the complexities and intricate strategy of a modern pro football season, some of the most imperative evaluations still border on the rudimentary.The consensus, however, is that it’s not simply a measure of how fast someone runs, even if the 40-yard dash metric is ubiquitous and venerated. Sophisticated technologies can now quantify a dozen variables of a sprinting stride and decoding the clues within that data is a budding cottage industry, but there may also be more of a schoolyard ethos to the assessment.“It’s a little bit more in the heart than the stopwatch,” Belichick said last year on the topic, which is one of his favorites. “There’s competitive speed, or game speed.”It is not a trivial consideration: Championships can be won and lost on such plays. In addition to the countless examples of a wide receiver pulling away from a defender to get open for a deep touchdown pass or a running back bursting untouched through a team’s last line of defense, there are conspicuous illustrations of how a more self-evident, elementary skill can be the turning point of a pivotal game.On Thanksgiving Day this season, Terry McLaurin, a wide receiver for the Washington Football Team, was roughly 10 yards behind Dallas linebacker Jaylon Smith when Smith intercepted a pass at the Washington 47-yard line and had a clear path to the end zone for a game-tying score late in the third quarter. McLaurin dashed after Smith, and despite having to evade potential Dallas blockers stationed in his way, tackled Smith at the 4-yard line.The Washington defense then made a goal-line stand that forced Dallas to settle for a field goal. Demoralized, Dallas did not score again as an invigorated Washington rallied for three touchdowns and an easy victory. At season’s end, Washington was in the playoffs as the N.F.C. East champions because it had one more victory than Dallas and the Giants.“It was a huge play, just what we needed,” Washington Coach Ron Rivera said of McLaurin’s effort afterward.The aptitude for superior in-game speed may seem obvious to the naked eye, but in fact trying to figure out which college draft picks or potential free agents possess it in a way that will regularly show up on the field can be tricky. Nonetheless, it is a foremost aim of every N.F.L. team.“It’s talked about all the time because it is a complex assessment,” said Scott Pioli, the former general manager of the Kansas City Chiefs who was also a top executive with the Atlanta Falcons, New England Patriots and Jets. “We can all see what a player’s pure speed is when he’s running in a straight line in shorts at the league’s combine. But football is not a straight line game, it’s a lot of stopping and starting, it’s change of direction, it’s instincts and angles.”Pioli said Patriots scouts were perpetually asked to not only report a player’s timed speed, but his “playing speed,” as well.“The scout’s report might have a player running 4.5 in the 40, but the scout adds that he’s played faster than that,” said Pioli, who is now an analyst for CBS Sports HQ. “Or slower when he has pads on because football isn’t played in shorts.”There are outliers, and they can get lost, or found, in hours of film study conducted by pro personnel directors. Coming out of college, former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis was considered fast but was not necessarily projected to become the game-changing presence he turned out to be. Three linebackers and eight other defensive players were taken ahead of him in the 1996 draft. Wes Welker, a 5-foot-9 wide receiver who played for five N.F.L. teams and ranks 22nd in career receptions with 903, was not even invited to the N.F.L. scouting combine and went undrafted in 2004.“Lewis played much faster because of his intelligence, which helped him to read opponents’ tendencies,” Pioli said. “Undersized receivers like Welker, they also play faster because of their quickness. You have to look for all those attributes.”Teams are increasingly using tech help to recognize and verify those unique qualities. But it doesn’t always work as intended.With radio-frequency identification chips (RFID) placed in every N.F.L. player’s shoulder pads transmitting streams of data, pro personnel directors now have a trove of data at their disposal. The same information is also logged during practice sessions. Much of the same information is collected on players before the college draft. After Philadelphia Eagles general manager Howie Roseman took wide receiver Jalen Reagor with the team’s first-round choice in 2020 he talked about Reagor’s RFID numbers and on-the-field speed.“You get the GPS numbers on these guys, so you can see how they’re running in games and their speed in games,” Roseman said of Reagor, who also ran a swift 4.47 second 40-yard dash. “He’s running at a really high level.”Looking to add speed to their offense, the Eagles drafted receiver Jalen Reagor, above, whose speed was tracked via radio frequency identification chips (RFID). Credit…Michael Conroy/Associated PressReagor was viewed as a disappointment this season for the Eagles, especially for such a high draft pick. He had 31 receptions this season for 396 yards and a touchdown, although he did miss five games to injury. Exacerbating the appraisal of Reagor was the 1,400 receiving yards (a rookie record) and 88 catches accumulated by Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson, who was selected 22nd overall in last spring’s draft, one spot after Reagor.Last week, Roseman conceded there were lengthy deliberations about draft-eligible receivers like Jefferson and Reagor. “Definitely a lot of opinions on this draft class and this receiver class for sure,” he said.While not specifically speaking about Philadelphia’s decision-making, Pioli said that leaguewide there were obstacles internally that impede teams from making the most fruitful judgments. Notably, a front office schism can stand in the way of a cooperative marriage between staffers who compile analytical data and coaches and other evaluators who are more likely to trust their eyes after in-person tryouts and hours of traditional film study.“This comes in when one of those two worlds, whether it’s the football people or the analytics people, don’t have enough respect for the other,” Pioli said. “Egos get in the way of arriving at the best answer.”Steve Gera, an ex-coach, scout and executive with the San Diego Chargers and Cleveland Browns, founded a company, BreakAway Data, with David Anderson, a former N.F.L. wide receiver, in part to help facilitate the divide between a team’s analytic resources and parts of the organization that came up through more customary football channels.Using wearable sensors, Gera and Anderson have developed isolated, football-specific tests for athletes that they have tried out on college campuses and in the X.F.L. “Then, we processed that data essentially into coach-speak,” Gera said, explaining that the information must be presented in a way that matches the nuanced level that coaches and scouts view the game. “That gets you closer to bridging the gap between stopwatch speed and competitive speed.”Steve Gera was a special assistant to Browns Coach Rob Chudzinski in 2013 before starting a company that helps analyze competitive speed for N.F.L. teams.Credit…Tony Dejak/Associated PressGera, who has worked with franchises in multiple sports, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, added: “You can tell a football coach that one of his players moves at 22 miles an hour, but what really matters is how much space did the player create or take away on the field, right? That’s the name of the game.”Seven years ago, Belichick, who has been effusive on the game speed versus timed speed subject for more than a decade, invited an undrafted free agent cornerback to a tryout at the Patriots practice complex after the 2014 draft despite the player’s significantly inferior 4.62 second, 40-yard dash time. In the audition, Belichick observed an innate quickness on the field and immediately offered a contract.Later that season, the player, Malcolm Butler, closed the space between him and Seattle wide receiver Ricardo Lockette to make a Super Bowl-clinching interception.Said Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll of Butler that night: “The guy makes a great play that nobody would ever think he could do.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      What to Watch for in Saturday’s N.F.L. Wild-Card Games

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat to Watch for in Saturday’s N.F.L. Wild-Card GamesThe first day of the expanded postseason kicks off with the Bills facing a franchise hero and the Colts, an N.F.C. West grudge match and the Washington rookie Chase Young getting his date with Tom Brady.Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, winners of their final four regular season games, will try to keep their momentum going against the Washington Football Team’s fearsome pass rush.Credit…Grant Halverson/Getty ImagesJan. 9, 2021, 8:00 a.m. ETA weekend bulging with N.F.L. playoff football begins Saturday, when for the first time three games will be staged on the same day.The madness begins at 1:05 p.m. Eastern with an A.F.C. matchup in Orchard Park, N.Y., where about 6,700 fans, after assenting to coronavirus testing, will attend an event nearly as uncommon as a global pandemic: a Bills home playoff game.Bills legend Frank Reich returns to Buffalo as a spoiler.The second-seeded Bills will host the seventh-seeded Indianapolis Colts in the first postseason game at Bills Stadium since Dec. 28, 1996, another milestone in Buffalo’s enchanted season. But they’ll face a Colts team that’s led by Coach Frank Reich, who orchestrated one of the greatest playoff comebacks in league history when he quarterbacked the Bills to an overtime victory over the Houston Oilers after Buffalo had fallen behind by 32 points in a 1993 A.F.C. wild-card game.Credit…John Hickey/Associated PressCredit…Ron Schwane/Associated PressThis year, Reich’s Colts (11-5) had an unsettling tendency to collapse against good teams: They failed to score in the second half versus Baltimore, allowed 24 straight points in a loss to Tennessee and, in Week 16, blew a 17-point third-quarter lead at Pittsburgh. They did beat the Packers, though.In guiding the Bills (13-3) to their first A.F.C. East title since 1995, quarterback Josh Allen threw for 4,544 yards and 37 touchdowns, both franchise records. Receiver Stefon Diggs, who is questionable for Saturday’s game with an injury to an oblique muscle, led the league with 127 receptions, the sixth most in a single season, and 1,535 yards.If the Bills do have a weakness, it’s their run defense, which could benefit the Colts, whose rookie running back Jonathan Taylor rushed for 253 yards and two touchdowns in their Week 17 victory against Jacksonville. Only Derrick Henry of Tennessee has run for more yards since Week 11.Will the Seahawks stick to the basics against the Rams?Next up, at 4:40 p.m., is the season’s final installment of a delightful N.F.C. West rivalry, with the sixth-seeded Los Angeles Rams visiting Seattle for the second time in two weeks to face the third-seeded Seahawks. The Rams lost that Week 16 clash — and their quarterback, too. Jared Goff, recovering from surgery to repair a broken right thumb, may or may not be available to start. If he is not, John Wolford, who threw for 231 yards and ran for 56 in a Week 17 victory against Arizona that clinched a playoff berth, would start in his stead.The Rams allowed the fewest points (18.5) and yards (281.9) per game in the N.F.L. this season, but they also didn’t score an offensive touchdown in the last two weeks. Entering the postseason with that offensive malaise is bad timing, but it might be surmountable, considering that Los Angeles has held Seattle to 36 total points in their two meetings this season while sacking Russell Wilson 11 times.On pace at midseason to throw for 56 touchdowns, Wilson tossed only 12 over the second half of the regular season. Coach Pete Carroll, apparently unnerved by Wilson’s seven turnovers in losses to Buffalo and the Rams, resorted to a more conservative approach — for years the Seahawks’ formula — facilitated by a defense that stabilized after a dreadful start to the season: Since Seattle’s Week 10 loss at Los Angeles, no team has allowed fewer points.Chase Young will try to keep Tom Brady from getting comfortable.Chase Young, a Washington defensive end, led all rookies with seven and a half sacks and 10 tackles for loss.Credit…Mitchell Leff/Getty ImagesThe final game of the day, slated for 8:15 p.m. between fifth-seeded Tampa Bay and fourth-seeded Washington, showcases two quarterbacks who, based on all good sense, should not have been doing what they did this season.At age 43, Tom Brady threw for 4,633 yards, more than every quarterback but Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, and 40 touchdowns, tied with Russell Wilson and trailing only Aaron Rodgers, to lead the Buccaneers to their first playoff berth since 2007. Over the last four weeks, they have scored 148 points, the most in the N.F.C.For Washington, Alex Smith — whose status is questionable, as he has a calf injury — returned from a horrific 2018 leg injury to morph from third-stringer to backup to starter and help the Footballers secure their first division title since 2015.Smith’s on-field production, however, paled next to Brady’s, just one of the reasons this game has been touted as a mismatch. Brady is surrounded by an embarrassing collection of talent in Tampa Bay (11-5), from the receivers Antonio Brown and Chris Godwin to running back Ronald Jones to the rookie anchor at right tackle, Tristan Wirfs. Containing their offense should be a struggle for a Washington team that ranked 25th in scoring and 31st in yards per play, ahead of only the woeful Jets.It should be a lopsided game unless the Footballers (7-9) can make Brady’s life miserable all night — a realistic outcome given the team’s extraordinary pass rush. Brady succumbed to pressure in each of his three Super Bowl defeats and, at his advanced age, isn’t the most elusive fellow. Washington defensive end Chase Young led all rookies with seven and a half sacks and 10 tackles for loss. By the end of the night, those numbers will very likely swell. By how much could determine the game’s outcome.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Fight for Washington N.F.L. Team Could Tighten Snyder's Grip on It

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFight for Washington N.F.L. Team May Tighten Owner’s Grip on ItWashington’s owner, Daniel Snyder, is working to buy out three minority partners, including one he has accused of running a smear campaign against him.The Washington Football Team majority owner Daniel Snyder could expand his stake in the team.Credit…Brad Mills/USA Today Sports, via ReutersKen Belson and Dec. 19, 2020, 8:37 p.m. ETBy the end of this summer, Daniel Snyder, the majority owner of the N.F.L.’s Washington Football Team, was facing fire from many sides. Fans had long blamed him for the team’s abysmal performance. Now civil rights groups were criticizing Snyder for waiting so long to jettison a team name and logo that they considered racist, and women’s activists were aghast after news media reports detailed a culture of sexual harassment in the team’s front office.In a normal corporate setting, any one of these troubles might have led to a leader’s ouster. Instead, Snyder, a member of the N.F.L.’s cozy club of billionaire owners, may emerge from months of crisis with an even tighter hold on one of the most lucrative franchises in the league. Snyder is in talks to buy out three of his partners, and the sale price may be 40 percent less than they were asking in June.According to three people familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak publicly about it, Snyder would pay up to $900 million for the 40 percent of the club owned by the three partners: Frederick W. Smith, the chairman of FedEx; the financier Robert Rothman; and Dwight Schar, a real estate developer. The deal must be approved by the league.Representatives for Snyder and the partners’ banker declined to comment on the talks. The N.F.L. did not respond to a request seeking comment.The deal, if completed and approved, would end one of the more nasty and tangled ownership battles in the league in years, a bitter divorce that has included accusations of bad faith, malfeasance and mudslinging in a league that prefers such infighting be kept behind closed doors.Sales of shares in N.F.L. teams are normally cloaked in secrecy, with information tightly guarded by the principals and their lawyers and bankers. The boardroom battle in Washington, though, spilled into courts from California to Virginia and even New Delhi before finally landing in the lap of an arbitrator appointed by the N.F.L. to sort out the mess.The court papers in the various lawsuits that have been filed offer an unusual look at an eight-month dispute that has included the use of burner phones, profane text messages, accusations of leaks of credible and fabricated information to the news media, and threats of extortion, according to transcripts of phone calls, text messages and emails found in court filings and other documents reviewed by The New York Times.The fight over the team began in the spring, when the limited partners accused Snyder of mismanagement of the team he has owned since 1999, including improperly throwing them off the board, making financial transactions without their approval and trying to block the sale of their shares to outside investors.Snyder claims, in court filings, that Schar, in retribution, schemed to leak to the news media negative information about Snyder’s personal life and operation of the team in the hope that it would be damaging enough to compel him to sell it. The sale of the entire team — not only Snyder’s share but also the stakes owned by Schar, Smith and Rothman — would significantly inflate the value of the nonvoting shares the three minority partners have been trying to sell since this spring.A lawyer for Schar did not respond to a request for comment.The team, 6-7 but on track for a playoff spot, has been playing better this season under a new coach. It is at the top of its chaotic division with three games left in the regular season.Yet Snyder has been trailed by controversy, including accusations from cheerleaders that they were sexually harassed and intimidated on the job by well-heeled supporters and team employees, and the allegations of widespread sexual harassment in the team’s front office that remain under investigation by the league.But, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations, N.F.L. owners believe Schar crossed a line in seeking to publicly malign Snyder. Even so, kicking out an owner or part owner is seen as a rare, last resort, and so they are pushing for a settlement in which Snyder would buy out the partners.Under the plan representatives for the partners are working out, Schar’s proceeds would be reduced by millions of dollars as a penalty for trying to publicly undermine Snyder, according to three people aware of the potential penalties. Even then, he will walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars.“The most important thing for the league is its image,” said Upton Bell, a longtime team executive and the son of the former N.F.L. commissioner Bert Bell, speaking generally about ownership disputes. “They want to make it look like it’s Disney World when it’s not. It’s business, it’s not a moral universe.”The fight, at heart, is over money.The limited partners grew disenchanted in May when, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic that was threatening the coming N.F.L. season, Snyder halted the payment of annual dividends to Schar, Rothman, Smith and other limited partners. He did not explain the decision, but it was consistent with similar steps taken by other owners.In a letter reviewed by The Times, Schar’s representative then asked Snyder for the team’s financial records for the past two years, including cost-cutting measures. In early June, Snyder was told that Schar and Rothman had joined Smith, who had been trying to sell his shares for about a year, in putting their stakes on the market. This created a 40 percent block that Rothman argued in a letter to Snyder’s banker was worth $1.5 billion, based on the team’s total valuation.Angered that his longtime partners were shopping their shares, Snyder threw them off the board of the team’s holding company in June. The partners asked the N.F.L. to settle the dispute, claiming that Snyder failed to hold board meetings and did not get proper approval for financial transactions. The league appointed an arbitrator to the case at the end of June.Amid the crossfire of letters between lawyers, Snyder asserted that Schar began a long-shot smear campaign designed to embarrass him and force him to sell the entire team. Snyder has long insisted that he intends to leave his controlling share to his children.Dwight Schar, a limited partner in the team, could be bought out.  Credit…George Gojkovich/Getty ImagesKey to the scheme, court filings show, was Mary Ellen Blair. She was an executive assistant to him until 2017 who, at the behest of Schar, helped pass negative information about Snyder to the news media. Between July and October, Blair and Schar spoke 157 times on the phone, for a combined 11.6 hours, according to phone records obtained by Snyder’s lawyers and filed in court.During that same period, Blair dialed or received 123 calls from telephone numbers associated with The Washington Post, according to court filings. There were text messages, too, Snyder said. “Call me ASAP Mr Schar just called me great news for u call me ASAP please,” she wrote in one of several texts to a journalist at The Post who contributed to a blockbuster article in which 15 female former team employees revealed rampant, longstanding harassment of women employees. (“The idea is to force Snyder to sell,” Blair texted to a friend.)The Post article in July did not directly connect Snyder to the harassment claims. But he hired a Washington-based law firm, Wilkinson Walsh, to look into the allegations. The N.F.L. took over the investigation, which is continuing.“While I was unaware of these allegations until they surfaced in the media, I take full responsibility for the culture of our organization,” Snyder said in a statement after a second article by The Washington Post linked to him to two allegations of harassment, both of which he denied.As the substantiated reporting got people talking on social media, less reputable outlets tried to capitalize on online interest in Snyder. The day The Post published its first report of chaos in the front office, a website owned by an Indian company, Media Arts Entertainment WorldWide, published two items about Snyder. One falsely linked him to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Representatives for Media Arts Entertainment admitted they had relied on sources including a Reddit post, and removed the two items from their website. But Snyder sued the publication for defamation in August in India. (The case is ongoing.)Snyder used the suit filed in New Delhi to search for ties to Schar. His lawyers filed a string of discovery motions in federal court in the United States and obtained Blair’s phone records and text messages, which showed her communications with Schar and his daughter, Tracy, who, records show, made or received 44 calls to or from Blair. The records also showed that Tracy Schar bought Blair a burner phone to escape detection. When Snyder’s lawyers confronted Blair about her phone records late this fall, she gave a sworn declaration that has been reviewed by The Times. In it, she said she and Dwight Schar discussed an allegation that Snyder had sexually harassed a former female team employee in 2009.“Schar knew I would take that information about that employee’s sexual harassment claim to the Washington Post, and Schar was encouraging me to share the information with the Washington Post,” Blair said in the declaration.It is unclear if she shared the information. A spokeswoman for The Post declined to comment.Two investigations conducted in 2009, one by the team and another by an outside law firm hired by the team, said they were unable to substantiate the woman’s claim that Snyder had accosted her in April 2009 on a flight to Washington from Las Vegas. The team fired the woman because it said she lied to the team’s lawyers.To avoid any potential negative publicity if the woman sued Snyder, the team paid her a financial settlement and five people, including Snyder and the accuser, signed nondisclosure agreements, according to a person with knowledge of the arrangement who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.A spokesman for Snyder declined to discuss the settlement.Even so, Schar tried to use the settlement against Snyder. In late July, he called Norman Chirite, one of Snyder’s lawyers, and said that “the story was out” about the 2009 settlement and its public disclosure is “going to kill Dan,” according to Chirite, who gave a signed declaration that was reviewed by The Times.Schar said Snyder would have a “horrible existence” when the settlement was made public. “Dan should just sell the team,” Chirite recalled Schar’s saying. “He won’t have a choice.”Now, the reverse may happen: Snyder will not only keep the team, but possibly tighten his grip on it.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Steelers Lose First Game of 2020 to Washington

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySteelers Lose First Game of 2020 to WashingtonPittsburgh had been the N.F.L.’s final unbeaten team at 11-0 before losing at home to a sub-.500 Washington team.Washington quarterback Alex Smith threw for 296 yards and a touchdown in a 23-17 win over Pittsburgh, giving the Steelers their first loss of the season.Credit…Keith Srakocic/Associated PressBy More