Year: 2017

Donald Trump’s attacks on the NFL don’t seem to be affecting the league’s bottom line, but that isn’t stopping him from making an issue of players kneeling to protest racial injustice.

NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart said Monday that he hadn’t looked at Sunday’s attendance figures, but last week showed that there has been no impact.

Lockhart said the figures are “right within range.’’

Then Trump had a press conference Monday afternoon and said his comments are having an impact.

“The people of our country are very angry at the NFL,’’ he said. “All you have to do is look at the ratings, look at the stadiums. You see empty seats where you never saw them before.’’

Continue reading “Trump’s racist anthem ploy and lies aren’t hurting the NFL”

To quote the famous line from the movie “Cool Hand Luke”: What we have here is a failure to communicate.

At least the NFL apparently didn’t communicate what it meant in the infamous memo from Roger Goodell last Tuesday that gave everyone the impression he had a plan to ask the owners to vote Tuesday, Oct. 17, to mandate the players stand for the national anthem.

The Huffington Post summarized the impression the memo gave with a headline, “NFL kneels to Trump.’’

The impression was that the NFL was caving to Donald Trump, who has called the players to be fired for kneeling during the anthem.

The NFL started to backtrack last Wednesday, when Goodell reached out to NFLPA head De Smith and they issued a joint statement saying Smith and some of the player leaders would also attend the meeting.

Continue reading “Inept NFL office needs to stop blaming others for its anthem mistakes”

Five things I’ll be looking at in the sixth week of the 2017 NFL season:

1. Can the Steelers get their act together?

The Kansas City Chiefs, the league’s only unbeaten team, will be trying to boost their record to 6-0 against the Steelers. But all the chatter is about the Pittsburgh Steelers and how will they recover from the last two weeks.

First, Antonio Brown had his Gatorade bucket meltdown two weeks ago. So it appeared the Steelers tried to compensate last week against the Jacksonville Jaguars. They featured Ben Roethlisberger’s passing against the league’s best pass defense and he threw two Pick Sixes to give the Jaguars the win.

Meanwhile, Le’Veon Bell had just 15 carries against the league’s worst run defense. Roethlisberger said after the game that he didn’t know if he had it anymore. But mid-week, he was saying he has his confidence back and questioned the reporters, saying he’s been playing longer than many reporters have been covering the team.

And coach Mike Tomlin defended their game plan. The Steelers did knock the Chiefs out of the playoffs last year, but appear dysfunctional now. Can the Steelers get their heads back into the game against a good Chiefs’ team? We’ll see.

Continue reading “Five things to watch: NFL Week 6”

Five observations on the fifth weekend of the 2017 NFL season:

1. It was a weekend of close games as 10 of the 14 contests were decided by six points or less, the highest percentage of close games in 25 years.

But close games alone aren’t the answer to the NFL’s TV ratings problems.

Although the New England Patriots-Tampa Bay Bucs got a good rating Thursday night – a 26 percent hike over last year’s San Francisco 49ers-Arizona Cardinals games in Week 5 — the increases didn’t carry over for the rest of the weekend.

The Green Bay Packers-Dallas Cowboys game was the highest rating game of the weekend, but the Sunday night Kansas City Chiefs-Houston Texans game and Monday night’s Minnesota Vikings-Chicago Bears contest were the lowest-rated games of the season in those slots.

Continue reading “Taking a look back at the NFL’s Week 5”

Five things I’ll be looking at in the fifth week of the 2017 NFL season:

1. Can the Rams keep on rolling?

The Los Angeles Rams, coming off a victory over the Dallas Cowboys last week, have been a surprise team this year. But Jared Goff and Todd Gurley haven’t faced a defense the caliber of Seattle’s.

On the other hand the Rams have won four of six games against Seattle the last three seasons. A victory over the Seahawks would give the 3-1 Rams a two-game lead over the Seahawks and raise more questions about whether the Seahawks’ window is closing after they were a yard away from back-to-back Super Bowl victories three years ago.

2. Can the Cowboys awaken from their surprising slumber?

Continue reading “Five things to watch: NFL Week 5”

The Pittsburgh Steelers find themselves with an interesting dilemma Sunday.

They are nine-point favorites over the Jacksonville Jaguars, who are the worst team in the league against the run and the best against the pass.

So it figures their game plan would feature Le’Veon Bell, who finally got into a groove last week against Baltimore when he ran 35 times for 144 yards and caught four passes for 42 yards.

But things are complicated because it is also the first game since Antonio Brown had a temper tantrum last week when quarterback Ben Roethlisberger didn’t throw to him when he felt he was wide open.

Brown flipped over a Gatorade bucket and angrily brushed off offensive coordinator Todd Haley.

Continue reading “Steelers are winning, but Brown tantrum hints at trouble”

Sam Darnold is making things difficult for NFL scouts.

The USC quarterback was supposed to be the consensus No. 1 pick in next year’s draft, but his shaky play at the start of this season has raised questions about just how good a prospect Darnold really is.

In USC’s 30-27 loss to Washington State Friday night, he completed only 15 of 29 passes for 164 yards with an interception and a fumble that ruined the Trojans last bid for a late victory.

Washington State had lost 15 in a row to ranked opponents.

So far this year, Darnold has nine touchdown passes and eight interceptions. Last year, he had 31 touchdown passes and nine interceptions.

Continue reading “USC’s Darnold no longer looking like a sure NFL thing”

Five observations on the fourth weekend of the 2017 NFL season:

1. The 1972 Miami Dolphins can start putting the champagne on ice. With the season only four weeks old, Kansas City is the only unbeaten team in the wake of the Chiefs’ 29-20 victory over Washington and Atlanta’s 23-17 loss to Buffalo.

By contrast, there are four winless teams – the Cleveland Browns, New York Giants, San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Chargers.

The odds, though, are against the Chiefs going unbeaten. They barely escaped with the victory over Washington on a field goal with four seconds left. They added another touchdown, recovering a fumble on the last play when Washington tried the Stanford band lateral play.

That enabled the Chiefs to cover the spread and the over so a lot of money changed hands on that last play. But looking at Andy Reid’s playoff record – only one Super Bowl appearance and an overall 11-12 mark — it is too early to crown them as a favorite to make it.

Continue reading “Taking a look back at the NFL’s Week 4”