Year: 2019

Blog post updated Aug. 1, 2019

Imagine an elite pass rusher hitting the open market in free agency in his prime in March of 2022, weeks before his 27th birthday.

Imagine what he could command on the open market.

Since Bruce Smith, as Peter King of NBC Sports recently noted, recorded 108 sacks after the age of 30, a pass rusher just shy of his 27th birthday would be just reaching his prime.

He could probably set a new market for pass rushers.

The highest paid pass rusher currently is Khalil Mack at $23.5 million, although he is a linebacker.

Continue reading “UPDATED: Ngakoue’s long-term future with Jaguars appears up in the air”

It could be argued that the best contract in history for an NFL player was the three-year, $2.1 million deal O.J. Simpson got from the Buffalo Bills in the 1970s.

It doesn’t sound like much today but at the time, it was close to double the salary of the second highest-paid player in the league, New Orleans Saints quarterback Archie Manning.

While Simpson was making $733,000 a year, Manning was making in the $400,000 to $450,000 range.

Never again will there be that much of a difference between the two highest-paid players.

And it is likely again that no running back will ever be the highest-paid player in the league.

Continue reading “Running backs are fading fast on the NFL’s pay scale”

When will the NFL owners understand that “no means no” when they try to push the players for an 18-game schedule?

The players have rejected it numerous times, but that doesn’t stop the owners from bringing it up.

And the players are right in always rejecting it.

Not only is it a bad idea for the players in an era when player safety is a major concern, but it’s also bad for the game and bad for the fans.

The fact there are only 16 regular-season games a year makes them special. A lot is on the line in every game.

Continue reading “NFL owners need to stop pushing idea of an 18-game regular season”

The life and times and untimely death of Steve McNair is much more than a sports story.

It has elements of a Shakespearean tragedy because, despite his exploits on the field, there was so much promise unfulfilled.

This is the 20^th anniversary season of his lone Super Bowl appearance, when McNair brought the Tennessee Titans back from a 16-0 deficit only to see Kevin Dyson fall a yard short of sending the game against the then-St. Louis Rams into overtime.

And this week is the 10^th anniversary of his death on July 4, 2009, when his mistress shot him to death and then turned the gun on herself and committed suicide.

The way McNair died shocked even his former teammates, because it was such a contrast to the image he had as a family man with four sons who was noted for being generous in the community.

Continue reading “Steve McNair’s career and life a story of what could have been”

Here is my tongue-in-cheek suggestion for how NFL coaches should adapt to the new pass interference rules in the last two minutes when the replay official will take control.

They should call for a long pass on every play and instruct the quarterback to throw it deep even if the receiver is covered.

The reason for this strategy is that the replay official may stop the game and call a pass interference penalty even if it isn’t called on the field if the intended receiver and the defender jostle for the ball.

This obviously is not a serious suggestion, but then again, it won’t be surprising if the new pass interference rules cause more controversy than they solve.

Passing the rule was an overreaction to the play in the New Orleans Saints-Los Angeles Rams playoff game where the defender admitted he deliberately interfered to stop a touchdown and the officials didn’t call it.

Continue reading “NFL’s needless new interference rules are a recipe for disaster”

In case to you missed the memo, the NFL is all about the money.

It is the thing that obsesses commissioner Roger Goodell and most of the owners.

And the main goal of the owners is to increase revenue and limit as much as possible how much they have to share with the players.

Which is why they locked out the players for four months in 2011 to get a bigger share of the revenue pie than they had in the previous CBA negotiated by Paul Tagliabue with the late Gene Upshaw before he retired.

When Goodell replaced Tagliabue, he was hired to take a hard-line stance against the players and get a better deal.

Continue reading “NFL labor negotiations appear headed for trouble”

Before the Greatest Generation went off to war to save Western Civilization, they survived the Great Depression and played and followed high school football.

How big was high school football in 1939 when the nation was on the cusp of WWII?

It was so big that Paul Brown was a high school coach in Ohio and Vince Lombardi was an ASSISTANT high school coach in New Jersey. And high school games were played before big crowds and were covered like college football, which then dwarfed the NFL.

Eighty years later, it is almost hard to imagine what America was like in those days.

And veteran sportswriter Hank Gola has captured that time perfectly in his book “City of Champions” (Tatra Press) about how an underdog team from Garfield, N.J. beat Miami High School to be crowned the mythical national champion high school team in the country on Christmas night in 1939 at the Orange Bowl.

Continue reading “Terrific new book recounts when prep football was king”

One of the more interesting developments in the continuing controversy about reviewing pass interference calls and non calls was a report that some NFL officials may be having buyer’s remorse about the new pass interference rule it passed in March the wake of the pass interference no call in the Saints-Rams game.

Let’s hope the report is true and they make changes.

Judy Battista of NFL media reported the owners will consider a proposal at its upcoming owners meeting to allow the Competition Committee to modify the rule without needing a vote of all the owners.

They would consider allowing coaches to challenge offense or defensive interference throughout the game, including the final two minutes of each half, instead of having the replay official control the review in the last two minutes.

Forcing the coaches to use a challenge to review pass interference in the last two minutes would probably cut down on the number of delays and challenges.

Continue reading “NFL needs less instant replay, not more”

Upton Bell’s mother, who was a musical comedy actress on Broadway and a member of Ziegfield’s Follies, was once invited to a dinner with Al Capone.

As Bell recounts the dinner in his book about his long and colorful career, “Present at the Creation, My Life in the NFL and the Rise of America’s Game,” written with Ron Borges, she had a question for Capone.

“She naively asked Capone why all the women were sitting with their backs to the door,’’ he wrote.

His father was Bert Bell, the NFL commissioner from 1946 until he died of a heart attack in 1960 watching the Eagles play in his hometown of Philadelphia.

Upton said that his father was asked (Bell doesn’t say who asked) to check with Capone (who was in prison at the time) if the Lindbergh baby kidnapping was the work of the Mob. Within 48 hours, Capone got back to him and said it wasn’t.

Continue reading “New book by Bert Bell’s son an enjoyable read on rise of the NFL”

Thanks to Nick Saban, I am now taking a special interest in the career of Jacksonville Jaguars safety Ronnie Harrison.

Drafted in the third round by the Jaguars, he won a starting job during the season last year and started eight games.

Even though he was sidelined with a knee injury the final two games of the year, he will enter the upcoming season as a starter and seems to have a bright future.

That is why it was so puzzling when the Alabama coach singled him out when he went on a rant earlier this month decrying underclassmen for declaring early for the NFL draft.

“If you’re a third-round draft pick, and we had one here last year – I’m not going to say any names — goes and starts for his team so he’s making third-round money, which is not that great,” Saban said. “He’d be the first guy taken at his position this year, probably, and makes $15 to $18 million more.”

Continue reading “Saban’s hypocrisy about early entrants is appalling”