Year: 2019

Title games showed how NFL legacies can come down to a single play

It is often said that most football games come down to just a half dozen plays.

The conference title games Sunday came down to fewer than that. Each game was decided by one play.

New Orleans would have beaten the Los Angeles Rams if the officials had called the Rams for pass interference. And Kansas City would have beaten New England if Dee Ford hadn’t lined up offsides.

And then we could have a KC-New Orleans Super Bowl.

And think of how many legacies were changed because of those two plays.

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With Brady on the cusp of another Super Bowl, book offers interesting look at his redemption

Tom Brady is no stranger to challenges.

From his days at Michigan fighting Drew Henson for a starting spot to being overlooked in the draft before New England took him on the sixth round in 2000, Brady has met all the challenges while becoming the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls.

He faces another Sunday when he goes to Kansas City for his eighth AFC title game appearance in a row and his quest to make the Super Bowl for the ninth time.

It comes after a season in which the Patriots lost five road games to teams that didn’t make the playoffs and he didn’t have the numbers to make $5 million in incentives he made the previous season.

But he was the Tom Brady of old instead of an old Tom Brady when the Patriots crushed the Chargers in their first round playoff game. He couldn’t even resist playing the disrespect card after the game, saying that “everyone” thinks they suck and they can’t win any games. He ignored the fact the Patriots were favored. In Kansas City, they are the underdog even though they beat the Chiefs at home during the regular season.

But his biggest challenge was fighting the NFL for a year and a half in what became known as Deflategate before he was suspended for four games in 2016 on scant and flimsy evidence. He then won redemption and the Super Bowl against Atlanta by overcoming a 28-3 deficit.

The whole saga was chronicled in the book “12:The Inside Story of Tom Brady’s Fight for Redemption.” (Little, Brown) by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge. Although it was published last year, it is still a timely read. And it is not just about Deflategate. It is a review of his entire career  There are a lot of interesting tidbits in the book. Like owner Bob Kraft being ready to hire Dom Capers as his coach when he thought he couldn’t make a deal to pry Belichick loose from the Jets. Brady’s career likely wouldn’t have successful without Belichick.

The book is an inside look at the insanity of Deflatgate and how the league turned a mole hill into a mountain. The authors  interviewed both Brady and Kraft and the staff members of the NFL Players Association who assisted Brady in his long legal fight.  Not surprisingly, commissioner Roger Goodell declined to be interviewed for the book.

The access they got enables them to to provide a lot of insight. For example, Brady was upset when Kraft, who likes being a league insider, declined to sue the league.

The book also points out that Brady didn’t help his cause by talking at a press conference about the allegations despite the advice of the NFLPA to refuse to discuss the issue in public.

Union head Dee Smith said that since Brady didn’t feel he had done anything wrong, he could address it once and move on.

But as Smith added that the league tries to find a “murder behind every bush.”

“Once they target you, they do not stop,’’ Smith said.

Brady also made missteps when, on the advice of his agent, Don Yee, he refused to give investigators his cell phone. And later destroyed it.

The NFLPA staffers felt that was a mistake and turned the case into a personal vendetta for investigator Ted Wells. But Wells was not exactly a neutral observer. He made $45 million investigator Deflategate and the Miami bullying case and wasn’t likely to exonerate Brady although he could only say it was “more probable than not” that the balls were deflated and that Brady was at least generally aware of the plot.

A rather thin reed to suspend the game’s biggest star for four games on flimsy evidence.

In the end, though, Goodell was destined to win because the collective bargaining agreement gave Goodell the power to hound him.

When Brady won an early round court victory that was overturned, the authors say the judge’s reasoning was that Goodell presided over a kangaroo court in which he served as judge,jury and executioner.

What still isn’t known is why Goodell took such a hard line and damaged the reputation of the league and its biggest star.

One guess is that he felt pressure from the owners for giving the Patriots a slap on the wrist over Spygate. Another theory is that Goodell is incompetent and not qualified to be commissioner.

The authors do describe him as “Nixonion,” which is ironic since his father, Charles Goodell,  lost his U.S. Senate seat when Nixon went after him for breaking ranks on the Vietnam War.

The book is a good read although sloppy at times. It misspells the name of former quarterback Mark Brunell and gives an incomplete account of his first Super Bowl win. It doesn’t mentioned that Belichick used a nickel back the entire game to neutralize the Rams’ passing game and Rams coach Mike Martz was too stubborn to counter by running Marshall Faulk, who got only 17 carries.

The book has an epilogue noting the Patriots lost the Super Bowl to the Eagles after the 2017 year to end a season of more controversy about whether Kraft, Belichick and Brady were on the same page after the trading of backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.
Meanwhile, the legacy of Deflatgate will linger. It has made the players more militant and eager to take away some of Goodell’s power when the collective bargaining expires after the 2020 season. It is likely to make the negotiations even more difficult because the players are also upset at the givebacks they gave back to end the 2011 lockout.

If Goodell’s power becomes a major issue, the book is a good roadmap of how the league got to this point.

A quick look ahead at the NFL’s conference championships

Five quick takes on the NFL conference title games:

1. The coaching matchup in the Patriots-Chiefs game favors Bill Belichick, who is 29-11 in the playoffs while Reid is 12-13. In their only previous playoff meeting in the Super Bowl after the 2004 season, the Eagles were down 10 points in the fourth quarter and didn’t go to the hurry up offense. They scored a touchdown but virtually ran out their own clock and lost by three. This time, though, Reid is favored at home.

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A quick look back at the NFL’s divisional playoff round

Five quick takes looking back on the divisional round of the NFL playoffs:

1. Run the ball and stop the run. It seems so old fashioned in this passing era, but the four winners had a huge edge in rushing yardage. The Rams had a 273-50 margin, New England 155-19, the Chiefs 180-87 and the Saints 137-49.

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Jaguars should think more about cutting bait with Fournette, not coddling him

The Jacksonville Jaguars apparently don’t believe in the saying that if somebody tells you who they are, believe them.

The Jaguars apparently don’t believe that Leonard Fournette is the player who had all sorts of problems in his first two years.

They are apparently convinced they can turn Fournette’s career around when their main focus instead should be finding a new running back to carry the offense while viewing anything they get from Fournette as a bonus.

Tom Coughlin and the team’s top brass had a meeting with Fournette at the end of the year, according to a report by the NFL Network’s Ian Rappoport, to apparently clear the air and move forward.

The Jaguars also appear ready to hire veteran assistant coach Terry Robiskie, who like Fournette is from Lousiana and played at LSU, as their running backs coach to try to connect with him. Still, Robiskie has spent most  of his career as a wide receivers coach instead of a running backs coach. Connecting with Fournette will be no easy task.

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A quick look ahead at the NFL’s divisional playoff round

Five quick takes looking ahead to the NFL divisional playoff round this weekend:

1. The New Orleans Saints have the clearest path to the Super Bowl title. They are an indoor team with home field advantage in the NFC and the Super Bowl will be played indoors in Atlanta. And they beat their first foe, Philadelphia, by a 48-7 margin. But the one thing they have to worry about is the Nick Foles factor. A backup with four playoff wins on his resume as an underdog the last two years, Foles seems to have playoff magic. The Saints want to make sure he doesn’t pull one more rabbit out of the hat.

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A quick look back at the NFL’s Wild Card Weekend

Five quick takes looking back at the NFL’s Wild Card Weekend:

1. The end of the Philadelphia Eagles-Chicago Bears game will be remembered for the missed field goal, but what got overlooked is that Khalil Mack and the Bears defense coouldn’t protect the lead in the fourth quarter.

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Patricia looking like another avoidable mistake by woebegone Lions

The Detroit Lions are in the midst of a six-decade drought.

Since their last championship season in 1957, they’ve won one playoff game in 1991 and then lost the conference title game to the Washington Redskins by a 41-10 margin.

They went to the playoffs once between 1957 and 1982 and were blanked from 1999 to 2011.

They’ve had two of the worst general managers in modern times in Russ Thomas and Matt Millen.

Their best player in the last six decades, Barry Sanders, got so fed up he quit in his prime.

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A quick look at the NFL’s wild-card storylines

Five storylines for the NFL’s Wild Card Weekend:

1. The best storyline of the playoffs is Nick Foles. Can he win another Super Bowl as a backup? Probably not, but it will be fascinating to see him try and he’s got a tough game right out of the gate as an underdog on the road against the Chicago Bears defense. But then he thrived as an underdog last year and is a cool customer who doesn’t seem to get rattled no matter what the odds.

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A quick look back at the end of the NFL’s regular season

Five quick takes on the final day of the 2018 NFL regular season:

1. The biggest winner was Lamar Jackson, the fifth rookie quarterback selected on the first round last year and the only one to make the playoffs. He took advantage of his opportunity when Joe Flacco was injured as he went 6-1 and beat Cleveland Browns in finale to clinch the division title for the Baltimore Ravens. He is now the team’s quarterback of the future.

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