I still remember the time I was waiting for an airport shuttle bus at a hotel outside Chicago a couple of decades ago after the NFL owners had just concluded a meeting.
The only other two people waiting were Paul Brown and his son, Mike Brown.
It was unusual to see NFL owners waiting for a shuttle bus since they usually travel by limo.
Paul Brown, though, said that wasn’t their style.
“We’re not limo people,’’ he said.
Continue reading “Cheapskate Brown family has the Bengals at a crossroads”
The NFL owners apparently can’t wait to get DeMaurice Smith back to the negotiating table.
After the players’ selection committee voted to extend Smith’s contract as the NFLPA head, league spokesman Joe Lockhart congratulated Smith (pictured) in a conference call and then talked about the 2011 negotiations.
“I think we had productive negotiations with him in 2011,’’ Lockhart said. “We believe strongly that it has worked for both parties, for owners and players.’’
Can you imagine a Major League Baseball spokesman ever making a comment like that about a deal that Marvin Miller negotiated for the baseball players?
The deal has worked out great for the football owners. The players? Not so much.
Continue reading “Looks like union will remain a paper tiger against NFL owners”
Richard Sherman of the Seattle Seahawks is a smart guy with a Stanford education, but he couldn’t have been more wrong when he said this week that the NFL’s injury reports “are for gamblers.’’
They aren’t for the gamblers. They are to prevent gamblers from getting inside information.
Sherman vented on the injury reports after he was listed questionable Sunday because he missed two practices during the week with a hamstring injury. He then played every defensive snap Sunday against the San Francisco 49ers, as he’d done for 92 consecutive games after being listed as questionable.
“I guess from what I understand the rules are for gamblers, for Vegas to make sure the odds and everything are what they are supposed to be, which is apparently what the league is concerned about when talking about injuries and things like that,” Sherman said, according to the Seattle Times. “So maybe someone should look into that, because I thought we weren’t a gambling league or were against all of those things. But our injury report is specifically to make sure the gamblers get their odds right.”
Sherman also was listed as questionable the first weekt week after being listed as questionable in Week 1 because of a thigh injury.
Continue reading “Seahawks’ Sherman ill-informed about value of injury reports”
Five observations on the second weekend of the 2017 NFL season:
1. The New England Patriots are still the New England Patriots. As expected, the loss in the opener to the Kansas City Chiefs was just a blip on their radar screen. They bounced back by thrashing the New Orleans Saints, 36-20.
The opening-game loss prompted the Boston Herald to question whether the end is near for the Patriots. Granted, Tom Brady can’t play forever, but the end doesn’t appear to be near.
The Patriots appear a lock to win the AFC East (again) and make the playoffs (again). And the Patriots showed they’re still the Patriots when they benched Super Bowl hero Malcolm Butler.
Butler still played 75 percent of the snaps, but they seemed to be sending him a message that what he did in the past doesn’t count for anything in 2017. “It’s all about this year,’’ said defensive coordinator Matt Patricia.
When an NFL team loses its first two games of the season, it always downplays the slow start and notes, among other things, that it’s a long season.
So it was not surprising that when New Orleans was one of nine teams to start off 0-2 this season, the Saints played the “long season” card.
“It’s a long season, but 0-2 doesn’t make you who you are,’’ said wide receiver Ted Ginn.
Well, in many ways it does — and the Saints know it.
They’re 1-11 in September the last four years, and this is the fourth year in a row they have started out 0-2. New Orleans finished 7-9 and missed the playoffs the previous three years.
Continue reading “NFL teams off to 0-2 starts shouldn’t kid themselves”
