Category: sports

SNY NFL Draft Analyst Rick Cirminiello stops by Jets Game Plan to discuss the options for the New York Jets with the second overall selection in the 2021 NFL Draft. Should they take Oregon OT Penei Sewell, BYU QB Zach Wilson, or trade the pick?

Chargers coach Anthony Lynn is expecting a tough game against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday even though Patrick Mahomes won’t be starting.

When the NFL draft concluded back in April, it was clear what Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider were trying to find. While it’s been a mixed bag with some surprises and some disappointments, the Seahawks seem to have accomplished their goal. The group may not have the initial flash of some of Seattle’s previous draft classes, but the Seahawks found significant contributors.

The NFL expects to top one million fans in attendance this season, a substantial number given the pandemic. But the revenue loss will be in the billions.

An ESPN analyst wielded Dwayne Haskins’ release from Washington as an indictment of young, Black NFL players. Where do we even start?

Detroit Lions QB Chase Daniel, who completed 13 of 18 passes for 86 yards in relief of Stafford vs. the Bucs, could start Sunday’s season finale

The NFL has successfully navigated multiple COVID-19 outbreaks this year, without ever having to pull the pin on an 18th week. As Week 17 approaches, the league has one more regular-season challenge. With the Browns apparently in the throes of a full-blown outbreak, Sunday’s Steelers-Browns game becomes jeopardized. Unlike other weeks, however, postponing the contest [more]

The last time Mason Rudolph started a game against Cleveland, Browns defensive end Myles Garrett ended up suspended for swinging the quarterback’s own helmet at his head following the game’s antepenultimate play. Garrett was out for the rest of the 2019 season, and there have been no further incidents since his reinstatement for 2020. Rudolph [more]

Speaking with members of the media on Wednesday morning, Adam Gase denied a recent report that claimed he’s been told he won’t be returning as the Jets’ head coach next season.

Chicago was left for dead after a six-game losing streak, but now it enters Week 17 with a good shot at the playoffs. An unlikely duo has sparked the turnaround.

A couple weeks ago, the Rams looked like locks to make the playoffs. Now they’ve lost two games in a row, they’ve lost their starting quarterback to an injury, their top receiver is on the COVID-19 reserve list, and their leading rusher is on injured reserve. Rams coach Sean McVay says his team has to [more]

Matt Harmon and Dalton Del Don look back at a season of noteworthy stats and trends on the latest Fantasy Football Forecast!

The Kansas City star, who helmed an epic comeback in the Super Bowl to end the Chiefs’ 50-year title hoodoo, continues to recalibrate our expectations of what’s possible. And he’s only 25To describe Patrick Mahomes as the best player at the most important position in America’s most popular sport, which he is, somehow feels like an undersell. From the moment he took over as the first-choice quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs three years ago, Mahomes has turned the National Football League on its ear and laid waste to tired misconceptions about black passers with one record-breaking, dogma-defying performance after another. The whole piece continues to unfold with the dizzying illogic of a dream we’ve yet to wake up from.Occasionally, the Chiefs will finish a game with fewer points than their opponent. It’s become increasingly rare as their quarterback’s career has progressed – they’ve lost exactly once in 21 games over the past 416 days – but it does and can still happen. Yet Mahomes has never had a bad game as a professional. I mean take a look. He’s won 42 of his 51 career starts and put up 40, 51, 28, 31, 31, 13, 24, 32 and 32 points in the defeats. It’s hard to overstate how not normal this is. But the totality of Mahomes’ body of work has forced us to recalibrate our expectations of what’s possible on a football field.The closest thing to a bad day at the office we’ve seen from the Kansas City superstar came, fascinatingly, in the biggest game of his life. For more than three quarters in this year’s Super Bowl, he was harried, hassled and hounded by the San Francisco 49ers’ historically stingy defense. With the Chiefs trailing 20-10 and less than 12 minutes remaining, he threw behind his receiver on a crossing route for his second interception of the night. At that point, Mahomes had completed 18 of 29 passes for 172 yards and no touchdowns.But Kansas City’s defense forced the Niners to punt and Mahomes did as Mahomes does. He marshaled three straight touchdown drives in just over five minutes, swinging a double-digit deficit into a double-digit win and nailing down Kansas City’s first NFL championship since the Nixon administration. The only surprise was that we were surprised at all.But even that doesn’t fully communicate the transformative effect Mahomes has wrought, the extent to which he’s changed a notoriously stolid league for the better. It’s not just that he wins but the way he goes about it. Yes, the NFL has seen its share devil-may-care gunslingers in its 101-year history, from Sammy Baugh to Sonny Jurgensen to Dan Fouts to Brett Favre, but Mahomes’s ability to freelance and casual disregard for traditional mechanics, with no compromise in accuracy, is in a category of its own. He delivers the ball overhead, side-armed, (nearly) underhanded and even left-handed with the improvisational flair more typical of the sandlot than the NFL’s billion-dollar stadiums. Overcommit to the pass and he will beat you with his feet. There’s never been another quite like him.Next month Mahomes and the Chiefs will enter the playoffs as hot favorites to win back-to-back Super Bowl titles for the first time since the New England Patriots in the early aughts (and the first to accomplish it legally since the Denver Broncos back in the 90s). But with the standard he’s established in three short years, the outcome almost feels secondary. Mahomes has come to embody a certain boundlessness of possibility: there’s no limit to what may come with the next year, the next week, the next snap. When the dream’s this good, reality can wait.

Jets fans might have wanted their team to go 0-16 and land Trevor Lawrence, but NFL players have a strong incentive to play their best, even in a lost season.

Joe Judge has not been bashful in his support of Daniel Jones. For two weeks straight, he’s made it clear he believes the Giants have found their long-term franchise quarterback.

Despite missing multiple starters on offense, L.A. enters the week favored to win in Week 17.

King’s knee appeared to buckle as he was making a cut on a run in the second quarter.

The weekly mailbag is back with questions from Under Center fans about the resurgent Bears.

With QB Jared Goff continuing to struggle in big games like Sunday’s loss to Seattle, it’s fair to wonder if he’s the guy for L.A. going forward.

The Chiefs have been great, but they’re far from the best team against the spread this season.

Cam Newton has had a tough year.

The Detroit Lions dropped to 25th in this week’s power rankings after their blowout loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers

A look at the playing time for the Ravens players against the Giants on Sunday, as well as who produced the most with their opportunities.

Hayden Winks posts targets per game, target shares, red zone targets, deep targets, and targets over the middle for each player to recap 2020. (David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports)

What was Sean Payton thinking? What was Jon Gruden thinking? In an eventful Week 16 that culminated with a first-round draft pick going from maskless to jobless and the New England Patriots getting swept for the first time in 20 years, two of the NFL’s most seasoned coaches made decisions that had football fans scratching their heads.

It took playing games on all seven days of the week, a wide receiver starting at quarterback, numerous schedule changes and constant revisions to health and safety protocols for the NFL to reach Week 17 on time. ”Since March, the league, clubs, coaches, Players Association committed to a tremendous medically-led collaborative effort to create a safe work environment that maintained a level of acceptable equity,” NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent told The Associated Press on Monday. COVID-19 wiped out spring practices, canceled the preseason and took 2020 into uncharted territory but it didn’t stop the NFL from conducting business under the most unusual circumstances.

Dallas Cowboys offensive coordinator Kellen Moore said Monday he wants to remain focused on their playoff push as he courts interest from his alma mater, Boise State, for its head coaching position. According to Michael Gehlken of the Dallas Morning News, Moore acknowledged his affinity for Boise State while saying he wants to remain focused [more]

Cam Newton was the league’s Superman five years ago and a trendsetter for big, physical QBs. Now it’s fair to wonder if the former MVP will ever start another game.

Cam Newton can still run through defenders.

The Los Angeles Rams’ sputtering offense is the biggest culprit in their slide from the top of the NFC West to the brink of missing the playoffs. In fact, the unit is so ineffective that it’s unclear whether the injury absence of its starting quarterback and its leading rusher will hurt or help the Rams in their regular-season finale. Los Angeles (9-6), which led the division before its first two-game skid of the season, will miss the playoffs if it loses to the Cardinals and Chicago beats Green Bay.