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DAILY NFL NEWS CLIPS

November 12, 2020

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NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS DAILY NFL NEWS CLIPS 11/12/20

NFL ISSUES & OWNERSHIP

3 New York Times – “N.F.L. Announces the Weeknd for Its Halftime Show” By Belson, Rosman, Sisario 5 Associated Press – “Column: Half a season and a Super Bowl ahead for NFL” By Tim Dahlberg 7 ESPN – “Source: seek NFL inquiry on unmasked union rep” By Adam Teicher 8 Associated Press – “AP source: 49ers cleared of COVID-19 violations” By Josh Dubow 9 Associated Press – “Steelers trying to get a grip on their ‘virtual’ reality” By Will Graves 11 11 Minn Star Tribune – “Fans won't be allowed in U.S. Bank Stadium for the remainder of the 2020 season, Vikings say” 13 Washington Post – “Sports were a distraction from the pandemic. Now they’re being battered by it.” By Jerry Brewer 16 Wall Street Journal – “ Limps Toward the Pandemic Season’s Conclusion” By Laine Higgins 18 Tribune – “Why are there so many late afternoon NFL games this Sunday? Chalk it up to Masters in Nov.” 20 Miami Herald – “Tagovailoa versus Herbert looks like a classic in the making for years to come” By A Salguero 24 AZ Republic – “ are NFL contenders because of ” By Jeremy Cluff 26 ESPN – “For QB , return to lineup just another comeback” By John Keim 29 Washington Post – “Alex Smith is the NFL’s best story, Washington’s next few weeks are about ” 31 Wall Street Journal – “’s Dearth of Black Helps Explain Its Dearth of Black Managers” By Diamond 34 New York Times – “Sports Helped Shape Biden. But Expect a Quieter Fan in the White House.” By Jonathan Abrams 37 New York Times – “How Trump Lost Sports as a Political Strategy” By Jere Longman 40 Associated Press – “NFL announces Salute to Service Award nominees” 42 Military.com – “NFL Honors the Real Warriors With a 'Salute to Service'” By James Barber 44 FW Star-Telegram – “Charlotte Jones announced as ’ nominee for the Salute to Service Award” 45 ABC 7 News – “Local heroes get to compete with Rams players at SoFi Stadium” By Ashley Mackey

BUSINESS/MEDIA

46 Hollywood Reporter – “ESPN Shutters Esports Editorial Division” By Trilby Beresford 47 Front Office Sports – “Streaming Service FuboTV to Expand into Sports Wagering” By Torrey Hart 48 DigiDay – “‘Launching content on behalf of clients:’ How Gallery Media turned TikTok into a 7-figure business” 50 Wall Street Journal – “Social-Media Companies Took an Aggressive Stance During the Election. Will It Continue?” 53 Sports Business Daily – “Rams Sign Rocket Mortgage To Multiyear Sponsorship Deal” By Ben Fischer

FEATURES/COLUMNS

54 – “The Infinite Possibilities of ” By Greg Bishop 62 Pitt Post-Gazette – “Steelers turn to Cam Heyward for leadership on and off the field” By Gerry Dulac 64 Green Bay Press-Gazette – “Sky's the limit for Packers' prolific passing duo of and Davante Adams” 67 The Undefeated – “Shedeur Sanders says playing for dad at Jackson State will prepare him for NFL”

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N.F.L. Announces the Weeknd for Its Super Bowl Halftime Show

New York Times –– 11/12/20

By Ken Belson, Katherine Rosman and Ben Sisario

The Weeknd, the Canadian pop star, has been chosen to play the halftime show at the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., in February, a performance that may face challenges because of pandemic restrictions.

“We all grow up watching the world’s biggest acts playing the Super Bowl, and one can only dream of being in that position,” Abel Tesfaye, who is known professionally as the Weeknd, said in a statement. “I’ humbled, honored and ecstatic to be the center of that infamous stage this year.”

The selection of the 30-year-old singer is in keeping with the N.F.L.’s recent attempts to attract a wider audience by pivoting from classic rock acts dominated by white musicians to artists with large followings who are popular with younger fans and people of color.

The Weeknd has had five No. 1 hits, including “Can’t Feel My Face,” produced in part by the Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin, and “Starboy,” created with Daft Punk, the French dance- rock duo.

It will be the second Super Bowl halftime show produced in part by Jay-Z and Roc Nation. “The Weeknd has introduced a sound all his own,” Jay-Z said in a statement. “His soulful uniqueness has defined a new generation of greatness in music and artistry.”

The N.F.L. recruited Jay-Z in 2019 to help orchestrate musical performances for marquee games, most notably the Super Bowl, after artists across the music industry said they would not work with the league to show solidarity with , a former quarterback. Kaepernick began kneeling during the playing of the national anthem before games to protest police brutality and racial injustice, and has not found work in the league since 2016.

Tesfaye has publicly supported Kaepernick. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in police custody, he donated $200,000 to Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp Legal Defense Initiative, showing receipts to his 2.5 million followers. He has also been a vocal advocate for wider social justice causes. In a brief acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards in August, he said simply: “It’s really hard for me to celebrate right now and enjoy this moment, so I’m just going to say: Justice for Jacob Blake and justice for Breonna Taylor.”

The N.F.L. has scaled back its plans for the Super Bowl, on Feb. 7, because of the pandemic. Last month, the league said it was likely that only about 20 percent of the seats at Raymond James Stadium would be filled.

In most years, the halftime show is set up by hundreds of people who onto the field to build the stage. Then hundreds of fans, chosen in advance, typically out to the stage to cheer.

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The N.F.L. has not indicated how it will stage the show. , the league’s commissioner, has said the league will work within the safety guidelines established by the city of Tampa, Hillsborough County and other officials in Florida, as well as following their own protocols, which this season have included a significant reduction in the number of people allowed to be on the field before and during games.

After emerging a decade ago as a mysterious creator of brooding R&B, the Weeknd has found success as a pop artist with a dark, avant-garde edge. In the music video for his latest No. 1 hit, “Blinding Lights,” the Weeknd becomes a bruised and bloodied character in a red suit and black gloves, laughing maniacally as he dances to the song’s bright, pulsing synth-pop.

With an enigmatic stage persona, the Weeknd stands out for a high tenor with a strong Michael Jackson influence. “After Hours,” his latest , held the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s album chart for four consecutive weeks this spring. He also appears in a Mercedes-Benz commercial.

As a performer, including on TV appearances like “Saturday Night Live” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” the Weeknd has tended to favor elaborate, high-concept stage settings that can easily translate into a stadium environment.

But televised awards shows have struggled during the pandemic to capture the live performances that are usually their biggest draw. At the MTV awards, where the Weeknd was the lead performer and won video of the year for “Blinding Lights,” and at the Billboard Music Awards last month, artists appeared on soundstages without an audience. On Wednesday night, the Country Music Association Awards, in Nashville, featured a socially distanced but largely unmasked live audience that consisted mainly of the show’s performers, including Maren Morris, Eric Church and Chris Stapleton.

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Column: Half a season and a Super Bowl ahead for NFL

Associated Press –– 11/12/20

By Tim Dahlberg

It feels like another time, but it was only a few months ago that the NFL managed to pull off what seemed like a minor miracle. With Roger Goodell leading the cheers from his basement, the league conducted a virtual draft that stocked teams with new players and, more importantly, infected no one.

The actual season was always going to be harder. For that, the NFL needed a real miracle and the buy-in of everyone — including the — to clear a path to the Super Bowl in February.

Whether the title game will be played Feb. 7 in Tampa Bay still remains in question, halfway through a schedule upended at times by the coronavirus. If anyone needed a reminder the virus was in charge, they got it this week when the unbeaten put quarterback and three others on the COVID-19 list after Vance McDonald tested positive.

Equally as worrisome for the NFL, the number of people testing positive doubled this week in the league’s latest results. The new positives included 15 players and 41 other team officials.

One thing is certain: With empty or partially filled stadiums and fake crowd noise filling broadcasts, this isn’t the NFL anyone wants.

That includes the new team in Sin City, where a 5-3 start and a win over the defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs should have fans dancing on the Las Vegas Strip. If the town is excited, the Raiders seem to be the last to know.

``We can’t sense it,” Raiders coach said. ``We have played in front of empty stadiums and we don’t go anywhere. You do look forward to those times, but you really have a strange, I don’t know, experience going right now, that’s for sure.”

It’s strange all around the league, though the NFL has managed to make it through nine weeks of play, thanks to voluminous COVID-19 testing and a growing awareness among players that they don’t want to be the ones messing things up.

The league decided early on to go without a bubble like the ones that helped the NBA and NHL complete their seasons. Just testing, and lots of it, along with an underlying hope that NFL players and coaches recognized the only way there was going to be a season was if everyone behaved properly.

And now here we are, halfway through a season unlike any other. Everyone hasn’t always behaved properly and the games haven’t always gone off on schedule.

Through it all, though, the path to the Super Bowl remains open.

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“You know what? I feel like a lot of guys are going to be smart, be cautious of the situations they’re in,” Chiefs said. “And when I say that, if they go to a restaurant, wear a mask. If they go to a park, wear a mask. We’re in a pivotal moment. We need everyone.”

Still, nothing is normal, from Tom Brady under center in Tampa Bay to the COVID-19 tests that players and team officials begin almost every day with.

Meanwhile, the virus keeps spreading around the country even as some teams allow limited numbers of fans inside stadiums. How it looks may be as different in February as it was when Goodell was in his basement holding the draft in April.

To try and make it to the finish line, the NFL has a contingency plan to extend the season a week and expand the playoffs from 14 to 16 teams if teams don’t get in 16 regular-season games.

But the fact the NFL has made it this far borders on remarkable. That it administered more than a half million tests through the first week of November with only 78 players testing positive borders on incredible.

Meanwhile, enough story lines are playing out that have nothing to do with COVID-19 to keep fans interested.

The Steelers are unbeaten through eight games for the first time. The Raiders are winning in their new city. The Jets are awful, and the Giants aren’t much better.

And on Sunday night, Brady and faced off against each other in a matchup of the two greatest in the game. Brady threw three in a lopsided loss, leaving the debate still open whether he or was responsible for New England’s success over the years.

But this will always be a season overshadowed by the virus no matter what happens. This will always be the season remembered not for what happened on the field but everything that was occurring everywhere else.

Halfway through, February is clearly in sight even as the virus rages. Amazingly, the schedule is still intact and every Sunday is still filled with games.

The NFL just may get there, just like the NBA, NHL and MLB found a way to crown their champions. But there’s no guarantee, especially without a bubble. Things could quickly fall apart and no amount of contingency planning will overcome the worst-case scenario of a playoff team coming down with multiple infections.

For now, though, the NFL plays on.

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Source: Kansas City Chiefs seek NFL inquiry on unmasked union rep

ESPN –– 11/11/20

By Adam Teicher The Kansas City Chiefs asked the NFL to begin an inquiry with the players' association after a union representative held a meeting with the full team late in October without wearing a mask, ESPN's reported.

The National Football League Players Association representative was in proximity while meeting with the players, a source told Schefter. The union representative is not subject to the same COVID-19 testing as players and regularly travels among the teams, the source said.

The Chiefs have had a handful of players on the NFL's reserve/COVID-19 list this season, including wide receiver , who was placed on the list on Wednesday. Hardman is fourth on the Chiefs in receptions, with 25, and third in receiving yards (395) and (three). The Chiefs have their bye this week and next play against the Raiders in Las Vegas in Week 11.

Last week, the Chiefs put defensive lineman Chris Jones on the list, though he was activated the next day and played in Sunday's game against the Panthers. Fullback missed three games while on the COVID list but returned to play against Carolina.

The Chiefs placed a pair of practice squad players on the COVID list at different times, including defensive lineman Braxton Hoyett this week.

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AP source: 49ers cleared of COVID-19 violations

Associated Press –– 11/11/20

By Josh Dubow

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — The San Francisco 49ers have been cleared of any potential violations of the NFL’s COVID-19 protocols following a positive test from receiver Kendrick Bourne.

A person familiar with the investigation said Wednesday the league and union reviewed the 49ers and determined the team was in compliance of coronavirus protocols. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the league made no announcement.

The investigation started last week after Bourne tested positive for the coronavirus and was placed on the COVID-19 list. Teammates , Trent Williams and Deebo Samuel were also forced to miss last Thursday night’s game against Green Bay because they were determined to be “high-risk” close contacts.

The four players were then activated Friday when Bourne passed two COVID-19 tests. Bourne then tested positive again and was placed back on the list Monday but could return this week.

“It’s what you’ve heard. I mean, positive, negative, negative, positive, negative,” coach Kyle Shanahan said. “Those things happen I guess, and we’re all just dealing with it. I know it’s a weird situation with him. It kind of is weird though, with everybody in the world, not just our football players. So, we’re just trying to do the best with the protocols and hope that he gets cleared up to where it’s always negative and hopefully we can get him out of here later in the week.”

Shanahan was fined $100,000 and the team was docked $250,000 earlier this season because Shanahan didn’t properly wear his mask during a game.

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Steelers trying to get a grip on their ‘virtual’ reality

Associated Press –– 11/11/20

By Will Graves

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The vibe is the same. The jokes. The freewheeling banter.

In that way, the daily meetings for the Pittsburgh Steelers' offensive line haven’t changed a bit even with the group being forced to get together over Zoom instead of in the same room, a necessitated by the NFL's COVID-19 protocols.

Still, there is something offensive line coach Shaun Sarrett admits is lacking: the comfort in knowing he has each player's undivided attention as he tries to get a point across.

“When I am explaining something, I can’t look at the guy in the eyes,” Sarrett said Wednesday. “That’s the big thing. That’s just something we have to adapt to as coaches.”

In many ways, the NFL's first “virtual” offseason last spring prepared the Steelers for what amounts to a lockdown of sorts. Pittsburgh entered the league's “intensive” protocol last week when Baltimore defensive back received a positive test result hours after the Steelers had edged the Ravens on Nov. 1.

They will remain in the protocol this week after tight end Vance McDonald tested positive following a victory over Dallas on Sunday that pushed Pittsburgh to 8-0.

McDonald was placed on the league's COVID-19 list on Monday. Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, linebacker Vince Williams, and backup offensive lineman Jerald Hawkins joined him on the list Tuesday as a precaution after league-mandated contact tracing.

That means Hawkins is logging in from home as Sarrett fine-tunes the line's approach to facing AFC North rival Cincinnati (2-5-1) on Sunday.

Sarrett praised Hawkins for being “in tune” and stressed he has full trust that Hawkins — who is frequently used as an extra blocker in short-yardage situations — is doing everything he can to prepare for the Bengals.

It’s less than ideal. Then again, the same could be said about many things in 2020.

“We just have to move forward because come Sunday, there’s not going to be any excuses in this stuff,” Sarrett said. “The only thing people want to see is the results, the ending results, and that’s what we have to do. We have to go out and produce.”

It helps that Sarrett and the rest of the coaching staff have successfully navigated the steep technological curve that came with getting adjusted to the software required to simulate a normal teaching environment. That doesn't mean it's fun.

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Asked about the biggest difference between a normal meeting and a virtual meeting, defensive line coach Karl Dunbar laughingly suggested not being together in person messes with his players' nap schedules.

“Sometimes they be sleeping on me (in person)," Dunbar said.

Not exactly. Defensive tackle Cam Heyward pointed out there are no naps during the meetings because Dunbar's players are too busy “giving him hell.” Maybe, but Dunbar admits he misses the intimacy of being inside the same four walls with Heyward and the rest of one of the NFL's best defensive lines.

“Coaching, just like most things with football, is personal and it’s interactive,” Dunbar said. “And you don’t have that when you go virtual. But this is the only way you can do it because it’s 2020, and we have to learn how to do it.”

If anything, going virtual has brought about an even higher level of personal accountability. If Dunbar goes over something on video and you inadvertently miss it, there's no nudging of a teammate to ask for help.

“It’s tough, the virtual meetings,” Heyward said. “But I thought guys asked questions (today), continued to stay involved and then we got on the field, we were able to address the questions right then and there and then hit the field in stride.”

Still, Heyward is doing what he can to help fill in the gaps for a group that is currently missing injured veterans and . Second-year player and rookies and Carlos Davis filled in and Heyward is trying to help them get up to speed despite the restrictions.

No wonder Dunbar likens the 10-year veteran and longtime defensive captain to his unit's “Paul Revere.” Heyward smiled at the reference but stressed he's just doing his job, particularly during a season where the usual preparation methods are limited if they even exist at all.

“In this time, you’ve had to be more communicative and make sure it doesn’t just get lost in translation, we’re not just saying things,” Heyward said. "I want everything I say to be meaningful and then be able to be an outlet to the guys, whether they have concerns about what’s going on or what they're seeing on the field. And just, I’ve seen things they haven’t seen yet. If I can always lend an extra hand or point them in the right direction, I try to.”

NOTES: Alualu (knee) was limited in practice on Wednesday. ... WR JuJu Smith-Schuster (knee) and Buggs (knee) did not practice. ... DB (shoulder) and FB (hamstring) were full participants.

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No SKOL: Fans won't be allowed in U.S. Bank Stadium for the remainder of the 2020 season, Vikings say

Minneapolis Star Tribune –– 11/11/20

By Rochelle Olson

You're going to have to wait until next year, fans — not in terms of winning games, but attending them.

The Vikings blew the whistle Wednesday on their hopes of bringing fans back to U.S. Bank Stadium during the 2020-21 season. Rising COVID-19 infection rates forced the call.

"Closing the final four home games to fans is the right decision to help protect our community," the team said in a statement released Wednesday morning.

With virus infections surging across much of the country, the Vikings didn't have much choice. Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday imposed new restrictions on gatherings in bars, restaurants and even homes to contain the fast-spreading virus that has left Twin Cities metro area hospitals with fewer than two dozen available intensive-care beds.

So the Vikings will continue as they have for much of the season, allowing only the allotted 250 friends and family members into the games to sit socially distanced in the southwestern section of a stadium that can accommodate 67,200 fans.

The Vikings aren't the only team forced to keep fans out. The announced Monday that fans wouldn't be allowed at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., for the remainder of the season.

Teams in states with bigger stadiums or looser restrictions have been able to get thousands inside, but no one is playing before capacity crowds.

"While we have worked hard to develop a safe and responsible plan to bring back a limited number of fans, our decisions have been based on medical guidance with public health as the top priority," the Vikings' statement said.

Early on, Walz said that letting fans return to large indoor sports and concert venues would be among the final steps in the pandemic recovery. U.S. Bank Stadium may feature giant doors, a translucent roof and a state-of-the-art air filtration system, but it's still an indoor venue.

Vikings staffers spent months devising elaborate plans to segregate the stadium into seven self- contained pods, each with its own concessions and restrooms.

Tickets would have assigned entry times and designated gates, and fans would have to remain within their pod. There were to be sanitizing stations every few steps and plenty of ushers strictly enforcing masking and social distancing.

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But now it's wait until next year and see whether those plans get dusted off or scrapped. While the Vikings said they "look[ed] forward to welcoming fans back next season" to U.S. Bank Stadium, they acknowledged the return of fans to the stadium in 2021 wasn't a sure thing.

In the meantime, the team encouraged fans to "take the necessary precautions ... by wearing face coverings, practicing proper social distancing and limiting social gatherings."

The Vikings play Monday night at Soldier Field in Chicago, another city with new virus restrictions, before returning to Minneapolis to host the Dallas Cowboys on Nov. 22, the on Nov. 29, the on Dec. 6 and the Bears on Dec. 20.

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Sports were a distraction from the pandemic. Now they’re being battered by it.

Washington Post –– 11/12/20

By Jerry Brewer

Most of the time, Greg Sankey is so dry he can make a desert jealous. The SEC commissioner has an understated personality, and in his blustering athletic conference, that can create a soothing effect. But there is no calm way to normalize this week in college football.

Follow the latest on Election 2020 “I’m certainly shaken, but not deterred,” Sankey said during a media conference call Wednesday, reacting to the four SEC games postponed because of struggles to contain the novel coronavirus.

There’s a candidate for phrase of the year: Shaken, but not deterred.

Sankey wasn’t speaking for all sports, but he could have been. As covid-19 keeps plundering our bodies and spirit, it feels like sports have reached a point of no return. They won’t quit on their own, not without a municipal directive. Perhaps they think they can’t stop, considering how money influences risk assessment. “Shaken, but not deterred” also means “This is bad, but we won’t turn back.”

During normal times, there is little more inspiring than watching athletes ratchet up the determination. Right now, however, it feels desperate and dangerous. It’s understandable, too — and expected. Over the past few months, there have been just enough examples of leagues showing the resolve and creativity to survive, to complete seasons and crown champions. In professional and major college athletics, significant television revenue rewards such persistence. So college football is going to forge ahead. The NFL is even more of a freight train.

After canceling the NCAA tournament in March, college must manufacture a full 2020-21 season. Even though the NBA and NHL found a way to finish their seasons safely about five minutes ago, those leagues will be back soon, hoping to salvage what they can of their new seasons rather than bide their time until a vaccine emerges or simply wait for the current, petrifying wave to slow down.

Sankey admitted to being “troubled” by the outbreaks in the SEC. The pandemic is in a ferocious groove now, punishing the country with record numbers of cases each day and raising the death total to more than 240,000 Americans. It’s no wonder the SEC is having trouble, no wonder Maryland won’t be able to play Ohio State in the Big Ten, no wonder can’t get its season started in the Pac-12. The college basketball season is supposed to begin in two weeks, but Miami and Stetson already called off a game, and two other programs, Seton Hall and Minnesota, announced they were pausing activities.

“What America has to understand is that we are about to enter covid hell,” said Michael T. Osterholm, an adviser to President-elect Joe Biden and the director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, during a CNBC interview. “It is happening.”

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We may be en route to hell, but the International Olympic Committee expressed confidence this week that some fans would be allowed at the rescheduled Olympics in July. The sports world remains a utopia of optimism and tunnel vision.

Of course, hope means nothing to this coronavirus. It can be defeated only by science, and for now, the best defense is diligence about wearing masks social distancing and following health protocols. Sports have set a decent example. But as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said recently, “Ninety percent [compliance] is not good enough in this environment.” And it’s a tall order to ask large groups of people to grade out better than 90 percent at anything.

It was a worthwhile reset for most major sports to take a break from mid-March to late July. They learned plenty about the virus, and time helped the NBA, WNBA and NHL develop bubble concepts to complete their seasons. Other enterprises figured out some best practices, too.

But since then, you’ve seen the problems with waiting. The nation has neither developed a uniform strategy nor agreed to adhere to the simplest measures to protect each other. Now, the virus is out of control.

For leagues determined to play, it seems best not to delay. In hindsight, the Big Ten and Pac-12 should’ve tried to stay on schedule instead of initially opting to delay until the new year, only to change their minds to keep up with their peers. Now, they’re late to the party and experiencing the same issues as programs that started in September. The difference is, they’re at a competitive disadvantage trying to cram in their seasons before the scheduled start of the .

Consider what the NBA is doing, rushing back to play by Christmas after just finishing a season that lasted into October. Why not wait and hold out hope for a vaccine? The NBA pondered that approach, but it wasn’t a television ratings hit to stage a summer playoff that spilled into the start of the NFL season. With the Olympics looming next summer, the NBA is motivated get back to a more traditional timeline.

And the league would rather be desperate in the moment than desperate down the road. Again, it’s understandable. But if this period winds up being pandemic hell, how do you play three basketball games a week, without a bubble, and prevent the season from becoming a nightmare of positive cases and postponements?

In introducing the bubble concept, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in June, “My ultimate conclusion is that we can’t outrun the virus, and that this is what we’re going to be living with for the foreseeable future.” So he created a force field. And it worked. But it would be imprudent (if not impossible) to stage an entire 72-game regular season and playoffs in that environment.

Instead, the NBA will do the exact thing that has left every other sport and league, well, troubled. It will ask players, coaches and team personnel to be extraordinarily disciplined, and they will do their best, and the cases will persist.

Even though we’re used to this by now, it’s never going to feel normal. Or right. Or safe and manageable. It just isn’t. And while die-hard sports fans are relieved to have their games, this reality does inhibit some of the joy of watching.

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It seems most have compartmentalized the moral dilemma. But it’s a queasy kind of fun, isn’t it? Just not queasy enough to want it to end.

Everyone is shaken, but not deterred.

Everyone is troubled.

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College Football Limps Toward the Pandemic Season’s Conclusion

Wall Street Journal –– 11/11/20

By Laine Higgins

Louisiana State’s biggest football game each year is against Alabama, its neighbor. With this year’s game approaching on Saturday, however, the defending national champion Tigers didn’t look fit to play. Pandemic-season protocols and an outbreak following a Halloween party had left LSU with just one scholarship quarterback and zero tight ends or long snappers.

So on Tuesday, the game was canceled. It was the latest victim of the war of attrition that the coronavirus has waged on college football, where dwindling rosters and coaches exiled by their positive test results have become commonplace. As the season enters what should be its home stretch, the disruptions are reaching a zenith.

Things look particularly bad in the SEC. On Monday alone, Arkansas coach Sam Pittman tested positive; No. 5 A&M paused workouts after finding two cases; Mississippi State fell below the threshold of available scholarship players needed to play and postponed its game against Auburn until Dec. 12; and LSU announced its coronavirus cluster.

More chaos followed on Tuesday, one of three weekdays that conference conducts midweek coronavirus tests. Auburn found 12 cases within its program and halted practices and Texas A&M postponed its game against Tennessee to Dec. 12. LSU also called off its game against the Crimson Tide.

Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz admitted that his team was also having issues with Covid-19, and by Wednesday their game against Georgia had been postponed. All told, four of the SEC’s seven games this weekend are off.

Coronavirus has forced the SEC to call audibles before—last month the league rescheduled six games involving seven teams following an outbreak of 37 cases at Florida, including coach Dan Mullen, that sidelined the No. 6 Gators for nearly two weeks. Commissioner Greg Sankey had built extra bye weeks into the modified 10-game schedule to allow for such changes on the fly.

But LSU’s predicament brought the flexible slate to its breaking point, mainly because the Tigers already filled their open date on Dec. 12 with Florida. There simply aren’t enough Saturdays left to schedule Alabama, which could put the series on hiatus for the first time since 1963. The SEC stopped just short of declaring the game “no contest,” saying instead that “the opportunity to reschedule the Alabama at LSU game will need to be evaluated.”

“While it is unfortunate to have multiple postponements in the same week, we began the season with the understanding interruptions to the schedule were possible,” said Sankey on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Maryland canceled its game against No. 2 Ohio State and paused workouts indefinitely due to “an elevated number of COVID-19 cases within the Terrapins program.” The

16 university did not say how many athletes tested positive this week, though Maryland has recorded 10 positive cases among all sports since Sept. 30.

The schedule is slowly disintegrating on the West Coast as well, albeit for entirely different reasons. Two of the six games on the Pac-12’s opening weekend were declared no contest and two more this Saturday are in jeopardy.

Among the major conferences, the Pac-12 arguably has the most rigorous testing protocol in place with daily antigen testing supplied by Quidel Corp. However, there are as many directives for contact tracing as there are Pac-12 universities. That’s why one football player testing positive at California triggered the cancellation of the Bears’ Nov. 7 season opener against Washington, while Stanford, located about 50 miles away, still played Oregon even though starting quarterback and two others were out due to “Covid-19 protocols.”

Stanford had to move its training camp from university facilities to Woodside High School in nearby San Mateo County, where restrictions on large gatherings are looser than in Santa Clara County, where Palo Alto is located. The city of Berkeley, home to Cal, handles contact tracing for the football team and requires that all close contacts must isolate for 14 days following their exposure regardless of whether they receive multiple, consecutive negative test results. Coach Justin Wilcox didn’t realize that one positive result would send his entire defensive line into quarantine.

“We all know that there’s a high number of positive tests and a risk for the community and spread within our team,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “What we’re having a hard time understanding is the process that led us to this point.”

It’s unclear whether Cal will be ready for this weekend’s game against Arizona State, though Wilcox insists he is planning to play.

Utah did not play last week after having fewer than 53 scholarship players available and could face a similar predicament this weekend. The Pac-12 shifted their game against UCLA from Friday to Saturday evening and Utes coach Kyle Whittingham said his team had no new cases over the weekend. Still, UCLA coach isn’t certain his team will have a game to play come Saturday.

“This is really an hour to hour thing. That’s just this disease,” he said of Covid-19 on Monday. His hesitation stems in part from how he spent his September and October: “Just a few short weeks ago we didn’t even know if we were going to have a season.”

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Why are there so many late afternoon NFL games this Sunday? Chalk it up to the Masters in November.

Chicago Tribune –– 11/12/20

By Phil Rosenthal

Augusta National’s autumnal Masters this week will lead to an NFL Sunday like no other from a TV standpoint.

Plan on “Brunch with Bryson” and lots of late afternoon football.

(We’re just guessing U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau will be in contention for the green jacket, and the alliteration worked. Could also be “Doughnuts with Dustin,” “Toast with Tiger,” “Rashers with Rory” or “Java with Jon, Jordan and Justin.” You get the idea.)

Don’t be surprised if “60 Minutes” and the rest of the CBS prime-time lineup of “NCIS: ,” “NCIS: ” and “NCIS” start late. Set your DVR accordingly.

Let’s see if we can answer your questions in the meantime.

How many late afternoon NFL games will there be? Six — three on CBS at 3:05 p.m. CST and three on Fox at 3:25.

That’s a lot? It’s unusual for there to be more late afternoon games than noon starts, and there are only five early games, all on Fox.

Why does that matter to me? It might not. Fox still will carry two games and CBS one in your local market.

If you have the NFL Sunday Ticket or RedZone packages, the day’s rhythm might feel different.

Fantasy football players might sense the shift more acutely. It will affect the flow of statistics, as more numbers will come in later.

When is the final round of the Masters on TV? It’s slotted for 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Chicago’s CBS-2. If the goes longer, there’s an hour cushion until the network’s NFL games start.

Weather delays could cause problems, obviously, but the forecast as of midweek suggests that won’t be an issue.

Why is this happening, again? You know why. It’s 2020. The Masters moved from April to November because of the pandemic. COVID-19 precautions are also the reason there will be no spectators.

Which game will be carried on CBS-2?

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The (7-2) at the Arizona Cardinals (5-3) is set for 3:05 p.m. and Charles Davis will be on the call with reporter Evan Washburn.

Wait, if is working the Masters, which CBS NFL game will work this weekend and with whom? None and no one. Romo, the highest-paid NFL analyst in history, is getting a bye week.

Which games will air on Fox-32? Fox-32 is treating the Chicago market to the Jacksonville Jaguars (1-7) at the (6-2) at noon with , Greg Jennings, and reporter Jennifer Hale.

More than half of the country is getting the (6-3) at the Carolina Panthers (3-6), but who doesn’t want to see the 1-7 Jaguars? Blame it on area Packers fans.

The late Fox game locally will be the San Francisco 49ers (4-5) visiting the (6-2). It will be great to hear new Bulls announcer Adam Amin on play-by-play (joined by and ), but the (6-2) at the (5- 3) might be a better game.

Who has the Bears and when? Don’t worry about it. The play host to the Minnesota Vikings on ESPN’s “” at 7:15 p.m. In the Chicago market, it also will be on WCIU-26.

So, just to be thorough, which games are at noon Sunday on Fox? Besides Jaguars-Packers and Bucs-Panthers, there’s the Texans (2-6) at the (5-3), Washington (2-6) at the (3-5) and the Eagles (3-4-1) at the (2-7).

What about at 3:05 p.m. on CBS? In addition to Bills-Cardinals, CBS has the Broncos (3-5) at the Las Vegas Raiders (5-3) and the (2-6) at the (5-3).

And the 3:25 p.m. Fox games? There’s the (2-5-1) at the Pittsburgh Steelers (8-0) in addition to 49ers- Saints and Seahawks-Raiders.

‘Rashers with Rory’? Really? Hey, they can’t all be gems. Just roll with it. Stock up on snacks and beverages, get comfy and settle in for a long day in front of the TV.

19

Tagovailoa versus Herbert looks like a classic in the making for years to come

Miami Herald –– 11/11/20

By Armando Salguero

First it was and .

Then it was Tua Tagovailoa or Justin Herbert.

On Sunday it will be Tua Tagovailoa versus Just Herbert.

That’s the way it’s been since the 2019 college football season when it became clear the Miami Dolphins would evaluate two of the most talented quarterbacks entering the 2020 NFL draft.

The Dolphins knew they’d have to evaluate both, pick one, then ultimately watch their choice compete against the guy they didn’t select.

So these two quarterbacks on opposite ends of the country are bonded in a very obvious way now. And that’s how it will continue for a long time because fate, fans and the media will see to it these quarterbacks will often be mentioned together.

“I think that’s just something that’s going to have to be dealt with in the media,” Tagovailoa said Wednesday. “I have no animosity towards Justin Herbert and for me, it’s not even a competition between me and him. It’s a competition for myself to go out and see what I can do to help our team be successful against their defense.

“And I’m pretty sure it’s the same for Justin as well. But yeah, that’s kind of my thought with all of that.”

That’s fine. But the rest of the world will compare Tagovailoa’s development to Herbert’s.

Compare the two quarterbacks’ statistics.

Compare their Super Bowl wins or the lack thereof.

There’s no denying it’s going to happen because it’s been happening forever. Just ask Dolphins great because he, , and the other quarterbacks from that amazing 1983 draft class, spent their careers being compared to other classmates they both befriended and competed against.

The same thing happened to the quarterbacks of the 2004 draft because for a long time and Phillip Rivers were tied together by that epic trade while Ben Roethlisberger came up behind and did some amazing things of his own.

All this comparison and rivalry applies for better or worse.

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Because for every Marino and Elway Hall of Fame induction, there has also been the , Robert Griffin III, Ryan Tannehill type of results.

You know the ones: Where Luck goes into a surprising early retirement, Griffin III becomes a perennial backup, Tannehill rides a roller coaster career, and the best quarterback of the class ends up being the guy selected in the third round -- .

So fair or not, like it or not, quarterback comparisons are a thing.

And that’s where Tagovailoa, selected No. 5 overall in the 2020 draft, and Herbert, selected No. 6 overall, step into the spotlight.

On Sunday their teams will play as the Dolphins host the Los Angeles Chargers. And for the next whatever-number-of-years these two play professional football, one will be measured against the other.

(Yes, , too but he and the Cincinnati Bengals will be busy elsewhere on Sunday).

“I think you always look at the quarterback matchup as one of those keys to victories,” Herbert said Wednesday. “But overall, I think it’s more important how the offense and defense play. And so I think it’s the bigger picture that’s more important.

“Personally, I just look at it as a matchup each week. I worry about the team we’re playing. It’s always great to keep up with those guys, but I think it’s more important to beat the guys you’re playing against -- whether it’s the Raiders or it’s the Broncos, that’s the matchup you’re looking forward to.”

Neither Herbert nor Tagovailoa is saying anything remotely suggestive that any rivalry exists between them. That’s a savvy veteran thing to do during game week.

And it’s fitting because both have launched their careers playing pretty much like veterans.

Herbert has turned heads in his seven games. He’s third in the NFL, averaging 306.6 yards per game. His of 104.7 ranks him ninth in the league.

And although he really hasn’t had a stinker game yet, his first two outings in which he threw two touchdowns and two interceptions combined were probably his least impressive.

He’s thrown 15 touchdowns and three interceptions in the last five games.

“He’s a very good player,” Dolphins coach Brian Flores said. “He’s talented, big arm, athletic. He was very smart in the meetings when we spent time with him, so that’s not surprising. It’s not surprising at all that he’s having success.”

Tagovailoa sat all of September and October so he has only two starts to his credit. But his first two games were actually better than Herbert’s first two outings on a couple of fronts.

Tagovailoa has three touchdowns passes without an . His only turnover was a against the Los Angeles Rams. Tagovailoa’s passer rating is 103.8. And there was obvious growth from the first game to the second, suggesting significant improvement is being made.

21

“Yeah, start one to start two, I would say we were able to push the ball downfield a lot more,” Tagovailoa said. “We were able to get into a groove offensively with the pass game as well as the run game, but I think there’s just continuations of what you can improve on and I think that’s the best thing and that’s the best way to go about it.

“If you feel like there’s nothing else you can improve on, then that’s not good.”

Both players are working on their craft. Both are trying to develop because neither is a finished product.

But based on how well both have begun their careers, it would be awesome if these guys become the next generation’s version of Tom Brady and Drew Brees. And, yes, throw in Burrow as , too.

“They are both very good quarterbacks,” Flores said. “Both smart, both (have) good leadership qualities, intangibles. They both have good arms, both are accurate. Obviously two good players.”

That’s all true, but let’s not lose sight of the fact, the Dolphins preferred Tagovailoa. They obviously had a choice of the two players and believed Tagovailoa would be a better fit and a better player for them.

The Dolphins arguably did as much pre-draft work on Herbert as they did on Tagovailoa but the idea that he was not Miami’s choice doesn’t seem to bother Herbert. At least he doesn’t let on that it does.

“There were a lot of meetings so I wish I remembered more of what really happened but it was such a blur over a couple of weeks so I did my best, but I’m focused on this week of practice,” Herbert said.

“I didn’t really have any control over the situation so I didn’t get too much involved with the draft process. So I was kind of away from that.”

While Herbert stays away from the draft issue as best he can, Tagovailoa freely discusses the biggest issue which haunted him through the draft process -- his November 2019 hip injury and the ensuing questions about his recovery and future durability.

It’s been almost one year since that injury which changed Tagovailoa forever.

“Oh, man. I don’t know if I’ll ever be my old self because when something dramatic like that happens – it’s just a continuous process I think for me,” Tagovailoa said “Just continuing to focus on what I need to do to continue to strengthen the muscles around my hip and so forth and just continue to stay on rehab.

“It’s been a journey. It’s just been a journey just looking back at that whole process. Literally almost a year from now, we’re making a decision to decide if I was going to be able to play again or not. I’m just blessed to be here.”

22

It should be noted Tagovailoa and Herbert haven’t been able to really develop a significant relationship. They spoke only briefly at the February NFL Combine and one imagines they’ll meet up again on Sunday for a couple of minutes.

“A little bit,” Herbert said. “We weren’t in the same group so we didn’t get a chance to get together at the combine but I did say hello and we got a chance to talk to him a little bit.

“Tua’s been a really great guy to watch. He’s been fun to watch. He’s had so much success over the past couple of years that it’s been great to watch him and all the things he’s done. Really looking forward to playing against him this week and saying, ‘Hi.’”

Watching both players on the same NFL field for the first time and comparing how they perform should be fascinating. They should probably get comfortable with the idea of being mentioned in the same paragraph.

Because it’s going to be that way for a long time.

23

Arizona Cardinals are NFL contenders because of quarterback Kyler Murray

AZ Republic –– 11/11/20

By Jeremy Cluff

A lot of people expected Kyler Murray to be have a good second season with the Arizona Cardinals.

Just not this good.

The quarterback is turning heads with his performances each week, earning a lot of praise in the process.

The quarterback has rushed for 543 yards on the season on just 76 attempts (7.1 yards per carry), ranking eighth among all NFL players in rushing yards.

His eight rushing touchdowns tie him for third in rushing touchdowns in the league.

As for passing the ball, Murray's 2,130 yards rank 12th in the league. He has completed 68.1% of his throws, which ranks ninth in the league.

His 16 passes tie him for 11th in the league.

Touchdown Wire's Mark Schofield recently wrote about how the Cardinals are contenders this season because of Murray's growth.

He wrote: "Just like the Los Angeles Rams, the Arizona Cardinals saw a chance at a win dashed by the Miami Dolphins. While the Rams got blown out, the Cardinals played a bit more conservative down the stretch than their fans might have liked, leading to a three-point loss when a last-minute field goal was missed. In the loss, however, quarterback Kyler Murray dazzled. He accounted for over 300 yards from scrimmage and four touchdowns, and did not throw an interception. He has shown growth this season – aided in part by the acquisition of DeAndre Hopkins – and the Cardinals are closing in on a winning record for the first time since 2015. But are they contenders? Verdict: Contenders That’s right, out of the two NFC West teams we are going to look at, I’m buying the Cardinals and not the Rams. – prior to this past Sunday – has been one of the more forward thinkers this season in terms of scheming up defensive designs. It was surprising that he did not force a mistake or two from Tua Tagovailoa, but that might tell us more about the rookie quarterback than the Cardinals defense. What works in Arizona’s favor, beyond the growth from Murray, is the schedule. The Rams have to play Seattle twice, while Arizona has already beaten the Cardinals. That could play a role. Then there is this: The ability of Murray to change games with his legs is an X- Factor that defenses cannot gameplan for. If you him, or if you try a scrape-exchange to stop some of their option looks, he will find a way to beat you. That is going to give them an edge that the Rams cannot put on the field."

Schofield isn't the only writer to rave about Murray's performance this season.

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Touchdown Wire's Doug Farrar recently wrote that Murray was a secret superstar in the NFL.

He wrote: "It can be said that Murray did everything he possibly could to put his Cardinals ahead of the Dolphins in what became a 34-31 loss — it’s just that Tua Tagovailoa did a little bit more, especially as the game got real near the end. Still, that wasn’t Murray’s fault. In fact, he became the first quarterback in NFL history to throw more than 25 times in a game, complete more than 80% of his passes, have a quarterback rating of more than 150… and lose the game. That’s also another big “L” for the KORTERBACK WINZ crowd, but we digress. In any event, Murray is playing as well as can be expected; the only issue he has right now is that he can’t also play defense. Murray and the Cardinals have another formidable AFC East test this Sunday against the Bills."

Pro Football Talk's Chris Simms raved about Murray this week.

"Kyler is amazing," Simms said. "He is such a game-changer, a phenomenal talent. His skill set alone makes defenses have to do things they don't want to do. That's the beauty of him. And he is crazy competitive. I'll share this, he did an interview with my father (former New York Giants quarterback ) last week and somehow they got on to talking about ping pong and Kyler said 'I'll take you down', right away. It's all I ever hear about the guy. Who wins in a race, or Kyler Murray? If it's 50 yards or longer, I think I'd take Jackson, but 50 yards or shorter, I'd take Murray."

Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio said there's never been a quarterback like Murray.

"He strikes fear into every defender; you have to constantly be aware," Florio said. "Think of the stress; you have to worry about this guy that no-one can catch deciding to run. Good luck trying to stop him. It's uncanny. Usually what happens is, you bring this great skillset from the college level and you get smacked down onto the ground because you can't run away from the guys like you used to - they're all fast enough to get you in the NFL. Murray is that 'once in a generation' guy. Speed, agility and, most importantly, awareness. There has never been a quarterback like him. had the speed and agility, not the awareness; Lamar Jackson has the speed and agility, not the awareness. He is so much fun to watch."

ESPN's Ryan Clark created a bit of a stir Wednesday when he said he'd pick Kyler Murray over Lamar Jackson.

"If Kyler Murray, right now, was the quarterback of the , we'd have much more confidence in them to win the Super Bowl."

Fansided's Leigh Oleszczak wrote that Murray is a dark horse candidate for MVP with his insane numbers.

She wrote: "He’s rushed for more yards than guys like , Alvin Kamara, and Aaron Jones through the first nine weeks of the season. While that could obviously change, a quarterback having more rushing yards than three of the best running backs in the league is telling of how good of a runner Murray is. While Murray isn’t in the MVP conversation, he could most definitely be a dark horse candidate there for what he’s been able to do this year. Finishing the season with 1,000 rushing yards is a real possibility for Murray and he’s already thrown for 2,130 yards and 16 touchdowns. He’s a budding young star and the Arizona Cardinals are going to be competitive for a long time because of that."

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For Washington Football Team QB Alex Smith, return to lineup just another comeback

ESPN –– 11/12/20

By John Keim

ASHBURN, Va. -- During a videoconference with military veterans at Walter Reed Medical Center on Tuesday, Washington Football Team quarterback Alex Smith revealed the mindset during his recovery that also has shaped his pro career.

"Try to be as positive as possible," he told the assembled viewers. "We all have our dark days. ... It's tough. Everybody knows some days are great and some days are really, really tough and frustrating."

That also describes his career in the NFL. Since entering the league in 2005 as the No. 1 overall pick by the San Francisco 49ers, Smith has been cast aside, counted out and survived. He has been labeled a bust, made the , been traded twice, injured several times and viewed as an inspiration.

Now he'll make his first start Sunday at the Detroit Lions (1 p.m. ET, Fox) since the worst day of his career: Nov. 18, 2018, when he broke the fibula and tibia in his right leg.

It's the toughest thing he has had to overcome -- by far -- but not the only obstacle.

While some players have a linear path to success, Smith's has looked more like a river on a road map -- meandering here and there but always flowing forward.

Here's how all of that has unfolded in his career:

The early years Smith struggled for most of his first three seasons with the 49ers, with flashes of promise his second year -- his one season under offensive coordinator Norv Turner. As a rookie, Smith did not win the starting job out of training camp but took over in Week 5. A week later he suffered a knee injury against Washington. By the season's end, he played in nine games but threw one touchdown to 11 interceptions.

After a better sophomore season -- 16 touchdowns, 16 interceptions -- injuries and poor play were again the story. His first three seasons looked like this statistically: 30 starts, 19 touchdowns, 31 interceptions. His total QBR of 35.4 was the worst among quarterbacks with at least 30 games played between 2005 and 2007.

It was not a good start. Smith was on his way toward wearing the bust label.

Shoulder injury Smith's fortunes did not improve in 2008, when he injured his surgically repaired shoulder and missed the season. Then, in 2009, journeyman beat him for the starting job. But Smith reemerged and started the final 10 games, playing the best ball of his young career -- 18

26 touchdowns, 12 interceptions. Once again, he became the quarterback of the 49ers' future -- and he was only 25 years old.

The benching In 2012, following the best 25-game stretch of his career -- 30 touchdowns, 10 interceptions -- Smith suffered a concussion. And that all but ended his days as a starter in San Francisco. Colin Kaepernick, a second-round pick in 2011, emerged in Smith's absence, and coach Jim Harbaugh stuck with Kaepernick after Smith had recovered.

As Kaepernick led the 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII -- a loss against Baltimore -- Smith could only wonder what would have happened had he continued starting. He helped Kaepernick behind the scenes, but the end was coming for Smith in San Francisco.

Trade No. 1 San Francisco traded Smith to the Kansas City Chiefs during the 2013 offseason, receiving two second-round picks. The move certainly paid off for Smith and the Chiefs. He was the NFL's 13th-rated quarterback in Total QBR during this stretch (among quarterbacks with 50 or more starts), and he threw a combined 103 touchdowns to 33 interceptions.

But the Chiefs traded up to select in the 2017 draft. Behind the scenes Smith tutored Mahomes, and Smith was in the MVP discussion in 2017 when he had career highs in passing yards (4,042) and TDs (26) with five interceptions. There was all sorts of talent on that offense, and Smith had elevated his game under coach . However, it was clear to all that Smith's days were numbered in Kansas City.

Trade No. 2 With Washington wanting to move on from pending free agent Kirk Cousins, the franchise traded a third-round pick and to the Chiefs for Smith in 2018. It wasn't a smooth transition for Smith; there was frustration on his end, along with the coaches, because of the pace of progress in this offense and what he was being asked to do.

But he excelled at taking care of the ball, and that, in part, helped Washington to a 6-3 record entering a Week 11 game against the . Washington was not a powerhouse, but it was playing better and leading the NFC East by two games.

Leg injury For all the ups and downs of Smith's career, nothing came close to what happened on Nov. 18, 2018.

On a sack by Houston's J.J. Watt, Smith suffered the devastating injury. This is what followed: 17 surgeries to remove an infection, near amputation and a two-year battle to return to the starting lineup. At times he could barely walk; he needed an external fixator on his injured leg for eight months. Playing again did not seem like a realistic option for most of his recovery -- until he started to make bigger strides in the spring.

Even this summer, members of the organization, while cheering him on, did not factor him into the team's plans. But he was cleared to return before training camp began. Then Smith convinced the team to not put him on injured reserve before the final cuts and keep him on the roster.

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His recovery was met with admiration and doubt every step of the way. It led to an inspirational story. And after opening the season as the No. 3 quarterback, he tasted his first game action since his injury in a Week 5 loss against the Los Angeles Rams.

"It's about embracing what life brings at you," Smith told the veterans Tuesday. "The good, the bad and the in-between."

Now, at age 36, he's back in the starting lineup.

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Alex Smith is the NFL’s best story, Washington’s next few weeks are about Dwayne Haskins

Washington Post –– 11/11/20

By Les Carpenter

Alex Smith might be the NFL’s best story right now, but inside the Washington Football Team these next few weeks are as much about Dwayne Haskins as they are about the quarterback who was never supposed to be here again.

Smith is a football miracle. The moment he stepped on a field this season he became the obvious choice for comeback player of the year. When he starts Washington’s game Sunday in Detroit, he will be the only reason the nation pays attention to this team as the man who nearly died, whose leg was gutted by 17 surgeries, who wasn’t ever going to walk normally again, much less play a football game.

And yet his start Sunday is very much an experiment. Smith is 36, with a right leg that will never look completely normal, and no one knows what he has to give this team. His return feels like a week-to-week pursuit in which breaths are held each time he gets hit. For a team trying to win a broken NFC East and figure out who will be its quarterback for the next few years, he is an unknown.

Which is what makes Haskins so important now. He is Smith’s backup following the season- ending injury to , just weeks after he was benched as the starter and dropped to third string for inconsistent play and practice habits.

“He’s got the skill set,” Washington Coach Ron Rivera said this week. “I’m telling you, the arm is legit.”

This is Haskins’s time. Not in the games but away from the cameras, on the practice fields and in the halls of the team’s practice facility. If Smith is getting a second chance at football after a devastating leg injury appeared to take his career away, Haskins is getting another opportunity after a very public demotion.

While a person with knowledge of the situation said the coaching staff was irritated with Haskins for not arriving at the building early, arriving late to some meetings and not preparing enough for games — leading to on-field mistakes — Rivera also did not want to give up on him. Two people familiar with the situation said Rivera was not interested in trading Haskins, hoping instead that his second-year quarterback would take the benching as a challenge.

Rivera often likes to see how people around the team handle difficult situations, sometimes using the word “test.” It’s hard not to view these past few weeks as a sort of test for Haskins, a chance to gauge whether he will grasp the habits the staff is asking him to adopt.

Much of the problem for Haskins and Washington is that Haskins started only one season at Ohio State and didn’t come to the NFL with the same understanding of game preparation as college quarterbacks who started for two or three years. Both of the coaching staffs Haskins has played for with Washington have encouraged him to study the examples of veteran

29 quarterbacks who have been on the team in that time, such as Smith, Kyle Allen, Colt McCoy and .

But those examples haven’t always been easy for Haskins to follow, multiple people familiar with his time in the NFL have said. They describe a player who is bright and cares and wants to be good. Some theorize that because he’s always been one of the most talented players wherever he has been, the obsessive preparation NFL quarterbacks must put in each week has not come naturally to him.

There are signs that things have changed. While Haskins was described as being devastated by the demotion, he began coming to the facility early and doing extra work in the weight room. In recent days, Rivera has said Haskins has worked harder in practice, maximizing reps in drills that the quarterback hadn’t before. This week, the coach seemed happy that Haskins would get to see Smith — a quarterback long regarded as one of the league’s most diligent workers — preparing for games.

“It’s something that some guys grow and develop and understand how important it is,” Rivera said this week when asked whether players can learn how to prepare for games. “A lot of times, guys will rely on their great talent. That talent will get you by for a while, but there’s a point in everybody’s career where everything catches up to talent. The only thing that separates it are the guys that work the hardest.”

One person with knowledge of the situation said a big reason Rivera didn’t want to trade Haskins is that the coach believes he can work with the quarterback — not only in the second half of this year but in the offseason as well. Haskins is, after all, a first-round pick, not even halfway through his rookie contract. Unless traded or released, he will be a part of the team for at least two more seasons.

“The question we have to answer as coaches: ‘Is our franchise quarterback here, is he on the roster, is he being developed, or is he somewhere else?’” Rivera said.

Who knows how long Smith can continue his most improbable of comebacks. No one can assume he will last the season, let alone be counted upon for next year or the year after. But after what had to be a humiliating demotion, Haskins is still here, a step away from being the starter again. What happens now, behind the scenes, could say a lot about his own Washington comeback. One that might have seemed as unimaginable as Smith’s just a few weeks ago.

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Baseball’s Dearth of Black Catchers Helps Explain Its Dearth of Black Managers

Wall Street Journal –– 11/12/20

By Jared Diamond

Growing up as a baseball-obsessed child in a predominantly white area of Iowa, Ian Moller always introduced himself to new coaches as a . They usually didn’t believe him— largely, Moller believes, because of the color of his skin.

“Coaches just straight up told me, ‘You’re not going to make it catching’ and ‘I’m not going to waste your athleticism back there,’” said Moller, who is Black. “Coaches never really wanted to put me back there at all.”

Now a high-school senior, Moller has since developed into one of the best catching prospects in the country and is seen as a potential first-round selection in next July’s major-league draft. It makes him a prime candidate to end a disturbing trend with significant ramifications for the future of the game.

No Black American has been the everyday catcher for a MLB team since Charles Johnson retired after the 2005 season. There are no obvious candidates in the majors or top levels of the minors who appear poised to end that streak. The position dominated by Black stars like Roy Campanella, Elston Howard and Earl Battey throughout the 1950s and ‘60s is now exclusively the domain of white and Latino players.

Part of this phenomenon stems from declining Black participation in baseball, a demographic shift that MLB officials are desperately trying to reverse. Though players from Latin American countries like the Dominican Republic and Venezuela now make up about 30% of the league, Black representation has sunk to around 8%, down from nearly 20% four decades ago.

The disappearance of Black catchers specifically has particular importance as it pertains to the sport’s even more glaring lack of Black leadership. There are just two Black managers in MLB: Dusty Baker of the and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Dave Roberts, who was born to a Black father and Japanese mother. None of the three managers hired this offseason is Black. Meanwhile, more than a third of the current managers are former catchers, including of the , David Ross of the Chicago Cubs and the Detroit Tigers’ new skipper, A.J. Hinch.

This is no surprise. Catching requires leadership and communication skills more than any other spot on the field. The position has emerged as a direct pipeline to the manager’s seat—a pipeline with no Black candidates.

“What we’re trying to do is get rid of this ‘raw’ label that baseball has put on our kids,” said Lenny Webster, who is Black and was a major-league catcher from 1989 through 2000. “All ‘raw’ means is that they ‘lack knowledge.’”

Webster likens Black catchers to Black quarterbacks in football, who for decades were held back because of racist stereotypes about their leadership capabilities. Though the NFL now has

31 several superstar Black quarterbacks—like Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson—academic studies have shown that their success is more likely to be attributed to their athletic skill, while their white counterparts are praised for their intellect.

Moller said that throughout his life, coaches, college recruiters and scouts have complimented his playing ability but questioned whether he could handle the mental aspects of catching, like running a pitching staff or calling games.

“The label that I know was put against me was, ‘He might have the tools, but he’s not intelligent enough to go back there and handle the game,’ which obviously is just a stereotype,’” Moller said. “That was put on me before anybody even gets to know me.”

Many Black catchers have stories about receiving strange looks and hearing inappropriate comments throughout their amateur careers.

When Nick Hassan, the catcher at Kennesaw State, first started playing travel ball as a young teenager, “They didn’t believe that I was a catcher,” he said. Team coaches asked him if he could play any other positions before even seeing him behind the plate. Hassan realized that none of his childhood catching icons—like Yadier Molina and Salvador Pérez—were like him. He’s too young to remember watching Johnson, a four-time Gold Glove winner. (Russell Martin, a MLB catcher from 2006 through 2019 whose father is Black, hails from Canada.)

Early in his life, Hassan says, coaches tried to put him at shortstop, believing it was a better use of his speed, a common occurrence for aspiring Black catchers.

“Coaches wouldn’t trust that we have that knowledge of the game and knowing everything and knowing where everybody has to be,” Hassan said.

A.J. Lewis, who signed with the Colorado Rockies’ organization out of Eastern Kentucky this summer, had a different experience. He grew up in Chicago playing almost exclusively with other Black kids in the West Little League and the ACE program, which is designed to promote baseball among inner-city children. When he arrived for his freshman year of college ball at Missouri, however, “A couple of the guys were like, ‘You’re a catcher?’ We’ve never seen a Black catcher before,’” he said.

At Missouri, Lewis was initially blocked by an upperclassman catcher, so his coach tried to move him to the outfield. That experience only reinforced that he wanted to be a catcher, so he wound up transferring to find an opportunity to go back behind the plate. It was the one position that reminded him of basketball and football, the other sports he used to play, because “it kept you in every single play and you’re always doing something.”

“I’m more than literally ‘just an athlete.’ I think the game. I can handle a pitching staff. I’m able to control a baseball game,” Lewis said. “I truly believe that given the right opportunity, these African-American kids are just as capable or even more capable than some other candidates.”

For any of this to change, players say, baseball first needs to address the larger issue of attracting young Black athletes to baseball. But catching comes with its own challenges unique to the position. It requires specialized training beyond fielding and throwing, such as calling and receiving pitches and blocking balls in the dirt. With so few Black catchers in the professional ranks, “There are not lot of guys who can come back and teach how to play it correctly, so when

32 you do get to those higher levels it’s, ‘You’re serviceable back there, but I think that you’d fit better here,’ ” Lewis said.

Webster says he sees progress, thanks in part to MLB’s programs designed to bring more Black athletes to the game. He hopes it will ultimately lead not just to more Black players, but to more Black managers and executives in baseball—and the road begins behind the plate.

“Change is coming,” Webster said. “We just have to have an open mind at the top level.”

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Sports Helped Shape Biden. But Expect a Quieter Fan in the White House.

New York Times –– 11/12/20

By Jonathan Abrams

Archmere Academy, a private Catholic high school in Delaware, arrived as a heavy underdog to open its football season in the fall of 1960.

Its opponent, St. James High School, a New Jersey powerhouse, had battered Archmere by 11 touchdowns in a scrimmage a year earlier.

Yet Archmere had an unlikely weapon: Joe Biden.

The Archmere coach had filled his roster by recruiting nearly half the team from the lunch line and devised an offense that relied on power running, misdirection and the occasional pass. On a reverse in that game, Biden scurried 40 yards untouched for a touchdown in a 12-0 upset.

“He was a halfback, and he scored some running touchdowns too, but he was the guy that was the main pass catcher,” one of Biden’s teammates, Michael Fay, recalled. “We were seniors in 1960, so throwing the ball was almost a mortal sin. But he caught seven or eight touchdown passes in eight games, which was a lot for back then.”

President Trump has had a long association with sports, starting as a baseball player in his youth, and more recently as an avid golfer with something to say, often incendiary, about athletes and leagues.

Though President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has not worn his sports allegiances on his sleeve, as many politicians have, playing fields have often intersected with his life, going back to his childhood, when sports provided a universal language of communication while he managed a stutter. He spent his vice presidency under a noted sports fan, President , who this summer counseled N.B.A. players who boycotted playoff games in a protest of the shooting of Jacob Blake.

“You see these two things happening in his life at the same time,” Evan Osnos, the author of “Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now,” said, referring to Biden’s high school days. “One, he’s breaking the back of the stutter, and two, he’s finding his place on the football field. Those converged to give him this altered sense of himself, and that’s really the beginning of what was at that point almost a ludicrously ambitious notion of what he might be able to do in life.”

Still, even as athletes such as LeBron James and Draymond Green have celebrated his victory on , Biden, unlike Trump, has shown no taste for wading into the politics of sports.

Trump consistently used athletes as foils in appealing to his core supporters, blasting kneeling N.F.L. players, preemptively disinviting N.B.A. champions to the White House and falsely accusing the NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace of fashioning the apparent noose found in his garage.

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The antagonistic relationship helped push many athletes into social and political activism, including several who participated in voter registration and turnout drives.

“I don’t think that goes away when Trump is off the scene, even if you don’t have that single focal point that they did before,” said Eric Schickler, a political-science professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

For Biden, sports have been more a balm.

Members of the Pittsburgh Steelers visited the hospital beds of his young sons, Hunter and Beau, in 1972, after the car crash that killed his first wife, Neilia Hunter, and his young daughter, Amy.

Biden celebrated on the field when the won the Super Bowl in the 2017 N.F.L. season. The Washington Nationals have already invited him to throw out the ceremonial first pitch on opening day. (The White House declined the Nationals’ invitation for Trump to throw an opening day pitch in 2017, citing a scheduling conflict.)

Biden recently congratulated the basketball star Sue Bird and the soccer star Megan Rapinoe on their engagement. He has sided with members of the women’s national soccer team in their dispute with U.S. Soccer over pay equity. He said he would dismantle Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s new Title IX rule regulation, which could have an impact on college athletics and the reporting of sexual assault allegations on campuses, and pledged to “restore transgender students’ access to sports, bathrooms and locker rooms in accordance with their gender identity.”

“You’re going to see very clearly that Joe Biden looks at sports as a natural form of American community, which means not necessarily that it’s quiet,” Osnos said. “It means that it’s contested. It’s a place for politics. It’s a place where we live out our differences as much as the things that bring us together. In the purest sense, I think he’s a guy that believes that you can kneel.”

Biden campaigned with a focus on reining in the coronavirus pandemic, and so he may be called on to take a stand on whether leagues can or should have spectators at games.

A quieter sports advocate in the White House does not necessarily mean a less passionate one. Biden has recalled his time on the football field as memorable and influential.

The Archmere football team was 8-0 in Biden’s senior year, after a 1-6 record a year earlier.

He credited the coach, E. John Walsh, then fresh out of college, with energizing the program and unifying the team. “He urged us to play the game the same way you lived your life, with passion and integrity,” Biden said at Walsh’s 2012 induction into the Delaware Sports Museum Hall of Fame. “No matter how good you were, Coach always stressed that you were a teammate first.”

In 2008, Walsh, who died last year at age 83, described Biden as skinny, “but he was one of the best pass receivers I had in 16 years as a coach.”

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Fay, Biden’s teammate, said that season made all the players on the team believe more in themselves and in what was possible.

“It made us all believe that we were maybe a little bit more than what we thought we were beforehand,” Fay said. “It made the impossible seem possible.”

Biden also played on the school’s baseball team, as a corner outfielder, but he is not remembered as much for that.

“He was a good football player,” said Bob Markel, one of Biden’s baseball teammates at Archmere. “He wasn’t as good a baseball player, shall we say?”

Biden’s baseball tenure, though, may have been cut short by a leg injury sustained while attempting the hurdles.

“He caught the edge of the hurdle right on the inside of his thigh,” Fay said. “He cut it so deeply that it didn’t even bleed. You could see the muscle past the skin. It was an ugly wound, and he had to have about three layers of suture sitting there, and it kind of knocked him out of his senior year of baseball. The baseball coach was not a happy camper about that.”

After Archmere, Biden attended the University of Delaware. He played spring football there, but then left the sport to focus on academics. And a girlfriend.

In his book, Biden wrote that he planned to continue playing football before meeting Hunter, pursuing her instead of the sport. In 2012, he erroneously said that he had played college football in 1963.

He did continue playing recreationally after college. He recruited Delaware players for a touch football team named the Orangemen, in honor of , where he attended law school. That team, Fay noted proudly, also went undefeated.

“We were probably the roughest touch football team you’ve ever seen,” he added.

Through his mid-30s, Biden also participated in a touch football game in Wilmington, Del., every Thanksgiving morning. “We called it the Toilet Bowl,” Markel said.

Biden had more pressing matters as his political career advanced. “He introduced himself to a lot of people,” Markel said. “I think that’s why he became class president, and certainly helps in the political career that he enjoys connecting with people. It’s not just talking to them or talking at them, he connects with them.”

The teammates and classmates have stayed in touch through the decades.

Biden, whenever possible, joins them, retracing his athletic glory days.

“Joe hasn’t changed since 1957,” Fay said. “That’s when we first met as freshmen in high school. He’s straightforward and whatever he says he means. He sticks to his word.”

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How Trump Lost Sports as a Political Strategy

New York Times –– 11/11/20

By Jere Longman

For most of his presidency, Donald J. Trump reliably called out athletes who he felt were disrespecting the national anthem, the flag and him.

But the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25 set off waves of protest and galvanized athletes in an election year to more forcefully repudiate Trump’s demand that players stand during “The Star-Spangled Banner” before games. Athletes were also inspired to spur voter registration and turnout as stadiums and arenas became polling places.

As the election neared, Trump, perhaps unexpectedly, receded from the anthem, his most contentious sports wedge issue. He attempted another sports-related strategy: pressuring the to start its college football season immediately and then trying to take undeserved credit for the reversal of the league’s initial decision to try to have a season in the spring.

But the play to shore up his support in the Midwest did not pan out: He lost the Big Ten blue wall states of , Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“Football was the ultimate purple sport,” said Joe Lockhart, a former N.F.L. executive who was the White House press secretary for former President . “Republicans and Democrats weren’t Republicans and Democrats; they were Patriots fans or Jets fans. It brought the country together.

“Trump sought to divide that. He wins by subtracting. To a certain extent, he succeeded for a little bit. But by the end of June this year, it was a complete failure for him.”

Upon seeing disturbing video of Floyd being fatally pinned beneath the knee of a police officer — four years after the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt to protest racial injustice and police violence — people “understood the outrage in a new way and why a Black player would want to exercise his or her right to protest,” said Kevin Sullivan, the communications director for former President George W. Bush.

Floyd’s death set off a cascading series of actions by athletes, sports officials and leagues that more uniformly disavowed Trump’s stance on the anthem, even if the pushback appeared to have little impact on the election in a divided country, political experts said. Trump, who used the anthem issue to fire up his base, still received more than 72 million votes — significantly more raw votes than in 2016 — while losing re-election to Joseph R. Biden Jr., who earned more than 77 million votes.

In the late stages of the campaign, Trump seemed to largely abandon the anthem as a political cudgel, while also playing down issues like the coronavirus pandemic, even as he became infected. Instead, he focused his attention on his political opponent and baseless predictions of a rigged election if he lost.

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“He had bigger fish to fry in an election year,” said , Bush’s White House press secretary. “His opponent wasn’t the N.F.L. It wasn’t Colin Kaepernick. It was Joe Biden.”

Still, as spring became summer after Floyd’s death, sports leagues and athletes increasingly disregarded Trump. In early August, LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers laughed and said Trump wouldn’t be missed after the president said he had stopped watching the resumption of the virus-disrupted N.B.A. season, calling kneeling for the anthem “disgraceful.”

By the fall, even youth football teams were taking a knee. And Trump’s response via Twitter and public rallies seemed at times to deflate from raging defiance to aggrieved resignation.

“One day it was a huge issue,” the Democratic strategist said of the anthem. “The next day it was no issue.”

Doug Sosnik, the political director for Clinton, described Trump in an email as a verbal “day trader” who, once his lines begin to fall flat, “moves on to the next shiny object that will arouse his supporters.”

What Trump misunderstood about players kneeling for the anthem, Sosnik said, is that most Americans believe strongly in the First Amendment, and Floyd’s death made it “hard for anyone not to view the protests as anything but an appropriate reaction to such outrageous behavior.”

Trump had sparred with the N.F.L. for decades. In the 1980s, as a franchise owner in the upstart Football League, he led a movement to file an antitrust suit against the N.F.L., only to be left embarrassed by a reward of $3 in damages.

At a political rally in September 2017, Trump denounced any player who would kneel for the anthem, imploring N.F.L. team owners to “get that son of a bitch off the field right now.” But by June 2020, he reacted to a turbulent 48-hour period in the N.F.L. with the social media equivalent of taking his ball and going home, having lost his ability to bully the country’s most popular sports league.

On June 3, in an interview with Yahoo Finance, at a time when many Black athletes were demanding racial justice in the wake of Floyd’s death, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees essentially sided with Trump by saying, “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country.”

His remarks seemed tone deaf to many and drew lacerating responses from Black teammates and others around the N.F.L., a league where three-quarters of the players are African- American. A day later, Brees apologized in an Instagram post, saying his comments were “insensitive and completely missed the mark.” He asked for forgiveness in what seemed to be a mix of self-preservation and reflection.

On June 5, Trump posted on Twitter that he was a “big fan” of Brees, but that the quarterback should not have rescinded his original stance. “NO KNEELING!” Trump tweeted.

But Brees forcefully rejected the president’s position that same day. He wrote on social media: “This is not an issue about the American flag. It never has been. We can no longer use the flag to turn people away or distract them from the real issues that face our black communities.”

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At the time, Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, also faced intense pressure from Black players demanding that he condemn racism. In a video, he encouraged peaceful protests and issued a mea culpa for not listening earlier to concerns about social justice.

Goodell was widely criticized for not mentioning Kaepernick’s name. And Brees did not risk his career, as did Kaepernick, who has been out of the N.F.L. for four seasons. But Harry Edwards, the sports sociologist, said it was important for Black players to gain acknowledgments of regret and support from a white star like Brees and from Goodell, the commissioner of a league where some prominent team owners had given millions to Trump’s political coffers.

“It takes courage and character to say, ‘You know what, I’m wrong,’” said Edwards, a consultant for the 49ers who has been involved in social justice movements for more than a half-century. “It left Trump turning in the wind.”

On June 9, the United States Soccer Federation rescinded its ban on players kneeling for the anthem.

“I won’t be watching much anymore!” Trump tweeted on June 13. He also connected the move by U.S. Soccer to pro football: “And it looks like the NFL is heading in that direction also, but not with me watching!”

A week later, at a rally in Tulsa, Okla., Trump seemed puzzled by pushback from Goodell, Brees and other N.F.L. stars, wondering, “Where did that come from in the middle of the summer?”

“I thought we won that battle with the N.F.L.,” Trump said.

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NFL announces Salute to Service Award nominees

Associated Press –– 11/11/20

NEW YORK (AP) — Nominees for the NFL's annual Salute to Service Award for this year include players, coaches, team executives, and even cheerleaders.

The award, sponsored by the league and USAA, recognizes current NFL personnel and alumni who demonstrate an exemplary commitment to honoring and supporting the military community. Each nominee is selected by his or her NFL club, with finalists scheduled to be announced in January. The recipient — last year, it was former NFL linebacker Donnie Edwards — will be recognized at NFL Honors, the prime-time awards special the week of the Super Bowl at which The Associated Press individual honors are announced.

As the presenting sponsor of the Salute to Service Award, USAA will contribute $25,000 in the recipient’s name to the official aid societies representing all five military branches. The NFL will match USAA’s contribution of $25,000, which will be donated to the award recipient’s military charity of choice.

“The 2020 nominees for the ‘Salute to Service Award presented by USAA’ demonstrate the depth and widespread appreciation and support for the military community across the NFL,” Tony Wells, USAA's chief brand officer and a former Marine officer, said as the nominees were revealed on Veterans Day.

“During a trying year for all Americans, each of these nominees deserves this moment of special recognition for their passionate support of those who chose to serve. We congratulate these nominees and say thank you to America’s military families.”

The nominees:

Arizona: Justin Pugh, guard

Atlanta: Steve Cannon, CEO

Baltimore: Ravens Cheerleaders

Buffalo: Harrison Phillips, defensive tackle

Carolina: Christian McCaffrey, running back

Chicago: , tight end

Cincinnati: Jim Turner, offensive line coach

Cleveland: Andy Janovich, fullback

Dallas: Charlotte Jones, executive vice president and chief brand officer

Denver: Andrew Beck, tight end

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Detroit: Eric Hipple, former quarterback

Green Bay: Tom Bakken, equipment manager

Houston: Hannah and Cal McNair, owners

Indianapolis: Brian Decker, director of player development

Jacksonville: Sean Karpf, strength and conditioning associate

Kansas City: Eric Fisher, tackle

Las Vegas: Jerry Robinson, former linebacker

Los Angeles Chargers: James Collins, director of football/medical services

Los Angeles Rams: Andrew Whitworth, tackle

Miami: Malcolm Perry, wide receiver

Minnesota: Austin Cutting, long snapper

New England: Joe Cardona, long snapper

New Orleans: Latavius Murray, running Back

New York Giants: , former defensive end

New York Jets: Steve Castleton, military and law enforcement team liaison

Philadelphia: George Mateo, game day staff supervisor

Pittsburgh: Jon Kolb, former tackle and coach

San Francisco: John Lynch,

Seattle: Mike Flood, community outreach vice president

Tampa Bay: Ryan Jensen, center

Tennessee: Floyd Hyde, stadium safety manager

Washington: Ryan Kerrigan, linebacker

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NFL Honors the Real Warriors With a 'Salute to Service'

Military.com –– 11/11/20

By James Barber

The NFL's "Salute to Service" program has been a real boon to military charities, raising over $44 million since it began in 2011. The Bob Woodruff Foundation, Pat Tillman Foundation, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), United Service Organizations (USO) and Wounded Warrior Project have all received donations from the project.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the services those organizations provide more critical than ever and the league has just announced its "Salute to Service" plans for 2020.

If you watched the games this past weekend, you saw some of the on-field promotion: logos stenciled on the field, camo game balls, helmet decals and Salute-themed hats and other gear worn by coaches and staff.

There are spots running during the games that feature Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz, future Hall-of-Famer and insurance pitchman Peyton Manning and Dallas Cowboys legend .

USAA is sponsoring a Salute to Service Sweepstakes that gives active duty and veterans a chance to win one of five Ultimate Fan Cave prizes at SaluteToService.com. You'll need to log in with ID.me to enter and get a change to win a TV, sound system, gaming system and Microsoft Surface Pro 7 laptop. The winners also get a virtual interaction with an NFL player (video chat, online Xbox gaming), autographed NFL memorabilia and an NFL Shop gift card and a food delivery gift card.

USAA will also present its annual Salute to Service award to an NFL player or coach who devotes time and effort to military causes. They're working on adapting the popular Salute to Service Lounge to a virtual format due to current pandemic conditions and will hold one at next February's Super Bowl LV in Tampa.

Lowe's and the NFL will work with Rebuilding Together on November 18 to refurbish and update the home of an Air Force veteran in Kansas City. Rebuilding Together is a non-profit focused on transforming the homes and lives of low-income families, seniors, people living with disabilities and veterans.

Rocket Mortgage will donate $1,000 toward the fight to end veteran homelessness for every touchdown scored during the month of November. There have been 161 NFL touchdowns scored so far this month, so the tally currently stands at $161,000.

The NFL gets some flak for its military flyovers and national anthem controversies, but the "Salute to Service" campaign is something it's doing right and the league deserves credit for finding ways to support the active duty and veteran communities.

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"Our nation's heroes are not immune to the significant perils brought on by the pandemic." said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. "Many service members and their families are physically divided, either in response to COVID-19 or as part of their role in the military. This Veterans Day -- and throughout Salute to Service -- we express our gratitude to veterans and active service members for helping to preserve our health and safety, and for protecting and defending our freedoms domestically and abroad. The NFL and its 32 clubs humbly salute and thank you for your service to our country."

Enjoy the football and don't forget you can pick up custom "Salute to Service" merch at NFLShop.com.

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Charlotte Jones announced as Dallas Cowboys’ nominee for the Salute to Service Award

FW Star-Telegram –– 11/11/20

By Clarence E. Hill Jr.

Dallas Cowboys executive vice president Charlotte Jones was announced Tuesday as the team’s nominee for the 10th annual “Salute to Service Award presented by USAA.”

The award, presented annually by USAA and the NFL, honors a league member who demonstrates an exemplary commitment to honoring and supporting the military community. USAA holds the designation of Official NFL Salute to Service Partner.

Jones, who is also the team’s Chief Brand Officer, has spearheaded the Cowboys’ efforts in honoring our nation’s military and veterans during Salute to Service campaigns and at other times throughout the year — at home in North Texas, on base at Fort Hood, at training camp in California and around the world in partnership with the USO.

In 2019, Jones worked with the City of Arlington to bring the National Medal of Honor Museum to Texas and joined the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation board as Chairman in 2020.

Finalists for the award are scheduled to be announced in January. The recipient will be recognized at the NFL Honors awards show, which is set to air the week of Super Bowl LV next February.

Past recipients of the award include Donnie Edwards (2019), Ben Garland (2018), Andre Roberts (2017), Dan Quinn (2016), (2015), Jared Allen (2014), John Harbaugh (2013), Charles Tillman (2012), and the late owner, K.S. “Bud” Adams, a WWII veteran (2011).

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Local heroes get to compete with Rams players at SoFi Stadium

ABC 7 News Los Angeles –– 11/11/20

By Ashley Mackey

INGLEWOOD, Calif. (KABC) -- While they're still playing football at SoFi Stadium, on Tuesday, they played it virtually. The Rams invited two veterans with the Wounded Warrior Project to participate in a Madden 21 match with Rams Offensive Guard Austin Corbett and Defensive Lineman Morgan Fox.

"Something like this is really important to these warriors because it connects them virtually with other warriors all throughout the country," said Wounded Warrior Project's Outreach Specialist Matt Terry. "And currently, obviously, during the COVID crisis, they're not able to connect in person."

Although it's just a , Fox said given everything going on including the pandemic restrictions, it's also a little bit more.

"It's very hard to connect in person and be able to do things personally, face to face," Fox said. "It's a way to connect and still be able to, to have some kind of camaraderie and competition and hang out and just have fun with people outside of your normal stuff."

"The two warriors, John & Nicky sat right on the sideline, field-level, playing Madden 21 while the game was being displayed on the 70,000 square-foot videoboard."

"They were speechless getting to come into SoFi Stadium thanks to the Rams," Terry said. "But this opportunity has really been like a unique way to connect with all the different service members."

The gaming event is part of the Rams third annual Salute to Service week that features a variety of military appreciation events. Fox said he grew up around the military his whole life, so he has a soft spot for veterans.

"Being able to kind of give back and experience anything with guys and men and women who served our country in any way," Fox said. "And just hang out and try to, you know, make their day and a little more fun."

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ESPN Shutters Esports Editorial Division

Hollywood Reporter –– 11/11/20

By Trilby Beresford

ESPN has shuttered its esports editorial vertical.

"We have made the difficult decision to cease operations for our dedicated daily esports editorial and content," a spokesperson said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "We recognize esports as an opportunity to expand our audience, and we’ll continue to do so through coverage from the broader team for major events, breaking news and coverage."

Since the vertical launched in 2016 to cover the world of professional gaming, it has covered League of Legends and teams and hosted an competition under its event series EXP with well-known names such as Dr. Disrespect. Earlier this year, the company partnered with the NBA to broadcast an NBA 2K20 tournament.

While the dedicated vertical will cease operations, coverage of breaking news from major esports events is expected to continue.

According to a projection from analytics firm NewZoo, global esports revenue is expected to approach over $1 billion in 2021.

This news comes days after ESPN laid off 300 employees, citing the pandemic's "significant impact" on the business and the "tremendous disruption" in how fans are consuming sports, which prompted the acceleration of a change in strategy.

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Streaming Service FuboTV to Expand into Sports Wagering

Front Office Sports –– 11/11/20

By Torrey Hart

In a letter to shareholders published on Nov. 10, sports-centric streaming service FuboTV revealed that it intends to expand into the sports wagering market.

The company has previously said it sees the online wagering space as “complementary” to its business. In June, CEO David Gandler said FuboTV could look to partner with sports betting companies beyond standard marketing and referral deals.

“Owning our own technology stack allows us to think creatively about which direction we’d like to go,” CEO David Gandler said at the time, as reported by The Streamable.

“We believe fuboTV sits firmly at the intersection of three industry megatrends: the secular decline of traditional TV viewership, the shift of TV ad dollars to connected TVs and online sports wagering,” the latest letter says. “As our cable TV replacement product is sports-focused, we believe a significant portion of our subscribers would be interested in online wagering, creating a unique opportunity to drive higher subscriber engagement and open up additional revenue opportunities. Simply put, we expect wagering will lead to more viewing, and this increased engagement will lead to higher ad monetization, better subscriber retention and a reduction in subscriber acquisition costs.”

The company now expects to “share more tactical details as appropriate.”

In addition to the sports wagering news, FuboTV announced that it had its best quarter in company history for the three months ending on Sept. 30 — it then went public in October. Q3 revenues were $61.2 million, a 47% year-over-year increase.

Subscription revenue, specifically, increased 64% year-over-year to $53.4 million; advertising revenue increased 64% year-over-year to $53.4 million.

Paid subscribers at the end of the quarter reached 455,000, a 58% increase year-over-year. Total content hours streamed by paid and free FuboTV users in Q3 increased 83% year-over- year to 133.3 million hours.

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‘Launching content on behalf of clients:’ How Gallery Media turned TikTok into a 7-figure business

DigiDay –– 11/11/20

By Kayleigh Barber

Publishers do not yet have a quick and easy, one-size fits all strategy for monetizing TikTok.

But for Gallery Media, publisher of women’s lifestyle brand PureWow and gaming and internet culture brand One37pm, TikTok is now a mid-seven-figure business, according to CEO Ryan Harwood. He declined to disclose the hard revenue amount.

The Gary Vaynerchuk-owned media company makes about 45% of its revenue from its social media content business, Harwood said. And over the past two years, it has honed a TikTok strategy — that is similar to its plays with Instagram and Pinterest — to create a portfolio of handles on the burgeoning platform that allows Gallery Media to have a presence in a variety of verticals.

In addition to owning @purewow and @one37pm, it also owns 12 interest-based handles including @home, @fashion, @recipes and @desserts that allow for more for branded content distribution on the platform, Harwood said.

“We don’t have to do things that always ladder up to PureWow or One37pm,” he added.

PureWow has more than 125,000 followers on TikTok and 3.5 million likes across its content. One37pm has more than 500,000 followers and north of 12.5 million likes on its videos. Recipes is its most popular TikTok focus with more than 780,000 followers and 7.9 million likes.

So while PureWow and One37pm are available for branded content deals with advertisers looking to hit their audiences, having interest-based accounts is a good strategy for media companies to broaden their offerings to endemic advertisers or brands that are looking to reach niche audiences, according to Nick Cicero, the vp of strategy at streaming and social intelligence company Conviva.

The company is not earning all of that revenue off of its owned-and- operated TikTok accounts, however. Gallery Media is part publisher and part agency and it uses the expertise in building viral media presences to inform its brand clients on how they should use the social media platform.

Gallery Media does this in two ways, according to Harwood. One is by connecting brands like the PayPal, Athleta, Walmart and Sabra to the company’s TikTok influencer network. One campaign with Athleta, for example, had more than 2,500 videos created using a custom sound that was created for the campaign and influencers like @SweetyHigh, who has 7.2 million followers, used it on their videos.

The other way is by outright creating and running brands’ TikTok accounts.

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Gallery Media does this for is Revlon, which currently has more than 37,000 followers and over 400,000 likes on TikTok. Recently, the brand led a campaign on TikTok called the #DoItBold challenge, which was jointly executed between Gallery Media and Revlon’s marketing team, that garnered over 2 billion views in the first three days, according to a story by Digiday’s sister brand Glossy.

“Most publishers use TikTok for themselves and they put branded content in their channel, but we’ve been launching content on behalf of clients,” said Harwood.

And being engrained with TikTok the past two years, Gallery Media was even able to secure production rights to TikTok’s first podcast, which will launch in early 2021.

The publisher earns about 10% of its revenue from its podcast network, which has several shows that are not tied to either of its media brands. And Like most of the podcasts in the network, the to-be-named TikTok podcast will be exclusively sponsored by TikTok.

“Last year we were dipping our toe and building the properties. [This year] in many different ways we’ve made money with that and from that platform,” Harwood said.

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Social-Media Companies Took an Aggressive Stance During the Election. Will It Continue?

Wall Street Journal –– 11/11/20

By Emily Glazer and Sam Schechner

The 2020 election spurred social-media giants to adopt aggressive changes to how they police political discourse. Now the questions are whether that new approach will last and whether it should.

During the course of the contentious U.S. presidential campaign, and its messy denouement, Inc. FB +0.52% and Twitter Inc. TWTR +0.09% have taken steps that would have been unthinkable four years ago. They have applied fact-checking labels to posts from the U.S. president, deleted entire online communities and hobbled some functions of their own platforms to slow the spread of what they deemed false or dangerous content.

The companies—in particular Twitter—this month have been strict with warning labels on claims of voter fraud from President Trump and some of his supporters while Americans spent days awaiting vote-counting that was delayed by an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots.

For some lawmakers, mostly Democrats, the shift was overdue, while many Republicans accuse the tech firms of enforcing the rules inconsistently and allege the Silicon Valley giants are biased against conservatives.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R, Mo.), a Trump supporter who has been critical of social media, has tweeted about the moves and referred to them as the “#BigTech crackdown.”

The companies have maintained they are committed to making sure users get reliable information about the election and not allowing falsehoods to spread. Taking on that role puts them in the uncomfortable position of having to make decisions about what they believe is true and what isn’t.

The aggressiveness marks a shift for the social-media industry, which was paralyzed for years about whether to intervene on political speech, says Jenna Golden, former head of political and advocacy sales at Twitter.

“There was a bit of feeling frozen in what do we do, how do we do it and how do we do it fairly,” said Ms. Golden, who now runs her own consulting firm. “I saw the thinking happening, but no one was ready to make any decisions.”

A key turning point came in May, when Twitter for the first time placed a fact-checking advisory on one of Mr. Trump’s tweets. By the time of the election, such notices were almost commonplace. On Saturday, the day media outlets called the race for now-President-elect Joe Biden, Mr. Trump tweeted six times—Twitter labeled half of them as being disputed or misleading.

Mr. Trump has said Twitter is “out of control” and is censoring his views on the election.

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Facebook also labeled Mr. Trump’s posts, though it didn’t hide them as did Twitter, which required users to click through labels to see the content. Facebook took other steps to intervene in how content spread, including dismantling a fast-growing group called “Stop the Steal,” created by a pro-Trump organizations that were organizing protests of vote counts around the country. Facebook said it made the move because it “saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group.” The group’s organizers said Facebook was selectively enforcing its rules to silence them.

The company later tightened its grip on speech across its platforms, including its Instagram photo-sharing app, invoking some of the emergency tools that executives previously described as their “break-glass” options to respond to possible postelection unrest.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said it has spent years preparing for safer, more secure elections. “There has never been a plan to make these temporary measures permanent and they will be rolled back just as they were rolled out—with careful execution,” he said, adding that temporary election protections were also used during the 2018 midterms and in other global elections.

While the severity of their measures varied, all the major social-media platforms took steps to label false election information or limit the spread of content they deemed dangerous. The popular short-video app TikTok, owned by ByteDance Ltd., banned all searches for “election fraud” last week.

YouTube says it has put an emphasis on elevating video-search results from authoritative sources and is also limiting recommendations to videos advancing baseless claims of voter fraud or premature calls of victory. A search Saturday on YouTube for an unfounded allegation that Democrats had used U.S. hacking software to alter election results—something that Chris

51

Krebs, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency described as “nonsense”—returned several videos advancing the claim. By Sunday, results for that search had a banner saying, “The AP has called the Presidential race for Joe Biden.”

A YouTube spokeswoman said it can take time for the company’s system to trigger such banners. “We are exploring options to bring in external researchers to study our systems and learn more about our approach and we will continue to invest in more teams and new features,” she added.

It is too early to quantify the effect of most of these moves, and researchers say the impact may never be fully known because not all of the interventions are disclosed. Still some of the efforts had noticeable results.

Take a tweet Mr. Trump sent on the evening before Election Day, contending a Supreme Court decision on voting in Pennsylvania would allow “unchecked cheating.” In the nearly 37 minutes the tweet was available before Twitter labeled it as disputed and potentially misleading, it got 31,359 replies, retweets, quote tweets or retweets of quote tweets, according to Joe Bak- Coleman, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public. In the following 37 minutes, it brought in fewer than 5,700—a decline of 82%.

A separate analysis from social-media analytics firm Storyful found that Facebook posts by President Trump, his campaign and conservative outlets remained among the most viral on the platform in the days following the election. Storyful is owned by , NWS -1.86% which also owns Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co.

The view that the rules are selectively enforced has led many conservatives to abandon Facebook and Twitter for other platforms, such as Parler. The app, which calls itself a “free speech social network,” surged to the top of the download rankings for free apps this week.

In part because of that criticism, the larger platforms now face the challenge of articulating coherent enforcement strategies that can be applied consistently, including in other countries where the companies typically have fewer resources, say researchers who study social media and misinformation.

“Once a company makes a move once, it is much easier for them to do it again,” said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, which studies political misinformation. “We certainly crossed that Rubicon and aren’t going back across.”

Facebook has scheduled some postelection analysis sessions a few weeks after the election where employees are expected to discuss which measures that the company took in recent weeks should last longer, a person familiar with the matter said. Substantial changes would require Facebook CEO ’s approval, the person added.

One change that appears likely: Twitter said Mr. Trump’s account, which has grown to more than 88 million followers, would no longer receive special privileges once he becomes a private citizen. The loss of those privileges, which are reserved for world leaders and public officials, would mean that some tweets that violate the site’s rules would be taken down rather than labeled.

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Rams Sign Rocket Mortgage To Multiyear Sponsorship Deal

Sports Business Daily –– 11/12/20

By Ben Fischer

The Rams have signed Rocket Mortgage as their official mortgage sponsor in a multiyear deal. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Rocket Mortgage will get in-stadium display signage at Rams games at SoFi Stadium, presenting sponsorship to content related to Vamos Rams, the team’s Latino outreach platform, and rights to activate at major events. The Rams and Rocket Mortgage tomorrow will celebrate the deal with a volunteer labor project to beautify the grounds of U.S. Vets, an Inglewood-based veteran service nonprofit. The Quicken Loans-owned brand already is a sponsor of both the NFL and its hometown Lions.

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The Infinite Possibilities of Josh Allen

Sports Illustrated –– 11/12/20

By Greg Bishop

The confusion starts at the snap, allowing the pass rusher firing off the right edge the clearest advantage in football: an uninhibited shot at the quarterback. The quarterback spins to escape, only the pass rusher isn’t shaken. So the quarterback backpedals, furiously, like he’s moonwalking on fast forward. Meanwhile, from the opposite side, another defender closes in. As the quarterback shuffles frantically, he moves the ball from his throwing hand to his left, and, with his right hand free, reaches toward the first pass-rusher. The moment his stiff-arm connects, something remarkable happens: The quarterback is now the aggressor.

In one motion, he snatches the defender’s facemask and drags him into the path of his oncoming teammate. Once both defenders go to the ground, the quarterback stumbles backward and switches the ball back to his right hand, but just as he does the best defensive player on the planet arrives. raises both arms as he closes in for a sack, but instead the quarterback puts out another straight arm and uses Donald’s own freight-train momentum to relegate him to innocent bystander status.

The snap, coming while trailing with 49 seconds left, was at the opponent’s 15-yard line—now the quarterback is 19 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Finally, with nearly a half-ton of pass rusher left in his wake, he backpedals once more, toward the sideline, and flicks the ball out of the end zone, 45 yards downfield. There is a flag—for the face-mask grab on the defender turned human shield—but for now the clock is stopped, and disaster is averted.

If one play embodies the chaotic, poetic, and befuddling nature of the Josh Allen Experience, perhaps it was that beautiful facemask penalty, on which the quarterback was less Joe Cool and more Chuck Norris. “It looked like a bar fight,” Bills general manager Brandon Beane says. “Like he was being jumped, and he’s got one hand tied behind his back. When [dude] gets close, he goes, I’m going to sling him. And he rag-dolled him!” Which is to say, Josh Allen did something unlike anything anyone in football has seen. Again.

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It seems the Bills, who once led this game 28–3, are likely doomed as they line up for a second- and-25 at the Rams’ 30-yard line. No matter. Four plays later, Allen is celebrating his game- winning touchdown pass.

The infinite possibilities of Josh Allen reveal themselves not game by game or even play by play, but rather second by can’t-look-away second. Impossible feats beget improbable outcomes, and potential disaster always looms nearby. Teammates who know the QB for the magic tricks—yes, actual magic tricks—he performs in the locker room find him Houdini- adjacent on the field, too. His size and skill set combo defies the conventional wisdom applied to professional quarterbacks (as well as the now-buried notion that Buffalo’s ascending QB doesn’t belong in the NFL). None of which is to suggest that Allen is perfect or mistake-free or even smooth. It just means: There might not be another NFL player who brings the same edge-of-

54 your-seat terror to every single play. “It’s like, oh, you think I’m throwing it?” says Dion Dawkins, the tackle who protects Allen’s blindside. “Well, here’s a stiff-arm!”

The phrase Josh Allen Experience has been deployed as an insult in years past, in part because the good, the bad and the holy s--- often take place simultaneously. Going to Allen after the last might-have-been-franchise quarterback in Buffalo, conservative veteran , was like waving goodbye to the kiddie roller coaster and hopping on the screamer that barely passes its daily safety inspections. If the last generation of great passers was typified by world-class surgeons—Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Drew Brees—diagnosing defenses and dissecting them with painstaking precision, Allen arrives in the operating room with a bowhunting knife and a bottle of Wild Turkey from which he takes generous slugs. Even the NFL’s best improvisers—Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson and Russell Wilson—work through a flow chart on any given play. Allen’s options, though, can seem wider, perhaps infinite. Allen represents an outlier among outliers.

One play before that second-down bar brawl broke out, he had an opportunity to scramble for about five yards but, instead, at the last moment, tried to flick a lateral to an unsuspecting teammate, the ball skipping out of bounds. Unsuspecting because, well, who does that? Josh Allen does that. The play, which was ruled an incomplete pass, was reminiscent of the attempted lateral Allen flipped while getting dragged down at the end of a long run late in the Bills’ comeback in Houston last January.

He is rarely described as poetic, like Mahomes; isn’t naturally smooth, like Jackson. Instead, he recalls a famous Mike Tyson quote—“My style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable”—in that he doesn’t exactly make sense until he does.

And yet, this glorious, zany, cover-your-children’s-eyes experience is … working? The Bills look formidable, so good that this team reminds Buffalo legend Thurman Thomas of the Super Bowl squads he played on, the ones that dropped four-straight heartbreakers. For the first time in forever, the best quarterback in the AFC East isn’t Tom Brady and doesn’t play for New England. Allen—Josh Allen—is the reason the Bills are sitting at 7-2, and Western New York is considering the prospect of February football.

So how in the name of chaos theory did Allen and the Bills end up here? How did Allen and his comebacks make him the NFL’s foremost nut-cruncher—his term—and send long-ago-cursed Buffalo fans scurrying to buy another ticket for the wildest ride in football? Like every snap he takes, the route was, shall we say, more interesting than that of a typical quarterback.

* * *

When Beane took over the Bills in 2017, he inherited both the longest playoff drought in professional sports—18 seasons—and a quarterback carousel that never seemed to stop spinning. It was no surprise then that he took a particular interest in the ’18 QB class, which featured two Heisman winners in Oklahoma’s and Louisville’s Lamar Jackson; USC’s , who was the presumed front-runner to be drafted No. 1 for most of that college season; and UCLA’s , considered a blue-chip prospect since his high school days. Then there was Allen, the Wyoming flamethrower with the forgettable stat line, a non- recruit so distanced from the prep QB circuit that he might have thought was an Oceans franchise spin-off.

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But the more Beane watched Allen, the more he saw specific ways that Allen’s college experience would translate favorably to Buffalo. With several games each season featuring winds gusting at 15 miles an hour or more, Bills quarterbacks required big-boy arm strength. That, and comfort in snow. And the ability to deal with adverse conditions—and the talent around Allen at Wyoming his senior season qualified as such. “There was really no one Josh was playing with where you said, This kid is going to have a chance in the NFL,” Beane says.

The GM and his Bills contingent flew that spring to Wyoming’s campus in Laramie, beginning the car-wash process for all their top prospects. Allen’s workout put Beane at ease. “Just needed more coaching,” he says.

Buffalo held the 12th pick, and Beane knew that the QB-needy Browns, who held the No. 1 and No. 4 selections, would take Mayfield at the top of the draft. But he wasn’t sure what Dave Gettleman, the Giants’ new general manager, had in mind at No. 2 (Eli Manning was still the de facto starter). And on the day the Bills worked out Allen, news broke that the similarly QB- deficient Jets had traded up with the Colts to No. 3, ostensibly for a quarterback.

To Beane, Allen represented the draft class’s unmolded clay. He brought the highest risk, sure. But also, potentially, the highest reward. Beane saw a talent so raw that he figured—hoped— other teams might be scared away.

Beane waved away the obvious concerns. He liked that Allen hadn’t taken the typical route to the NFL scrutiny. That he’d grown up on a 3,000-acre cotton farm in Firebaugh, Calif., near Fresno, and proudly joined the Future Farmers of America. That he played multiple sports in high school, wasn’t coddled on the showcase camp circuit and started his college years at Reedley, a juco where the husband of one family cousin happened to be an assistant coach. Wyoming’s coaches stumbled upon the QB only while recruiting someone else. “I thought he had the potential to be a Division-I guy,” says Ernie Rodriguez, his offensive coordinator there.

In Allen’s first year after transferring, he broke his collarbone on a reckless run where he failed to slide. In his second, he played some of his worst football against Nebraska, Iowa and Oregon.

At that point he presented evaluators a different type of experience, but Beane saw the clay, the ability to build a passer from scratch. He loved Allen’s endless potential, his all-weather fit and his unassuming personality in a city where the biggest celebrity might be the wings. Allen was relatable, quoting from Will Ferrell movies and growing out a glorious mustache and cracking dad jokes. “No. 1 or 2 most likable guy I’ve been around,” says , who would eventually become Allen’s private quarterback coach. “Just a magnet.”

Beane was active on draft night, studying the first 11 picks in search for where he might be able to trade up. (The draft-day revelation of racially insensitive tweets from his high school days, for which Allen apologized in media appearances that day, did not affect his draft stock.) Beane tried to move to No. 4, the Browns’ second pick. When that failed, he agreed to a deal that would have sent two first-rounders to the Broncos for their choice at 5, with one caveat: The swap would be off if N.C. State pass rusher Bradley Chubb was still on the board. When Chubb slid, Denver kept the pick. Finally, Beane worked out a deal with the Bucs, giving up his No. 12 and two second-rounders to move up five slots. At Buffalo’s facility in Orchard Park, the GM headed downstairs to the media room, all fired up. “The looks on some of their faces, I’ll never forget it,” says Beane. “It was like I had just screwed everything up.”

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“Listen,” he promised, “you’re going to love him.”

* * *

The exhaustive process of refining the Josh Allen Experience took three full offseasons, with the QB retreating in the down months to Southern California, where he trained under Palmer, the longtime NFL backup turned mentor of prospects. There, a crew of sorts formed, with three signal-callers from the ’18 draft class—Allen, Darnold and Kyle Allen (no relation, now of the Washington Football Team)—and their sensei, perfecting their shared craft on the beach.

Even on television, Allen’s immense gifts leap off the screen. Not many humans are 6' 5", 240 pounds and move like he does. Few can chuck footballs almost the full length of the field, while lumbering over smaller defenders or choosing to out-run them.

As a player and coach, Palmer believes he has witnessed up close some of the most atomic arms in modern pro football, from Mahomes to to ; even his older brother, Carson. But Allen, he says, “has the strongest arm I’ve ever seen. When he throws in a group of [NFL] starters, at some point, they’ll all giggle after he bombs one.”

He points out, too, that Allen works with the same trainer as Texans QB , athletic marvel that he is, and Allen logs comparable times in drills that measure athleticism and explosiveness. So Allen slings missiles like Mahomes, moves like Watson and stacks up well, in size, against —all of which makes for a supreme talent. But not necessarily a polished one. To Palmer, potential looked like opportunity wrapped inside too many mechanical flaws and ill-advised laterals.

“This is the coolest ball of clay I’ve ever seen,” he told friends. He didn’t want to slow the Experience; didn’t think Allen needed a total makeover. He wanted to emphasize what existed and create comfort within chaos, making Allen max effective and max efficient.

Because Palmer, ultimately, works with his QBs in short chunks of time, he concentrates on one particular facet of each passer’s game every offseason. To begin unlocking the infinite possibilities, in their first spring together, Palmer lasered in on how calculated and consistent movement could improve Allen’s accuracy from his base.

“Remember, he was a bust and inaccurate and he couldn’t hit anything,” Palmer says. “But I realized: This wasn’t one of those big-armed guys with a wild fastball. None of his accuracy issues had to do with his arm.”

On tape, Allen rarely threw with his feet in the same position, which led to a disconnect between his body’s upper and lower halves. At Wyoming, he tended to bounce on his toes, with his feet too close together, making it hard to stride consistently. Palmer forced Allen to shuffle around the hardwood floors at his beach house, wearing socks, until he could steady himself for off- balance throws. Pause the camera, Palmer says, and Allen’s upper half began to look the same, every time he threw.

In offseason No. 2, after a rookie campaign that only exacerbated the doubts coming from analysts and opponents—12 games, 12 interceptions, 52.8% completions—Palmer built on that base. He focused that summer on Allen’s anticipation throws, heading to Doheny State Beach and taking over a grassy area lined with palm trees. Palmer would shout instructions for where Allen was to place his throws, calibrating his touch and angle so the ball arrives when the

57 receiver does: Throw one tree ahead of wideouts, then two trees, then three. Then they did the same drills on the beach, in shifting sand. Palmer compares these workouts to baseball bat swings with a weighted donut: Take the donut off and it feels easier. With his donut gone, Allen’s completion percentage jumped six points in Year 2.

In the lead-up to Year 3, Allen benefited from the upheaval of 2020, using his extra time during the pandemic to buy a house in Dana Point, Calif., near Palmer, and train more than ever before. He called Tony Romo and asked the old Cowboys QB for guidance on his throwing motion. He studied film of Aaron Rodgers, a quarterback he calls “one of the most talented guys to ever play the position, if not the most talented.”

He practiced little hops to open up throwing lanes, hoisting passes midair and experimenting with different arm angles. He worked on his deep ball, “to put it all together, be more consistent.”

The point was to keep the feel and the electricity and the possibility inherent in the Experience, but eliminate—O.K., cut down—the worst parts.

* * *

Allen understands the Experience can be stressful. That it whipsaws the frayed emotional state of Bills fans thirsty for long-ago success. That it puzzles everyone from the anonymous scouts who deemed him atypical to the star cornerback (Jalen Ramey) who called him “trash” in a GQ interview, to the game-charting services, like Pro Football Focus, which described Allen’s torrent start to 2020 not as excellent but as an anomaly. Direct insults, backhanded compliments, Allen pauses, then politely responds. The Josh Allen Experience? In a word? “Unpredictable,” he says.

“I don’t mean that in a bad sense. But any play could have me throwing deep or checking down or running or trying to stiff-arm dudes or jumping over Anthony Barr. I play with confidence and swagger and, when I’m on the field, there’s nothing that I can’t do.” Nothing encompassing vast positive and negative outcomes. It’s just that, now, the scales have tipped.

The latest touches were painted this spring, when Allen summoned offensive players to South Florida for training (in a way that seems less responsible now than then). They were already Experience converts, the tackle Dawkins says, zealots who knew Allen as their leader and the region’s most-famous man child and the tall, stilted white dude unafraid to Nae Nae or Dougie in the locker room. Between workouts, whenever the dad jokes halted, the Bills often turned to each other, unsure if the confidence they felt was shared. Dawkins constantly caught himself saying, “The talent we need is here.”

Well, it had taken Beane three summers, like Allen, to make good on his own promises. Like tailoring his offensive roster around the chaotic energy of his QB, who requires a suitable habitat never seen before in pro football to thrive—from the weather to the cocoon of coaches to the strangest of skill sets. Some of Allen’s past struggles, Beane blamed on himself. He knew that Allen would play “with five guys I plucked from the nearest grocery store,” but that didn’t mean the GM had to take him literally.

Before 2019, he added speedster John Brown and shifty slot wideout Cole Beasley. With better options, naturally, Allen improved in most statistical categories. His touchdowns went up, his turnovers went down, and he led four fourth-quarter comebacks and five game-winning drives. After the Bills lost an overtime playoff game to Houston last January, when the quarterback sat

58 down with his GM and his coaches for an exit interview, he rattled off all the critiques they planned to give him. He already knew the next steps.

Beane kept building around his quarterback. Even though Minnesota had already waved away his previous attempts to trade for Stefon Diggs, Beane tried again this summer, knowing the Experience could use a versatile, No. 1 wideout who doubled as a deep-ball specialist, meaning Diggs could continue to dash open while Allen’s unpredictable dashes unfolded. Per PFF, Diggs had led all receivers in gains on targets of more than 20 yards (635). Beane dealt for him last spring. Even after the influx of supporting talent, the “big question” pundits had about Buffalo remained the same: Allen, always.

And yet, over the first two months of the season, his biggest perceived weakness—downfield accuracy—was a strength. Through Week 9 Allen was completing 53.8% of throws that travel 15 or more yards through the air, seventh-best among NFL starters, compared to 31.9% on such throws over his first two seasons. In Sunday’s matchup with Russell Wilson he outclassed the presumptive MVP front-runner. Attacking the blitz-happy Seahawks with a pass-heavy spread approach, Allen went 31-for-38 for 415 yards, 3 passing touchdowns, a rushing TD and hung 44 points on Seattle while Wilson was the one floundering through turnovers (four) and erratic accuracy.

As the stats, the points and the wins accumulated, the latter coming not in spite of Allen but because of him, social media started circulating a Josh Allen Apology Form. There were boxes to check (I don’t know football . . . Mercury was in retrograde . . . didn’t watch the actual games) along with a suggestion that any gushing praise moving forward should equal any previous disrespect.

* * *

It’s no secret that the makeup of NFL quarterbacks is changing, that the more prototypical, drop- back legends who have dominated football for so long it seems like they’ll never retire will soon be playing a lot of golf. The game is shifting, rapidly, weekly, innovatively, with quarterbacks of different ages and different races and varied sizes and skill sets. The only thing they seem to have in common is how little they seem to have in common. And no player in the modern NFL typifies just how adaptable and malleable and creative the position has become than Allen, who stands alone, apart, in a way.

That’s not to say he is the best quarterback in the NFL, or the fastest, or the strongest, or the tallest, or the most refined. Allen is so many things crammed into one funky package that he— and the Experience—are impossible to clearly define. He’s big and fast but runs clunky. He can chuck the ball but not with a poetic grace. Palmer makes the argument that Allen is the most talented athlete to ever play the position, because he can move and throw like that at 6' 5".

Palmer says to picture this: Allen, one day soon, under center, Diggs set wide to the left. Diggs runs a curl at the 14-yard-line, while the protection breaks down. Allen scampers right, away from impending doom, maybe slips a tackle or five. Diggs spies his QB on the move, same as always, and he bolts downfield on a post route. Allen whips the ball across his body, 75 yards down field, all the way to the end zone, where Diggs settles underneath for an easy score. That play, Palmer promises, is coming—one indicative of a new, exhilarating landscape in pro football.

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“The future of the game is the quarterback’s ability to create time and space,” Palmer says. “Josh Rosen—and this has nothing to do with what happened to him, because he’s been a victim of situations—but I do think [he] is the last quarterback who will ever be taken high in the draft whose main attribute is not movement.”

Which is funny, right? That the quarterback deemed too atypical for some teams before the draft two years ago now has Bills fans dreaming of the most unlikely thing of all: their first, Su … pe … r … well, let’s not jinx it.

* * *

In the most important ways, Allen is just like the city that adopted him. On this, everyone seems to agree. Bills offensive coordinator , a Western New York native and a long- suffering Bills fan himself, may not approve of how strangers describe Buffalo, a city that so few of them have ever visited. But he’s still aware. He says his unit is emblematic of all the usual clichés used to describe places that are less than desirable to outsiders: tough and hard-nosed and working class and all that. Among his starters, he counts just one first-round draft pick. The one whom most of the football world doubted.

So Beane can say that nobody sees Buffalo as a destination, and that’s largely true. Allen can counter that he loves his adopted city and hopes he never leaves, and that’s also true. But it’s Daboll who espouses the most relevant sentiment for those lunatics swilling LaBatts and jumping through tables in the parking lot. The Experience? It’s theirs. Finally.

“This dude is so Buffalo,” Daboll says.

Beane believes the outsiders remain less-than convinced. That they eye the Josh Allen Experience with skepticism, enjoying the thrill and checking the apology forms, but still expecting Allen to make the kinds of mistakes that once defined him, like the two picks he threw against the Titans on a Tuesday night in Week 5, or his struggles through the wind and rain against Mahomes’s Chiefs six nights later. But not in Buffalo. In Buffalo, they’re all-in. In the same city where Beane twice had to switch barbers due to incessant needling about his roster- building, he can sense something unfamiliar wafting through the air. It’s not wing smoke; it’s … optimism.

In his first season as GM, Beane helped guide Buffalo back into the playoffs, ending the drought. He saw fans crying in the stands. He saved some of the videos, for whenever he needs the inspiration. But now, it’s different. For the first time in forever, the Bills are a legitimate contender that Beane molded around Allen much like everyone around Allen molded his unformed clay into a true franchise quarterback. The refinement of both roster and quarterback has led right here, to the overflowing bandwagon and the promising, if not perfect, start.

Thomas, one of many Hall of Fame Bills, sees what’s possible, and he hasn’t seen that for a long, long time. He did Zoom calls this summer with the current players and former greats, luminaries like and and Fred Jackson. He believed the players knew where they might be headed; he did not believe they could understand what a championship would mean. “Guys,” Thomas told them, “if you win one Super Bowl, you’ll be the greatest team in Bills history.”

He didn’t have to say the rest, didn’t need to remind them he’d lost four straight. “We have the guy that nobody wanted,” he says. “People said bad things about him like they say bad things

60 about Buffalo in the winter.” But, he told the players, “If you win, we win. I’m gonna feel like I won it, too.”

Allen hopes he can deliver that, for himself and for his coaches and for Thomas and for the believers in Bills Mafia. He likes this team, in this season, and he sees now the infinite possibilities.

So just when does the Josh Allen Experience end? “Hopefully,” he says, “the second week of February.”

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Steelers turn to Cam Heyward for leadership on and off the field

Pitt Post-Gazette –– 11/11/20

By Gerry Dulac

As one of the team captains, defensive end Cam Heyward said he has had to take a more active leadership role after the Steelers placed five players, including quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and linebacker Vince Williams, on the reserve/COVID-19 list.

Heyward has already had to do that because of injuries on the defensive line, trying to mentor young players such as defensive end Henry Mondeaux and rookie Carlos Davis, who had never even appeared in an NFL game.

While the situation is not dire — coach said he thinks four players will be able to return to practice Saturday, including Roethlisberger and Williams — it is the first time the Steelers have had to place that many players on the COVID-19 list in a week.

“I knew every team would be affected by this; I didn’t know how,” Heyward said Wednesday after practice. “We’re all adapting. I don’t think anyone has perfect protocol, in any sport or any job, to eradicate COVID-19.”

The Steelers held practice at their normal scheduled time but conducted their team and position meetings remotely, in accordance with NFL protocol. They even conducted their Zoom calls with the media by moving their coaches and players outdoors.

Heyward said his teammates were “wired in” despite the changes.

“It’s tough with virtual meetings, but I thought the guys asked questions and continued to stay involved and when we got on field we were able to address the questions right then and there. We have to do the same thing throughout the week. Whatever it permits, we got to be ready to attack on Sunday.”

And there was Heyward, making sure his teammates followed procedure and didn’t let the alterations in their routine be an issue. Defensive line coach Karl Dunbar referred to Heyward as the “Pied Piper” because of the way the other defensive linemen follow his lead.

“I just try to relay the message, make sure everybody is held accountable, understand when we do good it’s OK to shine a light on it but then understand we can still work.

“In this time, you have to be more communicative and make sure it doesn’t get lost in translation. I want everything I say to be meaningful and be able to be an outlet for the guys, whether they have concerns for what’s going on or what they see on the field. I’ve seen things they haven’t seen yet. If I can always lend an extra hand or point them in the right direction, I try to.”

Meantime, nose tackle Tyson Alualu returned to practice after missing Sunday’s game in Dallas with a sprained MCL. Tomlin said Tuesday that Alualu, along with nickel back Mike Hilton

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(shoulder) and fullback Derek Watt (hamstring), has a chance to play Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals.

Alualu, though, was expected to miss up to two games, and the Steelers don’t want to rush him back until his knee is healthy. The Steelers have also been without defensive end Chris Wormley (knee), who has spent the past two weeks on injured reserve and is not eligible to return for another week.

Those injuries forced the Steelers to promote Mondeaux from the practice squad and dress Davis for the first time against the Cowboys. It has also meant more playing time for Isaiah Buggs, who played 34 snaps in Baltimore and 28 in Dallas.

“To have Tyson back, he provides that leadership, but he’s got to take care of his body,” Heyward said of Alualu. “I don’t think we can throw anybody out there just to throw anybody out there. We want Tyson 100% when he comes back. If he’s not, its going to be up to Carlos, Buggs and Henry to hold it down. I thought they did an adequate job.”

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Sky's the limit for Packers' prolific passing duo of Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams

Green Bay Press-Gazette –– 11/12/20

By Jim Owczarski

GREEN BAY – Since the turn of the century, the Green Bay Packers have reached the playoffs 14 times, won the division 10 times, gone to five NFC championship games and won a Super Bowl. Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers have been to 12 Pro Bowls and Rodgers has won two Most Valuable Player awards.

But the last year and a half under head coach Matt LaFleur has been a bit different, even by Packers standards.

The Packers have been 6-2 or better at the halfway point of the season just seven times in the last two decades, and they’ve now done it in back-to-back years. Their 7-1 mark at the midway point of 2019 was tied for their second-best start since 2000 (behind 8-0 in 2011).

And as is often the case in Green Bay, as the offense goes, so goes the team in the regular season.

Rodgers’ resume often leads to “future Hall of Famer” being attached to his name like an executive title, but even after 12 seasons as a starter his 2020 campaign is shaping up to be one of the most impressive of his career in terms of counting stats.

It’s something that could have been expected, with Rodgers having had a year in LaFleur’s system.

“I would anticipate that, you know, everything’s going to be a little bit easier for him,” Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer predicted for Rodgers before Week 1. “So, I would anticipate big jumps. I don't know if, I mean, he’s so good ... I don't know that he makes huge, huge jumps. I just know that offensively that they probably would.”

So, let’s look at where the 37-year-old Packers QB sits statistically through eight games.

Rodgers is first in the NFL in passer rating (117.5), third in touchdowns (24), eighth in yards per attempt (8.0), ninth in yards per game (281.6) and 14th in completion percentage (67.5).

He has completed 189 passes on 280 attempts for 2,253 yards and 24 touchdowns.

Of course, simply doubling Rodgers’ numbers isn’t how football works – but he is on pace to throw 40 or more touchdown passes for just the third time and set a career high with 48. He is in position to challenge his career highs in completions (401 in 2016), yards (4,653 in 2011), completion percentage (68.3% in 2011) and rating (122.5 in 2011).

While Rodgers is tracking just behind his MVP campaign of 2011 in some areas, he will likely have more explosive single-game performances to keep him on that pace or perhaps overtake

64 it. Some of the most prolific single games of his career have occurred over the last season and a half.

Rodgers has had one of his three five-touchdown games and five of his 22 career four- touchdown efforts since the start of last season. He has also had three of his top-10 career performances in passer rating and completion percentage since the start of last season.

On a career level, Rodgers soon will pass John Elway for 10th all-time in completions and has a chance this season to surpass Elway to become 10th in career yards if he stays on pace. Rodgers can also become the seventh quarterback to throw for 400 career touchdowns.

Adams also on career pace Davante Adams made three Pro Bowls in his first six seasons, but he has had some unfortunate luck regarding his numbers during that time. He has only had one season catching at least 90 passes and topping 1,000 yards (2018). Twice he ended the season with 997 total yards. He has never led the league in any category.

In a talented receiver draft class of 2014, Adams is fourth in career catches behind , Mike Evans and Odell Beckham Jr. and fifth in yards behind that quartet and Brandin Cooks. He trails only Evans in career touchdowns (55 to 52).

There’s no question Adams has become one of the league’s best receivers, but this season is unlike any other for him.

Despite missing two and a half games, Adams is on pace to shatter not just his career highs but also several long-standing team records.

“You feel the size and the catching radius,” former Falcons head coach Dan Quinn said. “Those are things he plays with what we would call aggressive hands. When a play’s up in the air where it could go either way, he’s got such aggressiveness to come down with the ball. Certainly on the deep-shot plays, that’s one of Davante’s strengths. He’s a real one, there’s no doubt about it.”

Adams, 28, is averaging 8.8 catches, 112.5 yards and 1.3 touchdowns per game – and while his game-to-game performances are more uneven than Rodgers', Adams’ big games are wildly explosive. He has tied ’s club record for receptions in a game (14) and added a 13- catch game.

This has Adams on pace to catch 123 passes for 1,575 yards and 19 touchdowns. It would not only go down as the greatest single receiving season in Packers history, breaking ’s records for catches (112 in 1993) and touchdowns (18 in 1994) and ’s record for yards (1,519 in 2014), but would rate on a historical level for the NFL.

Catching 123 passes would tie Adams for seventh all-time in a single year while the yardage total would tie him for 25th. The 19 touchdowns would be good for third all-time.

“He’s such a great player,” Rodgers said after Adams’ 10-catch, 173-yard night against San Francisco. “He’s tough on matchups, he’s able to create so much space with his release pattern, and he’s got enough speed to get on top so you can’t necessarily play low and expect certain routes. We hit him with a lot of different things (against the 49ers). Hit him on the first possession with a go ball that he made a nice adjustment on. On the last possession we were in

65 on an inside go route. He’s so talented, he can do it all, handles himself the right way. Just a joy to play with. A special guy.”

Historic duo On an individual level, the Packers have not had a quarterback-receiver combination on pace to be this prolific since the 1990s.

In Rodgers’ tenure as a starter he has gone to the Pro Bowl with several of his top wideouts but Adams is the only one of those receivers to catch more than 100 passes. In 2018, Adams had 111 receptions and Rodgers threw for 4,442 yards – but his 25 touchdowns were the fewest he has thrown in a full season.

With Favre throwing passes, Antonio Freeman was the last wide receiver to make All-Pro (1998) and the Favre-Sharpe combination from 1992-93 led to All-Pro designations for Sharpe. But in that era, Favre never got close to 3,500 yards.

Statistically, the closest comparison to what Rodgers and Adams are putting together is the 1995 season, the first MVP campaign of Favre’s career. Favre, then 26, led the league with 4,413 yard and 38 touchdowns and his favorite target was Robert Brooks. Brooks was targeted 167 times and caught 102 passes for 1,497 yards and 13 touchdowns, but did not make the Pro Bowl.

And clearly, if Rodgers and Adams carry on they will blow Favre-Brooks out of the water as the greatest single-season combination in franchise history.

“I mean, you’ve got a great receiver and one of the best quarterbacks of all time,” 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said. “You’ve got an O-line that protects well, you’ve got a good running game, you’ve got a very good scheme, are coached well at every position. And then when you’ve got two players like that, they’re very hard to stop. They were hard to stop last year. You can tell both of them are more confident and probably more healthy this year, and really, I don’t feel like the years mattered. Whenever those guys are healthy and going, I feel like you always get the same results.”

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Shedeur Sanders says playing for his dad Deion Sanders at Jackson State will prepare him for the NFL

The Undefeated –– 11/11/20

By Jean-Jacques Taylor

A few weeks ago, Shedeur Sanders walked up to his father, Hall of Fame cornerback and Jackson State football coach Deion Sanders, and asked a simple question.

“Hey, are we ever gonna talk about the obvious?” he asked.

“What’s the plan? What’s the deal?”

“When you’re ready, I’m ready,” his father replied.

So father and son talked for an hour or so.

Sanders demanded the same answers from his father that he demanded of other head coaches: He wanted to know the offensive coordinator, playcaller and quarterbacks coach.

Simply put, Sanders wanted to know his father’s plan for preparing him to be an NFL quarterback.

“This is an investment to his future. This ain’t just football. This ain’t just a game,” Deion Sanders told The Undefeated of his son’s college choice. “He wanted to understand how was he going to be developed.”

When the conversation ended, Sanders told his father he’d let him know whether he was going to stay committed to Florida Atlantic or commit to historically Black Jackson State.

On Nov. 6, Sanders announced via Twitter he had committed to Jackson State, becoming the highest-rated recruit in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.

Understand, Sanders committed to Florida Atlantic in July and Jackson State hired Deion Sanders as football coach in September. Their conversation didn’t take place for nearly three weeks after Deion Sanders was hired. Sanders can officially sign with Jackson State during the national letter of intent signing period Dec. 16-18.

“That was the elephant in the room,” Sanders told The Undefeated. “I just wanted to go ahead and get the conversation over with and really talk about it.

“He told me his plan. I evaluated the whole program and everything he wanted to do there. The most important thing to me was my development. Basically, I wanted to know who was on the staff, and with the people on the staff I feel like I can get the most development and go to that next level.

“He’s my father and at the end of the day he doesn’t want to influence me or kind of force me to do something. I thought it was good that he didn’t really talk to me about it.”

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Sanders, at 6-foot-2, 200 pounds, is No. 60 on ESPN’s Top 300 and the second-ranked pro- style quarterback in Texas. He was going to be scrutinized no matter where he played college football.

Jackson State is getting a player who passed for 3,477 yards with 47 touchdowns and four interceptions as a junior at Trinity Christian High School in Cedar Hill, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. As a sophomore, he passed for 3,088 yards with 42 touchdowns and seven interceptions while leading Trinity Christian to consecutive state championships.

Deion Sanders didn’t want to pressure his son. He officially starts as the Jackson State coach in December and his coaching staff is expected to be named by that date.

“I didn’t want to be the sole reason he did what he did. I wanted him to understand the move in its entirety,” Deion Sanders said. “Sometimes, as a father, your son doesn’t hear you as well as he hears others. I think every parent understands that.

“Once he got all of his information and sorted it all out, then he came to me. Once he came to me and said let’s talk about this, then I knew he was ready.”

Sanders understands the spotlight’s glare will be harsher playing college football for his father than it ever was at Trinity Christian, where Deion Sanders is the offensive coordinator. His brother, Shilo Sanders, is a redshirt freshman safety at South Carolina, where he has amassed 24 tackles so far this season.

“Pressure is mental. You know what you’re getting yourself into before you do it,” Sanders said. “As long as you stay prepared, there should be no pressure.”

“It’s a tremendous challenge, but I’ve taught my kids we don’t feel pressure, we put pressure on people.” – Deion Sanders

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s challenging because whatever Sanders does on the football field will always be compared with his father’s feats.

“It’s a tremendous challenge, but I’ve taught my kids we don’t feel pressure, we put pressure on people,” Deion Sanders said. “And I taught them at an early age that pressure ain’t a game. Or performing when people think you can’t.

“Pressure is a single mama trying to make ends meet. Pressure is somebody in the hospital on life support. That’s pressure. Pressure ain’t no game.

“No matter if we win or lose, we’re still going to go back to the same lifestyle. We’ll get in the same car and have the same trappings of life before the game. That’s not pressure.”

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