By all accounts, the NFL’s My Cause My Cleats campaign is a lovely burst of altruism that give players the chance to talk about the causes nearest and dearest to their heart. Most of these causes come with person connection. For example, Patriots linebacker Matthew Judon wore two separate cleats: one for the American Cancer Association to honor his mother’s recent fight against breast cancer and the other for the International Justice Mission after Judon’s wife educated him on the rampant issue of sex trafficking. Eagles QB Jalen Hurts chose to represent the Women’s Sports Foundation to empower in sports and beyond, a cause ingrained in him from his mother who is a counselor.

.@JalenHurts on why he is representing the @WomensSportsFdn for #MyCauseMyCleats pic.twitter.com/n4BMQUQ3yl

— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) December 1, 2021

We learned about numerous causes during Week 13 and saw incredible artistry in cleat design which only gets splashier by the season. But there were also hundreds of players wearing cleats whose causes we didn’t get to learn about. Those players deserve the same platform that their teammates, who may hold bigger name value or have more impressive stats, are receiving. Thus lies the problem with My Cause My Cleats in its current form. It’s a overwhelming exercise with sideline reporters and team writers powering through so many causes in a sliver of time that it’s hard to keep them straight. It’s time for expansion.

Ever since Roger Goodell issued an apology for not listening to Colin Kaepernick and other players who were emphatically waving their hands trying to tell the story of what its like to be Black in America, the NFL has promoted its commitment to social change. While the league has donated hefty sums to the Players’ Coalition and allowed players to showcase their causes in Week 13, there are still 17 weeks (plus the pre- and postseason) where players have to follow strict edits about appearance or be fined.

My Cause My Cleat deserves to be a season-long campaign. There are several ways to orchestrate a wider campaign.

My choice would be featuring players wearing these cause-driven cleats during prime time. Every team has a prime-time game – yes, Thursday night counts – so use the broadcast to truly focus in on the charities. Tell the stories in and out of breaks. Instead of players saying their name and college in the introductions, make it their name, their charity, and one line about what or who it aids. Run a concurrent social media campaign where the teams involved are sharing the stories and charities throughout the games and with the NFL accounts boosting for higher visibility.

Given the frenetic way so any of us watch football – flipping every five seconds, watching Red Zone – capturing the national audience is far and away the most productive way to give these players and their causes the attention they deserve.

But the league could also divvy it up and have My Cause My Cleats by division on different weeks or feature two teams a week. They could also produce a My Cleats My Cause special on NFL Network with athletes partaking and fans having access to links and numbers to make donations.

Enacting My Cause My Cleats is a very positive first step for the NFL and a week the players cherish. But it’s time for more.

The post My Cause My Cleats Could Have Much Broader Impact appeared first on The Football Girl.

This week the league announced that the NFL Draft will indeed move forward in Cleveland with actual humans in attendance. There will be select prospects and media and even some fans on site. Masks and social distancing required. This is hardly surprising given the loosened restrictions on events throughout the country – even New York is allowing 10% capacity at large venues. But the differentiator between the NFL Draft and most other sporting events, or any events really, is that the league is going to have a special section reserved for fans who are fully vaccinated. And that special section, which the NFL is calling its “inner circle” happens to be the best seat in the house: the closest section to the stage where Roger Goodell will announce the selections. The NFL is still finalizing plans but a league spokeswoman says that this special section will have about 12 fully vaccinated fans per club. 

The spectrum of views on Covid and what is or isn’t safe continue to be endless and polarizing. I live in a town in California where, even though over 50% of residents are partially vaccinated, schools just reopened on a very part-time basis and if you’re maskless and within 20 feet of someone you’ll likely garner a dirty look. In other states, schools and sports, and restaurants have tried to survive the past year without missing a beat. Unfortunately for most, COVID had other ideas. COVID has been cruel and isolating. It needs to end. Despite all the societal and political differences that have prevailed during Covid, there’s one truth we should all coalesce around.  The clear ticket to putting the pandemic behind us is for everyone is get vaccinated.

The NFL Draft will be the second major event in which the league has created an elite category for the vaccinated. 7500 vaccinated health care workers were gifted free tickets to February’s Super Bowl in Tampa. That gracious display was probably more rooted in honoring the heroes that have worked in the throes of COVID than encouraging vaccinations. But the seeds for tiering were planted.

Israel has been the unequivocal world leader when it comes to vaccinating its population.  Over 60% of Israelis have received at least one shot. Compare that to the United States where 25.7% of the population has received the first shot. Not only is Israel closer to herd immunity they are also producing crucial data in terms of vaccine efficacy rates. 

But even in Israel there are those skeptical of the vaccine. To help entice them, especially the younger sect, the government last month introduced a green card where vaccinated residents can download an app and scan a bar code for entry into restaurants gyms, bands and other indoor spaces not yet proven safe for the unvaccinated. It’s essentially a ticket to pre-pandemic life. Or at least the closest thing the world can safely offer at this point.

The U.S. has a much deeper group resistant to receiving the vaccine, thanks to the politicization of COVID in this country. In an early March NPR/PBS/Marist poll,49% of Republican men said they would not receive the vaccine if made available. And the vaccine will be made available to every American by the end of May, according to President Biden.

While a sizable chunk of the NFL’s fan base are Republican men – 31% according to a recent Morning Consult poll – the league itself can’t rectify the vaccine skeptics. But in the name of public health and incentivization, the NFL can and should continue with a broader tiered system. The vaccinated folks get better access to seats with less distancing, something that mimics the pre-pandemic fan experience. 

Unvaccinated folks can still attend games but they will have to do so under stricter rules, and from a more distant vantage point, which will make the experience less fun. If the unvaccinated fans yearn for a better experience and see it dangled in front of them, well, sign up for the vaccine. We’re already inching toward supply exceeding demand making it plausible that mobile vaccine units can be placed in front of stadiums, arenas, and ball parks in the very near future. Imagine if clubs across all sports did this, especially baseball teams where there is such a frequent number of games (and the male Republican fan base exceeds the NFL). Beyond the stadium experience, teams and leagues can produce PSAs with their athletes talking about the importance of vaccinations. They can create discounts on apparel for the fully vaccinated. They can offer free Bobblehead dolls for anyone who gets a shot.  The possibilities for altruism with a little monetization on the side are endless. Heck, the NFL already got Subway to sponsor its inner circle of vaccinated fans! 

The Miami Heat are on board with the notion of tiering. They just announced that only fully vaccinated fans (meaning fans who can prove they received their second shot at least 14 days ago) will be eligible to sit in the lower bowls of American Airlines Arena. The Preakness in Baltimore will offer a less disparate but still useful version of a tiered system with vaccinated fans receiving expedited admissions. The sentiment extends beyond sports. Singer/songwriter Brandi Carlisle announced that select fully vaccinated fans would be eligible to attend her anticipated virtual concert this weekend. 

Other options to ensure safer events beyond masks and distancing have been floated. One of the most prevalent, a negative PCR test, might be effective at minimizing COVID spread on an event-by-event basis. But who knows what that person is doing or who they will cluster with in the future?  Let the bigger picture be the focus and get the skeptics vaccinated. With mass incentivizing and tiering, the NFL and entertainment as a whole might change a few minds. 

The post How the NFL And Sports Can Help Us Get Back to Normal appeared first on The Football Girl.

As a starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, Kaepernick’s stats were impressive. His passing rate was 88.9, which is higher than 15 of the league’s current starting quarterbacks. What makes the situation even more incomprehensible is the fact that several teams – the New Orleans Saints, the New York Jets, the Carolina Panthers, and the Jacksonville Jaguars – are already facing quarterback problems. 

With quarterback injuries once again jeopardizing team’s prospects, what sensible general manager wouldn’t look for a reliable backup? And Kaepernick, though clearly capable of being a starter, has now stated he would settle for being on the bench. 

Kaepernick’s employment problems began back in 2016, when he made the decision to kneel during the national anthem as a symbolic protest against police brutality. Kaepernick’s protest caused a wave controversy that resulted in his effective exclusion from the NFL. While the league has always denied blacklisting Kaepernick, it settled a collusion lawsuit with him in February, which presumably means they did have something to hide. 

Despite the case being settled, Kaepernick continues to be unemployed, but commentators and fans are increasingly calling on the NFL to put him back on the field. Opinion pieces have appeared in numerous major publications, including the Washington Post and USA Today among others, calling for his return to the NFL.   

One can only speculate as to why Kaepernick continues to be ignored. There are those who believe him responsible for a drop in TV ratings post kneeling-gate, but such claims are hard to substantiate given the enormous success of his Emmy winning, “Dream Crazy”, Nike ad, which caused the company’s stock price to shoot up. 

Another theory has it that Kaepernick’s notoriety would be a distraction from the sport. But other players, such Antonio Brown, who was accused of sexual assault and then proceeded to intimidate his accuser, don’t seem to have been affected by similar concerns. Despite being dropped by the New England Patriots for his behavior, there are reportedly still teams interested in Brown. 

The only realistic conclusion seems to be that Kaepernick is still blacklisted regardless of the settlement agreement between himself and the NFL. No matter how ready Kaepernick might be to return, it seems the NFL is still holding a grudge against him. And the odds are that we’re more likely to see Brown return than Kaepernick.

Hopefully, if people continue to support him, the NFL will be forced to set aside its petty grievances and allow a brilliant player to pick up the ball again.     

The post Colin Kaepernick Ready For Return to NFL appeared first on The Football Girl.

Jason Whitlock of Fox Sports’ Speak For Yourself was beside himself about the idea of a woman playing in the NFL. “Carli Lloyd can kick in the NFL and Toni Harris is a potential NFL defensive back. Is this healthy? What’s the endgame?” he tweeted.

I understand his reasoning to some extent. Let me explain.

When I was eight years old, I wanted to play football. My twin brother joined a local Pop Warner team and I asked my parents if I could try out, too. I knew I could play just as well as the boys. In the back grassy areas behind schools and at the neighborhood playground, I’d tackle and get hit just as hard as they did. I ran just as fast and could catch the ball better than most. It felt like we were equals on the same playing field. As kids that young, we were.

My parents thought otherwise. They didn’t let me play because they were afraid I’d get hurt. So, I’d sit in the stands at my brother’s games and sulk. It felt like a betrayal I’d never get over.

I’m older and a bit wiser now. I know that my parents made a tough decision that was in my best interest, even if I do think I could have played with the boys at that age. I continued to play tackle football with my brothers and their friends in backyards and playground fields, but as we all got older I began to notice that I couldn’t tackle them as easily as I had before. And they stopped tackling me as hard as they could. My body changed and eventually, I stopped playing tackle football with them altogether. It just wasn’t the same.

My love of football hasn’t waned. I still play in a co-ed two-hand-touch league. I’m still fast and I can still catch the ball better than most.  I talk trash and when a guy lines up across from me, I tell our QB to hit me on an out and up. Sometimes I smoke them and it feels awesome. But I also know for a fact that there’s no way I’d be able to play tackle football with these same guys. I’ve nearly had my head taken off going up for passes against guys who are taller and bigger than me more than a few times. And that’s just two-hand touch.

Football is a dangerous and brutal sport. Injuries are abundant. We already know that CTE happens due to continual hits and blows to the head. Rob Gronkowski retired at the end of last season because his body and mind were debilitated. Andrew Luck just announced his early retirement due to pain and mental anguish associated with the game. More and more players are bowing out in their early thirties to try and salvage their bodies before the pain of injuries become chronic issues. 

If men hitting men on the football field suffer this much, what would men hitting women on the field look like? 

So yes, on that level I agree with Whitlock. Toni Harris plays a full contact position and made history for earning a scholarship to play college football at a four-year school. I love Harris’ story. It’s inspiring and her determination is incredible. But I’ll be surprised if Harris gets on the field more than a handful of times this season. For the past two years, Harris attended East Los Angeles College and played on the football team as a safety. In two seasons, she played in only four games and recorded three tackles. 

Name one football player in the history of the game with that stat line who’s been offered a college scholarship to play football at a four-year school?

Again, it’s great to see Harris following her dream and I truly do believe she wants to make it to the NFL someday. But it’s not realistic. As someone who champions women athletes and sports and often comments on women competing head to head against men in other sports, I can honestly say that professional football is not one of those sports—not in a full contact position. The risk is too great. 

But what about Lloyd? 

A kicker is not a full contact position. And it’s been done before. Katie Hnida was the first woman to ever play Division I college football at the University of New Mexico. There have been others since. So a woman playing in the NFL as a kicker isn’t that far of a leap, especially when that woman is Lloyd. She has one of the strongest legs we’ve ever seen. She has scored goals from midfield. It should come as no surprise that she can hit a 55-yard field goal and perhaps, even further. I understand that Lloyd hit the field goal on a sunny day with barely any wind, wearing no pads/helmet and not facing an opposing team. Others say her form isn’t right, that soccer and football are two different disciplines. Both of those things are fair. Pundits, commentators, analysts and the whole of Twitter can speculate all they want but unless Lloyd gets the opportunity to prove whether she can or she can’t, we’ll never know for sure.

To answer Whitlock’s question, there’s no endgame here. No one, especially me, is advocating for women to suit up and compete in the trenches against 300-pound men or risk getting their heads cut off while running a route across the middle. It’s simply a special situation and it would be fun and amazing to see if Lloyd could make it as an NFL kicker if she were given the opportunity to do so. 

I’m not going to lie. My eight-year-old self would love to see it happen.

The post Opinion: Carli Lloyd Deserves an Audition But Women Playing Contact Positions in the NFL Should Not Become Norm appeared first on The Football Girl.

Just like that the world’s most incompetent self-appointed police department strikes (out) again.

In a long-awaited decision that was guaranteed to drop on a Friday, Hill, who along with his ex-fiancé Crystal Espinal were under investigation for the broken arm of their 3-year old son, was cleared from suspension or fine by the league. Not even a slap on the wrist. Nothing. He’ll be at Chiefs camp next week.

Nothing for the widely released audio in which Hill clearly threatened Espinal while talking about their son. “You need to be terrified of me too, bitch,” Hill said in chilling fashion. Nothing after uttering those disturbing words to the same woman he pleaded guilty of choking and punching while she was pregnant and they were in college.

In a longer version of the audio, Hill denies hurting his son, though admits being hard on him in an exchange between Espinal and Hill that sounds like they’re vying for a most dysfunctional parent award. Remember the boy is just THREE YEARS OLD.

Hill’s attorney floated a four-page letter denying and explaining aspects of the recording, but the receiver’s words are undeniable.

In June, Hill was legally cleared by Johnson County but not because he or Espinal were proven innocent. “We believe that a crime has occurred,” Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said at the time. “However, the evidence in this case does not conclusively establish who committed the crime against this child.”

NFL head of Special Counsel and Investigations Lisa Friel reportedly spent eight and a half hours with Hill, who according to Yahoo Sports, presented compelling evidence to corroborate the four-page letter responding to the accusation. Espinal was unwilling to talk.

Unable to draw a conclusion, the league issued a statement dripping in vagueness. “Our understanding is that the child is safe and that the child’s ongoing care is being directed and monitored by the Johnson County District Court and the Johnson County Department for Children and Families,” the statement read.“  “Similarly, based on the evidence presently available, the NFL cannot conclude that Mr. Hill violated the Personal Conduct Policy,” it continued.

But here’s what the Personal Conduct Policy says: “It is not enough simply to avoid being found guilty of a crime.  We are all held to a higher standard and much conduct ourselves in a way that is responsible, promotes the values of the NFL, and is lawful.”  There is a long list of prohibited conduct, which includes a provision that seems to align with Hill’s behavior: “actual or threatened violence against another person, including dating violence, domestic violence, [and child abuse].

You need to be terrified of me too, bitch.

If Hill threatening a woman is not enough to warrant some form of suspension when players are getting suspended for four games for smoking pot or for whatever it is that Tom Brady supposedly did with air in a football, the NFL ought to rip up their Personal Conduct Policy and bury their police badges.

The number of games in each case is far less relevant than the stark lack of consistency, much of which stems from a Personal Conduct Policy that is impossible to apply.

The threatening portion of the Hill’s case is matter of interpretation, but the audio clearly line up with the verbiage in the NFL’s Personal Conduct Policy. But the possible child abuse portion Hill’s case is a matter of evidence, which is especially murky and complicated because it involves a young child in protective services with a bevy of sealed documents. How can the NFL determine whether Hill’s conduct “poses a genuine danger to the safety and well-being of another person” or “undermines or puts at risk the integrity of the NFL?” How can it draw sensible conclusions about so many of these cases when the alleged victim is too unwilling to speak to the league? It can’t.

The result is that the NFL issues too many punishments that feel like pin the tail on the suspension board, and far more rooted in politics and reactiveness than justice.

How on earth can Ezekiel Elliott get six games after the NFL’s prosecutor recommended none but nothing for Hill? No wonder Jerry Jones was so livid.

Ex-Giants kicker Josh Brown got one game despite his wife telling police he abused her more than twenty times. Outcry. League went extra hard on Elliott despite little to no evidence. Outcry. Let’s not overdo it again. ZERO games for Hill, despite the chilling threat and history of violence. Even with the NFL’s hollow messaging of not tolerating violence against women. Outcry. It’s as if each new punishment is framed to compensate for the NFL’s last screw up.

The league just needs to get out of the policing business.

As Deadpsin’s Diana Moskovitz, who covers sex crimes and abuse, pointed out on the TFG Podcast. “We really need to rethink the idea of the league playing police, judge and jury,” she says. “I think the history bears that out. The fact that over all these years and we still have all these scandals and they’re so repetitive.”

Moskovitz is right. Cases involving domestic violence or assault are often so highly complex and layered that experts and actual law enforcement have a difficult enough time sifting through them. The NFL issuing, or not issuing punishments, without real evidence to support their decisions has been a disservice to the league and society for too long.

The post The NFL Really Needs to Exit the Policing Business appeared first on The Football Girl.

pic.twitter.com/5sdcGSuwvW

— Mark Geragos (@markgeragos) February 15, 2019

While the confidentiality agreement means the terms are to remain sealed, Kaepernick is likely a much richer man given the recent trajectory of this case.  Kaepernick won his summary judgement in August, signifying the judge believed there was enough tangible evidence for the grievance to move forward. Reports had also surfaced that a trial was upcoming.

Unlike most corporations, the NFL does not shy away from public ridicule and exhaustion that comes from a case going to court. The league spent millions for an embarrassing series of court dates over some air in a football, largely rooted in reiterating the commissioner’s powers. But the fervor over Kaepernick has been in a different stratosphere and the league needed to extinguish the public relations nightmare that has come from its egregious handling of a man most people with brain cells knows belongs in the NFL.

As time has passed, and quarterbacks like Nathan Peterman and Mark Sanchez have found places in the league, as coaches like Pete Carroll have publicly said Kaepernick should have a home as an NFL starting quarterback, the reality has become harder to deny: Kaepernick was banished from the league for peaceful protesting. Seriously, let that settle it. It never will.

Since Kaepernick last took an NFL field two years ago, fans have consistently protested, and while regular season ratings (games watched by avid fans) have survived, the most recent Super Bowl rating dropped below 100 million for the first time in a decade. Popular acts like Cardi B and Jay Z refused to perform in the halftime show and there was a robust “I’m with Kap” movement encouraging a boycott of Super Bowl Sunday.

Roger Goodell, when asked at the Commissioner’s presser a few weeks ago why Kaepernick was still unemployed, stumbled and bumbled and could barely look at his audience as he said,  “I think if a team decides that Colin Kaepernick or any other player can help their team win, that’s what they’ll do.”

In the time since Kaepenrick first peacefully protested police brutality and societal inequalities, he has become an influential figure who has already inspired multiple generations and empowered young kids, especially in the inner cities. Kaepernick could go spend the rest of his life in a closet at this point and he would unquestionably be remembered as an iconic figure who influenced society for the better. The nearly $100 million the NFL gave to the Player’s Coalition to fund social justice programs doesn’t happen without Kaepernick, and probably only happened as an attempt to buy the silence of those initially arm-in-arm with Kaepernick. Now the NFL is buying Kaepernick’s silence directly.

The backlash involving Kaepernick’s unemployment was not going to organically disappear, perhaps it never will. But NFL owners decided paying a presumably HEFTY price for his confidentially was its best available move. Which, of course, begs the lingering question: What did the NFL want to hide?

The post NFL Settles Collusion Suit with Colin Kaepernick appeared first on The Football Girl.

Just two months after video captured Hunt kicking and shoving a woman in a Cleveland hotel lobby, the Browns threw him a life jacket and here we are again.

“Given what we know about Kareem through our extensive research,” Browns GM John Dorsey said, “we believe he deserves a second chance but certainly with the understanding that he has to go through critical and essential steps to become a performing member of this organization, aside from what the NFL determines from their ongoing investigation.”

Later Dorsey unapologetically said he made no attempt to reach out to the alleged female victim. (The same presumably goes for the man Hunt alleged assaulted in a Kansas City nightclub in January 2018 and the other man Hunt alleged punched in June.)

Speaking to the alleged victims and gathering a complete account is, of course, an obvious prerequisite to conducting an investigation that could be labeled anything near “extensive.” And as recently illustrated by Deadspin’s Diana Moskovitz, there is a critical difference between assault and domestic violence, and their respective treatments. Hunt’s act in Cleveland was assault since he didn’t have an intimate relationship with the woman. Committing the time and resources to conduct a real investigation and understand the intricacies of each type of violent act might place teams in a better position to help rehabilitate the troubled athletes they tout giving a “second chance” to.

But Dorsey and the Browns acted hastily, offering up the usual tropes to justify their quest for a competitive advantage.

And that too familiar icky feeling is back. The one where the dark reality of the NFL sets in. The one where in an instance we are broadly reminded that the NFL doesn’t care about women or men or children until they stop watching its product or purchasing its gear. That it is willing to bury any semblance of its self-proclaimed moral compass to ensure the best football players in the world are gracing our TV screens on Sundays.  Where the inevitable casualties, from either injuries or off-the-field problems, are simply a cost of doing business.

None of this is to say that Hunt should not have the opportunity to work his way back to the NFL. Maybe Hunt is genuinely apologetic and has begun the right steps to prevent future incidents of anger turning into violence.  But the hastiness of the signing without any legitimate explanation of the steps Hunt has undergone would be stunning for anyone not already de-sensitized to the NFL’s history of blowing smoke about minimizing off-field violence.

When Ray Rice was shown punching his fiancé in an Atlantic City elevator in 2014, the NFL vowed to change its handling of violence against women, after massive public outrage, of course. Roger Goodell eventually announced a baseline six-game suspension for any case of domestic violence that wasn’t mitigated or heightened by other circumstances. At the time it was the league’s signature policy. Experts were brought in by both the NFL and players union, and the league added a vice president of social responsibility, all of which culminated in a supposed extensive mandatory training for team employees and players. Except that lasted just two years.

Concurrently the first cases of violence under the new policy came in which had inconsistent, confusing and reactive punishments, and the NFL never had a plan on how to handle draft prospects with known violent pasts like Joe Mixon and Tyreek Hill. The two experts brought into the NFLPA commission became disenfranchised by non-action and quit last year. One of them, Deborah Epstein, a professor of law and co-director of the Georgetown University Law Center’s Domestic Violence Clinic wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, “Because I care deeply about violence against women in the NFL and beyond, I can no longer continue to be part of a commission that is essentially a fig leaf.”

So while it’s easy to cast blame on the Browns and John Dorsey, the lip service culture created by the league is the real culprit. Hunt is on a commissioner’s exempt list, a weird moniker that rings as a reward but actually means the player’s case is under review, yet he can still earn a paycheck just not practice or play. As we see in the case of Hunt, a player can still be signed while his case is under investigation, which seems to suggest the purpose of the exempt list is to buy time to let the media  and fan scrutiny blow over. However, judging from the reaction to Hunt signing on social media, the Browns’ win-at-all-cost mentality does not seem like it will be shared by their fans any time soon.

There’s a difference between zero tolerance, which experts have warned against, and laying down a red carpet for the offending player to resume his place on an NFL roster while the league determines the severity. And the reality is the Browns and Dorsey simply beat other teams to the punch.

Deepening the reality is the juxtaposition to the news that immediately preceded the Hunt signing. Carolina signed safety Eric Reid to a three-year deal, and amidst Reid’s teleconference with reporters he stated  “his hope tank was on E” in respect to questions about Colin Kaepernick making it back to the NFL.

Let that sink in. Be shown on video assaulting a woman, get back in the NFL in two months. Non-violently kneel to protest police brutality and societal inequality, get banned for life.

In a powerful Outside the Lines piece last weekend Bob Costas revealed that he was taken off NBC’s Football Night in America after penning an essay about the film ‘Concussion’ and the NFL’s efforts to discredit brain trauma research. Costas expressed his ambivalence– disgust really – with the league’s glorification of violence. Costas was focused on one corner of the league’s darkness but the permanent stain that is the shunning of Kaepernick could certainly fall in a similarly deep shadow. Both issues illustrate the NFL’s base mantra: come for the football, leave your morality at home.

This is not to say the NFL is completely devoid of societal worth. Aside from an entertaining product, the league does associate itself with some worthy causes and organizations. But, unfortunately its quest to stand against violence toward woman has been an abject failure. Otherwise Hunt would be unemployed and re-enter the league only when he could truly explain why he is ready for a second chance. Only when he could explain what he’s learned and how he’s changed. But that will have to wait because there are football games to win.

The post Kareem Hunt’s ‘Second Chance’ Showcases NFL’s Lack of Morality appeared first on The Football Girl.

Goodell started the presser reading a speech that read as if written by a 13-year-old (“The Patriots are playing in their eleventh Super Bowl. Who could say more?”) in a manner that sounded like he was seeing it for the first time on the podium.  Blah. Blah. Blah. Fluff. Fluff. Fluff.

Then came the questions. It took four to get to the Saints controversy. Many followed. Goodell mostly punted. While he acknowledged that the call should have been made, he mostly escaped by lauded his communication with Sean Payton and Saints owner Gayle Benson. He continued by noting that tech could help but only to an extent, noting, “the game is not officiated by robots.” He mentioned taking a look at instant replay but in a way that screamed lip service. Mostly he offered his typical blanket non-response infused with a dose of bafflement.

“We try to get better. We try to learn…I don’t think the game has ever been officiated at this level. It’s extraordinary,” he said halfway through a barrage of questions on the subject.

What Goodell failed to offer is any comfort to Saints fans. When asked why he waited so long to discuss the no-call, he strategically mentioned his communication with the team for a second time,

“We addressed this immediately after the game. The coach announced the conversation and the fact that this play should have been called. … That’s our process.”

But therein lies the issue. This is a public matter. Saints fans don’t care a private conversation between coach and commissioner. There may be no utopian way to satisfy an outraged fan base. There is nothing Goodell could say to make things whole but an immediate acknowledgment that the pass interference should have been called and a vow to at least examine the tenets of instant replay in the offseason would have showcased some element of leadership. To go into hiding as the commissioner does on so many issues is disrespectful to the game.

His reactiveness was on display for much of the presser, fielding a number of questions on issues gone unaddressed.  Goodell was asked about the lack of minority coaches and GMs and effectiveness of the Rooney Rule, an issue that has garnered much attention in the last few weeks.

Goodell’s response was a relatively generic, “We don’t look at success or failure in one-year increments.” He did note that he would be meeting with several Coaches at the upcoming Combine so perhaps there will be more action steps.

He again fielded questions about Colin Kaepernick, the first related to the stain on the musical cache in Atlanta for Super Bowl week. Goodell responded, “ We have great artists performing all week. This is the biggest stage and I know people want to be part of that.”

And what about that overall stain on the league, whether he believes Kaepernick should be in the NFL?

“If a team decides that Colin Kaepernick or any other player can help their team win, that’s what they’ll do.”

Goodell is mired in litigation with Kaepernick so his non-response was a bit more understand but it’s still indicative of the bigger issue.

Goodell is supposed to be the face of the league, putting out fires, yet he’s done few interviews in the last two years as issues continue to transcend the league. He hides in the face of conflict. So instead of a state of the NFL presser mired in announcing new ideas and initiatives, he stands on a podium uncomfortably swatting away the issues deepest to the integrity of the league.

Perhaps next year the 32 owners should stand up there instead.

The post Roger Goodell’s Reactive Nature On Display at Annual Press Conference appeared first on The Football Girl.

On the surface these are two vastly different franchises. It starts with the age disparity between both starting quarterbacks and head coaches. The Rams built a “dream team” in the offseason, adding star power like Ndamukong Suh, Brandin Cooks and Aqib Talib.  The Pats have always elevated complementary players to fuel the nucleus that is Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski when he’s healthy. Their differences, along with a few similarities, and how the two teams intersect, leave us with some very intriguing storylines. Let’s examine the top narratives to look for during Super Bowl 53.

Belichick vs. McVay chess match

Likely the key to this Super Bowl. The 33-year-old wunderkind against arguably the greatest coach of all time, especially one who’s Super Bowl routine is old hat. McVay and Belichick are both gutsy with a propensity to be aggressive. Despite just beginning his head coaching reign, McVay is under far more pressure than Belichick given how immediate his coaching tree has been spawned this hiring season. McVay got very conservative and kicked the field goal on 4th and 1 at the goal line late against New Orleans, a call that probably would have cost the Rams the game had Nickell Robey-Coleman been called for pass interference. The McVay narrative would be vastly different today. But the Rams are in and if McVay brings his best and confuses Belichick with some exotic playcalling, you will all have head coaching gigs next cycle simply for reading his name in this paragraph.

Will Todd Gurley be properly used?

Gurley was error prone early in the NFC Championship with two key dropped passes and then seldom used until the 4th quarter.  Many assumed Gurley had lingering effects of his December knee injury. Turns out Gurley was fine and it was a coach’s decision, some might argue a very bad one given the dimensions Gurley adds to the offense. C.J. Anderson was mostly ineffective in his stead.  After the game Gurley chalked up his low usage to “playing sorry,” while McVay was more remorseful and admitted he “should have done a better job” incorporating Gurley into the offense. Seven touches for the NFL’s most productive rusher won’t cut it against the Patriots.

Will the Rams be ready for the moment?

This is the biggest stage the Rams and McVay have ever been on. They are a young team, with almost no Super Bowl experience.  The Patriots, on the other hand, function as a seasoned squad preparing to go into a battle they’ve seen the blueprint for several times before. All the insanely complicated logistics of Super Bowl week like family ticket distribution, the media storm and the different pacing of a Super Bowl game, are old hat for the Patriots.  The Rams will have to not be too wide-eyed in Atlanta.

How will Rams defend Rob Gronkowski?

Rob Gronkowski wasn’t much of a threat early in the season, either due to injury or the lingering effects of injury which had seemingly slowed him down.  Even in the single 100-yard receiving game Gronk produced in the season’s second half, his inability to move with any speed or precision punctuated the Miami in Miracle win for the Dolphins. But playoff Gronk looks like a different animal, like a younger version of himself.  Last week in Kansas City, Gronk caught six passes for 79 yards but it was his blocking that was a complete game-changer.  Brady said of his teammate, “He’s one of the most dominant blocking tight ends in the league. He’s a threat any time he’s out there.”

The Rams haven’t been keen on slowing down tight ends this year. Their defense was the second-worst in the league, giving up 1,075 yards receiving to opposing tight ends. If Gronk forces the Rams to double-team him on the line or downfield, it could be a long and tiring day for Wade Phillips’s group.

Will Brandin Cooks’ revenge tour continue?

While Cooks said publicly he’s not viewing the Super Bowl as a revenge game against his former team, he has to relish his current path. Cooks had two 1,000-yard seasons with the Saints and then knocked them out the postseason with the opposition. He spent a season with the Patriots where he added another 1,000-yard season to his record, and now he has the chance to take a ring from them. Even if it’s not in the forefront of his mind, the revenge tour is real.

Can the Rams get pressure on Brady? 

The Rams field arguably the NFL’s  best defender in Aaron Donald who led the league in sacks with 20.5. Tom Brady has one of the quickest releases in football and his offensive line has largely kept pressure at bay. But when there is penetration, Brady is prone to mistakes, or at least off target throws. The Chiefs led the league in sacks yet failed to record even one last week. If the Rams want to win Super Bowl 53, they need to attack any open lanes and get their hands on Brady.

If Pats win, does Brady retire?

At times, Brady has said he wants to play until 45 or later. Other times he’s been a little more coy. He’ll probably keep playing simply because he loves his job so much.  But if Brady wins a sixth ring after playing in his TENTH Super Bowl, does he really want to come back for more?

The Ratings Bowl

Yes, there are millions of people that either a) are tired of or hate the Pats b) have no emotional connection to the Rams and/or c) have little interest in the Maroon 5 led Super Bowl halftime show. Will enough of those people do something else on Super Bowl Sunday to make a major dent in the ratings?  Probably not.

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That whole period was not Payton’s finest hour as a playcaller and the Rams truly stepped up but to have a missed call so egregious is, as Payton said, something they’ll “probably never get over.” The course of football history – including Drew Brees’s legacy – was forever altered on one missed call. Of course this is hardly the first time officials have affected the outcome of a game in controversial fashion. (Almost every franchise has an example).  Nor was it the only missed call in the Rams-Saints game. Or of Championship Sunday. The Patriots’ offense avoided a crucial 3rd and 7 late when Chris Jones earned a roughing the passer call for tapping Tom Brady’s shoulder. An earlier play that was not called actually showed Patrick Mahomes being roughed up by a defender.

Every year feels like the worst year yet in officiating, and this season was no different, especially with wildly inconsistent enforcement of the new roughing the passer rule. Before we concoct any solutions to ongoing issues, we need to acknowledge the underlying issue. Football is played at a far faster pace than it appears on the screen. Plays are more often than not bang-bang, and it’s scientifically impossible for an official to get it right 100% of the time, or even 85%. Even the best officials will miss the intricacies of a play, thus potentially costing a team a game or a season. We should not accept the inherent flaw of human error without action.

Officiating needs an overhaul.  The league’s competition committee inches toward more fairness – i.e. relaxing the catch rule, makes scoring plays and turnovers reviewable – it’s seemingly never enough. It’s like saying all of your car is covered by insurance except the engine.

I’m not sure there is any obvious solution until we humans mostly evaporate and the world is run on artificial intelligence. But we need the league to further its conversation because the status quo is unacceptable. For an organization and fan base like New Orleans (or any fan base) to invest so much time and emotional energy into supporting a football game, only to have the season stripped away by a horrific no-call is just abhorrent. What happened Sunday will leave a tarnish on the NFL for a long time.

Here are a few ideas for improvement, though admittedly they all have flaws..

– Make PI reviewable. This one is the most clear-cut and fair. The CFL made pass interference reviewable and, as ESPN’s Kevin Seifert writes, this rule allowed a no call to be overturned in the 2015 Grey Cup that would have adversely impacted the outcome of the game. After Sunday’s debacle the league was to do something and this is the most obvious outcome. Making interference reviewable would help mitigate a sliver of the damage done by the league’s worst rule – the pass interference spot foul.

– EVERYTHING is reviewable. Now the boldest idea. Forget PI or RTP or holding or any number of rules not being reviewable anymore. Give teams four challenges (instead of the status quo that is 2) and make everything on the table. This protects teams against all officiating mistakes and also involves a heavy dose of coaching strategy. We all know there will be missed calls but do you really want to waste one of your challenges on a first quarter holding? A coach will have to weigh throwing the flag against the believability of the player and whether or not the challenge is worth saving for bigger fish to fry later in the game.

– EVERYTHING is reviewable in the fourth quarter of playoff games. As it stands, officials can review most things under 2:00 but not pass interference or horsecollars or actually,  there’s a lot they can’t review. Let’s take the same strategy as above but give each head coach one flag to use on something not automatically reviewed under two minutes if need be.

– Use more tech. Given that it’s 2019, it’s rather strange how little technology is used to advance the officiating experience or complement the work of the humans doing this thankless job. Most aspects of officiating can’t be replicated but even a few infusions of tech could make a impact. Imagine if footballs had sensors that lit up balls as they crossed the goal line. That’s one less aspect of a potential scoring play officials need to worry about, thus enhancing their judgement in other areas. In fact, because the ball would light up as it broke the plane, officials could pinpoint the right call based on whether or not a knee or other body part was down the moment the ball crossed the line.

– Chris Long to the rescue. The Eagles defensive end floated out the best solution. The refs should head to the booth and see what Twitter is thinking before making a final verdict.

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