Nfl
Story Stream
How the Super Bowl Stole Football’s Soul February 07, 2025
For Americans, bigger is always better. We “go big or go home”. Big Pharma makes our medicine and Big Tech builds our phones. We wash down Big Macs with Big Gulps and jam to Biggie Smalls. College football is much the same. “Big four” bowl games once...
Josh Allen Pulled Off a Massive MVP Surprise February 07, 2025
Lamar Jackson vs. Josh Allen was a true MVP debate for the ages—the type the NFL hasn’t seen since Steve McNair and Peyton Manning split the award for the 2003 season. When Jackson was overwhelmingly voted the first-team quarterback on the Associated...
Saquon Barkley Could! Go! All! The! Way! February 06, 2025
Midway through the fourth quarter of the Philadelphia Eagles’ 55-23 NFC championship game win over the Washington Commanders, the Fox broadcast aired a brief highlight reel of running back Saquon Barkley: twirling down the field, striding up the side...
College Football Is Not and Should Not Try to Be the NFL February 03, 2025
In the days following the College Football National Championship Game, Outkick founder Clay Travis took to X to note that:Just 22.1 million viewers watched Ohio State-Notre Dame, the third lowest playoff title game viewership on record. Truly awful n...
The Eagles Offense Finally Looks Super Bowl Ready January 28, 2025
The Eagles have punched their ticket to Super Bowl LIX in the most unlikely way—by passing the football. After they scuffled through most of the season offensively, everything finally came together for Philadelphia and quarterback Jalen Hurts, who co...
The Buffalo Bills Have Put Their Fans in a Trap January 28, 2025
There is not a lot left to say. Every publication is allotted one story with the headline “God Just Hates the Buffalo Bills,” and we used ours last year. We have already established in these pages, a few times, that the modern NFL has one fundamental...
I Hate That I Hate the Chiefs January 28, 2025
Some thoughts after our Kansas City Chiefs overlords again dispatched Josh Allen’s Buffalo Bills to again make it back to the Super Bowl…There’s a lot of research to suggest that people rationalize their emotional urges, retroactively. First you feel...
The Remarkably Quiet Death of Tackle Football January 27, 2025
Tackle football currently dominates the landscape of our national culture like no sport has done for almost a century. Almost single-handedly, it is keeping the major television networks—otherwise in a death spiral of their own badly broken business ...
The Bills Are a Footnote in the Chiefs’ AFC Dynasty January 27, 2025
Again.First there was 13 seconds. Then Tyler Bass’s miss, wide right. And now, this. Once again, the Kansas City Chiefs are going to the Super Bowl, after winning the AFC championship game on Sunday, 32-29. And once again, they’ve gotten there on the...
Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills Are on a Quest January 22, 2025
Relative to the home crowd at Highmark Stadium, which frothed over at each inflection point as the snow fell on Sunday night, Buffalo Bills players were calm after winning the biggest game of the season 27-25 against the Baltimore Ravens in the divis...
Mike Tirico Has a Note for That January 21, 2025
This NFL season, I was present for the birth of a Mike Tirico Note. Specifics are important. On November 17, the Bengals played the Chargers on Sunday Night Football. The score was tied at 27 with 7:20 left in the fourth quarter. I was standing behin...
Playoff Paradise in the D January 17, 2025
Long before they had their own television show, Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson had each other. After they met at Second City Detroit in the early 2000s, the two hometown boys started bro’ing out over their favorite teams. Robinson, Richardson’s impr...
The Year of the NFL’s Running Back Revival January 14, 2025
Two summers ago, the NFL’s running back market hit rock bottom. Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs, and Tony Pollard, three veteran starters who had been among the most productive players at the position, had each received the franchise tag in the spring of...
How to Spot an NFL Playoff Fraud January 10, 2025
Even before the NFL expanded the playoff field to 14 teams in 2020, we had some bad squads sneaking in through the back door. You know, those crappy seven-win teams who just barely won an awful division. The teams they put in the early slot on wild-c...
The Resurgence of the N.F.L. Running Back January 06, 2025
A specter is haunting the National Football League — the specter of the running back. While it would be an exaggeration to say that all the powers of the N.F.L. have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this ghost, it would not be a gross one....
Saquon Barkley Is Superman Again November 29, 2024
Saquon Barkley ran for 255 yards on Sunday as his Philadelphia Eagles cruised to a 37-20 victory over the Rams. The New York Giants, Barkley’s former team, had 245 yards total in their tank-tastic loss to the Buccaneers. In fact, over the Giants’ las...
The Divine Comedy of the Dallas Cowboys November 28, 2024
“I am the way into the city of woe, I am the way into eternal pain, I am the way to go among the lost.” —Dante Alighieri, Inferno, 1321“People either love us or hate us, but the most important thing is to be relevant.” —Jerry Jones, from his helicopt...
The Art of the NFL Checkdown November 01, 2024
Patrick Mahomes threw 51 checkdowns over his first three seasons as an NFL starter. Over the next three, from 2021 through 2023, the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback attempted 122, per Pro Football Focus. So if it feels like watching Mahomes now isn’t ...
Knowers of Ball October 24, 2024
Innovation has come for the NFL, America’s most popular sports league. As the writer Chuck Klosterman once pointed out, football presents itself as conservative but is incredibly liberal in terms of the competition’s evolution: the introduction of th...
Fear And Loathing On The Football Field October 23, 2024
We’re currently in the heart of football season. Teams at every level, from the NFL down to high school, are playing meaningful games that will define their seasons and shape the memories they carry forward. It’s an incredibly vibrant time of year ...
How Pete Rose Fell October 22, 2024
Sports serves many purposes in modern life, practical and moral instruction chief among them. Football “teaches you discipline and helps you develop a sense of leadership and courage and camaraderie with your friends and teammates,” the NFL cornerbac...
Peacock Needs More Hits October 21, 2024
When Peacock became the streaming hub for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, it didn’t quite go to plan, with users complaining about limited viewing options and a glitchy interface. It was, to quote NBCUniversal Media Group chairman Mark Lazarus, a “big di...
The Tom Brady Broadcasting Experience Feels Pointless October 17, 2024
Perhaps you’ve heard—Tom Brady is back to work. The seven-time Super Bowl champion and three-time league MVP has been calling games on Fox this season, the latest former player to make the jump from gridiron to broadcast booth. ...
Will We Finally Get Another Subway Series? October 14, 2024
New York is a baseball town. The NFL has been subsumed. Stroll around the five boroughs and witness the blue-and-orange, once donned sheepishly or with dour fatalism, become Hope personified. Consider Grimace, OMG, Hawk Tuah, Polar Bear’s playoff pum...
The NFL’s Newest Superstars Are Kickers October 11, 2024
With two seconds left in a tied game against the Buffalo Bills on Sunday, it was time for Houston Texans kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn to step on the field. In front of him, a span of 59 yards stretched from the spot of the kick to the goalposts. Not long ...
