Author: Nick

Via ESPN:

Effective immediately we are suspending the publication of Grantland.  After careful consideration, we have decided to direct our time and energy going forward to projects that we believe will have a broader and more significant impact across our enterprise.

Grantland distinguished itself with quality writing, smart ideas, original thinking and fun.  We are grateful to those who made it so.  Bill Simmons was passionately committed to the site and proved to be an outstanding editor with a real eye for talent.  Thanks to all the other writers, editors and staff who worked very hard to create content with an identifiable sensibility and consistent intelligence and quality. We also extend our thanks to Chris Connelly who stepped in to help us maintain the site these past five months as he returns to his prior role.

Despite this change, the legacy of smart long-form sports story-telling and innovative short form video content will continue, finding a home on many of our other ESPN platforms.

As the Cowboys continue to enable Greg Hardy’s behavior, Todd Archer and Adam Schefter bring news of troubling behavior from one of Hardy’s teammates:

In a best-case scenario, [RB Joseph] Randle only will be fined. But more likely he will be suspended, quite possibly for multiple games, for a February incident in Wichita, Kansas, where Randle was arrested for unlawful possession of marijuana after police received a call for domestic violence with a weapon after an incident with Randle and the mother of his son.

According to the police report, the mother of Randle’s son said Randle broke a car window in an argument and threatened her with a gun with their son nearby. In April the charges were dropped, but while legally clear, Randle faced sanctions from the NFL.

It remains to be seen just exactly what Randle’s punishment will be, but if the NFL is going to have a policy against domestic violence with teeth, it should come down hard on Randle.  The reason why can be summed up with the name of one NFL player: Jovan Belcher.

That, of course, was a domestic argument that ended in the worst way possible: as a murder/suicide.  The key ingredient in why that was able to happen was due to the presence of a gun in such a volatile situation.  Thankfully, in the case of Randle no one was hurt.  But had there been one emotional misstep on his part, it could have turned out much worse due to the deadly potential that a gun possesses.

Any domestic argument that involves a gun should be deemed violent, even if no physical harm is done.  The Joseph Randle case should be a key determinant to see whether the NFL finally has a satisfactory policy against domestic violence, one that will actively discourage another Jovan Belcher-type situation from happening again.

The Broncos best offensive player, Brandon McManus, named AFC's special teams player of the month.

— Lindsay Jones (@bylindsayhjones) October 29, 2015

Suffice to say, this is an excellent honor for McManus, and it also is another good sign for the Broncos’ roster building.  While Matt Prater was released for reasons not necessarily related to his overpriced contract, it did allow the Broncos to cut free from that contract, and ultimately find a suitable replacement at the proper price to invest in a kicker.  As he is in only his second accrued season, he can be retained cheap once again in 2016 under an ERFA tender, and still reasonably cheap once again in 2017 under an RFA tender.  If McManus continues his high level of play, it will be nice that the Broncos won’t have to worry about this position for a while.

For several years, the NFL has made two peculiar pushes.  The first, which has had some success, is to play more games overseas.  They’re up to three now, and have been talking much about adding more. The second, which has yet to be successful, is their longstanding desire to expand the regular season to 18 games.

I’m not terribly crazy about these two proposals, though I don’t have any burning anger against them, either. It’s clearly an effort by the NFL to make even more money. But if these pushes are to continue, I’ve felt for some time that the proper solution would be one offered today by Mike Florio: Expand only to 17 games, and then send the resulting extra 16 teams overseas.

Continue reading Mike Florio Suggests Expanding Regular Season to 17 Games

  …I attended my first ever Broncos game.  I mentioned this in comments somewhere else, but this game may have very well been the very last home game where Broncos fans could witness Peyton Manning at his typical best.  While I didn’t know exactly that for sure, as the picture at the left suggests I figured to go big for this game, as there wasn’t going to be many other times to see Manning do what he does live.

You can see the entire photo gallery of my time at the game here.  Also, as a bonus, this is where I was at in Denver the day before the game.

As we continue to burn away the bye week, feel free to share your own stories of Broncos games that you’ve attended.

 

Via Ian Rapoport:

The NFL announced today that it will conduct public hearings later this month in Oakland, St. Louis, and San Diego as part of the league’s procedures for evaluating possible franchise relocations.  The hearings will take place on October 27 (St. Louis), October 28 (San Diego) and October 29 (Oakland).

The purpose of these hearings is to provide an opportunity for fans and others in the community to ask questions and express their views directly to the NFL before any decisions are made about potential relocation of a club or clubs from a current market. Members of Commissioner Goodell’s executive staff will be in attendance to listen to comments and answer questions from the audience.

If you’ve ever watched John Oliver’s takedown of stadium financing boondoggles, the portion starting at 13:52 is highly relevant to how I think this will go down.  Rapaport also says these hearings will be streamed live.  If so, October 29 should be some must-see streaming, because, although Raiders fans are typically lacking in many types of characteristics, one area that they decidedly don’t lack in is passion.

Steelers defensive end Cameron Heyward is not going to be deterred by the NFL’s fine police.  For the second straight week, Heyward adorned his eyeblack with the words Iron and Head, honoring his father who died of cancer.  Per Mike Pereira, this will cost him $11,576.  Heyward’s personalization comes off the heels of his teammate, running back DeAngelo Williams, being denied a request to wear pink all season to honor his mother who died of breast cancer.

And since this wouldn’t be the NFL without some inconsistency, Williams’s pink-tinged hair ends up being OK.  More strikingly, I’m trying to understand how Heyward and Williams can face fines, but Ronnie Hillman can continually get away with his unique and intimidating mouthpieces (which are also breast cancer aware in October!).

Instead of making clumsy attempts of suppressing the personality of players on game day, I feel that the NFL should instead create a uniform (pun intended!) standard to allow players to express a little bit of themselves in their most public moments.  The league should create a small space somewhere on the uniform to allow personal messages.

Continue reading The NFL Should Create A Personalized Uniform Space