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thisdaynews · 4 years

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Super Bowl 2020: The NFL Academy & its first students on new path to US game

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Super Bowl 2020: The NFL Academy & its first students on new path to US game

The first intake of students started at the academy in September

It’s 5am and an alarm clock goes off in Milton Keynes. Fraser Holden has to get up and out in time to catch the 05:53 to London Euston.

From there he takes the tube to Southgate, north London, and is down to work by 7.30am. He might not leave until five in the afternoon.

Unlike the other commuters, Fraser travels kitted out in sportswear. He’s 16 and is going to college to learn how to play American football. Today. the aspiring linebacker will meet Jerry Rice, one of the greatest players of all time.

Yet this is not a one-off, it’s a regular day at the NFL Academy. Backed by the NFL, Nike and some superstar mentors, the programme is the first of its kind in Britain.

The aim? To transform the perception of American football in the UK and Europe.

The NFL said nothing until a surprise social media campaign announced the details last May. Within two weeks, over 1,500 had applied for the 90 places on offer.

In September, the first intake started at Barnet & Southgate College. Here, 16-to-18-year-olds study for regular qualifications alongside elite American football training.

Fraser was one of those who applied. He grew up playing rugby but had started playing small-sided American football games too. He was lured by the ‘We Can, We Do’ campaign, aimed at British youngsters dreaming of following Efe Obada and Jay Ajayi into the NFL.

The first try-outs were held in June. Cleveland Browns’ wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr was there – as well as BBC pundits Osi Umenyiora and Jason Bell.

From the outset, the message was clear. Academy hopefuls would be judged on their attitude and character as much as their athletic ability. And the programme would be very demanding.

Jerry Rice is widely regarded as the greatest wide receiver in NFL history

“It’s dedication, it’s commitment,” says Will Bryce, NFL UK’s head of player development. “It’s prioritising studying, managing your time, getting to bed early, getting off social media when you don’t need to be on it. It gives the kids structure, they’re part of a team, plus there are some pretty cool opportunities too.”

Selfies with OBJ was just the start. After the try-outs, 150 hopefuls were called back to a stadium showcase in the first NFL event at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in July. There they met Obada himself and did drills with Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Juju Smith-Schuster.

Fraser was among the 90 eventually accepted. He admits the first few weeks of the programme were “a big shake-up – especially after going to school five minutes away”. Now he is proud to wear his NFL-branded kit, to be one of those who stands out on campus.

In pride of place is the academy gym, which was converted from the college’s theatre and now features NFL branding inside and out. Jerry Rice came for the official opening.

The 57-year-old, who won three Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers, tells students that at their age he was a “diamond in the rough”, that he never thought he would play professional football, that he wasn’t the greatest athlete and didn’t have the best skills but refused to let anybody “out-work him”.

The legendary receiver speaks with the ‘inspiration wall’ as backdrop. It features quotes from NFL players, each one almost always featuring the same word – work. Three more are prominent too: Responsibility, integrity, respect.

The students are often here lifting weights at 7.30am. For linebacker Fraser and defensive end Tyrese Peters-Tovey, 19, the strength and conditioning work has been the toughest part. But the shared experience quickly saw the group bond.

“You kind of have to when you’re running 110-yard sprints together and running into each other for three hours a day!” Fraser says.

Each week they have three field sessions, four classroom sessions and four weightlifting sessions. On Wednesdays, the focus is on character development. Staff and external speakers talk about life skills, wellbeing, and issues such as social media safety and domestic violence.

They have 10 hours of classes in their chosen subjects – the same as all the college’s students – plus 15 hours of training on top. And if anybody wants extra video footage to review in their own time – an essential part of life in the NFL – staff are happy to oblige.

“If they’re willing to put the work in, we’ll match it and then some,” says Bryce. “It’s going to produce a type of American football player which this country has not produced before. They’re going to be much better prepared to compete in the NFL, mentally and physically.”

Only 90 could be accepted for the academy’s first intake in September

Head coach is Tony Allen – the long-serving London Warriors coach. He and his staff have had to tailor sessions to accommodate a range of skillsets.

Some signed up having already broken into Great Britain’s Under-19s, some had never played a snap. Many have come across from rugby, others have switched from sports like athletics, tennis, judo and swimming. In total, 32 of the 90 students are considered ‘crossover athletes’.

While American youngsters grow up with the game, British players like Umenyiora and Obada have proved you can pick it up late and still succeed.

Umenyiora was born in London and hadn’t even heard of American football until he moved to Alabama at the age of 14. He went on to win two Super Bowls. Obada didn’t play until he was 22 and, five years on, has just signed for a third year with the Carolina Panthers.

“We always said that if we’re going to help develop European talent we need to get them earlier and here we are working with 16-year-olds,” says Allen.

Students come from very different backgrounds, too. Three are involved with the Big Kid Foundationwhich seeks to help “young people at risk of social exclusion and youth violence”. Another is a former pupil at Charterhouse boarding school in Surrey.

Thirty-five have left home to be here – 30 from further afield in the UK, five from Europe. Because they’re under 18 they aren’t permitted to live on their own, so the college has partnered with a homestay programme to place them with local families, with extra pastoral and welfare staff on hand to support them.

The dream for many is to earn a scholarship and join the American collegiate system, from which NFL players are drafted. The academy has therefore had to find centres in London where they can sit the SAT test, for college admissions in the US.

That’s true of George Reynolds. He wants to be the NFL’s first British quarterback and has just been out in Florida. He was one of eight from the academy, selected by fellow students, to take part in a High School skills showdownbefore Sunday’s Pro Bowl all-star game in Orlando.

Fraser has recently joined George in the British U19 squad, and although he also hopes to play in the US too, he feels his academic choices could help him pursue an alternative career in politics.

Tyrese chose to put off university for a year, moving from Hackney to his dad’s in Enfield so he could be closer to campus. While his parents backed the decision, he initially faced opposition from his grandparents, who are lawyers and dentists in Trinidad.

“They made it sound like I wasn’t being productive,” Tyrese says. “But I’m not just getting better at football, I have a chance to get a qualification and get something in life.

“Whatever happens after this, I’ll be a better player and a better person. I think I made the right choice.”

Fraser Holden grew up playing rugby but switched over to American Football

With the NFL’s regular season already over, British players Christian Scotland-Williamson and Jamie Gillan recently dropped by. Obada is also set to pay another visit.

He and Scotland-Williamson are products of the International Player Pathway, which started in 2017. And the success of that programme, for over-20s, gave Alistair Kirkwood the inspiration to revisit an idea he first presented early in his 20-year tenure as NFL UK’s managing director.

Back then, things were focused solely on producing more elite, international players. But after helping bring regular season games to London, Kirkwood realised an academy could do much more.

“We wanted something from a community perspective in north London that was more year-round and impactful than just playing the London Games,” he says.

“Now education is as important in the academy as the athletic side, if not more so. An elite few will go to the States but success for us is 100% of kids having some form of defined success, be it going on to further education, becoming more employable or being role models who can influence younger kids.

“We’ve had lots of little landmarks where we’ve confounded ourselves and gone on to greater things but of all of these, I’d say the academy has the potential to be truly transformational. It could be something we look back on and say it changed the shape of the sport.”

As the students watch Super Bowl 54 this Sunday, it will be with a clear path of how one day they could get there too. Realistically, few will make it. Only 1.6% of US college players were drafted in 2018.

But even if they don’t, the experience will last a lifetime, wherever their future lies.

#first #students

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sportsminorityreport · 6 years

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McMahon’s New XFL: Evaluating the Initial Press Conference.

As I noted in my last article, I have been a fan of leagues that compete against the NFL since the USFL days. I am, if not an "expert" on the usfl, at least very, very well versed in its history.... as well as other leagues that have tried to give the NFL the finger, like the original XFL.

I have deep-seated opinions as to why each individual league failed but I feel like the NFL is vulnerable today and has been vulnerable in different ways since the days of the USFL. I firmly believe these leagues failed because of failings of the leagues themselves, not because of the NFL.

Further, I've said that the one guy who I would happily put my career in neutral to go work for in a competitive league working against the NFL.... is Vince McMahon.

I think his XFL was vastly, vastly underrated. The structure and foundation of it was immensely solid, and if he ever decided to do it again, I have frequently said I think he could succeed.

So given that....What did I think of the initial press conference of the new xfl?

Well....honestly, I was very much underwhelmed with the press conference, but, overall, I do think the New XFL has a legitimate chance for success, unlike leagues like the UFL that was DOA or the new USFL that is unlikely to ever play. (Ever since Jaime Cuadra was thrown into jail, I have to believe the New USFL -NUSFL- is just an NFL front to undermine other startup competitive leagues..... I freely admit I could be wrong on that one. )

If you missed the New XFL press conference you can watch it here or if you don't have 30 minutes of patience, these guys did a pretty fun and funny job of summing things up.

(Disclaimer: I will mention things in quotes below, but honestly I am being lazy and they are approximations of what was said, not true quotes. Ordinarily, I would watch the press conference again to confirm accurate quotes, but it’s 30 minutes long and I am just not feeling it tonight...)

The good

Let's be clear the new XFL slogan, "Reimagining Football", is not going to sell at all to the fans.

Wrong message for the wrong audience.

Football fans like football as is. It’s a little crazy to say that they don’t.

Sure they bitch about not liking this or that, but they still watch the NFL and college football. Length of games didn’t sink the original XFL.

It's only a problem if there is football that fans just don't want to watch. That was more the issue with the original XFL. They didn’t like it at the time and just don't like what they remember about the original XFL.

While it was kind of silly to bring up that "Reimagining Football" slogan repeatedly in the press conference --- like they’re implying that the NFL is a broken media product --- I have this under “the good” because the concept is a strong one from a MANAGEMENT perspective and is exactly what is going to give the XFL the optimal chance to succeed.

I think it might be fair to say few fans truly enjoy watching 3 and 1/2 to 4 hour long football games.

The networks like it because they have 4 hours to try and extract some of the money that they're paying the NFL from a captive audience.

America doesn't read books or newspapers; We like sound bites where people tell us what to think.

Few seem to disagree that our attention span seems to be shrinking. That may be even more so among the cable cutting/never had cable, younger set.

Investing 2 hours or even two and a half hours into a football game sounds like something that might be an absolute winner with younger fans. (It will create a lot of huge problems for the league though.... many of those implications may have been glossed over by McMahon's advisors, but I digress.... in TV terms, it's a great differentiation idea for a league that doesn't need a huge amount of money from the networks in order to be successful and is chasing a younger audience.)

If this XFL makes it or fails, I think it's highly likely that in 10 years, all football games are going to be two and a half to three hours due to the influence of McMahon's New XFL.

I think it's fairly likely that by time the NFL's TV deals are concluding, that the NFL will be taking a hard look at major changes to attempt to cut their football games average length to 3 hours while insisting their payout remains the same. It will be fun watching them wrangle with their network partners.

Certainly if the XFL has any success in the first couple of seasons ---- and I think they will ---- the NFL will do what they have always done and steal the best ideas put forth by their competitors.

Likewise college football tends to follow the pro trends when rules changes are made. (Often they don't make the exact same changes, but the thought process parallels.)

Shorter games are on the way.

He also said that they would be looking into all different kinds of media options. This again is a great competitive advantage over the NFL, who are overpaid to stick with a dying platform (cable TV).

The other impactful statements made by McMahon were those where he sheepishly acknowledged the "failings of the orininal xfl" most actively pointed at by the fans.

There will be no crossover of wrestling talent to cover the games.

He acknowledged that the perception of fans was that the level of play was lacking and came close to tacitly acknowledging that they rushed things in order to get a product on the field. He says with two years lead time that they will be able to have better quality of play.

The original XFL assumed they would pull heavily from wrestling and football audiences. His use of wrestling antics and wrestling personalities turned off a lot of traditional NFL football fans.

It is very clear that he considers that a mistake and is now actively trying to pull a football audience. This press conference was largely a mia culpa to that crowd.

He said at one point that not only is football itself going to be reinvented but the XFL will be. He said that the original XFL brands are not necessarily going to come back and that the current thinking is to reimagine things from scratch....but nothing is off the table.

I think this to was a very deliberate intent to distance himself from the failures of the original XFL and to earn a second look from traditional football fans.

McMahon envisions starting with 8 teams with 40 players each on a team located mostly(/exclusively ?) in areas "where fans watch football". If you think about that statement, that probably is very bad news for USFL/XFL mid-major cities that do not have NFL teams like San Antonio, Birmingham, Orlando, and Memphis that have all struggled with attendance in some leagues and good news for mid-major cities that host major college football programs like Austin -University of Texas - and Columbus -Ohio State - that have historically been on the outside looking in.)

FINANCIAL OUTLAYS AND CITY SELECTIONS

As I mentioned in my last article, I do have my own Pie-in-the-Sky business plan to compete with the NFL for the day that I win the lottery and have $100 M to burn. My research for that lead me to a similar $100 million dollars investment capital sum (assuming a fairly significant TV Revenue contribution) that the New XFL is using and that a starting point of 6-8 teams in specific nfl-caliber cities was optimal.

I am not at all surprised that this is his plan. This is why I've long thought McMahon was one of the few people with the means and guts to pull this off.

(In my research I concluded that really only about 10-11 cities should be legitimate candidates for those 6 to 8 initial teams. To me, those initial 10 or 11 are kind of no-brainers and I would argue should be fairly evident. My suspicion is that his list of potential initial sites is bigger than mine. That's disturbing. I am distrusting his advisors but I am still generally in on the fact that he's starting with 8 teams. I think the odds are he can still get enough of the cities right to have a shot at success.)

Football is a very expensive sport to put on, in part because the rosters are large and you need a lot of supporting personnel. From that angle, having small rosters is a financially sensible thing to do, especially as a start up league. (I took a different strategy that I still think offers better odds survival but.....It's legitimately hard to argue with keeping expenses as low as possible on a startup.)

One of the highlights of the question-and-answer of the press conference was when McMahon is asked whether he went to his wife Linda McMahon for advice on starting this new XFL. (You see Linda McMahon at one point apparently had some interaction with the legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi!!!)

The question tickled me on several levels. The first being that having conversations with Vince Lombardi ---- whose NFL career was over by the 1970s --- would give Linda McMahon ANY insight into running a pro football league in 2019.

Secondly the question is a little bit of a dig at Mr. McMahon....as it can be taken as "Hey Mr. McMahon....You did such a horrible job with the XFL that I have to ask, 'As your wife once spoke to somebody who knew something about the NFL and as such would certainly be much better qualified to start of another professional football league than you... Did she come up with the plan for this new XFL?' "

And finally the third way this cracked me up was based on my experience as a former business owner. Once you've had one business fail and you get married you will find that your wife is very eager to talk you out of EVER trying the same business again.

I think that's how McMahon took it, as you could almost hear him choke down a snort or chuckle as he responded, "No. She did not."

On the downside...

The press conference wasn't a homerun. It wasn't even a double. And it should have been.

Mr. McMahon look tired and somewhat beaten.... not a good look for the driving force behind a league that intends to compete with the NFL.

His presentation was not up to Vince McMahon standards, quite honestly. Very early in the presentation he mentions the idea of shortening games and presents it in a way where the implication is he's been told that by fans.

At the time it hit me as a somewhat disingenuous presentation. I think it would be far better if he had presented it in a way where he acknowledged that the concept came from business analysts who are working hard to improve upon his first effort.

My criticism along these lines is sort of the same criticisms I have when I'm listening to politicians who are not very polished ---- “He needed a better writer.”

The way to present that, is to say that for 30 years fans have complained that football games are too long.

He's tasked football Consultants to put together a better product for football fans than what he delivered with the initial XFL.

One of the first goals of his league is to shorten football games to about 2 hours.

And then I think you throw in that there are two years before you open for play and you hope several other ideas will be suggested by fans and incorporated into the league that ultimately emerges.

The way it was worded came off as manipulative and dishonest ....and those are two words that Vince McMahon, who's made a ton of money playing a dishonest, morally bankrupt heel in the world of wrestling, cannot afford to have tied to his new endeavor.

Secondly, he frequently says something along the lines of," we want to know what you, the fans, think." This is a very good strategy to embrace but without following that up with an immediate site to go to where fans can put in their 2 cents....it again comes across as disingenuous.

This is like when your corporate bosses say they want opinions from everyone in your department and then don't follow ANY of them, pissing off all of your employees. You are frankly much better off not asking, if you aren't going to follow any of them.

I think the people who advised Vince McMahon on this press conference really blew it.

McMahon basically more or less said that he was going to be the silent investor into this operation and that experience football people were going to run the whole show. He even said that this was probably the most we would see of Vince McMahon from here on out with regards to the XFL.

This is like PT Barnum saying, "I'm going to open a new kind of circus but don't ask me to talk about it... "

I get the strategy, but it reeks of a bad decision.

This appears to be either a bad decision by McMahon or him following some heinously poor advice. What I see there is that McMahon was advised by some of his football advisers to entirely remove himself from the new XFL picture. Likely they told him that in order to win football fans he would have to fade into the background.

That was shity advice.

There has not been anyone who has worked for the NFL over the last 30 years who can communicate to fans in a passionate way at the level of Vince McMahon.

What that means is the XFL essentially has taken it’s best player off the field so they can start unproven rookie free agent.

Secondly, the very premise that football people hate Vince McMahon because the XFL failed and would never give Vince McMahon a second shot is ridiculous.

American public is nothing if not forgiving. Anyone who apologizes for mistakes and request a second chance he is generally given one. Fans cheered for Michael Vick! McMahon's first XFL cost him like $70 million dollars. That also gives him a lot of sympathy.

It would be far more appropriate to say that football fans 16 years ago felt like McMahon drug too much wrestling crap into a real sport.

And that he promised them high-level football and then delivered I'm not ready for Primetime product. If McMahon owes football fans any type of apology, it's just for that... there was no reason to vote him off the island.

I have to wonder if someone's lust to be a high-profile figure led to this rather stupid arrangement.

This will again be a single owner Enterprise. Anyone who has studied the usfl understands how the league spent themselves out of business. This has given rise to a general assumption that the way you correct for that is to go with a single-owner setup.

Such a setup does allow salaries to be kept under control however it creates as many problems as it solves. To take this sort of endeavor requires an owner with the kind of wealth Vince McMahon has, so as far as that goes, everything's good.

The trouble is, the single owner model is ripe for failure because all the pressure is put on one person.

Additionally, because a lot of fans can't get over the single owner model, there will always be the presumption in some circles that things are stilted to favor the owner's personal interests. "New York vs LA for the title for the third year in a row, huh? Why should I follow Columbus if McMahon doesn't want them to win?"

Heaven forbid a good player accidentally gets traded to a good team.....

Few fans will crystallize that thought as concisely as I've shown it above, but it will be there. A single-owner Enterprise for many will be seen as a Mickey Mouse operation and as such you may see a portion of fans who just aren't willing to entertain following the XFL.

There was also a question put to McMahon about Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, and Colin Kaepernick playing in the XFL. McMahon said anyone who keeps their nose clean was welcome and specifically said Tebow was welcome. His silence on Manziel and Kaepernick was telling.

A follow-up question was asked to try and clarify his position on Kaepernick and McMahon or less implied the Kaepernick MIGHT be eligible to play for the XFL, but the jist was everyone has to stand for the national anthem. It did sound like McMahon was not very excited about signing Kaepernick. I think this was a little foolish.

McMahon laid out the rules of conduct in a way that was optimal initially. He said if you want to play in the XFL you have to stand for the national anthem, but you can say whatever you want on social media. You can be political, just not at work.

That is exactly the right position to take. He should have stopped there. To me he muddied the waters with his "answers" on Manziel and Kaepernick.

I also think he blew some major opportunities there. Smart positioning would have been to be prepared to talk about the positive attributes of all three quarterbacks and then say we'd love to have them playing in our league but like all players they have to meet our behavioral guidelines.

This public admiration would do a lot to increase the chances of signing these guys. The only one of the three that McMahon seemed excited about was Tebow, and while I love Tebow and hope he shows up in the XFL, if memory serves Tebow has turned down both the Arena Football League and CFL and is frankly kind of old given his style of play. (He is a quarterback who runs for tough yards. When you're pushing 30, that's not a great kind of quarterback to be.)

Again I would classify that under opportunities lost.

Johnny Manziel was probably the greatest Collegiate quarterback we've seen in the last 30 years. Why would you not float a carrot out to motivate him in getting his life back in order? (Manziel tweeted interest in the XFL anyway, but now McMahon has created his own baggage there to trip over by implying a lack of interest.)

Again, to me, I see one of two possible reasons behind all of this.

Either McMahon and his business advisors have become convinced that there is a sizable crowd of (please forgive the political description) "Trump-backing, Conservative Republican-type football fans" who are fed up with the ill-behaviour of football players and those fans will sign up in droves to support a much lesser caliber league where everyone behaves.

I think this line of thinking is bug nuts fucking crazy.

That is chasing your flakiest potential audience ---one that will tune out if anything fails to please them. (McMahon sort of plays both sides of the fence here. He says players have to stand for the pledge and is lukewarm on Kaepernick, obvious attempts to lure that audience, but then says politics will not play a role in any way shape or form in this League....who knows.....)

The second possibility that jumps out is the idea that the football people McMahon has hired who are likely career-long NFL guys who are blackballing the same players the NFL is blackballing.

That would be an example of importing the NFL's groupthink.

If that is what's going on then, the new XFL is doomed.

Many, if not most NFL execs, are constantly wrong.

Now if you had a cream-of-the-crop team of NFL execs --- guys like Bill Polian, ....well then okay.... but the reality is those are almost certainly not the guys Vince McMahon has already hired.

The NFL is just like your shitty job. You may work for a highly respected company, but there are only four or five people you know in the company who are truly exceptional at their job. Everyone else is indistinguishable from the guy who sold you coffee this morning.

For the new XFL to succeed, they need people of influence among the leadership advisory group who can present a well-argued contrary position to the NFL trained advisors. That, to me, is probably the thing that worries me the most about the new XFL, because I didn't see much of that in this press conference.

To challenge the NFL, a startup League will need quality quarterbacks. People mention Tebow, Kaepernick, and Manziel because they are all high-profile brands who have flashed sufficient, and at times, elite Talent.

There is a good argument that if Tebow had been drafted by Jacksonville, Harbaugh had stayed in San Francisco with Kaepernick, and Manziel had been drafted by the Cowboys, all three of these quarterbacks might still be in the NFL.... very likely as starters.

There is a pretty good chance all three of them can play at a high level in the Pro game.

And these are high profile brands that people will watch. Fans may watch to boo Kaepernick and Manziel but they're still going to tune in. For a guy who played a heel in wrestling, passing on two natural heels seems very out of character.

To open business by looking down on two of the three easy sources for quality quarterback play is just not working in your best interest.

That's kind of an "NFL executive"-type decision.

If they've just got NFL execs running the show, the XFL would be likely to have a problem with quarterbacks any way, because the NFL ruins most quarterbacks.

If you think about the eleite collegiate QBs taken in the first 3 rounds of the NFL draft, how many of them are busts? 2/3? The NFL is a sink or swim league for young QBs. This is the environment in which these execs have learned to operate.

If your competitive leagues doesn't have quarterbacks, you will fail.

That’s what I got out of the press conference.

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junker-town · 7 years

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The 6 best things from Week 5 in the NFL

Aaron Rodgers owns Dallas, Leonard Fournette ain’t scared, Myles Garrett has arrived, and more.

We’re officially in the second quarter of the NFL season — and Aaron Rodgers stole the show with his game-winning drive against the Dallas Cowboys.

But there were other things that happened this week we need to pay homage to. Leonard Fournette and Nelson Agholor had our most disrespectful moments of the week, with their teams coming up with big wins.

Remember Myles Garrett? The highly touted No. 1 overall pick? Yeah, he played like one on Sunday in limited game action with two sacks.

So let’s review, starting with...

Aaron F***ing Rodgers

If there’s one quarterback in the league who you had to watch for the rest of your life, it’s going to be this guy. There’s nothing the guy can’t do and is probably the smartest quarterback playing the position — he is Free Play Shawty after all.

The Cowboys scored a late touchdown to take a 31-28 lead against the Packers with 1:13 remaining in the game. That was more than enough time for Rodgers, who pieced together a touchdown drive in a minute and two seconds.

At no point did it look like Rodgers and the Pack were going to play for a field goal. After he scampered for this 18-yard run, it was even more obvious.

Rodgers would later miss Davante Adams for the game-winner, and just decided he was going to go right back to him like a boss.

Game. Blouses.

Rodgers always plays well in Dallas, and he knows it. Afterward, he said, “They should have the Super Bowl here every year.”

Just think of all the kids growing up in Dallas that are going to hate Aaron Rodgers for the rest of their lives because of how good he’s been against the Cowboys. It’s perfect!

Leonard Fournette doesn’t care who you are, he wants to devour you

Show me a rookie who’s got more juice than Leonard Fournette. You can’t.

Before the season even started, Fournette said that the NFL was “a lot slower than I really thought.” THE NFL! SLOW!

On Sunday afternoon he kept his flex going by stiff-arming one Steelers defender, then inviting Mike Mitchell to come get a piece too.

Fournette didn’t exactly truck Mitchell or anything, but he’s calling shots during the game! That’s the type of bad-assery that the Jaguars are going to need if they want to win the AFC South.

He then polished off the Steelers with this 90-yard touchdown run.

Fournette finished the game with 181 yards and two touchdowns. If the Jaguars are on your favorite team’s schedule, and that defense is bad, brace yourself. He’s coming.

Myles Garrett está aquí

Myles Garrett let us know in Spanish earlier last week that he was back. What he didn’t tell us, was how he was going to ball out on Sunday.

The No. 1 overall pick’s debut was delayed because of his high ankle sprain, but he made the most of his debut with two sacks.

This right here is the first of what should be many sacks for Garrett:

After his second sack, Garrett paid tribute to the great J.R. Smith, showing love to another great Cleveland athlete:

He was the first top draft pick to register a sack in his first NFL game in 25 years. That list includes the great Bruce Smith.

After the game, Garrett told Cleveland.com, “I always want more.”

So do we, Myles. So do we.

Nelson Agholor became a father ...

... to Budda Baker. Carson Wentz had one heckuva first half against the Cardinals, with four touchdown passes. The fourth one went to Agholor, who hit Baker with the brakes, a stiff-arm, a spin, and a juke before he ate the turf.

Agholor finished the play by paying tribute to DeSean Jackson with the backwards trust fall into the end zone. That’s the full arsenal right there as Agholor successfully son’d Baker.

I’ll let SB Nation’s Norf Philly native, Tyler Tynes, appropriately gas Agholor up:

Aye, breh, listen. I don’t respect anyone from the state of Washington. Budda thought this was a game. Foh. Buddy caught a Popeyes 3 piece special wit no sauce, no napkins, no concern. If he was a real one and didn’t go to a college that celebrated fake wolf dogs, he mighta had the foresight to know he was gonna get clapped up. Wild, breh. That would never happen to me. Upon first crossover I’ll let you walk into the end zone. You won’t embarrass me in front of my homies in the Gucci sweaters. All sympathy to Buddha, but somehow, I’m gonna assume he deserved that hell Nelson put him through.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

We’ll consider this Baker’s cliche “Welcome to the NFL” moment.

“THE 3-2 PITCH”

The Eagles cruised by the Cardinals on Sunday 34-7. They played well in every aspect of the game, including the extracurriculars like celebrating.

After Carson Wentz’s third touchdown pass of the first quarter, Torrey Smith, Alshon Jeffery, and Nelson Agholor participated in a baseball celebration, capped off with Smith hitting a home run.

Nobody’s done group celebrations better than the Lions this year, but if the Eagles are able to keep bringing these week in and week out, they can surpass them.

Between the cheeks

Browns rookie tight end David Njoku scored his third career touchdown on Sunday against the Jets. The Browns haven’t had much to celebrate this season, so Njoku was going to soak it all up.

He provided us with the first butt spike.

The slow-motion ripple in his ass makes the celebration. It’s kinda like those plays that look more impressive in slow motion than in real time.

I’m not sure if he planned for the ball to go straight back up like it did, but that’s also quite the risky proposition. If the football lands a little more forward, that’s a painful celebration.

Anyway, he should have to recreate that now for each touchdown.

OTHER THINGS FROM WEEK 5:

The Dolphins show why you should always play until the whistle

Larry Fitzgerald joins Jerry Rice and Tony Gonzalez in the NFL record books

Curt Menefee’s teleprompter is hilarious

DOINK

Two wrongs eventually turned into a right for Phillip Supernaw

Odell Beckham Jr. performed CPR on a football

The last play of Packers-Cowboys was goofy

Earl Thomas gave us all deja vu

“They DICK Wilson!”

You gotta catch that one, rook

Charcandrick West being pretty

Deshaun Watson unloading THIS dime

Sunday scores

Cincinnati Bengals 20, Buffalo Bills 16

New York Jets 17, Cleveland Browns 14

Carolina Panthers 27, Detroit Lions 24

Indianapolis Colts 26, San Francisco 49ers 23 (OT)

Miami Dolphins 16, Tennessee Titans 10

Los Angeles Chargers 27, New York Giants 22

Philadelphia Eagles 34, Arizona Cardinals 7

Jacksonville Jaguars 30, Pittsburgh Steelers 9

Seattle Seahawks 16, Los Angeles Rams 10

Baltimore Ravens 30, Oakland Raiders 17

Green Bay Packers 35, Dallas Cowboys 31

Kansas City Chiefs 42, Houston Texans 34

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footballleague0 · 7 years

Text

The Arkansas Razorbacks will travel to Dallas to honor alum Jerry Jones

8:20 AM ET

Paul LukasESPN.com

Close Sports journalism’s foremost uniform reporter ESPN.com columnist since 2004 Also blogs at uni-watch.com

There are several unusual aspects to this Saturday’s SEC showdown between Arkansas and Texas A&M. First, the game will be played at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys. Second, although the game is taking place in Texas, Arkansas will be the designated home team, so the Razorbacks will be wearing red — but not their usual red jerseys. Instead, they’ll be suiting up in a red version of the Cowboys’ uniform.

It’s all part of a tribute to Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who grew up in North Little Rock, attended college at Arkansas and was co-captain of the Razorbacks’ 1964 national championship team. After he was selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame earlier this year, Arkansas decided to honor its most famous alumnus with this uniform (additional info here).

Cowboys replica unis. In Razorback red. In the house he built. http://pic.twitter.com/p1UAu1Hqm9

— Razorback Football (@RazorbackFB) September 17, 2017

It’s a clever idea and an even better execution. Uni Watch recently caught up with the Razorbacks’ equipment director, Jack Rosch, to learn more about how the uniform came to fruition. Here’s how our conversation went.

Uni Watch: When did you folks get the idea for this uniform?

Jake Rosch: Back around the spring, when the Hall of Fame announcements came out and they said Jerry Jones would be one of the inductees, we started kicking around ideas about how to honor him. We wanted to do something bigger than just a helmet decal or a patch. Someone in the athletics department came up with the idea of the Cowboys-Razorbacks crossover uniform.

That sounds like a pretty compressed time frame.

Yeah, Nike usually likes to do these things at least a year out. It was a short window.

You chose to base your design on the Cowboys’ blue jersey, but they’re really known for wearing their white jerseys, especially at home. Did you consider wearing white?

We’re the home team for this game, but it’s tricky, because the Cowboys wear white at home. In theory, we probably could’ve gone with the white, but we would’ve needed the other team to approve it. Also, the blue jersey has more detail on it, it’s more distinctive. It has the sleeve stripes with the star, the outlined number font, the stripes on the collar. We thought basing it on that design made it more identifiable as the Cowboys, instead of just wearing a plain white jersey with block numbers.

Also, going with white would’ve meant matching the pants with that sea foam green-blue color, which wasn’t really an option. They wear standard silver pants with their blue jersey, so we just went with that.

Yeah, it’s one thing to wear those blue-ish pants with a blue-trimmed uniform, but it wouldn’t work with red.

Right. And we wouldn’t want to wear the regular silver pants with the white jersey, because they don’t do that themselves and then it wouldn’t be 100 percent accurate. So going with the red jersey instead of white let us avoid that problem.

Did this design have to be cleared with the NFL as well as the NCAA?

It had to be cleared on multiple levels. The school, NCAA, NFL, SEC, the Cowboys. You’ve got licensing, you’ve got trademarking. There’s a lot that went into this to make sure we were within rule. Obviously, there was a retail aspect of it as well, because they’re selling replica uniforms. So there are a lot of boxes that had to be checked in order for this to happen. And again, we had a short time window.

Did it help that your team and the Cowboys are both outfitted by Nike?

Probably. But I think the bigger thing was Jerry’s personal relationship with Nike, which he’s had over the years. Knowing what this meant to Jerry, I think that’s what got Nike to say, “OK, this isn’t something we’d normally be able to do on this timeline, but just this once.” And they really went above and beyond to make sure we were taken care of.

Did you consult with your counterparts on the Cowboys’ equipment staff?

Yeah, a little bit. I talked to their equipment manager, Mike McCord. They have their own unique Dallas Cowboy shade of silver paint for the helmets. I wanted to make sure we matched that, and we needed their approval for that.

Did you try to match all of their specs for, like, everything? Are the stripes on the helmet and pants the same width as theirs? Are the numbers on the jersey the same size as theirs?

Our jersey numbers are a little bit smaller, just because the rules on NCAA numbers are a little different. But it’s a minuscule difference, really. The stripes are the same. And since Nike produces the Cowboys’ uniforms, they could just match the specs.

There were lots of little things. Like on the back of the helmet, where they put the NFL logo, we put the SEC logo. And where they put the American flag, we put it there too. We tried to mimic their approach.

My favorite detail is that you have the red Dymo tape label on the back of the helmet, mimicking the blue label that the Cowboys have been using for generations. Whose idea was it to include that?

Best detail in the Cowboys-style uni that Arkansas will wear on Saturday: They included a red version of Cowboys’ Dymo tape helmet label. http://pic.twitter.com/ZJpPv6Eyk9

— Paul Lukas (@UniWatch) September 20, 2017

That was mine. When teams do alternate uniforms, a lot of times there are little details that the overall public might not notice, but me and my equipment buddies will always pick it out and we’ll tip our cap to it. So as this project came to fruition, I was trying to come up with that unique detail that maybe only 1 percent of the people might appreciate or notice.

And the label was it.

Yeah. It’s something unique to the Cowboys. I mean, it’s 2017, and my grandparents were using those labels. We wanted to make sure it looked right. Like, five or six years ago, they included the number along with the player’s name, but now it’s just the last name, and we wanted to make sure the letters were facing the right direction.

Did you already have a label maker?

No. I found one online. I wasn’t sure how many labels I’d get from one roll of tape, so I bought a bunch of rolls, just to be safe. The whole process took a long time — you’re literally turning this giant dial and punching every single letter.

Couldn’t you get a student intern to do that?

Oh, no. Helmets are my thing. I really only trust myself and my assistant, Tyler.

The Cowboys are sort of notorious for having multiple shades of blue that don’t match. Did you consider mimicking that by going with multiple non-matching shades of red?

No. We wanted to maintain our own Arkansas brand integrity. So we wanted to have the reds match across the board. Our design is based on theirs, but it’s not an exact copy.

Speaking of which: I see that you included your “Razorbacks” chest lettering in your own font. Did you consider doing it in the Cowboys’ font, to more closely match their blue jersey?

Not really, no. Again, we wanted to maintain our brand there.

Were there any other design details that you considered including, but ended up not using?

No, I don’t think so. We’ll still have the grad patches for those players who normally wear them. Our captains will still wear the “C.”

Will it be your usual “C,” or the NFL-style captain’s patch?

Our usual one. Oh, and we haven’t talked about the socks. In the NFL, they wear the half-and-half socks [white on the bottom, colored on top]. But we don’t have a lot of players who like wearing high socks. It’s really going in the opposite direction — our guys want to wear tiny socks. But we wanted to have that half-and-half look, so we got three-quarter-length red tights, and then they can wear low white socks over that. From a distance, it’ll have that NFL sock look.

Kansas State’s uniforms have been based on the Cowboys’ design for many years now. Were you inspired by that, and did you talk to them at all about this project?

I know those guys from when I was working in the Big 12. But we didn’t really reach out to them or anything like that. Not that we meant any disrespect, but ours is just a one-off thing for Jerry, so we didn’t really feel we had to check with them.

Also, last year Mississippi State played a game against UMass at Gillette Stadium, where the Patriots play, and they wore uniforms based on the Patriots’ design. Were you inspired by that one?

I don’t know if I’d say inspired, but it did give us a past example to cite when we were checking off all those boxes for approval. There was precedent for what we were doing, right in our own conference, and that was brought up in our initial conversations, so that helped move things forward. It’s too bad that they beat us to the punch in terms of the concept, but it’s still big for us because we’re not just playing in the stadium — we have that connection with Jerry.

The Cowboys famously have a superstition about the curse of the blue jersey. If you guys lose, will your fans start talking about a curse of the red jersey?

I hope not. Jerseys don’t win or lose games. Regardless how the game turns out, I hope people can appreciate the uniform. It’s only for one game — we’ll be right back in our normal uniforms the next week.

You say it’s just for one game, but you play a game in this stadium every season, so do you think you might wear this design again next year, or maybe the next time you’re the home team?

You know, I’m not sure if that’s been discussed. At this point, I’d say probably not, but you never know. If we get a win, that always helps.

Are you happy with how it all turned out?

Definitely. It actually exceeded expectations. Seeing it on a model when we were doing a photo shoot, it definitely looked better than the renderings. And you know, our fans usually don’t like it when you mess with the traditional home uniform. But this design still looks traditional, it still has our running hog on the helmet. It’s not one of those “shock and awe” designs. It’s more that we wanted to tip our cap to Jerry. People like it.

Arkansas will face Texas A&M at AT&T Stadium this Saturday at noon ET. The game will be televised by ESPN.

Paul Lukas is glad Jerry Jones didn’t end up owning the Jaguars or the Bengals. If you like this column, you’ll probably like his Uni Watch Blog, plus you can follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Want to learn about his Uni Watch Membership Program, check out his Uni Watch merchandise, be added to his mailing list so you’ll always know when a new column has been posted, or just ask him a question? Contact him here.

The post The Arkansas Razorbacks will travel to Dallas to honor alum Jerry Jones appeared first on Daily Star Sports.

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giantsfootball0 · 7 years

Text

The Arkansas Razorbacks will travel to Dallas to honor alum Jerry Jones

8:20 AM ET

Paul LukasESPN.com

Close Sports journalism’s foremost uniform reporter ESPN.com columnist since 2004 Also blogs at uni-watch.com

Cowboys replica unis. In Razorback red. In the house he built. pic.twitter.com/p1UAu1Hqm9