AFCN

Time has been short, so rather than my typical blathering, I’ll leave you with a few pertinent AFC North links.  Stay tuned for my season previews in a week or two. Baltimore Ravens: QB Lamar Jackson and CB Marcus Peters returned to practice Monday.  With Jackson’s mobility as the defining staple of his game, the…

It’s “time”. NFL training camps have opened, more or less.  Players are actually reporting.  A number of players, including some prominent names, have opted out for the season due to individual COVID-19 concerns.  Those still dithering have until Thursday to decide their  – and their team’s, in some cases – fortunes.  The next few weeks…

We’re getting there. With NFL teams finalizing plans to open training camps, however abridged, optimism over the football season happening as scheduled is steadily climbing.  While most teams have been cautious and non-committal regarding the stringency of their guidelines, COVID-19 testing among athletes is expanding daily, although it should be noted that the NFL hasn’t…

The inexorable march through the dregs of the offseason continues. While the NFL scrambles to produce a coherent plan for (supposedly) pending training camps, fans, still stuck in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, are essentially in limbo.  We’re treated to the latest accounts of NFL player-based Twitter wars.  The torrent of badly-conceived TikTok content…

The Groundhog Day analogies are everywhere these days. Every morning, you wake up in the same bed at roughly the same time.  You’re probably sporting a mild hangover.  You try to remember what you watched on TV last night, or the night before, but even two cups of coffee isn’t enough to jog your memory. …

There’s a glimmer of hope.  A beacon, if you will. Discussions are ongoing regarding the NFL’s return (although really, is it a “return” if they haven’t missed any game time?) from the COVID-19 global pandemic.  Little  concerning concrete testing and prevention has been disclosed to the public, but it’s encouraging the owners and players are…

That, as they say, is that. For three days, NFL fans were treated to a familiar process, and for three days, they ate it up.  The 2020 NFL Draft proved to be as enlightening as non-quarantined versions from previous years, and at minimum, it represented the hope that football will indeed return someday…soon.  For 72…

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” – Henry David Thoreau For those of you who’ve experienced in print the…

Note:  This will be my last offering until the draft.  Given the lack of football (and the lack of an appetite for discussing the few crumbs we have), here’s a few links.  It might be enough to distract from the disease-ridden hellscape we lovingly call home…but I doubt it. Because everyone’s talking about it, here’s…

Pro football’s a unicorn. It’s become that rarest of beasts in its sheer existence.  It’s alive!  It breathes!  It schedules things!  It’s finding a means to operate under unprecedented circumstances.  No one should ever view NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell as a maverick, but in this instance, he’s handled the situation well by providing cogent arguments…