FMIA Training Camp Tour: Mahomes Channels Brady, Packers Love Affair, and Justin Tucker Magic

Since leaving football, Bill Parcells has become a horse aficionado. He owns a few, has his own stable, and has been looking for that one big horse since leaving football. Maple Leaf Mel looked to be that horse. A filly Parcells bought for $150,000 in 2022, she’d raced five times prior to the 3-year-old’s major-stakes debut last week at prestigious Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York.

“Amazing,” Parcells said. “Five races, and she’d been ahead the whole way in all of them.”

Maple Leaf Mel was named for her trainer, Melanie Giddings, a Canadian who’d survived stage 4 ovarian and cervical cancer in 2020. Parcells admired her grit and thought she was doing a great job with the gray horse. The Aug. 5 seven-furlong race was a big one. If Maple Leaf Mel won impressively, she’d ascend to the upper rungs of the sport. She’d be worth millions.

In the race, Maple Leaf Mel repeated her history, taking the lead and holding off the competition. About eight yards from the finish, maybe two strides, Maple Leaf Mel’s right foreleg gave way and she fell to the track, throwing the jockey forward. Parcells knew immediately this great run, and this horse’s life, was over.

When I spoke to Parcells a few days after the race, he was composed and realistic about the business. He had a This is the life we chose attitude, though this pained him — in a sporting way much more than financial.

“A gut punch,” he said. Maple Leaf Mel was euthanized at the track. Parcells and his family — his three daughters and grandchildren were at Saratoga with him — watched the end of his greatest horse’s life two strides from her greatest triumph. It hurt.

When Parcells saw Giddings after the race, the old coach was empathetic, to be sure. But he was also firm. He told her, “24-hour rule.” Meaning: In football, I gave the players 24 hours to celebrate a great win or to get over a terrible loss. So when you come back to work, it’s time to work. Giddings knew.

Interesting. I noted a story from the New York Racing Authority press office as I was reading about the horse and the trainer:

Sounds like a Parcells trainer.

There was the famous (infamous?) end to Mahomes’ first season in 2018, when Tom Brady and the Patriots beat KC in OT, 37-31. And the post-game scene when Brady went to find Mahomes to tell him how impressed he was with him. “That was great,” Reid said. “Brady was like, You’re gonna take my place in this thing.”

Amazing to see a “7” next to Mahomes’ name on the team roster here. This is his seventh season, including the mostly redshirt first one behind Alex Smith. As a point of comparison, I totaled Brady’s first five starting seasons and compared them to Mahomes’ five years quarterbacking this team. You might be surprised. I was.

Brady vs Mahomes first five years at a glance.

What startled me is the touchdown-to-pick ratio. In 93 games in his first five starting seasons, Mahomes is plus-172. Brady was plus-67 in his first five. That’s stunning. Two provisos there: Brady did get more offensively prolific with age, and Mahomes threw it more than Brady did through five years (five more attempts per game). And there’s the 3-2 Super Bowl edge for Brady. But it’s a race. No one who watches football think it’s impossible for Mahomes to legitimately chase Brady’s record of seven Lombardies. After practice Friday, Mahomes sounded grateful for the target.

“Seven’s a lot, but I’ll strive to get as close as I can,” he said. “To win seven Super Bowls and be in 10 Super Bowls, it’s crazy to even think about, even for me today. The other stats kinda come with it. I knew at Texas Tech, I put up a lot of stats but didn’t win games. When I got to the NFL, I knew I wanted to be a winner [first]. Try to win Super Bowls and give my team the best that I can.”

I haven’t been around Mahomes as much as I was around Brady, but I see these similarities:

• They’re not pigs at the trough. Brady famously left lots of money on the table in his career. He always felt—particularly because he could make millions off the field—that if the Patriots spent to the cap to make the team better, he was fine with taking less. Mahomes’ $45-million-a-year average is great, but in the three seasons since signing that deal, he’s fallen to seventh in the QB pay standings. He told me: “You want to keep the quarterback position and the rest of the skill groups, that salary cap moving. But I want to have a great team around me too. I think it’s just about finding that balance throughout your career and knowing when you need to push it and when you need to get those great players around you so you can win those Super Bowls.” Mahomes is still much better off, overall than Brady was. His $45-million average is 20 percent of this year’s KC cap. When Brady and the Pats went 16-0 in 2007, Brady counted for 6.7 percent of the New England cap.
  
• They hear what the outside world is saying, and they make decent players play lots better. Both QBs have been helped by all-time tight ends. But they made the best of average wideouts. In New England, when Brady led that comeback from 28-3 to beat Atlanta in the Super Bowl, his big wideouts late in the game were Chris Hogan and Malcolm Mitchell; Brady knew his team was being doubted, and he talked about his lesser teammates as if they were Pro Bowlers. In KC, the team scored more points and won more games in 2022 without Tyreek Hill than they did with him in 2021. Mahomes at different times highlighted and praised Justin Watson and Skyy Moore, and he made them factors. This spring, Moore was tied to his hip in Texas workouts. “I had all the guys down there in Texas for over a month-and-a-half. Skye was at every single workout. I mean, every single one. Wanted to get extra work after every single practice. He has that drive to be great.” First two throws in Friday team periods: Mahomes to Moore, one go route, one seam.
  
• The will. Brady’s story has been told. Mahomes’ is in process. Watch the NSFW video of the sideline scene after he twisted his ankle. He re-aggravated the ankle near halftime of the Super Bowl, limped off, and proceeded to be better in the second half than the first. For the post-season, playing with a bum ankle for 85 percent of the snaps over three games, Mahomes completed 72 percent of his throws, put up 71 points, went 3-0 and had a rating of 114.7

Reid said: “I haven’t worked with Tom, of course. But I think they both see the big picture — the very big picture. Patrick kind of looks at football with a panoramic shot. He sees the whole thing for everybody. I think that’s unique. He can see where the whole team can go, where he can go, our present, our future. Most people are, when you really cut to the chase, self-centered. Patrick’s team-centered. Listen to him compliment the 12^th-string players. That helps a team. And on top of that, he’s a football player.”

Kansas City’s practice Friday morning was a tempo affair. New names, some brand new, all over the offense. With Tyreek Hill, JuJu Smith-Schuster and Mecole Hardman having vanished in the last 17 months, Mahomes still has the omnipresent Travis Kelce to lean on. But on this day every other guy he targeted in the passing game had worn KC red for no more than 1.5 year. Go route to Skyy Moore (round two, 2022), deep out to Marquez Valdes-Scantling (UFA, joined KC in 2022), crosser to Rashee Rice (round two, 2023), fade to Justin Watson (UFA, joined KC in 2022). The faster the better. With Reid’s offense, every skill player’s alive on every play, and Mahomes doesn’t discriminate. My bet: Skyy Moore, more sure-handed and confident this year, breaks through with a big year.

There’s one other thing I saw in camp, and I’ve seen consistently with Mahomes. He loves everything about this life. He handles the attention, understands he has to hug some moms and kiss some babies, loves the challenge of roster-turnover, is so at-one with his coach that his can F-bomb him for five minutes and 90 minutes later hug him with sincerity. He knows he came to the perfect place to chase Tom Brady, even though on draft day he surely had no idea that by season seven he’d seriously be doing it. And he’s competitive. In everything. Even streaming.

“That’s why,” Kelce told me, “You keep seeing him on this slow incline of taking over the world. He’s gonna become even more of an international superstar with the Netflix “Quarterback” doc. He understands how to keep getting better at this game of football and this game of life.”

GREEN BAY, Wisc.—The hotel bellman talked about it. Packers president Mark Murphy talked about it. The fans from Sarasota who come to Packers camp every year talked about it.

Did you hear that ovation for Jordan Love at Family Night?

The 70,000 fans who paid $10 to come to the annual early-camp Saturday night tradition — practice at Lambeau Field, then fireworks — gave Love a 12-second ovation when he was introduced to the crowd. It was symbolic. Packer fans were ready to move on from Brett Favre in August 2008, paving the way for first-round QB Aaron Rodgers to play. Fifteen years later to the month they’re ready to move on from Rodgers to first-rounder Jordan Love.

“The ovation was awesome, a special moment for me,” Love said. “First time that happened in Lambeau.”

Fans here got tired of Rodgers’ cat-and-mouse games with the front office, particularly after scoring a rich, all-in extension last year, then staying away from the off-season program. The new guy, great or suspect, would logically get a welcome-to-the-big-job ovation in Green Bay. It’s the way of life here. The football team is a continuum. The locals are ridiculously grateful for 30-plus years of Hall of Fame quarterbacking from Favre and Rodgers—no other fan base has been that lucky—but there’s not a lot of pining for the good old days here. Time to go. Time to move on.

On the practice field last week, Love was in command of his offense. Tackle David Bakhtiari said he’s confident and calm in the huddle. But Love has had a shaky summer. The day I saw him, he threw an easy pick to safety Darnell Savage on the first play of team period, and cornerback Jaire Alexander taunted Love after the play. Hard to imagine Rodgers making that throw — and harder to imagine Alexander taunting Rodgers after it. On other days, he’s been superb. ESPN’s Rob Demovsky charted Love as 16-of-22 with four drops or throwaways in competitive periods on day three of camp.

Watching Love, he looks fluid in the pocket. Good arm, not a rocket. Might be too quick to run, but that’s hard to tell until the real games start. I bet he’ll run lots more than Rodgers, who averaged two rushes per game in his last three years.

He had a good start in his preseason opener Friday (7 of 10, 46 yards, one TD, no picks) at Cincinnati. One play bugged me. First series, third-and-10 from the Packer 35, and rookie tight end Luke Musgrave runs a crossing route from the right to left. No one’s within five yards of him when Love releases the ball, but it’s inaccurate. Not close. And Musgrave doesn’t have a defender within six yards. Good for Love — he moved the linebackers with his eyes to get Musgrave that open. Bad for Love — he tried to Mahomes the throw. Tried to no-look-pass the ball to Musgrave and just missed by a lot. He didn’t need to. He could have focused on Musgrave a split-second earlier and still found him open enough.

I expect Love will have a shakier first year than Favre’s in 1992 (8-5, 85.3 rating) or Rodgers’ in 2008 (6-10, 93.8). Outside of the veteran backfield, Love’s skill group is incredibly green. It’s likely that each of Green Bay’s top five pass-catchers will be a product of the last two drafts: wideouts Christian Watson and Romeo Doubs (drafted in 2022) and slot receiver Jayden Reed (’23), with two rookies — Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft — likely to be the top tight ends. (Musgrave has had a monster camp.) Some teams skew young, but imagine Love’s dual challenges: following two Hall-of-Famers at sports’ toughest position to master, and relying on five receivers age 24, 23, 23, 22 and 22.

“We’re very young,” coach Matt LaFleur said. “I can feel it. It’s like we’re a ball of clay, and we’re trying to mold it.”

You get the feeling here that GM Brian Gutekunst is more comfortable with this way of doing business, tearing down to the studs and starting over, than his peers would be. Would Jim Irsay let GM Chris Ballard have a no-doubt rebuilding year in Indianapolis? Imagine Robert Kraft saying the same to Bill Belichick in New England?

“You talk about the continuum,” Gutekunst told me. “Going back to [GMs] Ron Wolf and Ted Thompson, I trained under them. There’s some things we believe in here—developing quarterbacks, and drafting quarterbacks to develop. We believe in allowing them to sit and learn a little bit before they have to play. It’s an organization thing. It’s the route. It’s trying to make the best decisions to win today but also understanding that there’s gonna be a tomorrow and not sacrificing that.

“We went through the Brett Favre thing. Obviously I was a road scout at the time so I wasn’t here making those decisions. I always wondered: If we had a traditional owner, we would’ve been very close to Brett I’m sure, and what would we have done [in 2008]? But I do think this place, because of what we believe in and the stability of it, is a little bit different. This place, I think, is about what’s doing right for the team each and every day. Sometimes those are complicated decisions. But no one’s ever come to me and tried to make me compromise that.”

No one said this to me on my day in camp, but as much trepidation as the team must have entering a clear rebuild, the sense is Murphy, Gutekunst and LaFleur love it. They get to wipe the slate clean and start with all-in players. That is clear. It’s also clear that the road could be potholed. The amount of teaching and learning is massive.

One granular point: the cadence. When LaFleur took the job in 2019, he came in fully intending to teach Rodgers how he wanted him to call his signals but soon asked himself, Why? “I’m not gonna tell Aaron Rodgers how to do his cadence,” LaFleur said. “He’s got one of strongest voice inflections. He’s drawn more people offside and gotten more free plays than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

The cadence is important not just in trying to draw a penalty or get a free play. Smart quarterbacks use their inflection and hard count and pauses to get a “tell” from the defense. Will the defense bring pressure? Bump the receiver or receivers? Man coverage or zone? Even if he didn’t get the defensive end to jump, Rodgers could learn so much at the line with his hutHUTTT!

“The one thing we’ve challenged him on is it’s got to sound real,” LaFleur said of Love. “It can’t be like … A lot of times I think quarterbacks get up there and they’re so worried about the offense false-starting that they don’t do it as hard or they don’t have the voice inflection at the same level as they would if they were using normal cadence. The ‘huts’ sound different. So Jordan’s is a little bit softer. That’s one thing that we’ve had to talk to him about. You’ve got to trust those other 10 guys around you that they’re not going to move.

“I mean, we never would’ve talked about that before.”

Multiply the cadence thing times 100, and you get an idea what Love’s going through. It’s not exciting, not something that’ll end up on the next season of “Quarterback” on Netflix. It is the reality of Love’s life and the Packers’ 2023 raison d’etre.

“It is a process and you’ve got to take it one day at a time,” said Love. “But I’m a worker. I’m just excited to showcase my talent on the field.”

Patience, folks.

Four things you need to know this morning:

For the Browns, it’s on to football, like it or not.

BEREA, Ohio — Talked to a few people inside the team and on the team and got the impression they’re not going to focus much this year on the decision to trade for Deshaun Watson or the decision to give Deshaun Watson the biggest guaranteed contract in history as the league prepared to come down hard on him for his sexual misconduct. The franchise will understand continued fan anger over signing Watson, but this is the sentiment I felt from the team: We had a 93-percent season-ticket renewal rate, above the league average, and we raised ticket prices 7 to 8 percent, and there’s a wait list for tickets. Our fans want to watch football and they support our players. The question now is, what kind of quarterback will they have this fall in the very expensive Watson?

Playing for the first time in 100 weeks, Watson was less than mediocre down the stretch of the Cleveland season. He went 3-3, but completed 58 percent of his throws —10 percent below his career average — with a lousy 79.1 rating. He played totally without confidence. Team leader Myles Garrett had a theory: “You’re in a new city, with new people, new teammates, and the news cycle is going on and on about you every day, and not for football. You’re gone for [two-and-a-half months, suspended], and you come back to this new team and you’re supposed to be good all the time, not some of the time.” And the first game back is in Houston, where his career and life self-imploded.

There’s this feeling here that Watson can pick up where he left off in his huge 2020 season, when he completed 70 percent of his throws for a league-best 4,823 yards and a 112.4 rating. That last full season, Watson was a confident player, at ease with his game, knowing when to abandon the pocket, when to hang in. Now it’s 32 months since he played like he owned the place. Can he do it again? Part of the answer has to be about Watson the person. Two civil lawsuits against Watson remain open, so the legal process could still be a factor this year. I hear his sessions with a league-assigned counselor to address his sexual and mental issues have been valuable, and the organization thinks Watson has made progress in eliminating the other life that marred so many lives and disrupted his career. Time will tell if that’s true.

This offseason, he maxxed out his time with a new set of receivers. The skill group had three off-campus sessions, including one in Puerto Rico to build chemistry and comfort. He and his girlfriend got tight with Amari Cooper and his girlfriend. The receiver group was helped by the addition of Elijah Moore from the Jets, so on and off the field, Watson should have a better chance than last year.

“The biggest distinction, I think, is that he has a clear head,” Cooper said. “He’s very intentional about the camaraderie, very intentional about getting guys together in the offseason and during the season so we can build that bond so that we can play for each other on Sundays.”

At one practice jammed with fans last week, Watson was greeted warmly, and for the first hour I heard not one boo. That’s in keeping with the warmer reception locally he’s gotten in 2023.

In addition, Watson’s support system has been everything a troubled player could hope for. The counseling and the intense planning and ignominy for signing a player seen as a predator is in the rear-view, for now. Now it’s up to Watson to hold up his end of the $230-million deal of desperation made by the Browns. We’re about to find out if this franchise-tarnishing gamble will give the team the franchise quarterback it’s lacked for generations.

—

A more ridonkulous play you may never see.

In AT&T Stadium Saturday, edge-of-the-roster quarterback Nathan Rourke of the Jaguars had a third-and-16 at the Dallas 21 in the fourth quarter. Rourke, a Canadian kid, had a nice dual-threat career at Ohio of the Mid-American Conference, went undrafted, got one sniff from the NFL (Giants coach Joe Judge tried to make him a wide receiver in 2021, one of Judge’s many bad ideas in New Jersey), then played a strong season in Canada for British Columbia last year. He signed as a longshot free agent with the Jags last winter. “First game in Jerryworld, against America’s Team,” Rourke said Sunday afternoon from Florida. “Pretty big deal for me. But on the play, we were down a long-snapper, so we were in four-down territory, so I was just trying to get some yards for a manageable fourth down.”

Problem: The Dallas front flooded at Rourke immediately, overwhelming his protection. “The play was a five-step drop, sort of long-developing,” Rourke said. “I needed time to get to my first read, but as you saw it got a little muddy [in the pocket].” A little muddy? Rourke had shed his first sack try at the 35, then stepped up and nearly went down again at the 32 and another close call at the 32. “At that point I’m just trying to see anyone, trying to make anything happen. Later, I saw we had a receiver wide open to the left but I just never saw him,” Rourke said. These things happen when you’re scrambling for your life. Former Colt rusher Ben Banogu had Rourke in his grasp at the 31, and he barely saw a back, Qadree Ollison, downfield, maybe open enough inside the Dallas 10.

“I love the fields in Canada, because you’ve got more space to make a play,” Rourke said. “In America, it feels tighter. The D-lineman had me, and I just thought, ‘Why not? Give my guy a chance.’” The throw was all arm from the Dallas 31, Rourke’s knee four inches from the turf as the spiral left his right hand.

Amazing Rourke got rid of it.

Amazing it was a fairly tight spiral.

Amazing it traveled 32 yards with precision, right on Ollison’s hands a yard into the end zone. I mean, who could believe this throw?

In Athens, Ohio on Sunday, Jimmy Burrow could. “Oh, I’ve seen that before with Nathan,” Burrow said. He was the Ohio defensive coordinator for part of Rourke’s time at Ohio and practiced against him.

“It’s fun to show people who I am,” said the 6-1, 210-pound Rourke. “I’ve always been the underdog, the guy with no expectations, just another quarterback. Hopefully this will get something good started for me here.”

Bill Walsh used to say if he saw a player do something once, he could coach him to do it over and over. I doubt anyone’s coaching Rourke to break four sack attempts and whipsaw a dart 32 yards for a touchdown, but I know Doug Pederson. That play will buy a lot of currency with the Jacksonville coach at final cutdown. No undrafted free agent improved his chances in this week of preseason games more than Nathan Rourke.

—

Justin Tucker might be the best player at his position in football.

That’s saying a lot, when Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Donald and Justin Jefferson are hanging out there. But look at this kick by Tucker against Philadelphia Saturday night.

Four points:

1. It was struck so easily. It was almost a relaxed boot.

2. It was good from 60 yards. There is no doubt it would have been true from 70. (Tucker holds the NFL record for longest field goal, 66 yards, in 2021. It shtoinked the crossbar in Detroit and bounced over.)

3. It was right down the middle, as so many of his field goals are. Perfectly bisected the uprights. That is as amazing as the distance. So many of Tucker’s field goals look like they’d be good if the uprights were a yardstick apart.

4. There’s little doubt in my mind Adam Vinatieri will make the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and maybe on the first ballot, after an accurate and clutch career in New England and Indianapolis. So what to do with the 33-year-old Tucker, entering his 12^th season with the Ravens? Vinatieri’s an 83.8-percent career kicker. Tucker checks in at 90.5 percent, the only kicker in history to have a 90-percent success rate.

I don’t know what’s left to say about Tucker, other than: Enjoy him while you can.

—

It’s okay to be honest about rookie QBs.

On the fifth play of Colts rookie quarterback Anthony Richardson’s career Saturday at Buffalo, he threw a careless, off-balance, backfoot rainbow to the right flat, and the ball was intercepted by cornerback Dane Jackson. Poor throw. Rookie mistake.

After the game, coach Shane Steichen said he should have coached the play better, and he said Richardson showed “great poise” coming back from the early pick. Isaiah McKenzie, the intended receiver, said the interception was “on me.”

This is what happens when a great prospect begins to play. If there’s a mistake made by the great hope guy, teammates/coaches fly in to say no, no, no, it was my fault. I’ve never understood that. Nice to be valiant. But if you say that over and over when we all can see it was a terrible throw that never should have been made, don’t you cost yourself some credibility?

I spoke with Richardson during the week. I’ve thought all along that of the top three rookie quarterbacks — Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud, Richardson — that he’d be the most likely to sit and learn early for a couple of reasons. He’s the least experienced, having started but one season of college football. And the Colts have a veteran, capable backup in Gardner Minshew. Many more throws like his first and he’ll make that decision easy for Steichen.

“I’m working on my footwork a lot,” said Richardson. “Understanding the depth of the routes. Understanding what we’re trying to do to the certain defensive coverages, different defensive schemes. It’s just understanding a lot of things and mastering the details … Understanding that everybody has knowledge about football. You see guys shifting this way and that—watch this, watch this. So I gotta fine-tune myself.”

Self-awareness at 21 is a good thing. And for Richardson to play opening day, the clock is ticking.

Amon-Ra St. Brown, wide receiver, Detroit

St. Brown leads all wide receivers picked in the 2021 draft with 196 receptions in his first two NFL seasons.

What did you learn from the disappointment of being the 17^th receiver picked in the 2021 draft after thinking you’d go much earlier in the draft?

“We set up a party in a restaurant on day two of the draft (rounds two and three), and when I saw I wasn’t going to be drafted, I thanked everyone for coming, but then got in my car to drive back to the AirBnb where I was staying with my two brothers. I was super upset, crying. I didn’t want anyone to see me.

“I think back now, and this was one of the days that I’ll never forget for me as a player, as a person. Just how mad I was, and what I took from it. I got home. I was like, I can go to bed, I can feel sorry for myself. But I was like, Let me get on this Jugs machine. Let me catch my balls like I always do. So I got on my Jugs machine, like 12:30 at night. My brothers were with me. They fed the machine. Caught 202 balls. That’s always been my number, growing up. There was this other kid that we met that had really good hands. He said he catches 200 balls a day. So I gotta be better than him. I gotta catch 202. It’s just a little reminder.

“I’m still pissed off to this day. But I learned something from it. I was going to go hard every day, every play, to prove all those teams made a mistake. That’s why I go so hard.

“The guys they picked before me, I’m watching.”

This is my 40^th season covering the NFL. Each week during the season, I’ll resurrect a memory from one of those seasons. This week: 1993, when I tagged along with Reggie White, the first big free agent in NFL history, on his road to Green Bay. I never saw the Packers coming.

A video remembrance:

I.

— Henry Ruggs, the former first-round Raider receiver, in court in Las Vegas as he received his sentence (three to 10 years in prison) for driving drunk, speeding at 156 mph and smashing into a vehicle, killing a woman, per the New York Times.

II.

— Jets wideout Garrett Wilson, on HBO’s Hard Knocks, after the Jets’ offense won the day in training camp, and defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich had the defensive players do 20 pushups each. Wilson hollered at the defenders as they did the pushups.

III.

— Aaron Rodgers, via Hard Knocks, speaking to Zach Wilson through the headset, in the first quarter of the first preseason game, presaging a 57-yard completion to free-agent receiver Malik Taylor.

IV.

— Patrick Mahomes, trying out his new handshake on me after our conversation at training camp Friday.

If you haven’t seen it, here’s the latest NFL quarterback trying out a new greeting on your faithful correspondent:

V.

— Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson, to me, on the injuries that kept him out a total of 34 percent of the offensive snaps in the last two years.

Hot dogs at Atlanta Falcons games cost $1.50.

No other stadium in the league sells hot dogs for less than $3.

I
We stopped at the minor-league stadium in Davenport, Iowa, on Wednesday night. I threw out the first football (bounced it, unfortunately). The Quad Cities River Bandits played the Cedar Rapids Kernels. Pleasant place, right on the Mississippi River.

Davenport takes advantage of its locale on the mighty Mississippi. There was a Viking cruise ship docked downtown.

Davenport is a river town.

Batting second and playing left field for the Davenport-based ballclub: River Town.

II
Paul Tagliabue’s tenure as NFL commissioner: 16 years, 9 months, 25 days.

Roger Goodell’s current tenure as commissioner: 16 years, 11 months, 14 days.

I doubt Goodell breaks Pete Rozelle’s record for longevity (29 years, 9 months, 4 days). He’d be 77 if he ruled longer than Rozelle—say, 29 years, 10 months. From what I hear, 20 or 21 years might be nice round numbers for his time in office.

Last Tuesday, our camp team — me, producers/videographers Kelsey Bartels and Morgan Miller had the Colts on the docket. (We had Kalyn Kahler, my colleague from The MMQB, in tow as well.) I was driving as we started off from our hotel in Lake Forest, Ill., at 4:40 a.m. for the 9 a.m. practice at Colts camp in Westfield, Ind. It’s a 3-hour, 5-minute trip, and with the time change from Central to Eastern we’d be cutting it close. Anyway, pre-dawn is the time you want to drive through Chicago. So smooth. No traffic. Got through the city, headed south on the Dan Ryan Expressway near the White Sox stadium. Dead stop. Ten, 20, 30 minutes we sat, crawling a few feet every minute or so. This was bad. Morgan looked up some Chicago traffic site and said, “We’re stopped because there’s been a shooting on this highway.” Turns out at 4:36 a.m. the cops had shut down the road and now we were made to exit through a southside neighborhood. Slowly. After 70 minutes, we were back on the road. “We’re gonna miss half the practice,” I said.

An hour or so later, we’re on I-65 just past West Lafayette, Ind. Dead stop. Two-lane highway. Ten, 20, 30 minutes we sat. We were 65 miles from Colts camp. “We’re gonna miss all of the practice,” I said.

With the car in park on I-65, I opened my car door. I walked to the median and looked ahead. I could see maybe two miles into the distance. No movement. I yelled a word not fit for the column at the top of my lungs, then got back in the car.

“Wanna turn around?” I asked. It was unanimous. Of course.

So we pulled a U-turn in the median, got on I-65 North, and headed back to Lake Forest; we had the Bears the next day.

Got back to the hotel at noon. Seven hours and 20 minutes. Drive to nowhere. Now that’s a first on the training-camp trip. Camp visit cancelled due to traffic.

Email me at peterkingfmia@gmail.com.

Tasker for the Hall. From Jeff Berman: “Considering the expansion of eligible candidates for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, I believe it to be a great injustice that Steve Tasker keeps getting passed over. He may have been the greatest special teams player of all time. His performance paved the way for special teams players in today’s game. I would hope you would be able to use your influence and knowledge of the game to help remedy this injustice.”

Thanks for the note, Jeff. There’s no “may have been” about it. I believe he’s the best ever at this niche piece of football. A year or two after Tasker retired, his longtime special teams coach in Buffalo, Bruce DeHaven, made a VHS tape of 10 plays Tasker made while a Bill — kick blocks, punt blocks, beating double-teams at gunner to make big plays downfield — and told me he and Marv Levy thought these 10 plays were the biggest plays to help the Bills each game, and maybe someday this would help Tasker’s Hall of Fame case. I took the tape and showed it to some voters but could never get the traction. The problem: Too many voters think a player who played 15 percent of the plays in a game, or in that vicinity, didn’t do enough to make the Hall. I claimed if a player for a dominant team made the biggest plays in 10 victories, and then was a cornerstone player for that team for 12 years, they deserve to be in the Hall. I’m one voter.

On newspapers. From Craig Ross: “I feel your frustration with newspapers Peter. Our family read both the Cincinnati Enquirer in the morning and the Post in the evening while I was growing up. But the Wall Street Journal Saturday paper is worth the six bucks. Need a bottle of wine for a friend? They have it. New recipe? They’ve got that. New car? Check. Interesting commentary? Peggy Noonan. Personal finance? Jason Zweig. And there’s always a sports story. It’s just better in your hands than reading it online.”

Preach, Craig.

Patience. From Jeff Preston (Packers’ season-ticket holder): “The only way to properly evaluate Jordan Love is to have a solid offensive line. If he has time to think, you can evaluate. If not, he’s running for his life and it’s backyard football at its best.”

Agreed. The one thing you should be encouraged about is the physical condition of left tackle David Bakhtiari, who told me his knee is feeling better than it has in a long time. For Love’s protection, Bakhtiari’s good health would be a big, big plus.

Well … From James Philion, of Ottawa: “Just read your first column of the year. Two people I don’t want to read about anymore are Aaron Rodgers and Damar Hamlin.”

It’s going to be a long year for you, James.

He wants me to cover the Commanders. From Erik Wallace: “Big fan of FMIA and longtime reader of your NFL column. You mentioned in this week’s column “melting your way” down the East Coast but not a single mention of my beloved team the Washington Commanders. No gushing of love like you give to Bryce Young and Jalen Hurts. Give us a LITTLE LOVE, Mr. King. Hail!!!”

Every summer I have to strike a balance between the teams I feel I have to see because of their prominence (Kansas City, San Francisco, Philadelphia), an interesting story (Green Bay minus Rodgers, Jets with Rodgers, Broncos with Sean Payton, Bryce Young, reinvigorated Lions) and places, frankly, I enjoy seeing (Latrobe). The other part of the puzzle I put together is when teams are practicing and whether it’s a real practice (with pads), and who I might be able to meet with when I’m there. Miami, for instance, was attractive to me this year, and I was going to be able to have a session with Tua Tagovailoa, who I’d never met. So I’m sorry I don’t get to them all. It’s just not doable. And when I’m immersed in a team per day, I don’t pay much attention to the other teams. Just a casualty of the trip.

1. I think the biggest headline of the first full preseason weekend had to be not only Damar Hamlin’s return to football in Buffalo’s game against the Colts, but Hamlin seeming to eliminate any chance he wouldn’t make the 2023 Buffalo Bills. That may sound out of touch with those who think, Buffalo could never have cut Damar Hamlin this year, not after his good-news story of survival. But I can tell you this wasn’t a gimme. The Bills needed to see how Hamlin would respond to physical football over the past two weeks, particularly in the game against the Colts. And in a five-play sequence midway through the first quarter, Hamlin answered the question. He made two solo tackles and one assisted tackle, including stoning Colts running back Evan Hull on a fourth-and-one rush into the pile, getting the ball back on downs for the Bills.

2. I think Hamlin realized the significance of Saturday too. “It was super fun, just another milestone on getting back to myself in professional football,” he said. “When you step between the lines, you’re putting yourself at risk by hesitating, by reserving. I made the choice — I wanted to play. Making the choice, I know what comes with it. I’m out there, I’m not thinking twice.” When I was in camp, I wondered about his drive, whether he’d have the same verve. So far, he does. “I honestly couldn’t imagine not being a part of this,” he said Saturday. “There’s no other place I’d rather be.”

3. I think my eyebrows got raised the other day when I read that some Washington players approached coach Ron Rivera with — apparently — some complaints about the hard coaching style of Eric Bieniemy, the new offensive coordinator. “They were just a little concerned. I mean, it’s a whole different approach,” Rivera told reporters. Good!!! Where Washington ranked in the past five seasons in points scored:

2018: 29^th
2019: 32^nd
2020: T-25^th
2021: T-23^rd
2022: T-24^th

I’m not in the meetings or on the practice field. But maybe the best concept here is for a new coach with fresh ideas to come and shake things up. “A little concerned.” Stop. Rivera walked it back the next day, saying he put his foot in his mouth. Bad look all around.

4. I think we all understand the first episode of “Hard Knocks” being all about Aaron Rodgers. The insights into his introduction to the Jets were great and insightful. But two quibbles: Every show can’t be the Aaron Rodgers Show. And there was waaaaaaay too much time spent on the Hall of Fame Game. It doesn’t matter, guys. When a team is simply trying to get back on the bus after the game with zero injuries and the result is the most meaningless outcome of anything the team will do all season, four minutes would have been plenty. The sequence on the long throw from Zach Wilson to Malik Taylor was great. A couple of color shots beyond that and get out of there.

5. I think Matt Araiza, cleared of all charges in a college sex-assault case, should have a job in the NFL. If we’re innocent till proven guilty, and he was one of the best punters to come out of college football in recent years, what’s the holdup?

6. I think Vikings co-owner Mark Wilf is handling the Kirk Cousins situation the right way — not committing to moving swiftly to try to re-sign Cousins. Why would the Vikings? Cousins is a tremendous guy, a good leader, an efficient player (153-50 TD-to-pick rate with Minnesota) … who has one playoff victory in five seasons. Do you want to commit a minimum of $50 million a year, for one, two or three years? Or, if Cousins does not lead the Vikes deeper into January this year, do you want to start over in 2024, when Cousins will be 36?

7. I think I understand if you’d say, “Wait. Lamar Jackson is a 1-3 career playoff quarterback — same as Cousins — and Jackson has missed 10 starts due to injury over the last two seasons, while Cousins has missed one over that period. And you supported the Jackson contract. What’s the difference?” Excellent question. I would answer this way: The Ravens seem more inextricably tied to Jackson and his style of quarterbacking; he was 30-7 as the Ravens’ starter in his first three years, the 2019 MVP, before injuries struck the last two years. There’s also the element of fan bases, I believe, though neither franchise would admit it. Ravens fans would be protesting in a big way if Jackson were not re-signed. I sense Vikings fans want Cousins to be their quarterback, but if he doesn’t advance the team this year, I think many would be ready to move on.

8. I think I gave you my opinions on the shameful college football realignment mess, with the NCAA abdicating all authority over the college game. Then I read Stanford coach Troy Taylor’s thoughts in an ESPN.com story by Kyle Bonagura. I understand where he’s coming from—basically, that being in the ACC is better than being an independent, as silly as it would be Stanford and Cal to have five road trips of 2,500 to 3,000 miles a season. “I’m okay with traveling,” Taylor said. “People used to have to come across the country in a covered wagon. It would take them months … We get on a plane for five, six hours. That’s not the end of the world. You get drinks served to you and some snacks.” Well, I guess.

9. I think Troy Taylor would be good at making lemonade out of lemons.

10. I think these are my other thoughts of the week:

a. Poor Maui. The terror of fire is absolutely amazing.

b. This story, about how Annelise Cochran of Lahaina escaped the fire by hanging on a rock ledge at the Pacific Ocean is both harrowing and heroic. Good work by Matthias Gafni of the San Francisco Chronicle. Cochran, a friend (Edna) and a neighbor (Freeman), set out to save themselves when the fire overwhelmed their apartment building near the Pacific Ocean in Lahaina.

c. Wrote Gafni, about the peak of Cochran’s ordeal:

d. There are horrifying human tragedies, and then there is what happened in Maui.

e. I’ve never seen a dumber suspension in my life than play-by-player Kevin Brown getting banned by the Orioles for simple and obvious and gentle analysis of the ballclub.

f. Email Headline of the Week: “NCAA concerned with realignment,” by Sports Business Journal.

g. That rivals “Ohtani good at baseball.”

h. Stay at the Graduate Hotel in Iowa City if you ever get a chance. It’s a chain that doesn’t feel like it. Short walk from campus, cool coffee shop (Poindexter) right off the lobby, comfy rooms. (Mine was perfectly black at night, the way I like it, with no light seeping in.)

i. Then there’s the key card:

j. I’d never been on the Iowa campus before. Never been to Iowa City. What a lovely college green and setting. Makes me want to go back for a game sometime.

k. One highlight of the trip last week: Breakfast with Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz and The Athletic’s Dan Pompei, who was along for the ride from Chicago to St. Joseph. Ferentz enters his 25^th season as Iowa coach (after starting, as he pointed out, 2-18), and I knew him a little when he was on the Cleveland and Baltimore coaching staffs in the nineties. Hadn’t talked to him in 25 years, I bet, but he was exactly as I’d remembered: smart about football, great conversationalist. He must be a great recruiter.

l. Sports Business Story of the Week: Peter Kafka for Vox on the huge ESPN gambling story. Great headline: “Disney used to hate gambling. Now it’s doing a $2 billion sports betting deal.”

m. ESPN is like so many companies: virtuous until you see how much money can be made by being un-virtuous.

n. Writes Kafka:

Here’s a story that would have been very, very hard to imagine a few years ago: ESPN, Disney’s sports behemoth, is doing a $2 billion deal with Penn Entertainment, a gambling company you’ve probably never heard of. It’s a striking about-face for Disney CEO Bob Iger, who spent years insisting that his company should avoid anything to do with gambling.

And there’s an additional wrinkle for people who pay attention to changes in sports and pop culture: ESPN’s sports betting deal with Penn replaces one the company previously had with Barstool Sports, the raunchy and provocative publisher that used to thrive on portraying ESPN as lumbering and out of touch.

Some folks who work at ESPN think it’s a big win: They get an infusion of cash, and they think not just telling their viewers about sports betting but directly participating in sports betting is a good thing. ESPN already had deals with sports betting companies, but you should now expect to see a lot more of it when you tune in.

o. In 10 years, Gamblers Anonymous will have more people to counsel than Alcoholics Anonymous.

p. Radio Story of the Week: “In California, wildfires are prevented by crews of unlikely firefighters: goats.” Vanessa Romo of NPR on a crazy phenomenon.

q. Reports Romo:

The end of a quiet residential street in Glendale, Calif., is just one of many battlegrounds in the state’s annual fight against wildfire season. And it’s being waged by goats.

About 300 of them are spread out along the foothills and steep ridges of the Verdugo Mountains, which loom over multi-million dollar homes at the end of a cul de sac. The goats are busy chomping away on the dried-out vegetation that’s exploded after this year’s drought-busting rains.

Seemingly oblivious to the 94-degree heat, the animals are hard at work devouring several acres of dead, yellowed grasses, scrubby bushes and cactus, as well as some of southern California’s most invasive plants, including star thistle and black mustard.

“There’s very little they won’t eat. Even things that seem impossible. I don’t know how their digestive systems deal with it, but they do,” Michael Choi told NPR, squinting out at his herd from under a brown felt cowboy hat.

r. I’m done with oldies. How often can one hear “Back in Black” before saying enough already?

s. Review of the Week: Leila Fadel of NPR on the new Netflix series “Painkiller.” Good information here:

t. There’s something still so perverse about the Sackler family of Purdue Pharma avoiding prison for the thousands who have died from opioid overdoses. Good to see the Supreme Court paused the Purdue Pharma opioid settlement on Thursday.

u. Why was there a Halloween popup shop open in suburban Atlanta on Aug. 3? Weird country. Halloween costumes on sale 88 days before Halloween.

v. Some baseball thoughts: The Braves amaze me. The 2-3-4 hitters, Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley, Matt Olson — have played in all 117 Braves’ games and have 99 homers with 272 RBI. Imagine having three ironmen like that who are averaging 33 homers and 90 RBI in the heart of your order — with seven weeks left to play.

w. The Mets are a national embarrassment, as is owner Steve “I’ll Show You How to Buy a Championship” Cohen. Hedge funds aren’t sports, Steve. With CitiField mostly packed for the first three games against the rival Braves over the weekend, the Mets performed vomitously. In two days, they lost three games 7-0, 21-3, 6-0. Outscored by your rival at home 34-3! Sunday night’s six-run fifth wasn’t enough to salvage that.

x. RIP to a friend from the Cincinnati Enquirer days, John Fay, the longtime Reds’ beat writer. A good man gone at 66.

y. NBC gives me consistently high-quality producers and videographers all the time on the road. As the third segment (Cleveland-Green Bay-Chicago-Iowa City-Kansas City ended Friday night, with the bad travel day cutting out Indianapolis), all praise to Kelsey Bartels and Morgan Miller for the pictures, the video, the driving (1,116 miles from Green Bay to Lake Forest to rural Indiana to Lake Forest to Davenport to Iowa City to St. Joseph to KCI Airport, in five days), the sanity, the tolerating of my phone calls and NPR-listening. Folks, I’m a lucky man to have the support system I do.

Caitlin Clark jerseys

flood U of Iowa store.

First time on campus.