FMIA Training Camp: Jerry Jones Still Believes; Shanahan on the SF Safety Net

At mile 24 of the training-camp marathon, where I’ve been, what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard, 17 days before Detroit and Kansas City open the 104^th season of the National Football League:

Driven Dak. “A thousand percent” Prescott’s motivated by just two playoff wins in seven seasons.

The weird QB sitch in San Francisco. After six minutes of a monologue dissecting San Francisco’s quarterback world since 2017, coach Kyle Shanahan looked at me and said, “I forget what the question was.” I did too.

“Big team, little me.” Reunited ex-Raiders Dennis Allen and Derek Carr try to lead a veteran team on one more playoff run.

Draft D.J. Moore. I’m no Matthew Berry, but I do know new Bear wideout Moore will have the best season of his productive career if he’s healthy 17 games.

Speaking of fantasy football … The San Diego Padres have their fantasy draft Thursday night. See all the invaluable information you can only get in FMIA?

Buddy Parker. Who he is, why he kept Robert Kraft and Mike Shanahan out of the Hall of Fame, and the process that seems to enrage some of you.

Saleh vents. No way, no how would the Jets have let Robert Saleh’s blistering tirade on his offensive line into “Hard Knocks” unless he wanted it in there. Mekhi Becton alert.

Daboll’s not going to like this. Records in NFC East games in the last two years of team meetings in week one: Dallas 10-2, New York 2-10-1.

What John Lynch has learned. John Harbaugh has a pretty big hand in it.

Christian McCaffrey’s bright idea. A re-imagined Brainy Conference in college football.

World Cup 2026. Three NFL stadia may be competing to host the final.

I love Petco Park. Swingin’ Friar Ale is a hit too.

Deuce Vaughn gets a huge honor. After a ridiculous TD run Saturday night in Seattle, the Cowboy mini-back is the subject of The Adieu Haiku.

On with the show.

There are few people in football I admire more than Dak Prescott. His speech after winning the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award last year, crediting his late mother for all the good in his life, was the best and most sincere Payton speech I’ve heard. He’s the guy you want leading your team, and his regular-season performance mirrors his impact: a 97.8 career rating, 67-percent accuracy, just 36 losses in 97 starts.

But to join the Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman on the pantheon of great America’s Team quarterbacks, and to win the first Dallas Super Bowl since 1995, Prescott has to play better in the biggest moments.

I asked him about that drive against San Francisco, those 48 seconds. The Cowboys won’t admit it, but I’m pretty sure that drive was the capper for the decision to dump offensive coordinator Kellen Moore so head coach Mike McCarthy could take play-calling and full gameplan duties. Jones told me when he hired McCarthy that he wanted to be game-planner and play-caller.

“I think you have to use your scars in that sense,” Prescott told me. “To say I’m continuing to relive it, it’s past me at this point. But a lot of the offseason was about that. With Mike taking over the play-calling we went into details and sometimes there’s those three plays—there’s a lot of details in that that allowed those three plays to not be successful. That’s what we really focused on this training camp and this spring, cleaning that up and making sure receivers are on the same page, linemen are on the same page with my [pass] drops and receivers understand where they’ve gotta be and when—so the operation just goes a whole lot smoother. We’re using the things that hurt us last year. That’ll be our strength this year.”

The Dallas offense could try to run faster this year, so Prescott can put more pressure on defenses; the acquisition of deep threat Brandin Cooks should help that. But the Cowboys were not a plodding team in 2022. Their 65.5 average offensive snaps per game were more than offensive powerhouses Kansas City (64.4), Cincinnati (61.9) and Buffalo (61.0). McCarthy’s going to have enduring faith in Prescott to play up-tempo, given Dallas’ clear desire to cut down on Prescott’s 15 picks in 2022.

Dallas is 5-12 in the postseason since the last Super Bowl win 28 years ago. Prescott wears a piece of that—he’s 2-4 in the postseason—and as he enters the first season of his thirties, he knows the focus is on those two playoff wins in seven years.

“Yeah,” he said. “A thousand percent. I want to win the Super Bowl. The only way to do that is to win playoff games. Those two wins aren’t going to be enough. It’s about stringing three or four together to make sure that we’re playing in the Super Bowl and winning what we hold as our expectations and what all these fans have as our expectations. That’s the standard when you wear this star. It’s a high standard but we love it. We embrace it.”

But it can be suffocating too. You don’t have a lot of chances like Prescott has now, entering a season as one of three NFC teams (with the Eagles and 49ers) with the best chance to make the Super Bowl. The chances are fleeting.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—When I left Niners’ camp Thursday, I had no intention of writing about Kyle Shanahan. I was intent on writing about the strangest six-year quarterback run I’ve seen in my four decades of covering the NFL, and what makes Brock Purdy tick, and how he looks in training camp, and the very weird story of Trey Lance.

When I sat down to write Sunday, I changed my mind. Just a gut feeling.

The details:

• Shanahan has coached six seasons, covering 107 regular- and post-season games.
• Six starting quarterbacks in six seasons, covering 107 games.
• A first-round quarterback started four of the 107.
• Where each of the six starting QBs was drafted: third, 62^nd, 104^th, 262^nd, undrafted, undrafted.
• In the one season out of six that the same quarterback started from start to finish, 2019, San Francisco was seven minutes away from winning the Super Bowl.
• The 49ers have never been in the bottom half of the league’s total offense rankings in Shanahan’s six years. Last year, when three different quarterbacks started, the Niners were fifth in total yards and sixth in points.
• Mr. Irrelevant, Brock Purdy, was 8-0 last year in games he started or played at least three quarters.
• The QB depth chart this summer has the 262^nd pick of 2022 (Purdy) ahead of the number three overall picks in 2018 (Sam Darnold) and 2021 (Lance).

September 2022: Lance was named starting quarterback … Week two: Head athletic trainer Dustin Little tells Shanahan, mid-game, that Lance has a fractured ankle. Out likely for the year. Jimmy Garoppolo enters the game at Seattle and pilots a 20-point win … Week 13: Little tells Shanahan, mid-second quarter, that Garoppolo has a broken foot. Likely out six months, which is the season. “Exactly the same feeling I had when he came to me week three [2018] and said Jimmy’s gone with an ACL,” Shanahan said. “Like, oh s---.” Brock Purdy leads the Niners to a 16-point win … NFC title game: Purdy gets sacked on the last play of the first drive, severely injuring his elbow. A couple minutes later, Purdy goes to Shanahan on the sidelines and says, “You gotta put Josh [Johnson, the backup] in the game. I’m not tapping out, but I can’t throw at all.” A bridge too far. Niners got waxed by the Eagles.

March 2023: Purdy’s elbow surgery got delayed. Lance was rehabbing well, but he wasn’t perfect. Free-agency hell for Shanahan. What to do? “We feel we got the quarterbacks here,” said Shanahan. “But one is having elbow surgery and if that does go wrong, and we find out four months from now that they gotta redo something, he might not play this year. Then we have Trey, who’s coming off a broken ankle, who we haven’t seen do anything yet to know how he’s coming back from that. Not to mention, he’s only played one game and a quarter the year before. That’s why we hoped to get Sam Darnold. We were able to be honest with Sam, but it all came down to Sam wanting that role. Sam still could’ve gone other places for a lot more money. For him to come here—a huge leap of faith. He had no idea if he was coming for the one, two or three job.”

Aug. 17, 2023: For the first time since the surgery, Purdy practices for a third straight day; he’s fine. Darnold is in the lead for number two, practicing fully. Lance has had some bad throws, but he’s healthy and just needs reps as the number three. “Honestly, I never thought we’d be sitting here with three really good guys ready to go right now,” Shanahan said. “It’s amazing what we’ve been through, really. And now …”

And now the Niners are in the best quarterback situation, one through three, in the seven seasons of Shanahan’s reign. This is a crazy, crazy world.

“I think back to the night of the Miami game, when we lost Jimmy and had to play Brock,” Shanahan said. “The feeling after that game was very sad, because of what happened to Jimmy. And I’m laying there in bed that night, and I say, ‘Man, it’s awful for Jimmy. But wait a second. Brock did play pretty good.’ Like, just because we’re to our third-string quarterback does not mean things are gonna change. Then you come in on Monday and you think, ‘Well, I’ll pump up Brock so the players will believe and so they don’t get all down.’ But you know what? I didn’t have to do anything. They believed in Brock. They’d seen him in practice. Then he just came in and never lost a game. Kept getting better and better.”

Shanahan stared at me. “I forgot what the question was,” he said.

“But year after year, all these quarterbacks. All these bad injuries. The one thing we believed in was having a great defense. That keeps games close, then you just figure a way sometimes on offense. Why’d we go after Javon Hargrave this year? Defense. Make it hard to score on us.”

He brought up the Super Bowl champ Bucs, with Brad Johnson at quarterback. And the Ravens, winning the title with Trent Dilfer. The defenses were so good those teams didn’t need a tremendous quarterback.

And this is the biggest surprise of the 35 minutes I spent with Shanahan. He’s more laser-focused on building a defense and a kicking game, with GM John Lynch and personnel czar Adam Peters, than he is on building a team that leads the league in scoring every year. It was just 19 months ago that the Niners had zero going for them on offense, trailed Green Bay 10-3 with five minutes left, and won on a zero-degree wind-chill night with a blocked punt and long field goal at the end. Thus spending big on Hargrave this year. If they live in quarterback hell again this year—not likely, but in San Francisco, who knows?—they’ll always have a chance.

“That’s kind of been a view of how to build a team for me forever,” he said. “Hoping you can always have that quarterback, but if you can build that defense that way and play the right way, you do have a chance.”

Ninety minutes later, I’m standing in the end zone at practice. The number one offense is playing the ones on defense, and it’s a red zone period. Eleven on 11. Darnold and Lance, the insurance policies, stand 10 yards behind the first unit, watching Purdy. On Purdy’s third straight day of practice testing his surgically repaired right elbow, he examines the defense from the 10-yard line.

Purdy barks: “One-18! One-18 HUT!!!”

At the snap, Purdy sees Deebo Samuel, running an out route from the left flank, cutting to the pylon at the goal line, with half a step on the cover corner. Purdy throws exactly as Samuel cuts, and the ball is thrown on a laser three yards shy of the pylon, where only Samuel can catch it. Samuel dives. Catches it. Touchdown. One hundred seventy days after significant elbow surgery, Purdy throws the ball just like he always has. The fastball, always underrated, is back.

“To be able to go out and practice and still make all the throws with velocity, on time, gives me a lot of confidence,” Purdy told me post-practice. “I’m confident, ready to roll for this year.”

I left camp being sure of only one thing: Shanahan will have insurance, and confidence the thing can work, if some debacle befalls Purdy. That’s how good coaches operate—with safety nets. Because nothing is certain in football.

LAKE FOREST, Ill.—One of the great things about seeing practice at training camp: You see the real thing. The day I was at the Bears, wideout Chase Claypool and rookie corner Tyrique Stevenson (from the U) started jousting after one coverage play. They had to be separated, and Stevenson chirped angrily at him—not at all rookie-like. Impressive, standing up to the strong-willed Claypool.

Another snap: Stevenson, likely to start, one-on-one on new wideout D.J. Moore, on a go-route down the left sideline. Stevenson’s a physical kid; doesn’t play like a rookie. Justin Fields let it fly. Moore climbed (seemingly) on air to high-point the ball over the strong coverage of the rookie. Great catch, strong hands, good instincts knowing when to go for the ball, good confidence in drawing everything together.

Moore is the player this franchise needed for the care and development of the young quarterback, Fields. Even though I think the Bears would have been partial to acquiring either of two untouchable Panthers in the trade-down (pass-rusher Brian Burns or defensive tackle Derrick Brown), on this morning a month before the season, it’s apparent no one here wants a do-over on the trade that netted Chicago one of the game’s top 20 wide receivers.

“Very happy with it,” GM Ryan Poles told me, smiling, when I asked how he felt about the trade now. “Very happy.”

Those who’ve watched the Bears this summer say the biggest difference in Fields is he trusts his receivers more. This is a rare second straight year in the same offense for the young QB, and smart money says he gives his routes longer to develop and will hang in the pocket more than last year. In other words, don’t look for Fields to run it 10.1 times per game, as he did in 2022. This summer, the ball gets out a little quicker, and when it doesn’t, he’s comfortable waiting a tick longer; the decisions are surer.

“The offense is electrifying—it’s electric,” said Moore.

When is the last time anyone said that about the Chicago Bears, by the way? And for that to be true, Fields needs to remember his rushing is a premier weapon. But Moore needs to be a big factor, and immediately. That’s the plan here.

“Justin’s young. He’s a sponge. He’ll throw deep, intermediate, short—just wants to make the best choice on every play,” Moore said.

Moore was the 24^th pick in 2018, the top wideout chosen in a weak draft for them. He’s justified the pick, averaging 73 catches and 14.3 yards per catch in his five pro seasons. Moore is average size (6-0, 210) with slightly above-average speed (4.42-second 40-). But he’s competitive, he wins battles for the ball, and he’s there every Sunday (two missed games in five years). Not much not to like.

The Bears, so far, have gotten a poor return in dealing the first pick in the 2023 second round to Pittsburgh for Claypool. Poles, and this offense, need Moore to be everything he’s looked like so far in camp.

COSTA MESA, Calif.—On a short visit to meet up with the Saints Friday, five things of note:

1. Derek Carr is the rising tide lifting all boats. Sometimes a change is best for everyone. Carr leaving the Raiders was good for Vegas; the Raiders lost faith him as a player and leader. Signing with the Saints was great for needy New Orleans, which needed a quarterback the coaches could trust more than the Winston/Dalton combo of 2022. And the move was great for Carr, who needed a new start the way Aaron Rodgers did. But wait before you see this as total nirvana for New Orleans. Remember the shady end to Carr’s tenure in Las Vegas. He never threw for 310 yards in any of his 15 starts under Josh McDaniels, got benched for the last two weeks, mysteriously disappeared from the team—and his sub, Jarrett Stidham, debuted with a 365-yard passing day against one of the best D’s in football, the Niners.

To be fair to Carr, last year was an uncharacteristic season. He’s always been seen as a solid player and good leader. Now he’s back with his first head coach in football, Dennis Allen, who has total faith him. Sometimes that’s the best medicine for a wounded career. Carr spent the offseason in the first workout group every morning at 6:30, leading the Derek Jeter way—by example, not by volume. He’s leading an offense that practices fast, that tries to put pressure on the defense, that is aiming to play as fast as the quarterback processes information. The vibe at practice against the Chargers Friday was palpably pro-Carr.

“I love my team,” Allen said. “I love my quarterback. We’ve got the best quarterback in our division. Our team believes in our quarterback. You can feel it at practice.”

2. Dennis Allen’s T-shirts. Check out this shirt (below) that’s omnipresent around the Saints—at practice, in the building, on the sidelines. “Big team, little me,” Allen said. “The best teams I’ve ever been on don’t care who gets the credit, don’t care who’s in the headlines. That’s the kind of player we want, to build the kind of team we want.” Allen has been preaching a team-first way since taking the job after the departure of Sean Payton, and he put the exclamation on it this year, in season two. He’s fond of telling his team things like this: “We always hear stories about self-made men. There’s never been a truly self-made man, because every successful person has had people helping him along the way.”

3. Jimmy Graham, who came out of retirement at 36, was arrested Friday night in Newport Beach—where the Saints stayed while conducting joint practices with the Chargers—when cops found him wandering in traffic. The Saints said Graham had a seizure and was being treated for it Saturday. Before the Saints’ preseason game against the Chargers Sunday, Dennis Allen said, “He’s still shaken up, but he’s actually in a pretty good spot. We’re thankful that medically it wasn’t more serious than it was.” We’ll see how this impacts his present and future with the Saints; throughout camp, he’s seemed on track to make the team. The vet tight end left football with a whimper in Chicago 19 months ago, with a 15-game, 14-catch season in 2021. But he called GM Mickey Loomis in the offseason, said he wanted to come back, said he wanted to come back to only one place, and so he returned to the Saints after a nine-year absence. Undrafted riser Juwan Johnson will start at tight end—Derek Carr has zeroed in on Johnson throughout training camp—but until Friday night, Graham was on course to get some snaps in the tight end rotation.

4. Who is Michael Thomas now? In the last three regular seasons, knee and ankle injuries have limited Thomas to 10 regular-season games and 56 catches. He made a great catch in traffic in Thursday’s joint work against the Chargers, and he’s on track to be a regular contributor for New Orleans—if he can stay on the field. No one’s expecting his production of 2018-19, when he twice led the league in receptions (125, 148). A nice third or fourth option in the passing game would make coordinator Pete Carmichael happy. “I don’t need Mike Thomas to be the guy he was in 2019,” Allen said. “If he’s 75, 80 percent of that, we’re good.”

5. Dot dot dot. Vet defensive coordinator Joe Woods replaced the co-DC pairing of Ryan Nielsen and Kris Richard, despite the Saints being ninth in the NFL in scoring defense last year. Allen wanted his own guy after inheriting most of the staff left by Sean Payton … Marshon Lattimore, who missed 10 games with a lacerated kidney last year, has looked his old self in camp … Saints are happy with free-agent back Jamaal Williams, who led the NFL with 17 touchdowns last year in Detroit. Feeling the Lions didn’t offer him a good enough contract, Williams left for New Orleans—and the same money (three years, $12 million) he’d have gotten in Detroit. He’ll be vital early because of Alvin Kamara’s three-game suspension … GM Mickey Loomis may be able to trade the loser of Wil Lutz/Blake Grupe (free agent, Notre Dame) for a sixth-round pick just before roster cutdown. Wouldn’t be surprised to see Sean Payton show interest in Lutz in Denver.

As a 32-year veteran of the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee, I’ve gotten used to being surprised at the decisions we make. We vote in secret, and I don’t take the temperature of fellow voters before meetings, so I really don’t know how the vote will turn out most times.

The Hall has 50 voting members. There are two subcommittees (Seniors and Contributors) with 12 voting members each that advance candidates to possible election in January. Last Tuesday, the Contributors Subcommittee, which I’m a part of, met via Zoom to whittle 12 candidates (coaches, GMs, owners, scouts, officials) for 2024 election down to one.

The Contributors list was strong: Patriots owner/league pillar Robert Kraft and John Wooten, who blocked for Jim Brown and recently has been at the forefront of football’s diversity efforts, were on the ballot, as was a slew of coaches who’d won 160 or more games—Mike Shanahan, Tom Coughlin, Mike Holmgren and two who hadn’t won titles as head coaches, Marty Schottenheimer and Dan Reeves. Also in the mix: Buddy Parker, who’d coached the Lions to NFL championships in 1952 and ’53 and is the only coach to have Paul Brown’s number head-to-head, ever. But Parker had been eligible for election for 58 years and never gotten much traction. When in 2020 the Hall of Fame decided to enshrine 15 forgotten candidates (at least that was the idea) as part of the league’s 100-year celebration and Parker didn’t make it then, I thought it was over for him.

Voters are not allowed to divulge what happened in the meeting, so I can’t tell you specifics. I can say each case is heard, and voters are tasked with voting for their top six; when the list is cut to six, we’re asked to cut it to three, and when it gets to three, we’re asked to cut to one. When this meeting ended after nearly five hours, the last man standing was Parker.

So … two questions.

Who was Buddy Parker?

And which Hall voter (apparently persuasively) presented his case to the group to advance him past a strong field?

Parker, an acerbic Texan who died in 1982, coached the Lions to three NFL championship-game matchups against mighty Cleveland in his tenure from 1951 to 1956, winning two. The Browns played in the championship game of their league for 10 straight years beginning in 1946, winning seven. Head-to-head with the great Paul Brown of the Browns, Parker’s Lions were 4-1. He was one of the early adoptees of the nickel defense and the two-minute offense. He left the Lions weeks before the 1957 season in a reported contract dispute; the Lions won their third title of the decade that year while Parker got hired to coach the Steelers. He was 107-76-9 in 15 years (12- and 14-game seasons) as a head coach.

George Gelatly/NFL

Paul Kuharsky, a longtime NFL writer based in Nashville, presented Parker, taking the reins from another Hall voter, Clark Judge, a longtime Parker advocate who’d presented his case previously. What’s odd—or good, depending on your point of view—about the Hall process for Contributors or Seniors is that any voter can be chosen to present any candidate; voters can request a candidate but aren’t guaranteed getting to present him. Kuharsky chose Parker.

“I was born in Cleveland, grew up in Jersey, went to college in New York, lived in Nashville since 1997—and presented a guy who coached in Detroit and Pittsburgh,” Kuharsky said. “I was upset he didn’t get in from the Centennial Committee vote, and I couldn’t figure out why. That stuck with me. As a committee, I think sometimes we lean too much on the modern candidates.”

There will be those outraged by passing over an owner with great credentials (Kraft), one innovative coach with two titles and a great current coaching tree (Shanahan), another coach with two Super Bowl wins over the powerful Patriots and who built an excellent expansion team (Coughlin), and a coach who won one title and mentored Brett Favre and took another team to a Super Bowl (Holmgren). Understandable.

But I love Parker making it. I’ve supported him wholeheartedly. We need to honor pro football history more at the Hall of Fame than we do. The game’s 104 seasons old. Too often we default to what we’ve seen, what we know—instead of opening our mind to the Buddy Parkers. I’d have been fine with Kraft, or with one of the three leading coaches (Shanahan had the slight edge over Coughlin for me). But this feels right. Parker being up for the Hall come January is justice delayed, but not denied.

“I think those other guys are going to get in, and before their 109^th birthday,” said Kuharsky. Parker was born more than 109 years ago. “Buddy getting in is not a slap in the face to anyone. The game was different then, and we can’t hold it against him that there were fewer regular-season games and there weren’t levels of playoff games then.”

John Lynch enters his seventh year as Niners’ GM. He’s no longer the guy who’s seen as certain to go back to the TV booth one day. I asked him: “What are some of the lessons you’ve learned on the job about being an NFL GM?”

“There’s a road map here because of the 49er way, and the lessons from Bill Walsh obviously are helpful. But you can’t totally lean on that. You gotta go do it yourself. I’ll never forget a conversation I had at the Arizona Biltmore at the [2017] owners’ meetings. Kyle and I just took over. John Harbaugh and Ozzie Newsome were there getting coffee one morning and I was too. They said how excited they were for me and Kyle, how good it was for the league. I said, ‘Interesting you say that. In my conversations with Kyle, we talked about having a John Schneider-Pete Carroll relationship, John Harbaugh-Ozzie Newsome. That was our goal, because of the respect we had for how you guys have done it.’ One of the things I said was if Kyle and I go into a draft, and if I like a player but Kyle doesn’t, we’re gonna move on.

“Thank God John Harbaugh said this. ‘Could I talk to you for a sec?’ He said he couldn’t let me leave because of the respect he had for me and Kyle. He said, ‘The one thing Ozzie and I learned is if you feel really convicted on a player, it’s your job to sell Kyle on him. Tell him why you love him. Show him film as to why you love him. If you can’t agree, then you move on. But man, there’re not enough good players that if one of you doesn’t like him when you start talking, next! I can’t tell you how many times where Ozzie’s loved a player and I hated him. But by the end, Ozzie’s got me all in and vice versa.’ That was a great lesson.

“I’ve learned it’s good to evolve. At the beginning, every one of our scouts could tell you, here’s what we’re looking for in a receiver. We wanted separators. That was huge for us. But then, the league evolves and people start holding and playing physical on the separators. The response to that became Deebo Samuel, a guy who’s thick and strong and powerful. We kind of started playing bully ball because what you realize in today’s football, power and oomph kinda translates.

“Then there are so many little things. Give you an example. I didn’t know the life of a road scout, like what those guys go through. Early on, I didn’t understand that those guys struggle to feel connected to the team because they’re rarely here. They come around for meetings, and then it’s, ‘See ya in six months.’ By year two or three, I started saying, Hey, that scout seems not in a great mood. Well, of course—he doesn’t feel connected to our team. Now it’s every two weeks, let’s do a Zoom. We all jump on and say hey fellas, how you guys doing? Here’s what’s going on with our team. You assume that those guys know but they aren’t in our team meetings. I’ll write notes to the scouts. When I got in this, I just had no idea. But you learn.

“This job’s a lot about learning, adapting, adjusting, and keeping your core beliefs about building a team.”

This is my 40th season covering pro football, and each week I’ll recall my favorite memory from one of those seasons. This week, I’m featuring my 2013 memory. I spent a week inside the lives of members of referee Gene Steratore’s officiating crew. Each day during the week, I spent time with the various officials—with Steratore as he drove from his Pennsylvania home to Ann Arbor to referee a college basketball game, with back judge Dino Paganelli in Grand Rapids as he balanced being a social studies teacher and a single dad of three … and more. Those guys did their day jobs, then studied for their looming game (Ravens-Bears) at night. This is one of my favorite stories ever—because no one had been allowed behind the curtain with the crew for an entire week plus the game.

I recorded this video memory earlier on the training-camp trip, driving the same Pennsylvania highway I took with Steratore on the basketball trip to Michigan:

I.

--New England captain Matthew Slater, after Patriots player Isaiah Bolden suffered a spinal injury in the fourth quarter of the Patriots-Packers game. Bill Belichick pushed for the game to be suspended with 10 minutes left, and the game was called. Bolden was taken to a Green Bay hospital and released after observation, with full use of his extremities, at 8 a.m. Sunday.

II.

--Jets coach Robert Saleh, on “Hard Knocks,” ripping into his offensive line for its performance after a practice against Carolina.

III.

--Rookie defensive end Will Anderson Jr., who was the second overall pick in the draft, by Houston, with a mini-scoop on the “Green Light with Chris Long” podcast.

Hadn’t heard that.

Chris Long: Reporter extraordinaire.

IV.

--Peyton Manning, to Bob Kravitz for his Substack “Musings of an Old Sportswriter,” on his belief that a young quarterback like Anthony Richardson should play early. Kravitz’s piece with Manning can be found later today here.

V.

--Aaron Rodgers, appearing on WFAN in New York.

The strange recent case of the NFC East:

1. Wide open: There hasn’t been a repeat division winner for 19 years, since the Eagles won three straight East titles ending in 2004.

2. Tell your team this, Ron Rivera: In the last 11 seasons, the last-place team in the division won the East the following season six times.

3. Giant drought: Since 2006, the Giants have won the division as often as they’ve won the Super Bowl—twice. Last division title: 2011.

4. “Rivalry” shoved down throats: The NFL scheduled Cowboys-Giants in week one this season for the seventh time in the last 11 years.

5. Etc.: In the last two seasons, Dallas is 10-2 in division games, New York 2-10-1 (including a playoff loss to Philly last year) … Dak Prescott is 27-7 all-time in division games … Since taking over the starting Eagles QB job in December 2020, Jalen Hurts has started three games against Dallas: 20-point loss, 20-point loss, nine-point win.

I.

There is a life-size pale-yellow sculpture of Caitlin Clark at the Iowa State Fair, sculpted out of butter.

II.

Ezekiel Elliott’s first NFL practice after seven years with the Dallas Cowboys came Wednesday with the New England Patriots, coached by Bill Belichick, on the Green Bay Packers’ training-camp field at the Don Hutson Center across the street from Lambeau Field.

Cowboys, Patriots, Belichick, Packers, Hutson, Lambeau.

That’s a lot of NFL history right there.

Ducked down to Petco Park in San Diego Friday night to see Pads 4, D-Backs 0, and to do a fantasy football interview.

Bummer of a season for the Padres, but it’s a big week in non-baseball things for the Pads. The Padres players have a fantasy football league, and the draft is at their road hotel in Milwaukee Thursday night, an off-night before they begin a road series. “We’ll do it in a banquet room at the Pfister Hotel,” San Diego pitcher Joe Musgrove told me. Musgrove, a football nerd and lifelong Chargers fan, is one of the team owners in the Padres’ league, and he’s my lead guest this week on The Peter King Podcast (which drops Tuesday) to answer this burning question: Why do so many baseball players play fantasy football?

“It’s probably people’s ability to prove how good they can be in that role,” said Musgrove, sitting in the Padres’ dugout an hour before first pitch Friday night. “Take a sport we’ve always watched for fun and add a managerial element, a GM perspective. You see which guys are tapped into the intricacies of football.”

Musgrove said fantasy football “taps into the competitiveness that we all have. This team is definitely up there on the competitive side.”

The Padres, with a 12-player league, had the lottery for draft slots the other day. Musgrove got the fourth spot, which means in the snake draft, he’ll pick 4, 21, 28, 45, etc. “Not a great spot this year, four,” he said. That’s because the fantasy game has changed a bit—no more dominant running backs carrying it 320 times. Grabbing a bunch of backs early is obsolete. Drafting philosophy has changed.

“I like to try to grab the run-pass backs, the Ekelers,” Musgrove said. “In that spot, the four spot, I have a chance to grab [Chargers all-purpose back Austin] Ekeler.” Now, he said, he thinks about taking the versatile back and best players early, then backfilling with a Miles Sanders, say, in the fourth or fifth round.

“How about Bijan Robinson?” I asked.

Musgrove said he hadn’t studied the versatile Falcons rookie back much. “But talking to [Houston third baseman Alex] Bregman, he took him early on. He got him at like, three. Bregman’s in a high-rollers league, the big-money league.” I told him, Be careful. Arthur Smith’s got a lot of mouths to feed in that Atlanta offense.

Once the season ends and the players scatter, the league stays intact by a WhatsApp group chat. Xander Bogaerts is in the league, and he’ll play from his home in Aruba through the fall and early winter. “Guys stay truly engaged when they go home,” Musgrove said. “It’s a true competition.”

One more thing is a draw, Musgrove said: “It helps keep you sane down this last stretch of 162 games.”

Reach me at peterkingfmia@gmail.com.

That escalated quickly. From Tom Schmidt: “I have been a lifelong reader and enjoyed your journalism, but your recent article “Death at the Track” sickened me. Horse racing is inhumane, almost up there with dog-fighting. They are pushed to their physical limits at a very young age, and then killed when they break a leg. How can you glamorize this? And Bill Parcells pushed his horse trainer to get back to work immediately, after losing an animal that they probably loved as much as a child? Disgusting. You have lost a lifelong reader. I am also boycotting NBC because of your promotion of animal cruelty.”

It’s a free world, Tom, and you’re free to go. I wrote about a dramatic moment in a sports event, whether you like the sport or not, and the reaction of the owner and trainer in that sport, whether you like their reactions or not.

Bob likes the column this season. From Bob Benckert of Nashville: “I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember. This year’s iteration is amazing. I would notice the changes year to year, all good tweaks. This year it’s easier to load on my ancient phone and the layout is superb. You and your team have made a wonderful leap. Thanks for years of making Monday mornings so pleasurable.”

You are nice to write and be so kind, Bob. Thanks. I will pass along your praise to the inside team at NBC.

Don’t let the Browns off the hook. From Sebastian J. Smith: “You wrote, ‘I sense the Browns won’t sit back and take the Deshaun Watson arrows much longer. It’s onto football for them.’ Well, I have some unfortunate news for the Browns; we decide when to let them off the hook, not the Browns. They chose to sign a serial sexual predator to the most lucrative guaranteed contract in NFL history, and they must deal with the consequences. Please don’t let time sweep this under the rug, as so often happens.”

When Watson signed the fully guaranteed $230 million deal, I was highly critical of it. “It’s hard to be more outraged about this story,” I wrote. We’ll see how it goes. I thought of reprising some of my opinions and writing, This still isn’t fine. If Watson messes up, you’ll hear from me about it. Watson’s been fricasseed, and rightfully so. But they’re playing football now. To me, the story today is whether he can play great again after the self-inflicted damage to his life and career.

Barry likes 40-for-40. From Barry Shiller: “Like the new column features. Can you share the approach you’re using to pick these 40-for-40 vignettes?”

Thanks Barry. Nothing scientific. In my 11-week hiatus, I took a couple of days and just thought back on the 40 years and remembered where I was, the stories and people I was around, and just picked one per year. Take 1987. I had three choices: Meeting Bill Parcells for coffee in the lobby of the Super Bowl hotel twice the week before Giants-Broncos, seeing Doug Flutie getting frozen out by Jim McMahon in Bears training camp, and watching Lawrence Taylor play great in a very weird 1987 Strike Game at Buffalo when he crossed the picket line. I picked the Parcells story because it’s so vivid to me; there’s another Taylor story I’m telling anyway. It was a fun exercise. It rekindled lots of memories from my career.

Why not the Commanders? From Cole Ahnell of Brooklyn: “I do not understand the excuses you used for not seeing the Commanders this offseason. I get it, traveling around the country to a new team every day is brutal! Especially when you have unforeseen obstacles LIKE A HIGHWAY SHOOTING. But the Commanders having new ownership for the first time in some fans’ lifetimes is not a story? Did you see the 10K fans that showed up to the public practice? We have a new minority OC trying to get out of the shadow of his former mentor.”

That’s a team I have some regrets about missing. But I’ll miss 13. I’ll miss the Giants, Jags, Bengals, Pats too. Skipping one of the spots I visited to hit Washington might have meant bypassing enlightening conversations/stories with either Tua, Odell or Aaron Rodgers. Such is life.

Stop that. From Bill Theede, of Plano, Ill.: “Justin Tucker’s not a football player. He’s a kicker.”

On Sept. 26, 2021, with Detroit leading Baltimore 17-16 on the last play of the football game, was that a football player or an apparition who lined up to try to make the longest field goal in NFL history? Did a football player or an apparition swing his leg and line a ball over 21 football players and did it fly 66 yards and doink on the crossbar and—wait, wait, wait—did it then fall just over the crossbar causing one football team to be 2-1 and to weep with joy and the other football team to fall to 0-3, totally deflated? When Justin Tucker did that, he looked like a football player to me.

1. I think the best idea I heard in my camp travel in the past few days came from Christian McCaffrey. He’s a Stanford man, and is chagrined by the dissolution of the Pac-12 as we knew it. His idea: Create a football conference of schools with similar emphasis on academics: Cal, Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Rice, SMU and maybe Georgia Tech (I may be missing another one). Smart. Stanford and Cal joining the ACC seems dumb.

2. I think the flying-under-the-radar Story of the Month is the competition between NFL stadia in New Jersey, Los Angeles and Arlington, Texas to host the 2026 World Cup Final. The decision will come sometime in the next month, I hear. I suppose MetLife Stadium just outside of New York City would have to be considered the favorite. But I wonder about AT&T Stadium, Jerryworld, in Dallas-Fort Worth. The place can fit 100,000 fans, it’s near the epicenter of soccer in the Western Hemisphere (Mexico and Latin America), and it’s got incredible sightlines. We’ll see; every one of those places has appeal.

3. I think the Michael Oher story has a few chapters left to reveal, which is why it’s probably best today to not judge yet but rather to say, “Let’s see what happens.” I thought Stephen L. Carter, writing for Bloomberg, had a smart, down-the-middle story. The fact is, we don’t know the full story. We know lurid accusations, but I’d rather wait and see the full truth, assuming it comes out in the next few months.

4. I think Professor Peyton Manning is not anything I thought I’d ever see. He’ll teach a class as a “professor of practice” at the University of Tennessee’s college of communications. Not sure what a professor of practice is, but he‘ll teach a class touching on lots of news- and sports-media topics.

5. I think I find this odd: There’s only one starting quarterback in the league 36 or older: Aaron Rodgers, who turns 40 in December. Just eight years ago, the Super Bowl-winning QB, Peyton Manning, was 39, and the top four QBs in passing yards were 35, 34, 38 and 36 (Brees, Rivers, Brady, Palmer). I don’t think it means much—just an oddity in an era when quarterbacks are protected better than ever and they’re playing longer than ever.

6. I think I’m looking forward to seeing the Chargers’ new training facility open next year—offices and three full natural-grass fields in El Segundo, five minutes (in mild traffic) from the airport in L.A. The model is gorgeous.

7. I think, of course, I’m not there every day and the Colts know their business. But I’m not crazy about the decision to name Anthony Richardson the starting QB after an in-and-out training camp, and after just one year as a college starter. I know he needs the experience, but what’s the rush, with Gardner Minshew a solid option to start the season?

8. I think when you hear Cleveland coach Kevin Stefanski isn’t concerned that kicker Cade York missed 47- and 41-yard field-goal attempts with a preseason game on the line, and you hear York say he’s not concerned, you should be skeptical. A coach is not going to publicly express doubt in his kicker. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. Stefanski cares, a lot.

9. I think I’m looking forward to Mike Silver’s 2024 book about the major change in football in recent years—the change in offensive football dating to Mike Shanahan’s staff in Washington from 2010 to 2013. It’s about the imagination of Shanahan, and how he encouraged experimentation and new thinking about the game with the assistants on that staff, including Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Matt LaFleur, Mike McDaniel, Raheem Morris. Silver’s been reporting this book for the past five years and—I know Mike well—he’s sure to have a bunch of Moneyball-type stories from deep inside the Shanahan tree. He’ll have stuff about where these men see the game going. And there will be dirt. Mike did not major in Sugarcoating at Cal.

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

a. Stadiumnerdness: Many thanks to Fred Uhlman of the Padres for hosting me and my NBC colleagues Myles Simmons and Kristen Coleman at Petco Park—and for arranging my interview with Joe Musgrove, whose fantasy football thoughts you can read higher in this column. Petco is a gift. What a lovely park.

b. Baseball’s so fun, often when you least expect it to be. Two teams a combined four under .500 playing in front of a packed house on a Friday night … Never heard a discouraging word about the disappointing Pads, even while they were being no-hit through six innings by a pitcher with an ERA in the 6’s, Brandon Pfaadt. With runners on second and third in the eighth, leadoff batter Ha-Seong Kim comes up and the crowd starts chanting his name, over and over. (Manny Machado I get, but the light-hitting Kim? Cool support.) Kim singled in two and the crowd went nuts. Then Fernando Tatis Jr. came up and belted a homer to the moon, accentuating it with one of the great, emotional bat flips ever. A gray-haired guy three rows ahead of us was jumping up and down like a kid.

c. Tatis is one fun player to watch.

d. Time it took to drive 82 miles from Costa Mesa to downtown San Diego Friday afternoon: 2 hours, 29 minutes. I actually viewed that as a positive.

e. Fun moment while I was getting a hot dog in the fifth inning. A couple of big football fans who’d had a few beers each, from appearances, recognized me and were surprised to encounter me at a baseball game in the middle of training-camp season. One of the guys didn’t really think it was me. I didn’t know what to say to convince him, so I just said, “Yeah, it’s me.”

f. “Are you sure?” Mr. Tipsy said.

g. Beernerdness: Had a Swingin’ Friar Ale (Ballast Point Brewing, San Diego) in the ballpark. Aside from it being served in the best can in beer history—the old Padre logo of a friar swinging a big bat, in brown and gold colors—the beer was refreshing, hoppy, very flavorful. It went down in a single inning. Really nice, as are all the beers at Ballast Point.

h. I bet southern California had never hosted six big-league baseball games in one day, ever, until Saturday. The Dodgers, Angels and Padres all had home series over the weekend. The tropical storm slated to hit the state on Sunday caused a pre-emptive move of all the Sunday games to early-afternoon Saturday starts. So each franchise had day-night twinbills Saturday: Marlins-Dodgers, Rays-Angels, Diamondbacks-Pads.

i. Podcast of the Week: “The Retrievals,” a Serial Productions/New York Times five-part podcast that, quite frankly, still has me angry six days after I finished it.

j. The story: Hundreds of patients a year use the Yale Fertility Center in New Haven, Conn., attempting to increase their chances of getting pregnant. There is a surgical procedure known as “egg retrieval” used to aid in the pregnancy quest. Suffice to say that without a local anesthetic—pain-killing fentanyl dripped into the patient—the procedure would be intensely painful.

k. For more than a hundred patients at Yale several years ago, the procedure was agonizing—because a nurse at the clinic, addicted to fentanyl, was stealing the fentanyl and replacing it with saline solution. The story is compelling and heart-wrenching enough. But the way the authorities at Yale handled it, the way the nurse and doctors minimized the excruciating pain, the way our legal system dealt with the nurse, and the absolutely outrageous way the board overseeing medical misconduct handled the nurse’s case … well, the reporting by Susan Burton and her podcast team is extraordinary.

l. Overall, I’m outraged by the way the women’s pain was minimized. You’ll listen to this and wonder how we got to the point where such a severe violation in an important medical service is treated in a way that protects the violators more than the victims.

m. On that happy note … we segue.

n. Story of the Week: Eric J. Greenberg of Rolling Stone with a gem: “Two Teens Hitchhiked to a Concert. 50 Years Later, They Haven’t Come Home.”

o. Amazing, really, that Mitchel Weiser and Bonnie Bickwit, high-school kids from Brooklyn, hitchhiked to Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, N.Y., to see the Grateful Dead, The Band, the Allman Brothers and a slew of others. Did they make it? Did they enjoy the show? Did they leave and hitchhike in the direction of Brooklyn?

p. Pre-cell phone. A crowd of 600,000. How would anyone know what happened to the two kids? And nary a clue about their fate. What a story.

q. Let the record show that Aaron Judge went 12 weeks without a home run at Yankee Stadium this year. He ended that over the weekend, but going Judge-less for so long is a good part of the reason why the Yankees, on Aug. 21, are below .500.

r. Coffeenerdness: I had to take this shot of threatening skies over my morning home-away-from-home on so many mornings of this camp trip. The cities vary. The setting’s similar. This one: Thursday, 6:18 a.m. Santa Clara, Calif., 1.1 miles from Niners camp. I’d been to this one a couple of times and remember how eminently workable it was. Padded bench seats are the key. Good for two hours of planning and writing before the day begins.

s. I don’t write about one of the joys of traveling west. At 66, my body clock is loath to change time zones. So last Thursday, I woke up at 2:45 a.m. in the Santa Clara Marriott, thought, Oh no, it’s over, managed to go back for 70 more minutes of sleep and then just got up. You can get a lot done when the world is asleep.

t. This is a little bit more—but not a lot more—than an educated guess: Smart people in baseball think Shohei Ohtani’s going to sign with the Dodgers this offseason.

u. Happy 69^th birthday, Archie GriffinHappy 69^th birthday, Archie Griffin.

v. I’ll leave you with this story from NPR about a good person, and good dog, in Maui.

w. Radio Story of the Week: Eric Westervelt of NPR, from Maui, on the mental toll the wildfires have taken on the humans who survived them.

x. Westervelt dug into the support system for the ravaged community of Lahaina and found a gem of a person named Annie Vance.

WESTERVELT: “Psychotherapist Annie Vance lost her home in Lahaina. She’s now volunteering at shelters and counseling hotel employees affected by the fire with the help of her 9-year-old black lab therapy dog, Rio.”

VANCE: “I’ve taken him to my sessions, and people just love him. We get talking about the dog, and then we get talking about how are you and what happened to you. And it gives a nice entrance into the conversations that need to be had.”

WESTERVELT: “But who counsels the counselors who’ve had to flee a deadly wildfire and lost their home? Vance admits both she and Rio are pretty tired, and she and these other mental health professionals say survivors will be reckoning with their wounds for a long time. After Vance recently went to buy some much-needed clothes, Rio gave her a forlorn look.”

VANCE: “I ran out of the house with the dress I had on and one other, and Rio got back into the car, and he gave me this look like, ‘Mom, I just want to go home. Are we going to go home now?’ And I just looked at him and cried, and I said, ‘Rio, honey, I want to go home, too, but we don’t have a home anymore. But we’ll make the best of what we’ve got.’”

y. Bless you, Annie Vance.

Saturday: Deuce Vaughn
Left Seahawks grasping at air.
The man’s electric.