As more homes of pro athletes are invaded and robbed, they need to be thinking about hiring personal security details.
Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is one step ahead of them.
“I have personal security just because my house had gone broken into — not necessarily my house but one of my cars,” Tagovailoa told reporters on Wednesday. “So it’s a little too close for my comfort with my family being in the house. So we got personal security to take care of all of that. When we’re on the road, we got someone with my wife. Got someone also at the house surveying the house. So just to let that be known, they are armed. So I hope if you decide to go to my house, you think twice.”
He said the incident happened in the last year or two.
Does he feel like he might be a target?
“I wouldn’t say necessarily I would be a target, but I wouldn’t want to play the chances with my family, my kids sleeping,” he said. “My wife sleeping, me sleeping at the house.”
Whether he regards himself as a target, he is. His compensation and profile make him one, especially with the FBI investigating whether a transnational crime ring is robbing the homes of players like Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.
It’s not cheap, but given what he’s making it’s worth it.
Bill Belichick is finalizing a deal to become the head coach at the University of North Carolina.
That makes him eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2026, a spokesman for the Hall of Fame confirmed.
The Hall of Fame changed some rules this year, including the length of time coaches are required to be out of professional football before becoming eligible for induction. (Yes, college football has become pro football, but the Pro Football Hall of Fame still doesn’t count it.)
Previously, coaches had to be out of the game for five seasons before earning enshrinement. Now, coaches have only a one-season waiting period.
Since Belichick didn’t coach in 2024, he is eligible for the next class.
Mike Holmgren is the coaching finalist for the Class of 2025.
Belichick appears a no-brainer, first-ballot inductee, but Bill Parcells didn’t get elected in his first year of eligibility. Parcells, under previous rules that didn’t have a separate coaching category, was not voted into the Class of 2012.
Some voters expressed skepticism that Parcells would remain retired, but he did, and he was elected a year later. Selectors could have the same reservation about Belichick.
Current rules allow for only one coaching finalist a year, so if Belichick is the choice for the Class of 2026, it will push back the possible inductions of Mike Shanahan and Tom Coughlin.
After a surprisingly good year, the Browns have gone surprisingly bad. The team’s owner plans to assess the implosion after the season ends.
“We need to get through the season and we will look at everything,” Jimmy Haslam told ESPN.com on Wednesday.
“We went from 11-6 and making the playoffs to 3-10, so it’s a little perplexing what happened,” Haslam added.
Haslam explained that he tries not to “get too emotional” during the season. Still, it sounds like coach Kevin Stefanski and G.M. Andrew Berry are safe.
“I do,” Haslam said when asked if he has the right people in place at those two positions. “We do. We’re very supportive.”
Haslam also said it’s too early to make decisions about the quarterback position. The Browns owe Deshaun Watson $46 million fully guaranteed in 2025, and another $46 million fully guaranteed in 2026. Watson’s cap numbers for each season are $72.935 million.
Whatever Haslam decides, the Browns have a mess on their hands. Again, however, they might have to pay Watson, but they don’t have to play him.
It’s a safe bet that the final decision on that will be Haslam’s, even if his football people manage to conceal the fact that the non-football person who bought the team is calling those shots.
Netflix has the NFL’s Christmas Day games. That has some fans of the four teams involved nervous that the streaming service will have the same technical issues it had for the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight.
The NFL is not.
“I think they have done an incredible job with all their preparations, every piece of what they’re putting in place,” NFL EVP/Media Distribution Hans Schroeder said Wednesday. “The core of it is how the game is going to be produced. They’re going to be produced by CBS. They’re as good as a live-sports production entity as there is in the world with a ton of history of doing the NFL and many other sports. So, unlike even the fight that people look at the fight and maybe look at streaming, there are some production areas that I think they will work through, and that certainly will be in CBS’ hands and we’re incredibly excited about. I think there were some bumps certainly with Netflix, but everything we’ve seen, we think their plan and the work we’re doing alongside them, we’re incredibly confident in and we feel incredibly well prepared for a great day on Christmas Day for our fans, and fans not only here but around the world, so we’re really excited about that.”
Netflix has the Chiefs at the Steelers followed by the Ravens at the Texans on Christmas Day.
While streaming the fight live on Nov. 15, Netflix experienced buffering and freezing issues. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos explained during the UBS conference Tuesday the technical challenge streaming to an “enormous live audience” of 108 million people.
“We were pushing the [internet service provider], every ISP in the world, right to the limits of their own capacity,” Sarandos said, via The Hollywood Reporter. “We were stressing the limits of the internet itself that night. So, we had a control room up in Silicon Valley that was re-engineering the entire internet to keep it during this fight because of the unprecedented demand that was happening.”
Netflix also will stream at least one Christmas Day game in 2025 and 2026 as part of its three-season deal with the NFL.
“We feel incredibly well prepared and incredibly excited about what that partnership is going to look like going forward,” Schroeder said.
In 2021, the NFL expanded prohibition against blocking below the waist. Now, the NFL wants to eliminate all low blocks as a safety measure.
“The low block below the knee needs to be removed from the game,” NFL executive Troy Vincent said Wednesday. “You look at high school, you look at college, too. Every block should be above the knee, but below the neck. All the work that we’ve done for the head and neck area — all the things that we’ve taken out of the game — this is the right time for us to remove the low block out of the game. Be consistent with high school. Be consistent with college. Every block should be above the knee and below the neck.”
The league greatly reduced allowable low blocks three years ago.
It made illegal blocking below the waist by offensive and defensive players on scrimmage downs when contact occurs beyond 5 yards on either side of the line of scrimmage and more than 2 yards outside of either offensive tackle. The league previously outlawed low blocks by players of either team after a change of possession or during kicks.
The penalty for an illegal block below the waist is 15 yards.
Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts landed on the team’s injury report Wednesday, but it doesn’t look like anything that will impact his availability for Sunday’s game against the Steelers.
Hurts is listed as a full participant in practice and a left finger issue is given as the reason for his appearance.
Safety Sydney Brown (knee) was the only player to miss practice for injury reasons. Right guard Mekhi Becton, wide receiver A.J. Brown, left guard Landon Dickerson, safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, cornerback Darius Slay, and edge rusher Josh Sweat all had rest days. Right tackle Lane Johnson did not practice for personal reasons.
The Eagles listed safety Reed Blankenship (concussion), defensive tackle Jalen Carter (shoulder), wide receiver Britain Covey (neck), and cornerback Cooper DeJean (rest) as limited. Linebacker Nakobe Dean (elbow) was the team’s other full participant.
The league will consider changes to the onside kick this offseason, NFL executive Troy Vincent said Wednesday.
The NFL overhauled the kickoff on a one-year basis for 2024, but the onside kick remained mostly the same aside from the elimination of the surprise onside kick. This season, onside kicks are permitted only in the fourth quarter and only if the kicking team is losing.
“We need to look at that. That’s a dead play,” Vincent said of the onside kick’s low success rate. “That is a ceremonial play. Very low recovery rate. When we look at the kickoff and maybe where the touchback area should be during the offseason, we need to revisit the onside kick.”
Teams have recovered only 3-of-41 onside kicks this season, with the Cowboys, Bucs and Bears each having one recovery of an onside kick.
The Competition Committee will discuss alternatives.
This offseason the Eagles proposed allowing teams to line up their offense on the field on fourth-and-20, instead of kicking off, for an onside try.
Owners rejected allowing a team that scored a touchdown or field goal from taking the ball at its own 20-yard line and facing a fourth-and-20. If the scoring team converted the fourth-and-20, it would keep the ball and go from there.
“It’s something that started back with, if I’m not mistaken, John Elway was the first proposal about six years ago. The fourth-and-17 or fourth-and-23, one of those, and then over the previous three or four years, Philadelphia [has proposed it],” Vincent said. “It has garnered [support from] where it started and the votes that it received, and where it ended a year ago, there has been progress.
“Those are all the things that we should be exploring. If we’re going to have a ceremonial play on the way it is today, we’ve got to be creative [in trying to change it]. Our coaches, they can be creative enough to come up with a good, solid, competitive play to bring some excitement back in those situations.”
The Chiefs have a normal week leading up to Sunday’s game against the Browns, but the next two games won’t unfold under the usual circumstances.
A Saturday game against the Texans in Week 16 will be followed by a Wednesday road game against the Steelers in Week 17. That schedule was put in place because Christmas falls on a Wednesday this year and the four teams involved in games that day will all be playing three games over 11 days to get through that stretch.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes said he has been “tailoring my workouts” to prepare for this stretch because he knows how challenging it is going to be on him.
“It is not a good feeling,” Mahomes said, via Adam Teicher of ESPN.com. “I’m excited to play on Christmas to hopefully get back from what we did last year, but you never want to play this many games in this short of time. It’s just not great for your body. But at the end of the day, it’s your job, your profession. You have to come to work and do it.”
The Chiefs have already clinched the AFC West and they have a lead in the race for the top seed in the AFC, which mitigates some of the pressure they will feel to navigate this stretch without a misstep but everyone on the club will be more than happy to have the extended break that comes at the end of Week 17.
The favorite to win the NFL’s Coach of the Year award is a big fan of the favorite to win the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award.
Lions coach Dan Campbell said today that he considers Bills quarterback Josh Allen one of the most physically impressive quarterbacks in football, but perhaps even more impressive in his competitive approach to the game.
“He’s big, he’s strong, he’s fast, he’s explosive, and he’s competitive,” Campbell said. “He’s got all these attributes, physical attributes, but it’s what’s inside of him. He’s the ultimate competitor. That’s what separates him from a lot of guys. He’s fearless and it’s why those guys play the way they do for him, because he just won’t give it up, he’s not gonna give it up and he’s gonna do whatever it takes to get the next first down, or get the touchdown, and when they need him in crunch time he’s gonna show up, and he just won’t give up. I think that’s what makes him who he is, his competitiveness.”
Campbell is a -175 favorite to win Coach of the Year, and Allen is a -400 favorite to win MVP. Their teams face off on Sunday as they each march toward the playoffs. And perhaps a rematch in the Super Bowl.
The hits just keep coming for the Cowboys.
Linebacker DeMarvion Overshown (knee) will become the 13th player the Cowboys have placed on injured reserve. Other players have fought through injuries all season, including wide receiver CeeDee Lamb and cornerback Trevon Diggs.
Lamb (shoulder) and Diggs (knee) were limited in Wednesday’s walk-through.
Center Cooper Beebe (concussion), linebacker Eric Kendricks (personal/shoulder), safety Juanyeh Thomas (knee) and linebacker Nick Vigil (foot) did not practice.
Cornerback C.J. Goodwin (hamstring) and cornerback Jourdan Lewis (hamstring) were limited.
Cornerback DaRon Bland (foot), running back Rico Dowdle (knee), left tackle Tyler Guyton (ankle), tight end Marshawn Kneeland (knee) and left guard Tyler Smith (ankle) were full participants.
