Player Notes

Week 1 wasn’t pretty for the New York Football Giants.Brian Daboll’s team was blown out of the water by the Dallas Cowboys, losing 40-0 on “Sunday Night Football.”They gave up two defensive touchdowns in the first quarter and three largely garbage-time rushing touchdowns in a game that was all but over before halftime.The Giants went into the game as 3.5-point underdogs, so a win wasn’t exactly expected, ...

Jordan Addison was a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh when he first met Brennan Marion. At the time, Addison was a rising star with the Panthers, and Marion had recently been hired as the program’s receivers coach. As they got to know each other, the conversation veered toward what Addison hoped to accomplish in the future.“He gave me some average goals,” Marion said. “I told him to come back ...

Justin Fields needs to let it fly.He knows it and his coaches do, too. That’s what the Bears quarterback, head coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Luke Getsy talked about when they debriefed after Sunday’s 38-20 shellacking by the rival Packers.“I felt like I was a little bit too conservative at times during the game,” Fields said before Wednesday’s practice.Why?“I’m not sure,” he said.He ...

After the Chicago Bears laid an egg in their season opener against the Green Bay Packers, boy, do readers have questions. As he does every week, the Tribune’s Brad Biggs opens the mailbag and takes a crack at answering them.I think Ryan Poles along with Luke Getsy and Alan Williams are getting off easy. Agree? The Bears were completely outclassed by the Packers from personnel to scheme. Getsy’s play ...

Panthers head coach Frank Reich didn’t have a particularly encouraging update on cornerback Jaycee Horn’s hamstring injury on Wednesday morning.“We’re still kind of working through that,” Reich said. “He’s working through getting other opinions, and just seeing the full extent of it. It is a serious hamstring injury. He’s going to be out for a while — for an extended period of time — but I still don’t ...

FLOWERY BRANCH — Falcons safety Jessie Bates III was named the NFC’s defensive player of the week for Week 1 on Wednesday by the NFL.Bates, who signed a four-year, $64.02 million contract in free agency, finished with 10 total tackles, two interceptions, two passes defensed and one forced fumble in the Falcons’ 24-10 win over the Panthers on Sunday.“It was really cool to be able to represent the Falcons, ...

9/5/2023C.J. Stroud is a little ticked off.Not with anybody else. With himself.He’s a perfectionist who’s learning that he’s not going to be perfect. That he doesn’t have to be perfect.Being a quarterback in the NFL isn’t easy. Let alone doing it as a rookie for the Texans, a team that hasn’t had a winning season in three years.He thinks about the passes he should have made in practice. The defenders ...

They’ve long since blown away, but there was a time when the ashes of late Broncos running back Rob Lytle were lying in Lot J at Empower Field at Mile High.It was Lytle who was at the center of the most controversial play in the history of the Broncos-Raiders rivalry. Midway through the third quarter of the 1977 AFC championship game at old Mile High Stadium, the rookie lost the ball at the Oakland ...

At last, the NFL’s regular season is upon us. And after one of the most fascinating offseasons in recent history, with all kinds of comings and goings and highly anticipated acquisitions, we’re about to see how it all unfolds.Whether it’s familiar faces in new places, promising figures on the rise or new kids on the block, there’s no shortage of intriguing players. We’ve zeroed in on 23 whose performances ...

(By Matthew Waltherm editor of The Lamp, a Catholic literary journal, and a contributing Opinion writer) There is no English noun that adequately conveys what millions of fans experience on the eve of the pro football season. Only something like the ancient Greek concept of ataraxia — which literally means the absence of disturbance or trouble but connotes a kind of sublime contentedness — begins ...