The N.F.L. low season has gotten shorter since the common season was prolonged to 17 video games, and it actually feels shorter, too, provided that once-mundane calendar entries, equivalent to the begin of low season exercises, are actually handled like red-carpet occasions.
Yet the down time between final season and this one continues to be lengthy sufficient that impactful free-agent signings, un-retirements and guidelines adjustments made months in the past have receded to the background. Here’s our refresher on the N.F.L. happenings to remember as the common season begins in earnest on Sunday.
Damar Hamlin is again.
Eight months after Hamlin, a Buffalo Bills security, went into cardiac arrest throughout a “Monday Night Football” sport, he made the workforce’s 53-man roster and can backup starters Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer. Hamlin spent almost every week in the intensive care unit of a Cincinnati hospital after he collapsed on the discipline following a collision throughout a Jan. 2 sport in opposition to the Bengals. He was then transferred to a hospital in Buffalo.
He steadily handed checkpoints throughout the low season, from being cleared to renew soccer actions in April to taking part in in his first sport since the life-threatening medical occasion, an exhibition in August. “I made the choice that I wanted to play,” Hamlin, 25, instructed reporters afterward, including that he received’t have any hesitation when he’s on the discipline. Buffalo’s Week 1 sport is a return to “Monday Night Football,” in opposition to the Jets in East Rutherford, N.J.
Eric Bieniemy left Kansas City for Washington.
After a decade working below Coach Andy Reid in Kansas City, first as the operating backs coach after which as the offensive coordinator, Bieniemy is forging out for Washington, the place he’s the Commanders’ sole offensive play-caller in addition to an assistant head coach. Bieniemy labored with Reid to develop and run the league’s most fun offense, helmed by quarterback Patrick Mahomes, as the workforce received two Super Bowl rings in the previous 4 seasons. But additionally throughout that time-frame, Bieniemy interviewed for greater than a dozen N.F.L. head-coaching jobs with out receiving any affords.
In Washington, he has the probability to run an offense away from Reid’s shadow. The transition hasn’t been totally easy: Commanders Coach Ron Rivera stated final month that some gamers had been “concerned” with Bieniemy’s intense teaching type, earlier than Rivera apologized for placing “my foot in my mouth.” Some depth is clearly wanted, as Bieniemy has been tasked with reviving an offense that has perennially ranked close to the backside of the league.
Tua Tagovailoa didn’t retire.
After Tagovailoa, the Miami Dolphins’ beginning quarterback, sustained two identified concussions throughout the 2022 season, he admitted in an April information convention that he thought-about retirement earlier than concluding that he was not able to stroll away from soccer at age 25.
The N.F.L. modified its concussion protocol final season after an investigation into how docs dealt with Tagovailoa’s return to the discipline following a tough hit to the head in a sport final September. Four days later, he once more hit his head in one other sport and was taken to the hospital, and Tagovailoa then suffered his second identified concussion on Christmas Day, sidelining him for the remainder of the season. Tagovailoa stated he took up jiu-jitsu this low season to discover ways to shield his physique when he falls, an method unproven to stop head damage.
‘Thursday Night Football’ video games may be flexed.
In one other instance of how the pursuit of media cash shapes sports activities leagues, N.F.L. homeowners permitted in May a decision to carry flex scheduling to “Thursday Night Football” on a restricted foundation, for now. The rule will enable the league to maneuver not more than two video games from Sunday afternoon to Amazon’s Thursday evening broadcast. The league can solely make these swaps of video games scheduled between Weeks 13 and 17 and has to supply at the very least 4 weeks’ discover.
The Giants co-owner John Mara spoke out in opposition to the change, suggesting that it wasn’t in the greatest pursuits of gamers or followers, however the measure acquired sufficient votes from different workforce homeowners to go for a one-season trial.
After spending final season as a senior defensive assistant and linebackers coach for Pittsburgh, Flores will name defensive performs for the Minnesota Vikings. A decide dominated in March that Flores’s racial discrimination lawsuit in opposition to the N.F.L. and its groups can proceed by way of the judicial system relatively than being moved behind closed doorways in personal arbitration. Flores, who’s Black and of Honduran descent, filed swimsuit in February 2022, accusing the league and its groups of discriminating in opposition to him and different coaches of colour in its hiring practices.
Players can truthful catch kickoffs.
In the newest rule change addressing performs which have been discovered to be the most harmful, the N.F.L. this season will enable gamers to name for truthful catches on kickoffs and on free kicks after a security. If a participant makes a good catch behind their workforce’s 25-yard line, the ball will then be positioned at the 25, mirroring the rule that has been utilized in school video games since 2018.
The league expects the return charge, and thus the variety of concussions sustained on returns, to lower on account of this modification, which will probably be evaluated and thought of for everlasting adoption after the season.
Ten gamers are serving playing suspensions.
Widespread legalized sports activities betting in the United States has change into more and more entwined with the N.F.L., whilst the league in the previous yr delivered its most intensive set of penalties for violations of its playing coverage. Ten gamers are at the moment serving suspensions, starting from six-game penalties for betting on different sports activities whereas at workforce amenities to indefinite suspensions for betting on N.F.L. video games.
The N.F.L. has requested the public to take its phrase that no video games had been compromised, whereas critics have identified the dissonance between the league’s stringent penalties and its rising partnerships with betting corporations.
Sean Payton is again.
Given the myriad methods Payton has made his presence recognized, equivalent to by saying that Nathaniel Hackett’s time period with the Denver Broncos, by which he didn’t make it by way of a full season, was “one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the N.F.L.,” it’s unlikely Payton is off anybody’s radar.
But it’s simple to overlook that only a yr in the past, he spent Sundays sitting on the Fox Sports set as a commentator, having “retired” after 15 seasons main the New Orleans Saints.
His run with the Saints, which included one Super Bowl ring, overlapped with that of quarterback Drew Brees. Now, Payton has maybe the hardest problem of his profession: rehabilitating Russell Wilson. His method has been hard-charging, beginning along with his proclamation at his introductory information convention in Denver that, in contrast to final season, Wilson’s private efficiency coaches wouldn’t be allowed in the workforce facility.
Odell Beckham Jr. is a part of the Ravens’ new-look offense.
After spending the 2022 season out of the league whereas recovering from a knee damage he sustained in Super Bowl LVI, Beckham signed with the Ravens in early April. He joined Baltimore simply weeks earlier than the workforce broke a stalemate with quarterback Lamar Jackson, whom it signed to a five-year, $260 million contract extension.
There’s a great deal of anticipation round the league for a way the Ravens’ offense will look. Jackson has a brand new offensive coordinator, Todd Monken, for the first time since his first full season as an N.F.L. starter. Along with Beckham, the Ravens additionally added Zay Flowers and Nelson Agholor to a receiver group that had been spotty.
Teams can use an emergency third quarterback.
The final labor settlement between the N.F.L. and the gamers’ union expanded game-day rosters to as many as 48 gamers, up from 46. A brand new rule put in place this low season provides groups further roster flexibility, permitting them to decorate a forty ninth participant as an emergency third quarterback. For the participant to enter the sport, two different quarterbacks on the game-day roster have to be unavailable as a consequence of damage or disqualification.
The utility for this function got here into focus throughout the N.F.C. championship, when each the San Francisco 49ers’ quarterbacks had been injured throughout the sport, forcing the starter Brock Purdy to return after he had injured his throwing elbow. The 49ers misplaced, 31-7, to the Philadelphia Eagles.
The Super Bowl will probably be in Las Vegas for the first time.
When the Raiders moved to Las Vegas from Oakland, Calif., in 2020, the workforce introduced with it the risk of the N.F.L. world descending on The Strip for marquee occasions, even when the workforce’s efficiency of late has stored it removed from the league’s largest video games. After internet hosting two Pro Bowls, Allegiant Stadium will welcome its first Super Bowl this season, although not with out warning for gamers and personnel round the league: New Orleans Saints operating again Alvin Kamara is serving a three-game suspension for his function in a battle in Las Vegas on the eve of the 2022 Pro Bowl. And Super Bowl LVIII is bound to be plastered with betting ads and partnerships, whereas the league continues its crackdown on potential violations of its playing coverage by gamers.
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