Turron Davenport covers the Tennessee Titans for ESPN. Turron is a former collegiate football player at Cheyney University and is a native of Philadelphia, and he has authored/co-authored four books. You can catch Turron on ESPN Radio on his show “Talking with TD” and you can follow him on Twitter: @TDavenport_NFL.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Tennessee Titans are closing on a deal to make Bill Callahan their offensive line coach, a source told ESPN.
It would be the first time in NFL history that a head coach has hired his father.
“I don’t know how many fathers and sons have been head coaches in the NFL,” Brian Callahan said at his introductory news conference last week. “I don’t think it’s many. You want to be like your dad.”
Bill Callahan spent the past four seasons as the offensive line coach for the Cleveland Browns. He was a key part of building a dominant Browns offensive line that included All-Pro selections Jack Conklin at right tackle and guard Joel Bitonio.
The Titans submitted a request for permission to interview Bill Callahan, and Cleveland obliged.
Brian Callahan has long expressed a desire to work with his father. Now the two can together try to fix a Titans offensive unit that allowed 64 sacks last season, tied for the third most in the NFL.
ESPN reporters Stephen Holder and Michael DiRocco will be providing news, analysis and observations from the 2023-24 NFL Pro Bowl Games.
Keep checking backing here through Sunday’s final flag football game.
The Skills Showdown is Thursday at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN and ESPN+. This event will feature five skills competitions, including precision passing and dodgeball.
Sunday’s coverage begins at 2:40 p.m. ET on ESPN and ESPN+, with the final flag football game starting at 3 p.m. ET. Additional skills competitions (including move the chains, gridiron gauntlet and tug of war) will air between quarters of the flag football game.
Jamison Hensley is a reporter covering the Baltimore Ravens for ESPN. Jamison joined ESPN in 2011, covering the AFC North before focusing exclusively on the Ravens beginning in 2013. Jamison won the National Sports Media Association Maryland Sportswriter of the Year award in 2018, and he authored a book titled: Flying High: Stories of the Baltimore Ravens. He was the Ravens beat writer for the Baltimore Sun from 2000-2011.
On Thursday, Andrews assisted a woman who experienced a medical emergency during a Southwest Airlines flight from Baltimore to Phoenix. Andrews, who is a Type 1 diabetic, provided a diabetic testing kit that led to the woman being stabilized for the rest of the flight.
“It was scary,” Andrew Springs, a passenger who first recounted the story via social media, told ESPN. “It was touch and go there for a while. And I think the coolest part is, if anybody who’s ever watched Mark Andrews, they knew exactly what was going to happen. It was just very classic Mark Andrews where it’s like, in times of need, people like that step up.”
About three hours into the flight, passengers noticed a woman sitting in the middle of the plane had a medical issue. According to Springs, she was in and out of consciousness and was quickly being attended to by a doctor and nurse who were also passengers. Springs overheard that the woman’s heart rate, pulse and blood pressure were extremely low.
After hearing the doctor and nurse ask the woman numerous questions, Andrews popped up from his aisle seat and asked if they knew if her blood sugar was low.
Andrews showed the doctor and nurse how to administer the finger prick test kit. They then gave her orange juice, which helped her get through the remaining 90 minutes of the flight. The woman was able to walk off the flight, Springs said.
The Phoenix Fire Department said the woman was in stable condition upon receiving an evaluation after the flight landed and then refused any further treatment or a trip to the hospital.
“In addition to the fast acting flight attendants, the real heroes are the nurse and doctor who also happened to be on the plane,” Andrews said in a statement released by the Ravens. “Thankfully, they were able to provide the woman the quick assistance she needed.”
Southwest Airlines declined to disclose names or specific details but confirmed that medical personnel met the flight once it arrived in Phoenix.
“We are appreciative of the efforts of our crew, medical personnel and fellow customers who assist others during these in-flight situations,” the airline’s statement read.
Andrews is a three-time Pro Bowl player known for his toughness, work ethic and ability to come through at timely moments. This season, he was able to come back to play in the AFC Championship Game just two months after cracking his left fibula.
Four days after Baltimore’s 17-10 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, Andrews found himself in another instance where he came through under pressure.
“It was a team effort,” said Springs, 34, a Baltimore native and Ravens fan who lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. “But if Mark doesn’t pipe up. … I don’t know if they even come to the conclusion, ‘Hey, let’s try and get something sweet or sugar.’
“Unsung heroes deserve to have their songs sung too.”
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The U.S. Women’s Open, already the largest purse in women’s golf, is getting a boost to $12 million under a new corporate partnership with Ally Financial.
The deal makes Ally the presenting sponsor of the U.S. Women’s Open and the official retail banking partner of the USGA and the men’s and women’s Opens it runs.
“Partnering with Ally allows us to not only continue elevating the U.S. Women’s Open, but to also further our commitment to the future of the game via our U.S. National Development Program,” said Mike Whan, the CEO of the USGA. “Ally has established itself as a force in sports, with a passion for equity across the industry. Its brand values and actions align perfectly with ours, and I can’t wait to see what we are able to do together.”
Ally also signed a sponsorship deal with Lilia Vu, a two-time major champion last year and the LPGA player of the year.
Ally already is a title sponsor for a PGA Tour Champions event at Warwick Hills in Michigan.
The U.S. Women’s Open made the first big spike in women’s golf by raising its purse to $10 million in 2022, with ProMedica as a presenting sponsor. That deal ended, and the USGA now has Ally as a partner.
The Women’s Open was held last year at Pebble Beach for the first time. It will be at Lancaster Country Club in Pennsylvania this year, and future venues include Riviera and Oakmont.
Stephanie Marciano, the head of sports marketing at Ally, described golf as being on a “meteoric rise” with an increasingly diverse fan base.
“The USGA is best-in-class and presented us a powerful opportunity to positively impact both the women’s and men’s game, as well as engage a new group of sports fans across the country,” Marciano said.
Alvin Henderson had the biggest visitors at his school on Wednesday and both made a big impression.Maybe one bigger than the other?The four-star running back from Elba, Ala., met with Georgia coach…
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Elijah Melendez will return to Miami, where he has been committed since December, for the second time in as many weeks come Saturday. Most of the programs courting the Rivals100 linebacker out of K…
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Rivals national recruiting director Adam Gorney has thoughts on the NIL situation being problematic for college football, the fight for the No. 1 spot in the 2025 Rivals250 and he also takes an early look at the 2025 team rankings.
I’m not going to clutch my pearls and act surprised that there is confusion around NIL when it comes to college football but there have been worrisome developments lately that continue to confuse and befuddle.
As Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger wrote this week, there is this strange juxtaposition of the NCAA moving forward with NIL proposals so each school could handle those deals internally while the organization is also starting to come down hard on schools that allegedly break the murkiest rules known to mankind.
Florida State offensive line coach Alex Atkins gets hit for reportedly driving a recruit to a collective meeting. Florida is in hot water from what I understand is a look at Jaden Rashada’s recruitment and a blown NIL deal where the four-star quarterback ended up at Arizona State.
And now Tennessee reportedly is being investigated for a private plane flight five-star quarterback Nico Iamaleava took to Knoxville. Attorney Tom Mars, on behalf of Spyre Sports Group, the outfit in question, released a statement Tuesday night which amounted to word salad to those who didn’t finish first in his class at the University of Arkansas School of Law, like Mars did (it says so on his web site).
So Florida, Florida State and Tennessee are in the crosshairs. Who’s next? Could be anybody. Literally.
You think those are the only schools breaking rules? I’m not even sure anyone firmly has a grasp of the rules from the NCAA to the college coaches to the collectives or anyone else. They are so opaque it’s like the Wild West in recruiting right now.
The No. 1 prospect in the 2024 class, Jeremiah Smith, caused indigestion across the Ohio State community after signing with the Buckeyes in December but then not sending in his paperwork for hours as lawyers reportedly reviewed NIL figures. We dedicated our signing day show to the matter since it was so unclear.
Former five-star offensive lineman Kadyn Proctor transferred from Alabama to Iowa and said the Iowa Swarm collective helped him out “a lot” in the process of going from the Crimson Tide to the Hawkeyes.
Proctor also said the Iowa coaching staff hit him up after he struggled in the SEC and told him they’re proud of him and he’s going to get through this and that “ultimately helped with my decision because they still believed in me.”
So is encouragement from a previous relationship against the rules? Can a nice gesture be construed as tampering? Was it?
That’s the point. The NCAA has so unsurprisingly bungled NIL and the organization is so late to understanding its impact and predominance in college football that only now it reflexively comes out to whack Florida, Florida State and Tennessee.
The current model is unsustainable because it’s so ill-defined not because NIL is a bad idea. But the NCAA has to put guardrails and guidelines around this thing and not play from behind like it always does.
Dellenger writes for Yahoo Sports that NCAA enforcement managing director Mark Hicks said at its convention early this month that the organization has proof that recruiting rules are being “widely violated.”
Wow, that’s a bulletin. Duh.
The NCAA allowed this tube of toothpaste to be opened and millions upon millions of dollars got squeezed out. Now they’re trying to put it back in, starting with Florida, Florida State and Tennessee. Good luck.
When five-star quarterback Julian Lewis reclassified from the 2026 class to 2025, we moved him to No. 2 in the class behind David Sanders Jr.
But we’re meeting later this month for another rankings release for the 2025 class and I’m going to strongly push to make Lewis the No. 1 prospect in the class.
It’s nothing against Sanders, a dominant and athletic offensive tackle from Charlotte (N.C.) Providence Day who has Georgia, Clemson and others high on the list. He could move to No. 2 no problem but here’s the thing: Lewis is so incredibly special that it’s going to be hard over time to keep him off the top line.
At Steve Clarkson’s QB Retreat last spring, Lewis was right there with five-star quarterback Julian Sayin, who has already transferred from Alabama to Ohio State, and that’s a huge compliment. Lewis was more impressive than other 2024 and 2025 quarterbacks in attendance.
The Carrollton, Ga., five-star then had a monster junior season and has trained with the elites in Georgia – Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields and others – for years.
We should have made Bryce Young No. 1 in his recruiting class. He ended up second. I don’t want to make the same mistake again when it comes to Lewis.
In the history of Rivals dating back to 2002, so more than 20 recruiting cycles, a program from the northern part of the country has never won a team recruiting title.
That’s not deliberate and it’s not even really up to the analyst team since the computer model crunches the numbers and spits out the team rankings, but it is telling as we look at the early 2025 rankings.
Notre Dame sits at No. 1. Irish fans, don’t hold your breath.
There are already 14 commits in Notre Dame’s 2025 class – and the second signing day for 2024 has not even happened yet. That is an incredible early run for the Irish as one of three teams (along with LSU and Clemson) to have double-digit pledges in that class.
But there is always a ton of movement. Prospect rankings go up and down. There were 115 decommitments in December alone. Teams will rise and fall – and then there are the transfer rankings as well to consider for the all-important comprehensive rankings.
That’s not to say Notre Dame cannot spurn history and finish with the top class. But LSU is right on its heels and Alabama and Georgia over the years had significant say in how the team recruiting rankings pan out.
We’re not even completely through 2024 and the focus has turned to 2025. Recruiting never stops.
Investigative reporter for ESPN’s Enterprise and Investigative Unit since 2007
Co-author of New York Times best-selling books “League of Denial” and “Game of Shadows”
Co-winner, 2004 George Polk Award
Feb 1, 2024, 07:00 AM ET
A YEAR AGO, as more than 6,000 media representatives descended on Arizona for Super Bowl LVII, Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center issued a news release with the headline: “Researchers find CTE in 345 of 376 former NFL players studied.” It emphasized that two of the brains dissected in the previous year and found to have the neurodegenerative disease tied to football came from men who once played for the very teams that would be vying for the Lombardi Trophy, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs.
The release had no new information about CTE itself, nor was it tied to fresh research produced by BU. Still, it had the desired effect: It put the topic back on the radar on the eve of football’s biggest event. The idea to issue the release had come from Chris Nowinski, a BU researcher and the co-founder of the CTE Center’s education and advocacy partner, the Concussion Legacy Foundation.
Sometimes “people need to be exposed to certain ideas and information multiple times to understand, you know, to learn them,” Nowinski told ESPN recently.
What we’ve learned about CTE and its connections to football has been shaped largely by the research produced by BU over the past 15 years. That work has led to a revolution in the way America considers its most popular sport: instilling a deeper understanding that repetitive hits to the head can lead to cognitive problems later in life, prompting reforms at all levels of the sport, sparking a decline in participation and spawning legislative debates in some states, most recently California, about whether youth tackle football should be banned altogether.
But the narrative about CTE has outpaced the science. Fueled by the publicizing of several high-profile cases and data that even the BU researchers acknowledge is limited, the result is a heightened level of fear in players and families, from the pros down to Pee Wee. That fear has led some NFL players, teenagers and weekend warriors to conclude — fatalistically — that whatever cognitive or emotional troubles they’re enduring must be rooted in CTE; and it has created tensions within the research community that the story has become far too simplified.
Somewhere in the middle of this sits BU, the undisputed king of CTE research.
“I’m very respectful of what [BU has] done,” said Dr. Aaron Baggish, a former cardiologist for the New England Patriots and a member of a Harvard University research team studying former NFL players. “But it has contributed to a very single-sided discussion and has, unfortunately, left many to think that this is a much simpler problem than it really is.”
BU has “taken over the research, [it’s] all you hear from,” said a leading expert on brain injury and neurocognitive disease who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I really wish these cases wouldn’t be publicized so heavily.”
EVEN AS THE BU group dominates CTE research, one pervasive truth remains, which the researchers readily admit: Their work suffers from a “tremendous selection bias.” It’s built on a select sample of football players who reached the very highest level of the sport; a specific set of NFL players who, years after they retired, were so cognitively addled that their families donated their brains for study.
Yet, the numbers screamed out in headlines, from The New York Times to ESPN: “New Study of 111 Deceased NFL Players Finds 99 Percent Had CTE” … “111 N.F.L. Brains. All But One Had C.T.E.” … “How CTE was found in 110 of 111 Ex-NFL players’ brains.”
Plus, there were high-profile cases of former NFL stars losing themselves and then killing themselves or others. Stars like Junior Seau or Aaron Hernandez. Or Dave Duerson, who went from CTE nonbeliever to shooting himself in the chest and leaving a note directing his brain to be studied.
Suddenly, the very thought of a forgotten name, a misplaced set of keys, or a missed turn on the interstate represented a sign to a former player or his wife. A sign that CTE was hovering — even though there’s still no way to diagnose the disease in the living nor, really, are there clear symptoms definitively tied to it alone.
“I think one of the things that some people in the community [believe] is that CTE is a fatal disease,” said Dr. Julia Kofler, a neuropathologist at the University of Pittsburgh who runs a recently established a brain bank, “And that if they develop any neurological symptoms and happen to have played football, that they are doomed.” The National Sports Brain Bank was launched last May with some funding from the Chuck Noll Foundation, named for the legendary Steelers coach, and other groups.
“I think and feel comfortable that even though the Steelers provide some support, that I have scientific independence, which is important for me,” Kofler said.
Four months ago, the brain of a 47-year-old man from Columbus, Ohio, was donated to Kofler’s lab. The man, whom ESPN is not identifying by name, had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest and on his left forearm had written with a black Sharpie: “Look for CTE.”
His wife of 15 years told ESPN her husband was a recreational soccer player, a snowboarder and a race car driver who had taken many hits to the head doing all three. She recalled a time when he forgot his way home from the soccer field where he had played regularly for years. He often had headaches, she said, but he hated going to doctors and was never clinically diagnosed with a concussion. She said he gave no indication to her, other family or friends that he was under duress.
“The way I knew he had a headache was I would hear him getting into the medicine cabinet and you could hear the little bottle of Tylenol rattle around, you know?” she said. “If he was suffering, nobody knew that he was suffering. He kept it completely silent.”
When Kofler studied the brain, she said she found some pathology that suggested a possible early-stage CTE diagnosis but not enough to warrant a definitive diagnosis. Nor enough that would suggest significant cognitive issues. Her workup, though, revealed a devastating truth: The man had a rare type of brain tumor. Kofler said the tumor was benign, but it could have explained his symptoms. She wrote in her report that “these tumors most commonly present with seizures, followed by headaches, episodic confusion and dizziness …”
“The relationship between this tumor and any clinical symptoms the patient may have experienced leading to his suicide is uncertain,” Kofler wrote.
Kofler said the tumor type has an excellent prognosis and probably would not have affected his life expectancy.
Kofler said the case “reinforced my feelings that we need to raise more awareness about mental health issues and that people, once they have any symptoms, should not automatically self-diagnose themselves with having CTE.”
Michael Alosco is a clinical neuropsychologist and co-director of clinical research at the BU CTE Center. As part of his practice, Alosco regularly treats former NFL players. And although CTE cannot be diagnosed in life at this point, he says it is “common” for many to be concerned they have it.
“When they come to us, we do the full standard workup,” said Alosco, who sees progress in helping players and is hopeful that being able to diagnose CTE in the living isn’t far off. “We tell them, ‘We can tell you whether or not we think there’s impairment in your thinking and memory. We can tell you whether or not we see changes consistent with a progressive brain disease on MRI. We can rule out Alzheimer’s disease. But at this point, we can’t sit here and say confidently that you have CTE.’”
Asked if he has concerns about promoting research and the results being misunderstood by the public, Alosco said, “I often struggle with when do you just let stories sit in the science, versus making it public and making it the news? What is that line?”
CTE DIDN’T ALWAYS get this attention. Neither did BU.
Fifteen years ago, Nowinski arranged a news conference in Tampa just days before the Super Bowl. Less than two dozen of the more than 4,500 credentialed media members showed up for an announcement that former Buccaneers lineman Tom McHale had died with CTE. At the time, McHale was only the sixth former NFL player diagnosed with the disease, but the cases were raising concerns.
Though the six were all former NFL players, Nowinski issued a far-reaching warning.
“This should be a wake-up call, especially to parents, coaches and league administrators,” he told the handful of reporters. “We’re exposing more than a million kids to early-onset brain damage, and we don’t know yet how to prevent it.”
Far more is known now than at the time of Nowinski’s comment. And yet, it remains unclear how right he was about the real long-term threat to the brain for a kid who’s never going to play football past high school, let alone to other kids and young adults playing contact sports.
Over the years, the BU brain bank had amassed more than 150 from young contact sports athletes, and neuropathologist Ann McKee recently decided she wanted to look more closely at what they had. Dr. McKee, the BU CTE Center’s director, has diagnosed more brains with CTE than anyone else in the world. Some of those stuck with her more than others — such as that of Eric Pelly, an 18-year-old who had played high school football, hockey and rugby. He died in 2006 after a series of concussions.
The 152 brains studied represented the largest case series of contact sports athletes who had died before the age of 30. Last August, McKee and her team reported that more than 40% had CTE. Almost all the brains studied were in the earliest stages of the disease, stages when clinical symptoms don’t typically manifest, said Alosco, a co-author on the paper.
“They had mild CTE, but that’s still a problem because mild CTE turns into severe CTE with aging,” McKee told ESPN. She deemed the study one of her “most important” and said it was “personal,” too. “They don’t have to play any more football,” she said, emphasizing that risk for CTE can come from low-level amateur football, even if they never play professionally.
But like most, the study came with caveats and limitations. It was a small sample of the sickest brains, symptomatic enough to have loved ones donate in search of answers. There was also no control group of non-contact athletes due to donated brains of young people being “extremely limited.”
The findings revealed that while some in the sample had CTE, a majority didn’t. It also noted that there were “no statistically significant differences” between the CTE and non-CTE cases in terms of the young athletes showing clinical symptoms before they died.
Also, even though the paper suggested concerns for young people playing football and other contact sports, the study concluded, “Despite the narrow age range of the sample, brain donors with CTE were older, were more likely to play American football, had longer duration of football play, and were more likely to play at an elite level.” The paper also noted that “no estimates of incidence or prevalence can be implied or concluded from this study.”
But these messages were lost in the center’s efforts to promote the study. News headlines on the study, even if accurate, often lacked nuance: “Study Finds CTE in 40% of Athletes Who Died Before 30” … “Boston University: Study Finds CTE in More than 40% of Athlete Deaths Under Age of 30” … “CTE symptoms linked to 40% of athletes who died young.”
The paper and its presentation created some debate even within the BU group.
“Part of this is the way the paper’s written, part of this is the way I think we presented it to the world, and part of it is the old, ‘If it bleeds, it leads,’” said one BU researcher who asked to remain anonymous out of respect for colleagues. “The messaging of it was, in my mind, only going to create more fear and more backlash from the scientific community because it sounds like we are saying 42% of young amateur athletes have CTE.”
Indeed, one of the challenges BU and others have faced in telling the CTE story is trying to make their findings understandable to the media and public without losing scientific precision. And because so much of the story is built around America’s most-popular sport, the interest is widespread.
Alosco said he thinks the paper is “very important scientifically” for researchers in the neurodegenerative disease community, but he acknowledged, “I think it’s a very hard message for the general public to wrap their head around it and what it means.”
Another issue emerged. In the paper, suicide was noted as the most common cause of death among those studied, which was not surprising, given it’s a leading cause in that age group. Also, a majority of the group had symptoms of depression and apathy, irrespective of their CTE status.
Suicide was not referenced in the news release, and it was not mentioned in relation to CTE in the study itself, other than to note that “there were no differences in cause of death based on CTE status.” Yet that became a central part of the story when BU’s advocacy arm, the Concussion Legacy Foundation, which is run by Nowinski, connected The New York Times with families whose loved ones were part of the research.
The result was a powerful feature published in November. The story opened with a video suicide note made by an 18-year-old boy moments before he shot himself in the chest. In the video, the boy detailed concussions and hits he took while playing football, and he directed a final request to his father: “I want my brain donated to be studied.” Later, the brain would be diagnosed with what the BU research paper termed “mild” CTE.
The rest of the project explored the boy’s story and that of four others who died with CTE, three of whom also committed suicide. It also highlighted the conflict that plagued the parents over their choice to let their kids play tackle football.
What the piece didn’t address is that there’s no evidence at this point linking CTE and risk of suicide. Nor did it mention that the early 20s represent the average age for significant mental health disorders to surface. Or that major cognitive symptoms are unlikely to be associated with the earliest stages of CTE.
None of this information was included in the CTE Center’s news release or in the study published in August in the Journal of the American Medical Association Neurology. The news release did include a quote from McKee cautioning against making sweeping generalizations: “The study suggests that some of the symptoms these young athletes are experiencing are not caused by the early tau pathology of CTE.” McKee urged young athletes experiencing neuropsychiatric symptoms to seek treatment.
Baggish, the Harvard researcher, said that he found the depiction of suicide in The Times story “appalling” and that it was a “disservice” to the world to suggest that young contact sport athletes are at risk for suicide, given the lack of a proven link.
In a statement to ESPN, a Times spokesperson said the outlet “reported accurately on the Boston University research showing that young contact sport athletes are at risk of getting C.T.E. While some athletes in the study, including some we featured, died of suicide, we did not assert a link between C.T.E. and suicide.”
Asked about BU promoting the study given the various caveats, Baggish said, “I think scientists always have the prerogative to choose the elements of their science that they want to really champion and to slightly ignore those that may be less sexy or may provide more caveat or nuance to the story.”
Gina DiGravio, the BU medical school’s associate director of media relations, said she can’t be “responsible” if nuances get lost in translation.
“All I can be responsible for is presenting the data in the press release that accurately explains the research,” she said, adding that she wasn’t criticizing The Times or any other media.
Questioned about the Concussion Legacy Foundation’s promotion of the study and his part in The Times piece, Nowinski told ESPN, “Our role was just to connect the families with the reporters.”
Asked what he thought of the piece given CLF’s involvement, Nowinski searched for the right words before pulling up an internal memo on suicide titled, “Discussing CTE and Suicide.” The document begins, “It is important that we continue to follow best practices when discussing suicide in the context of CTE,” and goes on to list a series of guidelines for responsible reporting. Item No. 1 reads, “Suicide is complex and multifactorial. A post-mortem CTE diagnosis should not be considered the cause of a suicide and is not known to be a risk factor for suicide.”
Nowinski said the memo was not shared with The Times. “At that time, our policy was to distribute the memo internally to all members of the team involved in public-facing roles to inform all conversations and content development on the topic,” he wrote in response to a question.
Regarding suicide and CTE, Nowinski said, “I mean, that’s something that, yeah, it was brought up early and we try not to bring it up as much anymore because we’ve listened to other perspectives and agree that there’s not evidence of a clear link between CTE and suicide right now.”
However, Nowinski added, “The other side of that is (traumatic brain injury) is associated with suicide independent of CTE. Systematic reviews have found that a single diagnosed concussion increases your risk of suicide by two times. CTE is caused by repeated traumatic brain injuries. So it could have a hypothesis that if one concussion doubles the risk of suicide, multiple concussions may increase it more. But nobody has done those studies with appropriate control groups, so there’s still a lot of unknowns.”
THE BU GROUP is no stranger to criticism. They’ve been studying the neurological disease so long they’ve gone from being the “rowdy road crew” taking on Big Football to the leading voices in the science. BU has published more than 180 papers on CTE.
In 2008, BU and Nowinski’s foundation worked with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs to establish what would become the UNITE Brain Bank. It currently holds more than 1,000 brains, making it the largest in the world to focus on CTE and traumatic brain injury. They’re not the only ones studying the condition, but McKee said that they “never will be caught.”
The work has contributed to a significant understanding of what the world now knows about the subject. And what was once met with denial and doubt, particularly by researchers tied to major sports organizations, has become accepted science.
In July 2022, Nowinski was the lead author on a paper published in Frontiers in Neurology that concluded repetitive head impacts cause CTE. After years of some researchers refusing to acknowledge any link, now the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — America’s foremost medical research center — cites the clear connection.
BU’s studies also have confirmed that it isn’t the number of concussions that predict the development of neurological struggles later in life, but rather the cumulative force of the hits, concussive or non-concussive. As well, in partnership with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the BU group recently reported a “strong link” between playing football and increased odds for getting Parkinson’s or related diseases.
But being out in front draws attention — and occasional sniping from other researchers.
“Science is competitive, like everything else,” McKee said.
In March 2019, a letter signed by 61 researchers was published in the Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals. Titled “Primum non nocere: a call for balance when reporting on CTE,” the letter criticized not just the media’s coverage but, more pointedly, the medical and scientific communities. It emphasized the many unknowns that surrounded CTE and urged that “distorted reporting” might have “dire consequences,” especially on people with treatable conditions.
The letter concluded: “We propose that the principle of, first, to do no harm, is used when communicating on CTE, whatever the platform. In particular, the many remaining uncertainties should always be acknowledged. Otherwise, the risk of doing harm is very real.”
In addition to targeting the media, the letter clearly was directed at BU. Kofler, one of the signatories, said the letter reflected discontent in the neuropathological community over the lack of “fair scientific discussions” and freedom to have differing opinions on the disease.
In a show of support for the BU group, a rebuttal from a handful of researchers was published three months later in the Lancet: “They misconstrue the term ‘first, do no harm’ as a call for inaction and the one-sided reporting of important uncertainties.”
It hasn’t been easy for other researchers to criticize BU. One byproduct of the NFL spending decades and millions of dollars discrediting research connecting football and brain damage is that researchers who raised doubts were sometimes labeled deniers. Or at least they fear as much. Several scientists interviewed by ESPN expressed concern about talking freely and then being lumped in with the NFL or others who have sought to deny any link between CTE and sports.
“CTE is clearly real, repeated hits to the heads are not good for you, but …” was a regular refrain.
BU IS HARDLY alone anymore in the CTE business. Nowinski has focused on expanding the center’s reach by creating collaborations with groups around the world.
Yet, there is one research group that stands out as having virtually no relationship with the BU team. This, despite both groups focusing on former NFL players and working at institutions separated by just a few miles and the Charles River. In many ways, the groups are worlds apart, both in approach and messaging.
The Football Players Health Study was launched at Harvard in 2014 against the backdrop of a funding disagreement between the NFL and the NFL Players Association. The multimillion-dollar initiative has been funded by the union since then, and a contract extension was signed two years ago. The goal of the project is assessing total health in former players. Researchers are examining a range of issues beyond head hits — issues, they note, that can contribute to cognitive problems.
“The platform that I champion is that CTE is part of a larger discussion,” said Baggish, a senior faculty member who helped write the initial proposal to the players association. “That we know that cognitive function, brain health, call it what you want, is a very relevant issue among football players, both former players as well as active players. And we need to do a better job understanding why. And to simply focus on one cause is short-sighted, particularly when we know a lot less about that one cause, particularly as it affects people that are living.”
More than 4,300 players have signed up for what is the largest study of living NFL players. Through a combination of in-person assessments and questionnaires, the research has revealed that early-life brain injury can cause cardiovascular issues such as hypertension, which might also contribute to cognitive decline. That, for the Harvard folks, begs the question: How much of this decline is caused by CTE and how much by other factors? Factors that are treatable.
Perhaps the answers lie somewhere in between the largest repository of donated brains, at BU, and the granular data of the living housed at Harvard. Yet the suggestion of collaboration between the two groups is met with uncomfortable pauses and a general lack of enthusiasm. There’s a palpable level of distrust, and one reason for that seems to be Grant Iverson.
Iverson is a neuropsychologist working as an investigator on the Harvard study. He’s also labeled by some as a CTE denier. Iverson has been co-author on several papers examining the connection between concussions or repetitive hits to the head and later-in-life cognitive problems. The results are generally the same, with conclusions such as: “Evidence does not support an increased risk of mental health or neurological diseases in former amateur athletes with exposure to repetitive head impacts.” … “There are minimal observed differences in performance on neurocognitive assessments between collision sport, contact sport and non-contact sport athletes.” … “Men who played high-school football did not report worse brain health compared with those who played other contact sports, noncontact sports, or did not participate in sports during high school.”
One researcher not affiliated with either school called Iverson a “gadfly,” and Robert Stern, the BU CTE Center’s director of clinical research, described Iverson as someone who made his recent career “bashing anything related to CTE.”
“We have different points of view, and those points of view are very — well, you’ve got Grant Iverson over there, who is, words can’t even describe him,” McKee told ESPN. “… I mean, the man’s obsessed with his own personal agenda. I’ll say that about him. To me, there is no logical discourse there.”
But several of Iverson’s colleagues raved about him.
“Grant Iverson is an astounding researcher and scientist and has a work ethic like I have never seen before,” said Doug Terry, a neuropsychologist who was mentored by Iverson and is currently the co-director of the Vanderbilt Sports Concussion Center. This center was founded by Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s current chief medical officer.
Terry said Iverson has “an unparalleled way of conceptualizing science and describing the findings and limitations of those studies,” and added, “I think it’s unfortunate that he has been perceived in certain ways when I think he’s truly trying to increase the scientific rigor of the tools that we use to measure anything in this realm.”
Iverson didn’t respond to multiple requests to be interviewed for this story.
Nowinski suggests that the lack of collaboration between the BU and Harvard researchers is related more to the groups’ differing goals than anything else.
“I think we have very different assignments,” he said. “The [union] wants to know how to take care of the old guys, and that involves talking about more than their brains. But for me, the brain is the most important factor and again, it’s the one that we can change. The other stuff doesn’t really happen while you’re playing, right?
“We don’t necessarily need a study to tell us to lose weight, control your blood pressure, don’t get diabetes and control your pain. But it is important to think about clinically, when we’re trying to determine what is CTE causing versus what it’s not.”
Just as Iverson represents a divisive figure, Dr. Dan Daneshvar might be a unifying one. Daneshvar, the chief of the division of brain injury rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, goes way back with the BU group; with McKee as his mentor, he produced the first Ph.D. dissertation in history on CTE, in 2013. Now, Daneshvar is working alongside members of the BU group on some studies and with the Harvard researchers as part of their research.
“We ultimately are all interested in figuring out what’s going on and how we can help these athletes,” Daneshvar said. “And I think that because of my background, I have the opportunity to serve as a bridge between different schools of thought.
“The beauty of the scientific method is that it provides a framework that we could use to figure out the truth.”
BACK AT BU’s CTE Center, just outside McKee’s office hangs a painting of a brain made to look like a football helmet: Life come to art. Still, Nowinski remains convinced that, as common as CTE has become in the public discourse, current levels of education and prevention aren’t enough. He doesn’t believe there’s “informed consent at any level of the game.”
So BU and the CLF press on with their research and their messaging, toeing a narrow line between awareness and fear.
“Is that my fault that fear exists, or is it the fact that no one’s responded to the fact that it’s a risky behavior?” McKee said.
A year ago in Arizona, BU chose to sound the alarm again, though McKee acknowledges now she had her reservations. Why, then, did she agree to Nowinski’s push to update the numbers at the Super Bowl without any new research to accompany them?
“Well, I caved,” she said, laughing. “That’s probably more accurate than anything.”
Nowinski said he hoped that releasing the numbers would “encourage individuals concerned about CTE to seek medical care, with the hopeful message that medical treatment can be effective for symptoms.”
The BU medical school’s communications team told ESPN there’s a new policy in place: No more reporting of numbers unless they’re tied to a corresponding study. They also initially said there were no plans to make any news during this year’s Super Bowl buildup. But late last week, Maria Ober, associate dean of communications at BU’s medical school, told ESPN a new study had been accepted for publication in a neuroscience journal, and it would be distributed during Super Bowl week.
Covered Chiefs for 20 seasons for Kansas City Star
Joined ESPN in 2013
THE FIRST DAY of wide receiver Rashee Rice‘s NFL career was a mess — literally. In the middle of a drill at his initial Kansas City Chiefs training camp and struggling in the summer heat, Rice threw up.
Rice and the Chiefs knew better days were ahead, but they didn’t know those days would happen for him so quickly.
Rice wound up leading the Chiefs’ wide receivers by wide margins during the regular season in catches (79), yards (938) and touchdowns (7). His was the best season for a rookie wide receiver in the 25-year head-coaching career of Andy Reid, whose previous rookie receivers include Tyreek Hill, DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin.
Rice has 20 catches for 223 yards in the three playoff games and scored the Chiefs’ first postseason touchdown on an 11-yard catch from Patrick Mahomes in the wild-card round win over the Miami Dolphins. He had eight catches for 130 yards that night.
All of this was more than the Chiefs anticipated from Rice as a rookie when they drafted him from SMU in the second round.
Offensive coordinator Matt Nagy described Rice as drinking from a fire hydrant at full power in terms of how much information the Chiefs were sending his way during training camp. He dropped some passes early in the season, a sign that he was thinking about his assignments rather than playing loosely.
“We were talking about in training camp him getting in and out of the huddle and getting lined up and just trying to run the play the right way,” Nagy said. “He’s way past that now. Now he gets up to the line of scrimmage, he’s seeing what the defense does and now he can let his natural ability take over. Probably midseason or around that time is when I felt like it clicked.
“The beauty is that he wants to be coached. He wants more.”
The rookie recovered from his messy start to become one of Mahomes’ go-to receivers as the Chiefs pushed through the playoffs and into Super Bowl LVIII, where they will face the San Francisco 49ers (Feb. 11 6:30 p.m. ET, CBS).
“He’s still got a lot he can improve on, which is crazy to say [because] he’s had such a great season,” Mahomes said. “The little things that NFL receivers do — he’s got the explosiveness, he knows how to run the routes — but the nuance and the how you run the routes, how you set one route to run up another one … He listens and he learns as much as he can and tries to take that in. I think that’s why he’s gotten better and better as the season’s gone on.
“Some of those guys hit that rookie wall, and it seems like he just kind of pushed right through it and continues to get better and better.”
RICE COULD HAVE played another season at SMU but decided after catching 96 passes in 2022 and leading all FBS receivers in yards per game (113) he would head to the NFL.
Input from his college coaches was unanimous: He was ready.
“It just kind of got easy out there,” Rice said of his last season in college. “I knew I was ready my junior year, but we had some other receivers coming out so I waited for my moment so I could shine as the No. 1 receiver.”
SMU receivers coach Rob Likens, who previously worked with receivers Brandon Aiyuk and N’Keal Harry at Arizona State, joined Rice at SMU for what turned out to be the player’s final collegiate season. That was enough time to impress on Likens that Rice was perhaps the quickest learner he has coached.
Rice was mostly a slot receiver at SMU until Likens arrived and used him more as an outside receiver. The positions can be remarkably different, so Rice had to learn to do things a different way.
“We didn’t motion him a lot and we didn’t move him around,” Likens said. “He was stationary and so he got press coverage almost every snap. There’s an art to defeating press coverage.
“We would meet right before we would go to practice and I would tell him things about beating the press, like ‘Hey, try this.’ He could apply things at that day’s practice that were just talked about on a board or shown by somebody else doing it as an example on film. He can immediately take something that he sees or hears and he can apply it faster than anybody I’ve ever coached. I would tell him five different things in a meeting and he tried all five of them that day and he was successful doing it.”
Likens has a saying he uses with his receivers: “Don’t be soft,” which he will also shorten on occasion to DBS. The message is that he doesn’t want his receivers to use excuses but to play through and conquer any obstacles they might face.
He didn’t have to hammer the point with Rice. After a few days with Likens, Rice went and had “DBS” tattooed on his hand.
“When he’s in his stance, he can see it,” Likens said.
AS THEY WERE preparing their draft board, the Chiefs asked Mahomes what he thought of Rice.
Rice lives near Dallas and was invited by Mahomes to participate in the offseason throwing sessions he organizes in the area. The workouts are more for Mahomes and the Chiefs’ receivers, but he’ll expand the group to draft-eligible receivers the Chiefs have an interest in.
Mahomes was impressed, particularly with Rice’s ability to run with the ball after the catch.
Rice was third in the league this year in yards after the catch with 654, this despite catching far fewer passes than CeeDee Lamb of the Dallas Cowboys and Amon-Ra St. Brown of the Detroit Lions, the two players ahead of him.
The workouts left an impression on Rice, too.
“It’s just a different perspective when you’re watching on TV and you don’t have personal relationships with those guys [from] being a part of it and actually having to put your head down and grind to get where you want to,” Rice said.
Rice wound up finishing second on the Chiefs in catches and yards behind tight end Travis Kelce, though Rice scored two more touchdowns.
In Week 12 against the Las Vegas Raiders, the Chiefs were leading by four points and faced a third down from the Las Vegas 39 early in the fourth quarter. Mahomes threw to Rice on a shallow crossing route, and he took it for the touchdown that clinched the victory.
That game proved to be a turning point for Rice. In 10 games prior, Rice caught 36 passes. In the six after (he missed Week 18 with an injury), Rice had 43 catches.
“He’s come a long way and I think he’s still ascending as a player in this offense and it’s just been fun to see him rise to the occasion and really just catapult us in a lot of ways,” Kelce said. “It’s been awesome to see him accept the challenges every single week. … As a rookie you kind of get lost a little bit and he’s been focused throughout that and really hasn’t really hit a rookie wall as much as I did for sure.”
Rice has long moved past that first training camp practice. But he looks back on that day now with no shame.
“I don’t mind puking,” Rice said. “That just means I’m working as hard as I can.”
EVANSTON, Ill. — Caitlin Clark cruised right by Jackie Stiles and Kelsey Mitchell. Next up is Kelsey Plum.
That’s the only name above Clark on the NCAA women’s basketball scoring list.
Clark collected 35 points, 10 assists and six rebounds in front of a sellout crowd at Welsh-Ryan Arena, leading No. 3 Iowa to a 110-74 victory over Northwestern on Wednesday night.
Three weeks after passing Brittney Griner, Clark took down two more big names in women’s hoops. She passed Stiles for third on the NCAA list when she made a 3-pointer with 2:04 left in the first quarter. She moved ahead of Ohio State’s Mitchell when she converted a layup with 4:58 left in the first half, making her the career scoring leader for the Big Ten.
Clark finished the night with 3,424 points, departing to a big ovation with 4:23 remaining. Plum, who starred at Washington from 2013-17, tops the women’s Division I scoring list with 3,527 points.
“I think the coolest thing is just the names that I get to be around,” Clark said. “Those are people that I grew up watching, especially Kelsey Plum, Brittney Griner, Kelsey Mitchell. Those are really, really great players.”
Cheered on by a crowd of 7,039 filled with Iowa colors and dotted with Clark shirts, the senior guard went 11 for 22 from the field and 10 for 10 at the free-throw line. It was her 13th game this season with at least 30 points.
But it was her passing that really stood out. She made a nice pass ahead to Hannah Stuelke for a fast-break layup in the second quarter, and she found Sydney Affolter for a backdoor layup in the third.
“This was one that was definitely circled on my calendar, just because I know the amount of Iowa fans in the Chicago area,” Clark said. “So I was super excited to come here. I love this gym.”
Stuelke had 17 points and nine rebounds for Iowa (20-2, 9-1 Big Ten), which earned its second straight win since a 100-92 overtime loss at Ohio State on Jan. 21. Kate Martin added 16 points, and Gabbie Marshall finished with 12 on 4-for-5 shooting from 3.
Northwestern (7-14, 2-8) lost its fifth straight game. Melannie Daley scored 19 points for the Wildcats, and Hailey Weaver finished with 13.
“I thought it was going to be a much better game than what it was,” said Paige Mott, who finished with 10 points. “We didn’t show up to play for 40 minutes.”
LOOKING BACK
Clark has been limited to single digits just once in her collegiate career, when she scored eight points in a 77-67 loss at Northwestern on Jan. 9, 2021.
BIG PICTURE
Iowa: Led by Clark, the Hawkeyes had 28 assists against just five turnovers. They also enjoyed a 42-30 rebounding advantage.
“I think we did a better job of rebounding in the second half,” coach Lisa Bluder said. “I love 28 assists on five turnovers. Really good numbers there.”
Northwestern: Daley was 8 for 17 from the field in almost 24 1/2 minutes, and coach Joe McKeown said she should be in the mix for the Big Ten’s Sixth Player of the Year award.
“We really like Mel’s pop coming off the bench,” he said.
UP NEXT
Iowa visits Maryland on Saturday night.
Northwestern hosts Wisconsin on Sunday.
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AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball
December was a wild month for decommitments and while January was not nearly as busy there were still some significant players backing off their pledges. Here is a look at the 10 biggest stings of the month as 22 prospects decommitted during that stretch.
Note: Five-star Ryan Williams will not be included in the top 10 since he decommitted from Alabama but then rejoined the Crimson Tide’s class.
Jaime Ffrench’s decommitment from Alabama
One of the best receivers in the 2025 class, Alabama landed an early commitment from the Jacksonville (Fla.) Mandarin standout but after coach Nick Saban left and position coach Holmon Wiggins left for Texas A&M, Ffrench reopened his recruitment. Now everybody is swarming with Florida State, Ohio State, Miami, Texas A&M, Georgia and others reaching out and trying to get involved. The Crimson Tide’s new staff is not giving up, either, so things should stay interesting.
Ewald decommitted from Michigan before coach Jim Harbaugh took the Los Angeles Chargers job but the writing was on the wall that Harbaugh was gone and so the high four-star defensive back decided to take a step back. The Wolverines are probably not going to get back in with Ewald on a serious level as it looks like – right now anyway – that Miami and Auburn are the most involved with Florida State and others are in the mix, too. It looks like the shutdown corner will end up somewhere in the Southeast.
The four-star offensive lineman from Evans, Ga., ruffled some feathers when he chose Alabama over Georgia early in his recruitment but less than a week following former coach Nick Saban’s retirement, Short was back on the market. Georgia and Clemson have emerged as two of the main contenders for the 6-foot-7, 295-pound four-star prospect but new Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer has re-engaged with Short so that could be something to watch as well.
Sting Factor: 8
*****
Zion Grady’s decommitment from Alabama
The top-ranked weakside defensive end picked Alabama over numerous SEC powers and others in mid-November but only a couple months later basically everything changed in Tuscaloosa and so Grady backed off his pledge. This one could particularly sting the Crimson Tide in the coming years since Auburn is one program to watch for the Enterprise, Ala., standout along with Georgia and LSU. There’s a good chance Grady will end up elsewhere in the SEC West and almost a lock he’ll be somewhere in that conference.
Sting Factor: 8
*****
Javion Hilson’s decommitment from Alabama
In December, the four-star defensive end committed to Alabama but over the next few weeks Hilson saw Saban retire and an entirely new coaching staff come into Tuscaloosa. A few days after Saban’s decision, the Cocoa, Fla., not only decommitted from the Crimson Tide but flipped to Florida State. He’s an in-state four-star standout, his father is a big Seminoles fan and Hilson grew up watching that program so it looks like he’s now locked in with FSU.
Sting Factor: 8
*****
Devin Carter’s decommitment from Florida State
Carter’s father, Dexter, played at Florida State so it was not a major surprise when the 2026 four-star standout made an early pledge to the Seminoles. But it took some people aback when the Ellenwood (Ga.) Cedar Grove prospect backed off his pledge in late January especially after FSU had such a great season. A lot of SEC programs will be involved with Carter but since he’s a legacy at FSU it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him back in the Seminoles’ class either.
Heading into the All-American Bowl, Carter was ranked as a three-star defensive end. It was a nice pickup for Washington but not one of the Huskies’ biggest. The Peoria (Ariz.) Centennial standout had an outstanding week in San Antonio and moved up to four-star status so his decision to back off his Washington commitment and then flip to Alabama when coach Kalen DeBoer left one for the other definitely hurts the Huskies.
The four-star defensive end from Tucson (Ariz.) Salpointe committed to Washington in late October and it looked like it was another big win for the Huskies, who ended up playing for the national championship in DeBoer’s second season. But then DeBoer left for Alabama and Wilhite got out of his letter of intent. Michigan State, Nebraska and UCLA are the three finalists for him as Washington had a standout defensive end signed but still couldn’t keep him.
Sting Factor: 7
*****
D’Antre Robinson’s decommitment from Texas
Texas scored a big recruiting win over the summer when the four-star defensive tackle picked the Longhorns over Florida and a late push from Alabama but Robinson won’t end up in Austin. After position coach Bo Davis left Texas to return to LSU, Robinson backed out of his letter and flipped to the Gators. At 6-foot-5 and 290 pounds, the four-star has a lot to work with but is not a finished product so development will be key at Florida.
Toward the back end of an outstanding junior season where Kollock threw for 3,174 yards with 41 touchdowns and five picks and ran for eight more scores, the four-star quarterback from Laguna Beach, Calif., committed to Washington. But only a few months later, DeBoer was off to Alabama and Kollock had to restart his recruitment. This spring could be huge for the four-star quarterback as teams across the country come to see him.
Lewis Hamilton will leave Mercedes and join Ferrari for the 2025 Formula 1 season.
Hamilton’s current contract with Mercedes is due to expire next year but he will depart the team after this season and replace Carlos Sainz at Ferrari.
The seven-time world champion is the most successful driver in F1 history with 103 wins and 104 pole positions.
The new 2024 F1 season begins with the Bahrain Grand Prix from February 28 to March 2 – live on Sky Sports F1.
Hamilton, who has not won a race since December 2021, joined Mercedes in 2013 from McLaren and has won six world titles with the team.
He was linked to Ferrari for this year but signed a new two-year contract last summer, along with Mercedes team-mate George Russell, to stay until the end of 2025.
Sky Sports News understands Mercedes employees in Brackley will be made aware of the news today before an announcement.
More to follow…
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NEW YORK — Kevin Durant made his return to Barclays Center, his home for the better part of four seasons, on Wednesday night and said he hasn’t thought about how his tenure with the Brooklyn Nets could have played out differently and that he, Kyrie Irving and James Harden simply “didn’t have enough time together.”
“No,” Durant said matter-of-factly after posting 33 points, 8 assists and 5 rebounds in the Phoenix Suns‘ 136-120 win over Brooklyn. “I mean, that’s just a pointless exercise, in my opinion, to think about what could have been.
“What happened. That’s what I thought about: what actually happened. The reality of it.”
“We didn’t have enough time together. That’s just it,” he continued. “Guys wanted to go their separate ways. We tried our hardest to, you know, salvage everything and everything together. We had three or four different teams [from] when I signed here until when I left. But at the end of the day, I enjoyed coming to work, playing for, being a part of this community and playing, representing Brooklyn; regardless of what went on, what was said or how I felt, I still came to work.”
In so many ways, Durant’s return was a reminder of what could have been.
Even after a ton of injuries, Wednesday’s outing marked the 17th game Durant has played alongside Devin Booker and Bradley Beal, his Suns co-stars, this season. Across the entirety of their time together in Brooklyn, Durant, Irving and Harden played a total of 16 games together. They won one playoff series (although Durant was a toe on the 3-point line at Barclays against the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference semifinals away from winning a second one) before first Harden then Irving and ultimately Durant himself asked to be traded away from the Nets.
But when asked about how he felt about that stop of his career as compared to his first two — the Oklahoma City Thunder, with whom he reached one NBA Finals and the Western Conference finals three other times; and the Golden State Warriors, with whom he won two titles and reached the Finals a third time in three seasons — he pushed back on the idea that his time with the Nets was a failure in any way.
“I like to look at success as like the individuals, what you do as an individual and how you can bring that as a team, as an individual,” Durant said. “I mean, I was an All-Star every year. I was the leading vote-getter every year in All-Star games. Sold a lot of jerseys. [Averaged] 50-40-90, averaged 30, [made] All-NBA. … I mean, was that successful? You know what I mean?”
“But team success is a different thing,” he explained. “But you’d like to put the team, how the team does, you’d like to put that on one of the best players and call it a failure. But you look at the work, if you want to talk about me individually, you can just look at the work that I put in here. I think I’ve grown as a player.
“I’m on my way to mastering the game. I think coming here helped me, pushed me far closer to that. So that’s what I try to take from my time here.”
The Nets played a tribute video before Durant was introduced to start the game — even though he had asked on social media earlier this week for there not to be one.
He then was greeted by a mix of cheers and boos — slightly more cheers — before he was given the introduction that was used for his three-plus seasons in Brooklyn.
And while Durant said it “is what it is” when it came to the tribute, he went out of his way to say how much he enjoyed his time in Brooklyn and that he appreciated the way the organization treated him.
“That wasn’t going to stop me from just doing my job regardless,” Durant said of the video.
“But there’s class people here. They appreciate everybody who donned the jersey. I don’t care if it’s for a 10-day, and that shows a great organization. You can appreciate everybody who stepped foot and put their blood, sweat and tears into your organization. So, I respect that.”
What’s impossible not to respect is Durant’s talent, which was on full display Wednesday night. One of the greatest pure scorers the sport has ever seen, Durant finished the game 10-for-16 from the floor and 11-for-12 from the free throw line, getting wherever he wanted from start to finish while resigning the Nets to a 13th loss in their past 18 games, dating back to last month’s controversial tilt against the Bucks that saw Brooklyn get fined $100,000 for violating the league’s player participation policy.
For Durant, the Nets are in the past. What is ahead is what both he and the Suns hope is a deep playoff run this spring. And, he said, he is optimistic about what this group can accomplish after enduring a sluggish start amid injuries to each of their three stars.
“We were just floating from two to three games under .500 and .500 for most of the year,” Durant said. “[Now] we look up, we’re 28-20 with a good opportunity to be 10 games over .500 with our next two games on the road. So, we’re going home at the 50-game mark, hopefully we can be 30-20, and I like where we are. It’s a grind throughout the whole season, especially with the new group, new coaching staff, new team, guys in and out the lineup. You got to build some continuity, and I think we’re on our way to that.”
NEW YORK — Kevin Durant was cheered before the game, then booed when it started.
His return to Brooklyn was on track be a noisy one, until he and the Phoenix Suns took the crowd out of the game with some relentless offense.
“I love to shut the crowd up. Even though I love these people here, I love to shut them up,” Durant said after scoring 33 points to lead the Suns to a 136-120 victory Wednesday night.
Durant added eight assists in his first game in Brooklyn since being traded to Phoenix nearly a year ago. He got a mixed reception early before leaving Nets fans little to cheer with 11 points in the third quarter, when the Suns outscored the Nets 42-26 after leading by three at halftime.
“He put the team first, went out and competed, played team-first basketball, had eight assists and several other plays where made the extra pass and allowed his teammates to play through his double-teams and played a team-first type of game and ended up with 33 and eight,” Suns coach Frank Vogel said. “Hell of a performance.”
Durant’s return earned the game a national-TV slot but it wasn’t much of a contest in the second half. The Suns, with Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal, are trying to build a title contender, while the Nets — who not long ago had their own Big 3 with Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden — are 19-28 and outside playoff position.
Jusuf Nurkic added 28 points and 11 rebounds for the Suns, overwhelming an undersized Nets team as the Suns won for the ninth time in 11 games. They improved to 3-2 on a trip that has stops remaining in Atlanta and Washington, Beal’s former home.
“It’s tough. With a team like that you know they’re going to shoot well, just those three guys at a high level, so we had to pick our battles tonight,” Nets coach Jacque Vaughn said.
Booker finished with 22 points and Eric Gordon had 17. The Suns shot 62% from the field and 50% from 3-point range.
Cam Thomas scored 25 points for the Nets, who had won two straight games. Mikal Bridges, who came to the Nets in the Durant trade, had 21 and Lonnie Walker IV added 19.
The Nets played a tribute video for Durant — who had wrote on social media that he didn’t want one — before he was announced first among the Suns starters. He received cheers then, though was booed when he touched the ball in the early minutes.
“That wasn’t going to stop me from just doing my job, regardless of how I was honored,” Durant said of the video, calling the Nets a classy organization for the way they treat former players.
The swing of emotions was fitting, as Durant had said earlier this week that fans didn’t know how to feel about him. He brought hope of a first NBA championship to the Nets when he and Irving signed together in 2019, but left without ever getting close. Brooklyn won just one playoff series during that time in 2021, but Durant was disappointed with the way the Nets played while he was hurt the following season and asked for a trade in the summer of 2022.
The Nets held onto him then, but moved him to Phoenix before last year’s trade deadline after Durant renewed his request after Irving had been moved to Dallas.
The Nets were without Ben Simmons, who was sidelined with a bruised left knee just one game after returning from a 38-game absence with a pinched nerve in his lower back. Simmons came down awkwardly after blocking a shot in the fourth quarter Monday and Vaughn said the No. 1 pick in the 2016 draft’s knee was swollen, though an MRI exam showed no structural damage.
The Suns broke it open in the third quarter with a 10-0 run that pushed an eight-point lead to 99-81. Durant had the first five points, and after Nurkic dunked, Durant scored while being fouled by Thomas, who is listed as 7 inches shorter. Durant stared for a few moments across the baseline toward the crowd, then held his fingers close together to indicate that Thomas was too small.
The entire Nets team was too small. With Dorian Finney-Smith and Day’Ron Sharpe also sidelined, there was no ability to match up inside and Phoenix outrebounded Brooklyn 42-27.
Phoenix played without starting forward Grayson Allen, who sprained his right ankle Monday in a victory in Miami.
LOS ANGELES — Since Jim Harbaugh accepted the Los Angeles Chargers‘ head-coaching job last week, he’s been reaching out to several players, including Quentin Johnston, whom Harbaugh faced two years ago as the coach at Michigan in the College Football Playoff semifinal.
Johnston and TCU won that game over Michigan, 51-45, with the star receiver snagging six catches for 163 yards and one touchdown. Harbaugh will be entering a TCU-laden locker room that includes Johnston, receiver Derius Davis and quarterback Max Duggan, who were all on that Horned Frogs team that beat Harbaugh’s Wolverines.
Harbaugh joked about that point in his and Johnston’s first interaction, before telling the rookie his excitement about coaching him this season.
“His past experience with the 49ers and then going to college, I have no doubt in my mind that he can get that done with this team at this level once again,” said Johnston, the Chargers’ 2023 first-round pick. “So we’ve got a world of confidence with him. I’ve been texting back and forth with some of the players, and we’re very excited to get back to work.”
Harbaugh, who will have his introductory news conference Thursday, coached the 49ers from 2011-14, when his teams made three conference championships and a Super Bowl. Under Harbaugh, receiver Michael Crabtree had some of his best seasons, including career highs of 1,105 yards and nine touchdowns in 2012.
The Chargers selected Johnston with the No. 21 pick last year. He showed flashes of the potential that made him a top pick, such as a 51-yard reception in a loss to the Denver Broncos in Week 14, but Johnston’s season was more bad than good as he struggled with drops (3). He finished with 38 catches for 431 yards and two touchdowns.
Johnston has acknowledged his struggles but is confident he can turn it around with Harbaugh.
“I didn’t really get a chance to show who I really was and what type of player I am, but I still got the world of confidence in myself even if nobody doesn’t,” Johnston told ESPN. “And so, you know, going into this next season, I can’t wait. Like I said, I feel like I’m due for a breakout, so I’m very excited for that.”
Head coach Jeff Hafley is leaving the program to take the Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator position.
“He wants to go coach football again in a league that is all about football,” Thamel reported. “College coaching has become fundraising, NIL and recruiting your own team and transfers. There’s no time to coach football anymore.”
Hafley got his first bowl win this year, but had a roller coaster career in his four seasons at the helm of the program, irking many alumni and donors and ultimately losing a large majority of the fan base. The timing is pretty tough too, with winter workouts in full swing and the second NSD next Wednesday.
As far as a couple of early names for replacements, off the top of my head Chudzinski taking over makes the most sense right now in terms of keeping some continuity. But, keep an eye on Brian Flores. Former Alum that would unquestionably command respect immediately. The only problem is, he obviously wouldn’t have recruiting experience. We’ve also heard some scuttlebutt regarding Kentucky OC Liam Coen, who also has local ties.
The list of names will obviously be bigger as this all develops.
BC fans now need to worry about guys like Castellanos and others hopping into the portal with such an abrupt departure from Hafley.
We’ll have more on this tonight and in the coming days…
Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley is expected to become the new defensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers, sources told ESPN.
Hafley has gone 22-26 in four seasons at Boston College, bringing them to bowl eligibility in three of his four years. Boston College finished 7-6 this year with a win over No. 22 SMU in the Fenway Bowl.
Hafley has resisted prior NFL coaching opportunities in the past. But his reasons for taking this coordinator job are rooted in both the overall state of college football and the opportunity to work for one of the NFL’s most respected franchises.
“He wants to go coach football again in a league that is all about football,” a source told ESPN. “College coaching has become fundraising, NIL and recruiting your own team and transfers. There’s no time to coach football anymore.
“A lot of things that he went back to college for have disappeared.”
Hafley becomes the third sitting college head coach to leave on his accord this year for a coordinator job. He follows South Alabama’s Kane Wommack and Buffalo’s Maurice Linguist. They both took coordinator jobs at Alabama, and the moves speak to the gap between the top-tier schools pulling away from the others in terms of resources. That’s only been magnified in this era of Name, Image and Likeness deals being critical to recruiting and roster retention.
The future of the Packers proved a significant allure to Hafley, as they have a strong young core and bright future. He’s a longtime friend of Packers coach Matt LaFleur and long-time admirer of the Packers franchise.
He’ll replace Joe Barry and be the third different defensive coordinator as LaFleur enters his sixth year as the franchise’s head coach.
While LaFleur and Hafley have never directly worked together, they have some mutual connections. Hafley was the Browns defensive backs coach in 2014-15 under then head coach Mike Pettine, who was LaFleur’s first defensive coordinator in Green Bay (2019-20). Hafley also worked for 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan, one of LaFleur’s mentors. Hafley was the 49ers defensive backs coach from 2016-18 before he became Ohio State’s co-defensive coordinator.
The rest of the Packers defensive coaching staff is under contract for the 2024 season and none of them was let go when the Packers parted ways with Barry. So there’s a good chance some — or all — of them could return to work under Hafley.
Hafley is a veteran NFL assistant coach who worked seven years in the NFL coaching various secondary positions before returning to college football as Ohio State’s defensive coordinator in 2019.
Hafley became Boston College’s head coach following the 2019 season, taking over the COVID-19 addled season of 2020. He had one losing record in four years — 3-9 in 2022.
The past three Boston College coaches have failed to win nine games, as the school’s last nine-win season came under Jeff Jagodzinski in 2008.
Hafley’s time at Boston College included three of the top recruiting classes in BC history. In 2022, Hafley led BC to its first win over an Associated Press ranked opponent since 2014 when BC upset No. 16 N.C. State. BC’s bowl win this year was the school’s first since 2016.
Information from ESPN’s Rob Demovsky was used in this report.
