Anthony Harris wrestled with the consequences of what he wanted to do versus the potential outcome.
The Minnesota Vikings safety was on his way to the grocery store one evening in early June when he noticed a police car driving through his neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia, his offseason home. He thought about pulling over and putting on his flashers to get the officer’s attention.
Harris wanted to talk. Human to human — Black man to white police officer — about the events taking place across the nation. The unrest and activism began after George Floyd was killed while in custody of the Minneapolis Police Department on May 25.
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Harris’ intentions came from a place of hurt, wanting to bring forth healing. He saw an opportunity to use his voice and platform as a prominent Black athlete to create change and understanding.
After weighing the risks, Harris decided it was worth it.
“It crossed my mind that I could be potentially shot or viewed as a threat just for what I was trying to do,” said Harris, who talked to the officer for 25 minutes, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “I made sure I proceeded with extra caution so I didn’t surprise them or, with everything going on in the world, that I tried to make them feel comfortable. It kind of just kept things in perspective of, no matter where you go or no matter what you’re really doing as an African American man, that’s something that you can’t shake.”
Harris and his Vikings teammates watched the video of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for seven minutes and 48 seconds, according to Minnesota prosecutors. It happened in the community where so many Vikings had donated their time and resources.
In 2018, the Vikings launched a social justice committee in which players can discuss racial matters openly and support organizations battling systemic issues in the Twin Cities. According to a survey by ESPN’s NFL Nation, Minnesota is one of 17 teams with a social justice committee. Three other franchises have similar programs in the works.
Now, the Vikings are at the epicenter of a social justice movement that has gone international. The team’s presence in the Twin Cities community should help give them a platform to foster a dialogue about racism and remove barriers that hinder the vulnerable and underserved.
“These issues are very real,” linebacker
In the days after Floyd’s death, Vikings players, coaches, front-office personnel and ownership held a series of meetings and expressed anger, sadness and pain. Harris and Kendricks released videos on the team’s website in which they wrestled with their grief and expressed a desire to help while struggling to determine the best course of action. “More minds are greater than just one, and that’s the attitude we’re taking, and we’re all putting our heads together and trying to really create change,” Kendricks said. When Vikings general manager Rick Spielman and co-defensive coordinator Andre Patterson came up with the idea of a teamwide social justice committee, they received immediate support from ownership. The Wilf family, which owns the Vikings, donated $250,000 to the committee in 2018 and again in 2019. That money was allocated to scholarships and school supplies for low-income students, legal aid, youth services and programs that aim to improve the relations between law enforcement and the community. In the aftermath of Floyd’s death, Vikings ownership announced a $5 million donation to social justice causes across the nation. The social justice committee also created an endowed George Floyd Legacy Scholarship to benefit Black high school seniors in Minneapolis-St. Paul who are pursuing post-secondary education. Chief operating officer Andrew Miller called the Vikings’ opportunity to make an impact “both a privilege and an obligation.” Players on the committee, including Harris, Kendricks and running backs Ameer Abdullah and Alexander Mattison, are ready to lead the charge. It comes after another African American was killed by police. This time, however, the circumstances feel different. “Through time, the Black community has been telling the world that this has been going on,” Patterson said. “And a lot of people didn’t want to believe that it was going on, that the person had to do something wrong to either get choked to death, or shot, or whatever. “But this is the reason why this one’s different: Because the whole world got to see life leave that man’s body. … Not only did they get to see him lose his life — they got to see it from start to finish.” Almost 30 years ago, Patterson learned progress can be made when you foster communication and understanding. Like many of his African American players at Washington State, where he coached from 1992-93, Patterson often was followed home by police or stopped without reason. He went to then-head coach Mike Price and asked to be a liaison between the team and police department with the goal of bridging a gap. Patterson met with the police chief regularly. He arranged for players to take part in ride-along programs with officers and held joint softball games and barbecues. Building trust was crucial. “One of the things that I ended up finding out was the police thought that all of the players we were bringing in from California were Southern California gangbangers,” Patterson said, noting the racial tensions at the time after Rodney King’s assault by the Los Angeles police. “They were already on alert because they heard all the stories about what was going on in L.A. and the gangbangers and how violent they were. That’s how they viewed our players, and because of us being able to spend time around them … it changed, and they started to treat our guys differently. Our guys started to treat them differently.” He shared that experience during the Vikings’ social justice committee’s first meeting in 2018, and players saw an opportunity to make a similar impact. That winter, members of the social justice committee teamed with police in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area to read books to children. They did it again in 2019. • Officer Charles Adams III was at that meeting. He is a police officer and the head football coach at his alma mater, Minneapolis North High School, which produced Tampa Bay Bucs receiver “It’s hard to have people understand that I wear blue but I’m Black. So all I try to do is let each and every one of the kids I mentor and I coach, let them know where my heart’s at.” Charles Adams III, Minneapolis police officer and high school football coach And he asked for Vikings players to help. “I just told them, straightforward, that we need your guys’ support as an organization in letting people know that you support us, but you identify the problems and are willing to continue to provide to the community to make change,” Adams said. “Publicly, people need to understand that this is an isolated incident that has put a huge black eye on our department, but this is not the characteristic of every single person in this department. “It’s easy for organizations to be like ‘What do you guys need?’ And I never ask for anything monetary, because I know people can give me thousands of dollars and I can never see them again. I always tell people that it’s more important to have the time and showing your face. I think kids and people appreciate that more. The fellowship and the outreach in the community is a big thing.” The Vikings’ social justice committee wants to be a part of the solution. They want to take action. The big question is how. For many, it starts with the most basic element when seeking change: starting a dialogue. “How can I get individuals who aren’t affected [by issues of racism and other forms of systemic injustice] to be more aware, and somehow draw them into the issue and the topics that are going on?” Harris asked. “… How can I draw the person who is unaffected, who hasn’t experienced that? How can I draw them closer to this situation? “Those are the people who I’m trying to reach, to create more of a dialogue and brainstorm, and really just draw behind the rally of acting in the best interests of the country and standing behind what’s right and what this country is supposed to represent and look like.” Vikings players believe having “uncomfortable” conversations and creating an alliance to help expand the committee’s reach and impact is part of the solution. The Vikings have had a diverse group of players among its membership. Tight end
TAMPA, Fla. — Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers team president and senior executive Gay Culverhouse, who devoted her life to helping former NFL players dealing with health issues including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), has died at the age of 73, a family spokesperson told the New York Times.
Culverhouse, the daughter of late Buccaneers owner Hugh Culverhouse, died Wednesday at her home in Fernandina Beach, Florida. Culverhouse suffered from complications from myelofibrosis, a form of chronic leukemia inhibiting the production of red blood cells. She had battled the condition, which left her severely anemic, since 2003.
She was originally given just five years to live and survived 17 years with the illness.
“We are saddened to hear of the passing of Gay Culverhouse earlier this week,” Buccaneers owner and co-chairman Bryan Glazer said in a statement. “During her family’s ownership of the Buccaneers, Gay was a leading figure in and around the Tampa Bay community who was defined by her compassion for helping others. Her tireless work as an advocate for retired NFL players is also an important part of her personal legacy. We send our heartfelt condolences to her children, Leigh and Chris, and the entire Culverhouse family.”
Culverhouse joined the Buccaneers in 1986, years after her father was awarded the expansion Buccaneers in 1974. Before joining the Buccaneers, she worked as an instructor at the University of South Florida College of Medicine from 1982-1986, specializing in child psychiatry after earning her doctorate from Columbia University.
She remained with the organization until 1994, resurfacing 15 years later to serve as an advocate for retired players, testifying in a House Judiciary hearing on head injuries among NFL players in 2009.
“One of the things you, as a committee, need to understand very clearly is the fact that the team doctor is hired by the coach and paid by the front office,” Culverhouse said. “This team doctor is not a medical advocate for the players. This team doctor’s role is to get that player back on the field, even if that means injecting the player on the field.”
“My men have headaches that never stop. They cannot remember where they are going or what they want to say without writing it down. Some are on government welfare. Some are addicted to pain medication. Some are dead.”
She called for mandatory benching of players suffering from concussions and for independent neurologists not affiliated with teams to be on the field for every game evaluating players. Thanks to her efforts, the league implemented this policy in 2013, which includes fines and even forfeiture of draft picks should teams fail to follow concussion guidelines.
It was the death of former Buccaneers lineman Tom McHale of an accidental drug overdose in 2008 that prompted Culverhouse to take up the cause of helping former players. McHale was just 45, but his brain, researchers found, was marked by signs of the neurological disease CTE.
“I became very concerned and started looking more thoroughly into concussions,” she said. “And I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something. I can’t let this fester.’ “
She formed the nonprofit Gay Culverhouse Players’ Outreach Program, paying for medical exams for dozens of retired players while assisting them with the necessary paperwork to receive medical benefits.
When asked why she chose to adopt the cause of retired NFL players, Culverhouse said in 2010, “Because it needs to be done. If not me, then who?”
Culverhouse didn’t shy away from her father’s unpopular and often controversial decisions, which included a low-ball salary offer to then-Buccaneers quarterback Doug Williams, who would later become Super Bowl MVP as a member of the
The Washington Redskins face renewed pressure to change their nickname, but this time protestors are targeting their sponsors, Adweek reported.
According to the report Wednesday, Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo each received letters signed by 87 investment firms and shareholders worth a combined $620 billion asking the companies to sever ties with the Redskins unless they change their controversial name. There has been more pressure in recent weeks to change their name given the social climate following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota.
The Redskins have contributed to some of that change, removing the name of former owner George Preston Marshall from their ring of fame. Marshall was the last NFL owner to integrate his roster, and did so only under pressure from the government to avoid losing a 30-year lease on federal land.
But Native American leaders want owner Dan Snyder to change the name, which the franchise has used since 1933. In the past, groups protested the name and tried to win in court. Those efforts failed. Now investors are appealing to the sponsors, something that one former high-ranking Redskins employee called “different.”
In the end, Cam Newton and the New England Patriots made too much sense for each other. In a league in which every other starting quarterback opportunity was full, the Patriots gave the former NFL MVP his only realistic chance of being a Week 1 starter on a competitive team. And while I don’t doubt that the Patriots still believe Jarrett Stidham is capable of being a starter at the NFL level, the chance to acquire the 2015 MVP when the alternatives were Stidham and Brian Hoyer was always going to interest coach Bill Belichick at the right price.
We might never know whether Belichick delayed the timing of the Newton signing to coincide with the news that the Patriots had lost a third-round pick from the latest in their series of league investigations, but by the time we get to September, it won’t matter. New England might have come away with the bargain of the offseason by agreeing to terms with Newton on a one-year deal, reportedly for the league minimum. Newton also can reportedly make up to $7.5 million in incentives, before he would presumably be able to hit the market again under far better circumstances in 2021.
Jump to the grade for the deal
The facts about Newton’s post-MVP career
To start, there’s very little risk here for the Patriots. They have only about $1.8 million in cap room, so depending on how the incentives are structured, they might need to create additional space to get Newton under contract. They can achieve that by extending guard Joe Thuney or cutting someone such as Rex Burkhead, Deatrich Wise Jr. or Jermaine Eluemunor. If Newton gets hurt or isn’t able to beat out Stidham, New England would presumably be out only about $1 million. When you consider that the organization paid Antonio Brown more than $9 million for one game last season, you can see just how little the Patriots have to lose by adding Newton.
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Of course, that’s the $7 million question. If we knew that Newton was healthy, there’s little chance he would be available in the market for the league minimum. He hasn’t been healthy for a regular-season snap since the first half of 2018, and with the Newton played excellent football through the first half of 2018. With Carolina sitting pretty at 6-2 in the NFC South, he was 10th in the league in passer rating (100.8) and 12th in QBR (63.1). Often one of the deepest average passers in football, he was given shorter passes to throw and magically improved his completion percentage to 67.3. The former first overall pick was averaging nearly four touchdowns for every interception and producing nearly 280 yards from scrimmage per game. He was fourth on my midseason MVP ballot that year. The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Panthers 52-21 in Week 10. Pretty quickly, it became clear that Newton’s right shoulder was a problem. He struggled to make throws with zip over the second half of the season, and while he battled through the injury before eventually sitting out in late December, the Panthers collapsed during the second half. He underwent shoulder surgery after the season. It’s important to make this distinction, because if you weren’t paying attention to the Panthers last summer and into the preseason, you might have missed an important piece of information. By all accounts, Newton healed from that shoulder injury. One report from camp lauded the return of his deep ball, which had gone missing as a result of the shoulder injury the prior year. He looked to be back on schedule to return as the Panthers’ primary quarterback, and while I’m sure there would have been some growing pains, there was no suggestion that he was still being bothered by his shoulder when the next injury struck. Newton suffered a Lisfranc injury to his left foot in a preseason loss to Belichick’s Patriots. He sat out the remainder of the preseason before returning for Week 1, but when I watched Newton play against the Los Angeles Rams, I didn’t see a quarterback who was struggling for velocity or arm strength. From how he was moving and how many passes he sailed over his receivers, it was clear he wasn’t comfortable planting his foot. After the issue was even more obvious during a Thursday night loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers the following week, the Panthers shut him down. When the injury didn’t heal with rest, the Panthers placed Newton on injured reserve, ending his season. While a Lisfranc injury can be disastrous for receivers, it’s not typically a career-impacting injury for quarterbacks. Matt Schaub hit injured reserve with a Lisfranc injury in 2011 and returned to make the Pro Bowl the following season. Taysom Hill suffered a Lisfranc injury in college, and while it cost the BYU quarterback most of his senior year, he has been able to return and move just fine. Newton should be recovered from both the 2018 shoulder surgery and the 2019 foot surgery. Is it possible Newton has simply taken too many hits and has grown brittle? I suppose, but we have plenty of examples of quarterbacks who suffered multiple serious injuries and were still able to rebuild their career. Tannehill, who is nearly a year older than Newton, comes to mind. Randall Cunningham dealt with an ACL injury in an era in which it was far more career-threatening and came back at 35 to deliver an All-Pro season for the Minnesota Vikings. Steve McNair battled through injury after injury and was a Pro Bowl-caliber passer at age 32 and 33. I don’t know whether Newton will get back to his old self, but it’s premature to write him off. 2:18 Adam Schefter breaks down how the Patriots managed to strike a deal with former MVP quarterback Cam Newton. A healthy Newton has to be considered the favorite to win the starting quarterback job in New England. Stidham was about to become the second player in league history taken after pick No. 100 to start for his team in Week 1 of his second season after not starting as a rookie. While the Patriots were optimistic enough about Stidham’s chances to avoid making a more significant move before now, the most we can say about the 2018 fourth-rounder is that he represented something totally unknown. Before the Newton signing, there was already evidence that the Patriots were going to change their offense. Even the most optimistic Patriots fan couldn’t suggest that Stidham was going to be Tom Brady. He wasn’t going to have Brady’s accuracy, experience reading defenses or ability to avoid turnovers. That was never going to happen. What the Patriots did this offseason, instead, was build around a more run-heavy attack. They put the franchise tag on Thuney, meaning that the Pats are set to spend nearly $28 million on guards this season, $6.5 million more than any other team. They got back David Andrews after their starting center missed the entire season with a pulmonary embolism; signed fullback Danny Vitale to replace the retiring James Develin; and then used a pair of third-round picks on tight ends Dalton Keene and Devin Asiasi, both of whom are regarded as plus blockers. With Stidham, this offense would have likely looked something akin to a modern version of the attack the Patriots ran in 2001, when they had something closer to a 50/50 run/pass split. Brady’s job was to convert friendly third downs and protect the football. It worked: The Patriots were 11th in offensive DVOA and won a Super Bowl with a defense that was only 13th in DVOA. The 2020 Patriots should be much better than that on defense. That formula was going to be competitive with the Buffalo Bills for a division title even before adding Newton. If Newton does win the job, the Patriots probably will build something closer to the offense he was working under during his time with Turner in Carolina. With the Panthers trying to get the ball out of Newton’s hands quicker, the concerns about accuracy and efficiency that might have otherwise made him and the Patriots seem like a bad fit went away. Newton had just four interceptions and four fumbles over the first half of the 2018 campaign. That’s an outlier given the rest of his career, but it’s also the only time Carolina didn’t have a healthy Newton in an offense when the Panthers were expecting him to average 10 air yards per pass attempt. You could also see the Patriots borrow concepts that have worked elsewhere. It wouldn’t be shocking if they were to steal some ideas out of the Greg Roman playbook for Lamar Jackson and use heavy doses of motion to manipulate teams and create opportunities for Newton as a runner. New England has always been aggressive with trying to stay ahead of the offensive curve and attempting to build its offense around what is undervalued. In 2007, the team traded for Randy Moss and Wes Welker and incorporated a spread attack. Three years later, it drafted Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, and the offense shifted into becoming 12 personnel. When Chip Kelly took hold with the Philadelphia Eagles, the Patriots were one of the first teams to really emphasize pace and tempo, even before Kelly joined the league. The Baltimore Ravens might have beaten the Patriots to the punch, but Belichick isn’t going to write off the league’s most effective offense as a gimmick. What it all comes back to for me is this: When the Patriots haven’t been able to simply blow past teams with talent like they could in 2007, their core offensive concept has been versatility. Because they’ve had Gronkowski, Develin, Julian Edelman and a variety of versatile running backs, the Patriots have always been able to create a mismatch. They could go three- or four-wide and still have the blocking ability to run the football effectively. When they sent out 22 personnel and made it look like they were going to run the ball, they had the athletes to motion out or work off of play action and beat an opponent’s base defense in the passing game. It’s how the Patriots won their last Super Bowl. Last year, with Gronkowski retired, Develin injured and a replacement-level group of tight ends, the Patriots didn’t have that ability to disguise their intentions with their personnel or the flexibility to shift from one concept to the other. They might have wanted to run the ball more effectively, but when Sony Michel was in the game, they ran it 67% of the time; only two players (who played 300 offensive snaps or more) were better indicators of whether their team was going to run the ball, and one of them was Ravens fullback Patrick Ricard. When James White came in, the Pats threw the ball 81.8% of the time; only three other players were a more obvious tell. New England suffered both running and throwing the football. The Patriots didn’t get Gronkowski back this offseason, but by replenishing at fullback and tight end, they were able to restore some semblance of versatility. By adding Newton to replace Brady, they’ve upgraded that versatility and added uncertainty at the one position where they didn’t have it during the Gronkowski era. They were fine without Brady as a run threat given everything else he could bring to the table; but if Newton is healthy, he can give them a runner who can barrel through undersized boxes out of 10 or 11 personnel or someone who can take advantage as a passer when teams load up the box to stop the run. In that sense, he is less a replacement for Brady and more a replacement for Gronkowski. Having said all that, while the Patriots aren’t incurring much financial risk by signing Newton, there is an opportunity cost that drops this grade ever so slightly. Naturally, there’s a chance he fails his physical, which would render this whole thing a waste of time while simultaneously jabbing at Stidham’s confidence. If Newton stays healthy enough to soak up the majority of the preseason reps with the ones and then suffers a season-ending injury in Week 2, the Patriots will have wasted their time when Stidham could have desperately used those snaps. Even if Newton does stay on the field and plays well enough to start, there’s a chance this doesn’t move the needle for the Patriots. If Newton is the 24th-best quarterback in football, they will probably go 9-7 and not be good enough to beat the
1:53 Dan Orlovsky breaks down how Cam Newton will be utilized with the Patriots, saying Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels will find new ways to use his skill set.What could the Patriots’ offense look like?
The grade: A-minus
In that dream scenario in which Newton stays healthy and the Patriots compete for a Super Bowl, there’s still some modest downside for the team. They were unable to convince Newton to sign a multiyear deal or get any sort of option on him for 2021 if he excels as the starter. It’s unclear whether the Pats will have the right to franchise him after the season if he does return to form. They’ll be able to afford a tag for him, given that the Pats are projected with more than $86 million in cap space, but if his camp negotiated a tag refusal as part of this deal, the Patriots won’t have a lot of leverage in re-signing him.
This is an obviously smart move for the Patriots, even if it doesn’t work out. Merely having Newton on their roster when he could have served as a high-upside backup for such rivals as the Bills, Ravens, Steelers, Chiefs and Tennessee Titans would have been worth what the Patriots are paying him. For the Patriots to add a starter with Newton’s upside this late in the process is almost a cliché. This has a strong case to become the best free-agent signing of the offseason.