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NFL

Landry: 'Like to stay,' but ball in Browns' court

Browns wide receiver Jarvis Landry tweeted Tuesday that he would “like to stay” in Cleveland, but added that he is confident he can still be a contributor for another team in “winning a championship.”

Landry struggled with injuries throughout the 2021 season, beginning with, as he noted in the Twitter thread, a Week 2 knee sprain.

3/3 I have put the ball in CLE court by telling them I would like to stay but if not then I’m confident enough in myself to be a better healthy me this year and moving forward to helping do my part in winning a championship elsewhere.

— Jarvis Juice Landry (@God_Son80) February 22, 2022

He finished the season with 52 catches while playing in 12 games. Landry had just 570 yards receiving with only two receiving touchdowns.

Landry did not interview with reporters through the team the rest of the season following wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr.’s release in early November. Landry and Beckham are close friends dating back to their time together playing at LSU.

On Twitter, Landry explained why he stayed silent as the Browns struggled down the stretch on the way to an 8-9 finish, saying he was “focused on getting on the field as healthy as possible during the week and after games.”

Landry is not a free agent but has no guaranteed money left on his deal.

NFL

Buccaneers offseason preview: What's next now that Tom Brady has retired?

TAMPA, Fla. — Life after quarterback Tom Brady: That’s what the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are trying to figure out this offseason.

Sign or trade for a marquee free-agent quarterback, and the window to contend stays open. But if they come up empty and are forced to turn to Blaine Gabbert, who hasn’t started a game since 2018, or Kyle Trask, who was their fourth quarterback on the depth chart last season, it will be a rebuild, even if general manager Jason Licht and coach Bruce Arians won’t be calling it that — preferring to instead use the term “reload.”

Even before they attempt to reassemble their roster, their daunting list of opponents outside their division will make for an uphill battle: They face the Cincinnati Bengals, Los Angeles Rams, San Francisco 49ers, Green Bay Packers, Kansas City Chiefs, Arizona Cardinals, Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will have to alter their offseason plans with the decision of quarterback Tom Brady to retire. Mark LoMoglio/AP

Projected salary-cap space: $7.9 million

Top free agents: WR

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NFL

Protecting Trevor Lawrence is key to how Jacksonville will go with No. 1 draft pick

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – What the Jacksonville Jaguars are going to do with the first overall pick in the NFL draft isn’t as clear as it was when they picked first last season.

That was a no-brainer: They were taking quarterback Trevor Lawrence.

This year, there are multiple options in play: Pass-rushers Aidan Hutchinson and Kayvon Thibodeaux and offensive tackles Evan Neal and Ikem Ekwonu. Maybe even someone else.

The Jaguars’ decision, however, depends on left tackle Cam Robinson.

Robinson is an impending free agent, and the Jaguars must decide what to do with him. Do they use the franchise tag for the second year in a row? Sign him to a long-term deal? Let him walk? If they bring him back, the first pick isn’t likely to be an offensive tackle. If they don’t, they may pick a tackle – but it could be another month before that becomes clear.

The Jacksonville Jaguars need to protect last year’s No. 1 overall pick quarterback Trevor Lawrence (left). If left tackle Cam Robinson (right) leaves as a free agent, they may end up drafting a replacement with the top pick this year. Bob Self-USA TODAY NETWORK

The first day teams can use the franchise tag is Tuesday, and they have until 4 p.m. ET on March 8 to do so. If the Jaguars use it on Robinson he’d be owed $16.5 million and the salary would be fully guaranteed. The Jaguars also could try to sign Robinson to a new contract and Spotrac projects a market value of a $16.8 million annual salary, slightly higher than the franchise tag.

Either way, Robinson would be protecting Lawrence’s blind side at least in 2022. The Jaguars could opt to have Robinson also has allowed 29 sacks, per ESPN Stats & Information. For comparison, Taylor has allowed 40 in 12 fewer games.

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NFL

Georgia artist goes big for Pro Bowl cleats of rookie Kyle Pitts

The conversation started casually, as it usually does whenever Curtis Booth inquires about whether a player wants his cleats to look like more than what comes out of the box from Nike, Adidas or UnderArmour.

Kenny Osuwah, assistant equipment manager for the Atlanta Falcons, reaches out. Or sometimes Booth hears from the player himself. Then, as the relationship is formed, Booth will reach out on his own. Which is how the idea came up to have what Falcons rookie tight end Kyle Pitts has on his feet at the Pro Bowl on Sunday (3 p.m. ET, ESPN) look like anything but a normal pair of shoes.

The Pro Bowl will be held on Sunday, Feb. 6 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas at 3 p.m. ET., on ESPN.
•

The custom Pro Bowl cleats of Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts are painted in University of Florida colors and list some of the accomplishments from his record-breaking rookie season. Courtesy of Curtis Booth

But those steps are what Booth focused on as he created Pitts’ shoes. He wanted Pitts’ feet — which were so integral to his first-season success — to display the message of how good his rookie year was, sort of a commemoration of what he accomplished splashed across his Jordan 5s.

“He’s the second [rookie] tight end ever to reach the 1,000-yard milestone, so I know I’m going to put that on there,” Booth said. “And maybe a couple stats and some Falcons logos, also. Still brainstorming, maybe have one cleat look completely different than the other cleat.

“But rookie things, definitely.”

Two weeks ago, Booth was in the brainstorming process, the first part of the creative painted journey from concept to creation — something the player didn’t see until he received the shoes just before he left for Las Vegas.


This isn’t as simple as putting some paint on a shoe and going with it. This is an hours-long process for each pair of shoes Booth works on.

It’s a process Booth has streamlined over the past three years, one self-taught from what he calls YouTube University. All of this happened so randomly — how the psychology major at North Carolina Central who wanted to become a forensic psychologist ended up doing this instead. He never imagined this in college, when his boredom and scrolling on Instagram took him to WalMart and he painted a pair of Jordan 1s pink.

He wore them to class. Because he knew nothing about the custom shoe business at the time, the color ran. It looked like he was wearing a pink-spotted cow. But classmates were still intrigued. This was years before it became his full-time job, before he locked in with the Falcons and became their cleat creator.

Georgia artist Curtis Booth spent about 20 hours from design to finished product for Kyle Pitts’ Pro Bowl cleats. Courtesy of Curtis Booth

With Pitts’ shoes, because he had time, it began with brainstorming sessions. Knowing he was working with a six-panel Jordan 5 — the more panels available, the more creative he can be — Booth then takes an all-white silhouette and puts it in a photoshop mockup on his computer.

It’s there he messes around with different fonts and sizes to get an idea of what could go where and the type of space he might need for each idea to pop to life.

“I usually go on Instagram a lot and post my mockups and have people vote on which one they like best, and the highest vote, I’ll go with that,” Booth said. “A lot of times I’ll do that to make sure we’re on the same page. I’ll know what I want to do with it, so I’ll go post a different mockup to see if people are seeing the same thing that I see.

“That helps me out a lot because it’s like that second opinion, like definitely do that. Because otherwise, I’m thinking in the back of my head, ‘Ahh, should I do this or that?'”

Booth learned from experience to edit who can see the mockups in his stories — often blocking his clients so as not to spoil the surprise. Sometimes screenshots have leaked, a hazard of social media and a lesson Booth learned.

Design done, the real work starts. Each shoe has to be specifically prepped. Booth starts by taping the soles of cleats — they are unable to be painted — and then takes acetone, places it on a pad and scrubs down each shoe to take off the clear, unseen sealer on the top of each cleat. This will keep the paint from running and sliding off the shoe or cracking once it’s put on.

“The reason for that is to open up, I say to open up the pores a little bit,” Booth said. “To give the paint something to stick on to.”

Once the initial gloss is gone, Booth can start painting. He’ll add an adhesion promoter to the shoe to add a layer and give the paint another opportunity to stick to the shoe. If he’s doing a detailed design, like a logo or a cartoon character or stenciled writing — like for Pitts’ shoe — he’ll print out stencils and lay those down while the shoe is still fully white.

Then he’ll add a base coat of paint — usually white or gray depending on the colors he’s working with both on the shoe and the design — and let it dry. Then he’ll start painting in the detailed design and stencils. Finished there, he’ll go back to do touchups just in case any of the paint bled into another area of the shoe.

“I do my outlining last because that makes the design pop,” Booth said. “Pretty much that important step in the prep. That’s the important step because football players, they are pretty rough on sneakers. They are running and jumping and sliding and tackling and everything and the worst that happens is the paint comes off.

“And as an artist, you don’t want that to happen, because that kind of tells you the quality of work isn’t there.”

Booth is meticulous with each pair. When he’s done painting and likes the work of the shoe, he’ll seal it again — much like what was initially on the shoe that he scrubbed off. He first uses a scratch-resistant sealer, again protecting his work from the realities of football. Then, he’ll use either a glossy or matte finisher depending on the look he’s going for.

The average time it takes on a shoe, from brainstorm to completion, is around eight to 10 hours. For some of Patterson’s work, it took 15. For Pitts’ shoe, he allotted 20 hours.

“I really want to perfect that design on there,” Booth said. “And I want him to really stand out at the Pro Bowl.”


This isn’t the first time Pitts has tried to show some creativity during his rookie season. His request for a change to old Florida Gators cleats he had early in the season kickstarted the relationship with Booth.

And then there’s something else — something he had every game but didn’t always get noticed: The design on his hands.

Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts kept every pair of the Jordan brand gloves, designed by Georgia artist Curtis Booth, that he used during his record-breaking rookie season. Mark LoMoglio/Associated Press

When Pitts signed with Jordan Brand — the cleats he wears — one of the things they asked him about was if he wanted to help design anything else. Pitts decided he had interest in helping to create a unique pair of gloves just for him.

And what he ended up going with each game this year had one meaning — even if it ended up looking like another.

“With the eight in the middle, that was just one of the designs,” Pitts said. “I didn’t think of it as a bullseye until I had seen it and seen the colors and it was pretty cool. I didn’t think of that to signify anything.”

But for much of the season, it kind of did. Pitts became

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“If you think about it, I've never held a job in my life. I went from being an NFL player to a coach to a broadcaster. I haven't worked a day in my life.”
-John Madden


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