2025-2026 NFL Season Thread

[Rodney-2187]

Originally Posted by Samus Aran

Kendrick Norton, a DT who was drafted by the Panthers last year and was on the Dolphins roster this year, was involved in a serious auto accident which required the amputation of his arm.

Originally Posted by imsounoriginal

Horrible situation for Norton.

Just now hearing about this. So terrible.

[BizCat]

Former New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi suffered a stroke on July 4, but his recovery is going well.

The ex-linebacker posted on social media accounts early Monday morning about his second stroke and did a little educating on the topic while updating his status.

"Around 10:30 a.m. on July 4th I lost use of my left arm," Bruschi wrote. "I then tried to speak and realized I was slurring my speech. As I turned to my wife she noticed the left side of my face was drooping. We immediately knew what was happening. These are stroke warning signs. We called 911 and an ambulance got me to the hospital. Thank you for all your kind thoughts and prayers. I'm doing much better."

[BizCat]

Some interesting history:

The Dallas Texans become the Kansas City Chiefs

In 1960, two professional football teams descended upon Dallas: the NFL’s Cowboys and the AFL’s Texans. The Texans were great; they went 25-17 in their first three seasons and won the AFL title in ‘62. The Cowboys were not; they won nine games in three years and, despite a potent offense, were still years away from contention.

But Lamar Hunt didn’t see enough of a market in the heart of Texas to support two pro teams, so he started looking for a new home for his AFL club. When Kansas City mayor H. Roe Bartle — a man with quite possibly the most “1960s politician” name ever to exist — guaranteed to triple Hunt’s number of season ticket holders, the Texans became the Chiefs.

The Chiefs posted a 5-7-2 record in their first season in Missouri, then put together a 10-year streak of non-losing seasons. This stretch included four playoff appearances, two Super Bowl appearances, and one title — laying the foundation for one of the most passionate (and loud) fanbases in the NFL.

As for Dallas, the loss of the Texans in 1962 pushed fans in the Lone Star State to the city’s NFL holdover, where young coach Tom Landry was slowly building an empire. While the Cowboys lacked the initial Super Bowl success of the team that left town, they wound up serving as a pretty solid consolation prize for Texas — they’d be a mainstay in the NFC title race by the 1970s.

[BizCat]

The Decatur Staleys become the Chicago Bears

Decatur, located smack dab in the middle of Illinois, had a population of nearly 44,000 in 1920, the first season the Staleys played in the fledgling AFPA. With a 10-1-2 record, they had more wins than anyone else in the league and a bigger local population than rival franchises in cities like Hammond, Ind., Muncie, Ind., and Rock Island, Ill.

Even if that boded well for the regional nature of the game at the time, George Halas had bigger ideas. He bought the team — then a company team representing the A.E. Staley Food Starch Co. — and moved it north to Chicago after only two seasons in Decatur.

The Windy City already had a team — two of them, in fact — but the dissolution of the Chicago Tigers in 1921 made the Cardinals and Staleys the only game in town. For nearly four decades, the city would be host to the Cardinals and the club that, in 1922, would become the Bears. Then the Bears effectively ran a near-bankruptcy Cardinals team out of town in 1960.

The Staleys/Bears would win eight NFL championships in the years between the move in 1921 and 1963 while appearing in four other title games. And though the years since have been a desert brought rain mostly by the Super Bowl Shufflin’ team of 1985, the Bears are one of only two original franchises to have survived the tumultuous early era of the NFL to stand tall in 2019.

[BizCat]

The Cleveland Browns become the Baltimore Ravens (and then resume their existence four years later)

First things first: this was a terrible move for Cleveland, who went three seasons without an NFL franchise and was then forced to deal with the Members Mark version of their former team over the past two decades. Art Modell righted the wrong of the Colts’ mad dash out of Maryland by doing pretty much the same thing to Cleveland, a city with a similarly impressive historical resume but limited recent success.

And, as long as you don’t look back at the Browns, this move was a rousing success. After three seasons of shaking off their just-moved malaise, the Ravens were a .500 team by 1999 — beating a revived Cleveland team twice that season — and a Super Bowl champion after the 2000 season. Baltimore was, unsurprisingly, stoked about this. Fans bought out the Ravens’ season ticket supply by 2004, and in 2016 the season ticket waiting list was a queue that would take an estimated 20 years to wind through.

Oh, and while the Browns have yet to make it to a Super Bowl, the Ravens have been twice in approximately one-third the time — and won them both (still hurts).

[BizCat]

The 49ers move from San Francisco to Santa Clara

While not an official relocation, the Niners left behind their blustery waterfront home at Candlestick Park in order to christen a $1.3 billion stadium in Santa Clara, some 40 miles away. In mild traffic, that’s about an hour’s drive from San Francisco, and that combination of that long commute, high prices, and uninspiring play have combined to sap the club’s homefield advantage in their new confines.

Levi’s Stadium opened in 2014 with the highest average ticket prices in the league, which wasn’t especially surprising given its location in one of the most expensive places to live in the world. The problem was that for elite prices, fans had the opportunity to wade through horrible traffic and watch a team that’s averaged five wins per year in its Santa Clara tenure.

Levi’s issues stretch beyond expensive seats and an uncomfortable commute. The stadium’s positioning and lack of shade means fans get roasted under a hotly reflected California sun in a problem executives have no idea how to fix. The turf condition ranges from mediocre to “terrible.” Officials once kicked out a Girl Scout celebration event to hold a more profitable concert, only to reverse course once EVERYONE IN THE WORLD told them what a bad idea this would be.

In short, Levi’s Stadium is garbage. Long live the frigid bay winds of Candlestick.

[BizCat]

Portsmouth Spartans become Detroit Lions

The Portsmouth (OH) Spartans formed in 1928 when the team began importing players from defunct independent professional and semi-pro teams. The following year, Portsmouth residents agreed to fund the construction of a football stadium that was comparable to those in neighboring communities along the Ohio River. That approval prompted the National Football League to offer the city a franchise in July 1930, and led to the construction of Universal Stadium, which opened September 14 with a capacity of 8,200. With less than 43,000 residents in 1930, Portsmouth became the NFL's second smallest city, ahead of only Green Bay, which had a population under 38,000. During the team's first year in the league, the Spartans compiled a record of 5–6–3, tying for seventh place in the eleven-team league in 1930.

Early highlights as the Portsmouth Spartans include the "iron man" game against Green Bay in 1932. In that game, Spartan coach Potsy Clark refused to make even a single substitution against the defending NFL champion Packers. Portsmouth won 19–0 and used only 11 players all game. At the end of the 1932 season, the Spartans were tied for first place in the league with the Chicago Bears. That prompted what in retrospect became known as the first NFL playoff game. Blizzard conditions in Chicago meant the game was moved from Wrigley Field's outdoor field to the indoor field at Chicago Stadium, which allowed for only an 80-yard field. The game was won 9–0 by the Bears, on a touchdown pass from Bronko Nagurski to Red Grange. The resulting interest led to the establishment of Eastern and Western conferences and a regular championship game beginning in 1933.

Despite success on the field, low revenue and the Great Depression threatened the Spartans' survival. In 1934, it was announced that a group led by George A. Richards, the owner of Detroit radio station WJR, bought the Spartans and moved them to Detroit for the 1934 season. Richards renamed the team the Lions, as a complement to the Detroit Tigers.

[Samus Aran]

Lions safety Glover Quin is retiring after 10 seasons of being quite productive but under the radar.

He wrote: "Football was never who I was as a person. It was always what I had done. I wanted to use football as a stepping stone into the rest of my life and not let football be my life. I always only wanted to play 10 years. Said if I was able to walk off the field after the last game in Year 10, it would be really hard for me to walk back on. I'm young, I'm healthy and I got a lot of life to live. So I'm walking away from the game of football."

[RageATL]

Originally Posted by Samus Aran

Lions safety Glover Quin is retiring after 10 seasons of being quite productive but under the radar.

He wrote: "Football was never who I was as a person. It was always what I had done. I wanted to use football as a stepping stone into the rest of my life and not let football be my life. I always only wanted to play 10 years. Said if I was able to walk off the field after the last game in Year 10, it would be really hard for me to walk back on. I'm young, I'm healthy and I got a lot of life to live. So I'm walking away from the game of football."

Solid player who is leaving on his own terms...ya gotta respect that.

[imsounoriginal]

Supplemental Draft happens this afternoon. Not sure who's worth keeping an eye on, but the radio mentioned Jalen Thompson (Safety) from Washington State.

[Samus Aran]

Originally Posted by imsounoriginal

Supplemental Draft happens this afternoon. Not sure who's worth keeping an eye on, but the radio mentioned Jalen Thompson (Safety) from Washington State.

Thompson was selected by the Cardinals, who gave up a fifth round pick for him. No one else was taken in the supplemental draft.

[BizCat]

Originally Posted by RageATL

Solid player who is leaving on his own terms...ya gotta respect that.

I'll miss him.

[ChadFL]

Apparently Albert Haynesworth is suffering kidney failure and begging for a kidney donation on social media. I feel for him, but unfortunately for Haynesworth this probably isn't going to end well. Many people die on the kidney transplant waitlist who are in better health than Haynesworth and you can't just pay to cut ahead in line. His case sounds too dire for him to be a suitable candidate for a transplant.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap300...ney-transplant

[imsounoriginal]

Shame about Haynesworth. I live in an area where mention of his name brings about passionate derision, but we often forget that players are people at the end of the day.

[Bigdog]

Originally Posted by ChadFL

Apparently Albert Haynesworth is suffering kidney failure and begging for a kidney donation on social media. I feel for him, but unfortunately for Haynesworth this probably isn't going to end well. Many people die on the kidney transplant waitlist who are in better health than Haynesworth and you can't just pay to cut ahead in line. His case sounds too dire for him to be a suitable candidate for a transplant.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap300...ney-transplant

I hope he somehow finds the miracle he needs here, 38 is just too young to go...

[fatediesel]

Getting close to camp so naturally a player threatening to holdout:

Adam Schefter
‏Verified account @AdamSchefter

Los Angeles running back Melvin Gordon has informed the Chargers that unless he receives a new contract, he will not report to training camp and he will demand a trade, his agent Fletcher Smith told ESPN.

Think he's been paying too much attention to the NBA where players have the power to force trades because I can't see many teams willing to give up significant assets for a running back in a trade plus a big contract.

[imsounoriginal]

He's on the fifth-year option of his rookie contract and scheduled to make $5.6M. Of course the market is unkind to RBs and I don't think a trade will happen, but I'm sure there's a team with the need and cap space to have at least a little interest.

[BizCat]

Originally Posted by imsounoriginal

Shame about Haynesworth. I live in an area where mention of his name brings about passionate derision, but we often forget that players are people at the end of the day.

He could have been so good had he not gotten lazy.

Either way, shame for what he is going through.. hope it works out.

[Samus Aran]

Jalen Richard went all in on being anti-vax on Twitter.

[Moviefan1203]

Originally Posted by imsounoriginal

He's on the fifth-year option of his rookie contract and scheduled to make $5.6M. Of course the market is unkind to RBs and I don't think a trade will happen, but I'm sure there's a team with the need and cap space to have at least a little interest.

His injury history might spook some teams.