It's only Week 1, but Sunday's game between the San Francisco 49ers and Minnesota Vikings is going to be very revealing.
It's going to give us our first glimpse at quarterback Kirk Cousins in the Vikings' offense. And it's going to tell us if the 49ers, who have been hyped as a playoff sleeper in a crowded NFC ever since Jimmy Garoppolo's emergence a season ago, are a legitimate force or if they're not quite ready to hang with the actual Super Bowl contenders.
On Sunday, it's 49ers-Vikings in game between a legitimate Super Bowl contender (Vikings) and a potential playoff contender (49ers).
How to watch, stream
Kickoff: Sunday at 1 p.m. ET
Sunday at 1 p.m. ET TV: Fox (Check local listings)
Fox (Check local listings) Streaming: fuboTV (Try for free)
We'll be bringing you live updates throughout the game. All you have to do is scroll down below for our live blog. After the game, this story will turn into a recap with all the takeaways you need to know from the game, so be sure to keep it locked here or check back later.
Let's get to it.
Thank you for joining us.
This Town author Mark Leibovich switches from politics to the Pats and finds a game blitzed by powerful outside forces
The National Football League bills itself as a non-taxable trade association that promotes the “interests of its 32 member clubs”. These days, it may need to add the title of America’s favorite tackling dummy. From the president to Colin Kaepernick to worried parents, the NFL is under a never-ceasing, bone-crushing blitz. Nike’s swoosh hits harder than any middle linebacker.
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The game pits Donald Trump, his supporters, predominately white owners and fans, against a labor pool that is 70% black. In the words of the late Tex Schramm, the Dallas Cowboys’ first president and general manager, to the late Gene Upshaw, a Hall of Fame offensive lineman and executive director of the players’ association: “You guys are cattle and we’re the ranchers … And ranchers can always get more cattle.”
Into this morass dives the New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich. His book is an entertainingly informative bird’s-eye take on the country’s still-favorite sport in the age of uncertainty and never-ending culture wars. As Leibovich observes, professional football has become “a proxy for our national divisions”, adding that “no one buys tickets to watch a morality play”. Apparently, the choice is binary.
A Patriots fan, Leibovich chronicles the five-time NFL champions from the beginning of their 2014 season through their defeat in Super Bowl LII last February. He treats the reader to Tom Brady’s training regimen, football’s concussion problem, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ affinity for Johnnie Walker Blue in 24oz stadium cups, and steaming dollops of Trump. Make no mistake, smooth scotch goes down easier than a teetotaling president.
Commissioner Pete Rozelle saw Trump as 'this scumbag huckster' and a 'New York fast-talking kind of con man'
Trump is a man liked by some of the owners, distrusted by the NFL brass and reportedly disdained by Gisele Bündchen, Brady’s wife. Indeed, it was Bündchen who helped put the kibosh on Brady visiting the White House after the Patriots won Super Bowl LI in 2017.
Nor is Bündchen alone. As Leibovich describes things, Pete Rozelle, the former NFL commissioner, took a dim view of Trump, and his take ultimately took hold at 345 Park Avenue, NFL headquarters. Quoting fellow author Jeff Pearlman, Leibovich writes that Rozelle saw Trump as “this scumbag huckster” and a “New York fast-talking kind of con man”. Even Tony Soprano got more respect from Johnny Sack’s crew.
Roger Goodell – the current NFL commissioner, a Rozelle protege and the son of an anti-Vietnam Republican senator from New York – is more circumspect in describing Trump. Still, drizzles of disdain are in the air.
When asked about Trump, Goodell volunteered that we live in “interesting times” and smirked when asked if he maintained a back channel to the president. For good measure, Goodell added: “Our focus is on what we do … Our focus is on the game itself.” Yes, we’ve heard that line before. For his woes, Goodell is comforted by $40m annually even without holding any actual equity interest in the game.
On top of the president wishing Ivanka Trump had paired off with Brady instead of Jared the Middle East negotiator, Big Game spells out that Trump always coveted an NFL franchise but was never viewed as financially worthy. Trump helped drive the USFL and his New Jersey Generals into the ground back in the 1980s; in 2014, his gambit for the Buffalo Bills went nowhere.
NFL 2018 predictions: our writers call the winners, losers and also-rans Read more
In particular, Trump lacked the requisite liquidity and transparency to shoulder a team. “Football owners,” Leibovich writes, “… get a much closer look at a candidate’s finances than electorates do.” Indeed, in a 2012 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, first reported by the Guardian, Trump’s liquid assets clocked in at $250m, nothing to sneeze at but also not the kind of cash needed to roam the halls alongside the NFL’s titans, who include Paul Allen, a Microsoft founder and owner of the Seattle Seahawks.
For the statistically inclined, Forbes pegs Allen as No44 on its rich list while Robert Kraft, the Pats owner, is 281 and the Cowboys’ Jones a mere 321. Trump languishes in 766th place, dropping 200 in a year. Indeed, in the midst of the 2016 presidential race, Kushner confided to Steve Bannon that his father-in-law was cash-strapped.
Executive time, the Robert Mueller investigation and Stormy Daniels have come with a hefty price. To paraphrase the president, vice and emoluments are expensive.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Colin Kaepernick is sacked by Dwight Freeney and Ricardo Mathews of San Diego, in a San Francisco home game in December 2014. Photograph: Ben Margot/AP
Actually because of its nuggets, yucks and giggles, Big Game is a dead serious work. Leibovich agonizingly depicts the toll the sport exacts on the life expectancy, mental capacity and health of those brave and talented enough to make it to the pros. The book records the reactions of NFL Hall of Famers whose short-term memories are addled and a front office whose relationship to brain injuries and the truth is all too reminiscent of Big Tobacco’s approach to cigarettes and cancer.
Ultimately, Leibovich is focused on the question of how long “peak football” can stay on top of its game. He offers no simple answer.
Nike just thrust Kaepernick back in the spotlight – where he belongs | Khaled A Beydoun Read more
He notes that last season the NFL suffered its lowest Super Bowl viewership in almost a decade and its highest number of concussions in six years. Thursday night’s opener between the champion Philadelphia Eagles and the Atlanta Falcons saw the Nike ad narrated by Kaepernick air during the second half. Michael Bennett, an Eagles defensive end, sat during a portion of the anthem.
Even as the league’s revenues continue to grow, interest in pro football has declined. In 2014, nearly three in five registered voters closely followed it. Now the figure is barely half. Like organized religion, the NFL is losing its luster.
All this spells “another nonstop Christmas for the NFL doomsayers”. Yet as Leibovich notes, the “league just kept printing money to buy presents … They don’t make doomed sports leagues like they used to.” The fact that football legends Troy Aikman and Brett Favre have voiced concerns about their “hypothetical sons” following in their footsteps barely registers as a footnote on a balance sheet. Yet.
How does it all end? As the story fittingly concludes: “We await the replay.”
During the offseason, while he stayed away from the team and mulled retirement, the Patriots engaged in trade talks centered around star tight end Rob Gronkowski. They had several interested parties, and at one point, it appeared a deal would get done to send Gronk to a new team, sources say.
But when Gronkowski learned of his new reality, he strongly resisted. He informed the Patriots that he would rather step away from football and retire than play for another team, coach or quarterback. He told people close to him that he only wants to catch passes from Tom Brady.
Any trade likely would have come with a new contract for Gronkowski, and without his cooperation, no trade was consummated. the 2017 season had been difficult for Gronkowski, and he openly mused about retirement after the Super Bowl. He wanted to work out with guru Alex Guerrero because he believed the trainer helped him feel as good as he's ever felt.
This all led to an in-person meeting with coach Bill Belichick, Gronkowski's longtime agent Drew Rosenhaus and Gronkowski, one that culminated in Gronk's Instagram announcing he was back. Two weeks ago, the two sides agreed on a reworked contract to give him higher upside.
The team considers him year-to-year, but the events of this offseason likely sealed his fate as a member of the Patriots until he steps away from the NFL for good.
Follow Ian Rapoport on Twitter @RapSheet.
Adam Schefter reports the latest on the NFL's anticipated decision to not implement a new national anthem policy this season. (0:52)
The NFL is not expected to implement a new policy on the national anthem this season, league sources told ESPN, no matter how many meetings and conversations occur regarding the topic.
The new policy is going to be no policy -- at least for this season, according to sources.
Too many people have stances too strong to figure out a compromise, but an NFL official insisted Sunday morning that there is continuing dialogue on the topic as the league looks for ways to address social justice issues.
Players began sitting or kneeling during the anthem in 2016 to protest racial inequality, police brutality and other issues. The protests have become a divisive topic of debate, and the NFL and players' union still haven't said whether players will be punished this season if they choose to kneel or demonstrate during the anthem.
President Donald Trump has been a regular critic of NFL players demonstrating during the national anthem since the 2016 campaign. On Sunday, Trump said NFL ratings could decline further if players do not stand for the anthem and if television networks do not broadcast the pregame ceremony.
Wow, NFL first game ratings are way down over an already really bad last year comparison. Viewership declined 13%, the lowest in over a decade. If the players stood proudly for our Flag and Anthem, and it is all shown on broadcast, maybe ratings could come back? Otherwise worse! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 9, 2018
NBC ratings for the Atlanta Falcons-Philadelphia Eagles season opener Thursday were down 13 percent, but the kickoff was delayed by more than 30 minutes due to rain, pushing the broadcast later into the evening. NFL ratings were down 9.7 percent overall for the 2017 regular season, though Nielsen data shows that the 20 of the 30 highest-rated shows on television in 2017 were football games.
The NFL passed a new anthem policy in May, but those rules were put on hold to allow the league and union to further discuss the issue. Of the 2,880 players who were on the sidelines for preseason games this year, only two players took a knee and one sat during the anthem.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
