McCourty twins reunite after 10 seasons of contrasting NFL successes ... Alliance of American Football set to launch next February ... Jags release Hurns
Asserting that twins Devin and Jason McCourty, between them, have started 19 playoff games, seven straight AFC title games and two Super Bowls is sorta like saying that the late hotel tycoon and philanthropist
Conrad Hilton and his great-granddaughter Paris Hilton, between them, have brought honour to their family name.
It’s all thanks entirely to one, not both.
In the case of the 12th set of twins to play in the NFL, Devin McCourty over his eight-year NFL career with the New England Patriots has been about as fortunate from a post-season participation standpoint as any NFL player could hope. He has played in at least two playoff games after every season but his first, when the Patriots in 2010 went oneand-done in January.
In contrast, Jason McCourty entered the NFL a year before his 30-yearold identical-twin bro, but still has yet to play past New Year’s weekend. That is, in the post-season, after eight years in Tennessee and one in Cleveland.
Odds are, Jason’s luck will change this year.
Last week the Browns traded Jason McCourty to the Patriots. Since 2001 the Patriots have missed the playoffs just once, in a season (2008) when Tom Brady blew out an ACL.
The cornerback will join his brother in the New England secondary, where Devin has started at safety for the past six seasons, after two years as a corner.
Asked on a conference call Tuesday what it’s been like to be on the ‘nothing’ end of the twins’ combined all-or-nothing playoff experiences, Jason said:
“Being able to watch my brother’s success — man, it’s been really cool. Us being twins, growing up extremely close like we did, the one thing you kind of always wish is the maximum amount of success for your brother.
“In regards to me, I’m excited just about the opportunity. I guess, just to be able to now share the field with Dev, and just be able to do something that we grew up loving … You think back to being 10 years old, waking up early to head to a Pop Warner game.”
That youth team was the Valley Cottage (N.Y.) Indians, in the up-Hudson River hamlet where the brothers were raised, about 50 km north of Manhattan. The McCourtys thereafter played on the same football teams through high school and in college, at Rutgers.
With Malcolm Butler having signed a free-agent deal in Tennessee, the Patriots need a new starting cornerback opposite the entrenched Stephon Gilmore. Jason, who says he’s for sure faster than his brother, ought to have a great chance to win that job this spring and summer.
SPRING FOOTBALL LOGJAM
Yet another spring pro football league has announced its launch.
The Alliance of American Football (the AAF?) will debut next February, after Super Bowl LIII, according to Charlie Ebersol.
Former Buffalo Bills and Indianapolis Colts GM Bill Polian will help run the league, which aspires to have eight teams of 50 players apiece, according to reports.
“There are 28,000 Division I football players,” Ebersol told ESPN.com. “Only 1,700 have NFL jobs. We’re looking for those Kurt Warners working in grocery stores and we think we will find them.”
The XFL, another U.S. spring outdoor pro football league, is slated to return in spring 2020. As well, the CFL intends to move the start of its season earlier in the calendar, to late spring.
TWO BIG JAGS CUTS
In a pair of surprising moves, Jacksonville cut two veteran pass catchers: first WR Allen Hurns, whom the club signed to a $40.7-million, four-year deal just two years ago; then
Marcedes Lewis, a tight end who’d been the longest-serving Jaguars player.
The move means both of the team’s “Allen and Allen” starting receivers from two years ago are gone. Allen
Robinson signed as a free agent in Chicago last week.
The 33-year-old Lewis had been with the Jags since being drafted No. 28 overall in 2006. The club only last month exercised its 2018 option — at a cost of $500,000 — on the $12-million contract Lewis signed two years ago.
The latter move clears $3.5 million in cap space for Jacksonville, per Spotrac.com.
“I think I deserved a little better than I got,” Lewis told the Associated Press. “I wish they would have done it sooner.”
Why the move now? Because on the weekend the Jags inked younger, faster free-agent tight end Austin Sefarian-Jenkins,
the former Tampa Bay and New York Jets starter.
CATCH RULE, UPDATE
As I was first to report three weeks ago at the Scouting Combine, it looks as though the NFL indeed will now permit slight movement of the ball, if it otherwise is securely possessed on a catch. This, according to the league’s VP of football operations, Troy Vincent, in an interview with the Washington Post’s Mark Maske. Vincent confirmed numerous reports from the combine that owners will vote on removing the “survive the ground” element from the catch rule, something I’ve exclusively reported has unanimous backing from the NFL’s competition committee as well as representative coaches, game officials and players.
EXTRA POINTS
In the first NFL trade since winter turned to spring, Dallas acquired FB/RB Jamize
Olawale and a 2018 sixthround draft pick (192nd overall) from Oakland, in exchange for the Cowboys’ fifth-rounder (173rd overall). Olawale is a prototypical blocking fullback, who in six seasons has played in 77 games but has had only 55 carries for 206 yards … Freeagent DT Ndamukong Suh apparently did not reach a deal with the Los Angeles Rams, as many believed was imminent. Instead, reports late Tuesday afternoon said Suh had lined up a visit with the Oakland Raiders … Buffalo signed ex-Raider OT Marshall Newhouse and ex-Cincinnati C Russell Bodine … Indianapolis signed nine-year veteran C/G Matt Slauson, and confirmed the signing of WR
Ryan Grant, less than a week after Baltimore voided its free-agent deal with grant for having failed a team physical …WR Jarius Wright signed with Carolina … New Orleans denied that a deal with WR
Eric Decker was imminent.