A sport at the crossroads
A UK franchise will happen, according to Monday Morning quarterback host Peter King, but there may be difficult times ahead, hears Stewart Fisher
WHAT better way to survey the state of play in the NFL than a Sunday morning sit-down with the Monday morning quarterback? Peter King has seen most things in his 33 years covering American football, the last 28 of which have been served with Sports Illustrated. But the gridiron game is at another crossroads, as this respected veteran sports writer and author crossed the pond to spread the gospel for the game in Edinburgh last week.
Part of the board of the selectors for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, King was sharing a stage with the former LA Rams and Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner and the recentlyretired trash-talking former Carolina Panthers and Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Steve Smith Snr. The former, a starter in three Super Bowls, will take his place in Canton, Ohio, this year, while the latter – seventh on the all-time list for receiving yards – will surely join him as soon as he becomes eligible for selection in 2022.
Ahead of the latest edition of the NFL draft, which takes place at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from Thursday, King is ruminating on the theme of tradition. In particular, he is outlining why some are worth fighting for and others can be dispensed with. In this regard, he welcomes the increasing imperative to build on the league’s successful international series matches at Wembley, and now Twickenham, by establishing in the UK the league’s first non-American based franchise. In fact, King feels that process is inevitable and could be less than a decade away.
Yet he rails against the idea of uprooting established franchises from their historical heartlands. The St Louis Rams returning to Los Angeles last season was one thing, but the San Diego Chargers joining them in La La Land this year (they began life as the LA Chargers in 1960, only to spend the intervening half -century two hours down the Californian coast) and the Oakland Raiders moving to Las Vegas, Nevada, by the 2020 season, all seem like too much in the way of innovation.
“A UK franchise is going to happen – even though you will have a bunch of people pissed off about it,” King, 59, said. “Imagine people in Liverpool saying that they and Everton have to go over and play in New Jersey now, because they have brought in a Barclays Premier League franchise in New Jersey. It is a seismic shift. But the way the NFL work is that they are not afraid to take some chances. And not afraid to fail.
“Having said that, some of the things the NFL are doing are stupid. Moving the Oakland Raiders – stupid. Moving the San Diego Chargers – stupid. Those moves are stupid because they have chosen stadiums over fans. “I am a big baseball fan, too, and the Chicago Cubs play in a place called Wrigley Field which is an old dump and the Boston Red Sox play in Fenway Park which has been refurbished but it’s still microscopic compared to the huge stadiums in baseball. If that was the NFL they would have thrown the Red Sox out of Fenway and thrown the Cubs out of Wrigley Field and the two greatest parks in Major League Baseball would be no more. They would say ‘you just have to build a new stadium’. That ticks me off. The NFL has no regard for some of the great traditions – how you can have the NFL without the Oakland Raiders in it?
“But I have a different feeling about starting a franchise over here [the UK]. Because if the NFL tomorrow lost the Jacksonville Jaguars, there is not going to be a lot of people crying over it.
“If the Jacksonville Jaguars played in London, and not Jacksonville, OK the other teams in their division would be pretty ticked off because they would have to fly seven hours to go and play them, but in general I think it would be a good experiment. I don’t care if they move or not, but all I am saying is that someone eventually is going to move to London. It is going to happen. Six, seven, eight years down the road, I am convinced that by the mid-2020s, say 2024 or 2025, there will be a franchise here.”
Myles Garrett, a defensive end from Texas A&M, is widely tipped to be the choice when the Cleveland Browns go on the clock to choose the No 1 overall draft pick, but a decade spent in combines and war rooms has provided King with an interesting view of the whole recruitment procedure. He illustrates the point with reference to current champions, the New England Patriots, and their poster boy Tom Brady, their four-time Super Bowl MVP and five-time winning quarterback who was plucked from college in Michigan at the end of the sixth round, the 199th pick of the 2000 draft.
“The draft is just such an inexact science,” King said. “The New England Patriots are the best team in the 33 years I have covered the sport. Look, the [San Francisco] 49ers are close [during the 1980s] but I think the Patriots are better. And on the last drive of the fourth quarter in the Super Bowl, when they tied the Atlanta Falcons and took things into overtime, they had 11 players on the field, the five offensive linemen, or the six players who touched the ball on that drive and only one of them was drafted in the top 75 players [Nate Solder].
“The one thing the draft doesn’t measure is how much someone really wants to be great. And Tom Brady, over and over and over, has proven that he is going to figure out a way to beat you because he has this intense desire. He is going to go down in history as one of the league’s most unique players, mainly because really he has no business doing it. There are so many guys on that team you just shake your head at and say ‘what are they doing here?’ Julian Edelman, a seventh-round pick, was a tiny quarterback in college. Chris Hogan [the wide receiver] played lacrosse.”
The NFL is a formidable machine, but one further threat to the whole operation is the increasing number of players – the 49ers Chris Borland and the Ravens’ Zachary Orr to name but a few – opting to retire early for fear of the cumulative effect of concussive head injuries.
“It is the fear of the unknown,” King said. “One hit can ruin your life. So when these guys retire early I say ‘good for you’, you made a conscious choice, a conscious decision. We are going to see more of that and people say that is going to be the ruination of the game, but it won’t be. If you ever go to Texas, Florida or Georgia and you see what high school football is like out there, it is the single most important thing in the life of these towns.”
A UK franchise is going to happen – even though you will have a bunch of people pissed off about it