On Pro Football: Falling Short Again, Legacy of Belichick and Brady Loses Some Luster

On Pro Football: Falling Short Again, Legacy of Belichick and Brady Loses Some Luster Back in February 2005, when Bill Belichick and Tom Brady hoisted the Super Bowl trophy for the third time in four seasons, they seemed like a safe bet for greatest coach-quarterback combination in N.F.L. history. That was before the videotaping scandal known as Spygate ensnarled New England, before the Super Bowl defeat in 2008.

That was before Sunday, too.

Again, the New England Patriots not only reached the Super Bowl but led the Giants late in the fourth quarter. Again, they lost a heartbreaker. This, though, is where the question of Brady and Belichick’s collective legacy gets tricky, even for two men certain to reach the Hall of Fame.

Between them, B&B boast 5 Super Bowl appearances and 16 playoff victories, the most for any one such pairing. But while Brady and Belichick have won numerous games and twice put themselves this close, the slim space between thumb and forefinger, to another championship in recent years, their recent history is that of falling short, closer to the Buffalo Bills of the early 1990s than any historic N.F.L. dynasties.

In the immediate aftermath of Super Bowl XLVI, a dour Belichick grunted one-word answers at his podium. This supposedly new Belichick, warm and fuzzy throughout the week, clad once in a lilac-patterned shirt and another time in a violet tie, had returned to vintage form, right down to his classic grey hoodie and postgame disdain. Asked if he would explain his thought process in allowing the Giants to score late to get the ball back, he answered quickly, simply, “No.”

Brady descended his own podium, walked down a corridor and sank into the waiting arms of his wife, the model Gisele Bündchen. They embraced for a long time.

Soon after, a video would hit the Internet, with Bündchen defending Brady to hecklers. She swore in the video and said her husband could not throw the ball and catch it, an obvious dig at receivers Wes Welker and Deion Branch, both of whom dropped critical passes.

That’s the funny thing about legacies, how easily they can shift. If Rob Gronkowski does not injure his ankle against the Baltimore Ravens, if Welker’s hands secure the ball, if Brady doesn’t throw an interception, perhaps the Patriots win. Perhaps Brady and Belichick move closer to assuming the title of greatest combo of all time. An inch here, a correction there, and everything is different.

Say Asante Samuel secured the interception he dropped in the Super Bowl four years ago. The Patriots would then stand with the Packers of the 1960s, the Steelers of the 1970s, the 49ers of the ’80s and the Cowboys of the ’90s; stand, if not at the top, then near it.

The Patriots have won 86 games since their last Super Bowl championship, in 2005. The key phrase to add is “and counting.”

The elephant in the room is Spygate, of course, even if the scope of the scandal — and the impact of the information the Patriots illegally obtained — is dismissed by Belichick supporters. The N.F.L. made its feelings clear on the subject when it docked New England a first-round draft choice and fined Belichick and the Patriots $750,000 total, a penalty among the steepest the league has ever levied.

The Patriots have continued to achieve success, to win games and division titles, since the controversy dimmed. But where they once seized Super Bowls by the slimmest of margins, they have recently lost them exactly the same way.

The last time Brady lost to the Giants, he said he struggled to sleep, woke up after an hour and thought “that didn’t happen.” This time, Brady must confront both his wife’s unfortunate comments and the window remaining in his career, which has shrunk considerably since 2008.

This current Patriots team, while obviously talented, is not as deep as the ones that won the championships. There are fewer Richard Seymours, Rodney Harrisons and Ty Laws around. That was evident Sunday.

Now, Brady and Belichick hold a 3-2 mark in Super Bowls, which is nothing to scoff at, which is remarkable, really, just a cut below other combinations. Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll never lost in their four Super Bowls. Joe Montana and Bill Walsh went 3-0 and Montana won a fourth title with a team that Walsh largely built.

It’s hard to argue that Brady and Belichick are even the best quarterback-coach combination of the past four seasons, not after Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin bested them in the Super Bowl, not once, but twice. This is how quickly perceptions shift, even since the events of Sunday ended.

Back at his podium, as Belichick addressed reporters, his voice dripped with that classic dry annoyance. “Any more questions about the game?” he asked. He didn’t get that after another Super Bowl defeat, the most pertinent questions, of his legacy in particular, went beyond that.

More Evidence Big Football Players Face Heart Risks

More Evidence Big Football Players Face Heart Risks The report in the American Journal of Cardiology followed more than 3,400 National Football League (NFL) players who were active between 1959 and 1988, and found that 334 had died by 2007 -- only about half the rate that would be expected based on U.S. norms.

But certain players, the ones who were biggest during their careers, had higher risks of dying from heart disease or stroke, with defensive linemen especially vulnerable.

The findings build on evidence that football players' big bodies can become a health liability in the long run, said Sherry Baron, a researcher at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Cincinnati, who led the study.

"I think this makes it clear that if you're big and muscular at a young age, it could have a long-term (health) effect," she said.

According to the study, defensive linemen had a 42 percent higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease compared with U.S. men in general. Of 498 defensive linemen, 41 died of cardiovascular causes.

Often, professional athletes' muscle mass can make for a high body mass index (BMI), a commonly used measure of weight in relation to height, and Baron said there was an argument that a high BMI based on muscle is not so bad.

The problem, though, is that once big athletes are no longer in the game, it's very hard to keep up their former physical activity levels, she added. Sometimes, injury can make it impossible.

The study also showed that players with a BMI of 30 or higher during their careers, which would qualify them as "obese," were twice as likely to die of cardiovascular causes as their lighter peers.

As for why the ex-players had a lower overall mortality rate than the general public, the authors said one factor was likely to be that few of them smoke, which has been shown in previous studies.

The high BMI numbers might not reflect the fact that more of their weight is based on muscle mass, and their overall higher fitness level and body composition may help as well, they wrote.

But other studies have found that after retirement, pro football players tend to have more heart risk factors, such as high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol levels and obesity, than the general public.

Cardiologists said the current study has some limitations.

One is that it relied on information from death certificates, which do not always give the whole picture, said Martin Goldman, a cardiologist at Mt Sinai Medical Center in New York, who has studied heart risks for NFL players.

There are also many unknowns, such as how the players' BMIs changed over time, or what kind of lifestyle they led after retirement.

Still, he agreed that the bottom line does seem to be that size matters, adding that big players need to make an effort to lose weight once they're no longer playing.

"They don't necessarily change their eating habits, even though they're not exercising as much," he said.

Both Baron and Goldman agreed that there are implications beyond the NFL, since college and high school football players tend to bulk up to play. And there is evidence this may put them at risk for heart disease later on.

"Young athletes may strive to look like the professional players, but they need to realize there could be long-term health effects," Baron added. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/xPPpyF

(Reporting from New York by Amy Norton at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies and Bob Tourtellotte)

The Fifth Down: Long Live Football. Football Is Dead?

The Fifth Down: Long Live Football. Football Is Dead?

During the Super Bowl, the N.F.L. used a minute of commercial time to pat itself on the back for its history of progress and safety innovations. The commercial ended with these words: “Here’s to making the next century safer and more exciting. Forever forward. Forever football.”

A week after the game, ESPN’s Grantland.com posted an article by the economists Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier that had a slightly different interpretation of “forever.”

The NFL is done for the year, but it is not pure fantasy to suggest that it may be done for good in the not-too-distant future. How might such a doomsday scenario play out and what would be the economic and social consequences?

The most plausible route to the death of football starts with liability suits.

So the battle is joined.

On the one hand, the N.F.L. commercial described the adoption of the hard plastic helmet as an improvement. On the other, the transition from a leather helmet to a hard one soon made players feel so protected that they started using it as a weapon.

A Wall Street Journal article in 2009 included a comparison with Australian Rules Football, a festival of sport and violence, but one without helmets:

When comparing AFL research studies and official NFL injury reports, AFL players appear to get hurt more often on the whole with things like shoulder injuries and tweaked knees. But when it comes to head injuries, the helmeted NFL players are about 25% more likely to sustain one.

After huge TV ratings for the Giants-Patriots Super Bowl, football appears to be at a peak. Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated wrote, “Endless keystrokes and bandwidth will be spent repeatedly quantifying the obvious conclusion that the NFL is the most popular sport in America.”

Right, but then there’s this: Tony Dorsett squealing like a pig. The video below is a counterpoint to the N.F.L. advertisement at the top. Dorsett, one of the most breathtaking players of the 1970s, and one of many N.F.L. alumni struggling with memory problems, is joining hundreds of former players in a lawsuit against the N.F.L. At one point in the video, Dorsett imitates the sounds he emitted — “squealing almost like a pig,” he said — while trying to play through a particularly painful injury.

Dorsett was a running back. The N.F.L. has been expanding its definition of defenseless players, but there are situations in which it is legal to hit a vulnerable running back in the head with maximum ferocity. How seriously can the N.F.L.’s horn tooting about safety be taken if that’s still true?

Extra point Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com took issue with the ESPN article, but regardless of who’s right about the long-term health of the sport, parents need to be armed with knowledge about how safe, or unsafe, it is for their children to play youth football. And the N.F.L. sets the example for all levels of play.

What changes would you like to see the N.F.L. make in the off-season, if any, to improve player safety?