KANSAS CITY, Mo. — From just about the minute the plummet-back-to-earth 2025 season ended for the Chiefs, coach Andy Reid has seemed almost eerily upbeat and energized.

Certainly, that was his abiding demeanor in a pre-NFL scouting combine meeting with the media over Zoom. And it was what he projected in a pre-NFL draft session that came ...Read more

CHICAGO — As lawmakers consider helping the Chicago Bears build a new stadium, the ghosts of past stadium deals still haunt the present.

Soldier Field, Rate Field and even Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis loom over the landscape, marking steel and concrete warnings and justifications for a new stadium deal. Critics and boosters alike say we ...Read more

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is in the midst of an ongoing knee-rehab process after tearing his ACL and LCL during a game in mid-December.

This weekend, the Chiefs played host to their annual rookie minicamp in Kansas City. Veteran players are slated to enter the fold for Phase 2 of the team’s offseason ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — Sometimes, it’s funny what draft picks can turn into.

The Steelers sent George Pickens to the Dallas Cowboys a year ago this month and effectively got Drew Allar in return, more or less. The compensatory selections they received for letting Dan Moore Jr. and Justin Fields leave in free agency effectively allowed them to draft ...Read more

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There’s a man who saved the life of Laveranues Coles.

And Coles will testify to that.

He just doesn’t know the man’s name.

“I’ve battled with this over the last month,” Coles told The Charlotte Observer on Thursday morning. He was set to speak in about an hour to the Hood Hargett Breakfast Club, a membership ...Read more

MIAMI — Everyone (and by everyone I mean the folks who set the betting odds driven by public consensus) agrees the Miami Dolphins will be pretty awful this coming season. Whether they will be awful enough is open to some debate. So is how they might parlay that awfulness to best advantage ... and how they should.

All of the above assures this...Read more

PITTSBURGH — In the post-NFL draft era, the mania of predicting which players will be drafted by what teams has been replaced by the ungovernable excessiveness of evaluating how well teams drafted which players.

Both can be profitless exercises in futility.

The success or failure of the Steelers’ most recent draft, which got off to a bit ...Read more

I don’t buy the idea of a “weak” draft class.

Every draft gives 32 teams a chance to get younger, cheaper and better: the holy trinity of roster building.

The board may not be overflowing with blue-chippers. The depth may get uncomfortable by Saturday afternoon. But every team in the NFL still gets three days to find starters, role ...Read more

Patriots quarterback Drake Maye backed his head coach, Mike Vrabel, on Thursday.

Maye, speaking at a Best Buddies event, was asked about Vrabel amid the head coach’s off-field controversy.

“We’re here for coach, we love coach and what he does for us, and has done for us this past year. You can’t speak it into words, and thankfully, he�...Read more

BALTIMORE — A familiar face is returning to the Ravens as they try to shore up their defensive front.

Calais Campbell, who played for Baltimore from 2020 to 2022, is signing a one-year deal, a source with direct knowledge of the situation confirmed to The Baltimore Sun on Thursday. Terms of the agreement were not immediately available. He ...Read more

The 2026 NFL draft is in the books, and the San Francisco 49ers made one thing abundantly clear: Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch do not care what the rest of the league is doing or thinking.

They never really have, but they’re really reveling in their counterculture these days.

And so they spent this past weekend staring at a glaring, blinking-...Read more

DENVER — With Fixed Nix, it’s not the ankle. It’s the messaging.

It’s accounts that scramble from hashmark to hashmark, depending on the week and the narrator, looking to buy more time. Only the off-season’s pocket — the Denver Broncos’ four-month window to refresh, reset, renovate, resuscitate and reload — is collapsing fast, ...Read more

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — No doubt the Kansas City Chiefs entered the 2026 NFL draft with a concealed but zealous focus: applying their best-perched pick since 2013 to LSU cornerback Mansoor Delane, whom they valued enough to trade up from the No. 9 slot to sixth overall.

But they hadn’t exactly envisioned deploying their first four selections, ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — Ben Roethlisberger, a lightly recruited high school quarterback who developed into a first-round pick, seems underwhelmed by the Steelers’ selection of Penn State quarterback Drew Allar, a five-star recruit who became a third-round selection.

Allar “never jumped off the page to me,” the retired Steelers quarterback says in ...Read more

Josh Mauro, a former defensive end who spent six of his eight NFL seasons with the Arizona Cardinals, has died at age 35.

"With many tears and broken hearts, yet anchored in the unshakable certainty that our precious Josh Mauro is now healed and made new — living in the presence of the Lord — we humbly covet your prayers as our family walks...Read more

PITTSBURGH — Based on the initial reaction among fans and many media members both locally and nationally, the Pittsburgh Steelers had a very underwhelming draft class.

They made 10 picks and most sparked some valid questions about where they fit and/or why the Steelers drafted them so high when they were likely to be on the board later.

Penn...Read more

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Gov. JB Pritzker said Tuesday legislation that passed through the Illinois House last week to help the Chicago Bears move to Arlington Heights “is within the framework” of a deal that the team would be willing to agree to, while acknowledging the bill needs changes as it moves through the Senate.

With the Illinois ...Read more

BALTIMORE — The Ravens already know who their top two quarterbacks will be this season. Who the No. 3 option behind Lamar Jackson and Tyler Huntley will be, though, is still unclear. They have added at least two players to the mix.

Quarterbacks Diego Pavia and Joe Fagnano each agreed to a three-year deal with Baltimore, a source with direct ...Read more