Mike Tunison

Whose continued success is worse for their league: Pats or Warriors?

The Warriors had little trouble avenging their NBA Finals loss in 2016, polishing off the Cavaliers in five games even though LeBron James was still dominant in his own right.

10 NFL veterans with something to prove in 2017

The mantra of the NFL is “what have you done for me lately?” Players are reassessed wildly on a week-to-week basis during the regular season. Have a full

Nothing has lower stakes than the Jets’ 2017 QB battle

The biggest news out of New York Jets OTAs this week is that journeyman Josh McCown appears to have taken a commanding lead in the team’s quarterback battle against Bryce Petty and Christian Hackenberg.

It’s our civic duty to stop attending Super Bowls in new stadiums

The news this week that the first Los Angeles Super Bowl in nearly 50 years (30 if you count Pasadena) is being pushed back until presumably 2022 sent a tizzy into the minds of the sort of people who think about Super Bowl locations five years in advance, which is to say people invested in the business of football.

Gisele brings focus on Brady’s late career back to head injuries

What’s the difference between a brain that has sustained injuries from playing football until the age of 40 and a brain that has sustained injuries until the age of 45?

On Kaepernick, Peter King is once again the NFL’s useful fool

A point of contention throughout the NFL off-season has been whether Colin Kaepernick is being blackballed by the world of professional football over his national anthem protest, which the quarterback has already admitted he will no longer continue past the 2016 season.

Yes, teams are jealous of the Patriots. But the Patriots deserved scrutiny

New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft echoed the talking point of the most abrasive fans of his team this week when he attributed “envy and jealousy” as motivating forces behind the NFL’s investigation into whether the Pats illegally deflated footballs two years ago during the playoffs.

Marshawn Lynch gives an already-spurned city hometown appeal

The Raiders don’t deserve the support of Oakland in their lame duck seasons in the Bay Area, and there’s no guarantee they’ll get it even with the acquisition of local hero Marshawn Lynch, but it does assure these two years will be a little more intriguing.

In some ways, Dan Rooney was just another NFL owner

In the week since former Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney passed away, there have been countless testaments to the man’s towering integrity and character throughout the years.

Matt Ryan’s journey of self-inflicted pain

You can’t blame a player for getting hung up on a Super Bowl loss, especially if it’s the unprecedented 25-point blown lead the Falcons endured back in February.

What’s to become of Phil Simms?

Going into the NFL off-season, the presumption was that there would be a high-stakes contest for the services of Tony Romo in 2017. Few guessed that it would be broadcast networks that would be the ones vying for him.

NFL Roundup: Jay Cutler wasted a perfectly good sendoff photo

Roughly a month before his 34th birthday and presently employed by exactly zero football teams, Jay Cutler was photographed bare-assed by his wife, who included a quote from a former teammate about how the sea sets you free.

The NFL distraction playbook

This week spelled the end of the strangest NFL mystery in recent memory, the whereabouts of Tom Brady’s stolen Super Bowl jersey. In fact, the resolution only made the controversy more bizarre in retrospect.

The Patriots are offseason champs for once

Typically a pejorative used to mock the desperate efforts of mismanaged franchises to leapfrog into title contention, the term “offseason champion” is seldom applied to the New England Patriots.

How recent Super Bowl winners made free agency work

Even though NFL players generally make less than their counterparts in MLB and NBA, that doesn’t stop the rampant grousing about escalating contracts in professional football come the arrival of free agency.

Where's the ideal landing spot for the top QBs?

Circumstance has seen fit to bless this NFL off-season with an unusually large bounty of viable starting quarterbacks. The outset of free agency can be a whirlwind few days most years, but with the quarterback market so much in flux, this year the intrigue is more pronounced and the fate of several teams can be radically changed instantly.

The NFL combine is extreme vetting that amounts to little

Outside of maybe the Pro Bowl, you won’t find a more maligned annual NFL event than the combine. Reporters decry it as massively overhyped, some fans describe it as humiliating and exploitative for the prospects who take part.

The NFL off-season is a passer’s fancy

It’s the week before the combine and two weeks before the start of free agency, so NFL news at the moment is mostly concerned with lining up the dominoes for the roster moves to come in the coming month, specifically those under center.

Observations from a day at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show

Disclaimer: I am not anything close to resembling an expert in show dogs. I still couldn’t list all the breeds that take part in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show nor even all the breeds that comprise each group at the event.

2017 NFL off-season preview

Super Bowl LI bailed out an otherwise poor postseason and put a definitive end to Deflategate. Now that Goodell has his court victory and Pats fans got to boo the bejesus out of the commissioner as he handed over the Lombardi Trophy, we never have to hear about that dreadful saga ever again.

Why Super Bowl LI will be like the rest of the playoffs: bad

The 2016 NFL season was largely an underwhelming affair. The playoffs that followed, with the exception of one classic game, followed suit. The league needs more than a good Super Bowl, it needs a great one, a classic to belong to the ages, and needs it bad.

Fact-checking Donald Trump on Roger Goodell

There have been many attempts to talk about Donald Trump at the Super Bowl, most of them unsuccessful. Patriots tight end Martellus Bennett said he probably won’t go to the White House if his team wins the Super Bowl on account of his dislike of Trump.

Expanding the NFL skills challenges to include the fun parts of football

This year, in the latest attempt to drum up interest for the Pro Bowl, the NFL has resurrected the the Pro Bowl Skills Challenge. It’s now called the Pro Bowl Skills Showdown, because every brand tweak in the NFL, whether be new names or logo changes, has to represent some elevation in aggression.

NFC & AFC Championship preview: We love scoring

Roger Goodell is a coward, but then we knew that