Bills' Josh Allen on PGA pro Scottie Scheffler ahead of US Open: 'Spoke a lot to me'
He finished the 2024 NFL season with a return to the AFC Championship game and, later, received the league MVP award. He then also married actress Hailee Steinfeld, a moment of even greater importance for the 29-year-old from Firebaugh, California.
Along with the high points, he also once more experienced a loss to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs that left him and the Buffalo Bills one win shy of reaching the Super Bowl.
And while a championship is what drives Allen to compete, it's life off the field that keeps things in perspective.
A big golf enthusiast, Allen explained how Scottie Scheffler's recent comments about chasing accomplishments versus finding fulfillment ahead of The US Open (which he won), "spoke a lot to me."
"It's maddening," Allen said to CBS Sports about the feeling that you're doing things right but not yet seeing the desired results. "But at the same time, it helps put things in perspective about what matters in your life, and you figure out what that is fairly quickly. Scottie Scheffler had that really good interview before The Open that spoke a lot to me, and I really appreciate him sharing those words."
He also noted some similarity in terms of turning the page in competition to focus on what's next.
"Yeah, it's kind of crazy where you're coming out here and doing everything you can for a quick enjoyment of it, and then you're on to the next. It's like the MVP award. I don't look back and think about that night. It happened, and it was over with, and I'll never think about it again, to be honest. I'm so moved on to trying to help this team win football games this year."
Allen's comments offer a view into his mindset and the impact Scheffler's comments had on him, in that true perspective lies in finding more to life that exists off the field, and how that allows one to be their best as an athlete.
Washburn asked if that mindset helps alleviate some of the angst before playing in those big games, and Allen agreed, noting how the message in the Bills locker room has been less about the outcome and more about the importance of doing the right things and living with the results.
When asked whether that also helps prepare him mentally ahead of big games, the QB also provided a view of the Bills' overall mentality as a team as well.
"For sure, and going out there and playing free -- and the main thing we always preach here is playing for each other and putting your best stuff out there," Allen said. "And as long as you're doing everything right [that's enough]. You can hope and pray for the best, but sometimes it doesn't happen. But we really do hope it does happen."
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Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
GA natives Sterling and Shannon Sharpe are the first brothers in Pro Football Hall of Fame
Shannon Sharpe donned his gold jacket emblazoned with the Pro Football Hall of Fame logo at his Atlanta home last winter and awaited his brother's arrival. Sterling ambled down the stairs and into the basement looking perplexed. 'Welcome, bro!' Shannon said. To what, Sterling wondered, 'your house?' 'To the Pro Football Hall of Fame,' corrected Shannon. 'Class of 2025.' [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] The first pair of brothers who will ever have both of their busts on display in Canton fell into each other's arms, decades of doubts dissipating in a medley of laughter and tears. Dashed was the notion that seven stellar NFL seasons weren't enough for football immortality. All along, the brothers figured it was Sterling who would reach Canton first. He was born three years earlier and the wide receiver had a standout career at South Carolina and then for the Green Bay Packers, who made him a first-round pick in 1988, two years before the Denver Broncos selected his younger brother in the seventh round out of Savannah State. Sterling would start every game for seven straight seasons until a neck injury cut short his career just as he and the Packers were peaking. The green and gold would go on to return the title to Titletown behind fellow Hall of Famers Ron Wolf, LeRoy Butler, Reggie White and Brett Favre while Sterling dabbled in broadcasting before leaving football behind for the golf links. Sterling was named to five Pro Bowls and earned first-team All-Pro honors the three years he led the league in receptions. He averaged 85 catches in his career — an unheard of number for that era and 10 more than Jerry Rice averaged in his first seven seasons. In his last season he led the league with 18 touchdown receptions, including a trio of scores in his final game despite dealing with numbness in his arms and tingling in his neck caused by an abnormal loosening of the first and second vertebrae in his cervical spine. He had felt increasingly bothersome symptoms over the last half of that season and he suffered what's commonly referred to as 'stingers' against the Falcons in the Packers' final game at the old Milwaukee County Stadium on Dec. 18, 1994, and again six days later at Tampa, where he caught nine passes for 132 yards and three first-half touchdowns in what turned out to be his final game. Right after Christmas, he learned he needed neck fusion surgery that would limit his head swivel, making it too dangerous to continue playing football. Upon hearing the prognosis, he stood up and shook his doctors' hands. 'I had already accomplished what I wanted to,' Sterling told NBC affiliate WIS News in Columbia, South Carolina, this spring. '... I just wanted to play, and I got to play in the NFL for seven years.' His career cut short at age 29, his protracted wait for Canton would last 31 years. 'Sterling was supposed to be in the Hall first,″ Shannon said ahead of his 2011 induction, where he drew a standing ovation for saying, 'I'm the second-best player in my own family." Unlike Sterling's truncated testimonial, Shannon's Canton credentials were never in question. He set the standard at tight end, going to eight Pro Bowls in 14 seasons, earning four first-team All-Pro honors and winning three Super Bowls in a four-year span, two in Denver and one in Baltimore. He gave his first Super Bowl ring — from Denver's 31-24 win over Green Bay in 1997 — to Sterling. And he called the chance to welcome his big brother into the Hall 'the proudest moment of my life.' Despite their shared love of the game, the brothers who grew up in a tiny cinder block house in rural Georgia were different in one big way: Shannon overcame a childhood speech impediment to become one of the game's most talkative players and later one of football's most vocal commentators. Sterling preferred to hone his craft in relative obscurity and mostly avoided the public and the media. 'As a football player, I was unapproachable,' Sterling told WIS News. 'I didn't want to be approached. I didn't want to be famous. I didn't want to make friends. I've got a job to do and I'm going to do this job better than anyone else does anything else.' [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] Butler said Sterling's media blackout was on par with his isolated nature. He just didn't let many people into his orbit. 'Sterling didn't want nobody to know what he did,' Butler told The Associated Press. 'He didn't want other receivers mimicking him. His edge was his physicality and his brain.' Butler said teammates started calling Sterling 'The Hermit,' because 'he just wanted to play football. He didn't want to go nowhere. He didn't want to do nothing. He'd be swiping his card to get into (Packers headquarters) at 6 o'clock when nobody's up but burglars and roosters.' Ask him for his autograph and he'd walk right past you. Send him a letter care of the Packers and he's sign a stack of them, Butler said. Every Tuesday, Sterling would spend his time answering fan mail, 'signing 1,000 autographs,' Butler said. 'I never did that. He was the only one in the building signing everything. He's probably going to hate on me for telling that story.' Sterling was amongst a group of wide receivers including Andre Reed and Jerry Rice that defenses began double-teaming in the late 1980s. Sterling embraced the extra attention of the 'clamp and vice' defense and actually became better for it. 'He said if two guys are doubling me, they don't hide it,' Butler recounted. 'The corner has outside leverage, the safety has inside leverage, the linebacker is in a zone. He broke it down like this: 'When it's a pass, I'm going to attack the worst cover guy, the safety. When it's a run, I'm going to attack the worst tackler, the cornerback.' I'd never heard nothing like that. It made so much sense. 'If he's putting pressure on the safety, running straight at him, it's what we call a panic state. As soon as he turns around to run with you, you stop on a dime and 'Magic' (Don Majkowski) or Brett would throw him the ball. I'd never seen any receiver do that, where he just said I'm going to attack the weakest guy based on what the play is.' Butler said another of Sterling's hush-hush advantages actually salvaged his own career. Favre's fastballs at practice were exacerbated in the winter months, so to save his hands and preserve rhythm with his quarterback, Sterling began wearing scuba diving wetsuit gloves, Butler said. With their padding and super tack, the gloves served like a catcher's mitt. They worked out so well in the elements that Sterling began wearing them indoors, too, Butler said. 'So I went out and got me some scuba gloves like Sterling and it saved my career,' Butler said. 'I started to get more interceptions. And before you know it our whole secondary was wearing them. I don't think opponents realized it. Again, you don't talk about it.'
CNN
26 minutes ago
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NY gunman Shane Tamura who cited CTE was once a standout high school football player
A decade before police say he gunned down four people at a Manhattan tower that is home to the National Football League, Shane Tamura was a celebrated high school football star whose coach once described him as 'lightning in a bottle' and among the most talented athletes he'd ever seen. Now, investigators are looking into claims in Tamura's suicide note that link the deadly attack to his years playing football. It's unclear whether Tamura was ever tested for brain injuries related to his football career, and one former coach said he didn't recall him having any concussions. But a former teammate at a different high school told CNN he knew 'for a fact' that Tamura did sustain concussions, and remembered him missing games or practices as a result. 'He was an undersized guy, he's playing running back, but you know, he had that dog in him,' said Dalone Neal, the former teammate. 'He wasn't afraid of contact whatsoever.' The 27-year-old Tamura walked into the office building Monday evening carrying an assault rifle — and a suicide note in his back pocket alleging that he suffered from CTE, a brain disease linked to head trauma, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation. After killing four others, including an off-duty New York police officer, Tamura fatally shot himself in the chest, police said. In the note, according to the source, Tamura expressed grievances with the NFL and asked for his brain to be studied. Police said Tamura's motives are still under investigation, and he had 'a documented mental health history.' The short note was scribbled over three pages and found by investigators after the shooting, the source said. 'Terry Long football gave me CTE and it caused me to drink a gallon of antifreeze,' the shooter wrote, according to the source, referring to Terry Long, a former NFL player who was diagnosed with CTE and died by suicide after drinking antifreeze in 2005. The note continued, 'You can't go against the NFL, they'll squash you.' Tamura, who most recently lived in Las Vegas, spent his high school years in the Los Angeles area, where he played several seasons as a running back for Golden Valley High School in the suburb of Santa Clarita. His athletic accomplishments were chronicled in the Santa Clarita Valley Signal newspaper. A 2013 article described Tamura as the Golden Valley Grizzlies junior varsity team's 'biggest weapon' on offense and noted his coach believed he was the most athletically gifted player. The Golden Valley head coach, Dan Kelley, referred to him as 'lightning in a bottle' in an interview for a 2014 article. Tamura accounted for more than half of the team's touchdowns over roughly the first month of the 2014 season, and was a big reason for their overall success, the newspaper reported. 'He's a game-breaker. You definitely want the ball in his hands,' Kelley said. 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'Everybody thought he was going to have a bright future in football.' Another former teammate, who asked not to be named, told CNN that it wasn't uncommon at the time for football players to suffer concussions, and said he was 'sure' Tamura 'missed a game or two because of a concussion.' 'Shane was like a big ball of energy,' said the teammate, who was friends with Tamura since kindergarten. 'Always had something funny to say, would say exactly what's on his mind.' Tamura once doubted he would make the starting lineup, he told the Signal newspaper. 'Going from JV to varsity is a huge difference and it's surreal to be seeing the ball this much and having the team doing so well,' he said. 'It's great being a big part of everything and scoring a lot of touchdowns, but I have to keep getting better… I need to keep pushing myself.' His older brother Terry also played football, according to friends and local coverage. When asked about his brother's skills in 2014, Terry said, 'We're similar… He's a little quicker though and probably more elusive, too.' Tamura transferred to Granada Hills Charter School in nearby San Fernando Valley in 2015 for his senior year of high school, where he played for the Highlanders football team. He attended Granada Hills during the fall 2015 semester, but later withdrew from the school, a school spokesperson said Tuesday. Walter Roby, who coached the Granada Hills team, told CNN that Tamura was 'by far my best running back at the time.' 'He was warm, soft-spoken, hard-working,' Roby said. 'He did what you asked him to do and he led by his example… He would come up, smile, hug, warm embrace.' Roby said he never saw any signs of violence or other trouble from Tamura and had no memory of him suffering a head injury during his time at Granada Hills. In a video posted to YouTube in 2015 by Los Angeles Daily News Prep Sports after his team won a game, Tamura answered questions from an interviewer who called him a 'standout running back.' 'We just had to stay disciplined and come together as a team,' Tamura said. 'Keep playing, keep fighting through it, and just hold our heads up high, and a good result's going to come.' Another friend and former teammate also told CNN that Tamura never mentioned a head injury or any kind of mental illness. 'We were kids back then, so mental illness — we don't really pay much (attention) to that topic,' the teammate said. He said Tamura was one of his closest friends, but they lost touch after high school. Tamura reached out to him a few months ago on Instagram just to say hello, but before that, they hadn't spoken in more than 10 years. It's not clear whether Tamura played football after his high school years or if he was ever diagnosed with any brain injuries connected to his athletic career. CTE, which has been associated with head impacts suffered by some football players, is generally only confirmed after death. Tamura's death echoes at least one previous high-profile CTE case: Former NFL player Dave Duerson also shot himself in the chest and left a note asking for his brain to be studied. The NFL has acknowledged a link between football and brain disorders like CTE, and has said in recent years that it has made changes to eliminate some unnecessary contact to the head and neck areas during practice and games. Tamura was put on a psychiatric hold in 2022 and 2024, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the situation. In 2022, a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officer encountered Tamura on the street and observed behavior that made them believe Tamura might be a threat to himself, the official said. Police took him to a hospital where he was put on a psychiatric hold for an unknown period of time, the official said. Tamura worked as a 'surveillance department employee' at Horseshoe Las Vegas, a hotel and casino, a spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday. He received private investigator licenses in California and Nevada in 2019, both of which later expired, according to public records. Court records show that Tamura was charged with misdemeanor trespassing in 2023 in Clark County, Nevada. According to a police incident report, Tamura refused to leave a Las Vegas casino after attempting to cash out about $5,000, and security called police, who handcuffed and arrested him. A court database suggests a district attorney declined to pursue the case. Police said Tamura drove his BMW across the country from Las Vegas over the last few days, and that he double parked it in front of the Park Avenue office building before walking in with a rifle. He opened fire in the lobby, killing off-duty NYPD officer Didarul Islam, who was working as a security guard, and then took an elevator to the 33rd floor. Tamura gunned down several other people at a real estate office before fatally shooting himself in the chest. The NFL's headquarters are on the building's fifth floor, but Tamura 'mistakenly went up the wrong elevator bank,' Mayor Eric Adams told a local news station. CNN's John Miller contributed reporting.
Yahoo
an hour ago
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How Antonio Gates amazingly made the Hall of Fame without playing college football
What Antonio Gates did as a Chargers tight end was remarkable. But what he didn't do was just as impressive. Gates, who will be enshrined Saturday in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, is the only player to reach that pinnacle without a single snap of college football. He was a basketball star at Kent State, a half-hour up the road from Canton, Ohio, and never seemed to give football a second thought, even though he was a two-sport high school phenom in his hometown of Detroit. 'I never in a million years when he was playing basketball at Kent State thought he would be a professional football player,' said Steve Sefner, the school's play-by-play announcer when the 6-foot-4 power forward was routinely dominating taller opponents. 'Tone' was his nickname. Tone was what he set. 'He had an elite first step, point-guard skills, making reads, passing,' recalled Anthony Wilkins, now a basketball assistant coach at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and then Kent State's co-captain with Gates. 'We could put the ball in Tone's hands and literally run the offense through him.' Considering how polished he was as an NFL player, it's mind-boggling he achieved what he did without the practice and polish of college football. It's worth noting that not everyone with a bronze bust had a distinguished college career. Old-timey Cleveland end Dante Lavelli, nicknamed 'Gluefingers,' played only three games at Ohio State, and kicker Jan Stenerud was a competitive skier who only played in his senior year at Montana State. Another one-and-done was cornerback Dick 'Night Train' Lane, who only played a single season at Scottsbluff Junior College in Nebraska. Inductees Tim Mara and Joe Carr didn't play college football, but Mara was the founding owner of the New York Giants and Carr was president of the NFL for 19 seasons in the 1920s and '30s. But Gates played in an era when making an NFL roster meant devoting virtually every waking hour to becoming a better football player. That said, football wasn't unfamiliar to Gates. He was an outstanding linebacker at Detroit Central High and one of the state's top tight end prospects. Basketball was his first love, but his football prowess was undeniable. 'Football was something I did so natural, I never really cared,' he told ESPN in 2010. 'I stepped foot on the football field, and it was like, `That's the best player.' It was one of those things that was so natural that I didn't go to practice. I didn't do the offseason stuff, and I would walk out and catch the first two or three [passes] and take it to the house. And it was like, 'Wow, and he missed all those days — just imagine if he applied himself.' 'And that's where the football thing started rolling. I was like, 'Whatever.' I was in the gym, shooting basketballs every day, working on my game.' Not surprisingly, he got all kinds of scholarship offers from top-notch football programs but only nibbles from big-time basketball schools. Most of that interest came from mid-majors. A dream offer did come together, however. Nick Saban recruited him to play football at Michigan State, and Tom Izzo had a spot for him on the basketball team. Gates committed to the Spartans in 1997. Read more: Latest Jim Harbaugh experiment could have a major impact on Justin Herbert's season Gates arrived on campus in the summer of '98 as a Prop 48 academic qualifier, meaning he initially had to sit out of competition. He had some challenges in the classroom in his first semester, leading to Saban rescinding his permission to let Gates play basketball in addition to football. Gates said he felt blindsided by that and wound up leaving the school. He wound up transferring to Eastern Michigan to play basketball in the Mid-American Conference but failed to focus enough on the classroom. That led to him leaving for a community college in California, specifically College of the Sequoias in Visalia, with the goal of getting some good grades under his belt. All that paved his path to Kent State, where he made an impression the moment he stepped onto campus. 'He had a pair of Cartier glasses, that Detroit swag and a confidence,' Wilkins said. 'He carried himself like, 'This isn't too big for me.'" And the stage wasn't too big. He typically was the best player on the court. 'Man, I'd just get caught watching him,' said teammate Deandre Haynes, a former Kent State point guard and now a Marquette assistant. 'He could cross you up, dunk on you, shoot the three, everything.' Haynes was four years younger but also grew up in Detroit, so he knew all about Gates the high school football star. 'He actually put my brother in the hospital, he hit him so hard,' Haynes said. 'Tone cracked him. He used to punish people in high school.' All that seemed like a distant memory when Gates decided to go out for spring football at Kent State and lasted… one day. Read more: Philip Rivers: Antonio Gates was so good, 'The Gates Rule' overruled our playbook Recalled Kent State basketball teammate Eric Haut: 'He came back after one practice saying, 'Man, I hate football.'' Haut, now an assistant coach at Utah State, frequently finds himself telling his players about Gates. 'He was one of the best teammates I ever played with,' Haut said. 'Everybody knew Tone was a step above the rest of us, but he never acted that way.' It wasn't uncommon for NFL scouts to show up at his basketball games. Gates still held out NBA hopes, but he was a tweener at that size, too small to play forward at the next level. He suffered a sprained ankle in the pre-draft process, dimming any bit of spotlight he commanded. The effects of that sprained ankle lingered when he tried out for a couple of NFL scouts. (He hadn't been invited to the combine.) One of those evaluators was Tim Brewster of the San Diego Chargers, who knew about the ankle problems so he didn't put a lot of stock in Gates' plodding, 4.8-second 40-yard dash. No one selected Gates in the draft, but the Chargers gave him a $7,000 bonus to sign as a rookie free agent. That set in motion one of the NFL's unlikeliest stories. He caught 116 touchdown passes, the most by any tight end in league history. 'Being a competitor means putting your best on the line with no guarantees, and Tone embodied that,' Wilkins said. 'I told him when he got in [the Hall of Fame]: 'The greatest blessing I've had has been seeing life through your eyes. And you deserve every bit of it.'" Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
