Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson is ruled out of Wednesday’s crucial Champions League home leg against Atletico Madrid after picking up an injury in training, the club confirmed Friday.
“Muscle, slight, in the hip region. A small muscle,” manager Jurgen Klopp said of the injury, which was suffered ahead of the team’s midweek FA Cup loss to Chelsea. “You (reporters) could all do your work still but a professional goalkeeper is slightly different. That’s the situation.”
Alisson was subsequently left out of the Brazil squad for the national team’s World Cup qualifiers against Bolivia and Peru at the end of March. His lack of availability for those fixtures indicates he may also miss Liverpool’s meetings with Everton and Crystal Palace before the international break and won’t return to fitness until April.
? Convocação da #SeleçãoBrasileira para as Eliminatórias da Copa 2022:
The 27-year-old, who’s widely dubbed as one of the world’s best goalkeepers, has kept 14 clean sheets across 28 matches in all competitions this season. Backup Adrian, by comparison, has only three clean sheets in 16 outings.
Jordan Henderson is still sidelined for the Bournemouth tilt, but Klopp seemed more positive about the captain’s involvement in the second leg of the Champions League last-16 tie with Atleti. He said the midfielder “has a chance” to overcome his thigh problem for that game, according to Thomas Mallows of BBC Sport.
Liverpool enter the reverse fixture against Atletico Madrid with a 1-0 disadvantage. Saul Niguez scored the only goal during the first leg as the Reds failed to register a shot on target at the Wanda Metropolitano.
HOUSTON — When Bill O’Brien announced last week that he was handing over playcalling duties to Tim Kelly, the Houston Texans coach praised the job his young offensive coordinator already was doing before quickly joking that he better not speak too highly of him because he wants to keep him in Houston.
In O’Brien’s six seasons with the Texans, he has continued to gain more influence in the organization, outlasting two general managers — Rick Smith and Brian Gaine — to take over the job himself. Now that he has control of the front office in addition to his head-coaching duties, it’s on O’Brien even more to produce a winning team. That has led to the realization that to be successful, he has to prioritize keeping his bright young coaches in the organization.
“[Kelly is] a really bright guy,” O’Brien said. “He’s a really good coach. Players really respect him. He just does a great job. Great knowledge of the whole offense from the passing game to the running game.”
Kelly, 33, has been with O’Brien since serving as a graduate assistant on his staff at Penn State. Although Kelly wasn’t calling plays during the regular season in his first year as offensive coordinator, he was in charge of many meetings.
New defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver is in a similar situation as Kelly after taking over for Romeo Crennel. Promoting from within is something new for O’Brien, who watched quarterbacks coach Sean Ryan move on to the Detroit Lions after the 2018 season to pursue his aspirations of one day calling plays in the NFL.
Weaver was promoted to defensive coordinator after the Tennessee Titans showed interest in him to replace the retired Dean Pees as coordinator there.
Tim Kelly, left, has been on Bill O’Brien’s coaching staff since their days at Penn State, when Kelly was a graduate assistant. Daniel Dunn/Icon Sportswire
“Weave [Weaver] has a great presence,” O’Brien said. “He was a former player and has coached for a long time. He’s been in different schemes; he’s done an excellent job with our D-line. … He’s very smart, and the players have a lot of respect for Anthony and he’s going to bring a lot of different ideas and creativity to our defense.”
Regardless of why O’Brien decided to make the changes, it shows that he realizes that to have continued success, especially after being named general manager by Texans owner Cal McNair, it will require more delegation of control than he previously was willing to relinquish.
Of course, O’Brien hopes that giving up the playcalling also frees him up to take a look at the bigger picture on game day as well. At the NFL combine last week, O’Brien said he doesn’t think this will change his in-game role “too much,” but that it does allow him to focus more on the whole game instead of sitting on the bench between series with quarterback
METAIRIE, La. — Andrus Peat might be the New Orleans Saints’ most high-profile free agent outside of their three quarterbacks this offseason.
But figuring out how the Saints and the rest of the NFL will value the two-time Pro Bowl left guard is one of their biggest mysteries heading into the start of free agency on March 18.
Peat, 26, seems like an obvious place for the Saints to save money this offseason, because they’re slammed against the salary cap (they have about $11 million in space) and because they have so much money and draft capital invested everywhere else on their offensive line. But the Saints could also wind up keeping Peat if he doesn’t generate enough interest on the open market.
Andrus Peat may be difficult for the Saints to re-sign considering their challenging salary-cap situation. Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire
The top 10 guards in the NFL make at least $10 million per year, but it remains to be seen if the league will value Peat in that category. The Saints, meanwhile, have less than $10 million in salary-cap space for now (though they have a handful of ways to create more space by releasing players or restructuring current deals).
The 6-foot-7, 316-pounder has waffled between overrated and underappreciated throughout his five-year career. He struggled a bit as a rookie, when the Saints drafted him with the 13th overall pick out of Stanford in 2015 and moved him from left tackle to right tackle to guard.
And he seemed to regress a bit in 2019, showing more inconsistency than usual — which made his second straight Pro Bowl selection as an alternate a bit of a surprise.
But in between, the versatile big man was better than many Saints fans gave him credit for from 2016-18. Peat’s greatest asset has been his ability to slide over and play left tackle when needed — which has been huge for the Saints, since their standout left tackle
Peat is at the very least a competent, experienced starter with the flexibility to play two positions. And at 26, he still has the potential to be even more than that. So there’s a good chance that a team with more money and more desperation to upgrade the offensive line will snatch him away.
If that happens, the Saints could turn to veteran backup Nick Easton, who proved more than capable while starting six games as an injury replacement for both Peat and right guard Larry Warford in 2019. Easton, 27, is due to make $5 million this season.
Or New Orleans could go even cheaper with some combination of third-year backup Will Clapp, free agency and the draft. And it’s not out of the question that they could consider upgrading the position instead — especially because Warford is heading into the final year of his contract.
The offensive line, in general, should be a priority for the Saints in the draft because they will eventually have to do some rebuilding alongside fourth-year right tackle Ryan Ramczyk and second-year center Erik McCoy. Armstead and Warford both turn 29 this summer.
Peat is one of 10 Saints starters/key contributors scheduled to be an unrestricted free agent this month. We have broken down QBs Drew Brees and Teddy Bridgewater’s prospects at length. I also took a long look at New Orleans’ five key defensive free agents recently (safety Vonn Bell, cornerbacks Eli Apple and P.J. Williams, linebacker A.J. Klein and defensive tackle David Onyemata). The Saints’ other top unrestricted free agents are fullback Zach Line, who already announced his retirement, and receiver Ted Ginn Jr.
Ginn could potentially come back because he shouldn’t cost very much and remains a good veteran presence in a young position group. But he turns 35 next month and his production has dropped off considerably over the past two years. So that’s a position the Saints must upgrade whether he stays or not.
It’s hard to find something to complain about when it comes to examining quarterback Joe Burrow’s prolific final year at LSU.
He slipped away from pocket pressure, set passing records and commandeered the Tigers to their first national championship since 2007. All of that culminated with Burrow ascending draft boards, where he is projected to go No. 1 overall to the Cincinnati Bengals.
However, nobody is perfect. And if one question about Burrow has lingered, it’s his arm strength. He didn’t need to throw at last week’s NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis to answer that question to the Bengals’ satisfaction.
“There’s multiple times where he throws a ball to the field — to the far sideline — where you go, ‘Yeah, that’s more than enough; that’s going to get you everything you need,'” Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan said.
Callahan said he had “no reservations” about Burrow’s arm strength after watching every one of his passes in 2019, when Burrow set the Football Bowl Subdivision record with 60 touchdown passes in a season.
Early in the year, Callahan said Burrow threw a couple of shaky deep balls on which his arm strength was brought into question. But as the season progressed, Burrow put “most of those things to bed” as he excelled during LSU’s title run.
According to research from ESPN Stats & Information, Burrow had more passing yards than any FBS quarterback on attempts of 20 air yards or more. More importantly, he was second in completion percentage on such passes, trailing Minnesota’s Tanner Morgan (minimum of 300 attempts).
“What makes playing quarterback in the NFL so much different is that the anticipation and the accuracy are so much more important over the long haul than just pure strength,” Callahan said.
Recent history shows the Bengals haven’t let a lack of arm strength dissuade them from drafting a quarterback.
Cincinnati moved up in the fourth round to select North Carolina State’s Ryan Finley last year. Veteran starter Andy Dalton has a stronger arm than Finley, but that didn’t deter the Bengals from investing in the rookie. Finley started three games while the Bengals evaluated his long-term outlook, but he struggled, completing just 47.1% of his passes.
Bengals coach Zac Taylor said an NFL team rarely needs its quarterback to sling a 70-yard pass.
“You just want to make sure you can see on tape or in person guys who can make all the throws they are going to need to make,” Taylor said last week at the combine. “A lot of them are intermediate stuff. I feel confident, pretty much every quarterback we have watched in the draft has the necessary arm strength to play in the NFL.”
And this concern about Burrow isn’t new. When he threw at the Elite 11 Regionals in Columbus, Ohio, before his senior year at Athens High, his arm strength was one of the things he wanted to prove.
“A lot of people don’t think I have great arm strength, but I think I showed that pretty well today,” Burrow told reporters in June 2014, shortly after he committed to Ohio State.
Six years later, Burrow talked about the topic with a sense of self-realization. Because he can’t muscle throws into tight windows, Burrow has refined his timing and anticipation, two traits that helped him succeed in 2019 against SEC defenses.
“My physical traits are limited compared to some of the guys here [at the combine], right, and everyone can see it,” Burrow said last week. “So I’ve got to be smarter, I’ve got to prepare better and I’ve got to know what’s happening before it happens so I can play fast.”
More than arm strength, it’s everything Burrow mentioned that Taylor and Callahan are looking for. The totality of Burrow’s skill set could be what the Bengals need to become a relevant franchise again.
