N.F.L

The Tom Brady era has ended as younger players like Patrick Mahomes make their mark, while injuries, diversity and other issues intensify.

That came several weeks after [Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, said Snyder](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/18/sports/football/dan-snyder-washington-commanders.html) might have to be removed for sullying the league’s reputation. [battling a lawsuit brought by former head coaches of color](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/sports/football/brian-flores-giants-discrimination-lawsuit.html) who have accused the league of discriminatory hiring practices. [pay the N.F.L. roughly $10 billion a year for the next decade. But the league knows that younger fans are more likely to stream games over the internet, so it’s tiptoeing into the streaming space. [Tom Brady really has retired after 23 seasons](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/sports/football/tom-brady-retires.html), Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes will be the most recognizable player in the league. There are just three Black head coaches among the 32 teams in a league (a fourth, Mike McDaniel of the Miami Dolphins, identifies as biracial) in which nearly 70 percent of the players are Black. With the 2022 season in the books, with a thrilling victory by the Kansas City Chiefs over the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl, here are some of the issues that will be the talk of the N.F.L. Their scary episodes again highlighted the brutality of the sport, and how many N.F.L. “We’ve been around for 104, 105 years, and is concerning that we’re still having these conversations that today we only have a few head coaches rather than many head coaches of color.” From the Super Bowl to the scouting combine in a few weeks to the start of free agency in March and the draft in April and the preparation for the new season a few months after that, the drumbeat of attraction and attention never seems to stop. “Mahomes is probably the best representation of that.”