Category: In The News

Texans’ Leinart Out for Season With Broken Collarbone

Leinart, who started in placed of the injured Matt Schaub, will be placed on injured reserve after breaking his left collarbone in the second quarter of Houston’s 20-13 win at Jacksonville on Sunday.

The left-handed Leinart was making his first start since 2009 after Schaub broke his right foot in the Texans’ 37-9 win at Tampa Bay on Nov. 13.

Kubiak said Leinart would have surgery in the next week. Schaub is scheduled to have surgery on Wednesday to repair a Lisfranc injury.

“I’ve been a little bit part coach, part counselor here the last couple of weeks,” Kubiak said.

Despite losing one key player after another, Houston (8-3) has won a franchise-record five straight games. The rookie T. J. Yates, a fifth-round draft pick out of North Carolina, will start Sunday’s game against Atlanta (7-4). Kellen Clemens, signed last week, will serve as the backup.

Kubiak said Houston would try out other quarterbacks this week. And he hinted that he might even consider 42-year-old Brett Favre, who retired in January after 20 seasons.

“I don’t think you rule out anybody,” Kubiak said when asked about Favre specifically.

POLAMALU’S STATUS UNCLEAR Pittsburgh safety Troy Polamalu, last season’s N.F.L. defensive player of the year, may have a concussion, but the team did not offer a prognosis on when he would return. Polamalu sat out almost the entire win at Kansas City on Sunday after making a low hit on the 6-foot-6, 290-pound Chiefs tackle Steve Maneri.

Coach Mike Tomlin said the Steelers held out Polamalu as a precaution; it is the second time this season Polamalu left a game early after a blow to the head. “I don’t know at this juncture if it was a concussion; I want to be clear,” Tomlin said.

BROWNS LOSE FUJITA Cleveland linebacker Scott Fujita could be out for the season with a broken right hand. Fujita played in only nine games last season because of a left knee injury. Browns Coach Pat Shurmur said Fujita would miss “a significant amount of time.”

NO MORE CELEBRATIONS Buffalo Bills receiver Stevie Johnson suggested that his days of colorful — and sometimes questionable — touchdown celebrations may be over. His statements came a day after he was criticized for a celebration in which he mocked Jets receiver Plaxico Burress for shooting himself in the leg and then pretended to crash a plane. The celebration drew a penalty that robbed the Bills of momentum in a loss to the Jets. After saying he “probably” won’t continue celebrating after scoring, Johnson then added that his extended demonstration on Sunday would be his last.

CHIEFS CONSIDER A CHANGE Chiefs Coach Todd Haley said that Tyler Palko remained Kansas City’s starting quarterback, despite a four-turnover effort in Sunday’s loss to Pittsburgh, but he acknowledged that Kyle Orton would be given an opportunity to win the job before Sunday’s game at Chicago. The Chiefs claimed Orton off waivers from Denver as they scrambled to find a replacement for Matt Cassel, who was placed on injured reserve on Nov. 13. Palko was given the job for a game at New England and threw three interceptions. When Orton did not arrive until Friday, the team had no choice but to start Palko against Pittsburgh.

Shahid Khan Buys Jacksonville Jaguars and Realizes Dream

“He’s very inquisitive, he’s studied it and he’s been talking about it for a long time,” said , a former athletic director at the university. Guenther asked his friend Jerry Colangelo, a former owner of the Phoenix Suns and the Arizona Diamondbacks, to tutor Khan on buying a team. Their first meeting was at the 2005 Final Four in St. Louis, where North Carolina defeated Khan’s Fighting Illini in the final.

“His interest was specifically football, but he may have mentioned baseball, too,” Colangelo said.

In conversations over the next few years, they focused on the politics of acquiring a franchise.

“You don’t just go in cold turkey to buy a team,” said Colangelo, a former chairman of the N.B.A. board of governors. “You develop relationships, and you create credibility.”

Even before the Pakistani-born Khan tried to purchase majority control of the St. Louis Rams early last year, he was known to the N.F.L. as a feasible buyer when a team came up for sale.

Khan sought 60 percent of the Rams from the family of Georgia Frontiere, but he lost out when Stan Kroenke, who owned 40 percent, exercised an option to match his bid.

“He wasn’t heartbroken about it,” said Sid Micek, president of the University of Illinois Foundation, who has known Khan for 12 years. “He was pragmatic and realistic. He said that’s the way things go.”

But Khan had no such obstacle blocking him when he made his deal to buy the Jaguars from Wayne Weaver for a reported $760 million. If the league’s finance committee recommends it to the ownership committee next week, he could be approved as the team’s owner soon after.

One problem that has shadowed Khan since he tried to buy the Rams is a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over taxes the agency said he owed from tax shelters that he and his wife, Ann, used over five years to reduce their federal taxes by $85 million. He has said that he paid $68 million and was hoping to get that back through litigation. But that issue has apparently been settled, with Khan making some additional payments, said one person briefed on the approval process who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Weaver said Commissioner Roger Goodell supported Khan’s bid. And presenting a bid like Khan’s to the finance committee is usually a sign that it has strong league support.

Khan, 61, left his hometown, Lahore, in 1967 to study industrial engineering at Champaign-Urbana. While still a student, he began working at in Urbana, which makes auto parts. He left in 1978 to create a company to produce a one-piece bumper that he designed with no seams to rust. Two years later, he acquired Flex-N-Gate and built it into a private company with more than $3 billion in revenue, 12,450 employees and 48 plants in the United States and abroad.

In an interview in 2009 with The News-Gazette of Champaign, Khan discussed his support of the government’s auto industry’s bailout. “We can’t become a nation of hamburger flippers and insurance salesmen,” he told the newspaper.

He is described as a private person with a gregarious, salesman’s personality. With long, wavy hair and a thick mustache that ends in waxed tips, Khan cuts a somewhat rakish figure.

“That mustache didn’t come out of nowhere,” Guenther said. “That’s his signature.”

In Urbana, where Flex-N-Gate has 885 employees, Mayor said: “He’s a quiet person, not real loud, but he’s very effective. He and his wife take on responsibility. They took on buying and redoing the . We didn’t ask them to do it. They just did it.”

Khan and his wife, who live in Champaign, have donated tens of millions of dollars to endow five professorships in aging and disability research, and to finance the building of an annex to the school’s and an outdoor tennis complex.

“He came here to go to college and has really never left the community,” Micek said. “He stays committed to the community although he travels globally.”

Recently, Khan was named a Lincoln Laureate by the state of Illinois for his achievements.

“This gentleman is absolutely the American story,” Weaver said.

And like many wealthy business executives, Khan believed it was time to buy a sports team.

In the Jaguars, he is taking control of a 3-8 team that needs a new coach, after Weaver fired on Tuesday, and has been rumored to be a candidate to move to Los Angeles. It has struggled to fill its stadium, , to avoid local television blackouts (there were seven in 2009 but none since) and is the league’s least-valuable team, according to Forbes magazine, with a worth of $725 million.

If Khan is approved, his Pakistani roots will make him stand out among the 32 owners ( of the Minnesota Vikings is from Germany). But Colangelo said that an owner’s birthplace does not matter.

“He came here and created something out of nothing,” Colangelo said. “That’s a lot better than it being handed to you. You understand the work ethic.”

He added, “The key word is passion.”

N.F.L. Roundup: Changes for Jaguars, From the Top Down

Fire Jack Del Rio, who has the Jaguars at 3-8 in his ninth season as coach, and who had made the playoffs twice and won only one postseason game, and install the defensive coordinator Mel Tucker as the interim coach? Check.

Extend the contract of General Manager Gene Smith, who drafted the rookie quarterback Blaine Gabbert, whom Del Rio benched in Sunday’s loss to the Texans? Check.

And make the stunning announcement that Weaver, the founding owner of the 17-year-old franchise, had sold it to an auto-parts mogul who was born in Pakistan and had previously tried to buy the St. Louis Rams? Done.

The Jaguars, in the most tumultuous day for the franchise since it was formed in 1995, recast their future and, at least for now, removed the possibility that they would move to Los Angeles, which hopes to lure at least one team to a new stadium that has yet to be built.

Weaver had long maintained publicly that he would not sell the team, which struggled to fill its stadium and which repeatedly avoided local television blackouts only with the help of tarps covering large swaths of seats. But on Tuesday, Weaver sold the Jaguars to , who emigrated from Pakistan as a teenager, made his fortune in an Illinois-based auto parts company called and had tried to buy the Rams last year before Stan Kroenke exercised his right to match his offer. Khan has pledged to keep the Jaguars in Jacksonville.

Forbes magazine recently listed the Jaguars as the least valuable N.F.L. team, at $725 million. The magazine reported Tuesday that Khan paid $760 million for the franchise.

Weaver said Commissioner Roger Goodell supported the sale, an indication that concerns about Khan’s financial and tax situation, raised during his pursuit of the Rams, had been resolved and that the sale would probably be approved by owners.

“This gentleman is absolutely the American story,” Weaver said of Khan, 61.

Weaver, who became emotional when discussing the deal, also sought to temper speculation that the team’s sale might mean it would soon be moving. Weaver said Khan first inquired about a minority interest in the Jaguars five years ago and came back a year ago seeking to buy the team. Weaver said his criteria for a new owner was to find someone whose passion for football in Jacksonville matched his. With the Jaguars apparently staying put, the San Diego Chargers, who are seeking a new stadium, are now the most likely team to move to Los Angeles.

“If the proposed transaction is approved in the weeks ahead, I will responsibly and enthusiastically serve the N.F.L., the Jacksonville Jaguars and their great fans, and I will be fully committed to delivering Jacksonville its first championship,” Khan said in a statement. “This is a franchise with tons of potential, playing in a community that is passionate about football and loves to win. I can’t think of a better place to be.”

Weaver said Khan, who was not at the news conference but was expected to attend Jacksonville’s Monday night game against the San Diego Chargers next week, was going to buy a home and spend time in the Jacksonville area, although he would allow the existing management team to run the team on a day-to-day basis.

“This is a team that will be in Jacksonville for many years into the future,” Weaver said.

Still, the sports landscape is dotted with owners who said they were committed to one city only to move to another, and Khan’s actions will be closely scrutinized as long as Los Angeles remains without a team.

Khan will have to make a huge decision almost immediately: hiring a new coach. Del Rio was the first N.F.L. coach to be fired this season, and while the move was expected, Weaver acknowledged that the timing was awkward because of the concurrent announcement of the team’s sale. Weaver said he spoke with Del Rio on Tuesday morning.

“I said ‘We deserve better, the community deserves better,’ ” Weaver said. “We’ve been very average over the last few years. This team is not far away from being a very competitive football team.

SUH APPEALS SUSPENSION A few weeks ago, Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh said that he would worry about his reputation for being a dirty player only if his family, friends or teammates told him he was crossing the line. On Tuesday, the N.F.L. did. The league suspended Suh for two games without pay after he stomped on the arm of Green Bay guard Evan Dietrich-Smith and shoved his helmet into the ground during a loss to the Packers on Thanksgiving.

Suh was ejected, and immediately after the game he insisted that he did not intentionally step on Dietrich-Smith. But a day later, after the Lions condemned Suh’s actions, Suh issued an apology on his Facebook page.

Suh is appealing the suspension, and the N.F.L. said it would hold an expedited hearing before this weekend’s games. It will be heard by Ted Cottrell, a former assistant coach, and the former Raiders coach Art Shell. If Suh’s suspension is upheld, he will miss games against New Orleans and Minnesota.

COLTS MAKE CHANGES Indianapolis fired its defensive coordinator, Larry Coyer, and announced that quarterback would make his first N.F.L. start since 2008. The changes came after the Colts dropped to 0-11 for the first time since 1986.

Coach Jim Caldwell said the decision about Coyer was made to “improve communication and production.” The linebackers coach Mike Murphy will take over the defense. Orlovsky will replace Curtis Painter. Orlovsky has started seven games in his career, for Detroit when it went 0-16 in 2008. (AP)

TEXANS SIGN DELHOMME Jake Delhomme’s agent said his client had signed with the Houston Texans and would back up the rookie quarterback T. J. Yates. (AP)