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The Caesars Superdome is getting some improvements, $500 million worth of improvements to be exact, that are expected to be completed by the time the stadium hosts Super Bowl LIX on February 9, 2025. According to city officials, the New Orleans stadium’s renovations are scheduled to be completed by July of 2024. 

The upgrades, including new escalators, bathrooms and walkways, not only line up with Super Bowl LIX, but also with the stadium’s 50th birthday. Renovations have been in progress for some time, with the eastern side of the stadium completed in the summer of 2023. 

With some of these new features already done, fans got to experience the new-and-improved Superdome during the 2023 season. Saints president Dennis Lauscha says the fans are the main motivation when it comes to upgrading the stadium. 

“The focus really was on that fan experience, and I think for our fans this year that got to see half the building done, I think they’ll come out and say it was really a step up in that experience,” Lauscha said. “I think once our fans see the second half done it really is raising the bar.”

The changes were approved in 2019 and at the time were predicted to cost $450 million. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, another $50 million was added to the cost. 

Saints owner Gayle Benson included these upgrades as one selling point for New Orleans getting a Super Bowl bid. 

Louisiana was initially granted the 2024 Super Bowl, concluding the 2023 season, but conflicts with Mardi Gras celebrations caused a change of plans. When the league moved from a 17-week regular season to an 18-week regular season, the Super Bowl was pushed back a week, creating the overlapping of events in the Big Easy. Las Vegas was instead given the Super Bowl for February 2024 and New Orleans was pushed back to 2025.

This will mark the city’s 11th Super Bowl, tied with Miami for the most of all time. Caesars…

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How ‘The Dynasty’ director approached asking Belichick about Spygate originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

If you’re filming a 10-part documentary about the 21st century New England Patriots, you’ll need to ask some hard questions. Specifically to a man who may not want to answer them.

That was the unenviable task of Matt Hamachek, the director of the Apple TV+ docuseries “The Dynasty,” which chronicles the Patriots’ unprecedented success and eventual fall from grace under former head coach Bill Belichick over 20-plus seasons.

Episodes 3 and 4 of the series were released Friday, with Episode 4 focusing on the Spygate scandal that rocked the team during the 2007 season. Hamachek interviewed several prominent figures about Spygate — which involved the Patriots illegally videotaping signals from the New York Jets’ defensive coaches on the sideline during their Week 1 game in 2007 — but obviously had to broach the issue with Belichick.

So, how did Hamachek approach asking Belichick, a coach notorious for shooting down questions he doesn’t like, about the subject he’d probably least like to discuss? Hamachek joined Tom E. Curran, Phil Perry and Michael Holley on NBC Sports Boston’s The Dynastic Post Show to reveal his strategy, which involved utilizing one of the most candid interviews Belichick gave as Patriots head coach.

🔊 Patriots Talk: Dynastic postgame show – Takeaways from Episodes 3 and 4 | Listen & Subscribe

“By the time I interviewed Bill, I knew that I had the Armen Keteyian interview,” Hamachek said. “I had seen Bill get asked about it enough to know that he was never going to go to the places that he had already gone in the Keteyian interview.”

In May 2008, CBS News’ Armen Keteyian pressed Belichick for nearly 15 minutes in a rare 1-on-1 interview focused on the Spygate scandal. Belichick was surprisingly candid, calling out former Patriots video director Matt Walsh — “For him to talk about game-planning and strategy and play-calling and how he…

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There won’t be any franchise-tag drama between Tee Higgins and the Cincinnati Bengals. 

According to NFL.com, the Bengals have informed Higgins that they’ll be using the franchise tag on him this year. The news comes on the same day where the Bengals — and the 31 other teams — got an unexpected gift from the NFL when the league announced that the salary cap would be set at $255.4 million in 2024, which is $10 million to $15 million more than most teams were expecting. 

The Bengals will now be using some of that extra money to pay Higgins, who will get a fully guaranteed one-year deal worth $21.816 million if he plays on the tag. Once Higgins signs his franchise deal, he’ll have until July 15 to work out a long-term contract with the Bengals. If that doesn’t happen, then he’ll go into the 2024 season on his one-year deal. 

The fact that the Bengals decided to tag Higgins isn’t that surprising, but the timing of the decision is somewhat unusual. Most teams wait until closer to the tag deadline before making a decision on whether to use the franchise tag (the deadline this year is March 5). That gives the team more time to work out a possible long-term deal with the player. 

Assuming Higgins gets officially tagged in the next few days, that will make him just the fourth player since 2018 to be tagged in the month of February. If he’s officially tagged by Monday, it will be the earliest that ANY player has been tagged since Jarvis Landry was hit with the franchise tag by the Dolphins on Feb. 20 back in 2018. 

Keeping Higgins was high on Cincinnati’s priority list for the offseason. The Bengals didn’t hide the fact that they wanted to keep Higgins with everyone from Joe Burrow to the team’s director of player personnel, Duke Tobin, making it clear that they wanted the receiver back. 

“He’s a big part of what we have done here,” Burrow said of Higgins in January. “It’s no secret our…

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The 49ers released veteran cornerback Isaiah Oliver on Friday, the team announced.

The move saves $2 million in salary cap space.

Oliver appeared in all 17 games last season, but he played only four snaps or fewer per game in six of the last nine games. He did not play a single down on defense in the postseason but saw action on 35 special teams snaps.

He totaled 58 tackles, two passes defensed, one interception and one fumble recovery in 2023.

Oliver originally signed with the 49ers last March.

The Falcons made him a second-round pick in 2018, and Oliver spent his first five seasons in Atlanta. He played 62 games with 38 starts for the Falcons.

In his six-year career, Oliver has totaled 270 tackles, three interceptions 36 passes defensed and three forced fumbles.

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