BASEBALL

Derek Jeter steps away

from the Miami Marlins’

ownership group. D2

HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL

The St. John’s girls and

the Paul VI boys are WCAC

tournament champs. D4

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Ex-Baylor coach Art Briles

resigns as Grambling’s

offensive coordinator. D5

KLMNO

SPORTS

TUESDAY, MARCH 1 , 2022. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/SPORTS M2 D

BY NICKI JHABVALA

B randon Beane can recall every detail,

dating from his earliest conversations

with Buffalo Bills ownership, about find-

ing “that guy.” Months were spent rejig-

gering the roster to collect draft picks,

poring over college game film, making

trips to meet prospects and holding

private workouts.

“It was all in the eye of, ‘We’ve got to go

get a quarterback,’ ” Beane says now.

“Once I left the Senior Bowl [in January

2018], I was convinced we were going to

have some options to say, ‘This guy can be

the guy for us.’ ”

In his first year as general manager of

the Bills, Beane set out to do what every

quarterback-needy team must: try to find

that franchise player with the physical

tools, the mental makeup and the leader-

ship skills to turn a fledgling team into a

contender. His aggressive yet calculated

approach — which included multiple

trades to move up in the first round —

landed Josh Allen, whom the Bills

nabbed with the No. 7 pick and have since

built their offense around. His emer-

gence as one of the NFL’s most transcen-

dent players has not only reshaped the

trajectory of the Bills but f urther cement-

ed the value of an elite quarterback.

“It’s truly about being a consistent

contender, and if you don’t have that guy

under center, everything else has got to

be really good, really strong,” Beane says.

Just ask the Washington Commanders,

who have loosely modeled their latest

rebuild after the Bills’ approach. With a

revolving door of coaches and just as

many offensive philosophies, the Com-

manders have tried just about every

approach possible, cycling through 25

starting quarterbacks over the past 22

seasons.

And yet they’re still stuck in quarter-

back purgatory, still looking for the

SEE QUARTERBACK ON D2

Hunting for big game

Commanders’ search shows finding a franchise quarterback remains the NFL’s hardest puzzle

Hurricanes at Capitals

Thursday, 7 p.m., ESPN Plus, Hulu

majority-owned by the Russian

government. The company has

sponsored the Champions

League for many years, and the

title game this year was to have

been played at Gazprom Arena in

St. Petersburg.

“Football is fully united here

and in full solidarity with all the

people affected in Ukraine,” the

FIFA and UEFA statement said.

“Both presidents [of the govern-

ing bodies] hope that the situa-

tion in Ukraine will improve sig-

nificantly and rapidly so that

football can again be a vector for

unity and peace amongst people.”

The Russian Football Union,

SEE SOCCER ON D3

The suspension also affects the

Russian women’s team — which

was slated to play in the Euro-

pean Championship this summer

in England — and Spartak Mos-

cow, a men’s club team that ad-

vanced to the round of 16 in the

Europa League, the continent’s

second-most-important club

competition.

UEFA already had moved the

May 28 Champions League final,

the biggest club match in the

world, from St. Petersburg to the

Paris suburb of Saint-Denis.

European soccer authorities

also announced they had can-

celed their partnership with Gaz-

prom, a natural gas giant that is

The Russian men’s national

team, a World Cup quarterfinalist

in 2018, was scheduled to host

Poland in a qualifying playoff

March 24. Had it won, it would

have faced Sweden or the Czech

Republic five days later for a

berth in this fall’s tournament in

Qatar. All three teams announced

over the weekend that they would

boycott games against Russia.

BY STEVEN GOFF,

CINDY BOREN

AND ANDREW GOLDEN

FIFA, soccer’s global governing

body, and its European counter-

parts suspended Russia from in-

ternational competition Monday,

a move that affects World Cup

qualifying and major club compe-

titions and comes amid mount-

ing worldwide pressure on the

country to end its invasion of

Ukraine.

In a statement, FIFA and the

Union of European Football Asso-

ciations (UEFA) said the ban

would remain in place “until

further notice.”

FIFA, UEFA suspend Russia from international play

Soccer bodies join IOC

and other groups in push

to halt Ukraine invasion

MICHAEL AINSWORTH/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Josh Allen, the seventh pick in the 2018 draft, has turned the Bills into l egitimate contenders, illustrating the value of an elite quarterback in today’s NFL.

macho nationalism — has been a

long con, and it’s no small thing

to knock him off medal podiums

and expose the lifts in his shoes,

or to rip off his judo belt and

show the softening of his belly

and, in turn, weaken his

influence.

“This could have a

tremendous impact on minds of

many Russians,” says Garry

Kasparov, the former chess

world champion turned activist.

It was an act of “moral

capitulation” to award Putin

prestige via sports events in the

SEE JENKINS ON D3

There is nothing
trivial about
wiping Vladimir
Putin’s musky
perspirations
from the
international
sports stage.
Sanctions against
Putin in the sphere of games
have a reach unlike any other
because they leave him
sweatingly exposed to the only
audience he really fears or
courts: the Russians in the
street. His brand of shirtless
belligerent patriotism — his

Knocking his teams o≠ the stage

exposes Putin to his own people

Sally
Jenkins

slowed a potent Toronto Maple

Leafs offense.

But as they often have this

season, the Capitals couldn’t get

past early self-inflicted errors in

their 5-3 loss at Capital One Are-

na. Washington has lost three in a

row overall and its past six at

home. The Capitals have lost

three in a row in regulation for

the first time since they dropped

four straight in February 2021.

“We got to control the big mo-

ments and find ways to win those

games,” forward Tom Wilson said.

“I think we’ve found ourselves in

close games quite a bit here the

last month and they’ve just been

going the other way — and that is

just unacceptable.”

Wilson tied the score at 3 early

in the third period with his sec-

ond goal of the night, but the

Capitals couldn’t find the go-

ahead tally. Maple Leafs defense-

man Rasmus Sandin scored the

game-winner to cap a nifty pass-

ing play at four-on-four with 3:23

left, and Pierre Engvall found the

empty net with 1:01 to go, ending

Washington’s hopes.

Wilson’s first goal was a deflec-

tion of captain Alex Ovechkin’s

shot on the power play midway

through the second period to cut

Toronto’s lead to 3-2. Wilson then

scored shorthanded at 1:44 of the

third to tie it.

“There’s things that we can do

better,” Coach Peter Laviolette

said. “You can go back and look at

the goals. We’re in a position right

now where it’s not bouncing our

way, so we’ve got to clean it up and

we’ve got to do a better job.”

Early goaltending issues put

the Capitals on their heels again.

Ilya Samsonov, who got the start,

SEE CAPITALS ON D8

BY SAMANTHA PELL

It appeared the Washington
Capitals had finally started to
figure it out Monday night. They
threw a flurry of shots on net,
they moved the puck quickly and
efficiently, and they briefly

Capitals’ comeback is squandered in sixth straight loss at home

MAPLE LEAFS 5,

CAPITALS 3

BY CHELSEA JANES

jupiter, fla. — Major League

Baseball’s lockout began in early

December and stretched through

43 days without negotiations and

then a month and a half of futile

talks.

By mid-February, MLB had de-

layed spring training, a beloved

tradition, cutting games from

spring training schedules and

keeping players and fans locked

out of Florida and Arizona ball-

parks. And by late February, rep-

resentatives from MLB and the

players union were meeting daily

at Roger Dean Stadium in Flori-

da, the spring home of the St. Lou-

is Cardinals and Miami Marlins,

in talks that never seemed to have

much urgency and didn’t lead to

much tangible progress.

Those talks reached a critical

point Monday, the day MLB set as

the cutoff to reach an agreement

or else Opening Day would be

postponed. At 10 p.m., the sides

were still talking.

At one point in the early eve-

ning, MLB Commissioner Rob

Manfred walked by reporters and

said, “We’re working at it.” At

around 9 p.m., a person familiar

with the negotiations said that

while the sides were still talking,

they remained far apart on many

key issues — but that they had

discussed extending MLB’s dead-

line to Tuesday to give them more

time.

So by late Monday evening, the

talks were ongoing, and it re-

mained unclear whether the

s econd-longest work stoppage in

major league history would be-

come the first since the strike of

1994-95 to cost the sport regular

season games.

Those familiar with the negoti-

ations initially indicated they

would sense whether a deal was

possible by midday Monday, and

early reports about the tone of the

negotiations were not promising.

The union also began to organize

a staffed training facility in Ari-

zona, according to a person famil-

iar with the plan, preparing in

case the lockout continues.

If it does, the union hasn’t

completely conceded that MLB’s

threat to disrupt the schedule is

one it can make good on. A person

familiar with the union’s thinking

said Sunday that if regular season

games are canceled and salaries

SEE MLB ON D3

Baseball

talks go

long into

the night

Opening Day hangs

in balance as MLB,

u nion keep negotiating