NASCAR suspended Truck Series driver Conner Jones for one race on Wednesday after he intentionally crashed another driver, Matt Mills — who was hospitalized for two days over the weekend as a result of the wreck.

Jones, 18, lost his temper while racing Saturday at Homestead-Miami Speedway and rammed into Mills’ rear bumper, sending Mills’ truck up the racetrack and into the wall. Mills’ truck then caught fire. The driver was taken to a local hospital due to smoke inhalation.

NASCAR issued a two-lap penalty to Jones at the time. But after meeting this week, officials determined that Jones’ behavior also warranted a one-race suspension.

Jones refused to speak with reporters at the track, but later issued an apology in a statement on social media that said, in part: “Matt and I have encountered several on-track incidents this season, and I let my frustration get the best of me. I underestimated the impact my actions would have on Matt, and I deeply regret the consequences that followed.”

pic.twitter.com/wbLtM64Id8

— Conner Jones (@connerjones88) October 26, 2024

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Mills, after being released from the hospital Monday, posted a video to his social media channels that expressed appreciation for the outpouring of well-wishes from fans.

“Definitely didn’t like being in the hospital as long as I was or being in that situation,” Mills said, his voice still raspy from the smoke. “Having you guys there to support me and help me get through that, I can’t thank you all enough.”

Glad to be heading home. Appreciate everyone that reached out over the last couple of days. 🙏 pic.twitter.com/lN7Ph8y2fy

— Matt Mills (@mattmillsracing) October 28, 2024

Mills has been cleared to race Friday at Martinsville Speedway. He is 23rd in the point standings for Niece Motorsports with two top-10 finishes this year.

Jones, who has driven a part-time schedule for ThorSport Racing this season, has a best finish of 11th on the season. A replacement for Jones has not been named.

Required reading

(Photo: James Gilbert / Getty Images)

Brad and Charlie Hart are season-ticket holders at Spurs. Father and son, they always sit near the tunnel at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and at full time, after every game, 10-year-old Charlie will rush to try to get the attention of the players as they walk off the pitch.

But earlier this month, after Tottenham had beaten West Ham United 4-1, Charlie realised he had forgotten his trusted marker pen for those autographs he covets so much. Little did he know that he would leave the stadium that Saturday afternoon not with a few squiggles of ink on his shirt or a programme but with a true collector’s item.

During the match, Spurs’ goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario had put on a baseball cap to keep the lunchtime sun from his eyes, a moment celebrated by nostalgic football purists as a welcome return of a once-prominent piece of goalkeeper kit. “Old school vibes,” said one fan on social media.

Those were the days: a ’keeper in a cap or maybe jogging pants, putting comfort before fashion, looking more suitably dressed to wash the car or take the dog for a Sunday morning walk than play in the world’s top domestic football league. While it was commonplace in the 1990s and early 2000s to see a goalkeeper in a cap — Oliver Kahn for Germany and Bayern Munich springs to mind — it is a more unusual sight now. Long gone are the days of goalkeepers wearing flat caps, like the great Lev Yashin.

“Vicario came out with the goalkeeper coach (Rob Burch), who was holding the cap,” Charlie, from Harpenden, a commuter town north of London, tells The Athletic. “He (Burch) just looked in my eyes and said, ‘Catch’, and then he threw the cap. I caught it in one hand because my dad’s phone was in the other, although I would have happily dropped my dad’s phone to secure the catch.”

Unlike his father, who remembers goalkeepers in caps as a more familiar sight, it was the first time outside YouTube videos that Charlie had seen a ’keeper wearing one in a game.

In recent years, England internationals Dean Henderson and Jordan Pickford have worn caps for their clubs, Crystal Palace and Everton, but they are in the minority.

So why has the hat-wearing goalkeeper become so rare?

International Football Association Board (IFAB) rules for the 2024-25 season state that caps for goalkeepers are permitted, as are “sports spectacles” and tracksuit bottoms. There are also specific rules on head covers for players, including the need for them to be black or the same main colour as the shirt, but the same directives do not apply to baseball-style caps worn by goalkeepers. If the rules haven’t changed, what has?

Former Liverpool goalkeeper Chris Kirkland became synonymous with cap-wearing during his pro career, which began in the late 1990s. When people meet him now, the 43-year-old says it is still something he is remembered for.

Kirkland, who won one cap for England, started wearing a cap in training when he was a young player at Coventry City’s academy after seeing the senior team’s first-choice goalkeeper, Steve Ogrizovic, use one. Kirkland found it helpful for boosting concentration levels, as much as for keeping the sun’s glare out of his eyes.

Lev Yashin wearing a flat cap when playing for the Soviet Union against England during the 1958 World Cup (Pressens Bild / AFP)

“I always used to wear one in training because I’m not great in the sun,” Kirkland, who joined Liverpool in 2001 aged 20 in a deal that made him the most expensive goalkeeper in Britain, tells The Athletic. 

“I burn, so I used to wear caps to keep the sun off my face. But I got used to it and it helped give me better vision. It used to block other things out and I found myself being able to concentrate more because it blocked out distractions. I used to wear it sometimes even when it wasn’t sunny, which I used to get a few strange looks for.

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“A cap can block the sun out at certain angles, which I used to find helpful. I’m surprised ‘keepers don’t wear them anymore because you see them (when facing the sun). They put their arm up and their hand over their eyes, which is obviously a distraction itself.”

Fans have come to the rescue of squinting goalkeepers plenty of times. When Leeds United goalkeeper Felix Wiedwald was struggling with the sunshine away at Barnsley in 2017, a supporter emerged from the away end to heroically give up his cap. A year later, a West Ham fan threw one onto the pitch for England’s No 1 Joe Hart to wear during an FA Cup third-round tie against Shrewsbury Town. 

Kirkland played for Coventry, Liverpool and Wigan Athletic among others (David Davies/PA Images via Getty Images)

“I stuck with the same cap for years,” Kirkland adds. “It was a navy blue Nike one, and the Nike tick eventually fell off because I wore it that much. I did well in the first game and stuck with it. The only time I would wear another is if I had taken it out of my kit bag to wash it. It was rotten by the end, but I kept it for years until the missus made me get rid. She was like, ‘That is absolutely honking and has got to go!’.”

Richard Lee is a former Watford and Brentford goalkeeper known for his caps — but not because he used to wear one.

“I’ve got a bit more of an association with caps because I went on Dragons’ Den (a British business-based game show) back in the day and it was for a cap company, but I never wore one in a game,” Lee, now a football agent with a long list of goalkeeper clients, tells The Athletic. 

“Wearing a cap was good when the sun is out of your eyes, but the moment a cross comes in, or a ball is played over the top, and you get that sudden glare, you look up and the sun hits you. So, I’d almost prefer to have the sun there the whole time and you knew where it was.”

Style could be another reason for goalkeepers opting out of wearing caps. It could simply be a fashion choice.

“You look at the goalkeepers now and they realise they’ve got a certain brand and look, and that does play a part,” Lee adds. “When you go out (onto the pitch) you want to feel a certain way and present yourself a certain way, whether that’s to the fans, the scouts or your team-mates.”

More on the world of sport and fashion…

Elite goalkeepers choosing not to wear caps influences the next generation, too. “The younger ones will copy what the current Premier League goalkeepers are doing,” Lee says. “You’re seeing it less and less at younger age groups too.”

Towards the end of her career, former Everton and England goalkeeper Rachel Brown-Finnis found “a better alternative” to wearing a cap.

“For a while, Nike produced sunglasses-like soft contact lenses. They were bright orange and when you put them in they looked a bit ‘Halloween’,” Brown-Finnis tells The Athletic. “They were by far the most effective thing. I hated wearing caps because they were fine if the ball was on the ground, but as soon as the ball came up in the air, you had to tilt your angle and vision — you were looking into the sun.”

Brown-Finnis said sunshine is a problem for goalkeepers and increases the importance of the pre-game coin toss for an afternoon game. A goalkeeper, she said, would want their counterpart to be facing the sun in the first half in the hope the strength of the sun’s rays died down in the second.

“Clearly that being seen as an advantage for your team to not be in the sun in the first half, it does affect the goalkeeper and players. It’s interesting that there’s not a standard intervention for that,” she said.

Jacob Widell Zetterstrom of Derby County, in the second-tier Championship, is one of the few goalkeepers across the professional game in England who wears headgear. The Sweden international wears a protective scrum cap, something The Athletic’s goalkeeping analyst Matt Pyzdrowski is familiar with.

Zetterstrom of Derby during a match in August (Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)

During the final seven years of his career, spent playing in Sweden, where he still resides as head of academy for his former club Angelholms, Pyzdrowski wore a protective head guard, similar to the one popularised by former Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech, who returned to the sport wearing the rugby-style cap in January 2007, three months after a collision with Reading’s Stephen Hunt fractured his skull.

“It was too many concussions in a short period,” Pyzdrowski says. “I remember the specialist I met told me, ‘Matt, you have got to be careful, because we don’t know how much this is going to impact you. If you want to have a good life in the future, you need to start thinking about the risk versus reward of 1) playing and 2) protecting yourself’.

“When you put that into perspective, I was like, ‘I have to wear a helmet’. For the rest of my career, I had a rugby helmet on. Every single training session, every single match, it became part of my outfit.

“It took some time to get used to heading the ball, as well as learning how to control it, but the big benefit was how it made me feel secure. When you come back from a head injury, you become timid, even if you were an aggressive goalkeeper before that. It took me a while to feel safe again, even when I had the helmet.”

Charlie Hart received a memorable memento at Spurs’ home match against West Ham this month (Brad Hart)

Pyzdrowski said protective headgear is becoming more prevalent in Sweden, with a few top-flight goalkeepers wearing them. “As a goalkeeper, you are very vulnerable. You have to be brave and put yourself in very difficult and unsafe situations. When I think about it, and about the safety of goalkeepers, it really should become a priority,” he says. 

As for Charlie, after taking Vicario’s cap to school to show his classmates, he is hoping to get it signed by the player himself at one of Tottenham’s upcoming home games. It will then be put in a display case — a reminder of the special family day that sparked a nostalgic outpouring within the football world.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

Turns out Jerod Mayo wasn’t completely wrong when he made his much-analyzed comment about the New England Patriots being “soft.” It’s just that he directed his Insta-slam post at the wrong people: If only he had aimed it at Patriots legends instead of Patriots players, Mayo would be getting saluted in every port of call in Football America.

The Patriots legends of whom we speak are Robert Kraft, the no-doubt-about-it savior of the franchise whose vision and business acumen are why the NFL has a team called the “New England Patriots” and not a team called the “St. Louis Stallions” or whatever they would have been called if only the late James Busch Orthwein had had his way.

The other legend is Bill Belichick, the no-doubt-about-it greatest coach in NFL history whose two decades of point/counterpoint with Tom Brady produced six Super Bowl victories. (And if you’re in the Belichick-is-overrated-because-drool-he-never-won-anything-without-Brady camp, please sell your crazy somewhere else. I’ve explained the lunacy of that take a million times and lack the patience to do so again today.)

But two things can be true at once. Yes, Belichick is a sure-as-shootin’ Hall of Fame coach, and, yes, Kraft should have received his Canton kiss years ago, but in recent weeks these two fellas have been presenting themselves as a couple of needy, insecure old men.

Caught in the middle of all this Kraft-Belichick whining and caterwauling is Mayo, whose focus is the 2024 Patriots. As opposed to the 83-year-old Kraft and the 72-year-old Belichick, who can’t move on from the 2019 through 2023 Patriots.

It begins with Kraft, who wants to take his share of credit for the good things that have happened with the 21st-century Patriots while also making it sound like he was in the other room whenever the bad stuff happened.

But Kraft was definitely out to lunch when he went on “The Breakfast Club” and said, “Our record the last three to four years wasn’t what I wanted. And I had given him (Belichick) so much power. He had full control over everything. And shame on me, I should’ve had some checks and balances better.”

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Nobody needed a secret decoder ring to translate what Kraft was saying, which is that Belichick screwed everything up when the owner had his back turned.

These words from Kraft provided a hold-my-beer moment for Belichick, who proved he could be even needier and more insecure than his former boss.

“I’m kind of hurt for those guys,” Belichick said during his appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show.”

“To call them soft — they’re not soft. They were the best team in the league last year against the run, and those guys went out there and did it even though we couldn’t score many points offensively.”

“The Patriots led the league in rushing defense last year and they still have a lot of those players..

I’m hurt for those guys because they’re not soft..

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I feel bad for the defensive players because they’re all tough players” ~ Bill Belichick #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/wVN9ufcNMg

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) October 21, 2024

Again, you don’t need a secret decoder ring. Belichick was nominally speaking about Mayo, but he was really speaking to Kraft, essentially saying, “That’s what you get for firing me.”

Belichick was also speaking to former players of his when he said, “I feel bad for the defensive players on that one because that’s a tough group. Jon Jones, (Davon) Godchaux, Jennings, Josh Uche. Those are all tough players.”

Secret decoder ring: You guys miss me, right?

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Belichick is being paid handsomely to be opinionated and provocative. He throws in the neediness and score-settling for free. As for Kraft, I can’t help but feel everything he says is designed to bolster his Hall of Fame candidacy, except that the attempts come across as needless and clunky. Kraft should be judged on his record, not his reminders.

Besides, if Kraft truly believes it was a missing system of checks and balances that doomed the Patriots in the last years of the Belichick era, he’d have made sure to help out his new coach, Mayo, with some of those checks and balances. Years ago when the Red Sox hired 28-year-old Theo Epstein to be their general manager, they brought in the late Bill Lajoie, a seasoned baseball man who helped build a World Series winner in Detroit, as a “special assistant.” Alex Cora, in his first year as manager of the Red Sox, brought in Ron Roenicke as his bench coach. Roenicke had managed the Milwaukee Brewers for four-plus seasons, as well as managing the Dodgers’ Double-A San Antonio club in 1997 when 21-year-old Alex Cora was his shortstop.

Other than Ben McAdoo and his two seasons as head coach of the New York Giants, there’s not much in the way of seasoned perspective on the 2024 Patriots. Some of that is on Mayo. Mostly it’s on ownership, which oversaw a rebuild of the front office and coaching staff.

As for Belichick, his cute little dog-whistling fools nobody. In calling out Mayo, he’s exposing his own softness.

The referendum on Jerod Mayo’s tenure as head coach of the Patriots will likely continue for what’s left of this season and into the offseason. But, really, it’s pointless. It behooves the Patriots to see what Mayo can accomplish with a year’s worth of head-coaching acumen on his resume. It behooves the Patriots to work with Mayo and executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf to add some been-there-done-that to the coaching staff and front office.

And it would behoove Mayo to a) improve his messaging, and b) while I have everyone’s attention, perhaps try being a little more aggressive with the play calling. You know, surprise us now and then.

Lastly, it would behoove Kraft and Belichick to take their little squabble out to the schoolyard and stop dragging Mayo into it. He has in-the-moment, grown-up things to do.

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(Photo of Bill Belichick, Jerod Mayo and DeMarcus Covington: Perry Knotts / Getty Images)