Armando Salguero
Armando Salguero is a longtime NFL columnist who uses three decades of league reporting and award-winning opinion writing to frame current news, controversies and ceremonies around the bigger story of professional football. He is OutKick’s Senior NFL Writer and focuses his coverage on how decisions by players, teams and the league shape the sport beyond the box score.
Senior NFL writer with Hall of Fame responsibilities
Salguero holds a senior role at OutKick as its primary NFL voice, writing columns and reported pieces that treat the league as his main beat.
He has covered the NFL on a full-time basis since 1990, giving him direct experience with more than three decades of league evolution, labor disputes, rule changes and franchise moves. His authority is reinforced by formal roles inside the sport’s honors system: he is a selector for the Pro Football Hall of Fame and a voter for the Associated Press All-Pro Team and major awards.
He has presented Jason Taylor and Zach Thomas for Hall of Fame induction, a responsibility that reflects long-standing relationships with players and a detailed understanding of their careers.
His author biography notes that he has covered 34 Super Bowls and reported from multiple NBA Finals, the Olympics, NASCAR and Formula 1 racing, Major League Baseball and college football, but his current work at OutKick is concentrated on the NFL. Before joining OutKick he spent decades covering the Miami Dolphins and the NFL for major newspapers, including long stints on the Dolphins beat and separate turns as the University of Miami Hurricanes beat writer during national championship seasons. He has also worked as an NFL bureau reporter in television and hosted multiple morning-drive sports radio shows, experience that informs his tone and his attention to how stories play across different media.
Quarterbacks, roster moves and the business of teams
Salguero writes frequently about quarterbacks and how their decisions affect franchises, using his experience to connect contract moves, personal choices and performance windows. He has covered Aaron Rodgers reconciling with his parents after years of estrangement, framing the story around Rodgers’s plan for a “last rodeo” season and the way personal relationships intersect with the end of a long career.
He follows that thread on the field as well, reporting on Rodgers’s training ahead of a season with the Steelers while noting that voluntary minicamp did not yet resolve the team’s uncertainty at the position. He tracks organizational decisions on younger quarterbacks, such as the Minnesota Vikings demoting former first-round pick JJ McCarthy to third string, and explains what that move signals about internal evaluations and depth chart plans. His work on Deshaun Watson’s status as the Cleveland Browns’ starting quarterback examines how guaranteed contracts, performance and public perception interact when a team weighs whether to change course. Beyond quarterbacks, he covers roster construction and trades, including a piece on the Bengals and Giants and defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence being pleased with a trade that sends a Pro Bowl player from New York to Cincinnati, highlighting how both sides view value and fit.
He also reports on player discipline and legal issues, such as Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice being jailed for 30 days after a probation violation and the possibility of further consequences, treating off-field events as part of the business reality teams must manage.
League spectacle, international games and global stage
Salguero’s NFL coverage often focuses on the league’s public face, from patriotic ceremonies to global expansion. He reported on Week 1’s 9/11 tribute in Seattle, detailing the moment of silence, military flyover and a national anthem rendered as a wild guitar solo, using the scene to show how the league mixes solemn remembrance with entertainment.
He covered the Seattle Seahawks’ appearance on “Hard Knocks,” emphasizing the first day of training camp and padded practice and noting how the Navy’s Blue Angels stole the show, a recurring example of his interest in behind-the-scenes access and how the league packages that access as content.
His reporting on an international game in Brazil includes an interview with an NFL field expert about the challenges of playing on that surface, down to the need for trimming grass with scissors, illustrating his attention to operational details that affect player safety and competitive integrity. Although the NFL is his core subject, he has also written about the United States as a host for the FIFA World Cup, focusing on how visitors respond to Americana and sports culture, a piece that shows his comfort shifting from football specifics to the broader staging of major events.
Together, these stories show a writer who treats ceremonies, television productions and international fixtures as important parts of how the NFL presents itself to fans and partners.
Off-field consequences and sports media stories
Alongside game and roster coverage, Salguero writes about the consequences of policy decisions and the people who work around the sport. His piece on a highly rated sports talk host who became a “vaccine mandate casualty” profiles a program director and morning-drive host fired for refusing a COVID-19 vaccine, tracing the timeline from internal conflict to forced exit and the impact on his family.
In that story Salguero pays close attention to employment terms, cause for termination and how corporate mandates collide with individual choices, signaling a willingness to handle contentious topics in detail. He applies a similar treatment to disciplinary and legal matters involving players, as in his coverage of Rashee Rice’s jail time and potential further sanctions, where the focus is on how personal decisions and court outcomes can quickly affect a career, a team’s planning and league reputation.
His draft-season self-audit, “Grading Armando Salguero’s Hits And Misses During NFL Draft Season,” reviews his own predictions between the scouting combine and the draft and then scores them after the fact, underscoring a columnist who is comfortable putting his judgment on the record and revisiting it. Across these off-field and meta-media pieces, Salguero shows an interest in accountability - of players, executives, media figures and himself - which distinguishes his coverage from more routine game recaps or transaction logs.
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