In 2020, Nick Underhill announced he was leaving The Athletic, where he’d been covering the New England Patriots, to start his own website covering the New Orleans Saints.
And he hasn’t looked back, not for a second.
Underhill, who had been a longtime New Orleans Saints beat writer with The Advocate, did not enjoy his time with the now-New York Times-owned sports outlet and recently summarized why he decided to leave it behind to become his own boss.
Nick Underhill explains why he left The Athletic to cover the Saints independently 👀🤣
“I have a big-ass audience here — I was way happier here. Covering Belichick f*cking sucks. You’re in that locker room and it’s just like no one’s saying sh*t. It’s f*cking hard, man.” pic.twitter.com/fTDHet8bMm
— In The Bayou With Tyrann Mathieu (@InTheBayouPod) April 17, 2026
“I started out in New England, and The Athletic gave me a job covering the Patriots. And they’re like a paid model. You’ve got to pay to read it,” he said during a recent appearance on In The Bayou With Tyrann Mathieu. “And I got up there, and I started to see how it worked. And I was like, ‘Wait a minute. So you’re gonna pay me $100K, but if I don’t sell enough subscriptions, you’re gonna fire me. And if I sell a lot of subscriptions, you’re gonna make $200K, and I’m still gonna make $100K.’
“So I’m going to sleep with the stress… I came back up here after four years, and the stuff I’m writing is hitting, and people are paying for it, and I’m meeting my quotas and exceeding them, and, you know, you’re just kinda watching the stats on the backend, and it’s like, hold up, why am I doing this? I’m marketing my own content. I know I’m marketing it effectively. I have a big-a** audience back [in New Orleans]. I was way happier back here.
“Covering [Bill] Belichick f*cking sucks. You’re in that locker room, and it’s just like no one’s saying sh*t. It’s f*cking hard, man. It was miserable. And it’s just like, I’m doing this, I hate it, I was happier there, and I didn’t realize how much I loved to be here until I left.”
Here’s 3,000 words on which receivers best fit what Tyler Shough does
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Saints scouting: Which rookie receiver fits best with what Tyler Shough does well? https://t.co/t0MIv5VjZP via @NofNetwork pic.twitter.com/5VIbJ6xf1O
— Nick Underhill (@nick_underhill) April 11, 2026
With that, Underhill quit The Athletic, came back to New Orleans, and started NewOrleans.Football, where he could cover the Saints his way. Now he can write 3,000 words on which receivers in the 2026 NFL Draft are the best fits for working with Tyler Shough, and he wouldn’t want it any other way.
Underhill isn’t the only former Athletic writer to take issue with the company’s stats-based focus. In 2023, sports columnist Bob Kravitz went scorched-earth on the outlet, saying he was held to unreasonable quotas for subscription growth.
About Sean Keeley
Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Managing Editor for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.