SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The San Francisco 49ers had a bye during the opening round of the playoffs, but that didn’t mean Kyle Juszczyk had the weekend off.

The team’s fullback went into action after his wife, Kristin, managed to meld three massive newsmakers — Taylor Swift, the NFL and the winter storms that were walloping the nation — when Swift confidently strode into Kansas City’s frozen Arrowhead Stadium wearing a jacket Kristin had made.

Swift and her legion of followers wield tremendous influence and can make social media sites convulse. And her long, red puffer — adorned with the No. 87 of her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — did just that.

For the Juszczyks, it was the equivalent of a five-touchdown day. They’d learned the singer-songwriter planned to wear the jacket but they weren’t sure. Kyle said they were watching on television from their San Jose home on Saturday afternoon when cameras caught Swift, protected by the jacket and a white beanie, getting out of a golf cart before the Chiefs’ wild-card playoff game against the Miami Dolphins got underway.

.@taylorswift13 arrives for her #NFLPlayoffs debut. #MIAvsKC — 8pm ET on Peacock
Also available on #NFLPlus https://t.co/bTakd7uLvX pic.twitter.com/Ugb1URaSoc

— NFL…

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford is trying to keep this week as normal as possible.

Good luck with that.

Stafford will return to Detroit on Sunday night, as the city hosts its first playoff game in three decades, for the 10-7 Rams’ wild-card game against the 12-5 Lions.

Detroit drafted Stafford with the No. 1 pick in 2009, and he quarterbacked the Lions for the next 12 seasons before the Rams traded for him in 2021. Stafford played in three road playoff games, all losses, while with the Lions but led the Rams to a championship the same year he was traded.

Wednesday, he was asked what type of reception he expected from the Detroit fan base.

“I’m not expecting anything, to be honest with you,” said Stafford. “I was asked this question a couple of times just by friends and family. I think the biggest thing for me is (to) go experience whatever that experience is gonna be.

“I understand what the people of Detroit and what the city of Detroit meant to me and my time, my career, what they meant to my family. I hope they feel that back. At the same time, I’m not a stranger to the situation and understanding that I’m the bad guy coming to town. I’m on the other team, and they don’t want success for me.”

Stafford and his wife,…

NFL team owners collect millions in revenue. They wield outsized power over their organizations and in their communities. They point to the bottom line, wins and losses, when firing coaches and executives, sometimes without giving them much time. But their own won-lost records appear nowhere.

Even people who follow the NFL closely might not know whether Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross owns a better record than New York Giants owner John Mara (he does).

They might not know whether female owners account for two of the five highest winning percentages since taking over their teams (they do).

They might not know that the only team without a traditional owner could lose 200 games overnight without dipping below .500 (the Green Bay Packers could).

They might not know that five of the last six owners to buy (rather than inherit) a team make up the bottom five in win percentage (they do — the lone exception is the Buffalo Bills’ Terry Pegula).

Some of these ownership situations are difficult to evaluate for reasons such as owners allowing their offspring to operate their teams. I’ve used simple criteria in ranking owners from worst to best win rates below. For our purposes, wins and losses are counted for owners after the NFL has approved their purchases; after an owner…

In the summer of 1999, Dan Campbell climbed into a beat-up truck and drove it more than 1,500 miles to New York for his first NFL job. He was madly in love with football.

In the summer of 1988, Chris Spielman packed all the laundry he could carry into a beat-up truck that was filled with old fast-food wrappers, per legendary Detroit News sports writer Jerry Green, and drove to metro Detroit for his first NFL job. And he was madly in love with football.

In the summer of 1973, Sheila Ford — who has likely never owned a bad-looking truck — graduated from Yale, just five years after the school began accepting women. She wanted nothing more than to work in the NFL, only to be told females needn’t apply. She, too, was madly in love with football.

What, exactly, does it take to fix the unfixable?

For the first time in modern history, the principal owner of the Detroit Lions — this city’s most beloved sports asset (apologies to the Red Wings) — is building the franchise around the only thing that has ever mattered: honesty. In football, honesty equals trust and trust equals love. The unconditional kind.

Detroit is second only to the Arizona Cardinals for the most losses in NFL history, with 702. Yet in August, the Lions announced they had sold out their Ford Field…