Go Long turns 4 years old!

So, here's a special. Details inside.

The World Wide Web was still in its infancy. Up until this point, I’d hear a statistic on television or learn about a trade in a magazine and scribble it down in a trusty notebook, a “Stat Book,” virtually attached to my hand at age 8.

Then, one morning, I woke up to Christmas in July. It was glorious.

Right here — to my astonishment — were the NFL’s passing, rushing and receiving leaders from the season before neatly printed, stapled, ready to be consumed. My Dad set the packet of papers on the couch for me to find in the AM and I vividly remember having no clue how this was even possible. An entirely new species of animal could’ve been napping in the same spot and the shock would’ve been the same. Once I started studying the names (Marino, Young, Kelly, Favre) next to the numbers, the adrenaline rush was unforgettable.

Because back then? Access to information was scant. If you wanted to know who won a game the night before, you had two options: Wait 37 minutes for the 90-second highlight on Sportscenter (and there was no guarantee you’d see if Alonzo Mourning and the Charlotte Hornets won before heading off to school) or settle for the final score crawling along of the bottom of Headline News.

A few years later, a copy of that week’s Sports Illustrated sat on the coffee table waiting to be devoured. Like you, I tried soaking up every story from Peter King, Gary Smith, the legends. They made sports sing.

Today? We can search any piece of information we want at any moment.

Everything’s quite literally in the palm of your hand. Yet, this technological boom has come with concerning consequences. They’re not even “unintended,” either. Social-media companies are successfully warping brain chemistry and shrinking attention spans one dopamine hit at a time.

Thirty years ago, nobody had a clue we’d get to this point.

Thirty years from now, who the hell knows what our phones will do.

Through it all, one basic human instinct will never change. At our core, we’re curious. We want to learn. We see a football game and ask, “Why?” and “How?” and yearn for more. And these last four years I’ve grown exceptionally optimistic that a great amount of people do want to take their brains back as social-media giants try to morph us into reel-scrolling zombies. You’ve expressed a strong interest to go beyond the press conference.

This week marks our four-year anniversary.

A hearty Thank You to all.

Back in November 2020, I created Go Long to serve as a home for longform in pro football.

After covering the Packers at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Bills at the Buffalo News and the NFL at Bleacher Report, it was time to take the entrepreneurial plunge. While unsure exactly how many people wanted to ding the “Subscribe” button to read football stories, I could see that NFL journalism and storytelling (as we always knew it) was getting squeezed out by media conglomerates obsessed with those dopamine hits. Seven-round mock drafts and power rankings were replacing the page-turning SI and Sporting News features at an alarming rate because — obviously — those are the grifts that appeal to advertisers. Photoshop Shedeur Sanders in a Giants jersey and, voila, watch the Draft Kings money flow in.

NFL coverage is getting TikTok’ified but I truly believed then and believe now that the majority of fans are inherently hungry for substance.

So, that’s been our charge.

Go Long exists to bring you pro football coverage in its realest, rawest form. That means sitting down over dinner with players across the country for profiles and spending weeks reporting on longer team deep dives, in addition to a steady stream of columns, podcasts and chats. Our goal is to relentlessly pursue the unvarnished truth — the good, the bad, the ugly — with complete independence and without the pandering that infiltrates those social-media feeds.

All of this is only possible because of you. We are not beholden to sponsors demanding a certain number of clicks on a post or corporate masters demanding a hard ideological shift. This company is completely powered by the people — and I’m extremely grateful for your support.

My promise is to always put your investment to good use. You can read a few of our most-read stories below if you’d like. Thrilled to see what we’re able to build together.

In the spirit of “Black Friday” and our anniversary, let’s run a special.

• New readers: Subscribe annually at $50 and we’ll send you a Go Long hoodie or crew sweatshirt.

• Current annual subscribers: Re-up annually — or gift an annual subscription to a friend — and we’ll do the same. (If you recently re-upped, just let us know as well.)

Please email sweatshirt size and mailing information to golongtd@substack.com.

Thanks again, everyone.

One more note! Cannot say enough about Substack, our platform. From the top-down, they’re on a mission to help people fight the algorithmic machines. We’ll continue to use Substack’s various tools to innovate. Each Sunday, you can join readers from around the world to discuss the games inside the chat. We’ve also been recording “Substack Live” videos. Join and ask anything you’d like.

Here’s a link to download the app. Turn notifications on, and you’ll get everything at Go Long the second it’s posted:

• ‘I’m still alive:’ The Zay Jones story (APSE, first-place in long feature category)

• David Long Jr., and the beast within

• The Fight for Erik Kramer’s Life

• The Real Romeo

• DNA of the Lions

• What happened to Kevin Kolb?

• You’re up, Caleb Williams

• The McDermott Problem series

• Murder, cockroaches, belief: How Rachaad White bet on himself

• 1 on 1 with Brandon Beane

• It’s Jordan Love Time

• Why Damar Hamlin is exactly what the Bills need

• It’s a new day for the Minnesota Vikings

• The Autopsy: How it all got so bad, so fast for the New York Giants

• You don’t know Yannick Ngakoue

• Wyatt Teller is why we love football

• Inside Jerry’s World

• Rise of the Jaguars

• What in the hell are the Dallas Cowboys doing?

• The Pressure is on Josh Allen

• The Green Bay Packers have a plan (it's genius, too)

Our Friday Feature stories from this 2024 season to date…

• 'It will happen!' Why HOF'er LeRoy Butler sees greatness in Evan Williams

• ‘Twenty-one months ago, I was dead:’ Why Damar Hamlin isn’t close to finished yet

• SKOL! How old-school principles are fueling the 2024 Minnesota Vikings

• 'Through the storm:' Blake Cashman is the Minnesota Vikings' maniac in the middle

• ‘I can battle anything:’ Brian Robinson Jr. nearly lost his life... then gained a superpower

• Should Josh Allen play football on Monday?

• The Full Monty: Why Detroit Lions RB David Montgomery runs so damn hard

• Ass-Kicking Origins: Why the Detroit Lions are built for 2024 football

• The Immortal Harrison Smith

Testimonials

“If anyone would ever want to read a long-form story on me — they wouldn’t — I would want Tyler to write it. No one is better at going in-depth on an issue, a subject, or a controversy than Ty Dunne. And his website is a perfect example of that. His dedication to telling the readers just a little bit more shines through brightly. A great website to bookmark if you want to know everything about the best stories in the NFL.” — Ian Rapoport, NFL Network Insider 

“I started covering the NFL in 1984, when the football-media world was about one-twentieth of what it is now. (When it was a sane world, actually.) Today, there are free sites, pay sites. There's a network devoted to pumping the NFL's tires. ESPN has an NFL show every day, even when teams are shut down in the summer. The Sunday shows are out of control. You've got to be judicious in your NFL media consumption or you'll go stark raving mad. The reason Go Long is a regular part of my football education is because he's smart, his stories are smart and different, his involvement with readers/experiencers is perfect for this day and age ... and one more thing. I like people in this business who love their jobs. Tyler Dunne loves writing about this game and talking about this game. It seeps into everything he does. All of that contributes to me clicking on his stuff consistently. I'm grateful for it.” — Peter King, NBC Sports

“I’ve been a subscriber since day one and always will be because I enjoy everything Tyler Dunne writes. He is one of America’s premier NFL feature writers, and his opinions and perspectives on the game are captivating.” — Dan Pompei, The Athletic

“Tyler Dunne is the best of what you'd want in a football writer. He is grounded in the game's past and aware of its future. He is equally gifted as a crafter of prose, an analyst and a columnist, with the even-handedness of a true 30-year veteran. I start my day with Go Long because I know Tyler will have something worth my time, and he always delivers.” — Conor Orr, Sports Illustrated

“Go Long has my favorite NFL articles and interviews to read.  Players and coaches seem to genuinely open up to Tyler — allowing him an access and an insight that I really don’t see anywhere else.  This is where I go for depth and insight. Not clickbait.” — Tom Pelphrey, actor, “Ozark,” “Love and Death,” “American Murderer”

“I can't overstate how much I love Go Long and Ty's work, as both a football fan and as a radio host constantly looking for insightful, smart and unique insights on the game. His work is so good it can seem prescient, and it's rare to find someone schooled in the Xs and Os at the level of a football coach, a reporter plugged in enough to routinely be eating ribs or taking memory-lane tours with current NFL stars, and a writer so talented 5,000 words of perspective and surprising new information reads like its 500. The guy is a major talent, and Go Long is a must-read for any football fan.” — Bill Reiter, CBS Sports Radio