stoked

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Turns out, the marquee matchup Friday night between the Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs isn’t just a season-opening showdown between two premier quarterbacks and legitimate Super Bowl hopefuls.

It’s also a family feud — minus the bad blood.

Devin Woodhouse, head strength and conditioning coach for the Chargers, is the son-in-law of Chiefs coach Andy Reid, an under-the-radar connection that further hems these AFC West rivals.

“In our first game last year, I was a little anxious playing them,” Woodhouse told The Times. “It felt weird rooting against him at times.”

Reid understands, and he loves the fact that before bringing Woodhouse with him from the University of Michigan, Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh called his Kansas City counterpart and asked him if that would be OK.

“I said, ‘Heck, yeah, I’m honored that he’s got an opportunity to work for you,’” Reid said. “I got the biggest kick out of that, that Jim would even think of that. … What a class act.”

Chargers strength and conditioning coach Devin Woodhouse instructs players during practice at The Bolt in El Segundo on Dec. 13, 2024.

(Los Angeles Chargers)

Woodhouse, modest and focused on his Chargers responsibilities, was initially reluctant to sit down for an interview. But Harbaugh and Reid nudged him to talk, as did his direct boss, Ben Herbert, executive director of player performance.

“I don’t want to dim that light on him,” Herbert said. “I want that light brighter.”

Woodhouse, 34, who grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, met his future wife, Drew Ann Reid, when they were members of the same ward of their church in Provo, Utah. They had mutual friends, an instant connection and were married in 2013.

The couple was further bonded by tragedy. Drew Ann’s older brother, Garrett, who struggled with drug abuse for years, died in 2012. The twin brother of Woodhouse, Chaz, who was confined to a wheelchair with cerebral palsy, died a year later.

“As our relationship was growing, her brother passed away,” Woodhouse said. “We grew even closer together.”

The two now have four children, two boys and two girls, all of whom refer to Reid as “Gramps.” Woodhouse doesn’t call his father-in-law anything but “Coach.”

“I would say he’s a better man than he is a coach, and he’s a pretty dang good coach,” Woodhouse said. “And [mother-in-law] Tammy is the head coach of the head coach, so that’s how good they both are. I just love them, and not just the people they are for my wife, but for my kids and their grandkids.

“One of the things I love most about Coach Reid is how much I feel people love to play for him. It’s a cool thing to witness and I respect it a lot.”

Woodhouse feels the same way about Harbaugh, for whom he and Herbert worked at the University of Michigan.

“Ben Herbert found Dev,” Harbaugh said. “When Herb recommends somebody, I already know it’s going to be good. He doesn’t bring in anybody who doesn’t have a tremendous work ethic. Devin came in, and Herb was right.”

Herbert is meticulous down to the smallest detail. For instance, each dumbbell at the Chargers facility is emblazoned with the club’s lightning-bolt logo. Not only is that wall of weights always precisely arranged, but every lightning bolt is arched in an identical way. To ensure there’s never a speck of dust on the floor, Herbert and his crew use electric leaf blowers each day to clean the massive space.

Helping oversee the physical well-being of so many elite athletes is a challenging assignment, particularly for a franchise that has an unfortunate history of losing key players to injuries — as the Chargers did in August with left tackle Rashawn Slater, who sustained a season-ending knee injury.

Chargers strength and conditioning coach Devin Woodhouse helps quarterback Justin Herbert with his jersey during training camp in El Segundo on July 21, 2025.

(Ty Nowell / Los Angeles Chargers)

The way Harbaugh sees it, no one is better equipped to train an NFL team than Herbert.

“We are the tip of the spear,” said Herbert, who is not related to Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert. “Our job is to impact the mental and physical capability of the players. The physical part is much easier. The mental part — emotional stability, consistency — that’s the separator. And trust is everything.”

Woodhouse has a knack for building and maintaining those trusts.

“He has an ability to build relationships across a melting pot of personalities,” Herbert said. “He’s also versatile across range-of-motion, tissue and joint, strength, power and movement traits. So much so that with my 14-year-old, twice a week I want Coach Woodhouse to work with him.”

Woodhouse has a particularly keen eye when it comes to evaluating the tiniest aspects of a person in motion, helping players make subtle adjustments to the way they run in order to improve their speed.

Chargers strength and conditioning coach Devin Woodhouse works with Chargers wide receiver Ladd McConkey before a game at SoFi Stadium against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Dec. 15, 2024.

(Ty Nowell / Los Angeles Chargers)

“Dev’s someone who’s going to support you, but he’s going to tell it like it is,” Chargers receiver Ladd McConkey said. “I’ll be running a route, and Dev’s over there with his phone recording me. Then we’ll look at it in slo-mo and break it down.”

During games, Woodhouse is on the sideline as a “get-back” coach — a term he doesn’t particularly like — making sure players and coaches keep a sufficient distance from the field.

As for his own emotions, he figures he will have them in check, even with his father-in-law on the opposite sideline.

Family is family, true. But football is football.

US restaurant chain abandons rebrand after new logo prompts firestorm of criticism online.

Cracker Barrel, the US restaurant chain known for its southern-style cuisine, has abandoned a controversial rebrand following a backlash stoked by prominent right-wing figures including Donald Trump.

The Lebanon, Tennessee-based chain said on Tuesday that it would bring back its decades-old logo after its announcement of a simplified design provoked a firestorm of criticism online.

“We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our ‘Old Timer’ will remain,” the company said in a statement.

“At Cracker Barrel, it’s always been – and always will be – about serving up delicious food, warm welcomes, and the kind of country hospitality that feels like family. As a proud American institution, our 70,000 hardworking employees look forward to welcoming you to our table soon.”

Cracker Barrel, which has more than 600 stores across the US, last week unveiled a new logo as part of the “fifth evolution” of its brand, ditching the image of a seated man leaning against a barrel in favour of a simplified, text-only design.

The redesign prompted a swift backlash in right-wing circles, with some commentators claiming the company had gone “woke” – a term used by conservatives to mock what they see as an excessive fixation on racial and gender diversity.

Shares in Cracker Barrel, which had fallen sharply amid the backlash, rose more than 7 percent in after-hours trading following the reversal.

Weighing in on the furore shortly before Cracker Barrel’s announcement on Tuesday, Trump called on the company to revert to its old logo and “admit a mistake”.

“They got a Billion Dollars worth of free publicity if they play their cards right. Very tricky to do, but a great opportunity,” the US president wrote on his platform Truth Social.

Following Cracker Barrel’s U-turn, Trump congratulated the chain on the change.

“All of your fans very much appreciate it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Good luck into the future. Make lots of money and, most importantly, make your customers happy again!”

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has used the presidency to exert an extraordinary level of influence over private businesses.

Trump last week announced that the US government had taken a 10 percent stake in Intel, days after confirming that chip giants Nvidia and AMD had agreed to pay 15 percent of revenues from chip sales in China into Washington’s coffers.

Last month, Coca-Cola announced that it would release a version of its signature drink made with cane sugar in the US after Trump claimed to have persuaded the company to start using the sweetener in favour of high-fructose corn syrup.

WASHINGTON — Despite the sun bearing down on him and the sweat beading across his face, President Trump still lingered with reporters lined up outside the White House on Friday. He was leaving on a trip to Scotland, where he would visit his golf courses, and he wanted to talk about how his administration just finished “the best six months ever.”

But over and over, the journalists kept asking Trump about the Jeffrey Epstein case and whether he would pardon the disgraced financier’s imprisoned accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.

“People should really focus on how well the country is doing,” Trump insisted. He shut down another question by saying, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

It was another example of how the Epstein saga — and his administration’s disjointed approach to it — has shadowed Trump when he’s otherwise at the height of his influence. He’s enacted a vast legislative agenda, reached trade deals with key countries and tightened his grip across the federal government. Yet he’s struggled to stamp out the embers of a political crisis that could become a full-on conflagration.

Trump faces pressure from his own supporters

The Republican president’s supporters want the government to release secret files about Epstein, who authorities say killed himself in his New York jail cell six years ago while awaiting trial for sex trafficking. They believe him to be the nexus of a dark web of powerful people who abused underage girls. Administration officials who once stoked conspiracy theories now insist there’s nothing more to disclose, a stance that has stirred skepticism because of Trump’s former friendship with Epstein.

Trump has repeatedly denied prior knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and claimed he cut off their relationship long ago. For a president skilled at manipulating the media and controlling the Republican Party, it has been the most challenging test of his ability to shift the conversation in his second term.

“This is a treadmill to nowhere. How do you get off of it?” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist. “I genuinely don’t know the answer to that.”

Trump has demanded his supporters drop the matter and urged Republicans to block Democratic requests for documents on Capitol Hill. But he has also directed the Justice Department to divulge some additional information in hopes of satisfying his supporters.

A White House official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said Trump is trying to stay focused on his agenda while also demonstrating some transparency. After facing countless scandals and investigations, the official said, Trump is on guard against the typical playbook of drip-drip disclosures that have plagued him in the past.

It’s clear Trump sees the Epstein case as a continuation of the “witch hunts” he’s faced over the years, starting with the investigation into Russian interference during his election victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton nearly a decade ago. The sprawling inquiry led to convictions against some top advisors but did not substantiate allegations Trump conspired with Moscow.

Trump’s opponents, he wrote on social media on Thursday, “have gone absolutely CRAZY, and are playing another Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax but, this time, under the guise of what we will call the Jeffrey Epstein SCAM.”

During the Russia investigation, special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors were a straightforward foil for Trump to rail against. Ty Cobb, the lawyer who served as the White House’s point person, said the president “never felt exposed” because “he thought he had a legitimate gripe.”

The situation is different this time now that the Justice Department has been stocked with loyalists. “The people that he has to get mad at are basically his people as opposed to his inquisitors and adversaries,” Cobb said.

It was Trump’s allies who excavated the Epstein debacle

In fact, Trump’s own officials are the most responsible for bringing the Epstein case back to the forefront.

FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, regularly stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein before assuming their current jobs, floating the idea the government had covered up incriminating and compelling information that needed to be brought to light. “Put on your big-boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are,” Patel said in a 2023 podcast.

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi played a key role too. She intimated in a Fox News Channel interview in February that an Epstein “client list” was sitting on her desk for review — she would later say she was referring to the Epstein files more generally — and greeted far-right influencers with binders of records from the case that consisted largely of information already in the public domain.

Tensions spiked earlier this month when the FBI and the Justice Department, in an unsigned two-page letter, said that no client list existed, that the evidence was clear Epstein had killed himself and that no additional records from the case would be released to the public. It was a seeming backtrack on the administration’s stated commitment to transparency. Amid a fierce backlash from Trump’s base and influential conservative personalities, Bongino and Bondi squabbled openly in a tense White House meeting.

Since then, the Trump administration has scrambled to appear transparent, including by seeking the unsealing of grand jury transcripts in the case — though it’s hardly clear that courts would grant that request or that those records include any eye-catching details anyway. Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche has taken the unusual step of interviewing the imprisoned Maxwell over the course of two days at a courthouse in Tallahassee, Fla., where her lawyer said she would “always testify truthfully.”

All the while, Trump and his allies have resurfaced the Russia investigation as a rallying cry for a political base that has otherwise been frustrated by the Epstein saga.

Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who just weeks ago appeared on the outs with Trump over comments on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, seemed to return to the president’s good graces this week following the declassification and release of years-old documents she hoped would discredit long-settled conclusions about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The developments allowed Trump to rehash long-standing grievances against President Obama and his Democratic advisors. Trump’s talk of investigations into perceived adversaries from years ago let him, in effect, go back in time to deflect attention from a very current crisis.

“Whether it’s right or wrong,” Trump said, “it’s time to go after people.”

Megerian and Tucker write for the Associated Press.