In 2020, Nick Underhill announced he was leaving The Athletic, where he\u2019d been covering the New England Patriots, to start his own website covering the New Orleans Saints.<\/p>\n
And he hasn\u2019t looked back, not for a second.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nick Underhill explains why he left The Athletic to cover the Saints independently \ud83d\udc40\ud83e\udd23<\/p>\n \u201cI have a big-ass audience here \u2014 I was way happier here. Covering Belichick f*cking sucks. You\u2019re in that locker room and it\u2019s just like no one\u2019s saying sh*t. It\u2019s f*cking hard, man.\u201d pic.twitter.com\/fTDHet8bMm<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 In The Bayou With Tyrann Mathieu (@InTheBayouPod) April 17, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI started out in New England, and The Athletic gave me a job covering the Patriots. And they\u2019re like a paid model. You\u2019ve got to pay to read it,\u201d he said during a recent appearance on In The Bayou With Tyrann Mathieu. \u201cAnd I got up there, and I started to see how it worked. And I was like, \u2018Wait a minute. So you\u2019re gonna pay me $100K, but if I don\u2019t sell enough subscriptions, you\u2019re gonna fire me. And if I sell a lot of subscriptions, you\u2019re gonna make $200K, and I\u2019m still gonna make $100K.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cSo I\u2019m going to sleep with the stress\u2026 I came back up here after four years, and the stuff I\u2019m writing is hitting, and people are paying for it, and I\u2019m meeting my quotas and exceeding them, and, you know, you\u2019re just kinda watching the stats on the backend, and it\u2019s like, hold up, why am I doing this? I\u2019m marketing my own content. I know I\u2019m marketing it effectively. I have a big-a** audience back [in New Orleans]. I was way happier back here.<\/p>\n \u201cCovering [Bill] Belichick f*cking sucks. You\u2019re in that locker room, and it\u2019s just like no one\u2019s saying sh*t. It\u2019s f*cking hard, man. It was miserable. And it\u2019s just like, I\u2019m doing this, I hate it, I was happier there, and I didn\u2019t realize how much I loved to be here until I left.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s 3,000 words on which receivers best fit what Tyler Shough does<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Saints scouting: Which rookie receiver fits best with what Tyler Shough does well? https:\/\/t.co\/t0MIv5VjZP<\/a> via @NofNetwork<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/5VIbJ6xf1O<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Nick Underhill (@nick_underhill) April 11, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n With that, Underhill quit The Athletic, came back to New Orleans, and started NewOrleans.Football<\/a>, 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\u2019t want it any other way.<\/p>\n Underhill isn\u2019t the only former Athletic writer to take issue with the company\u2019s stats-based focus. In 2023, sports columnist Bob Kravitz went scorched-earth on the outlet<\/a>, saying he was held to unreasonable quotas for subscription growth.<\/p>\n \t