Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

The Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs will meet in the postseason for the third time in four years on Sunday. It is the first time in the Patrick Mahomes-Josh Allen era that the playoff game is not at Arrowhead, which could prove to make all the difference.Read more...

Anything can happen in the playoffs, and I mean anything. In just the wild-card round alone, we saw:Read more...

The Tampa Bay Bucs' margin for error coming into the season was pretty high for a team that had low expectations and a quarterback the rest of the league passed on. They have a receiving corps that's healthy, deep and full of playmakers to go with a defense that's also healthy and rife with big-time talent. All Baker...Read more...

A week after Pat McAfee failed spectacularly in his quest to CHECK!" noted anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist Aaron Rodgers, announced that Aaron Rodgers Tuesdays" were done for the year, and then had Rodgers back on the show the very next day, I have begun to ask myself if what McAfee is doing is some kind of...Read more...

Midway through January of 2024, Detroit exists at the cross-section of grief and euphoria. Grief for the terminally ill Detroit Pistons and euphoria towards the Detroit Lions reanimating. Nothing encapsulates the circle of life and sports quite like the present-day 313. There's even a dash of relief that Michigan is...Read more...

Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce told his teammates he is retiring after Monday night's 32-9 wild-card loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter.Read more...

Every other generation, a player changes how his position is taught, scouted and played. For the current generation of players entering their prime years, that dude is Nikola Joki. The Joker" has taken the passing acumen of former bigs Vlade Divac, Yao Ming, Bill Walton and Arvydas Sabonis and combined it with the...Read more...

From the moment it happened in the summer of 2022, the Minnesota Timberwolves' acquisition of Rudy Gobert from the Utah Jazz looked like an all-time terrible trade. But suddenly, the Timberwolves have the NBA's second-best record, the best in the West, and the best defensive rating at 108 this season. And much of that...Read more...

As usual Jerry Reinsdorf failed to read the room. The Chicago Bulls are looking at a second-consecutive appearance in the Play-in Tournament, rounding out yet another rebuild on its disappointing last leg. Now is not the time to force more nostalgia on the fans, reminding them of an era many of them feel ended...Read more...

WNBA's free agency started this week, and while players can't sign until Feb. 1, teams are allowed to be in conversation with them. Here are the top 10 players who are eligible free agents and some scenarios around what would happen if they re-sign or go somewhere else.Read more...

Snow is as omnipresent in Buffalo as rivers are in Pittsburgh. Buffalonians are accustomed to sheets of snow piling up on the city's roads and sidewalks. Highmark Stadium was supposed to host the opening playoff contest of 2024 until Mother Nature intervened, despite the fact that the city has experienced more extreme...Read more...

We've already highlighted some of the famous Black celebrities who are HBCU alumni, but what about the athletes?Read more...

NBC decided to broadcast Saturday's wild card matchup featuring Kansas City and Miami exclusively on their streaming channel Peacock. This was the first time an NFL playoff game was televised in such a way and, if you're like most folks, you weren't too thrilled about it. It sucked for millions, but you might as well...Read more...

Miami is the nexus of cult phenomenons. Heat Culture, cryptocurrency, crash diets. Over the last year and a half, Tua Tagavailoa has also become a South Beach cult favorite. Tuanon is the most prominent group of devoted believers in the Dolphins quarterback. When the Tuanon founder died last year, Tagovailoa even...Read more...

Super Wild Card Saturday lived up to its name in the city of Houston, with the Texans' introduction to the postseason making light work of the Cleveland Browns, 45-14. If you thought Houston's 10 wins in head coach DeMeco Ryans' first year with a rookie quarterback was a fluke, go ahead and smack yourself right now....Read more...

Coming into Wild-Card Weekend, there were different narratives about the Kansas City Chiefs and Cleveland Browns than usual. Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid spent the second half of the season trying to convince us that something was off - then Kansas City rolled Miami, 26-7. The other game featured a Browns squad...Read more...

Updated Jan. 13: New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the Bills-Steelers game will be postponed to Monday at 4:30 p.m. ET.

ESPN is reportedly close to completing its full transition to propaganda production as the NFL is in advanced talks to buy a stake in the network. This comes as no surprise given ESPN's parent company, Disney, has encountered a few well-documented, multimillion-dollar missteps of late, and the network's facade as a...Read more...

An 82-game season can be a long run for most franchises. Sometimes, nights just don't go your way. Just ask the Portland Trail Blazers, who combined an awful shooting night and a loaded Oklahoma City Thunder opponent to make for a historic blowout. In honor of the Thunder's absolute drubbing of the Blazers, here are...Read more...

It'd be interesting to see how many Alabama fans knew the name Kalen DeBoer before this season. Hell, I'd love to see the numbers a month and a half ago. It took all of two days for the Crimson Tide to find a replacement for Nick Saban, which feels fast, but with players diving into the transfer pool, expediency was...Read more...

It's hard to be an afterthought for an NHL team in Canada, and yet it kind of feels like the Winnipeg Jets are one. They're not grouped with either of the other blocks. They aren't near Toronto or Montreal in the Atlantic Division, and even the Ottawa Senators get more shine from being caught between the two. They're...Read more...

Mere days after I wrote about the penchant of accused athletes to find a friendly face in the sportswriting community to help them rehab their image among the mouth-breathers in the fandom, Trevor Bauer offered himself up as Exhibit A, launching his own redemption tour in a nakedly desperate attempt to get back in...Read more...

Kim Mulkey has consistently shown us where she stands on social matters. She leans to The Right, which is her right. But when 83 percent of your team are women of color, it's on you to answer for how your employer's decisions will affect them. - Carron J. Phillips Read MoreRead more...

After 18 weeks of grueling NFL action, we've made it to Wild-Card Weekend and the first round of the postseason. We often hear the term must-win" during the regular season, but once a team makes it this deep into January, every game is truly a must-win scenario. Like any other week, there's always a chance that the...Read more...

The NFL season zips by, which might be one of the hundreds of reasons it remains our national religion. There isn't really time to get bored with it and everything that happens in it feels truly important. Which means any team that can string a few good weeks together has turned some mythical corner that we wouldn't...Read more...

Josh Giddey is still playing for the Thunder while being investigated for statutory rape. The Charlotte Hornets were comfortable" bringing back Miles Bridges, after his domestic violence suspension. (He pleaded no contest to felony DV charges.)Read more...

People are going to watch the Super Bowl no matter what, but not all Super Bowl matchups are created equal. With a total of 49 possible Super Bowl matchups remaining, only so many are going to be truly watchable. Considering seeding, history, narratives, and outright entertainment, this is a deep dive into all the...Read more...

Michael Jordan is still taking it personally.Read more...

In case you were wondering what Carmelo Anthony is up to these days, he's officially retired - and shockingly in the content business. I know. My guess would've been timepieces and Bordeaux, but Melo is an entrepreneur now, so he has various pens in various inks, and hopefully, he's diversified enough to continue...Read more...

Now that the regular season is done, many NFL rookies made headlines for their skills and ability to transition well into the professional game. Pre-draft, there was lots of speculation about who would be a bust and who would excel greatly. Here is our list of booms and busts amongst NFL rookies for the 2023 season.Read more...

The NFL has outgrown being just a professional football league. It has become America's favorite TV show. But unlike most sitcoms, dramas or reality shows, Roger Goodell knows that ratings will remain consistent no matter which network/streaming app his production is broadcast on. This league has guaranteed viewers.Read more...

Updated Jan. 12: According to a report by the New York Post, ESPN's former senior vice president of production Lee Fitting's dismissal was directly tied to the fake-name Emmy scheme.Read more...

In the comedy classic Tommy Boy, Chris Farley's titular character informs David Spade's Richard that he graduated college - after nearly a decade of schooling.Read more...

Jerod Mayo, long favored to be Bill Belichick's replacement, was named the head coach of the New England Patriots. The move comes just a day after the organization parted ways with Belichick, who spent 24 years at the helm and won six Super Bowls.Read more...

It says something about the state of the New York Yankees these days, this self-imposed state, that instead of shopping at the top of the market for someone, anyone, to join Gerrit Cole that isn't made of dead bugs (Carlos Rodon) or terrible (pretty much everyone else, and Rodon) they'll turn to a pitcher who actively...Read more...

From the beginning, Bill Belichick flaunted the egalitarian team culture he sought to establish in New England. Before they took the field for Super Bowl XXXVI, the St. Louis Rams' Show on Turf offensive starters followed tradition by exiting the dimly lit tunnel one-by-one-by-one into the spotlight to the smattering...Read more...

Sometimes certain pairings in life become so successful that they are forever tied at the hip in the minds of the masses. In sports, we see it all the time, no matter how the relationship ends. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick will always be tied to one another just like Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson, and the list goes...Read more...

Bless the Atlanta Falcons' heart: They are shooting their shot. There are reports from national and local Atlanta insiders that the Dirty Birds want Bill Belichick to be their next head coach. On Wednesday, ESPN's Dan Graziano and Jeremy Fowler reported that the Falcons have a strong interest in Belichick, if he were...Read more...

The NFL is a small-sample league. Before you can even blink, 18 games have flown by and we're left trying to make sense of everything that happened. It means that luck can play a massive part in whether a team succeeds or fails, with a few bounces of the ball defining the entire story for an entire season.Read more...

According to Christopher Wallace's definition, beef is when you need two gats to go to sleep; when your moms ain't safe up in the streets; when I see you, guaranteed to be an ICU; when you make your enemies, start your Jeep; and when you roll no less than 30 deep. While I don't know how many of this Wild-Card...Read more...

Ah, yes, we've gotten to that point in the European football season where most everyone asks themselves, Why are these teams in Saudi Arabia?" before quickly correcting themselves.Read more...

After 18 weeks of grueling NFL action, we've made it to Wild-Card Weekend and the first round of the postseason. We often hear the term must-win" during the regular season, but once a team makes it this deep into January, every game is truly a must-win scenario. Like any other week, there's always a chance that the...Read more...

Wanna see a whiff?Read more...

There's one storyline the NFL hasn't highlighted heading into the postseason, and that's probably for legal reasons. At least, I can't imagine the league's attorneys would advise them to showcase its entire roster of Black head coaches making the playoffs, considering Brian Flores' lawsuit is still pending.Read more...

Yes, we get it. Bill Belichick is arguably the greatest coach in NFL history. He's also one of the sport's biggest jerks.Read more...

Kim Mulkey has consistently shown us where she stands on social matters. She leans to The Right, which is her right. But when 83 percent of your team are women of color, it's on you to answer for how your employer's decisions will affect them.Read more...

The NFL playoffs are officially set. All the ups and downs, laughs and years, improbable comebacks and unprecedented collapses, none of those mean anything now. All that's left is a four-week sprint to immortality.Read more...

It's one thing when a sport either ignores or is oblivious to whatever is surrounding a certain player or individual. It's quite another when they know and just don't care. Such is the case with this week's announcement that the ATP Tour players had chosen Alexander Zverev to their players' council.Read more...

I did not get the memo that Festivus had been moved from Dec. 23 to the entire month of January. Grievances have been aired and an expansion for that holiday is the only explanation I have for why so many celebrities are beginning the year by verbally going upside the heads of those whom they dislike.Read more...

Bill Belichick is no longer the head coach of the New England Patriots, a position he's held for nearly a quarter century, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter and Mike Reiss.Read more...