Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

If ever the NFL decides to give out an award for best contract, there’s no question that it would go to the New Orleans Saints for what they have done with Taysom Hill. He’s been a valuable player for them since 2017 as a utility player. He can play upback on special teams, wildcat quarterback, regular quarterback,…Read more...

Devin Hester is the greatest return man of all time. I don’t think that’s a very controversial opinion. Sure, some people might disagree, but in general, I imagine most people will either agree or understand how I could think he is. Hester was named to both the NFL Hall of Fame’s All-2000's and 2010's teams as a…Read more...

LeBron James returns to the court on Wednesday after serving the first suspension of his career. The Los Angeles Lakers forward drew blood on Sunday while boxing out Detroit Pistons forward Isaiah Stewart. What some thought at first was an elbow, really turned out to be a fist that James sent into Stewart’s eyebrow.Read more...

After sitting out of several days of practice last week with an unspecified injury to his pinky toe, Aaron Rodgers left mid-game against the Vikings when it became “very painful.” Then yesterday, Rodgers made another appearance on the Pat McAfee Show — the very program on which we all learned that he was a raging…Read more...

According to the Minnesota Vikings and Minnetrista, Minn., police, there has been an ongoing mental health situation at defensive end Everson Griffen’s home since early Wednesday morning.Read more...

The temptation is to label the Mets’ offseason a disaster so far, except that it doesn’t seem so out of character for the Mets. It’s kind of just a Mets offseason. Maybe it’s accentuated and louder than a normal Mets offseason, but the foundation is still very much the Queens baseball club. A clown car is still a…Read more...

Drew Timme’s iconic ‘stache might be tragically missing from this college hoops season, but he and the Zags are back in full force after an absolute rout of the No. 2 team in the nation last night. In a rematch of March’s overtime Final Four game, Gonzaga looked like a varsity team scrimmaging JV at the end of…Read more...

Being a fan of a team that hasn’t won a championship in your lifetime is generally seen as a circle of sports hell. You use words and phrases like “fatalistic” and “long-suffering” to describe the experience.

Dick Vitale returned to the broadcast desk last night for a Gonzaga-UCLA game, and if you caught the video live or on Twitter you’d have to be pretty stone cold to not have a salty discharge emerge from your tear ducts for the man who is currently battling cancer. If you didn’t know, Vitale had a melanoma removed…Read more...

There’s obviously been a rush in the aftermath of the Tampa Bay Rays signing Wander Franco to a deal that could be worth as much as $223 million and keep him in Tampa for 12 years, according to reports. The 20-year-old star will get a serious upgrade on what he would have made the next three years when he wouldn’t…Read more...

Bears fans, I know you’re upset. This season has been a disaster. They haven’t won a game since Oct. 10, and their most recent loss is to the Baltimore Ravens sans Lamar Jackson. Chicago’s defense has been disappointing, and the offense… has been somewhere between atrocious and promising all season, but never great.…Read more...

I can’t tell you why I and other soccer fans (which might just be my one friend) love it when the orange ball makes an appearance. Probably because it’s just so rare. Or maybe because it kind of looks like a tiny alien vessel has landed on the field and the players just decided to use it. It feels paranormal.Read more...

It’s been nearly a year since the Detroit Lions won a football game. In early December 2020, they managed a 34-30 victory over the Bears, before dropping the last four games of the season. In 2021, Dan Campbell’s squad dropped eight straight — until, rejoice, rejoice, a tie against the Steelers a few weeks ago broke…Read more...

Last night, the Bucs and Giants wrapped up Week 11 of the NFL season. As expected, the Bucs came out with the win by a final of 30-10. This marked the 21st consecutive game where the Giants failed to score 30 or more points. Even with the return of Saquon Barkley, the former No. 2 overall pick, carried the ball only…Read more...

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OMG, Iman and Daniella did it! On Monday, Iman Shumpert and Daniella Karagach won the 30th season of Dancing with the Stars, making Shumpert the first NBA player and the 12th athlete to win the competition.

Merely by looking at him, and certainly when you hear him talk, it’s easy to dismiss Darryl Sutter as the hilt of old-school NHL coaches. Throw in the fact that he was nothing more than a bottom-six grinder in his playing career, and you’d be forgiven for concluding that he would send his teams out with all the normal…Read more...

After being booed in the Browns’ 13-10 victory at home over the Detroit Lions, Baker Mayfield is steadily losing favor in Cleveland. I say good on those members of the Dawg Pound that have finally awakened to see Mayfield for who he is. He’s an average NFL quarterback, nothing more, nothing less. That’s it, and…Read more...

Chris Paul is like that overachieving student who never gets enough credit for doing more than the assignment required. Yes, Chris, your diorama features impeccable detail, but I don’t have a grade higher than an A+ to give you, and you already have enough extra credit that you could not show up for the last quarter…Read more...

The messenger is just as important as the message. And in the case of Enes Kanter, a very important message isn’t being listened to because the messenger would rather make impulsive noises.Read more...

Last week, it was Oklahoma.Read more...

I had a feeling, obviously due to recency bias, as soon as I saw the news about Chicago Red Stars coach Rory Dames resigning yesterday morning. It was two days after he had guided the Red Stars to the championship game, even though they were without at least half of their first-choice 11. Sure, he’d been the coach for…Read more...

It’s Week 11 of the NFL season, and rookie quarterbacks are always front and center, with some living up to the hype and others not as much. With that, let’s look at how the 2021 rookie class fared in Week 11.

The weekend before Thanksgiving wasn’t the best for the NBA’s royal family. LeBron James was involved in an altercation on the court in Detroit over the weekend. Then Bronny James was forced to hand over a fresh pair of Nikes to TikTok star “NeverMissAllie” because she beat him in a free-throw shooting contest.

There are times when watching people argue on social media isn’t depressing or infuriating. When it’s not about whether marginalized groups of people deserve rights or if the scientific method is anti-freedom, watching two grown people argue in front of the entire world can be quite amusing — especially if one of the…Read more...

I’ll admit to watching Survivor Series last night hoping that it would be an unmitigated disaster. Through WWE’s terrible promotion and build to the event, spiced with the disheartening and cold releases of wrestlers due to “budget cuts” even though the company keeps trumpeting record profits, there are few wrestling…Read more...

It’s not just you, it’s true. The 2021 NFL season has been highly unusual. Week 11 was the latest example, with the best teams in each conference losing to opponents that entered the week with a record below .500. That’s the second time in three weeks that several of the better teams suffered defeats on the same day.…Read more...

According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the Sacramento Kings handed Luke Walton his walking papers on Sunday, just 17 games into year three of his tenure as head coach. I wouldn’t call Walton a great coach, but he certainly isn’t the reason for the ineptitude displayed by this Kings franchise for the better part of…Read more...

Things were stacked against the New York Islanders before a puck was even dropped this season. The new UBS Arena, which would end this weird New York area odyssey they’ve been on since that ill-fated decision to play at Barclays Arena, which didn’t ever plan for hockey, wasn’t ready until this past weekend. Which…Read more...

Seventeen years and two days after one of the most historic events in NBA history took place in Auburn Hills, Mich., an updated version almost occurred involving the same fanbase and team — wearing the same uniforms — on Sunday night, as we were this close from having “Malice at the Palace 2.0" on our hands.

Another Sunday, another case of the upsets in the NFL. The AFC and NFC leaders both fell to division rivals yesterday, and they weren’t the only teams expected to bring home a victory that disappointed.

The IOC continues to happily eat whatever the Chinese government is willing to shovel to it. Yesterday IOC President Thomas Bach allegedly had a 30-minute video confab with Peng Shuai, in the hopes that would quell all the questions and fears about her whereabouts and well-being after she went off the grid after …Read more...

When you’re a fan of a team, you can’t really identify some threshold or benchmark before you know a coach will be fired. You can say before a season that this record wouldn’t be good enough, but you can never be sure, especially when it comes to the Chicago Bears. After all, all of us Bears fans were subjected to…Read more...

We’re in the second half of the NFL season, and we can separate the contenders from the pretenders. We’ll talk about the contenders later, because this list is about the least fortunate teams in the league. Let’s check out the worst of the worst from Week 11. Welcome to this week’s NFL Powerless Rankings.

Once upon a time, Deron Williams was seen as a top-five NBA point guard alongside draft classmate Chris Paul. Now Williams is retired and admits being a little jealous of Paul and how he’s still playing at such a high level all these years later.

Tiger Woods is swinging golf clubs again. It’s not at a tournament, or what even looks like a practice round, but a club is technically making contact with a ball. On Sunday morning, Woods posted a brief, three-second, clip on Twitter of him with a basket of golf balls, and taking practice cuts. The only words he sent…Read more...

Terence “Bud” Crawford and “Showtime” Shawn Porter put on a display of pugilism Saturday night in Las Vegas that more than lived up to its billing. Crawford retained his WBO welterweight championship with a 10th round TKO over Porter. But what happened in the bout’s aftermath could create a pathway for a mega-fight…Read more...

Rarely do finals turn out to be great games. When it all comes down to one game, teams tend to prioritize no mistakes over getting truly brave, and wait for their chance. Obviously, nerves play their own part, too, as the stakes become impossible to ignore.Read more...

Ole Gunnar Solskjær has finally been taken off hospice, and Manchester United fans’ burden of caring for their ailing family member through their final days has ended. After a valiant battle with the cancerous disease of poor managing, it was Watford that landed the decisive blow.

Going into Thanksgiving Weekend up on the campaign is always something to be thankful for. Making sure that happens, though, still requires one more solid week.

You could feel an Oregon loss coming at some point, and did it ever come on Saturday night in Salt Lake City, a 38-7 thrashing by No. 23 Utah which means that for the fifth straight season, the Pac-12 will not have a representative in the College Football Playoff.

The Philadelphia Eagles are just one of many unanswerable questions in the NFL this year. Their record says they’re bad. Their quality of opponent and matchup data says they’re good. They just handed the Broncos a three-possession loss, and the Broncos were just one week removed from handing the Dallas Cowboys a…Read more...

Yikes. I wouldn’t want to be a Michigan fan right now. After letting Penn State and Nebraska keep it close, Ohio State made a statement last weekend with a big win over a good Purdue team. “Statement” doesn’t even begin to describe what just happened in Columbus. Sure, after those two quick opening touchdowns, I…Read more...

Is it real?Read more...

Can Bears’ head coach Matt Nagy do anything right? The supposed “offensive genius” currently has Chicago ranking second to last in total offense — more than 20 yards behind the third-worst team, Seattle — and tied WITH DETROIT for the third-fewest points scored in the NFL this season. Nagy has more than disappointed…Read more...

As long as you’ve known baseball, it’s been four balls for a walk, but it wasn’t always that way. Today is the 133rd anniversary of the Joint Rules Committee taking away 20% of pitchers’ margin for error, reducing the number of balls for a walk from five to four.

Kyle Rittenhouse got away with murder, acquitted on all charges in the two killings that he admitted to last year, because he was able to convince a Wisconsin jury, with the help of a sympathetic-to-say-the-least judge, that he was acting in self-defense after having brought a rifle across state lines to play…Read more...

Come here. Sit down. Let’s have a talk. I’m not angry, just disappointed.Read more...

Twenty-three-year-old Riley Tufte got called up to the Dallas Stars’ roster last week to play for their fourth line. He saw a few minutes of playing time in victories against the Flyers and the Red Wings, but the big game for him was going to be his homecoming to face the Minnesota Wild in his home state, in the arena…Read more...

One of the biggest disappointments thus far in the 2021 season has to be Patrick Mahomes. This man had the greatest three year start to any career ever. Now, in his fourth season, the man is tied for the third-most interceptions in the league. He has been absolutely manhandled by some of the toughest teams in the…Read more...