Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

November has rolled around, and like clockwork, the Dallas Cowboys proved once again why they can’t be trusted once expectations are placed on their shoulder pads. Nobody outside Wisconsin gave the Packers a chance to beat the Cowboys Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, Dallas must’ve missed the email that they were…Read more...

The GM Meetings are in the books, the Winter Meetings aren’t in the distant future, and the rumors are beginning to fly. You can be sure your favorite team is talking to agents for players! Does that mean anything? Nope, sure doesn’t! But you’ll take anything at this point, and they know that. So we’d better get…Read more...

It wasn’t a coincidence. It was evidence.Read more...

For the fair-weather soccer fan, and let’s be real, that’s 99 percent or more of American sports fans, the World Cup is the one event taking place over multiple weeks where general interest is at a high. The United States men’s national team didn’t make the world’s best 32 in 2018, and a huge chunk of American fans…Read more...

Three members of the University of Virginia football team were gunned down on the Charlottesville campus late Sunday night and two more were injured, according to police and university officials.

For all of the press that Romeo Doubs received during the summer, the wide receiver from the Green Bay Packers 2022 draft class who they had their hopes set on the most was Christian Watson. This FCS star put an exclamation point on his evaluation at the draft combine.Read more...

Yesterday was most certainly not the most entertaining Sunday of NFL games ever played.Read more...

The Buffalo Bills continue to find more excruciating ways to break their fans’ hearts by losing. This time they did it in the closing seconds and overtime of their Week 10 matchup against the Minnesota Vikings.Read more...

There had to be some law of nature or human capability that was broken by Justin Jefferson’s catch.

You’d be severely challenged to come up with a duo more up their own ass than Cristiano Ronaldo and Piers Morgan, so it was kind of perfect and perfectly puke-worthy that Ronaldo carefully chose Morgan for his tactical masterplan to get booted out of Manchester as soon as possible. It was right as the Premier League…Read more...

Russell Westbrook’s first season in L.A. was an unmitigated failure. He was plugged into a lineup of non-shooters including LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and a confusing mix of ill-fitting pieces. Of Rob Pelinka’s misfit toys, though, nobody took last season’s debacle harder on the chin than Westbrook.

At the start of the fifth round UFC 281’s main event, the rapper with the Instagram handle @champagnepapi might have been ready to go get a ridiculously overpriced bottle. His $2 million bet on Israel Adesanya looked certain to be a winner.Read more...

It you ascribe to the theory that this will be a truly goofy World Cup — that the short run-up, the injuries everywhere (not clear the amount of injured is all that abnormal but let’s go with it), the odd setting — and that some team from out of nowhere could make a run, you’re probably sizing up your…Read more...

In the latest edition of “when trick plays go wrong,” we get Tom Brady falling flat on his ass while running a simple go route. Halfway through the third quarter of Tampa Bay’s game against Seattle in Munich, Germany, Buccaneers offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich decided to run a wildcat-looking play with Brady…Read more...

The Los Angeles Chargers are a very good football team. Even in the absence of Keenan Allen and Mike Williams for parts of the season, the downfall of JC Jackson, and the abysmal play of Jerry Tiller on the D-line — thankfully he just got waived — the Chargers have played their way to a 5-3 record and are very much in…Read more...

At the end of October, MLB announced their finalists for the Gold Glove awards. Every MLB fan collectively put palm to face at the sight of Juan Soto being named a finalist for the NL right field Gold Glove. Thankfully, he didn’t win the award. MLB coaches and managers dodged a huge bullet with that, because I don’t…Read more...

A few days ago, the New York Mets officially re-signed closer Edwin Díaz to a five-year deal worth $102 million, the largest contract ever for a reliever, by a wide margin. The details of Díaz’s contract are as follows:Read more...

When tickets for the NFL’s first game in Germany went on sale in July, the worst seats in the entirety of Allianz Arena were being sold left and right for upwards of $600. Germany has never had a mainstream NFL game in the country before, and although the first matchup would obviously be given a serious amount of…Read more...

Week 10 of the College Football season really shook things up. No. 1 Tennessee went down. Alabama and Clemson were all but knocked out of the College Football Playoff. And a few Heisman candidates had some good and not-so-good performances that changed things up in the rankings, including a newcomer entering the top…Read more...

We have something that just might make your day, weekend, or month, depending on how things are going in your life.Read more...

It’s not that the relationship between Jack Eichel and Buffalo Sabres fans will ever be good. Their union promised too much and delivered so little that there should be bitterness on both sides. The No. 2 pick the Sabres sold out for didn’t deliver them from the wilderness that they’ve been stuck in for over a decade…Read more...

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OK, I’m stretching to get a Rush reference into these. But the heart wants what it wants.Read more...

I don’t mean to go down a whole rabbit hole dive into corporate personhood, but team owners infuse their NFL franchises with personalities. The Dallas Cowboys exude Jerry Jones’ swashbuckling oilman bravado, the Pittsburgh Steelers have ingrained the Rooney family’s consistency and competence into their DNA and the…Read more...

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine announced Tuesday his office is going after Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder, the franchise itself, the National Football League, and league commissioner Roger Goodell, filing civil charges against the quartet.

There is a charm to a local sports broadcast. Sports is about energy, and passion, and a way to draw that out of fans is with the MCs of the event.

The MLB hot stove is not officially underway, but it’s warming up, and arguably the biggest name on the pitching market is two-time Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom. Earlier this week, deGrom officially opted out of his Mets’ contract — a decision most people saw coming — and almost immediately the rumors started…Read more...

It’s officially the offseason now, as we’ve gotten Scott Boras’s Fozzy Bear-in-the-college-dorm act at the GM Meetings. So let’s keep this record spinning right round and move to the NL Central, which I don’t feel personally about at all.

Dusty Baker “ought to be part of the conversation around MLB’s best-ever managers,” concluded Neil Paine from FiveThirtyEight after studying the most overachieving managers, and “shouldn’t need a ring to validate his career.” Agreed. Let’s go further.

The Golden State Warriors are far from the only team in the NBA that’s surprisingly struggling. Hell, there are surprises all over the league. The Utah Jazz gutted their team and have the best record in the Western Conference.Read more...

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From the clue package to both performances on Wednesday night’s edition of FOX ratings juggernaut The Masked Singer, anyone who’s a fan of the inaugural All Elite Wrestling world champion knows his signature growl and tone. Chris Jericho is the only current wrestler on American television to sing his own entrance…Read more...

With so much election news flying off the shelves, you might have missed this stunner out of California as voters rejected two propositions that would have brought sports betting to the state.Read more...

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Prior to the season, the NFL world was conflicted on Miami Dolphins starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s viability as a franchise quarterback. Even after his six-touchdown performance in Week 2, the world was still divided. Maybe it was just a fluke game. Hell, even I pointed out that bad quarterbacks have had games…Read more...

Any coach hired by U.S. Soccer, at least for the men’s side (though Vlatko Andonovski isn’t winning many fans these days either), is never going to have 100 percent buy-in. They just haven’t gotten it totally right in… well, ever? Berhalter being related to an exec at the time of his hiring didn’t help. U.S. Soccer…Read more...

Mere hours before a nationally televised matchup against the New York Knicks, the Brooklyn Nets opted for a semblance of stability, or at least a stable shoulder to lean on, when they removed the interim tag from assistant coach Jacque Vaughn’s title.

Pete Carroll still gets it.

Yesterday, after failing to find a trade partner, the Las Vegas Raiders cut former first-round safety Johnathan Abram. According to reports, the Raiders were shopping both Abram and fellow 2019 first-round selection Clelin Ferrell, but, after being unable to find trade partners, Vegas opted to cut ties with the former…Read more...

Well, it’s official. Here’s the merry band of men that will head to the deserts of Qatar…unless they get hurt this weekend and have to be replaced. But let’s be positive. After eight years, we now have an actual World Cup squad to debate! Get to know them and love them before you curse their name when they can’t break…Read more...

For as much tanking and general thirst that the top three picks of the 2022 NBA Draft garnered, they haven’t merited that attention quite yet. In Chet Holmgren’s case, it’s impossible because he’s out for the season. Paolo Banchero is going to win Rookie of the Year, and little else on an Orlando Magic team that’s…Read more...

Following last season’s disappointing journey and final destination, the Atlanta Hawks are off to a blazing start to this season. They are 7-3 and not only look like the clear best team in the Southeast division, but also like one of the better squads in the Eastern Conference.Read more...

Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of USMNT stuff, starting tonight with the roster announcement. It’s all we’ll do. Well, all I will do. I’m collecting Hacksaw Jim Duggan gifs, let me tell you. This is a space for all the others.Read more...

U.S. midterm elections are similar to the midpoint of the NFL season in that everyone is under the impression that it’s all rigged when, in fact, it’s merely a complex, shambolic set of systems from state to state that are sometimes overburdened and can fall victim to the occasional human error. There is no conspiracy…Read more...

Here we go again.Read more...

Basketball fans always wondered why the pre-Kevin Durant Golden State Warriors didn’t start its vaunted Death Lineup but instead opted to begin games with Andrew Bogut at center. The combination of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Harrison Barnes, and Draymond Green finished the 73-win season plus-45 in 177…Read more...

We continue our whip around the baseball offseason by looking at the American League’s worst division, which was won by a team that wasn’t even trying to win, the AL Central.

When a new wave of players becomes NBA relevant, it usually happens over time, never all at once. It’s a gradual increase in relevance, sometimes under the radar, because it’s guys who reach their potential in small markets and losing situations. When a lottery pick hits early and fast, like Paolo Banchero, we know…Read more...

Must’ve been a slow night, sports-wise, if I feel the need to talk about the New Jersey Devils. There has been no more scenery team, and dreary at that, than the Devils the past 10 years. You didn’t think about them until they came up on the schedule against your favorite team. And even when that happened, it wasn’t…Read more...