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The Cowboys looked like world-beaters when they started 3-0—but against three of the worst teams in the league, the Giants, Washington, and Miami. Dallas then looked lost in two straight losses—but to good teams, New Orleans and Green Bay. So far, so predictable, at least for a middling team, which is what the Cowboys…Read more...

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Even with their god-awful defense making Kliff Kingsbury look like the genius everyone used to pretend he was, the Falcons still found a way to build enough momentum to make it seem like a late victory over the Cardinals was possible—scoring 17 unanswered points to tie things up tends to have that effect. Atlanta’s…Read more...

As purveyors of the Gospel of Lamar Jackson, it is our solemn duty to inform the public whenever the Ravens quarterback elevates himself onto another level of football history. In a 23-17 win over the Bengals on Sunday, the lad did just that by becoming only the fourth-ever quarterback to rush for at least 150 yards…Read more...

So far this season the Miami Dolphins had looked unstoppable on their way to a No. 1 draft pick and Tua Tagovailoa. But their tank rumbled over a potential minefield on Sunday: a matchup with Washington, one of a small handful of teams that might be nearly as bad as the Dolphins, and the only team that might be as…Read more...

For all the turmoil there’s been around the Washington football team, it was nice to see a brief moment of firm communication between two teammates in Miami on Sunday. On a second-and-5 from his team’s 35-yard line, quarterback Case Keenum tried to switch the play to something else, yelling “kill kill kill” to signal…Read more...

Ravens tight ends love trying to hurdle defenders. Love it! They can’t get enough of it. And how could they, when it looks so damn cool when it works? But it doesn’t always, or even usually, work.

It had been a while since Odell Beckham Jr. had made a highlight reel for something other than getting choked out on the field, or giving up a bad fumble on a punt return. But against the Seahawks on Sunday he gave the ol’ make-an-incredible-catch approach a try.

It’s still just midway through the second quarter, and Stefon Diggs has caught four of five targets for 135 yards and two touchdowns. That includes a pair of bombs that the Eagles secondary made look much easier than an NFL defense ought to.Read more...

Jameis Winston is back, folks. After four straight games of relatively competent quarterbacking, Winston displayed a strong return to form in London against the Panthers on Sunday. He finished the game completing 30 of his 54 throws and 400 yards, but with five interceptions and a fumble.

High school is hardly an easy time for any teenager, let alone those who try to balance a life filled with academics and athletics, so it’s important for kids around that age to have a good support system who can help save them from themselves. Kha’Ron Thrower, a high school football player in California, played that…Read more...

Simone Biles stands alone atop the world of gymnastics, again. Her gold-medal performance on the beam in Stuttgart, Germany, made Biles the most decorated gymnast in world championship history with 24. Here’s what her record-breaking outing looked like:

The Panthers and Buccaneers are playing in London today, which makes it the perfect time to confuse everybody with an extremely obscure NFL rule that even most American fans don’t really understand: the fair catch kick!

Los Angeles Kings fans filing into Saturday’s home opener against, coincidentally(?), Nashville were treated to a pleasant surprise: a big, blank space where, previously, a banner celebrating Taylor Swift’s 16 sold-out concerts had been displayed. Kings fans are hopeful that this will reverse the franchise’s fortunes,…Read more...

During their pregame warmups, Penn State football players wore shirts in that supported teammate Jonathan Sutherland, who received a letter from an old white couple that chided him for his shoulder-length dreadlocks. The shirts played off of the team’s rallying cry and read “Chains, Tattoos, Dreads, & WE ARE.”…Read more...

The Garden, home to the Bruins and Celtics, underwent a major renovation this summer that promised to “redefine” the fan experience. I suppose that’s one way to put what actually happened: To make more money, the arena crammed in hundreds of additional seats, and fans’ knees are suffering for it.

Junior Middleweight Patrick Day remains in a coma Sunday morning after undergoing emergency brain surgery following his ugly knockout loss at the hands of Charles Conwell in Chicago Saturday night.

No. 2 Clemson has been manhandling Florida State all game Saturday evening, moving the ball seamlessly under Trevor Lawrence’s stewardship and stopping FSU’s run entirely. None of this was enough to tide over head coach and generally saturnine jerk Dabo Swinney, who decided that he absolutely needed to chew out kicker…Read more...

A report from ESPN’s T.J. Quinn reveals that officials for the Los Angeles Angels were told about drug habits of pitcher Tyler Skaggs well before his death. ESPN’s sources were two unnamed individuals aware of what Eric Kay, the Angels’ director of communications, had told agents at the U.S. Drug Enforcement…Read more...

Can you guess how many passing yards Rutgers had Saturday against Indiana? This is a trick question, because Rutgers did not have passing yards. They had passing yard. Just the one. However much TV money the Big Ten Network is making from the New York-New Jersey market, I would personally pay them myself if it meant…Read more...

In a game that could not have gone anymore haywire if it tried, South Carolina-Georgia still found a way to end in a rather anticlimactic, though still totally unexpected, way: a missed field goal from the usually reliable Rodrigo Blankenship.

When Mike Defee officiates a football game, you can be fairly sure that what transpires on the field will be discussed about half as much as what’s protruding from Defee’s sleeves. His arms first came to prominence a few years ago in the 2017 title game between Alabama and Clemson, after which he told SB Nation he…Read more...

The surest sign that a sports rivalry is for real, and not one that some big company or network has tried to manufacture, is when the players end up really buying into it as well. Granted, Oklahoma and Texas probably didn’t need to remind everyone of the Red River Showdown’s intensity, but players on both teams did so…Read more...

Kenyan marathoner Eliud Kipchoge became the first human to finish a marathon in under two hours on Saturday in Vienna, running the 26.2 miles in 1:59:40, a time long believed impossible. The event in Vienna, a “moonshot” race specially planned to provide Kipchoge with favorable conditions, marked the runner’s second…Read more...

It was only a matter of time before a pitcher decided to respond to Juan Soto for, well, being Juan Soto. In the top of the fifth, after forcing the 20-year-old Nationals stud to ground out, Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas looked over at Washington’s dugout as Soto trotted over and aggressively grabbed his junk. Oddly…Read more...

With the Nationals’ postseason demons exorcised, and the team now navigating uncharted playoff territory, it seemed only right that this anything-is-possible type of magic carried over into specific areas of the team to elevate certain players. Still, as Washington and St. Louis entered the bottom of the eighth, you’d…Read more...

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“The world is a complex place and there’s more gray than black-and-white.” That is how Steve Kerr rationalized his refusal to comment on the not-actually-all-that-complex topic of the NBA bowing to the Chinese government’s rage over an American in America exercising of one of America’s most fundamental rights. Those…Read more...

We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.

What you see above looks like a textbook pass interference penalty. Patriots cornerback Jonathan Jones pretty clearly hooked the arm of Giants wideout Golden Tate before the ball arrived. No flag was thrown. Yet even after Giants head coach Pat Shurmur challenged the non-call—as the rules permit coaches to do this…Read more...

Two leading Democratic presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, issued statements today condemning the corporate interests that have increasingly been destroying media institutions.Read more...

It’s been a weird week in WWE, and not in a way that anyone at the promotion would have wanted.Read more...

This little Bob Nightengale scoop starts on shaky ground by assuming there are people in existence who can tolerate Curt Schilling enough to be considered his friends, but it has a great punchline:

This may seem like a Guide To The League Championship Series, but it isn’t really. If you need to be guided through four teams, you may be too dim to read.

In August 1998, after I Know What You Did Last Summer propelled Ryan Phillippe to stardom and plastered his face on teen bedroom walls across the country, a Paper magazine cover story christened Ryan Phillippe “The New Heat.” Months later he’d be engaged to Hollywood’s princess Reese Witherspoon, and the following…Read more...

Houston Cougars offensive lineman Justin Murphy, who left the team Tuesday, shared his experience Thursday about his rough year with the program, as well as the specific mismanagement of head coach Dana Holgorsen. Murphy, a sixth-year graduate transfer who also attended Texas Tech and UCLA, said his body is too worn…Read more...

Going into the WNBA playoffs, it would have been fair to underestimate the impact of Washington Mystics forward Emma Meesseman. Though she was one of the Mystics’ most efficient scorers—she’d be in the 40-50-90 club if she had enough attempts to qualify—she often felt like a lesser version of her teammate and league…Read more...

As I remember it, the decision to buy my white Ron Artest Sacramento Kings jersey was not a reasoning one. The decision to buy a basketball jersey, as someone who will probably only ever wear it during the six days per year that I am at or near a beach, is inherently not a reasonable one. And yet I remember seeing it,…Read more...

After Chelsea striker Tammy Abraham revealed that the members of the English national team had collectively decided to walk off the field if subjected to racism during their Euro 2020 qualifiers, the team’s manager has walked back that threat. Gareth Southgate said in a press conference on Thursday that England would…Read more...

It’s hard to find an angrier person than a professional golfer who has just had his concentration broken by a loud noise in the middle of his backswing. But thanks to Tyrrell Hatton and his fiancée, we now have the formula for distracting a golfer without eliciting a tantrum. All you need is a portable toilet and…Read more...

The F.B.I. doesn’t know her name, but they do know that she’s dead. She may have been named Marianne or Mary Anne. She may have been 18 or 19 when she was murdered. She may have been murdered in 1971 or 1972. Her body may be decaying somewhere in the empty western edges of South Florida’s swampland, but they aren’t…Read more...

A huge REI sale, refurbished Nintendo Switch, Marvel Funko calendar, and prAna gear lead off Friday’s best deals from around the web.

(NOTE: Only ranked by how these perform in a bowl with milk. If you wanna use them as an ingredient in some nouveau dessert brittle, that’s a different list.)

Game 5 of the ALDS was more or less decided by the first 20 pitches thrown by Rays starter Tyler Glasnow. The Astros battered Glasnow for four runs in the bottom of the first inning, which wasn’t totally shocking given how fearsome Houston’s lineup is. What was surprising was how they went about scoring those four…Read more...

The Patriots beat the Giants Thursday night, 35–14, to move to 6–0 on the season. This was the second consecutive week where the Patriots looked vulnerable in the first half against a plucky but overmatched underdog, before a cascading series of second-half failures tilted things dramatically for the favorites. I…Read more...

Game 5 of the American League* Divisional Series between the Astros and Rays functionally ended in the first inning. Not because the Astros put 10 runs on the board, a la the Cardinals, but because they put more than a single run on the board, in a game in which they had the insane and unfair Gerrit Cole on the mound.…Read more...

The Washington Mystics used a strong fourth-quarter surge and the interior dominance of series MVP Emma Meesseman to overcome a second-half Connecticut Sun lead, then confidently held the relentless visitors at arm’s length down the stretch to win Game 5, 89–78, and capture the franchise’s first ever WNBA…Read more...

The athletic department of Pierce College is investigating head football coach Carlos Woods after a report from The Roundup News, a school publication, revealed that the coach had collected rent money from his players, and allowed four students to briefly live in the team locker room. Jose Cordova, a former player on…Read more...

Beef! We’ve beef in the world of football, pals, between a receiver and a cornerback who share a division, which is really the only way NFL beefs can dry-age their way to maximum succulence, outside of the aging racks of intense playoff action. I’m pretty well done with that beef metaphor now.Read more...

Padres pitcher Jacob Nix was arrested and charged with criminal trespassing after he allegedly tried to break into a home in Peoria, Arizona early Sunday morning using the doggie door, according to ABC15. Teammate Thomas Cosgrove was also arrested, but was reportedly not charged with anything.