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Yes, it’s Week 1. Yes, the Packers defense is expected to be much improved this season, after general manager Brian Gutekunst dedicated big bucks during the offseason to improving the personnel. Still. Chicago’s offense Thursday night was totally punchless, even amateurish, outside of a few nifty plays by rookie David…Read more...

Thursday night’s regular-season opener between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears was a real dog. Fancy camera angles and old-timey costumes could not lift the sloppy, disjointed mess on the field. It would be generous to describe it as a defensive battle, but defense had little or nothing to do with poor,…Read more...

The NFL is back, and we already have our biggest storyline of the season: Who said “I never had my butt fingered” on the NBC broadcast of the season’s opening Packers-Bears game?

Early in the first quarter of Packers-Bears, Tony Corrente, the game’s referee, announced a defensive holding call against Green Bay. At the end of it, he paid tribute to late former NFL referee Red Cashion by doing his own version of the classic elongated “first dowwwwwwwn” call.

A sophomore at a high school in southwest Missouri died on Wednesday after he collapsed following an indoor football practice. In a statement made on Facebook, the Joplin School District described the incident in detail:

One of the first major moves that the NFL and Roc Nation’s “Inspire Change” program will make is donate $400,000 to two Chicago groups that position themselves as local service organizations aimed at helping keep children in low-income neighborhoods off the streets, according to TMZ. The recipients of this money will…Read more...

Last week, New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees appeared in a brief video promoting “Bring Your Bible To School Day,” which, whatever. In itself, it’s probably a 3 on the scale of odd things an athlete can do with his free time. What’s actually frustrating—though frankly not too surprising—is Brees did the promo for Focus…Read more...

It can be difficult to remember given that he routinely appears on television with toilet paper on the soles of both his shoes and at least one of his hands stuck in a big jug of peanut butter, but Donald Trump’s opening position in all things is that he has never been wrong. He has been wronged, and is in fact…Read more...

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

Michigan State has agreed to pay a $4.5 million fine for its failure to protect students from Larry Nassar, a former school employee and former doctor to the USA Gymnastics national team, who is now serving more than 100 years in prison for sexually abusing young girls under the guise of medical treatment. The fine,…Read more...

Here’s Raiders GM Mike Mayock addressing the latest developments in the never-ending Antonio Brown opera buffa:Read more...

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday during the NFL season. Email Drew here. Buy his book here.

If you don’t like karaoke, you will soon. The next time you’re dragged to grown-up singalong, you can bring down the house with one trick: Sing the Weird Al version instead.

Tyler Williams was a guard on the D-II University of Arkansas-Fort Smith Lions men’s basketball team as recently as last month, and he was set to come back for his senior season as the program’s leading returning scorer until he was abruptly dismissed from the team by new head coach Jim Boone on August 16. Williams…Read more...

Let us start with a hearty LOL. The Oakland Raiders traded for downfield savant Antonio Brown during the offseason, handed him $30-plus million in guaranteed money, and now stand ready to piss that investment away in the quickest, most Raiders-like fashion possible. Adam Schefter is now reporting that after Brown …Read more...

Canadian 19-year-old Bianca Andreescu doesn’t walk around the court so much as she swaggers. She doesn’t just yell, “Come on!” and fist pump when she wins a big point; she’ll stare straight across the net at her opponent while she does it. She’ll toss her racket when she loses a point and impatiently smash the ball…Read more...

Leave it to Chris Jericho to make himself the biggest story in professional wrestling by virtue of partying too hard. The 48-year-old legend won the inaugural All Elite Wrestling world heavyweight championship at the company’s All Out pay-per-view on Saturday, defeating Hangman Adam Page in a solid-if-unspectacular…Read more...

We blog plenty of impressive sports catches around these parts—centerfielders robbing dingers, wide receivers reaching out for one-handed grabs, or dads snagging foul balls. But I’ll go as far to say that not a single one is as cool as the quick-thinking, high-speed catch made by New Zealand fistball player Samuel…Read more...

Like most Oilers—or “Earlers,” as they were known as their star galloped his way to Rookie of the Year and two MVP trophies his first couple of years in the league—Earl Campbell loved playing for the cowboy-hatted, easy-going Bum Phillips, who was always easy with a wisecrack. Bum once said of the team’s reliable…Read more...

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Lotta homers getting hit these days, right? Lotta homers. One guy who has been contributing his fair share of bombs to this record-setting era of dinger-mashing is Jorge Soler. You know, Jorge Soler! The six-year veteran who was a hot prospect with the Cubs for a bit, and then went to Kansas City after he washed out…Read more...

MLS has been in a season-long game of chicken with its own fans, and that feud has now entangled one of the more high-profile fanbases in the league. As first reported by ESPN and then confirmed by Portland Timbers supporters group Timbers Army, a “handful” of Portland fans have been banned for three games due to…Read more...

On a daily basis, professional athletes do things that normal people couldn’t dream of doing. But at least most of the time they seem kind of excited about their superhuman feats! Not Phillies outfielder Adam Haseley, though. In Wednesday night’s game against the Reds, with his team down a run in the eighth, Haseley…Read more...

You may not have heard about it because the National Football League has fought heroically to keep this information out of the public, but this season the NFL celebrates its 100th year of whatever it is that they do. Toward that end, commissioner and dictator-for-life Jerry Jones was invited to the New York Stock…Read more...

Warning: This article reveals major plot points from Stephen King’s novel It—and by extension, from the new movies adapted from the book.

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Costa Rica’s men’s national team head coach Gustavo Matosas had it all: a stable job with a good income, working in a prominent role within a competent, successful outfit; a schedule that only required work every couple of weeks; few expectations; and a work-life balance that left him feeling like most of the time he…Read more...

Armed with his fantastic set of, uh, arms, Reds reliever Michael Lorenzen nudged the Phillies’ wild card dreams further out of reach in an 8-5 win Wednesday night, and became the second player in major league history to hit a home run, play a position in the field and earn the win in the same game. The first was none…Read more...

Texas Rangers pitcher Lance Lynn did not have an especially fun time facing the dreaded Yankees Wednesday night. For starters, Aaron Judge and Gleyber Torres socked another couple dingers off him, and he got next to no run support, and wound up taking the loss. To make matters worse, home plate umpire Will Little…Read more...

The city of Milwaukee is looking to settle the federal civil rights lawsuit brought by Bucks guard Sterling Brown, who was tased and arrested by city police in January 2018 over a parking violation. Wednesday the city’s Common Council voted to authorize a $400,000 settlement offer, while depositions in the case are…Read more...

Asked afterward how he’d managed to outlast a practically inextinguishable Gael Monfils in their U.S. Open quarterfinal match Wednesday evening, Matteo Berrettini had no answer. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. Actually, right now, I don’t remember any points, just the match point.”Read more...

Earlier this summer at the World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas, a man was kicked out of the tournament and forced to forfeit his $10,000 buy-in during the first level of play for some egregious antics. Those antics included going all-in blind on the first hand, pulling his pants down, showing his bare ass to…Read more...

In news that will come as no sort of shock to anyone whose admiration of the Ball family does not rise to the level of actual cartoon swirly eyes, the wildly expensive ZO2 shoes that were the foundation of the failed Big Baller Brand apparel line were apparently utter piles of shit, totally unsuited to the job of…Read more...

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We all know it: The NFL season isn’t officially here until you draft your fantasy team. This is your chance to show off your squad.Read more...

Mandatory.com is a website that features “funny stuff, viral videos, must-read features, and a whole lot of awesome,” according to its Twitter bio. It also allegedly features wage theft and retaliation against its workers.

The Tennessee Volunteers dropped their first college football game of the season, 38-30, to Georgia State, a Sun Belt team that went 2-10 last season. The crowd was openly booing, and there’s already been a players-only meeting, so everyone in the program’s pretty on edge. With all that considered, it was probably a…Read more...

I understand that you come to Deadspin to see the “fresh content” of the day. What’s going on out there in the wide world of sports and beyond? Well you can always come on down to Deadspin to find out, of course! I am sorry to say that this particular post will offer no such insight into what’s currently “hot” on the…Read more...

Antonio Brown’s reality show of an offseason is nearly over, and within a week, a summer of foot drama, helmet drama, and lawn drama will give way to actual football. Before we get there, though, there are some final details to wrap up, such as the revelation that the Raiders fined the receiver $13,950 for missing a …Read more...

Everyone agreed that it was imperative, before she left the building and all of our lives forever, that we exact some kind of revenge on Megan Greenwell. But what? What unpleasant experience could even begin to approach recompense for all the times that she looked various staffers in the eyes and said horrible things…Read more...

When dealing with any kind of upper management at a job, the smartest thing you can do is to get it, whatever “it” is, in writing. That’s the hard lesson that Juventus midfielder Emre Can learned this week: The Germany international claimed that he was promised a spot in his club’s Champions League roster as recently…Read more...

Some people are fans of the New England Patriots. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the New England Patriots. This 2019 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews here.

Folks.... FOLKS. The NFL season starts tomorrow night. In just over 24 hours, it will once again be time to bathe ourselves in scalding NFL action. Are you ready for the big hits? The big throws? The big runs? The bashing and bruising? If you are not yet ready for these things, allow best-coach-in-the-world and valued…Read more...

Here’s a chicken-or-egg question to puzzle over for the next several weeks, until Oklahoma faces a ranked opponent: Was Sooners quarterback Jalen Hurts completely underutilized at Alabama, or is head coach Lincoln Riley an unequivocal offensive genius? In Hurts’s debut game for Oklahoma on Saturday, in the Sooners’…Read more...

Catalan cops seized over 40 cannabis plants from a rooftop near Barcelona yesterday thanks to information from an unexpected source: a TV helicopter broadcasting this month’s Vuelta a España. Stage 8 of the race finished in the town of Igualada on Saturday, and as the race made its way through the city streets at the…Read more...

Let’s get something out of the way up front: Ray Magliozzi hates cars. And not in a my-car-is-a-pain-in-the-ass-and-it’s-always-breaking kind of way (though there is some of that too), but in a they’re-killing-the-planet kind of way. “How could you not?” Ray told me earlier this year. “They’re ruining the fabric of…Read more...

Summer camp season is over, but that just means that you can buy Taylor Stitch’s popular Camp Shorts on sale, and enjoy them next year. Combining the cotton of everyday around-town shorts with the ripstop fabric of technical shorts, they’re built to take a little bit of a beating outdoors, while still looking good…Read more...

Roger Federer has done it all on the tennis court, except one thing: retire from a match due to injury. If he were ever going to do that, however, Tuesday night in Queens was the time and the place. After the fourth set of his U.S. Open quarterfinal match against 78th-ranked Grigor Dimitrov, Federer had to go to a…Read more...

When Jessica Howard entered the world of gymnastics in 1987, she was three years old and wore a pink leotard adorned with poodles. She would go on to become a three-time national champion and later serve on the board of USA Gymnastics. The experience would nearly kill her.