Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

It was a mere nine years ago that a rookie Jets quarterback was so awe-inspiring in how he didn’t screw up that observers were only able to describe him with one word: poise. Well, Mark Sanchez now has a true heir. In last night’s season opener, first-year Jets QB Sam Darnold went 16-for-21 with 198 yards and two…Read more...

Were you thinking pizza lumbered down the mountainside, fully formed? That the ancients plucked gyros from the surf and ate them whole? I bring news. That’s not how it happened.Read more...

Growing up, I did not play football. I did not know anyone who played football. I did not watch football. None of my friends or relatives watched football. As a result, I know nothing about football. Over the years, I have gleaned that it has about 100 million rules that I will, at this point, never understand; takes…Read more...

“Calling a dream crazy is not an insult,” Colin Kaepernick says during a two-minute ad that Nike rolled out last Wednesday. “It’s a compliment.” It’s one of many perfectly circular blobules of aspiration that Kaepernick delivers in stop-and-go voiceover throughout the ad, and in that context and the broader context of…Read more...

With 3:29 remaining in the fourth quarter and Nebraska leading Colorado 28-27, the Huskers were at midfield and driving toward the end zone when freshman quarterback Adrian Martinez took the ball and sprinted on a designed run to the right. Martinez hadn’t been perfect in his first-ever start, but with one score…Read more...

President Donald Trump, a person who is afraid of stairs, has long spewed mush-brain lies and bizarre boasts about everything, and that includes 9/11. Remember when he claimed he cleared rubble from Ground Zero, or the time he lied about seeing Muslims celebrating the Twin Towers falling, or when he said “hundreds” of…Read more...

An auto dealership group owned by former NFL Pro Bowl stars is being accused by Nissan and Hyundai of being a “house of cards” held together by questionable sales at several of its locations, according to Automotive News.Read more...

The Raiders actually looked feisty in the first half of their season-opener against the Rams last night. There were sparks of creativity on offense, a vintage Beast Mode touchdown, and a 13-10 halftime lead to mark head coach Jon Gruden’s return to the NFL. Everything fell apart in the second half, though, and the…Read more...

NFL head coaches are not a group known for dressing well, but the worst offender in the league is Bill Belichick, a member of Donald Trump’s Council on Sport, Fitness, and Nutrition and a man who has, by his own admission, “handled dozens of balls” in order to prove that his men are not cheaters. I’m not a Patriots…Read more...

Pretty soon, your light and airy summer activewear will have to make way for athletically-inclined jackets, leggings, and other gear to keep warm. If you need some new gear to prepare, Amazon’s taking 25% off one activewear item of your choice, from a selection of thousands of items.Read more...

After a true and prodigious walloping of the Lions, the Jets defense said they knew exactly what was coming. And while that’s the sort of thing defenses like to say, there were plays in Monday night’s 48-17 chucklefest that didn’t look like they could’ve happened any other way.

It was a bad week to be an NFL coach making his debut on their new team. After Jon Gruden’s Raiders decided to allow the Rams to score 23 straight points on their way to a 33-13 loss, new coaches ended the first week of the regular season a combined 0-7, breaking a 17-year NFL record.Read more...

Monday night’s scheduled Nationals-Phillies game was postponed when the Philadelphia grounds crew couldn’t get the field ready for play, despite there being no significant rain at game-time. The issue, it turns out, came down to heavier than expected rain over the weekend, or possibly a miscalculation by the…Read more...

The soon-to-be Las Vegas Raiders are getting it done early in Oakland thanks to one of the strongest feats of human strength ever seen on a football field. Marshawn Lynch showed he still had some “Beast Mode” left in the tank when he dragged almost the entirety of the Rams’ defense, and a couple of his offensive lineme…Read more...

It was a terrible, awful, no good and very bad day for Detroit’s two Matts—Stafford and Patricia—in the Lions’ Monday night season opener against the Jets. Stafford threw four terrible interceptions and finished with a quarterback rating of 47.9, and his shit sandwich of an evening was topped by a pair of injuries,…Read more...

Myles Garrett was hit with a dubious roughing the passer call Sunday afternoon, for the crime of allowing his momentum to carry him onto Ben Roethlisberger after a hit. The flag, which came on a third-down incompletion, kept Pittsburgh’s drive alive, and exactly one play later the Steelers found the end zone. It was a…Read more...

The powerful, yet errant, arm of Matthew Stafford certainly must make life as a Lions receiver a bit more difficult than it has to be. You’ll either get a well-placed ball on a deep route, or see the ball sail over your head when your route is anything under 15 yards. To deal with his quarterback’s inconsistency, it…Read more...

It took me a long time to come around to UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley. And by that, I mean I was resolutely Not A Fan until about, uh, three weeks ago.

The Jets’ recent history of self-sabotage is already rubbing off on No. 3 overall pick Sam Darnold. Less than 15 seconds into his regular-season debut, he threw the mother of awful passes and gave Detroit, along with Matt Patricia’s beard, an early touchdown lead.Read more...

Yesterday, France beat the Netherlands in a fairly meaningless international match. While the match itself didn’t matter, it did have the distinction of being the first time the French national team had returned to their home stadium since this summer’s glorious World Cup victory. To commemorate the occasion, the team…Read more...

Following University of Washington’s 21-16 loss to Auburn two weeks ago, ESPN announcer Mark Jones accurately tweeted that the team “took one on the chin.” He also wrote, “Where’s Montana?” referencing an ESPN broadcast from last season when the Huskies were lightly ribbed for having a “cupcake” non-conference…Read more...

If your tennis brain has only room for one takeaway from the U.S. Open, let it be this: Naomi Osaka was the most dominant player in the world over the last 14 days. With the exception of a fourth-round test of will, all of Osaka’s matches, including the final, were straight-set, open-and-shut, surgically efficient…Read more...

Future former Raiders coach Jon Gruden will make his regular-season debut tonight against the Rams, but because his team will be ass and because erstwhile Raiders superstar Khalil Mack was a beast yesterday, his team’s lunkheaded decision to trade Mack last week will certainly be a constant topic of conversation…Read more...

Pop Chart Lab makes all your favorite cartographic and infographics prints, from beer varieties to variations of the American flag to a taxonomy of rap names. Their latest print is a list of every European football club of any significance, with each’s club’s crest pinpointed on the map.Read more...

A lot of athletes have their parents in the stands for their games, but how many get a haka performed for them? New Zealand rugby union player Te Toiroa Tahuriorangi made his debut for the All Blacks in Saturday’s 46-24 win over Argentina, and his father, father-in-law, and partner treated him to a special version of …Read more...

In their ninth MLS season, the Philadelphia Union finally (finally) have a mascot. It seems like mere days ago he was a giant egg at the Philadelphia Zoo, which at least indicated that he was not a mammal, or was at least a monotreme. Today, we all got the big news:Read more...

It would have been enough for Aaron Rodgers to emerge from the tunnel for the second half just to keep playing. He had left the game on a cart after injuring his left knee in the first half, and it was easy to fear that Rodgers might be done for the year on the season’s first night. But there he was at the start of…Read more...

Former Arsenal player and cult-favorite shithead Nicklas Bendtner famously once unbuckled his pants, rubbed his junk up against a taxi, and then spanked the presumably titillated but bewildered vehicle with his just-removed belt in a fit of anger aimed at the cab’s driver. On Sunday, Bendtner was once again made angry…Read more...

The second-year Vegas Golden Knights are operating as if they’re in win-now mode, and why not? They absolutely are. Meanwhile the Montreal Canadiens are trading away their captain in the middle of the night. So that’s how things are going!

Central Oklahoma defensive back Derek Loccident lost his left foot in a freak accident early Sunday morning in downtown Oklahoma City. According to police, Loccident was on the train tracks near Fourth Street and E.K Gaylord Boulevard around 2:30 a.m. when an oncoming train ran his foot over, severing it. Initial…Read more...

When the state of Rhode Island offered up $38 million in June to the owners of the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox toward a new stadium, it seemed likely to be the first step on the road to a replacement for the beloved-but-modern-kitchenless 76-year-old McCoy Stadium. Sure, the PawSox owners had balked at some elements of…Read more...

Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun had a tense standoff Sunday with Giants workhorse Madison Bumgarner, after the latter threw inside and pegged the former. With this, Bumgarner loaded the bases with two outs and paid dearly.Read more...

Through a series of statements, tennis’s governing bodies (the Women’s Tennis Association, the U.S. Tennis Association, and the International Tennis Federations) are staking out their positions on the sad and entirely avoidable debacle that was the U.S. Open women’s final.Read more...

Remember when Madonna and Dennis Rodman were a thing? What ever happened to that couple?Read more...

According to a report from The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, several American League contenders are pissed off at the Indians for the way they completed a trade with the Blue Jays for Josh Donaldson. Toronto agreed to trade Donaldson to Cleveland on Aug. 31, the final day on which Donaldson would still be eligible to join…Read more...

The first week is here, of Jacksonville Jaguars football season: 2018-2019.Read more...

At 5'11" and 183 pounds, Los Angeles Rams cornerback Troy Hill is a small man compared to his teammates and other players in the NFL. At 5'2" and around 100 pounds, this is also true of me compared to most of my colleagues at Gizmodo Media Group. For this reason, I used Hill’s meal plan as a rough guide for my day of…Read more...

This week, Deadspin and Jezebel swap beats to celebrate America’s most dangerous and controversial pastimes: football and fashion, two sports that have far more in common than you think.Read more...

Perennially underappreciated UFC welterweight king Tyron Woodley completed perhaps his most impressive title defense last weekend, when he destroyed lanky English striker Darren Till in the second round. The submission loss marked the first time Till has lost in 19 professional MMA bouts, and he was pretty broken up…Read more...

One of the most striking things about last Saturday’s All In pay-per-view, the independent wrestling event that sold out over 11,000 seats in suburban Chicago, was where the show differed from WWE. When it came to the in-ring wrestling style and the creative influence of Cody Rhodes and The Young Bucks, the wrestlers…Read more...

Last night’s Astros-Red Sox game featured a play that pulled every replay-based nightmare out of the shadows: an interminable review process, a call that gets blown anyway, and a game result that hinged on that very same blown call.

Even though the Bears’ game on Sunday night ended with a gut-wrenching blown 20-0 lead and a Packers comeback of the classic Aaron Rodgers variety, there is one silver lining to Chicago’s 24-23 loss: Khalil Mack already looks extremely worth the $60 million signing bonus.Read more...

There’s one way to identify yourself as an outsider to residents of Appalachia: Pronounce it “Appa-lay-shun.” That got one college football referee in trouble on Saturday.Read more...

Jalopnik The Ford Mustang Is Eating the Chevy Camaro’s Lunch | Kotaku Wedding Proposal Hidden In Spider-Man Becomes World’s Saddest Easter Egg | io9 More Details And Rumors About the Avengers 4 Reshoots | Lifehacker What’s Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of September 10, 2018 | The Takeout For the crispiest…Read more...

The new Tomb Raider’s freshest idea is the floating of a question: What if all this tomb raiding that Lara Croft does indicates that she is a treasure-plundering jerk who wrecks other people’s cultures and, worse, their lives?

The Texans hung admirably tight with the Patriots in Foxboro, losing 27-20, but you can’t say they didn’t have their chances to outright win the thing. And a whole lot of the blame for that falls on head coach Bill O’Brien, who was responsible for some iffy fourth-down decisions, a brutally lackadaisical late drive,…Read more...

Rubbermaid’s Brilliance food storage sets have always been among the best you can buy for storing leftovers, but they also come in pantry storage form. Like OXO Pops and similar sets that you’ve ogled at Bed Bath and Beyond, they come in a variety of shapes to fit various pastas, grains, and snacks, and you can get a…Read more...

Tactica is a wrench. It’s a ruler. It’s a box cutter, a screwdriver, and a bottle opener. And somehow, it’s TSA compliant to boot. It’s pretty much always sold for $40 on Amazon, but today, you can pick one up for $29. Needless to say, it’d make a great holiday gift if you stock up on a few now, to give away later.Read more...

Aaron Rodgers fully healed from his broken collarbone last season, but he couldn’t get through the Packers’ season opener before hurting his knee.Read more...

Today’s Titans-Dolphins game, currently in its second weather delay, sounds like absolute hell for any fans in attendance:Read more...