Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Michael Lopez is the Director of Data and Analytics for the NFL, and is a statistics professor at Skidmore College. He runs the site StatsbyLopez, and in a series of posts is breaking down the findings of a forthcoming paper he’s written with a couple of colleagues. And this, my friends, is the good stuff.

Take your pick between all four sizes of top-selling Tramontina nonstick frying pans. They have a stellar 4.6-star rating, and come with removable soft grip silicone sleeves. As long as you use wooden or silicone spatulas, these pans should last for a very long time.

The Eagles’ offense had basically done nothing all night. They were booed at halftime in the first game of the NFL season. But in the third quarter, the team faced a third down in Falcons territory, so what did they do? They ran the trick play the Patriots failed to execute in the Super Bowl.Read more...

The first half of the 2018 NFL season’s inaugural game between the Eagles and Falcons had more penalties (16) than points (9), so things were already off to an abysmal start. Then, the dumb new “no body weight on the QB” rule made an appearance.

The Philadelphia Eagles unveiled their Super Bowl banner tonight. Thirty minutes of game action later, Philadelphia fans booed the team off the field.Read more...

With the NBA season still over a month away from starting, NHL players needed a new source from which to draw their insecurity.

Disgraced former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar lost today on another one of his requests for a new sentencing hearing, this one in Eaton County, Mich. Like in the case filed against him in Ingham County, multiple women in Eaton said Nassar sexually abused them under the guise of medical…Read more...

You may not have even noticed that the Toronto Blue Jays traded former franchise cornerstone and 2015 MVP Josh Donaldson to the Cleveland Indians this week, because the whole thing barely registered. Donaldson, who was only healthy enough to play 36 games for the Jays this season, was sent away for a player to be…Read more...

Two Florida International Panthers football players were shot this afternoon, according to Opa-locka (Florida) Police Chief James Dobson, via the Miami Herald. Neither player’s injuries are believed to be life-threatening.Read more...

Five years ago, as Tablet and the Daily Mail reported today, current New York state Senate candidate Julia Salazar sued Kai Hernandez, the ex-wife of former Mets star and baseball announcer Keith Hernandez, for defamation after she said Salazar stole from her, tried to break into her bank account, and possibly claimed…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.

The start of any given NFL season features plenty of players returning from major injuries; violence is an inescapable part of a game built on armored super-athletes ramming into each other. This year’s list of comeback hopefuls, though, feels especially lengthy, and its members especially prominent. The quarterback…Read more...

Every once in a while an athlete will just make you eat your words and your low expectations. Typically they’ll do this by winning; on Tuesday night, Dominic Thiem did it while losing his U.S. Open quarterfinal, pyrotechnically.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.

Auto racing follows the trends of the auto industry, for better or worse, and that includes self-driving tech. But the world’s first major self-driving racing series won’t go full computer right away—its inaugural 2019 season will have humans behind the wheel, tag teaming races with the artificial intelligence in the…Read more...

Dave Grohl and his classic rock band the Foo Fighters came to Lexington, Kentucky back in May, and boy did they get up to some trouble. The lowlife musicians hit the sleepy town like a heinous tornado of vulgar debauchery, and along the way they swept some University of Kentucky soccer players into their devilish…Read more...

Here we have an example of the redemptive power of never giving up, from the Tajik Cup. After a defender for Lokomotiv Pamir booted a long clearance, FC Istiklol Dushanbe’s goalkeeper made the critical mistake of getting fancy with his interception, trying to turn and kick the ball across the middle of the pitch to a…Read more...

La Liga’s money-grubbing ploy to bring a league match to the U.S. every year always sounded like just about the stupidest idea imaginable. With each additional revelation about the deal, we’re getting a clearer picture of just how moronic and incompetent the plan and the planners behind it truly are.

On the morning of Wednesday, February 22, 1984, head coach John Hadl arrived at the Los Angeles Express’s Manhattan Beach facility and reviewed the list of players who would be dismissed. When he broached the name of defensive end Greg Fields, an executive with the team warned, “Paper isn’t going to take this very…Read more...

The mighty Oakland Athletics pantsed the sickly New York Yankees last night at the Coliseum, taking two games from a pretty entertaining three-game preview of the most likely AL Wild Card game matchup. Oakland shot out to a four-run lead in the first inning, though Yanks catcher Gary Sánchez was as responsible for…Read more...

This is a table. It folds, it’s orange on top, and it’s only $22. That’s about all there is to say on the matter, other than that you should buy it for your next tailgate, or buy a bunch if you plan on launching your body into them. Not a Tennessee or Texas or <gasp> Cleveland Brows fan? Just cover it with a…Read more...

Some people are fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. This 2018 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

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.

For all the things that there are to love about the NFL—idiotic and wholly unaccountable leadership, a profoundly malfunctioning moral compass, the new rules that no one even knows how to enforce, the whole Nathan Peterman Thing—the purest pleasure it offers is the chance to be wrong as hell about it. There are some…Read more...

Play-by-play man Mario Impemba and color commentator Rod Allen have been calling Tigers games on Fox Sports Detroit together for over a decade—and they make a great on-screen duo, for what it’s worth. But apparently, putting two men together in a small box and forcing them to talk for several hours 162 games a year…Read more...

Gizmodo A Common Painkiller Has Serious Heart Risks, Study Finds | Lifehacker This Is How Often You Should Poop | Jalopnik Our Old Pal the Low-Ass 11-Foot-8 Bridge Dishes Out Hard Street Justice to a Red Light Runner | Kotaku After Four Years, A Just Dance Streamer Hits The Breaking Point | The Takeout The easiest way…Read more...

“Gravity” is a word that gets used sometimes in basketball analysis. It’s meant to denote how much attention a player demands from the defense, particularly in moments when he does not have the ball in his hands. There’s no clean application of this term in baseball, but during last night’s 6-4 win against the…Read more...

If you don’t have any intention of leasing your wrist real estate to a smart watch, Nordstrom Rack’s running a big deal on great-looking Tissot watches for men and women, today and tomorrow only. Several models are available for under $200, and if you’re a basketball fan, there are several (tasteful) team-branded…Read more...

The NL West is good as hell right now. The Rockies won 5-3 and swept the Giants and are now 1.5 games up on the Dodgers and two on the D-Backs. But you’re not here for that divisional intrigue, are you? That’s not what you were promised, and that’s not why you clicked. You, my like-minded friend, are here for dingers.

Somewhat counterintuitively, dull kitchen knives are more dangerous than sharp ones, as they’re more likely to slip off the side of whatever you’re cutting, and go into your hand.

Tommy John surgery—which Angels pitcher/DH Shohei Ohtani is supposed to receive, per a team announcement today—will steal a whole year from a dominant hurler in his prime. But UCL damage won’t necessarily hold back a good hitter. And luckily for all of us, what could be devastating news for any other pitcher in…Read more...

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the U.S. Department of Justice is conducting a probe into how the FBI mismanaged its investigation into sexual abuse allegations made against former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Thiis comes after the FBI conducted its own internal review into…Read more...

As a hitter, Shohei Ohtani has seemed pretty dang healthy since returning to the Angels lineup from a UCL sprain in his throwing elbow in July. As a pitcher, however, he was kept off the mound for nearly three months while undergoing a non-surgical rehab program. When he returned last weekend, he only got seven outs…Read more...

Until this afternoon, longtime Cincinnati Reds star Brandon Phillips hadn’t seen major-league action in almost a year. The 37-year-old former all-star signed with the Red Sox in June after spending a rather anonymous 2017 season on the Braves and Angels. Phillips has spent the season with Triple-A Pawtucket, passing…Read more...

At the grand slams—Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and U.S. Open—men play best-of-five set matches, and these matches are often too long. (Men play best of three sets at all other tournaments, except the Davis Cup.) At Wimbledon this year, John Isner and Kevin Anderson played for more than six hours in their…Read more...

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

It’s just a few days before the Steelers’ season starts, but running back Le’Veon Bell’s holdout is still going. His absence from team meetings today pretty much guarantees he won’t play in Week 1 (which is probably his plan, to avoid as much wear and tear on his body as he can—say, another 400-touch season—to…Read more...

I didn’t think I could be surprised by much these days. But that, it turns out, was a mistake. On a day filled with congressional dick measuring contests, bloated vanity lawsuits, and pathetically weak calls for civility from a cadre of southern gentlemen, it’s this New York Times opinion piece that actually made my…Read more...

All-Pro Seahawks safety Earl Thomas has been holding out for a contract extension this offseason, and the team has been unwilling to meet his demand that it either pay him what he’s worth or trade him to a team that will. Thomas is and has long been one of the best safeties in the game, and he’s still in his prime,…Read more...

In 2015, Time Inc., the listing titan of 20th-century publishing, bought FanSided—a network of more than 300 sport- and team-centric blogs producing the sort of easily digestible and SEO-friendly posts that exist purely to show up near the top in Google searches—and attached it to their legacy publication, Sports…Read more...

There was one close one—a fourth-round victory over Aryna Sabalenka that took her all three sets—but beyond that, the U.S. Open has been one continuous bloodbath for Naomi Osaka, the 20-year-old No. 20 seed. These are massacres on the order of Rafael Nadal carving up Roland Garros. Three times, she’s devoured her…Read more...

Moses Ali is the 79-year-old first deputy prime minister of Uganda. He is also enormously fat and wildly unathletic. Following in the footsteps of another politician who possessed a considerable girth and a dearth of athleticism, Ali embarrassed himself while trying to execute a routine physical motion at the Ugandan…Read more...

These days, our inboxes are crawling with spam, far beyond the stuff that makes it past the actual designated ‘spam’ folder. There are the newsletters we swear we’ve already unsubscribed from, the creepily personal messages from politicians, the desperate pleas for attention from Facebook, and now, thanks to the…Read more...

The 39-year-old version of Adrian Beltre has more hamstring injuries and isn’t as powerful as his previous iterations, but when he connects on a pitch, it sounds lovely. And regardless of his age, the Rangers third baseman will always have the same reaction when someone tries to touch his head.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 2018 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

CHICAGO! Chi-Town! Chicagoland! The Windy City! The Second City! Mrs. O’Leary’s Fire Pit! Wrigleyville! Caponetown! Murder Capital Of The Conservative Imagination! The Big Witch’s Tit! Guess what, Chicago: We’re coming to YOU.

Metal Gear wants the player to fail. The game’s rough edges are part of the growing pains of an early genre, but taken in the context of the entire Metal Gear series, these challenges also feel like horrifying defense mechanisms. As Solid Snake infiltrates Outer Heaven, the player intrudes upon the game’s world.…Read more...

David Beckham’s Mosaic trek through the American sports grifter desert as he seeks to realize his MLS team ownership dream has come another step closer to reality. We now know what to call this allegedly imminent franchise, and it’s a name as nauseatingly cosplayish as we’ve come to expect:Read more...

It wasn’t just thousands of Browns fans that braved single-degree temperatures in January for the “Perfect Season Parade” after the Browns went 0-16 in 2017. There were a smattering of Steelers fans who came to point and laugh—all they can do for what was once one of the NFL’s great rivalries. There were a few Buffalo…Read more...

Many many years ago, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Rajon Rondo were coworkers in Boston. Doc Rivers was their coach. They won the 2008 NBA championship together; then, later, some of them went on to work in other places. Some of them don’t really like each other. They don’t all come to each others’ life…Read more...