jessespector Page 6 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

You play to win the game… or do you?
More than half of the NFL remains in playoff contention heading into the final week of the season. That includes teams like the Packers, who have clinched home-field advantage throughout the postseason, and it includes teams like the Raiders and Chargers, who play each other but can both get into th...

Hear me out: The NHL should split up its schedule
The NHL schedule has been jumbled by the league’s latest COVID-19 outbreaks, resulting not only in games being postponed now, but the withdrawal of the game’s top players from the upcoming Olympics....

Lakers on their way to wrong kind of history
Injuries and the novel coronavirus have played a role in it, to be sure, as has the fact that they’re now up to 22 players used this season and it’s not even January, but the Lakers stink....

Check it out: The reason we know what players get paid
Just before Major League Baseball’s lockout began, the Mets signed Max Scherzer to a three-year, $130 million contract, a $43.3 million annual average that set a new record and also set a talking point for the labor dispute to come....

Rutgers is going to a bowl!
Rutgers’ claim to fame is playing in the first college football game, which the Scarlet Knights — then known as the Queensmen — won by the first scorigami ever, 6-4....

Buck Showalter is the right guy in Queens
If it feels a bit like the end times lately, that feeling probably isn’t helped by the New York Mets — yes, the New York Mets — conducting themselves as a competent organization with a legitimate plan and hopes. ...

Do we really need school sports right now?
The news that an 18-year-old high school student in upstate New York died of COVID-19 earlier this week should be a big red flag when it comes to the current state of the pandemic. It’s not just that the kid was unvaccinated, but that he died after it proved impossible to get him transferred from th...
![[UPDATE] This is fine: Kyrie Irving already in COVID protocols](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/0124ba961e791e1e056e5b9b9ac99d38.jpg)
[UPDATE] This is fine: Kyrie Irving already in COVID protocols
Less than two hours after this piece was published, the Nets announced that Kyrie Irving has entered the NBA’s health and safety protocols, because of course he did....

Avalanche, Panthers and Flames done until Christmas
The NHL has multiple rosters’ worth of players in COVID protocols, with the number growing seemingly by the hour. The obvious thing to do, the thing that we would have expected in the era of “an abundance of caution” (remember that?) would be for the league to shut things down for a couple of weeks,...

Soda giveaway is a Giant slap in the face to fans
The Giants have clinched their fifth straight losing season, are going to miss the playoffs for the ninth time in 10 years, and the most intriguing thing about them right now is how long they’ll start Mike Glennon at quarterback over Jake Fromm. That’s because Daniel Jones, a bust from the moment he...

Will Urban Meyer get a shot at redemption? Let's look at how other coaches bounced back after failing miserably
Urban Meyer is out as coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars after going 2-11 in his only partial season at the helm. While that’s 13 more games than Meyer ever should have coached in the NFL, and he leaves with a lower winning percentage in the league (.154) than Marty Mornhinweg (.156), it somehow does...

Heisman? Ho-hum, man
Bryce Young is certainly a deserving Heisman Trophy winner. Alabama’s sophomore quarterback has thrown for 4,322 yards with 43 touchdowns and four interceptions this season, completed 68 percent of his passes, and despite not being a big-time runner, carried three scores in himself....

So, about that pandemic…
The Detroit Lions, finally in the win column after beating the Vikings last week, head into their game on Sunday without 19 percent of their roster due to injuries and coronavirus....

Please just let Zion Williamson’s body work
Zion Williamson’s setback in his recovery from foot surgery, which means the former No. 1 overall pick will see “the volume of his training … reduced for an extended period to help allow for further bone healing,” is just a straight-up bummer....

Of course the Blazers say Damian Lillard is untouchable
There are a couple of ways to parse the report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe that the Trail Blazers are not willing to discuss trading Damian Lillard, “one of the Sixers’ top targets” in a potential Ben Simmons deal....

Old coach yells at cloud, shakes fist in air
In the past week, the NHL news around here has been excessive violence, more excessive violence, the Flyers being hellaciously awful, and the latest lunatic turns in the decade-long saga of the league trying to make fetch happen in Arizona....

Don’t worry, Seattle, you’re not losing Megan Rapinoe
It makes for a neat and interesting storyline that Megan Rapinoe is unprotected for Thursday’s NWSL expansion draft, right up until you think about it....

Replicating Pickett’s fake slide? No Ken do
If you liked Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett’s fake slide on the way to a 58-yard touchdown run in the ACC championship game last week, you’ll need to savor it, because you’re not going to see it again....

‘Bobby Margarita’ shows how MLB can have it
In most years around this time, baseball media is lamenting the slow pace of the free agent market, wondering when all the free agents will sign. In a world where the winter meetings mean far less than they did in decades past, free agency can drag on right up to the start of spring training, with s...

Sam Kerr decks pitch invader during Chelsea Women’s Champions League match
The worst yellow card in the history of soccer was issued on Wednesday to Sam Kerr late in the second half of the Chelsea Women’s match against Juventus in the UEFA Champions League. If anything, Kerr deserves a raise for also doing security’s job....