NFL Page 1122 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Matt Bryant Went To His "Happy Place" Before His Game-Winning Kick
Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: The Falcons kicker is a Happy Gilmore fan....

Who Has The Funniest Challenge-Flag-Throwing Motion, Andy Reid Or Mike Smith?
The Deadspin NFL Coach Challenge Challenge is a tournament pitting the throwing motions of 20 NFL coaches against one another....

Joe Flacco, The Big-Armed Oaf Who Saved Baltimore
Joe Flacco has played five full seasons in the NFL, and in each one, he has thrown for less than 4,000 yards and completed less than 64 percent of his throws. He has never been sacked fewer than 30 times, and he has never thrown more than 25 touchdowns. Flacco turns 28 tomorrow. He'll be a free agen...

Rob Gronkowski's Twice-Broken Arm Might Always Be At Risk
Rob Gronkowski broke his left forearm back in November, and had surgery to fix it. He returned for Week 17, played sparingly, then broke his left forearm in the Patriots' first playoff game. It's easy enough to jump to the conclusion that he came back too soon, that he wasn't completely healed up ye...

National Radio Announcers Just Couldn't Believe The Ravens Let The Clock Expire At The End Of The First OT Period
With all of the changes made to the NFL's overtime rules in recent years, anyone can be forgiven for not understanding some of the basics. But one detail that didn't change is what happens in a playoff game at the conclusion of the first overtime period: the teams move to the other side of the fie...

Dan Dierdorf: Cartoonish Grump
Look, I'm not going to be singing showtunes if I'm forced to work in 10-degree weather just to earn a paycheck, either. (Unless that showtune is "Sooner or Later" from the thoroughly-depressing La Strada.) But the sad face CBS analyst Dan Dierdorf cast on Saturday was especially rubbery, with an ex...

Doug Gottlieb Compares Tony Gonzalez Winning His First Playoff Game To A.C. Green Having Sex
That is an actual thing that happened today. No sensational headlines or tricks. Today, Doug Gottlieb had a train of thought the nuts and bolts of which went something like: "Hey, Tony Gonzalez finally won a playoff game. Wonder if it felt better to him than A.C. Green rubbing genitals with his wife...

Jacquizz Rodgers Will Quizz On Your Face, If His T-Shirt Is To Be Believed
Reader Corey wrote in and said he made this shirt for Falcons running back Jacquizz Rodgers while Quizz was in college. It is the first known display of personality shown by a Falcons player in the Mike Smith era. I feel like I know this team so much better now....

The Dolphins Want Taxpayers To Help Them Renovate Sun Life Stadium
We called this one a couple of months ago, but the Dolphins and owner Stephen Ross made it official today—they want to make $400 million worth of renovations to Sun Life Stadium, and they want state and local governments to pay for some, possibly most of it....

TV Ratings For Ravens-Broncos Were Bananas
The NFL is invincible. After a season of unnecessary distractions and safety crises and owner collusion and labor stoppages, in the course of two days the sport managed to put on two games that were so good they make you want to run through a fucking brick wall. Saturday's slugfest in Denver and yes...

Brendon Ayanbadejo Is Already Chirping About The Patriots' "Gimmick" Offense
Ravens LB Brendon Ayanbadejo made headlines last summer when he very publicly announced his support of Maryland's gay-marriage referendum. Now he's opening himself up to an even more hateful bunch of opponents—Pats fans. (See?) Ayanbadejo didn't even wait for New England to finish its asskicking of ...

Denver's CBS Affiliate Seems Really Confused About Which Teams Are Playing In The AFC Championship
As you already know, the Denver Broncos fell this weekend to the Baltimore Ravens in a double-OT thriller. The city of Denver, it seems, is still a bit in denial. Here's a graphic that ran during last night's 6 p.m. newscast, one that's exceptionally bizarre to the point you wonder how it got on TV...

Fox Gets Conservative: Did The Denver Coach's Risk-Averse Strategy Cost The Broncos A Playoff Victory?
NFL coaches will often refer to "playing the percentages." But if there's one thing I've learned by studying strategic decisions, it's that coaches don't have a firm grasp of those percentages. And when anyone is uncertain of the odds, he'll fall back on the sure thing. That was the case with Bronco...

Titans Wide Receiver Kenny Britt Wanted For Questioning In Connection With His Brother's Stabbing
Tennessee Titans wide receiver Kenny Britt dropped off his recently stabbed younger brother at a Jersey City hospital late on Saturday night, and has not spent his Sunday cooperating with the subsequent police investigation. The Jersey Journal reports:...
![Atlanta Finally Wins A Playoff Game And Brandon Spikes Over-Celebrates: Falcons-Seahawks And Patriots-Texans, In GIFs [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/18bf2wkhhylx6gif.gif)
Atlanta Finally Wins A Playoff Game And Brandon Spikes Over-Celebrates: Falcons-Seahawks And Patriots-Texans, In GIFs [Updated]
Here's where we're putting all of our divisional round GIFs for the Falcons' tense win over the Seahawks and the Patriots' not-so-tense win over the Texans. Click through for everything from Richard Sherman clap-clap-clapping in Roddy White's face (after losing him in coverage) to Bill Belichick ne...

Reminder: Peyton Manning Still Better Than Tim Tebow
Broncos fans should be used to this by now: a big time, Super Bowl-winning quarterback lost to an obviously lesser quarterback in an overtime classic in Denver. The comparisons have been as inescapable as they are stupid:...

A Summit Of Two Of The Most Widely Loved And Reviled Football Players In The NFL Took Place After Ravens-Broncos
A tableau: Peyton Manning and Ray Lewis talking in a Mile High Stadium locker room, 90 minutes after the end of the pitched battle that was their AFC divisional playoff matchup, 85 minutes after Ray Lewis yelled Bible verse at Solomon Wilcots, and about six hours after the game started. There's just...

Your Divisional Playoffs Open Thread
Baltimore at Denver, 4:30 p.m. (CBS): It'll be cold and probably lopsided, but the first thing might negate the second thing, so who knows. It'll also either be the last game of Ray Lewis's career or the last game of Peyton Manning's much-ballyhooed comeback season, so there are good schadenfreude ...

New Browns Head Coach Rob Chudzinski May Have The Clevelandest Surname In The NFL
As strange as it was to see the Browns fire Pat Shurmur after a 5-11 season—after all, isn't that merely upholding The Browns Way?—it seemed even more peculiar for them to hire in his place a 44-year-old without a lick of NFL head-coaching experience....
