ben Page 30 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Rams win Super Bowl LVI as MVP Cooper Kupp carries team on game-winning drive
Patience is a virtue — sometimes you have to wait an entire half for a makeup call. And yet I don’t think the Rams are complaining after beating the Cincinnati Bengals, 23-20, in their home stadium, to win their first Super Bowl in Los Angeles....

Live coverage of Super Bowl LVI: Analyzing each team’s first 15 plays
Around the NFL, it’s common practice for teams to script their first 15 offensive plays. Why? This is usually before teams can adjust on defense. That makes the first few drives the perfect opportunity for a coaching staff to strut its stuff. You can often figure out a staff’s plan for attacking an ...

Which Super Bowl team will be more affected by injury?
After 17 regular-season games and four postseason matchups, a Super Bowl berth can mean an immense physical toll for participants on both sidelines. Despite the NFL’s best attempts to cut down on the grizzly knee ligament injuries and concussions that threatened their league, injuries are a part of ...

Eli (Bad) Apple’s unwarranted hubris has him running his mouth like a 24-hour 7-11
If the NFL had an award for Cockiest Player of the Year Without Any Good Reason, then Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Eli Apple would have taken it home at this year’s NFL Honors award ceremony. Apple has had quite the bit to say during the Bengals’ surprising run to the Super Bowl for a player with z...

Super Bowl LVI NFL Betting Primer: Best over/under, spread, teaser and prop bets
There’s nothing quite like Super Bowl Sunday, but sadly, the drama and theatrics that come with it also bring about the realization that we’ll be making our final football wagers until early September (or August for those who very daringly elect to bet on preseason action)....

I think we owe Daryl Morey a huge apology
When it was first reported that Ben Simmons didn’t want to play in Philadelphia anymore, fans and the media immediately rushed to create dream trade scenarios for the 76ers. Even considering Simmons’ awful performance in the most recent postseason, the three-time All-Star still had some trade value ...

Enough of the Super Teams, it’s all Killer Bs
NFL America should root for the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday....

Kevin Durant makes James Harden the last pick on the playground... and it's awesome
I don’t know whose idea it was to hold the NBA All-Star Draft the same day as the trade deadline, but they deserve a massive raise....

Remember the Ickey Shuffle?
For me, the highlight of my week has been Ickey Woods doing the griddy....

No NHL stars, but plenty of drama for Team USA men's hockey
It’s obvious that the inclusion of the NHL at the 2022 Winter Olympics would’ve given a facelift to the United States men’s hockey roster competing in Beijing. Leaving Auston Matthews, Connor Hellebuyck and plenty of others at home takes away some of the best in the world. The Americans are far from...

In the other big NBA trade, four-team deadline deal could put Milwaukee over the top again
Many of you probably missed the four-team trade involving seven players and draft picks with all the commotion and reaction over the James Harden-Ben Simmons blockbuster. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Kings, Bucks, Clippers, and Pistons have agreed to the following trade: ...

Can Joe Cool solve the NFL’s Gen Z problem?
Much has been written about how deeply cool Joe Burrow is — and that’s really the only word anyone can come up with to describe him. Sometimes, there’s no further adjective that can really capture the appeal of a public figure than the simple, self-explanatory “cool.” As OBJ said, “If you look up co...

NBA steals the spotlight from Super Bowl week with blockbuster James Harden for Ben Simmons trade
Wow. So, the trade that felt like it would never happen finally went down. The Brooklyn Nets have agreed to send James Harden to the Philadelphia 76ers for Ben Simmons, Seth Curry, Andre Drummond, and two first-round picks, sources told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski....

The colorful but forgettable history of Bengals-Rams
The way that NFL scheduling works, Super Bowl opponents are always teams that don’t have a lot of regular season history. Still, Bengals-Rams feels particularly unfamiliar as a matchup, for a couple of reasons....

Avert your eyes, either Stan Kroenke or Mike Brown will get to hoist the Lombardi
Mere mention of the names Stan Kroenke and Mike Brown, owners of the two NFL teams facing off in the Super Bowl on Sunday, triggers largely negative emotions from fans of teams they own. (LA Rams fans are nihilists, dude, so discount them.) Talk to Bengals fans, former St. Louis Rams fans, Arsenal f...

Are we sure that defense still wins championships?
The saying goes, “Offense sells tickets. Defense wins championships.” Having a flashy offense with a quarterback who can throw the ball 80 yards through the air is great and all, but a defensive unit that can counteract those talents is arguably more valuable, or at least you’d think....

What it means when prosecutors decline to charge sexual assault
I have a love/hate relationship with Olivia Benson and the ubiquitous Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU to those of us who have it on the background at least 65 percent of the time). On one hand, it’s copaganda of the highest order, where police are nearly always the good guys, and one cop in p...

If Lillard and McCollum didn’t work, then why was it so much fun?
I just saw CJ McCollum in Chicago like a week ago. He seemed fine — he had 29 on 13-of-23 from the floor and played well — but the team wasn’t itself anymore. It was a Sunday morning, and I was in bed when my girlfriend asked, “Hey Portland’s playing today. Want to go?”...

The Bengals are in the Super Bowl, but don’t expect them to pick up a check in L.A.
The Cincinnati Bengals have overcome quite a bit of adversity to get to Super Bowl LVI. They had to claw their way to an AFC North championship after some bad regular-season losses, including the infamous 400-yard Mike White game against the New York Jets, followed by getting smoked by Cleveland Bro...

Brooklyn is facing a tough decision with James Harden, but they do have options
So, the cat seems to have entirely escaped the bag at this point. James Harden allegedly wants out of Brooklyn barely one calendar year into his stint with the team. It sounds like it’s more than just the part-time status of teammate Kyrie Irving that’s bugging Harden. Although the Nets, losers of e...