dan Page 43 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
World Cup Diary Day 11: Give them an inch…
We’ve gotten to the business end of the Group Stage, with Group A finishing up their schedule and sending a host home before the knockouts for the first time. But that was overshadowed by possibly the biggest upset of the tournament so far that blows up the draw a bit. Let’s run it through....
The Oakland A’s might not even be the worst team this year, let alone all time
Coming into the 2023 season, many thought that the Oakland A’s had the potential to be not just the worst team in baseball this year, but the worst of all time....
Denver Broncos' HC Sean Payton hates on Hack, New York Jets
Sean Payton knows a little something about reclamation projects. Nearly two decades after he rescued Drew Brees’ career following a torn labrum in the QB’s throwing shoulder, Payton has turned his attention to the revitalization of Russell Wilson. Like Brees, Wilson is an undersized passer, who thri...
Running backs meet as changes to the franchise tag are long overdue
Disgruntled NFL tailbacks are on the counteroffensive against unfavorable market forces and a collective bargaining agreement that leaves them with few options have spent the last few days discussing their current predicament amongst one another and appear to have emerged from their Zoom meeting wit...
The USWNT gets out of medium security jail
The pregame chatter mostly centered around Netherlands manager Andries Jonker’s quotes in the Matchday -1 press conference. It certainly had USWNT followers getting a little tight in the seat. In full:...
Lionel Messi’s quick start for Inter Miami has MLS’ detractors quiet
The shouts about Major League Soccer at large from other parts of the sports world get repetitive. Stating it’s a retirement league was always a jaded view. Perhaps it was the league with the most publicity that was willing to take big names past their prime. And while a lack of promotion and relega...
His disastrous ownership tenure is over — it’s time Michael Jordan fix his relationship with Charles Barkley
His best friend told the truth about him, and he “took that personally.”...
World Cup Day 7: It’s easy when you’re big in Japan…and Spain we suppose
After Group A decided to keep everyone alive with some truly weird (and awful) soccer on Monday night, it was time to send some teams to the land of wind and ghosts on Tuesday, as Costa Rica, Zambia, and Ireland will make it home before the postcards. Let’s make it happen, captain!...
Maybe I’ll just give up on the AEW Women’s Division
On Friday night, Athena and Willow Nightingale had one of the best matches, not just women’s matches, of 2023 on Ring of Honor’s Death Before Dishonor PPV. Not only was it the culmination of a three-match trilogy through both ROH and AEW, or the budding of a rivalry that will probably last years, bu...
Patrice Bergeron was your favorite player’s favorite player
When Felix Hernandez won the Cy Young in 2010 while his record was only 13-12, it was seen as something of a first strike for the new way of analyzing baseball. There was no question that Hernandez was the best pitcher in the AL that year, he had a 7-WAR season for fuck’s sake, but the fact that for...
Is Saquon Barkley stuck in a time loop, or just us?
On the surface, Saquon Barkley’s new contract with the New York Giants feels a lot like the franchise tag. It’s a one-year deal worth roughly the amount of same money — $10.1 million fully guaranteed vs. $10.091 million via the franchise tag — but with about a million in incentives. The main distinc...
Arthur Smith’s Falcons are riding the Bijan Robinson train in an age of aviator offenses
Arthur Smith migrated to the Falcons after laying down the railroad tracks for the Tennessee Titans’ 2020 AFC Championship berth. One would hope he isn’t trying to put his spin on the Derrick Henry cloud of dust offense he conducted for two years, but with Bijan Robinson. An essential part of buildi...
World Cup Day 4: Not much more than a feeling
If the story of the first three days of the World Cup was that the tournament favorites were kind of inching their way through their first matches, nothing changed on Day 4. Sweden, Holland, and especially France all had an air of trying to figure out what all the buttons do and what the lights mean...
When is the worst time to hassle an athlete for an autograph?
I’m not a big signed memorabilia type of guy. Personally, I’d rather take a picture. It lasts longer, is less labor intensive and I feel like less of a goofball displaying it. The parasocial connection between autograph seekers pressuring athletes to sign comes with the territory though. This week, ...
How to completely crap on your legacy, by Jordan Henderson
It’s my fault. I know better than to buy into it, but being so cynical, and assuming that every athlete that seems like he’s above the usual morass isn’t much of a way to live. I wanted to believe in Jordan Henderson, and still do in a lot of ways. ...
Draymond Green is public enemy No. 1 on NBA social media platforms
Nearly a year after the punch heard around the NBA was landed when Draymond Green took off on former Golden State Warriors teammate Jordan Poole in practice, we’re still talking about the incident, and some people are tired of reliving the ordeal. One of those people is Poole’s father, Anthony, who ...
These NFL teams haven't been on HBO’s <i>Hard Knocks</i>
Football season is near, which means HBO is gearing up to give us another season of all-access on Hard Knocks that won’t feature anything worth seeing....
At least one NFL scout has a valid opinion of Aaron Rodgers
Once professional athletes reach a certain level in their respective sport, no matter how long they’ve played and how obvious their decline becomes, it’s rare that anyone will go out on a limb and proclaim this to the masses. The more polarizing you become in your fame, the less people are willing t...
Ain’t no love in the heart of NFL ownership for running backs
On the field, running backs have an offensive line to protect them. Off of the field, all they have is each other. The position with the shortest career span in the NFL has become the one that comes with the hardest fight to receive a contract that properly compensates their contributions. The deadl...
Carlos Alcaraz out-Djokovic’d Novak Djokovic
There is a vision of how to beat Novak Djokovic at a major, especially at Wimbledon, and even more especially at Centre Court, where he hadn’t lost in 10 years. It’s only a vision, because so few have ever achieved it. Only Rafa Nadal and Daniil Medvedev had managed to beat Djokovic in a major in th...