football Page 51 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Coco Gauff will write her own story
When Coco Gauff beat Venus Williams at Wimbledon in 2019, a flood of expectations followed considering she was 15, American, Black, and had just ousted tennis royalty. The talent and potential was obvious enough, yet there are too many variables and unknowns to account for that calling anything a fo...

Ever wonder what the worst team of NFL starters would look like? Here it is
On an individual level, NFL Top 100 Player Lists are what get people excited. We get it. Patrick Mahomes is number one and the most competitive race is the scrum for number two. However, half of NFL fandom is groaning about the weak links on each unit. There’s enough glowing coverage of the NFL out ...
![Cincinnati Bengals take care of their franchise QB, but won't retain one of his top targets [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/ecb00f7342943ac5112c91c3e9bc0591.jpg)
Cincinnati Bengals take care of their franchise QB, but won't retain one of his top targets [Updated]
Well that was easy, and Joe Burrow didn’t even have to pull the old fake injury/shadow holdout move. According to reports, the Cincinnati Bengals’ quarterback agreed to a five-year, $275 million contract extension with the team. The deal comes with $219 million guaranteed, making Burrow the highest ...

Hey, refs: Mahomes already has enough of an edge, don't give him any more!
Facing Patrick Mahomes already presents unique challenges for pass rushers. Getting past the blockers may not even be half of the battle. Mahomes moves around in the pocket with the agility of a gazelle trying to avoid becoming lunch. Trying to corral him should not be made harder by the Kansas City...

Oddsmakers are singing ‘Hail to the Chiefs’, but buyer beware
The sports-driven corner of the internet nearly descended into armageddon on Tuesday when it was revealed that Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce hyperextended his knee during practice. His long-term status came into the forefront and every fantasy owner that picked him in the first round of...

Russell Wilson and his diva ways weren't ready for a coach like Sean Payton
Sean Payton is an old-school head coach in his approach and one of the few remaining in the NFL. As part of the Bill Parcells coaching tree, Payton mirrors his mentor in many ways regarding his no-nonsense way of dealing with players. It doesn’t matter who the player is or what they think of themsel...

The Ravens offense will only be as good as its backup plan
The Baltimore Ravens co-opted college tactics as much as any team in the NFL over the past five years — it just wasn’t the trendy playbook. The staff built a run-oriented scheme around Lamar Jackson, taking QB-run tactics from college, and tweaking them for the pros. It worked for a while, and earne...

Caleb Williams can return to USC instead of playing for the NFL team with the No. 1 overall pick
Caleb Williams’ father is absolutely right. Carl Williams talked to GQ’s Sam Schube for a profile about his son. He said that the NFL Draft system is “completely backwards.” After years of playing and training with the best programs at each level of football, Caleb is now forced to go play for the w...

Can the Detroit Lions live up to all the hype around them this season?
The Detroit Lions enter the 2023 NFL season on a wild hype train of high hopes and expectations after finishing strong last year, winning five of their final six games. Jared Goff looked like Detroit’s quarterback of the future, and Dan Campbell proved that he’s much more than a barbaric man who wan...

Coco Gauff is proof that tennis is wack without Black women
They used to not want Althea Gibson’s “kind” around. Now we don’t know where tennis would be without them. That’s how you ace an opportunity....

Hard Knocks Finale: Robert Saleh ended the season with a winner
In some ways, being a head coach is like being a late-night host. Day and day out, for an entire season, this person has to perform. There may be only 17 games in an NFL season, but every single day a head coach is forced to perform for the media, the players, and bosses. So many speeches, PowerPoin...

Jerry Jones traded for Trey Lance and didn't even tell Mike McCarthy
Recently, Jerry Jones made a front-office move that shocked many around the NFL. The Dallas Cowboys owner traded a fourth-round draft pick to the San Francisco 49ers for Trey Lance. In the aftermath of that deal, what wasn’t reported at the time is that Jones made the swap without consulting his foo...

Is Deion Sanders ushering in a positionless era at Colorado?
Deion Sanders is an iconoclast, if nothing else. Sanders has gone against the grain by taking the rarely traveled SWAC route to a Power 5 coaching job, in addition to his use of the transfer portal, his braggadocious coaching style, his deals with Barstool and decision to sign with Colorado over mor...

Mel Tucker gets paid too much to be this cavalier with his players
The college football season is back, and with it, negligent and dangerous coaching decisions. In East Lansing on Friday, senior receiver Alante Brown was knocked out while blocking on the first kickoff of the game. He was carted off, but somehow managed to return to action, taking a kick 16 yards be...

Maybe Dabo Swinney's success was tied to a string of good QBs all along...
This isn’t a referendum only on Clemson’s embarrassing 3-touchdown loss to unranked Duke. Things have been unraveling in South Carolina for nearly two years now and the signs of Clemson being brought down a few notches on college football’s hierarchy happens regardless of the result against Duke, si...

Arsenal are the Premier League’s new chaos masters and Chelsea can’t buy goals
It used to be Jürgen Klopp’s first Liverpool teams, and possibly the current one, that were considered the most raucous chaos merchants in the Premier League. They were equally capable of the most destructive football, going in both directions, equally capable of howitzer-ing their opponents or thei...

Team USA must play like this for the rest of the FIBA World Cup
Americans don’t care when Team USA wins non-gold medal games. But they do give a damn if they lose them....

The NCAA shortened football games only to shove more ads into broadcasts
College football is changing at such a rapid pace that it’s hard to keep track of every alteration. One example is the new rule that keeps the clock rolling after a first down. In recent years, it went from a full stop after moving the chains to pausing until the ref spots the ball. Now it only stop...

College football on Labor Day has always been a sick joke
Labor Day Weekend serving as the official kickoff for college football is still the biggest oxymoron in sports. For decades, college football was the most abhorrent, openly accepted form of free labor. Unlike their basketball counterparts, NFL-caliber athletes are forced to push themselves through t...
