fore Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Patrick Mahomes’ MVP season defied logic, now he has to elude history
Patrick Mahomes capped off what was likely his second MVP campaign with a humiliation of the Las Vegas Raiders on Saturday. And yet, few expected him to be in this position four months ago. The AFC West was getting too crowded to be a monopoly, Justin Herbert was the NFL’s most gifted pocket passer,...

World Cup Daily Diary Day 3: Whoops!
Saudi Arabia manager Herve Renard might be the most handsome manager at this tournament, and he certainly didn’t have a problem taking a page from another handsome manager, Jose Mourinho. If you recall the cold war that Barcelona and Real Madrid had when Mourinho was at the helm at the Bernabeu, th...

World sporting events are becoming a different kind of guilty pleasure
While this World Cup is unlike any other due to the start time and Middle East location, there is a recent world competition that comes to mind. Think about it. Climate unfit to host the event, haphazard accommodations, stories of government overreach, and sportswashing. That sounds like the Beijing...

NFL Week 10 Powerless Rankings: Only the Raiders can lose on a Sunday to a Saturday
It’s time to check in on the teams that can’t get out of their own way. We’re halfway through the 2022 NFL season, and much of it has been unpredictable, but there are always a few teams we expect to disappoint their fanbases. Now let’s get into the powerless ranking for Week 10....

This awful stretch of Raiders’ 1st-round draft picks is a sign
Yesterday, after failing to find a trade partner, the Las Vegas Raiders cut former first-round safety Johnathan Abram. According to reports, the Raiders were shopping both Abram and fellow 2019 first-round selection Clelin Ferrell, but, after being unable to find trade partners, Vegas opted to cut t...

NFL Week 8 Powerless Ranking: Could it get any worse?
It’s time to check in on the teams that can’t get out of their own way. We’re just about halfway through the 2022 NFL season, and it’s been unpredictable at times, but there are always a few teams we expect to disappoint their fan base. Now let’s get into the powerless ranking for Week 8....

It’s OK to enjoy Albert Pujols’ 700th home run
I never know how to write about the teams or players I like. I could pen 2,500 words on Albert Pujols in 20 minutes, literally breaking Mavis Beacon records along the way, and none of it would be coherent or old-time-y poetic like in the days when you had to read sports writers to see a swing. ...

The Favorite
I won’t be alone in saying that Roger Federer was the first winner I consistently cheered for. Part of that was growing up in Chicago, when as a child, being a fan of a consistent winner really wasn’t much of an option (as it is now. And everything turns, turns, turns…). But a sports fan’s natural i...

AFC South Preview: It’s all about Indy
Logical outcome: The last few years have been a song of Matty Ice and Fire. He’s either an MVP-caliber passer or he’s a borderline starter watching defenders react faster while he gets slower. For the first time in Ryan’s career, he’ll share the backfield with an All-Pro-caliber running back, which ...

It’s come together for Frances Tiafoe
There’s a pretty common narrative for tennis players, which has been blunted on the men’s side for a while because well, there’s been three guys stopping anyone else from taking the final step. The arc is supposed to be that a player shows up in his late teens or early 20s, flashes some serious game...

Does Tony Khan have a second gear for Ring Of Honor?
It’s pretty standard now, bordering on canon, that Tony Khan will spit out a great pay-per-view whenever he needs to. And now it’s with multiple companies. Last Saturday, it was Ring of Honor’s turn, with “Death Before Dishonor.” And by any measure, it was a banger. Not perfect — rarely is a show ev...

Make it a best of 13
Usually, especially in a Stanley Cup Final, you need at least a few games before the level of play truly takes off. Coaches and teams want to try different things, chase their matchups, or keep things tight as they can to preserve already exhausted players until there is absolutely no choice. No one...

The last chapter of the greatest rivalry?
It’s a testament to their greatness that whenever Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic line up in a major, where everyone projects they might meet, everyone starts girding up for it. Be it the quarters, semis, or final, everyone knows to block out half a day and gather the supplies necessary. Because whi...

The Nets are so weird
And thus ends yet another attempt by the Brooklyn Nets to skip the line and crash into the NBA penthouse. Actually, “another Nets experiment” sounds a little more apt. Because the Nets, the Brooklyn version, have always felt like one....

The Colts were a trendy Super Bowl pick last season, this season they want to be a favorite
The Indianapolis Colts were certainly not thrilled with the way that their 2021 season ended. It started in disappointing fashion by losing their first three games. They improved, but still lost twice to division rival Tennessee Titans, including a heartbreaker at home — 34-31 in overtime. Then the ...

The Jacksonville Jaguars have a gambling problem
Perhaps fittingly for the Jacksonville Jaguars, the 2022 Draft will be held amid the backdrop of casinos on the Las Vegas strip. The NFL Drafts is always a high-stakes poker table. Even with rookie wage scale contracts, drafting the wrong guy is a multi-million dollar mistake. There’s a reason why t...

Tennis is having the goldenest of all Golden Ages
It’s strange how normalized greatness is during something’s golden age. If you look at music for example, hip-hop peaked in the ’90s for a lot of people like classic rock did in the ’60s and ’70s. However, even when 2Pac and Biggie were at the apex, rappers like Nas and Jay-Z weren’t in the picture ...

Packers and Titans just latest teams to have fatal flaw exposed in playoffs
There’s a common thread between playoffs across sports, whether it’s best-of-seven series, single-elimination, or even NASCAR’s weeks-long gauntlet to the Cup. If your team has a weakness, it’s going to get exposed....

So what is the Olympic spirit, anyway?
We’ve all known that these upcoming Olympic games were a bad idea, and that’s putting it insultingly lightly. When they were first announced, even if you could get past the tiny little morsel of the egregious human rights abuses of the Chinese government (and you shouldn’t), there’s the whole thing ...