ick Page 255 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Cleveland has hope — and a pretty good basketball team
If there was a way to slyly tell you that Cleveland has the second best scoring defense in the NBA behind the Warriors, I would do that. But me doing the whole, “I bet you couldn’t guess who the second best scoring defense in the league is” bit isn’t clever, because Cleveland is in the headline of t...

Sorry Vegas, but there’s no way Jim Harbaugh or Nick Saban goes to the NFL
NFL teams have been looking at college coaches to fill their head coaching vacancies more than ever. In each of the past three seasons, at least one coach made the jump to the NFL after years of working at the collegiate level. Urban Meyer is the most recent college coach to take that route, and alt...

The onside kick revolution is upon us!
Despite onside kick rules becoming prohibitively restrictive in the NFL throughout the past decade or so, there must have been something in the air this weekend. Maybe you were sitting on your couch in a post-Sunday brunch fugue and you saw one and thought to yourself, didn’t I already watch one of ...

2021 Rookie QB Rankings: Down the stretch they come
It’s Week 14 of the NFL season, and rookie quarterbacks have been front and center, with some living up to the hype and others not as much. With that, let’s look at how the 2021 rookie class fared in Week 14....

No-clutch Steph Curry is not the best shooter of all time
Hold the confetti....

Week 14 NFL Betting Primer: Best Over/Under, Spread, Teaser and Prop Bets
Writing these primers while sick isn’t fun. An instant cure all, though, would be securing another winning week. The streak is at five straight entering this slate....

Heisman? Ho-hum, man
Bryce Young is certainly a deserving Heisman Trophy winner. Alabama’s sophomore quarterback has thrown for 4,322 yards with 43 touchdowns and four interceptions this season, completed 68 percent of his passes, and despite not being a big-time runner, carried three scores in himself....

So, about that pandemic…
The Detroit Lions, finally in the win column after beating the Vikings last week, head into their game on Sunday without 19 percent of their roster due to injuries and coronavirus....

Replicating Pickett’s fake slide? No Ken do
If you liked Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett’s fake slide on the way to a 58-yard touchdown run in the ACC championship game last week, you’ll need to savor it, because you’re not going to see it again....

The Miami Hurricanes and Chicago Bulls have put the pedal to the metal, but don’t expect them to be what they were in the past
The young, promising Chicago Bulls are in second place in the Eastern Conference, and the Miami Hurricanes have high hopes after hiring a new football coach — it’s like it’s 1989 all over again. Fans of both teams have great reason to be excited....

NFL Week 14: The battle at the bottom of the NFC playoff picture
Most NFL fans will tell you that in recent years the AFC has been a better conference than the NFC. Despite an NFC team winning the Super Bowl last season, they also had a 7-9 team (Washington) reach the playoffs by winning their division, along with an 8-8 team (Chicago) as a wild-card. Meanwhile, ...

TNF Week 14: For Mike Zimmer, tonight is a must-win
It’s easy to look at the Minnesota Vikings less than a week after handing the Detroit Lions their first victory of the season and see a huge trash can. Losing to the Lions is a harder pill to swallow for a fanbase than losing to Nick Foles in the 2018 NFC Championship Game. However, that loss last w...

CJ and Dame have been fun, but if the Blazers want to salvage this season it’s time to say bye to McCollum
It’s far from all CJ McCollum’s fault the Portland Trail Blazers are struggling, and currently the 10th seed in the Western Conference with an 11-14 record. His field goal and free throw percentages are down, but he’s still averaging 20.6 points per game and shooting nearly 40 percent from the 3-poi...

It’s almost time for college football’s most vacuous tradition: Bowl season! We tell you which bowl games are worth watching and why
Christmas approaches quickly, but college football fans are acutely aware that the real late December holiday is bowl season. Just when visions of the CFB content stream finally slowing to a crawl is dancing in your head, the NCAA presents the most meaningless postseason tradition in American sports...

The Dallas Mavericks are struggling and Luka Dončić deserves some of the blame
For the second straight year, this pipe dream of Luka Dončić being NBA MVP seems to be going up in flames already. Dallas started the season well, but now they’re a game under .500 (11-12) and have lost eight of their last 10 games. It’s not so much Luka’s statistical production, although his shooti...

And just like that… (poof)... NXT is gone
It’s not that it was surprising. Back when WWE announced it was completely reshaping it’s junior brand, NXT, I wrote that it would be the end of what fans of the black and gold had come to love. I guess I’m just impressed (while simultaneously depressed) at how ruthlessly and efficiently it came to ...

You’re a fool if you think Belichick doesn’t trust Mac Jones
Monday night, we saw a familiar outcome in the NFL: the New England Patriots beating the Buffalo Bills. Despite horrid weather conditions and having to play on the road, the Patriots continued their dominant play as of late, thus lengthening their lead in the AFC East and doing so while having their...

Spare thoughts for the former Gil Hodges Lanes
I don’t really know what I was expecting, going to a bowling alley that’s two names removed from what it was called when my grandparents used to take me there, and thinking that maybe there would be something special about the fact that the old namesake, finally, many years late, had been elected to...

These Bulls are so much goddamn fun
I won’t lie to you, dear reader. Things are pretty bleak around here in Chicago, sports-wise. And actually beyond sports-wise, but I’m not qualified to discuss those things, really. Our center, the Bears, are an elaborate prank played on all of us by a trickster god, or at least they’d better be. Fi...

The New England Patriots still rule the AFC — deal with it
Bill Belichick is the AFC’s Thanos. He’s inevitable. ...