mat Page 82 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Islanders Have Averted Disaster
Six months after they were dumped by their captain, John Tavares—the man who was both their best player and the most crucial piece of their long-term plan, who had publicly assured everyone two years ago that he would not leave them for his boyhood favorite franchise—the New York Islanders are one ...

Week 17 Is A Great Week To Watch Quarterbacks Catch Touchdowns
The early games on Week 17 Sunday are not that interesting. Everything with some drama was flexed to 4 p.m., so fans are left watching a bunch of blowouts and meaningless games....

Matt Prater Earned All Seven Points With His First Career Passing Touchdown
Matt Prater, who holds the record for the longest field goal in NFL history, notched his first career passing touchdown during Sunday’s game against the Packers. Prater lined up to attempt a 26-yard field goal, which would have added to the Lions’ 7-0 lead over a DeShone Kizer-led Packer team. But b...

Matt Patricia Is Always Late
Bill Belichick’s gnarled, stunted coaching tree—a coaching krummholz, really—ultimately reflects well on Belichick. He’s not, apparently, succeeding solely by surrounding himself with hypertalented assistants, as we’re seeing every few years when one of those assistants gets a head coaching gig and ...

Time To Check In On Jim McVay And His Ridiculous College Football Grift
Today the Washington Post published a story on Jim McVay, the guy whose only job is to run a lower-tier college bowl game, and the million dollars he makes for doing it. The report, which points out how the $1,045,000 McVay made in 2017 “ranks as extreme” even in the bloated business of college foot...

Falcons Punter Matt Bosher Absolutely Demolishes Panthers Return Man
The Falcons have found the solution to their defensive woes: just get punter Matt Bosher on the field and let him make plays. Bosher, who handles kickoffs, made the tackle of the day this afternoon when he kicked it off to Kenjon Barner then tossed him in the air and spiked him into the turf seconds...

The Kid Who Previously Lived Near Akron Has Returned
Today, Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the Cleveland Cavaliers and Milwaukee Bucks will be swapping some junk in boxes from their respective garages. The trade is centered around guard George Hill, who’s shooting 46.4 percent from three and could be useful to Milwaukee, but the real draw here is A...

Cal State Northridge Basketball Fan Shrieks Like She's Dying During Free Throws
Last night on SportsCenter, Scott Van Pelt brought attention to the archetypal college basketball fan of a bad team who maybe cares too much. This shrieking Cal State Northridge fan was trying her best to pierce the eardrums of Washington State players—as well as everyone in the stadium, all the cit...

Akron And South Carolina Will Play The Most Meaningless Game Of The College Football Season
On Wednesday, the University of South Carolina was compelled to issue a clarification regarding the tickets it was planning to give away for this Saturday’s home game against Akron at Williams-Brice Stadium. Yes, the upper level tickets were indeed free as reported but no, and this part was importan...

Here's A Fair Way To Pay College Athletes For Their Labor
At the end of October, federal prosecutors succeeded in proving something that every college sports fan alive already knew. With the help of FBI wiretaps, defendants Jim Gatto, Merl Code, and Christian Dawkins were found guilty in federal court of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The...

Do Not Blot Out The Sun
Probably nothing anyone does at this point stands more than a remote chance of averting any but the very most extreme, apocalyptic tolls humanity’s trashing of the planet could inflict on the global ecosystem and human society within the next few decades. The time when people could have addressed th...

Here's A Really Bizarre Stat About The Steelers
The Steelers lost to the Broncos on Sunday in Denver, in a game that seemed to make no sense: They outgained the Broncos by more than 200 yards, with Ben Roethlisberger throwing for 462 yards—the fourth-highest total of his career. They lost largely because they turned the ball over four times, incl...

Derek Carr Has Joined His Brother David In Stat Hell
Ravens linebacker Matthew Judon sacked Raiders QB Derek Carr on three consecutive offensive plays during Baltimore’s 34-17 win Sunday. That’s a rare accomplishment. Since 1982, only one other player has sacked the quarterback three straight times in one game: Colts defensive end Brad Scioli, who did...

Matthew Judon Makes Derek Carr's Life Hell With Three Consecutive Sacks
Third-year linebacker Matthew Judon is a rising star who is on his way to making a name for himself as the next great member of the Baltimore Ravens’ defense. Today’s performance against the Raiders should certainly help that goal. While Baltimore’s defense wasn’t at its best, it still managed to ge...

Somebody Get Matthew Stafford Some Damn Weapons!
Unless you’re a Bears fan, Thursday’s 23-16 Lions loss against Chicago was a boring, depressing way to start Thanksgiving. Both teams’ offenses came out with extremely conservative, mostly ineffective game plans, and while that could be excused with Chicago QB Chase Daniel making the emergency start...

Me And My Boy Snuck Into The Greatest Football Game Ever Played
Sunday night’s Gonzaga-DeMatha matchup for DC’s Catholic league title was, objectively speaking, the greatest event in the history of mankind. Sporting or otherwise. (Non-believers can watch it all here.)...

Matt Patricia Made The Lions Practice In The Snow For No Good Reason
The Bill Belichick coaching tree has produced a bounty of dullards and faux hardmen, and it’s beginning to look like former Patriots defensive coordinator and first-year Lions head coach Matt Patricia is the juiciest offering yet....

This Is Just What It's Always Going To Be Like Now
It never takes much. Tubbs started when some power lines blew over. All it took for Carr to roar to life was a flat tire. Thomas was born of a utility malfunction. Camp was probably the same. Their beginnings almost don’t matter, since the story of each of those historic wildfires, and all the fires...

Borussia Dortmund Defender Manuel Akanji Is The King Of Quick Maths
Last year, British rapper Big Shaq took the world by storm with an incredible freestyle performance during which he posed and solved a series of math equations mid-rap. It’s taken a while, but someone has finally surpassed Big Shaq’s show of numerical genius with even quicker, more complex maths. Th...

The Jets Defense Somehow Made Matt Barkley Look Competent
Before today, every Bills quarterback who had played in a game this season was either injured or deeply flummoxed by the game of football, so Buffalo’s had to dig deep into the scrap heap to find new guys to trot out. Fishing around with a rubber-gloved hand a few weeks back, they eventually grabbed...