There’s a lot on the line in the NFL regular-season finale between the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins in the Sunday Night Football odds. Whoever wins this game will lock up the AFC East title. A loss drops the Dolphins to the sixth seed while the Bills can breathe a little easier now that they’ve secured a postseason berth after Sunday’s early action.
While Buffalo is riding high into Week 18 with four straight victories, the Dolphins are licking their wounds after getting obliterated in Baltimore and losing linebacker Bradley Chubb to a torn ACL, adding to a long list of injury concerns for the Dolphins. With momentum on the side of the Bills, NFL odds have them tabbed as a three-point favorite with the game having a total of 49.5.
Let’s get int…
The New York Jets host the New England Patriots in Thursday Night Football action this week. The Pats were supposed to be one of the worst teams in the league but they’ve exceeded expectations so far thanks to a solid defense and Rhamondre Stevenson.
I’m betting on those things to continue with my favorite NFL picks and player props for the Patriots vs. Jets on Thursday, September 19.
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The Bundesliga has suffered a fall in the value of its TV rights, after it became the first major European league to agree a new broadcast deal since the Covid-19 pandemic.
The German top flight, whose rights are sold alongside those of the 2. Bundesliga, has secured a new agreement with Sky and the streaming company Dazn for its domestic rights – including Austria and Switzerland – worth €4.4bn (£4bn) over four years. That represents a fall of €200m on the previous deal, which expires this summer.
The Bundesliga became the first European league to return to competition in mid-May and now has set a broadcasting benchmark other competitions will be watching and attempting to analyse. The English Premier Leag…
BATTLE FIVER
What was the last genuinely great thing to happen in the Premier League? That’s right! The answer has nothing whatsoever to do with last Sunday’s well-received encounter between Manchester City and Liverpool, and everything to do with five years ago, when Chelsea put paid to Tottenham’s chances of winning the title and everyone disappeared down the Stamford Bridge tunnel throwing hands. And the time before that? It’d be Martin Keown getting right up in Ruud van Nistelrooy’s grille. And before that? Eric Cantona disappearing into the Selhurst Park stands to dispense beneficial advice on race relations.
All of these incidents were met with the usual performative wagging of fin…
Leeds 1-0 Liverpool, 21 August 1995
Little was known in England about the Ghanaian striker Tony Yeboah, who had been the joint top scorer in the German Bundesliga for two seasons, before he moved to Leeds from Eintracht Frankfurt for £3m in January 1995. Yeboah left an indelible mark on English football with a powerful volley past the despairing David James against Liverpool on Sky’s Monday night game to secure a Leeds win. He crashed in another goal-of-the-season contender the following month against Wimbledon.
Liverpool 4-3 Newcastle, 10 March 1997
No, not that one. That was on a Wednesday. But we are …
In search of an end to a winless start to the season, the Washington Mystics travel to College Park, Ga., to face the Atlanta Dream on Tuesday. Washington (0-12) extended the worst start in franchise history on Sunday, falling 93-88 to the New York Liberty. The Mystics led by five with under nine minutes left in the game but were outscored 21-11 over the final 8:18. For Washington head coach Eric Thibault, as difficult as the stretch has been, he believes the team is improving. "I told our team after the game, the loss stings because we played so hard, but we're becoming a better basketball team," Thibault said. "We're putting longer stretches of the game together. We've had a couple games in a row where teams have made threes and made tough shots on us. …
For rebuilding teams, progress can be measured in various increments, such as matching and eventually surpassing a win total from the previous season with a little more than two months remaining in the regular season. It is a scenario the Houston Rockets will face Saturday night when they attempt to match last season's win total in a game against the skidding Brooklyn Nets in New York. The Rockets own a 21-23 record under first-year coach Ime Udoka after going 59-177 over the previous three seasons following a run of 14 consecutive seasons with at least a .500 record. Last season en route to a 22-60 finish, Houston was 10-34 through its 44th game and in the midst of a 13-game losing streak. Besides matching their win total, the Rockets are hoping to reach — and exceed — .5…
Stipulate first that, when it comes to the annual Name of the Year Bracket, there are no winners, no losers, and no wrong answers. Every one of the names in the bracket—the psychedelic syllable pileups, the brazen onomatopoeias, the pokerfaced puns, all of them—is blessed, and a blessing in turn. The names are all good, and there is ample reason to treasure every one of them. And you should absolutely feel free to do that shit on your own time, but we did not do that here. The names are in a bracket, friends, and that means that they must fight to see which of these wonderful and precious names will rule supreme over the rest. And so Drew and Megan and I got together and unpacked the bracket, as we do every year: None of this is perfect, of course, or anywhere near scientific. For i…
Some people are fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. This 2016 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. And buy Drew’s new book here. Your team: Pittsburgh Steelers. Your 2015 record: 10-6. Let’s see how it ended. Oh, that’s unfortunate. And by unfortunate, I mean fantastic. You dirty filthy rotten shitbags. Your coach: Mike Tomlin. The Bullfrog! Old Tomlo! The Fourth Down Roulette Wheel! Not even Andy Reid makes more baffling fourth down choices than this man. Let’s take you back to October, when Tomlin made the following fourth down choices with barely over two minutes to go and then on into overtime… 4th and 5: Missed 43-yard Josh Scobee kick 4th a…
Some people are fans of the Oakland Raiders. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Oakland Raiders. This 2013 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the 2013 NFL previews so far right here. Your team: Oakland Raiders Your 2012 record: 4-12. I bet the people at NFL Films seriously considered doing the season highlights video using sock puppets just to spice things up. They know a lemon when they see it. In the past 10 years, the Raiders have lost 11 or more games eight times. The Tom Cable/Hue Jackson Years represent the apex of your past decade. Having fans who dress up like a third-tier ECW tag team does nothing to mask this team’s suck. By the way, that was the team’s first full season under new management. I keep waiting for Mark Dav…