The NFL is a small-sample league. Before you can even blink, 18 games have flown by and we’re left trying to make sense of everything that happened. It means that luck can play a massive part in whether a team succeeds or fails, with a few bounces of the ball defining the entire story for an entire season. That being said, that doesn’t mean all NFL moves are immune to scrutiny. There are absolutely some bone-headed, moronic decisions that can derail a season from the beginning. Single moves can be so bad that they squander seasons, change legacies, and cost people their jobs. Brace yourself, as we get through the biggest blunders of the 2023 NFL season. Deshaun Watson’s contract truly rearing its ugly head source: Getty Images This somewhat falls between the last two years, but …

ANOTHER NIGHT, ANOTHER CITY

The Fiver didn’t get where it is today by stealing catchphrases from characters in 1970s sitcoms about a man named Reginald Perrin who fakes his own death out of boredom. No, The Fiver got where it is today by showing a willingness to improvise and adapt in a bid to overcome adversity, much like Diego Simeone at Atlético Madrid. While the Argentinian’s pitch-side attire remains as Johnny Cash as ever, he has in the past year completely changed his team’s approach to the game. Whether it’s changing his formation or slotting assorted square pegs into round, triangular or hexagonal holes, the man once renowned for the rigidity of his thinking about how the game should be play…

Paul Pogba is a major doubt for the World Cup in Qatar as he requires surgery on a knee injury sustained in pre-season with Juventus.

The 29-year-old has yet to feature this campaign and the Juventus head coach, Massimiliano Allegri, revealed on Monday that the midfielder will now undergo an operation to fix the problem. “We will realistically get him back in January,” Allegri added on the eve of his side’s Champions League opener at Paris Saint-Germain.

Paul Pogba claims he has been target of extortion from organised gangRead more

Pogba played a key role in France’s World Cup triumph in 2018. The first match of their title defence comes against Australia on 22 November, with their other Group D games coming …

For more than three decades, English football media was a Winter wonderland. An eternal Winter. Winter extending an icy grip over the landscape. But even Winter, it seems, can end up being frozen out. Given the cold shoulder. It’s time to wrap up for Winter, now this particular Winter’s tale has reached its final chapter.

That, with apologies, was the opening paragraph to a column about Henry Winter’s dismissal by the Times, written in the style of Henry Winter for the Times. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible you haven’t the faintest idea what, or who, I’m talking about. Which to an oblique and probably self-defeating extent is actually the point.

Winter is the chief football writer of the…

The 2024 FedEx Cup season comes to a dramatic conclusion with this week's Tour Championship at the redesigned East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. Only the top 30 in the standings made it to the third and final leg of the playoffs, but how many players have a legitimate shot of hoisting the trophy and claiming the $25 million bonus check come Sunday? World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler arrived in Atlanta as the top seed and owning a two-stroke lead for the third consecutive year, but he has yet to go on to win a FedEx Cup title. Our golf experts preview the event and share their favorite prop picks along with best bets to win this week. TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP Location: Atlanta, Ga., Aug. 29-Sept. 1 Course: East Lake Golf Club (Par 71, 7,490 Yards) Purse: $100M (Winner: $25M) Defending Champio…

After more than six months of incarceration since her February arrest for having less than one gram of cannabis oil in her luggage at a Russian airport, eight-time WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner was sentenced to nine years in prison on Thursday for drug possession and smuggling. That harsh but expected final decision on Griner’s case is her final scheduled court appearance. How long Griner will stay in a Russian prison is now solely dependent on diplomatic relations between America and Russia. As noted by the Associated Press, a conviction is usually a prerequisite to arranging a prisoner exchange and also allows the WNBA star to apply for a presidential pardon. A swap between the countries freeing Griner and former US Marine Paul Whelan, detained under accusations of espionage, in e…

The UFC has its problems, but one stands out as more serious and scary than the rest: Fewer and fewer people are interested in what it’s selling. Even as UFC president Dana White touts his company’s record profitability in 2017, there’s no getting around the basic fact that the company isn’t doing well in the medium and long term. By several different metrics, the UFC’s audience is declining. Moreover, if the ubiquitous commercials for male vitality products like Nugenix during broadcasts weren’t a big enough clue, the audience that remains is aging out of the coveted youth demographic that the promotion used to sell itself to advertisers for so long. Anecdotally, fan enthusiasm seems to be at a low ebb. But every actual metric suggests that things are even worse than they…

As of last week, we are halfway through 2015. As usual, most of the year’s “prestige” movies aren’t out yet, but that doesn’t mean that the past six months didn’t have some terrific films. To make sure they aren’t forgotten come year-end-list time, Grierson & Leitch today present our favorite movies of the first half of 2015. Here’s our Top 12, with six from each of us. Grierson Eden: Filmmaker Olivier Assayas received strong reviews this year for the deft Clouds of Sils Maria, starring Juliette Binoche and a sneakily terrific Kristen Stewart. All the same, I prefer his wife’s film. Director Mia Hansen-Løve (Goodbye First Love) drew from her brother’s memories of being a DJ during France’s 1990s dance-music scene to make a meditative drama about an aspiring DJ (…

This week's Deadcast guest is Hold Steady guitarist Tad Kubler (Listen here, iTunes here.) DOUBLE WHISKY COKE NO ICE. I ask Tad all the tough questions, and submit him to a deadly gauntlet of asskissing, the likes of which he may never recover from. I also ask him questions from Deadspin readers, and he was nice enough to answer all of them with honesty and good humor. Is the band working on a new album? YES! Does he still drink? NO! Because he almost died from pancreatitis! RAWK Do double guitars serve any other purpose than to look awesome on stage? YES! Was the song "Slapped Actress" written to inspire Tony Parker? NO! Is he a Packer fan? YES! FUCK HIM! Has he ever trashed a hotel room? SEVERAL! What the fuck is the deal with Ybor City? NO ONE KNOWS! How do…