Some people are fans of the Carolina Panthers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Carolina Panthers. 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: Carolina Panthers Your 2012 record: 7-9. Your coach: Ron Rivera. Hey Coach, it's fourth-and-inches late in the game and you have a 250-pound, lightning-fast battletank for a quarterback. What do you do? OH DEAR GOD NO HOW COULD YOU BE SO GUTLESS?! It boggles the mind that the Panthers are gonna let Rivera stick around for another year after shitcanning their general manager last October (that's what happens when you invest 135% of your cap space on running backs). No new GM ever likes keeping around the team's old, shitty…
My exact moment of religious conversion on Naomi Osaka came while watching her play Karolina Pliskova from a few feet away in Indian Wells. Pliskova was and still is a spindly winner machine, and she sent balls bounding into the corners with no desire to see or deal with them ever again. Osaka was doing the same thing, and doing it just flatly better while spanning the baseline more fluidly to boot. Pliskova was then the No. 5 seed, Osaka was unseeded. She’d go onto win the title, an omen of more to come. When they played each other in the Australian Open semifinals on Wednesday night, the effect was the same even if their positions had been reversed. In Australia, just 10 months later, Naomi Osaka beat Karolina Pliskova all over again—only this time she was the chalk pick, the No.…
data-mm-id=”_17cbhof4z”>Major League Baseball imposed the long-awaited penalties on the Houston Astros on Monday following The Athletic's ground-breaking report of sign-stealing during their 2017 championship season. It's a doozy, with manager AJ Hinch receiving a one-year ban along with GM Jeff Luhnhow and the franchise receiving a $5 million fine, as well as losing first and second-round draft picks in 2020 and 2021. But the biggest punishment has yet to come. Red Sox manager Alex Cora was implicated in the initial report as the bench coach during the time the scandal occurred. But in a nine-page report released by MLB with the announced punishments, Cora was specifically named as the only non-player who had a hand in making everything happen. "Witnesses consistently d…
data-mm-id=”_4ua7cdliq”>It is extremely understandable that college football players and their coaches want to play the season as scheduled. Setting aside the myriad obstacles and morality of the situation, let's focus on the crux of the #WeWantToPlay argument: that their wants and desires should supersede any data that suggests it's unsafe and a hornet's nest of a liability nightmare for the university. One could look at this as a misguided interpretation of Maslow's Pyramid or an example of how anything bold needs to be pushed across the starting line. If there's an avatar for the widespread rah-rah bemoaning the fact that fingers might not get the opportunity to dig into mud this season, it's Scott Frost. In an impassioned Zoom call with reporters yest…
data-mm-id=”_vz9dcyz91″>Those who don't learn from history may be doomed to repeat it, but even those who take lessons from it may ultimately suffer the same fate. And the Rudy Gobert Night that shut down sports and sped up the shutting down of the country wasn't that long ago. One need not have an impressive historical tome to recall the events and emotions of the following 48 hours after the Jazz played their last note. Things moved slow at first, then all at once as a new normal was ushered in. It feels as though we're in a very similar spot right now. News of the Miami Marlins' COVID outbreak has thrust the Major League Baseball season into jeopardy. We've been down this road before. In fact, it was only days ago that we finally got off its bumpy stones and…
data-mm-id=”_842hd481z”>Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz is so aggravating to watch play football that at this point even two people who agree that he sucks at his job are fighting over the semantics of why he sucks at his job. While breaking down Wentz's lackluster play on Keyshawn, JWill & Zubin, ESPN analysts Keyshawn Johnson and Dan Orlovsky got into a heated argument. No one was advocating for Wentz. mind you. Both think he's not fit to be a starting quarterback in the NFL right now. What they argued about was an interception Wentz threw yesterday. Orlovsky pointed out that Alshon Jeffery mistimed his jump on the play. Johnson yelled at Orlovsky that Jeffery shouldn't have to jump in the first place. Then they realized they both blame Wentz and cooler heads preva…
data-mm-id=”_rx4kmaux9″>The Boston Celtics are going out sad. A team many considered to be title favorites heading into the postseason has gotten embarrassed in three straight games by the Miami Heat and are on the brink of elimination without even putting up a fight. There is plenty of blame to go around but the primary fall guy is Joe Mazzulla. Erik Spoelstra has put on a coaching clinic and run circles around Mazzulla during the Eastern Conference Finals, but more importantly Mazzulla was unable to get his players to show up to the most important games of the season. It's one thing if everybody played hard but Spoelstra's ability to amplify weaknesses and mitigate strengths of opposing rosters won the day. It's quite another when the Celtics' very decorated group…