Tag: FTW

Bears’ Jaylon Johnson was so thrilled to watch Tory Taylor’s booming 60-plus yard punts

The Bears’ monster-legged punter was their best player on Sunday.

Usually, the quarterback, No. 1 receiver, or star pass-rusher is the best player in an NFL victory. But in the Chicago Bears’ 24-18 win over the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday, one could’ve easily argued that rookie punter Tory Taylor was the biggest reason the Bears climbed back to a 2-2 record.

Chicago superstar cornerback Jaylon Johnson seemed to allude to this as much.

After the game, Johnson effusively singed Tory’s praises, saying Sunday was the first time in a long time he was actually excited to watch someone punt. This sentiment makes sense when you note that Taylor averaged 55.4 yards per attempt and, at one point, even launched a booming 66-yarder (!) with the Bears protecting a fourth-quarter lead.

Talk about flipping a game on its head on special teams.

As the Bears work through their current offensive issues and try to stack positive momentum, winning the field position battle will be huge for Caleb Williams and friends. From this respect, Taylor more than did his part to help his team get back to .500.

Rashee Rice was carted off after accidentally colliding with Patrick Mahomes on a Chiefs INT

Patrick Mahomes threw an INT and brutally hurt his best WR on one play.

The Kansas City Chiefs entered Week 4 undefeated, at the top of the NFL, with a LOT of room to grow all around — especially for a struggling Travis Kelce. They probably got off to the worst possible start instead against the AFC West rival Los Angeles Chargers.

With the Chiefs’ offense sputtering in the first quarter, Mahomes threw an awful interception to Chargers defensive back Kristian Fulton by sailing a deep pass. When Mahomes tried to make a tackle on the play, he accidentally undercut Rashee Rice’s legs.

Rice was not OK after the fact and actually had to be carted off the field. Rice would later be ruled out for the afternoon. Oof:

https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/1840494071015760137

Even in an undefeated start, the Chiefs have not played like themselves so far. But it was easy to assume they’d start putting it all together the more this season went along. With Kelce already struggling, starting running back Isiah Pacheco out for the foreseeable future with a broken leg, and Marquise “Hollywood” Brown out for the year, the last thing Kansas City can afford is Rice missing any significant period of time.

Here’s hoping Mahomes and the Chiefs didn’t see the worst-case scenario with Rice on this pick.

Aaron Rodgers’ demoralized reaction after the Jets’ final missed field goal became a meme

Even with Aaron Rodgers, the Jets will never stop humiliating themselves.

Well, let Sunday be a lesson to everyone who started to believe in Aaron Rodgers’ New York Jets again.

With New York suddenly looking like a formidable Super Bowl contender, Gang Green dropped the ball in a pitiful 10-9 loss against the rebuilding Denver Broncos. The Jets converted just 4-of-17 third downs and were otherwise mostly ineffective against a Denver team that also didn’t offer much on offense.

It was all cemented by kicker Greg Zuerlein shanking a 50-yard field goal to lose the game in the final moments. When the camera cut to Aaron Rodgers after the fact, he looked so disheartened while throwing a towel over his face:

Oh, boy. We haven’t seen Rodgers this visibly upset in a LONG time.

Naturally, NFL fans jumped all over the opportunity for a new meme with the Jets’ quarterback.

Tom Brady broke out note cards to confirm the Bears almost signed him in 2020

Tom Brady confirmed he was THIS close to being the Bears’ QB.

(This story was updated to add new information.)

With Tom Brady announcing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ matchup against the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 4, it gave the legendary quarterback a chance to reminisce about his time with the team he brought the Super Bowl 55 championship to.

While talking about his 2020 free agency recruitment after leaving the New England Patriots, Brady let an interesting offhand remark fly to millions of people watching at home.

He confirmed that the Chicago Bears’ sales pitch was so good that he really almost joined the organization with the NFL’s worst QB history ever. That’s right. We were this close to seeing Brady wear an orange C on his helmet.

That would’ve been unbelievable:

It’s safe to say that the Bears would’ve enjoyed their best QB play ever had Brady come to Chicago. With the elite Khalil Mack-led defense they had at the time, perhaps they would’ve even won a Supr Bowl championship of their own.

What a fascinating turning point in NFL history.

Jerry Reinsdorf dropped a TL:DR statement to explain how he’s gonna fix the White Sox (he won’t)

White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s statement was as empty as the calories in a bottle of Gatorade.

With the most losses in a single season in MLB history, the 2024 Chicago White Sox might be the worst professional baseball team ever assembled. To top it all off, they’ve been neglected, they’ve been poorly managed, and they’ve already promised that almost no help is coming in the 2025 offseason.

Yet owner Jerry Reinsdorf — easily the biggest villain in Chicago sports right now — seems to think people still want to listen to what he has to say.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

During the fourth quarter of a tight Chicago Bears game, Reinsdorf released a personal written statement roughly eight paragraphs long. In it, he promised to fix the team moving forward after an embarrassing year, but I won’t lie. That’s only an assumption because no one with functioning brain cells wants to read this man’s treatise as the actual sports cultural staple of the city (the Bears) were trying to secure a win:

The ego on Reinsdorf to think people would want to read this much about what he has to say at any time, let alone while the Bears are playing. That alone should tell you nothing meaningful will change about the White Sox moving forward. His words are beyond empty.

Matt LaFleur threw a furious tantrum after a ref ignored his timeout call during the Packers’ brutal first half

Matt LaFleur’s temper tantrum summed up a rough day for the Packers.

With Jordan Love’s return from a knee injury, the Green Bay Packers thought they’d have a fun divisional battle with the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday afternoon. They thought wrong.

From the outset, the Vikings jumped on the Packers, with Sam Darnold launching absolute lasers all over the field and the Minnesota defense flustering a clearly uncomfortable Love to break any Packers’ offensive rhythm. By the conclusion of the first half, Minnesota held a likely insurmountable 28-7 lead.

You could see the frustration mount on the Green Bay sideline when Matt LaFleur wanted to call a late timeout, but was ignored by an official. This led to a furious temper tantrum that summed up a long 30 minutes for the green and gold:

This is what happens when you get embarrassed at home, ladies and gentlemen. One random moment of “disrespect” gets blown up into a whole viral moment people will laugh about for the next few days.

Terry Bradshaw’s weird attempt at a ‘Carolina accent’ was incorrect at best and corny at worst

What was Terry Bradshaw trying to accomplish here?

I fully understand the plight of an NFL broadcaster. Sometimes, you need to fill dead air time and have something meaningful to say at all costs. But sometimes, it’s probably better to just serve up the cookie-cutter platitudes before veering into weird territory.

This is a good reminder after hearing Fox’s Terry Bradshaw impression of a “Carolina accent” before the Cincinnati Bengals’ matchup with the Carolina Panthers.

While discussing Andy Dalton’s resurgent game in Week 3, Bradshaw unveiled a corny “Carolina accent” for no apparent reason. And of course the rest of the Fox panel seemed rightfully confused by … whatever Bradshaw was trying to accomplish here:

https://twitter.com/awfulannouncing/status/1840441451723047394

Next time Bradshaw thinks about using a (incorrect) regional accent during the introduction of an NFL game, he should probably pump the brakes.

Sam Darnold’s absurd ball placement on a tight-coverage TD to Justin Jefferson even shocked the Vikings

Sam Darnold looked like an MVP candidate on this absurd TD pass.

We’re just about a month into the 2024 NFL season, and the Minnesota Vikings look like world-beaters. That’s in no small part thanks to the resurgence of Sam Darnold, who has played like a veritable MVP candidate for what might be the best team in the NFC.

With Minnesota on the road against the Green Bay Packers in Week 4, Darnold was sublime. The journeyman quarterback was practically perfect in the first half, completing 11-of-15 passes for 136 yards and three touchdowns.

Darnold was, for lack of a better word, absolutely dealing.

And we saw it best on this absurd touchdown to Justin Jefferson, where Darnold put it right on his receiver despite extremely tight coverage by Packers cornerback Keisean Nixon.

The ball placement was so ridiculous that you could even see the amazement from the Vikings’ sideline after the sequence:

You know a quarterback is firing on all cylinders if they’re throwing passes like this with the utmost confidence. The Vikings look unbeatable right now, and so does Darnold.

Caleb Williams and other Bears offensive leaders embarrassingly had to tell OC Shane Waldron to be more aggressive

Only the Bears could be this embarrassing.

Veteran playmaker Keenan Allen might be back for the Chicago Bears in Week 4 against the Los Angeles Rams, but it doesn’t appear key Chicago players are convinced his return will help their offensive woes that much in 2024.

And they’re letting offensive coordinator Shane Waldron know it.

According to Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer, Caleb Williams, Cole Kmet, and Marcedes Lewis met with Waldron this week to tell him he needs to coach and call plays more aggressively. Uh, yeah, that’s never what you want to hear about an offense less than a month into the season. I’m talking about both having the private meeting with their coach and the kinda alarming critical message.

https://twitter.com/nflonfox/status/1840425485550977355

Waldron, of course, is in his first year as Chicago’s lead offensive mind. While he had a good reputation with the Seattle Seahawks in recent years, a combination of Williams’ learning curve as a rookie and a bunch of different moving parts have led the Bears to one of the NFL’s worst statistical offenses so far.

To Waldron’s credit, he appears receptive to this kind of criticism. Earlier this week, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Waldron had spent significant time highlighting some of his worst play calls and taking responsibility for them in front of his players. That might be no small thing.

At the very least, it seems the Bears’ offensive leaders and Waldron have a quality back-and-forth dialogue. We’ll see whether it manifests in more points and yards moving forward.

JJ Redick revealed Lakers have already considered how LeBron James and Bronny might share the floor

The Lakers are already preparing for how LeBron James and Bronny will make history together.

While the Los Angeles Lakers probably have more pressing issues as a team — including how JJ Redick’s starting five will shake out — a lot of the focus on them will understandably center on LeBron James’ playing relationship with his son Bronny.

Fortunately, it sounds like Redick and the Lakers are already considering this in their organizational calculus.

During a press conference Wednesday, Redick clarified that Los Angeles has not yet nailed down specifics about when LeBron and Bronny will actually play together for the first time. That, of course, will have the duo make history as the first NBA father and son pair ever to share the floor.

However, Redick maintained the Lakers have thought about it — and that they will involve both LeBron and Bronny in planning — because it’s an important moment they want to give proper credence to:

https://twitter.com/MarkG_Medina/status/1839035830196908418

If you think about it, this is a situation that will require a little more thought.

After all, do you start Bronny for one of the Lakers’ first few home games while giving him the equivalent of a bench player’s minutes? Do you bring him off the bench and have LeBron stagger? If it’s at home, how do you involve the Lakers’ arena staff? Is there any additional fanfare they should be ready for?

These are all questions that Redick and the Lakers have to consider before this fateful, awesome moment finally arrives. It is cool, though, to learn that both LeBron and Bronny will be involved in the planning.