Tag: morning win

This year’s NFL Draft is going to be so weird/awesome

Let’s get weird, NFL.

This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning.

This time next week the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft will be in the books. Well, it should be in the books barring any technical issues that could pop up and make this year’s event even more unique.

This year’s draft is going to be a very weird one, with all the teams handling their picks while basically working from home like the rest of us and with Roger Goodell announcing the picks from his basement.

If you’ve done any Zoom work calls over the past month or so you know things can sometimes get a little wonky and awkward with those. Now we have 32 NFL coaches and GMs trying to figure this thing out and it could end up like a FaceTime with my parents when I have to yell at my dad to pull the phone away from his ear.

I mean, this thing could get truly bizarre.

But it can’t get here soon enough, because it’s been a while since we’ve had a real sports thing happening (and no, we’re not counting that awful H.O.R.S.E thing a real sports thing). I’m in the business of writing about live sporting events and let me tell you something – I can’t wait to have something live to watch again because my goodness is sports content getting more difficult to produce as these sports-less days drag on.

Like you, I’ve filled out the past month or so by watching old sporting events (all those Masters final rounds last year were perfect). I’ve also become addicted to F1 thanks to the awesome documentary on Netflix, and I’m about to finish up “Sunderland ‘Til I Die” which is also awesome and on Netflix.

Those have all done an adequate job of helping with my sports fix since things basically came to a standstill that night in March when Rudy Gobart tested positive for the coronavirus in Oklahoma City and the NBA shut things down. That set the stage for basically all the other sports in the world to close up shop as we all do the right thing of staying home and fighting off this deadly and depressing global pandemic.

Every day we’re searching for some normality in our lives, especially as we put on our masks and head into a grocery store. I have many WTF moments in my day where I can’t believe what we’re going through and how all of our lives have been changed so much in such a little time.

Which brings me back to the 2020 NFL Draft. Just seeing my coworker Steven Ruiz breaking down the QBs in this year’s draft got me fired up for some good NFL content that is all about football. Remember football? By the way, you should be following Steven on Twitter because he’s incredible at teaching you about the game from many different interesting angles. His content is always great, but his draft content is superb.

So here we are, less than a week away from real (and safe) sports stuff happening and I have to believe the ratings for this thing are going to be through the roof, probably for all three days because we are starving for some sports and there’s nothing else on.

Next week we get to sit on our couches and tweet together about shocking picks made by stupid teams, or embarrassing mistakes made by bad teams trying to figure out technology. We get to laugh together as we all gather to watch something that is new and fresh and something that will be TOTALLY different from any other NFL draft that we’ve seen before.

For a few days that is going to feel pretty awesome.

Now it just has to hurry up and get here.

Thursday’s biggest winner: Tom Brady.

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Thursday was the 20th anniversary of the day that the New England Patriots used the 199th pick of the 2000 NFL Draft on a scrawny Michigan QB who has since become the GOAT. He also recently became a Buccaneer, which is still weird to type. Brady celebrated the anniversary in typical Brady fashion, too, as he remains motived by that draft all these years later.

Quick hits: Dodgers pitches smashes a window… Jay Glazer gets ripped… Bubba Wallace speaks out about Kyle Larson… And more!

Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

– Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly was working on his changeup in his back yard when he… broke a window.

– Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer got crushed for the way he handled his breaking news about Brian Allen having the coronavirus.

– NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace condemned Kyle Larson for using a racist slur.

– A “Price is Right” contestant won the saddest sports prize.

– A college Jeopardy! contestant mixed up Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth in an easy baseball question. I mean, come on.

The Browns continue to do their best work in the offseason… which isn’t ideal

The Browns impressed everyone on Wednesday.

I need to be honest with you before I get into this – I’ve never been a NFL coach (head, assistant, etc), or a NFL GM, or a NFL scout and definitely not a NFL team owner.

So take what I say with a grain of whatever you want to take, but I think the best time for a NFL team to peak is in the regular season when games are being played and championships are being won.

Not the offseason when everyone is waiting around for football to come back into our lives.

But that’s apparently not how the Cleveland Browns do things because for the second straight year the Browns have done their best work when football is still very far away from us.

Last year they won the offseason championship when they traded for Odell Beckham Jr. and everyone, including the NFL, which scheduled the Browns for what felt like 900 nationally televised games, thought they would be contenders in 2019.

Newsflash – they weren’t contenders. At all. Baker Mayfield was awful and the Browns finished how they normally finish a season – well under .500 at 6–10.

On Wednesday the Browns continued their offseason dominance when they showed off their new uniforms and then sat back as everyone on Twitter sang their praises.

Yup, NFL fans were actually impressed by the Browns, which can only mean one thing – it’s not the fall.

The Browns’ new uniforms deserve all the compliments that they’re getting because far too often teams go the other way and make terrible changes. I’m looking at you, Falcons.

But come the fall (if there even is football, which is sad to even type) the Baker and the Browns will need to start impressing people when it starts are things could get even uglier for a franchise that has been awful for so darn long.

But hey, at least for one day in the offseason they were celebrated by everybody.

Gotta take your wins when you get ’em, I guess.

Wednesday’s biggest winner: The Nationals, who roasted the Astros.

(Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

Remember when baseball was still a thing and everybody was crushing the Houston Astros for cheating? Yeah, those were good times. Well the Nationals brought that back as they watched a replay of Game 7 of the 2019 World Series and had fun roasting the Astros in the process. Ah, some normality back in our lives. Feels great!

Quick hits: Deep dive on Tua… Latest NFL mock draft… Sports fans get hilariously specific… And more!

(Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

– Steven Ruiz does a great deep dive into Tua Tagovailoa and what type of NFL career he can have.

– Our Henry McKenna has his latest NFL mock draft… check out where Tua could go.

– Fans on Twitter shared some hilariously specific things they miss the most about sports.

– Mets pitcher Marcus Stroman says NASCAR driver Kyle Larson “needs his [expletive] beat.”

– The WWE released Kurt Angle and more than a dozen other stars on Wednesday. Boo Vince McMahon. Boo.

Mike Trout thinks MLB’s idea to play isolated baseball in Arizona is “pretty crazy.”

– A “disgusted” Mel Kiper defended the Bengals in a very passionate rant.

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I didn’t think I’d fall in love during quarantine but I did. Thank you, Netflix.

143, F1.

This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning.

Dating in a “normal” world is generally a horrific experience that rarely pays off with anything even remotely close to love. That’s something that you know if you were in the dating world back when the world was “normal.”

Dating while we’re all locked in our apartments or homes during quarantine to fight this coronavirus is now a totally non-existent thing, which can be nice at times but it can also make you miss the horrific experience of dating.

It also has similar results in terms of finding love because finding love right now is just as hard as finding toilet paper – you know it’s out there somewhere and you see pictures of it shared by overjoyed friends on social media but chances are you ain’t gonna get it.

At least not right now, anyways.

But that all changed for me last week when I was lucky enough to find love… and I have Netflix to thank for that. Because last week I fell absolutely head over heels in love… with Formula 1 racing.

Sure, it’s not a person. But it’s something and you can’t take this away from me!

For a while I had heard from friends and strangers on Twitter about the Netflix docuseries “Formula 1: Drive to Survive.” I had brushed it aside because I didn’t know much about the sport and had many other live sports to watch (remember those days? Man, those were the best.). I just couldn’t picture myself devoting time to watch something about racing, but then again I never thought I’d gleefully watch seven episodes about a bunch of lunatics who owned Tigers and wanted each other dead, so I figured what the heck – let’s check out this F1 thingy.

And just like that I was hooked.

If you haven’t watched this series it’s 20 episodes long and follows the past two seasons of F1. It’s all awesome behind-the-scenes stuff that leads up to a race at the end of each episode where perfectly developed storylines get paid off and then some.

The best part about this show is that they do a great job each episode of making you care about the drivers and teams and people who run the teams. I know this because during one episode I was sitting there on my couching going, “YEAH, HAAS RACING. YOU HAVE TO BE FASTER THAN THIS! YOU JUST HAVE TO BE!” even though I didn’t know Haas racing was even in F1 just a few hours before I watched the show.

If you don’t know the results ahead of time – which I didn’t – then you’ll feel some nerves and excitement leading up to the race. Then once things get underway you’ll suddenly feel like you’re watching live sports again and that you can’t wait to see how things play out.

The places where these races take place are incredible, too – from the fans in Monaco watching from the hundreds of balconies on buildings along the course to the fireworks exploding into the Singapore night, it’s all so stunningly beautiful and makes you feel like you are traveling the world instead of being locked inside your house.

If you’re like me and don’t know much about this sport then you’ll instantly be amazed by how insanely badass the drivers are and what they can pull off while driving at insane speeds. And you’ll be rooting for guys you didn’t know about that morning to try to keep their seat (a phrase I learned while watching the show but now use like I know what I’m talking about) leading up to season-ending races.

You’ll also get to know more about the legendary Lewis Hamilton. I work in sports so I had heard his name, of course, but I didn’t really know much about him. Now I know he drives for Mercedes, is really humble, treats his whole team incredibly well, and wins just about every time he gets into his car. You’ll also see that his “flu game” was just as impressive as Michael Jordan’s. OK, that may be overstated but I’m newly in love so let me overstate things!

Listen, right now there are no sports on. I’m watching Game 1 of the 1988 World Series on ESPN as I write this. We’re all hungry for sports and this F1 series filled my appetite and left me wanting more. It can do it for you, too.

I loved it so much that the other morning I Googled “F1 2020 results” to see who was winning races before the world shut down. But then I sadly learned that the season doesn’t start until March and everything has been postponed. Man, that search left me feeling so empty.

But I can’t wait until all of this is over and sports are back and F1 is back and I’m Googling ways to watch live races, because that is going to be awesome.

And yeah, I will wait for you, F1.

Because I love you.

Though I might have to share that love with Sunderland F.C., because “Sunderland ‘Til I Die” on Netflix is proving to be pretty awesome, too. But the team really stinks, which is a shame because Sunderland fans are deserve better.

Tuesday’s biggest winner: Ciara and Russell Wilson.

The power couple is having a second child together and shared a video of their gender reveal on Tuesday… and it was pretty great.

Quick hits: Breaking down Burrow… Kamara happy for McCaffrey… Anger over Colts’ logo… And more!

– My pal and coworker Steven Ruiz brilliantly broke down Joe Burrow’s game film from 2018.

– Saints RB Alvin Kamara loved hearing about Christian McCaffrey’s contract on Twitch.

– A coach is mad at the Colts for ripping off their new logo from a high school team.

– NASCAR star Joey Logano shared his thoughts on Kyle Larson’s firing.

– Did the 49ers’ save fans from spreading coronavirus by losing in the Super Bowl? This report makes it look like they did.

– The great Joe Buck continued his great play-by-play of random videos on John Krasinski’s new YouTube show.

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If it plays out as scheduled, November could be the greatest sports month of all time

We’re dreaming, but sometimes it’s OK to dream.

This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning.

On Monday, Augusta National announced that it was rescheduling the 2020 Masters to November. Golf fans rejoiced, as they were treated with something beautiful (and novel) to look forward to.

It also got sports fans thinking: Whoa, this November could be the greatest sports month ever.

Listen, this is pre-supposing a lot of things. One, that we’ll get the global coronavirus pandemic under control, or get to a point where sports could realistically be held safely. Two, that some of these sports will get seasons in this year, or start their seasons on time. Three, you know, that like a comet doesn’t hit the Earth or the Yellowstone caldera blows or whatever.

Pending all that happening, it it plays out like we’re hoping and this disease is somewhat under control by then, November 2020 could have:

  • The Masters
  • The World Series
  • NFL football
  • College football
  • Premier League
  • NBA basketball
  • NHL hockey

That is … bananas. Flipping over from NFL football to the Masters, then having a night cap of a World Series game … my brain just can’t really process that. We’re through the looking glass here.

Will any of this happen? I have no idea. It’s silly to get excited about it, and for all we know, none of these sports will be happening. But it’s fun, however briefly, to dream.

Tuesday’s Big Winner: Jay Cutler

TNNAT via OlyDrop

Cutler appears to be stranded in the Bahamas with his wife Kristin Cavallari and their friends, waiting out the coronavirus quarantine. He says it’s been close to a month, which doesn’t make sense math-wise, but Cutler was always about tossing footballs, not doing numbers. Anyway, may god have mercy on the staff who is trapped with him and his family.

Quick Hits: One Shining Moment, Tom Brady, ‘Hamilton’

– One lonely broadcaster filmed a full-length “One Shining Moment” video, playing all the characters by himself. It’s … elaborate.

– Was Tom Brady trying to snub the Patriots with his goodbye letter? Maybe! We dug WAY too deep into it.

– The “Hamilton” cast is here (with John Krasinski) to sing those quarantine blues away.

Adam Schefter rightly ripped the NFL in a passionate rant about the coronavirus

“They are determined to put this on while there is carnage in the streets!”

This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning.

The 2020 NFL Draft is scheduled to go on as planned – well, at least on the same date – on April 23-25. It will no longer be held in Las Vegas and it will be done mostly virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic that has brought our country and the world to a standstill.

On Tuesday we heard from president Trump who said: “We’re going to go through a very tough two weeks” coming up as things with the coronavirus worsen across the country.

Dr. Anthon Fauci said on Tuesday that we could see 100,000-240,000 deaths from the coronavirus in the coming weeks.

And the NFL is just going to go about things with its draft?

Yeah, its hard to see how something like the NFL draft is going to matter later this month, especially if things go as badly as predicted by the health experts.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter voiced his frustrations Tuesday night with the NFL and its desire to keep chugging along with business as usual despite all the horror that is happening in the world.

Schefter’s passionate rant happened during an appearance on Scott Van Pelt’s SportsCenter (if you’re reading the newsletter version of this post you can watch Schefter’s rant here):

He closed his rant with this:

“The draft is happening only through the sheer force and determination and lack of foresight from the NFL, frankly. They are determined to put this on while there is carnage in the streets!”

Schefter is absolutely right. What we might see over the next few weeks could change everything. If it gets as ugly as it could get, the NFL draft is not going to be any type of distraction that could lift us out of shocked state that we will be in.

I know this is all a little depressing. OK, a lot depressing. But this all seems to be heading down an even more depressing road.

And it’s not something that football can “fix” by calling out a bunch of names in late April.

So good for Schefter to voice his concerns with the NFL, a league he has covered very well for many years and has built many important relationships with during that time. And good for him to do it on ESPN, which has a TV deal with the league and has often made their reporters “stick to sports.”

This is all a lot more than sports and we’d be silly to stick to the games and the sports that aren’t going on right now.

Schefter is right – the NFL needs to sit back and take a real, hard look at what it wants to do the next few weeks.

Because draft talk right now seems entirely out of place.

Larry David made the perfect coronavirus PSA.

OK, let’s lighten things up a bit. The great Larry David made a perfect “Stay at Home” PSA for the state of California, in which he said: “I basically want to address the idiots out there… and you know who you are.” You need to watch this PSA.

Quick hits: Godwin’s free gift to Brady… Kittle defends Garoppolo… A-Rod called a fraud… And more!

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

– Bucs WR Chris Godwin had a very classy reason for why he gave his No. 12 jersey to Tom Brady for free.

– George Kittle went on “First Take” and perfectly defended Jimmy Garoppolo.

– Former New York Met Paul Lo Duca called Alex Rodriguez “one of the fakest people out there.”

– Shaquille O’Neal put on a DJ Diesel concert for his sons from his kitchen… and won the internet in doing so.

– Our Charles Curtis explains what “zoom bombing” is and how you can prevent it.

This is bigger than sports

We are at a historic moment in our lives, and sports won’t be back for longer than we think. That’s OK. It’s time to fight something bigger.

This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning.

Before we begin today, a little story. Please, bear with me.

My first day of high school was September 11, 2001. The news broke about the terror attacks while I was in math class. Then, dazed, because no one knew anything really, and no one knew better, we all kept going with the day. I walked over to history class.

Our teacher’s name was Robin Crawford and he was one of the most senior teachers at the school. (He’s since passed.) As class began, Mr. Crawford stood up there, in silence, in front of a group of terrified and confused 14-year-old kids, and then he began to speak.

He told us that this was a moment that would be written about in history books. It was a moment that would change our country and our world forever. He told us about Pearl Harbor and said this was going to be our Pearl Harbor. He was doing the active work of a historian, in real time, giving us context and understanding for an event that had happened about 90 minutes earlier.

His words didn’t make me feel better, exactly. They didn’t make me feel worse, either. They just made me understand the scope of what was happening, I guess. They let me understand, perhaps earlier than most, what would eventually become cliché — that nothing would ever be the same.

***

This is a similar historic moment, but before I get into that, a quick clarifying note: We are not in the middle of a terrorist attack. This is not 9/11.

The COVID-19 pandemic cannot be battled like we want it to be. The way to fight it — isolation, hygiene — feels counter-intuitive and silly for most Americans. It feels like capitulation. I saw too many posts on social media this weekend that took on the air of “We can’t let the terrorists win!” and showed people crowding in bars and restaurants.

This is stupid. Coronavirus is not a terrorist. It doesn’t care about your pride or your refusal to capitulate. If we’re cavalier about this, it will infect the young and old, and it will kill far too many of us.

We need to band together and fight. It’s just not going to feel like it. Staying at home cooped up on the couch and washing your hands often doesn’t feel much like fighting. But it’s the only way.

***

I bring up that 9/11 story not because this is akin to terrorism, but because we are at one of those moments that the late Mr. Crawford talked about above. This is one of those times, where our lives are fundamentally changed, and we must react as a society.

It will be quite literally historic, in that this pandemic will be written about in history books. We are at the beginning of something here, I fear — and yes, it’s still the beginning — that will fundamentally alter not only our individual lives for a bit, but our world, for a long time.

With all that being said: No, we’re not getting sports back in 30 days, as many of the professional leagues had hoped for. This is not going to be a week or two and then life returning to normal. I tell this to you not to make you feel better, or worse, but just to adjust your understanding, if you haven’t gotten there already yourself.

Just a few days ago, it felt impossible that the NBA was suspending its season. Now, the owners are targeting a mid-to-late June return.

This feels ambitious, bordering on impossible. Maybe we’ll get there. Maybe a treatment will be discovered and produced quickly. Maybe the world will band together, self-isolate, and contain this disease until the summer months come and it can’t travel as well. I sure hope so.

But if you had any hope that maybe we’d just have to stay inside and catch up on movies for a long weekend, and life and sports would come back soon … I’m sorry. We’re dealing with something way bigger. This is one of those big moments in our collective lives, and we’re just getting started.

Read more on COVID-19

Photo by Harry Baumert

– A college wrestling association not affiliated with the NCAA ignored coronavirus warnings and held its national tournament.

– Karl-Anthony Towns donated $100,000 to the Mayo Clinic to help them develop and get out a coronavirus test.

– Steph Curry issued a PSA encouraging NBA fans to practice social distancing.

– In Spain, a fitness instructor is holding workouts from a rooftop to beat the coronavirus lockdown.

Kobe Bryant showed us a different way to live

Kobe Bryant died on Sunday in a helicopter crash outside Los Angeles. On why he meant so much to so many, and his complicated legacy.

This is the online version of our Morning Win newsletter. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning.

Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash outside Los Angeles, along with eight other people who were on board at the time.

Typing those words is surreal, and I am not alone in feeling that the past 24 hours have been some kind of awful dream from which I keep waiting to wake up.

This can’t be real. It doesn’t feel real.

Trying to sum up Kobe Bryant’s accomplishments in his 41 years feels ridiculous, and I won’t try to here. If you even tangentially follow sports, you know what he did. More of a movie fan? Well, he won an Oscar in there, too.

His commitment to greatness was exemplified in everything he did, from his Hall of Fame career on the court to the storytelling he found himself drawn to after he retired. He was a singular person, one of those men who seemed impossible. How could he do it all?

Remembering him is also extremely complicated for many, many people.

Kobe Bryant was not a saint, and I don’t think anyone other than his most ardent supporters would argue otherwise. He was accused of sexual assault in Colorado in 2003 by a 19-year-old woman, and his attorneys used aggressive tactics, including smearing the alleged victim’s reputation, in making the case go away.

And while he remade himself as a staunch supporter of women’s sports, a loving husband and father, he never did publicly reckon with what happened in Colorado in the way that many feel he needed to.

How you view Kobe Bryant is up to you. That’s your choice. What can’t be denied is that Kobe inspired many people in ways that go beyond trite cliché. That’s why yesterday felt so horrifying, so surreal. People didn’t just look up to Kobe, or admire him — they built their worldview around him. They built their identity around him.

His (some might argue unhealthy) life vision, centered around excellence, around winning, around dominance, convinced a lot of people that they could do more with their lives, that they would not be held down by circumstance.

Kobe built this worldview off of Michael Jordan, but it soon grew to something more. He studied how apex predators hunted to learn more about his own body. This was classic Kobe — anyone else would be fine just accepting that you need a “killer instinct” to win in the NBA. That wasn’t good enough for Bryant. He needed to know what that meant, and how he could replicate it.

Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports

But the bigger appeal of Kobe Bryant was that his worldview was not limited to any certain type of person. Anyone could become a Mamba. He loved underdogs. He would recognize his “Mamba mentality” in NBA legends or Carli Lloyd or an entrepreneur hustling to make the next great American company.

When someone had a clutch moment in any sporting event, you knew to go check Kobe’s Twitter feed — he had undoubtedly seen it, and called it out for its greatness. In doing so, he validated it, in a weird way. When it came to individual brilliance, he was our arbiter.

For someone who built his whole life on the pursuit of individual excellence, he became someone, later in his career, who was so eager to recognize the achievements of others.

He saw that mentality in his daughter, Gianna who also passed away in the crash on Sunday. Kobe Bryant had much more to give the world, but he had written a major chunk of his life story.

Gianna was just getting started, and thinking about what might of been takes this from tragedy to something more, something Earth shattering, something we might not have the tools to express.

We should also find time in the coming days to learn about the other people who were on board, including John Altobelli, the baseball coach at Orange Coast College, who died along with his wife, Keri, and their daughter, Alyssa. Christina Mauser, who coached girl’s basketball, also died in the crash. They may not have had the fame of Bryant, but they all accomplished so much in their lives, and were loved by many.

There will be time to reckon with Kobe Bryant, with who he was and what he meant. For now, perhaps it’s best to simply recognize that millions of people around the world drew something from him, whether it be inspiration or a model for living, and today, they — and his family — are grieving. We should have them, especially his wife Vanessa and their surviving daughters, in our prayers.

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