Month: February 2018

Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we pose a question to a panel of ESPN fantasy basketball experts to gauge their thoughts on a hot topic.

Today’s contributors are ESPN Fantasy’s Joe Kaiser, Jim McCormick and Kyle Soppe.

No, I’m not suggesting you blindly drop Gordon for Miller today, but I am open to reacting to situations like that the closer we get to the fantasy postseason. Remember, there are no trophies for the team that looks the best on paper — not in the NBA and certainly not in our fantasy world.

Jim McCormick: Since we can’t trade for the blocks, 3-pointers or assists our teams might need over the next six weeks, it’s time to grind it out by working the wire. One savvy way to profit in free agency is to adopt a DFS mentality, approaching each night as its own unique market for minutes.

For many released players, there’s been an injury history that can get overlooked because we remember how great he used to be. Last year, that was Jamaal Charles, who was cut by the Chiefs after nine successful years with the team — but the last two were plagued with injuries that allowed him to start only five games. He signed with the Broncos in the offseason and rushed for just 296 yards in 2017.

And no other quarterback can touch Brady in this category. He has eight comebacks and three other fourth-quarter or game-winning drives in the postseason. The next-closest quarterback is Eli Manning with five total, according to ESPN Stats and Info.

The win sends Brady and the Patriots to their eighth Super Bowl. They’ve broken a lot of postseason opponents’ hearts with comebacks along the way.

This is no longer the Patriots’ most recent playoff comeback, but it is by far the most memorable.

Gronkowski’s appreciation for the number 69 dates back to his high school days. When he played basketball at Buffalo’s Williamsville North High School, he intentionally missed free throws to keep his team’s score at 69.

Update: As of Sunday morning, it looks like both teams will be, mostly, healthy for the game. We gave them all ‘til Friday to change their picks, but everybody on the panel is sticking with theirs.

The Eagles held the Atlanta Falcons and Minnesota Vikings to a combined 17 points in the playoffs. They haven’t given up more than 10 points in their last four games.

To beat the Patriots, Philadelphia will need to follow a similar formula that the Jaguars almost used to success in the AFC Championship before blowing a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter. Like the Eagles, the Jaguars lean heavily on a powerful rushing attack and a top-rated defense.

Jaguars running back Leonard Fournette rushed for just 76 yards on 24 attempts against the Patriots. The Eagles will likely need more than that from the combination of LeGarrette Blount and Jay Ajayi to take pressure off Foles.

Most of the experts think the Patriots will get the job done, though. Here’s the breakdown of our experts’ opinions on the last game of the year:

The NFL generally considers the Super Bowl halftime show as its biggest non-football event, but it’s always a big deal to see who sings the national anthem and everything else before the game. For this year’s Super Bowl, Broadway star Leslie Odom Jr. will sing “America the Beautiful,” while Grammy Award winner Pink will sing the national anthem.

Odom is an actor and singer, having won a Tony Award for his work in Hamilton.

The pregame show will be broadcast on NBC and will also be live streamed online, like the game itself. If you happen to be interested in the upcoming Winter Olympics, then the pregame show should contain plenty of information about American athletes, courtesy of NBC, as it will have coverage of this year’s Games as well.

Finally, if you’re a fan of NASCAR, Dale Earnhardt Jr. will begin his broadcasting career on the pregame show. Tune into that if you’re interested to see what he’s like talking about football after a lengthy career in a different sport.

I’ll talk to guys who have played other positions and obviously the coaches about what it takes and giving me a crash course, he said.

I saw everything that I would see with my real eyes, AD said. Lot of crazy, crazy things going on in this world. Everything was showing up in real time, so that was pretty dope.

You obviously want to make a good case to get him to come here. Obviously, it worked, he said. Talking to him and talking to his interpreter, I knew there was a shot. We wanted him. We got him.

I called some buddies, called some of my teammates, said Trout, who praised Angels general manager Billy Eppler for putting in years of work to sign Ohtani. We were all happy.

The organization is a volcano of hot talent lava, said Scott Boras, Hosmer’s agent. To turn that lava into major league rock is a hard thing to do. Eric Hosmer went through that in Kansas City. When you can have a young, veteran champion, I think your chances of guiding lava into rocks is pretty good.

Hosmer has generated some debate in the analytics community. His defensive metrics are subpar, even though scouts speak positively about his skills around the first-base bag. He also has less than prototypical home run power at first base, and his 55.6 percent ground-ball rate in 2017 was the fourth highest among MLB hitters.

But the Padres were impressed enough by his range of attributes to commit to him through 2022 — and 2025 if he declines his opt out.

Arizona announced the contract late Monday afternoon, shortly after the Boston Red Sox reached agreement on a five-year, $110 million contract with J.D. Martinez. Martinez had a big half-season with Arizona last year after being traded from Detroit, and the Diamondbacks were hopeful they could work out some sort of agreement to bring him back. But he was out of the price range for Arizona.

Dyson, 33, led the Seattle Mariners with 28 stolen bases last season, his first with the club, before undergoing season-ending surgery in September to repair a core-muscle issue and sports hernia. He had a .251 average and set career highs with five home runs and 30 RBIs.

A former 50th-round pick, Dyson spent the first seven seasons of his career carving out a speed and outfield versatility role for himself with the Kansas City Royals, where he became a fan favorite thanks primarily to his speed on the bases.

Dyson is a career .258 hitter with 204 stolen bases.

Houston Astros minor leaguer Forrest Whitley, one of the game’s top pitching prospects, has been suspended 50 games for a violation of minor league baseball’s drug program, Major League Baseball announced on Wednesday.

Whitley’s suspension is without pay.

We’ll step away from the big boys for a second and take a look at Conference USA. The race for the league title features three teams that are all capable of winning at least one game in the NCAA tournament. The issue for all of them is making sure they find a way into the field of 68.

Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee both have resumes that would get them heavy consideration for an at-large bid right now (the Blue Raiders especially), but neither is going to want to be in a position where that matters on Selection Sunday. The best way to make that happen is to earn the top seed for the C-USA tourney and then claim the league’s auto-bid next month.

Old Dominion and WKU will meet for the second time (the Hilltoppers won the first meeting) a week from Saturday. The winner of that game will likely go on to exist as the No. 1 contender to Middle Tennessee, a team which still has to face Western Kentucky once more. The Blue Raiders also have to end the regular season against a Marshall team that is the only squad to hand them a conference loss thus far.

Eric Hosmer arrived at San Diego Padres camp Tuesday with a new uniform number, a desire to lead and a personal mandate to take the franchise to a place it’s never been.

Hosmer, 28, landed the biggest guaranteed payout of the MLB offseason when he agreed to an eight-year, $144 million deal with San Diego on Saturday. The contract, which includes a fifth-year opt-out, easily surpasses the four-year, $75 million deal for pitcher James Shields that previously set the standard for a Padres free agent.

Hosmer said he is ready to embrace a leadership role for the Padres, who haven’t been to the playoffs since 2006 or logged a winning record since 2010 and have lost the only two World Series appearances since their inception in 1969. He hopes to convey some of the winning mindset that he developed as a pivotal member of Kansas City’s 2015 championship club.

But the tweet that indicated Rippon was one to watch and obsess over in Pyeongchang came long before he was even guaranteed to make the Olympic team, just after Christmas. And of course it was about his eyebrows.

It will take place in a dome just like Super Bowl 51 did … but much further north, where the weather outside the venue won’t be as inviting.

Granted, Minneapolis, with its state-of-the-art U.S. Bank Stadium, will be ready to host the Super Bowl and show off its fancy digs to the world.

Justin Timberlake will headline the Pepsi Super Bowl LII Halftime Show at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minnesota on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018.

Lewis was a 13-time Pro Bowler over a 17-year career spent entirely with the Ravens. He was the Defensive Player of the Year twice and helped the Ravens win each of the Super Bowl titles in 2000 and 2012. He was the MVP of Super Bowl XXXV and finished his career with 1,336 total tackles, 41 1/2 sacks and 31 interceptions. If there was any one player who was a lock for the 2018 class, it was Lewis.

Moss was one of the most dangerous receivers the NFL has ever seen. With blazing speed thanks to a long stride that comes with his 6-4 frame, Moss was capable of a big play every time he touched the ball. The former Marshall receiver was a first-round pick of the Vikings in the 1998 draft and had an immediate impact with 69 catches for 1,313 yards and a league-high 17 touchdowns in his first year. He finished his 14-year career, that included six Pro Bowl selections, with 982 receptions (15th all-time) for 15,292 yards (fourth) and 156 touchdowns (second).

Shazier suffered a serious spinal injury in a Dec. 4 game against the Bengals and has been recovering from a spinal stabilization surgery, which he underwent on Dec. 6.

Despite Shazier’s struggles, his father, Vernon, said his son reclaimed feeling in his legs last month.

Shazier made appearances at Heinz Field for games against the Patriots and Browns in December and visited his teammates at practice in January. He shared a photo of himself in a wheelchair on the sidelines, writing that he’s “far from done” with football and working “day-by-day” to get better.

Despite missing all of training camp and a pair of games this season — the season opener (due to a contract holdout) and the season finale (for rest) — and adjusting to a completely different defense under new coordinator Wade Phillips, Donald leads all defensive tackles in each of those respective categories this season, as well. Let that marinate for a second …

They’re in the throes of a quarterback crisis and just fired their offensive coordinator his week.

So finally, with failed stints by Trevor Siemian and Brock Osweiler, Denver will turn to Paxton Lynch at quarterback when they play the Raiders on Sunday.

After a feel-good 4-2 start, the Dolphins are mired in a three-game losing streak during which they’ve been outscored by a combined 112-45. Of particular disappointment has been their defense, which was supposed to be a strength of the team. The Dolphins have allowed 40 points or more in two of their past three games.

After the 45-21 loss at Carolina, Dolphins defensive coordinator Matt Burke said, according to ESPN, said not having the bye week “helps us.’’

“If we had to sit two weeks and chew on that for a bye weekend and not play for two weeks … as a coach, particularly, it always helps being able to dive back in,’’ Burke said.

“There’s nobody that can come in and learn a playbook in that period of time, so there’s challenges that would be with any quarterback in any system and in any NFL building,” Colts coach Chuck Pagano said this week.

“I’m new here, still continuing to learn, continue to get better and get familiarity with the offense and the team and go from there,” Brissett said. “Since I got here, I’ve been in the playbook and trying to learn as much and asking for advice in the quarterback room.”
Brissett started two games with the Patriots last season and figures to be able to better the 225 yards of total offense Tolzien and the Indy offense was able to muster against the Rams.

5. Colin Kaepernick, quarterback, 49ers (37): No matter what your opinion of Kaepernick’s decision to sit during the national anthem, it put him in the national spotlight and made him a household name again. And from strictly a football standpoint, how Kaepernick went from one of the sport’s rising stars to somebody who couldn’t even beat out Blaine Gabbert remains a fascinating question.

He’s now up to doing it a dozen times in the playoffs, including four occasions in the Super Bowl. In those situations, only in Super Bowl 39 against the Eagles did he have a higher efficiency rating than he did against the Jaguars (108.4).

There was nothing fancy about the Jaguars’ game plan. They were there to smash Brady in the mouth as much as possible and make his receivers uncomfortable on every pass play. He dropped back 45 times and either completed a pass or got a penalty called on 29 of those.

“Papa John’s is not going to be the last company to threaten to pull out,” said Geraldine Henderson, a professor specializing in race in the marketplace at the Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business. “A collective effort of advertisers pulling out may force the NFL to come to some sort of closure sooner or later.”

She said she interpreted Schnatter’s comments as an attempt to avoid antagonizing black players, football fans and customers. Henderson cited consumer survey data from spring 2016 showing blacks consume 1.2 times as much Papa John’s pizza as whites, and slightly favor Papa John’s over Domino’s and Pizza Hut.

Based on their points scored and allowed, we would expect a team with Cleveland’s point differential in 2017 (minus-132) to be 2-10 or 3-9, not 0-12. Of course, the other way to look at that is that the Browns are falling short of even those low expectations. And there are more reasons to believe the Browns should be better than they’ve shown in the win-loss columns.

According to the game charters at Pro Football Focus, this roster has higher-graded talent than nine other teams in the NFL this year. In order, those teams are the Denver Broncos (3-9), Washington Redskins (5-7), 49ers (2-10), Indianapolis Colts (3-9), New York Jets (5-7), New York Giants (2-10), Houston Texans (4-8), Miami Dolphins (5-7) and Arizona Cardinals (5-7).

Nagy is a former Arena League quarterback who is in his first season as the offensive coordinator in Kansas City; he was a co-coordinator with Brad Childress last season. With Nagy at the controls, the Chiefs ranked in the league’s top 10 this season in rushing offense, passing offense, total offense and scoring offense.

Few within the league seemed to view McVay as a viable head coaching candidate when last offseason began. Many thought that he’d get a head coaching interview or two but remain in Washington as Gruden’s coordinator, primed to become a head coach further down the road. But McVay wowed the Rams with his knowledge and wise-beyond-his-years polish. When the Rams hired him last January, he was less than two weeks shy of his 31st birthday.

Bill Belichick was once fired by the Cleveland Browns. When he resigned as the “H.C. of the NYJ” after one day on the job to go to the Patriots, the move was widely criticized. Meanwhile, Tom Brady was a sixth-round pick in the 2000 NFL Draft — No. 199 overall, to be exact. Now Belichick is the best coach in NFL history. I’d argue he’s the best coach in the history of sports. Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time, the GREATEST NFL PLAYER EVER (sorry, Jerry Rice and Jim Brown).

Brady and Belichick are going to their eighth Super Bowl together. That’s insane. Brady took over the starting job in 2001, after Mo Lewis delivered a crushing blow to Drew Bledsoe.

The league’s offseason decision to relax prohibitions on celebrations after touchdowns and big plays has turned into a rare unqualified source of whimsy. For years, the NFL punished any choreographed celebration and prohibited using the football as a prop for a demonstration. But a dozen weeks after officials decided to relent and permit such acts, only one question remains: What took them so long?

In short order, players concocted intricate and delightful dances. NFL players, upon reaching the end zone, have transformed into bobsledders, potato-sack racers and a family gathered around a Thanksgiving table. The Philadelphia Eagles defense performed the Electric Slide after an interception this past Sunday. The demonstrations have had almost no downside. Officials have called just three delay-of-game penalties after touchdowns this season, according to the NFL, and taunting penalties after touchdowns have remained static.

Joseph succeeds Gary Kubiak, who stepped away after suffering a series of health issues during his head coaching tenures in Houston and Denver, and inherits a Super Bowl-ready team.

The Broncos missed the playoffs this season on the heels of their Super Bowl title, and Elway must decide if the team’s quarterback is already on a roster that includes Trevor Siemian and Paxton Lynch. But this is not a rebuilding project. Far from it.

It’s tough to get national acclaim when you play in the Sun Belt, but Scott has a chance to make his name more widely known with a big week at the Senior Bowl. The 6-foot-6, 215-pound receiver runs well for his size and is a matchup nightmare against smaller cornerbacks. There are a fair number of big receivers at the Senior Bowl this year, with Marcell Ateman (Oklahoma State), Darren Carrington (Utah), and J’Mon Moore (Missouri) all trying to impress teams searching for a downfield and red-zone threat. Scott needs to show he can shine when he’s on the same field with Power Five players.

The NFL’s over 1,600 players are not required by rules to stand for the anthem and owners, who met last month with players to discuss an issue on which they are divided, have declined to compel them to do so.

“It’s very magical, miraculous,” he said Sunday. “I’m sure you guys will find lots of good words to name the play or whatever you guys are going to do. But for us, we don’t want to waste any opportunity … that’s given to us, especially this one. Does it put any more pressure on the future or this next game? No, this next game is big no matter what.”

The Eagles are a vulnerable No. 1 seed in these NFC playoffs because they have Foles filling in for Carson Wentz, the second-year quarterback who was an MVP front-runner before suffering a season-ending knee injury in December. Philadelphia has looked predictably unsteady since Wentz was hurt, and Coach Doug Pederson even was asked before the playoffs about his willingness to bench Foles in favor of youngster Nate Sudfeld if needed.

In the second coaching stint of its venerable head coach, Cal Lee, with its quarterback coach, Vinny Passas, Saint Louis just won another state championship, and wound up No. 5 in the MaxPreps.com national rankings. People know about it now, even if in Polynesian culture, as Sapolu said and Tanuvasa echoed, Humility’s a big thing, and Tagovailoa’s post-game humility coaxed just as much pleasure as his exploits.

I don’t know how Coach [Nick] Saban found me all the way in Hawaii from Alabama, Tagovailoa said.

Well, it’s 2018, a year of instant video transmission, the year of the Hawaiian quarterback. So, as a flawless garnish to that year, a radio caller on Thursday to ESPN 900 Maui’s midday show, Let’s Talk Sports With Kanoa Leahey, epitomized the eccentricity of the sports fanatic.

Eli Rogers saw that the play was not dead and ran a quick slant to the end zone. Roethlisberger tried to force the throw in. It was tipped and intercepted by Duron Harmon. The game was over, the Steelers standing in disbelief, the crowd silenced.

Man, it would have been fun for it to have turned out a different way, Roethlisberger said.

The pessimism for Washington starts with its next two opponents: the Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints. The Vikings rank fifth in points allowed per drive (1.48) with the ninth-lowest passer rating allowed (81.2) and the Saints prevent first downs at an above-average rate (69 percent of the time, sixth-best in 2017) with the league’s seventh-lowest passer rating against (79.3).

Detroit’s remaining schedule ranks as the seventh-toughest against the run, per Sharp Football Stats, with games against the Browns (2.9 yards allowed per carry, No. 1 in the NFL this season), Vikings (3.5, third-best) and Bengals (3.8, 11th best) still on the docket.

An orthopedic surgeon I spoke with said the timetable for return varies greatly depending on the severity but thought a four-week return was at least possible. If serious damage was done, Peterson could be lost for the year.