If McLaren manages to stumble its way to a Drivers' Championship victory in the final race of the Formula 1 season, it will not be for lack of trying to lose. Las Vegas saw McLaren intruding on Ferrari territory with a devastating double disqualification; on Sunday in Qatar,...

As a close observer of an NBA franchise that has spent the past few decades in various states of putrefaction, an exercise I like to undertake from time to time is to consider which of the 30 NBA teams faces the bleakest medium-term future. This excludes most teams presently...

Jacksonville Jaguars move to 8-4 record on the season with another big win this week. Unimportant people gape in slack-jawed amazement. Many have asked me, "How did we get here?" Well it all started right where you would think—in Week 1. That's when the Jaguars scored a big win over Carolina Panthers, holding Panthers star Rico Dowdle to only 12 yards of rushing. Ever since then the Jaguars have been on a rocket ship to the moon. Meanwhile, Rico Dowdle remains trapped in his humdrum life, each new day a disquieting echo of the last. 

"Hi, Mr. Dowdle?"
"Hi, I'm Mr. Dowdle. You can call me Rico. Rico Dowdle."
"Welcome Rico. Or Mr. Dowdle, haha."
"Haha. Either is fine. Rico, or Mr. Dowdle. Rico Dowdle."

It does not take long to assess Lane Kiffin's time at LSU, and not just because it hasn't begun yet. He has decided yet again to see how far into the campfire he can stick his face, and this time has chosen a bessemer furnace to test his hide. Put another way, Kiff...

Can you sense that it’s time for our Monday crossword? This week's puzzle was constructed by Kelly Richardson, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Kelly is a northern Michigander who loves running, stand-up paddleboarding, and traveling. In addition to constructing crosswords, she is a regular contributor to her hometown newspaper, the Traverse City Record-Eagle.

Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX, run every Monday. If you’re interested in submitting a puzzle to us, you can read our guidelines HERE. 

George Best was once the only man from Northern Ireland to make a stir kicking a ball in America. But now the NFL is rife with Irish kickers. Last season Jude McAtamney hit a FG for the Giants. (It went less well for him this year.) And on Sunday Charlie Smyth joined him with a successful kick of his own, joining Neil O’Donoghue in the growing fraternity of Irish-born NFL kickers.

Smyth was previously just another guy in the booth at Super Bowl 59. During a break, announcers on the UK Sky Sports broadcast brought him in for a chat. They introduced him as a member of the New Orleans Saints—he’d spent the year on their practice squad, and signed a futures contract for the following season—and “a big fan of the NFL.”

I didn't consider the possibility of failure enough when I was developing this show. For the last episode of the season I was supposed to have a conversation with Ronald Young Jr., he had been wanting to spend time learning piano and do a small show for his loved ones. But the week I was supposed to record with Ronald he emailed me to admit that he hadn't learned the song on piano, he never had the recital we'd agreed he'd do, and he wasn't ready to record with me.

I freaked out for a few hours. I knew I still had to deliver an episode, and I had no idea what to do. I considered spinning up a new episode with myself as the test subject; "Could I learn to play football in like three weeks?" But after sleeping on it, I decided to ask Ronald if he'd be willing to chat with me anyway — but this time, about failure.

Try as he did, Aaron Rodgers was not able to avoid having his own Brett Favre Moment. Any 41-year-old quarterback with decreasing mobility takes a big risk by participating in an NFL game, and on Sunday Rodgers's age caught up with him all at once.

The Steelers were nursing a 7–3 lead as the second half of their game against Buffalo got underway, and the plug was pulled after one play. Rodgers, playing with a broken left wrist that kept him out of the previous game, fumbled the ball after getting blind-side smashed by Joey Bosa on the Steelers' first snap of the half, and the Bills took a 10–7 lead when Christian Benford scooped up the loose ball and returned it for a touchdown. While the Steelers were losing the lead for good, Rodgers was reeling on the turf, blood dripping from the bridge of his nose.

A person is going to get hit in the nuts from time to time. This is a normal hazard of living in the world, which is filled with stray blows in contact sports, waist-high furniture in dark rooms, out-of-order turnstiles, rowdy pets, and small children with timeless senses of...

After absorbing as much attention as he possibly could, college football coach Lane Kiffin has made a decision: He will leave Ole Miss after six seasons and fill the vacancy at LSU. In response to Kiffin's departure, Ole Miss has named defensive coordinator Pete Golding the ...

The Dallas Mavericks set a miserable task for No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg. They constructed a tall, unwieldy roster without enough shooting or ball-handling, then told a power forward-sized 18-year-old to play the point. For the first fifth of the season, that went about...

As a publication, we haven't felt the need to check in with Bill Belichick and North Carolina since October. There are only so many jokes to make about a mediocre college football team as it plays out the string, and how much more is there to say, really? Let's give it a try anyway. It could be the last chance.

The string has been officially played out: The Tar Heels were trampled on Saturday by NC State, 42-19. UNC finished the season with a 4-8 record, and will not be bowl-eligible for the first time since 2018, which was Larry Fedora's final season. Here's a brutal series of stats about this year's team, via the Raleigh News & Observer:

Steph Curry's mere presence can mask so much mediocrity. As long as he's on court, the Golden State Warriors' offense crackles with possibility. The threat of Curry getting the ball with a few inches of space keeps any defense in permanent panic, and he is masterful at using...

The Detroit Lions and their fans have been on an emotional roller coaster over the past few days. Actually, the better amusement park ride for this metaphor might be a drop tower—it would more accurately convey how jarring and abrupt the changes in mood have been with this w...

For years, a rumor has floated around about the length of Willem Dafoe’s penis. Willem Dafoe’s penis is said to be extra-large. It is allegedly so big, in fact, that after filming nude scenes in the 2009 film Antichrist, Lars von Trier reported that he needed to re-shoot them using a different actor. “He has an enormous dick,” the director told The Boston Phoenix while promoting the film. “We had to take those scenes out of the film.” Here came the kicker: When Dafoe’s penis was on screen, said von Trier, “everybody got very confused when they saw it”.

What this means is that somewhere out there lives a humble man whose penis stood in for Willem Dafoe’s. Who is he?

Daniel Slosberg is the Tom Joad of Diana Nyad’s bullshitting. Whenever she’s out there beatin’ up the truth, he’ll be there. 

So Slosberg was in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. earlier this month as town officials planted a plaque at Las Olas Beach to honor Nyad, a local kid who grew up to be as famous as any female American swimmer of the pre-Ledecky era. Slosberg says he hadn’t flown in 10 years, but when he heard that the woman who Slosberg calls “swimming’s greatest fraud,” was going to be commemorated by public servants, he had to get on a plane.

Welcome to The Backlog, a series in which we will take a look back at 12 games from 2020 that, in one way or another, had a lasting impact on the video game industry. The Assassin's Creed series is a bit of a blind spot for me. It wasn't always that way. I played the first...

It is Thanksgiving all across these United States, but it wasn't until last weekend that I really felt it. I can read a calendar, and the season's usual logistic and chore requirements were all right there where I could see them, but knowing that a favorite holiday is coming ...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! The website will be a little sleepy for the next few days, so feel free to kick your feet up and relax in this open thread. Snacks are in the fridge!

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. A while back, I got a reque...

Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide, where Israel Daramola and Ray Ratto will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about. Israel: We finally made it to the end of a knotty mess of a college football season. The...

In the fall of 2021, Renato Borras-Chavez, a marine mammal ecologist at the University of Rhode Island, spotted a leopard seal on an ice floe. Borras-Chavez was on a research expedition to a glacial fjord in Chile's Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, one of the places leopard seals take up residence outside of Antarctica. He was thrilled; this was the first leopard seal he'd ever seen in Chile, where he is from. As he peered through his binoculars, he noticed another, smaller seal: a pup. "I got so excited, and then we got there, and it's dead," he said.

Zohran Mamdani is weeks away from becoming Mayor of New York City. As someone who does not live in the city but nevertheless has a lot of opinions about what goes on there, I want his administration to be a success. This is why I was so disappointed by some of the Mayor-Elect's recent conduct, which raises new questions about whether Mr. Mamdani is truly prepared to be a Mayor who represents all New Yorkers.

During his appearance on The Adam Friedland Show this week, Mr. Mamdani, a devout Arsenal fan, took some time out of explaining his policy agenda to remember some Arsenal guys:

We learned in our reading yesterday that the Detroit Pistons are now a fully fledged power in the better-than-we-thought Eastern Conference, and well worth the notice both for what they've already accomplished and for the wonders that the exceedingly springy Jalen Duran works on his own.

It's a nice story told well, but also they are not the Oklahoma City Thunder. If they're much closer than most expected, the Pistons currently fall among the NBA's narrow tier of closest-but-not-that-close teams. The Thunder are threatening the most dangerous résumé in sports—that of the 2016 Golden State Warriors, the most mocked great team in NBA history.

I grew up with three brothers. Several canon events in the 90s shaped our dynamic to this day. There was a certain game of Risk. There was the day mom relinquished her Hi8 video camera to us with no strings attached. A bike accident here, a rock thrown down the stairs there....

On tiny Hornby Island northwest of Vancouver, after the Women’s World Cup in the summer of 2015, our bed-and-breakfast host was telling us about the town. The pizza place in the park is terrific, he said, but things get crowded during music nights on Wednesday and Sunday. “I...

This week on the show, Harry and I yapped about a number of different media-adjacent topics, basketball and otherwise. What began as a discussion of how we each follow the NBA turned into a much longer conversation about cutting-edge media in other spheres, namely, the daily...

The Detroit Pistons are the best team in the Eastern Conference and the hottest team in the NBA, which is probably not what anyone outside of the Mitten would have scried before this season began or after simply looking at the Games Played column on the team's Basketball Ref...

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about salad tossing, Iron Maiden, strutting at the gym, and more.

Your letters:

Before he'd even entered a legit NHL game, Logan Cooley made an exciting first impression on me. Playing a 2023 preseason contest in Melbourne for a team called the "Arizona Coyotes" (I guess that's some sort of Australian thing), Cooley flew into the attacking zone with thr...