Many were surprised when the Washington Football Team’s coach Ron Rivera benched second-year quarterback and first-round pick Dwayne Haskins after four weeks into this season. Instead, Riverboat Ron opted for a mix of Kyle Allen and the two-legged Alex Smith as replacements, eventually opting for Allen.

While some slammed this move by Rivera, others criticized his inconsistent message on what prompted the move to Allen. “It does look a little inconsistent, but the consistency is that I’m going to make them based on what I know, on my gut feeling on things,” Rivera said. “Hopefully, they’re good decisions. If they’re not, we’ll know and I’ll take responsibility, that’s for doggone sure.”

A particularly contradictory moment for Rivera was coming out after a disastrous week three performance by Haskins and supporting his quarterback and saying that he was the guy for them. Then, he opted to bench him one week later. While Haskins has been disappointing many saw this as a silly move considering that the Washington Football Team’s roster is devoid of talent and unlikely to make much of a playoff run. But Rivera may have seen the landscape of the weakened NFC East and thought that he could ride his veterans to a 6-10 playoff berth. The Washington Football Team is currently one game out of first place in the NFC East at 1-5.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said that he is looking into an expanded playoff format in the future. Not necessarily the 16 teams that the league has this year, up from 10, but somewhere in between. “I like the idea of, and I’m choosing my words carefully here, an expanded playoff format,” Manfred said. “I don’t think we would do 16 like we did this year. I think we do have to be cognizant of making sure that we preserve the importance of our regular season. But I think something beyond the 10 that we were at would be a good change.”

It does need to be noted that this is not just Manfred’s decision. In order to change the playoff format going forward, the league would need the MLB’s approval.

Another rule change made during this COVID season has been the extra-innings rule where each team batting starts with a runner on second in order to make games go quicker. That has been met with mixed feelings from fans and players alike, but Manfred said that he intends to get that change into the rulebook. “I think the players like it,” Manfred said. “I think it’s really good from a safety and health perspective that keeps us from putting players in situations where they’re out there too long or in positions they’re not used to playing.”

All of these things need to be ironed out this upcoming offseason, and knowing the MLB nothing will actually get done, but this could bring some form of new excitement that could help a sport that is slowly dwindling in the ratings.

Last week, it was announced that that the Dallas Cowboys traded former Minnesota Viking and offseason acquisition Everson Griffen to the Detroit Lions for a conditional sixth-round pick.

Griffen was a four-time pro-bowler with the Vikings and will look to bolster a defensive line for the 3-3 Lions who have won two in a row. The Lions will owe Griffen $1.76 million in salary for the rest of the year, plus $187,500 for each game in which Griffen is on the active roster.

On the other end, this seems like a signal that the Cowboys are punting in this disastrous season. They started out 2-4 before star quarterback Dak Prescott broke his ankle and is out for the year and with no hope in sight they seem to have gone in asset collection mode.

This is just the beginning of the coverage ahead of the upcoming NFL trade deadline which is steadily approaching and with many team’s already out of contention it is looking like it will be more active than in year’s past.

Last week, it was announced that the Houston Texans have shut down their practice facility after receiving a positive COVID-19 test. Thankfully, this comes during the Texans bye week so it is unlikely to affect the game schedule in a significant way, but the Texans now join the Titans, Vikings, Colts, Patriots, and Falcons on the list of teams who have had to shut down facilities due to COVID-19 outbreaks.

“Late last night, we received notice that a Texans player tested positive for COVID-19,” the team said in a statement. “In accordance with NFL protocols, the player immediately self-isolated and our Infection Control Officer and other members of the Infection Response Team began working with the NFL to perform contact tracing. Our facility will be closed today to players for deep cleaning. We are in close consultation with the NFL, as well as our team of independent doctors and specialists, and will follow their guidance regarding our scheduled bye week operations. The health and safety of our team, as well as our entire staff, are of the highest priority.”

The Texans also had one positive test in training camp but have remained COVID-free since.

Last week, it was announced that Ole’ Miss coach Lane Kiffin would be fined $25,000 for retweeting a tweet that criticized officials. The tweet said, “Y’all are a disgrace @SEC your officiating is absolutely atrocious.@SECOfficiating If y’all want to just keep gifting Auburn wins, just say it.”

Kiffin did not seem very apologetic for the retweet that cost him 25 large, giving us this gem of a social media moment.

The Baltimore Ravens will be working out former all-pro and prolific wide receiver Dez Bryant who last played for the Dallas Cowboys in 2017. Bryant has been searching for a job for the past few years but has been a notable locker room problem.

Ian Rapaport said that if Bryant’s workout goes well, then he will likely get a spot on the practice squad, “The #Ravens plan to sign veteran WR Dez Bryant to the practice squad if his workout goes well and he passes a physical, source said. Baltimore previously worked out Bryant in August, so this is more of a check-in. He should land in Baltimore, finally.”

Bryant is a three-time pro-bowler and made an all-pro team in 2014 and has over 7400 yards and 73 receiving touchdowns in his career. He may be able to provide some veteran stability to the Raven’s receiving core.

During his media availability last month, Cleveland Browns’ Odell Beckham Jr. made some odd comments about the possibility of him contracting COVID-19 during the most recent string of outbreaks throughout the NFL.

Beckham reportedly missed practice one day with an illness that was not COVID. “Not in an arrogant way,” Beckham told reporters. “I don’t think COVID can get to me. I don’t think it’s going to enter this body. I don’t want no parts of it, it don’t want no parts of me. It’s a mutual respect.”

Beckham has been weird for a while, and he has not been a stranger to odd stories like this throughout the past few seasons. This has honestly been a common theme in the NFL with players either saying they are not afraid of the virus or are willing to die – and this may be the attitude that has led to these outbreaks in the league.

After a disappointing return to the NBA bubble where it seemed like the NBA created the play-in tournament for the playoffs for the sole purpose of getting Zion Williamson in front of more national audiences, the New Orleans Pelicans fired former head coach Alvin Gentry earlier this year and have now announced the signing of veteran head coach Stan Van Gundy. On his Twitter, Van Gundy wrote, “I’m excited to join a talented New Orleans Pelicans team. It will be an honor to work with our players and to work for Mrs. Benson and David Griffin, Trajan Langdon, their staff and the great people of New Orleans. I can’t wait to talk to our players and get the process started.”

https://twitter.com/realStanVG/status/1318986910040264704

Van Gundy is a respected veteran coach in the NBA, most famous for his late 2000’s Orlando Magic teams that featured a prime Dwight Howard, but has had less success in his last stint with the Detroit Pistons, which I don’t see as much of his fault since the Pistons haven’t had a good roster in a decade. Van Gundy might provide this talented Pelicans roster the leadership and defensive-minded presence that they need – he might be the perfect fit for this young team.

After a fantastic 2019 season where Buffalo Bills’ starting guard Quinton Spain allowed zero sacks and earned himself a $15 million extension, he has been cut by the team six weeks into the season. Spain had been dealing with injury and the interior line rotation for the Bills was beginning to get crowded but still, it feels curious to move off of an asset and a talent like Spain this quickly.

Spain will have many suitors right out of the gate with many teams looking for o-line help. The Cowboys are always in play along with the Philadelphia Eagles who are in desperate need of protection for quarterback Carson Wentz. Spain, who was undrafted in 2015, spent five years with the Titans eventually becoming a starting guard before going to the Bills last year.

On last week, the Washington Capitals announced that they were re-signing D Jonas Siegenthaler to a one-year deal worth $800,000 in order to keep the young defender around for the time being. Siegenthaler has played for the Capitals the past two seasons after being drafted in 2015 and making his way up the minor leagues for three years and has provided solid play for the Capitals in his two seasons.

Siegenthaler, 23, recorded nine points (2g, 7a) in a career-high 63 games last season and they selected Siegenthaler in the second round, 57th overall, in the 2015 NHL Draft.

Just 90 minutes after the state of California ruled that teams could start slowly having fans back to games, Santa Clara County, which is where the San Francisco 49ers stadium is, ruled that the team would still not be allowed to have fans of any kind attend games despite this ruling. According to the rules, the 49ers would have been able to allow 14,00 fans into their stadium that can hold over 60,000.

Later, at a news conference, county executive Dr. Jeff Smith said it would be “dangerous” to open stadiums. “This is the worst thing in the world to be doing,” Smith said. “At a time when California is beginning to see some light, this amounts to another step backward. We’ve already done steps backward in California that have cost tens of thousands of lives and this is another risk to do this.”

The 49ers declined to comment on the ruling but many companies were upset by the reopening guidelines, most notably Disney which is also allowed to have guests back in their parks but only under very strict guidelines. “The fact is that throughout the nation, the virus is spiking,” Smith said. “All of the health experts in the nation that are respectable have predicted another spike in November and December. It’s going to get worse. It’s going to get a lot worse. Right now is not the time to be relaxing regulations.”

Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones announced on Wednesday that Dallas is releasing defensive tackle Dontari Poe citing Poe’s weight issues and his lack of production on the field. While these could be considered valid reasons, some are speculating whether or not this decision has to do with Poe’s persistent kneeling during the national anthem before games – Poe is the only Cowboys’ player who kneeled every week.

“When you’re 30 pounds overweight and you’re not doing anything about what’s keeping you from performing well on the field, there is no reason to get into the other stuff,” Jones told ESPN. The “other stuff” is likely his protesting, but he was pressed on the question by his interviewer, “I understand your question, and I’m deliberately not going to answer it. We have a platform here, but the platform on the football field has a high standard, and [Poe] was not up to the standard. He needed to correct that, and he did not. I’m going to leave it at that.”

This feels like an absolute cop-out but, unfortunately, owners and NFL organizations have the unilateral power in the league to terminate a player’s employment for any reason that they want, even if that reason has nothing to do with football. I would say that Poe has the talent to make another roster but with some of the blackballing that has gone on in the league, most notably Colin Kaepernick, that is no guarantee anymore.

Poe, 30, was signed to a two-year, $8.5 million contract as an unrestricted free agent in the offseason. Poe was guaranteed $3.5 million on the deal.

After a string of COVID outbreaks throughout the NFL that only seem to happen once everyone thinks they have finally stopped happening, that has caused the NFL to reshuffle the schedule multiple times, many are wondering what greater measures will have to be taken if the rate of outbreaks does not slow down. Although they have pushed against it, the NFL may have to add weeks to the end of the season in order to accommodate teams that have or will lose games due to quarantining. “We could move the Super Bowl back as far as four weeks,” Packers owner Mark Murphy said during his team’s virtual pep rally. “Obviously, we’d prefer not to do that, but you do have that flexibility if we run into a number of outbreaks with different teams or if we have to kind of move the schedule back.”

The Pro Bowl has already been canceled and there is no real rush to finish the season by the start of February. It may create some competitive disadvantages if teams which remain COVID-free since they will have an extended layoff before the playoffs. But it is hard to avoid competitive disadvantages in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. I doubt there will be a decision on this anytime soon. If this past offseason is any indication then the NFL will push this off until the very last moment. But with the state that the NFL is in, they might have no choice but to add weeks.

If you are new to the UFC or only tune into the massive fights like the ones that Conor McGregor tends to have, then you not have heard of Dustin Poirier. It is no secret that Dana White and the UFC have been angling for a rematch between McGregor and lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, ever since their first bout at UFC 229, the most-bought fight in UFC history. Unfortunately, Khabib has been opposed to this idea. Very opposed. The bad blood between the two has been very real and Khabib has not given McGregor the time of day. Why is that relevant? Because Khabib in an interview this summer said that for anybody to be considered the number one contender after he fights Justin Gaethje next Saturday, they will have to beat Poirier, who Khabib beat last September, first.

So, if you follow that trail of bread crumbs then it is no surprise when the McGregor announced on his Twitter Wednesday that he accepted an offer to fight Poirier on January 23. The UFC and McGregor have been looking to get the Irishman back into the title picture and this feels like the best way to do it.

Let me introduce you to Poirier because this is not going to be a steamrolling like Donald Cerrone was for McGregor back in January. Poirier is a beast. If you need an example of the man’s work ethic go watch his first fight with McGregor – yes they fought before back when they were both young featherweights looking to make their way up the ranking – then watch his most recent fight with Dan Hooker. McGregor steamrolled an unrefined version of Poirier in 2014 taking less than a few minutes to knock him out, but since then The Diamond has molded himself into one of the best fighters in the best division in the UFC, holding wins over three former UFC champions and current number one contender Gaethje.

In short, if McGregor can beat Poirier in any form, it doesn’t have to be convincing, then his case for a rematch with Khabib is undeniable, Poirier is that good. On the fight analysis side, the odds according to Fan Duel Sportsbook have McGregor as a -184 favorite and Poirier as a +154 dog. Clearly, the oddsmakers respect Poirier because the usual big-name boos that a lot of fighters get would put them at +200 at least. Instead, it is clear that the oddsmakers know not to give good odds on Poirier. I’m not making any prediction yet but if McGregor fails to get Poirier out of there by the third round, this fight may go to the Diamond.

In his first public comments since being fired in January, ex Houston Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow reiterated on Houston TV station KPRC that he was not involved in the Astros 2017 sign-stealing scandal and claimed that newly released text messages by players and management that were released exonerate him.

“It’s pretty clear who was involved in the video-decoding scheme, when it started, how often it happened and basically when it ended. And it’s also pretty clear who was not involved,” Luhnow said. “And I don’t know why that information, that evidence, wasn’t discussed in the ruling, wasn’t used. The people who were involved that didn’t leave naturally to go to other teams are all still employed by the Astros.

“In fact, one of the people who was intimately involved, I had demoted from a position in the clubhouse to a position somewhere else, and after I was fired, he was promoted back into the clubhouse. So none of those people faced any repercussions. They weren’t discussed in the report, but the evidence is all there that they were involved.”

While it is possible Luhnow had nothing to do with it, it is unlikely that he had no idea. Luhnow was probably forced out in January by the MLB because of this scandal. What will be interesting to see if this story goes away before the next MLB season. The opposing team’s fans never got their chance to give the Astros a talking to because of the pandemic – and we will see how long baseball fans’ memories last this next April.

In one of the toughest gambling bad beats of all-time, Rob Huntze lost out on a $1 million Draft Kings prize, after a stat correction, which took away a sack from Chicago Bears lineman Akiem Hicks which dropped Huntze from the outright winner to a five-way tie for first. Huntze had the Bears defense in his lineup.

Huntze was at the top of the leaderboard for an hour, having the Bears defense, before he was dropped down to the five-way tie. Huntze called it, “Heartbreaking on many levels.” Now, apparently, Huntze is very good at this daily fantasy game and has suffered stat correction money losses before but just not on this level. While it is possible that he could be back, even non-gamblers would have to sigh after hearing about a loss like this.

After suffering a high ankle sprain in week two, Carolina Panthers’ star running back Christian McCaffery claimed that he was going to “attack” recovery like he attacks other issues in his life and hoped to beat the usual four- to six-week recovery timetable for the injury. Unfortunately, that has not panned out. It was announced on Thursday that McCaffery will not be playing in the Panthers Thursday Night Football matchup against the Atlanta Falcons.

So far, the Panthers have played fine in his absence with a 3-4 record and their play has been far more competent than was predicted during the pre-season. They have been receiving solid performance from backup running back Mike Davis, so it makes sense that the team is not trying to rush McCaffery back on the field.

When his comments about attacking the timetable were released, many pointed to this as a bad idea recalling when running back Saquon Barkley suffered a high ankle sprain last season and struggled to return to form after coming back before the four- to six-week timetable was completed.

On his Instagram account, Dodgers’ player Max Muncy, who just won a World Series earlier this week, took a shot at MLB commissioner Rob Manfred in his celebratory post which featured Muncy holding the World Series trophy with the caption, “What a nice piece of metal.”

This is referring back to Manfred’s comment earlier this year when he faced criticism for his lack of willingness to punish the Houston Astros for their sign-stealing scandal that many believed help them win a championship. In one of his comments about the matter, Manfred referred to the trophy as “just a piece of metal,” which infuriated most baseball fans and probably the players. This may be viewed as unprofessional by Muncy, but when you’re a champion you can say what you want.

After the NBA bubble in Orlando concluded with the Los Angeles Lakers winning title 17 against the Miami Heat, many speculated that we would not see basketball for a long time. It was suggested that the league would wait until they could return without a bubble with fans in the seats, but reports over the past week have indicated that the league is actually eyeing a December 22 return with a schedule shortened to 72 games and team playing series similar to baseball that would significantly reduce travel across the league.

This feels almost like resignation from the league rather than an aggressive move to get basketball back as soon as possible. I think they took a look at the landscape of the country and the pandemic and realized that they will not be able to maximize revenue from the next season and just want to finish it and focus on 2021-2022.

The ratings for the playoffs were less than ideal and probably motivated the league to avoid the playoffs going up against the NFL. While nothing is set, and it has been reported that older players like LeBron James, may take the first several weeks of the season off in order to recover more from the bubble, it is seeming more and more likely that we will see basketball return in December.

On his Twitter account Thursday, golfing legend Jack Nicklaus released a statement endorsing President Donald Trump for president ahead of next week’s election. The statement read, “I have had the privilege over the last three-and-a-half years to get to know our current President a little more as his term progressed. I have been very disappointed at what he’s had to put up with from many directions, but with that, I have seen a resolve and a determination to do the right thing for our country. He has delivered on his promises. He’s worked for the average person.”

The 80-year-old has continued to support the president even after he and his wife were diagnosed with COVID-19 earlier this year but neither suffered from any symptoms.

Nicklaus and Trump have had a long-standing relationship often playing together at Trump golf courses.