Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. If I hadn’t quit playing baseball when I was 14 I might have signed a $700 million contract this weekend.
In today’s SI:AM:
🛫 Zach Wilson’s big game
💰 The Dodgers’ decade-long pursuit of Ohtani
Three of the NFL’s best go down
With the end of the NFL regular season fast approaching, three of the top teams in the league were dealt worrisome losses in Week 14 as the Chiefs, Eagles and Lions all lost ground in the hunt for their conferences’ No. 1 seed.
Kansas City lost to the Bills at home and is now 8–5, sitting in third place in the AFC. Detroit lost a head-scratcher to the lowly Bears, dropping to 9–4 and falling a game out of the top spot in the NFC. Philadelphia’s loss to the Cowboys was the most damaging because it dropped them to 10–3, the same record as Dallas, but the Cowboys hold the tiebreaker, which means the Eagles are relegated to the NFC’s top wild-card spot.
The Chiefs’ loss followed a familiar formula, as their unreliable receiving corps cost them another game. K.C. has lost plenty of games this season due to its receivers dropping passes (a league-high 25 coming into this week). But this week they cost the team in a different way. With 1:25 left to play in the game, Patrick Mahomes completed a pass to Travis Kelce, who threw an improvised lateral to Kadarius Toney. Toney was able to waltz into the end zone for what appeared to be the go-ahead touchdown, but the play was waved off because Toney had lined up offsides. It was a baffling penalty by Toney. He was offside by a mile for no other reason than pure carelessness. It wasn’t even as though the Chiefs were rushing to get to the line. The clock was stopped. It’s an unfathomable mistake at any point in the game, let alone as the team is driving to win it. The fact that it wiped out the most remarkable touchdown of the season is depressing.
The good news for the Chiefs is that they have a pretty easy schedule coming up. They’ll face the Patriots, Raiders, Bengals and Chargers. Of those four, only Cincinnati has a winning record, but it’s also playing a backup quarterback now with Joe Burrow out for the season. Los Angeles could also have a backup under center after Justin Herbert broke his finger yesterday. It isn’t time for the Chiefs to panic, but with the Broncos just a game back in the division race, the path to a sixth straight conference championship game looks challenging.
The Lions had their worst offensive performance of the season in yesterday’s loss to the Bears, accumulating just 267 total yards and turning the ball over three times. While Detroit is still in third place in the NFC at 9–4, its upcoming schedule is pretty tricky. Its next game is against the surging Broncos before closing the season with two games against the usually feisty Vikings (well, except for yesterday) and a road game against the Cowboys. If the Lions could lose to the Bears yesterday, they’re capable of dropping any of those games.
The Eagles have real concerns, especially on defense, after dropping two straight against elite opponents. Last night’s game against the Cowboys wasn’t even close, finishing 33–13. The defense, which had powered Philadelphia to a 10–1 start, has now averaged 36.3 points and 451.7 total yards allowed in its last three games. That, combined with Dallas’s five-game winning streak, has turned the NFC East race into a hot ticket. The Cowboys currently hold the tiebreaker over the Eagles by virtue of their 4–1 division record (Philly is 3–1 against division foes). Even with the Eagles’ recent struggles, both teams have proved themselves to be among the best in the NFC. But one of them will be forced to play on the road in the playoffs as a wild-card team, making the final four weeks of the regular season a crucial race for the division crown—and perhaps even the No. 1 seed in the conference and the first-round bye that comes with it.
The best of Sports Illustrated
Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports
- The biggest sports news of the weekend was Shohei Ohtani announcing Saturday that he will sign with the Dodgers for $700 million over 10 years. Tom Verducci has an excellent story about how the team pursued Ohtani for a decade before finally landing him. The teams that didn’t win the sweepstakes are rebooting their offseason plans. Stephanie Apstein and Emma Baccellieri looked at the five teams who lost the most when Ohtani picked L.A.
- Conor Orr wrote about the Chiefs’ continued problems with their receivers and the team’s lack of urgency to fix the issue.
- Orr also broke down Zach Wilson’s impressive game against the Texans, which was another example of inconsistent play for the Jets’ quarterback.
- Wilson’s play also leads Albert Breer’s top 10 takeaways from yesterday.
- Gilberto Manzano makes the case for Dak Prescott to win the MVP.
- Bronny James made his debut for USC yesterday in a loss to Long Beach State. Kevin Sweeney has more on his return from a cardiac arrest.
- Michael Roseberg has an update on the PGA Tour’s negotiations with Saudi Arabia’s PIF that sounds like promising news for golf fans.
The top five...
… things I saw yesterday:
5. Bronny James’s chase-down block, just like his dad.
4. Christian McCaffrey’s vision, patience and speed on a long run against the Seahawks.
3. Travis Kelce’s lateral to Kadarius Toney that got waved off due to Toney’s offside penalty.
2. Tylan Wallace’s overtime walk-off punt return touchdown for the Ravens (and Lamar Jackson’s reaction to the play.)
1. Abdou Tsimbila’s dunk at the buzzer to lift Fordham over North Texas.
SIQ
Which team traded future two-time MVP Roger Maris to the Yankees on this day in 1959?
- A’s
- Senators
- Cubs
- Cardinals
Friday’s SIQ: On Dec. 8, 1959, Atlanta was awarded a professional franchise in which sport, although it would never play a single game?
- Football
- Baseball
- Basketball
- Hockey
Answer: Baseball. The franchise was the sixth planned team in the Continental League, a proposed third major baseball league that hoped to cooperate with the American and National leagues rather than compete against them.
The league was born out of New York lawyer William Shea’s desire to bring a second big league team back to the city after the departure of the Giants and Dodgers. When Shea announced plans for the league in August 1959, it had five member cities: New York, Toronto, Denver, Minneapolis–St. Paul and Houston. Atlanta was the next city added to the league, followed by Dallas–Fort Worth and Buffalo to round out Shea’s plan for an eight-team circuit.
Around the same time, a new upstart football league was also trying to get off the ground. In April 1960, SI polled several sports luminaries asking whether they thought the Continental League or American Football League had a better chance of succeeding. The response was decidedly split.
While the AFL eventually became so successful that it merged with the NFL, the Continental League never played a game—but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t successful. Shea got exactly what he wanted out of the venture. After MLB owners agreed to expand—granting AL franchises in Washington and Los Angeles, and NL franchises in New York and Houston—Shea disbanded the league. The headline on a December 1960 SI story detailing the league’s collapse: “The Damndest Mess Baseball Has Ever Seen.”
