The Jacksonville Jaguars began the 2023 season with a built-in advantage as the only playoff-ready team in a division of bottom-feeders. After last January’s Wild Card comeback against the Los Angeles Chargers, Trevor Lawrence was expected to continue his ascent both in the AFC and up the ranks of elite quarterbacks league-wide. Instead, with the 2024 season on the line, the Jags rolled over and played dead for a half and couldn’t wake up in time, losing 20-28 to the Tennessee Titans in their regular season finale. Of the Week 18 playoff scenarios, Jacksonville’s playoff aspirations were the biggest casualty. A four-game losing streak that began in December precipitated their fall. However, a soft landing should have awaited them against the Tennessee Titans, who entered with a 6-1…

For one brief moment the goal at the north end of the Wanda Metropolitano was left wide open and so was the title race. Thirty-nine seconds the sequence took start to finish, from Atlético Madrid grasping at an unlikely source of hope to everyone else doing the same. At the end of it, Diego Simeone slumped into his seat, defeated at home for the first time in a year, his grip on the league loosened. To his left, Levante’s players leapt about. In an old convent on the banks of the Pisuerga river, so did Real Madrid’s. In Barcelona they could celebrate too, if not for long. And in Seville, but no one said that. In four days, everything had changed.

The scoreboard in the stadium had stopped, because footballers can’t be trusted to know h…

The plan

Despite a strong start, Brighton endured a frustrating end to last season. Finishing seventh, one place down on the previous campaign, and narrowly missing out on their record points tally will have been a disappointment for Hope Powell and her side.

This summer’s exodus of players will have concerned fans. The departure of the ever-present Maya Le Tissier to Manchester United has left a defensive hole to fill. Equally, the loss of Finland’s Emma Koivisto and playmaker Inessa Kaagman has presented Powell with a recruitment headache.

Players have come in, although a few more bodies would not go amiss. There has been an emotional reunion on the south coast as Rebe…

Harry Kane admits Bayern Munich’s underperforming stars must “step up and be counted” in their Champions League quarter-final second leg against ­Arsenal, which offers hope of rescuing a potentially trophyless season.

A lack of silverware was not part of the plan when Kane joined Bayern last summer but they have drawn a blank domestically, a fact confirmed on Sunday when Bayer Leverkusen sealed the Bundesliga title, taking it outside Bavaria for the first time since 2012. But they start as favourites against Mikel Arteta’s side on Wednesday after last week’s 2-2 draw and Kane believes it is time for the six-time continental champions to make their experience count.

Agony for Arsenal and Liverpool. Why did it go wrong and is the…

The condensed nature of the college football season puts a high premium on every game. While the first month of the season can be a trial-and-error adjustment period for some programs, it’s also high stakes for teams expecting to be flawless in the loss column. Programs with championship aspirations and head coaches hoping to avoid the hot seat must come out of the gate fast. Depending on the docket, that’s easier for some teams than others. These 10 players are vital to the outlook of teams facing especially challenging opening months of the 2024 campaign. Arizona QB Noah FifitaHeading into a new conference under the direction of a new coach, Fifita returns with friend and favorite target Tetairoa McMillan after leading Arizona to one of its best seasons in program history. The d…

Formula 1’s winningest, most visible driver, Lewis Hamilton, got called the N-word by FF1 champion Nelson Piquet in an interview during the 2021 season. Piquet is the father of 2021 F1 world champion Max Verstappen’s girlfriend Kelly. Verstappen is Hamilton’s biggest rival in F1, and that’s about as far as I got before l found a hangnail more interesting than car racing. Speaking on a podcast in his native Portuguese, Piquet used a slur that’s the equivalent of the N-word in Brazil while talking about Hamilton, which is pretty jarring if you were under the illusion that Formula 1 is a classier NASCAR. Nope, it’s just as reprehensible as America’s favorite motorsport, but with exotic locales such as Monaco and Melbourne that aren’t synonymous with racism like Alabama and …

Last week, we ran staffers’ nominations for shitty things of 2017 that should stay in 2017. Because we are bad at organization, we left out some things. Here they are. The Majestic Plural Being neither a sovereign nor a pope, I’ve never had trouble keeping track of how many of me there are. Pay any attention at all, though, and you’ll notice that a lot of people either are having trouble with this or are speaking not only for themselves but for God, or the Commonwealth, or, more usually, everyone—me, presumably, included. As I can only assume many people do, I keep a running list of examples of this, if just to keep track of all the things I’ve apparently been thinking and doing that I wasn’t aware of. This is how I can tell you that I have been living, with you, in a “ho…

Here we go. The United States women’s national team is taking on Japan in the World Cup final. Follow along as we yell and jingoistically babble our way through the game while the Americans attempt to Do The Whole Shit for the first time since 1999. …