Skip to content
- Washington upsets Dallas: One of the charms of the National Football League is that the very best teams are only a little better than the worst teams. The gap between them is less than in other sports. The gap between good teams and bad teams is even smaller. Thus the expression “on any given Sunday” or, in this case, Monday night. The Washington Redskins beat the Dallas Cowboys 20-17 in overtime. The story of the game was the great play of Washington’s understudy quarterback, Colt McCoy, and the potential re-injury of Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo’s surgically repaired back.
Line: The Cowboys lost, but if Tony Romo turns out to be okay, they should feel like they won.
- The topsy turvy continued in the NHL: Seems like it was just one of those nights when the unexpected thing kept happening. The Edmonton Oilers upset the Montreal Canadiens 3-0 and the New York Rangers scored five goals (five!!) in the third period to beat the Minnesota Wild in a game that was marred by violence.
Line: What the huh?
- The quiet before the storm: Yesterday was a pretty quiet day in sports. Today is the complete opposite: the NBA season begins, the World Series might end if the Giants win, and the NHL has a full slate of games. Tune in to our sports forecast for the day for more coverage.
- The Giants Ace Game Five: The San Francisco Giants won game five of the World Series thanks largely to their ace pitcher, Madison Bumgarner, who threw a complete game shutout. That means he pitched for all nine innings and didn’t let in a single run. The Kansas City Royals tried their best but just couldn’t figure out how to manufacture a run against him. The Giants are now one win away from winning their third World Series in five years.
Line: The Royals were being held up as potentially having invented a new strategy in baseball. Last night taught us that nothing beats a great starting pitcher.
What’s Next: Game Six is Tuesday night at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.
- An overstuffed day of NFL football: On most Sundays during the fall, there’s NFL football on television from 1 p.m. ET to around 11:30 p.m. ET. Yesterday, the league one-upped itself by starting its first game at 9:30 a.m. ET. That’s fourteen hours of straight football! Just in case you didn’t watch it all, we’ve got one liners about all the games, so you can talk about them at work today.
Line: Woke up, watched football, went to sleep.
- CONCACAF Champions: The United States Women’s national soccer team finished off its World Cup qualifying run in the CONCACAF (The Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) region with a 6-0 win over Costa Rica. American Hero, Abby Wambach, scored four goals to bring her total up to 177, the most of any woman or man in international competition. The American team was dominant during this World Cup qualifying tournament. Not only didn’t they lose a game but they weren’t even scored on once.
Line: [silently bows down to show respect for Wambach and co.]
- Anything you can do…: The San Diego Chargers are a really good football team. Nothing about losing 35-32 to the Denver Broncos last night makes me think differently and that’s what’s so remarkable about the Denver Broncos right now. They look like they are playing football on another level. Everyone else is playing checkers while they’re playing chess. Everyone else is strolling around while they’re racewalking. It’s pretty impressive.
Line: The Denver Broncos are just playing on a whole nother level right now.
- Fallen Giant: The Boston Bruins have struggled to start the season. They lost last night, 3-2 to the New York Islanders, to fall to 4-5 on the year but the bigger loss was that of their 6’9″ captain, Zdeno Chara. Chara damaged some ligaments in his knee (no more specific information is available) and is said to be out for 4-6 weeks.
Line: A slow start is not all that worrying but losing Chara for any sustained time is.
- Huskies put up a fight: The college football game between the 1-5 Connecticut Huskies and the 5-1 East Carolina Pirates was not expected to be close. Vegas had the Pirates as a 28 point favorite. The Connecticut Huskies looked ready to upset their opponents when they scored 14 points in the third quarter to tie the game. The East Carolina Pirates fought back in the fourth quarter and scored the final 10 points of the game to win 31 to 21.
Line: Connecticut made it closer than people though but in the end, the Pirates’ class showed.
- Royals win to tie World Series at 1-1: That’s right, the Royals answered everyone’s questions about how they were going to react to losing their first game of the playoffs by exploding in the sixth inning to shift game two of the World Series from a 2-2 tie to a 7-2 blow-out. The Giants did tie a World Series record but it’s not a particularly good one — they used five pitchers in that one inning. None were all that successful.
Line: Looks like we’ve got a real, competitive series going on!
What’s Next: Game Three is at 8 p.m. ET, Friday, October 24, on Fox.
- National Hockey League honors Canada: The NHL reacted to yesterday’s shootings in Ottawa by postponing the game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Ottawa Senators that was supposed to take place in Ottawa last night. In Pittsburgh, the Penguins showed their sympathy and support by lighting the ice like a Canadian flag. The fans sang along to Oh Canada as if it was their own anthem. In Edmonton, it is the fans anthem.
- Losing but still laughing: Rex Ryan, the coach of the not-very-good New York Jets crashed a press conference call and nominally posed as a reporter while asking a question to a player from the opposing team in this weekend’s upcoming matchup. Ryan is always good for a chuckle. When being interviewed for the Jets coaching job, he took a road trip with the team’s general manager who said he knew Ryan was the right man for the job when, after spilling a giant limeade on his lap, he shouted, “On no! The dress sweats!”
What’s Next: The Jets play the Buffalo Bills Sunday, October 26, at 1 p.m. ET on CBS
- A Royal Surprise: After eight straight wins in the playoffs, the Kansas City Royals finally lost in the first game of the World Series. The San Francisco Giants jumped on them early, with three runs in the first inning, as if to say, “things are going to be different now that you’re playing us.” The Royals could never quite get their feet on the ground and ended up losing 7-1. If you missed our preview of the World Series (really just a reblog of the two best other previews out there,) read it here.
Line: Now we’ll see what the Royals are made of.
What’s Next: Game two is tonight, at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.
- Giant scores in the Champions League: As we explained in our article about the UEFA Champions League, the tournament is set up with the twin goals of inclusion and competitive balance. Yesterday’s slate of games had a few examples of what happens when inclusion overwhelms balance. Bayern Munich beat AS Roma 7-1, Chelsea beat NK Maribor, 6-0, and Shakhtar Donetsk beat BATE Borisov 7-0. They weren’t all blow-outs though, the most exciting a surprising result was a comeback 2-2 draw between Manchester City and CSKA Moscow.
Line: If you let all the champions of all the leagues, even the small ones, into the tournament, sometimes you’re gonna get some blow-outs.
What’s Next: Another set of games today at 2:45 p.m. ET on ESPN3 and ESPN Deportes.
- Cowboys waive Sam: That’s right, remember Michael Sam? The first openly gay person to be drafted by a major professional sports team? After being cut by that team before the season started, Sam was signed by the Dallas Cowboys to play on their practice squad. Yesterday he was cut by the Cowboys. This doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t good enough, practice squads are pretty small and teams often need to cut players for positional reasons (they need an extra wide receiver there more than they need a defensive end, for example.) Still, it means that Sam is another step farther from landing a contract as a roster player for a team. Hopefully this is a case of one-step-back-two-steps-forward. The New England Patriots just lost their best defensive end (the position Sam plays) for a month yesterday… maybe they’ll sign Sam?
Line: People get cut from practice squads all the time for all sorts of reasons. Let’s hope this isn’t the last we hear of Sam.
- Pittsburgh win, Houston loses: The Monday Night Football game was a game of streaks. The Texans had the first streak during which they opened a 13-0 lead against the Steelers. Then, the Steelers had the next one when they scored 21 points in the final two minutes of the first half! That was the decisive streak. After that, the teams traded points in the fourth quarter but the game was really decided in those last two minutes of the first half.
Line: Sometimes, you can play well enough to win for 58 minutes and bad enough to lose in the other two.
- U.S. Women perfect through three: The U.S. Women’s National Soccer team is perfect through three games of World Cup qualifying. They beat Haiti 6-0 last night to advance to the semifinals on Friday against the winner of the Mexico v. Jamaica game tonight with a 3-0 record in the group stage. This isn’t surprising, the level of competition in North America and the Caribbean, with the exception of Canada, is not at the U.S.’s level.
Line: No surprises here.
What’s Next: A semifinal game on Friday against Mexico or Jamaica. The winner will qualify for the World Cup.
- Baseball’s long wait is over: Nothing happened yesterday in the baseball playoffs, just like nothing happened on Sunday, Saturday, or Friday. That’s right, just before the World Series, baseball took a four day break from having games. I don’t know about you but any momentum I had as a casual baseball fan to watch the games feels like it has dissipated. It also feels a little cheezy because it seems like baseball was trying to avoid having the first game of the World Series go up against college or professional football because their ratings would look bad in comparison.
Line: Thursday to Tuesday is too long a wait between games.
What’s Next: Game One of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.
- Football, football, football: It was another full day of football. Sunday culminated with a record-breaking moment from Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning but there was lots of action before that. Get all the information you need to engage in football small-talk from our NFL One Liners column.
- NASCAR single elimination: Three NASCAR drivers needed to win Sunday’s race to stay alive in the playoffs, called the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Only one driver could win. That was Brad Keselowski who needed and got a little help on the last lap from Matt Kenseth. Coincidentally, the two of them had gotten into a physical altercation after the previous week’s race. NASCAR, it’s like professional wrestling except with cars.
Line: Car racing, like politics, makes for strange bedfellows.
- Liverpool gets a gift: Own goals (scoring on yourself) happen in all sports but they’re most tragic in soccer where goals happen so rarely. Queens Park Rangers had climbed their way back to a 2-2 tie against Liverpool yesterday when, right before the game ended, Steven Caulker scored against his own team! Gah!
Line: Losing on an own goal in extra time has got to be the worst (sports) thing ever!
- And then there were two: The San Francisco Giants finished off their series with the St. Louis Cardinals in a 6-3 victory. The game was closer than it sounds from the score. The last three runs were scored on a home run by Travis Ishikawa in the ninth inning. The Giants actually had to score one run in the eight to tie the game at three runs apiece before winning it in the ninth. Although the game was close, the series was not — the Giants won four games to one. It’s been a pattern this playoffs. For all the excitement over the Royals run and the close individual games, the series scored have all been sweeps or three or four games to one. I, for one, would like to see the World Series go six or seven games.
Line: The Giants don’t lose championships on even years but the Royals don’t seem to lose at all!
What’s Next: The Giants play game one of the World Series against the Royals on Tuesday, October 21, at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.
- The Jets were valiant but the Patriots won: In the continuing feud between the New York Jets and the New England Patriots, last night’s game was typical. The Jets came into the game with a losing record, the Pats with a winning one. The Jets played the Pats better than one would expect given their respective records and rosters. Tom Brady played great and the Pats found a way to win. The final score was 27-25 and the Jets had a chance in the last second to win on a 58 yard field goal. That’s pretty far to kick a football, two yards farther than the Jets’ kicker had ever successfully kicked before, but we’ll never know if he was going to make it because a Patriot managed to block it at the line of scrimmage.
Line: Brady and Bellichick won’t be around forever to beat the Jets infinitely but they’ll probably outlast the Jets quarterback and coach if the Jets keep losing.
- Double overtime in college football: The Utah Utes barely got by the Oregon State Beavers (how come pro teams don’t have such awesome names?) 29-23 last night. In fact, they needed double over time and 229 and three touchdowns from running back Devontae Boooker to do it. That’s a good two or three games for most running backs! This game does nothing to dispel the sneaking suspicion that the PAC 12 might be the strongest conference in the country.
Line: You gotta say, the college football overtime rules, where teams get alternating possessions starting at the 25 yard line until one scores more than the other, are really exciting!
- The Royals are in the World Series: The Kansas City Royals continued their magical post season run last night, beating the Orioles 2-1 in the game and 4-0 in the best-four-out-of-seven series. The Royals will host the first game of the World Series next Tuesday. This gives us plenty of time to appreciate their achievement so far! Winning eight games in a row is unusual; eight playoff games in a row is almost unheard of; eight playoff games after being one of the least successful sports franchises in any sport in the country for the last 25 years? Incredible.
Line: There’s plenty of time to analyze and project and worry before Tuesday. Let’s just enjoy today.
- One small step for the Giants: The San Francisco Giants are one game away from joining the Royals for a date in the World Series after beating the St. Louis Cardinals 6-4 thanks to some great pitching by Yusmeiro Petit and some not-so-great fielding by the Cardinals. The Giants won the World Series in the last two even years (2010 and 2012) so if you’re really superstitious, you’re beginning to wonder if something is up here…
Line: The Cardinals keep shooting themselves metaphorically in the foot. I just hope that if they lose, they don’t lose on another mistake.
What’s Next: Game five is today at 8 p.m. ET on FS1.
- U.S. women win but don’t inspire: The U.S. Women’s National Soccer team won its first World Cup qualifying game last night 1-0 against Trinidad & Tobago. A win is a win, but it won’t be analyzed that way by fans of the team. We expect domination from a team that is looking to win its first world cup in 16 years next year in Canada, especially against an opponent who we normally beat decisively. That said, the team will take the win and move on. They’ve got four more games in the next eleven days, all of which are opportunities to improve.
Line: Sure, we won, but if last night’s performance is representative, we won’t win the World Cup next year.
What’s Next: A World Cup qualifying match tomorrow, Friday, October 17, at 8 p.m versus Guatemala on FS1.
- Royals yet to lose: Remember way back when the baseball playoffs started and the very first game was a freakishly exciting one between the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland Athletics? The Royals haven’t lost a game since winning that one. They beat their next opponents 3-0 in a best three-out-of-five and after last night’s game, they’re up 3-0 in their best-four-out-of-seven series with the Baltimore Orioles.
Line: The Royals might never lose again!
What’s Next: Game four, today, 4 p.m. ET on TBS
- Giants sneak by Cardinals: The other series remaining in the baseball playoffs has been a lot closer. The Giants lead two games to one after just barely beating the Cardinals yesterday thanks to a wild throw by a player trying to field a bunt in the tenth inning.
Line: The other series might not be close but this one is. That’s two games in a row that ended 5-4.
What’s Next: Game four, today, 8 p.m. ET on FS1
- Honduras even with the United States: The U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team played an exhibition game last night against Honduras. After an early goal by Jozy Altidore in his first return to the world stage since he pulled up lame in the first game of the World Cup, the U.S. tried to hold on to the lead. They weren’t successful thanks to a goal in the 86th minute by Maynor Figueroa. That’s two games in a row that the team let up a goal in the last five minutes — not a good trend, even in exhibition games.
Line: I know they’re just friendly games but you never like to see the team concede late goals.
