🔥 Benches clear

📝 One of the worst contracts in sports history could finally come to an end. Anthony Rendon, who signed a seven-year, $245 million contract with the Angels in 2020, is in talks to have the final year of his deal bought out. In six seasons with the Angels, Rendon has played in just 257 games (out of a possible 1,032) — hitting just 22 home runs over that span (12 fewer than he hit in his 2019 season with the Nationals). 

• Fun fact: Ted Williams missed three full seasons to fight in WWII and still managed to play more games over that five year span than Rendon did with the Angels.
  

• The only bright spot of the Rendon era was him taking his first-ever at bat left-handed and hitting a bomb. After that, he mostly just assaulted fans who made fun of him. 

🏈 JJ McCarthy might be the worst QB in the NFL. After 11 games, this no longer feels like an overreaction. The Vikings rookie quarterback — who says he has an alter ego on gamedays called “Nine” — now has a league-worst passer rating of 57.9 (NFL average hovers in the low 90s). He fittingly has NINE interceptions in just six games (an homage to his super cool alter ego). 

• This “Nine” highlight tape will go down in the history books. 

🍷 Jack Hughes is using his time on injury reserve to date popstars. The Devils star, who’s out for eight weeks from a wine glass-induced, dinner party injury, was spotted out at a restaurant in New York with singer Tate McRae. Surely, she’s just trying to recruit him to her hometown Calgary Flames. 

• Given how Hughes ended up with that cast on his hand, we hope Tate insisted on him using a straw at dinner. 

🥜 Juan Jennings had a really good reason to start a postgame fight on Monday Night Football. It turns out, the 49ers wide receiver was blatantly punched in the family jewels by Panthers safety Tre’von Moehrig right before the end of the game.  

• Moherig was later handed a one game suspension for the low blow. I think it would’ve been a more fitting punishment to just let Jennings take a cheap shot at him. An eye for an eye. 

🥊 The Stanley Cup rematch ended in a benches-clearing brawl. I guess there was still some bad blood leftover from the past two Stanley Cups. Somehow this wasn’t even the best hockey fight of the week. The refs were feeling a little old school on  Sunday night and let these two beat the lights off each other uninterrupted. 

🧑‍⚖️ Bill Belichick's girlfriend is suing Pablo Torre. The popular sports journalist is getting taken to court by the 24-year-old Jordon Hudson. Torre ran an entire podcast series revealing how the two met when she was just 19, how she pushed her way into a Dunkin Donuts commercial with Belicheck, and the story behind the infamous Ring cam video of a shirtless Bill doing the walk of shame. 

⚾️ The Blue Jays have fired the free agency starting gun. The defending AL Champs broke the seal for the offseason, signing Dylan Cease — one of the top pitchers on the free agent market — to a seven-year $210-million deal. That’s a lot of cash, but look on the bright side, it can’t possibly turn out worse than the Anthony Rendon deal. 

🤦 The Giants can’t stop themselves from blowing leads. Fire your coach, start Jameis at quarterback, it doesn’t matter: The New York Giants will find a way to lose football games. Here’s a quick refresher of all the games they’ve blown this year. 

Welcome back to the weekly pick 'em game.

We’re putting $50 gift cards up for grabs for anyone who can correctly pick the winners of six games over the weekend.

• Weekly check-in: Take a look through the sports industry job board.

• You thought hockey fights were good? Lacrosse would like to have a word. 

• You can buy Pavel Datsyuk’s old Christmas tree on Facebook Marketplace.

• Checking in on Cam Skattebo: It’s not looking good…

• The best Thanksgiving NFL moments of all time.

Shoutout @Jojo1137 for hitting this 8-leg NBA monster this week. Ivica Zubac over 2.5 assists and Alex Sarr to get a steal is as niche as it gets, and we love it. 

Check out the full parlay here.

Alright, that’s enough yelling for one Friday.

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