Kyler(rhea)

Welcome back to our weekly pick 'em game. Once again, we’re putting five $20 gift cards up for grabs for anyone who can correctly pick a slate of five games for the weekend 

Five players who nail all of their picks will get a $20 gift card of their choosing sent straight to their email. Send this link to your groupchat, boss, ex-girlfriend…we don’t care, just share the fun. 

Click here to lock in your picks for this week. 

💰 The Kawhi salary cap saga just keeps getting crazier. The Clippers star reportedly asked the Raptors for $10 million in no-show sponsorship deals as well as a stake in the Toronto Maple Leafs when he was a free agent. When the Raptors execs told his camp that brands would want him to actually do commercials in exchange for the cash, they responded “We don’t want to do anything.”

• It may be shady, but you kind of have to respect his commitment to doing the least amount of work possible. 

⚾️ Nick Kurtz just recorded the most embarrassing strikeout in baseball history. Right after hitting a 447-foot bomb, the A’s star whiffed on the three slowest pitches in MLB history. This is arguably worse than striking out in a beer league softball game (we’ve all been there). 

🍻 Pro golfer Tyrrell Hatton detailed a dark night at the bar with Team Europe’s Ryder Cup team. Hatton gave an all-time press conference this week where he admitted to waking up in a pool of his own vomit after a 2023 Ryder Cup celebration went off the rails. 

• Hearing his full roster of drinks for the night, we blame the Margarita. Tequila’s always the culprit. 

🏈 After all the uproar, the RedZone commercials only lasted 1 minute. We’d prefer seven hours of commercial-free football, but 60 seconds of ads isn’t the end of the world. Plus, it gave us an early contender for best graphic of the NFL season. 

🤦‍♂️ Morgan Wallen accidentally nailed Jose Bautista’s wife with a baseball bat. During his concert in Toronto, the country singer reenacted Bautista’s signature bat flip and ended up drilling Jose’s wife with the bat. It’s definitely not the first (or last) time that Wallen threw something he shouldn’t have. 

⛳️ Andy Murray is making a run at professional golf. The British tennis legend has entered a regional qualifier for next year’s Open Championship. He might not pull off the win, but we can guarantee his swing will look better than LeBron’s. 

💩 The Rockies have been outscored by almost 400 runs this year. Everyone knows the Rockies suck, but this is a new low. If their run differential of -386 stands, it would be by far the worst losing margin in the history of baseball. 

• To borrow Brad Pitt’s quote in Moneyball “There’s rich teams, then there're poor teams… then there’s fifty feet of crap, and then there’s us the Rockies.”

We’re a week into football season, so naturally, fantasy football owners everywhere are already panic-texting their group chats trying to trade Jamar Chase after his four-point performance. 

Let’s dive into some of the overreactions, storylines and surprises from Week One.

These aren’t the QBs we expected to be talking about…

• Daniel Jones is good now? Jones went from a hail mary waiver pickup to posting the fifth-best QBR in the league, tossing three TDs and no picks in a Colts blowout. Somewhere, a Giants fan is punching drywall. We apologize, Danny Dimes, we weren’t familiar with your game. 

• Aaron Rodgers is all the way back. Three years ago he was MVP, last year he was limping off with a torn Achilles, and now he’s back to dropping dots in the laps of his receivers. What can we say, Unc’s still got it.
  

• J.J. McCarthy could be a dawg . The rookie QB dropped three TDs, led the Vikings to a comeback win over the Bears, and won NFC Offensive Player of the Week (which, let's be honest, is absurd). McCarthy settled in nicely, but I wouldn’t be putting the house on him to win Rookie of the Year just yet. 

Way too early overreactions.

• The Detroit Lions are cooked. Everyone needs to relax. Yes, the Packers put a licking on the Lions and Jarred Goff on Sunday, but let's not forget what this team has done the last three seasons. Let’s not forget that they have the best RB duo in football, a top receiving corps, and one of the coolest head coaches in the game. They’re going to be just fine.
  

• Bo Nix has started his sophomore slump. The Broncos QB had a rough week, as anyone who had him on their fantasy team would tell you, but the panic is overblown. He led all rookies in passing yards last year with 3,775, which is even more impressive when you remember that QB class included Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye. He had a bad week, but he’ll (probably) figure it out.
  

• Justin Fields is that guy. The Jets QB had a good week. He put up 218 yards, completed 77% of his passes and most importantly, he didn’t turn the ball over. Still, let's not pretend that Fields is suddenly the answer to the Jets problems. There are still a lot of missing pieces on this roster that aren’t going to be covered up by Fields. Exhibit A? They still lost to the Steelers in what could've been one of Fields' best games in the NFL. 

Not an overreaction: We may have already gotten the game of the year. 

The Bills came back from a 40-25 deficit in the fourth quarter to beat the Ravens in a Buffalo thriller. At the 8 minute mark in the 4th, the Bills had a 1.1% chance of winning the game. 

Enter Josh Allen…

The Bills QB threw for an absurd 251 yards in the fourth quarter to bring his team all the way back. That’s more than 21 other quarterbacks in the league had in their entire games week one. 

The Buffalo Super Bowl curse feels like it's in real danger this year.

Bottom line: It’s Week 2. Nobody knows anything. Don’t panic trade half of your fantasy team or give up on your Lions Super Bowl bet. We’ve still got a lot of football left.

Shoutout to @Pokerstierman for this absolute centipede this week with a 105x return. You know you’re doing something right when you hit a full ten-legger betting only on Aaron Judge and Kyle Schwarber. 

Check out the full parlay here.

🎞️ On this day in 2011, tennis GOAT Novak Djokovic won his first U.S. Open title, beating Rafael Nadal 6-2, 6-4, 6-7, 6-1. To think that Djokovic has won 20 more Grand Slams since that day — and is somehow still playing — is absurd.

Alright, that’s enough yelling for one Friday.

Got a hotter take? Think we missed something? Want to argue that the Leafs are actually cursed by a 1932 ghost?

Reply to this email, ideally with the subject line “listen here you clown.”

And if this newsletter hits harder than Aaron Donald after a fresh smelling salt, do us a favour:

Forward it to a friend who lives for the group chat debate.