Category: News

Sunday was the worst kicking day of the season around the NFL, as missed extra points and field goals were a story throughout the early window across pro football. Nowhere was it worse than in Cincinnati, where the game refused to end thanks to missed kicks on both sides, with the two teams combining to miss five consecutive field goals to take the lead late after it was tied at 22-22 — thanks in part to a missed extra point by the Packers early in the game.

It started with a missed 36 yarder by Mason Crosby with just over two minutes to play. Evan McPherson followed that up by doinking a 57-yarder off the right upright with 26 seconds to go, setting the Packers up near midfield needing just a field goal to get a win themselves. After moving the ball inside the 35, Mason Crosby strolled out for a game-winner at the buzzer from 51 yards away, only to tug it left (again) and send the game to overtime.

The Packers picked off Joe Burrow on the Bengals first series and were immediately in “field goal range,” a concept that had lost all meaning at this point, and after playing very conservatively, Crosby again yanked a game-winning kick left to give Cincy life once more.

The Bengals were able to get into Green Bay territory and set up a long game-winning attempt of their own, but this time McPherson pulled the kick left, clipping the flag on top of the goal post as it sailed just wide. It was so close that McPherson and the Bengals were celebrating, thinking they made it, only to learn it was, in fact, not good and the game would continue.

Green Bay would eventually get into field goal range thanks to a rather incredible throw on 3rd and long from Aaron Rodgers to Randall Cobb, but it came up just shy of the first down. On 4th and inches with two minutes to play, the Packers trotted Crosby out once again with the game on the line from 49 yards out, but this time the veteran was able to knock it through, putting a merciful end to an excruciating game on both sides.

It was a truly horrific kicking performance all the way around, and Crosby’s reaction after hitting a game-winner says it all, as he just shrugged and strolled towards the sideline with an exasperated “finally.” On the other side, it’ll be a lot of “what if” talk and frustration for the Bengals, who will feel like they let this one get away — and not totally due to the right foot of McPherson.

Democrats control all three branches of government, but that hasn’t stopped one of their biggest arch-nemeses: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The longtime progressive adversary somehow seems to have more power than ever, due in part to his utter shamelessness: He will do anything, even threaten to tank the economy, to show off the power he should no longer have. So when he finally agreed last week to raise the debt ceiling through December, thus avoiding an almost certain economic apocalypse, SNL wasn’t exactly impressed.

During the most recent episode’s Weekend Update, Colin Jost saved a small but savage section for Congress’ most powerful Republican. He mentioned McConnell’s move this week, but he didn’t praise him for clearing the lowest possible bar. Instead, Jost showed a picture of McConnell smiling and flashing a thumbs up, which he said showed him “watching a child fall into the gorilla enclosure.”

McConnell’s gesture this week ensured that we’ll all be back to worrying about the debt ceiling limit — which is sky high thanks to wild spending by the Trump administration, under McConnell’s watch — in two months. “At that point,” Jost joked, “it’ll be almost Christmas, and McConnell will be busy going around to Toys for Tots bins and gluing them shut.”

Jost and co-anchor Michael Che had a lot of scorn to go around during their segment, scorching the likes of Facebook, Instagram, even the night’s host, Kim Kardashian West. But only McConnell got jokes about delighting in the misery of children.

You can watch the segment in the video above.

Olivia Rodrigo has had a great 2021. The singer had her smash debut single “Drivers License,” which spent several weeks at No. 1 on the singles chart. Her debut album Sour was also a big success, debuting atop the Billboard 200. In a recent interview on CBS Sunday Morning, Rodrigo talked about the many “heartbreak songs” that can be found on her discography, as well as how much they relate to her current life.

“I’ve always been obsessed with heartbreak songs. I wrote heartbreak songs before I ever had a boyfriend, honestly,” Rodrigo admitted. “I’ve always been obsessed with that feeling. There’s nothing more painful that being in that feeling of loss.” She discussed “Drivers License” and how personal that song is to her. “I just remember writing it and feeling like it was a page ripped out of my diary, because it was so intimate and vulnerable,” she said. “I just think there was no other option for me: I had to write it, I had to write it for me, to get it out. I would feel sick if I kept all of that in, but really at the core of it I had to do it for myself.”

She continued, “I was really sad, I was a 17-year-old girl going through my first real heartbreak, but I think a lot of people also think that — listening to my music — I’m a sad, depressed person; that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Definitely not crying on my bedroom floor all the time.”

This comes after Rodrigo spoke to Teen Vogue about working on her sophomore album. “I’m gonna take my time to figure out exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it,” she said.

The Houston Texans are a desperate team, as anyone starting Davis Mills at quarterback is wont to be. They’re going for it on fourth down regularly these days, which certainly seemed necessary when they lost 40-0 to the Buffalo Bills. Sunday’s game against the New England Patriots saw more trickery and desperation, but to much better results. That is, until it all went disastrously wrong on a play where, somehow, the Texans blocked their own punt.

After a Mills flea flicker touchdown put the Texans up 22-9 in the third quarter, Houston was forced into punt formation for the first time all game on the next possession. This is a special teams unit that had already missed two extra points and had a kickoff go out of bounds, and they somehow decided that punter Cameron Johnston should get involved in the chicanery.

Johnston was in punt formation when things got wonky before the snap. He ran up to the line of scrimmage, apparently to run something other than a punt, but then aborted the fake punt and backpedaled a bit. But he didn’t go back to his original punting position 15 yards deep in the backfield, which is why his punt attempt doinked right off a blocking teammate’s helmet.

There are a lot of unanswered questions here, and my fear is that those involved will take these horrible secrets to the grave rather than admit what the hell actually happened here. Why did Johnson try to punt it from three yards behind his own lineman? Why did they not just call a timeout and admit whatever was going on here did not go according to plan? Why did he kick what clearly was not going to clear the line of his own teammates, let alone a Patriots special teams unit clearly gunning for the punter in a weird position?

The play set the Patriots up in Texans territory, but they only managed a field goal out of what was a horrible miscue. Later in the game, Johnston managed to get off a punt from normal depth that wasn’t a complete disaster. So maybe don’t expect to see Houston attempt something like that again anytime soon. If only for the concussion risk to their own lineman.

The Brooklyn Nets will open the season in Milwaukee against the Bucks on ring night for the now-defending champs, and for that game and their second contest in Philadelphia, they will be at full strength. However, when they return to the Barclays Center on October 24 for the start of a six-game homestand, they will play that stretch without the services of Kyrie Irving, who continues to refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine and cannot play home games due to New York City’s vaccine mandate.

It is one of the strangest situations we’ve seen in some time, as a superstar player will, quite literally, not be able to play in 42 games this season — the 41 home games for the Nets and their one road game against the Knicks — as it stands now. There were reports the Nets could have “hard decisions” to make regarding Irving, but it appears that they have simply accepted the fact that they won’t have one of their stars for half of their season, as Steve Nash spoke about the situation matter of factly on Sunday.

It’s not a wholly surprising quote at this point, but it’s just confirmation that the Nets are just going to try and figure out how to have a part-time starter, who only plays on the road. This is a franchise that has gone all-in on its Big Three and with all the good that comes with that on the court as the title favorites, it has also put them in a situation where they couldn’t do much to press Irving into getting the vaccine and now must go forward in a precarious position. They certainly have the talent to still make this work, but this isn’t a situation that seems like it will have a resolution before the playoffs and, for a team that figures to have homecourt advantage for at least one or two series, the margin for error and injury now for a team with title or bust expectations shrinks considerably.

At the end of August, Halsey shared her fourth album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, a project that arrived just a year after her third release, Manic. With four albums to her name, it should be noted that Halsey has just as many appearances on Saturday Night Live as well. She returned to the Emmy-winning show last night to deliver a pair of performances for the Kim Kardashian-hosted episode. Halsey started the night by impressing the crowd with a stunning rendition of “I Am Not A Woman, I’m A God” where she stood tall and proud on the futuristic stage in a leather bodysuit.

Later on in the night, Halsey returned with a fiery performance on “Darling” with Lindsey Buckingham to conclude yet another strong appearance on SNL. Halsey’s first performance on the show came back in 2018 when she played her “Bad At Love” single from her second album Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. The following year she did double duty as the musical guest and host for an episode, and in 2020, she once again found herself on the Studio 8H stage where she performed “You Should Be Sad” and a medley of “Finally” and “Beautiful Stranger.”

You can watch Halsey’s performances in the videos above.

If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power is out now via Capitol Records. Get it here.

There are few joys quite like watching your favorite sports team pull off a massive upset. Those moments are usually spent in the company of other fans who are experiencing the same emotions as you, or, at the least, you are in the comfort of your own home on your couch.

However, for Effrage Davis, a Texas A&M fan living in the Quad Cities area of Illinois, she had to deal with the stress of watching her Aggies try to hold on to beat Alabama while live on the air for WQAD 8 News. Davis, the station’s meteorologist, was asked to give the weather report with 90 seconds to go in the A&M-Alabama game and, to her credit, had warned the anchor that this wouldn’t go well as she was heavily invested in her Aggies.

The result is a rather hilarious video of her freaking out when the game-winning field goal went through the uprights mid-report, as she tried her best to power through.

The best part is that she’s delivering this weather report to folks in Illinois and Iowa who, while maybe intrigued by the Alabama-A&M game, are not nearly as invested in it as she is. The “can it wait til after the game is over” question is one we’ve all asked at some point when watching our favorite team, and Aggie fans all over can relate to this freakout, even if many of her viewers weren’t as dialed.

Through two episodes, the new additions to the cast and writing group for Season 48 of Saturday Night Live have been pretty easy to spot. James Austin Johnson has played Joe Biden and Lindsey Graham in consecutive weeks, and Sarah Sherman has looked comfortable in the later sketches where things get a bit weirder.

But Saturday’s second episode of the season saw a trio of new writers for the show air a digital short that stole the show on a night where Kim Kardashian and her very famous family took up much of the show’s oxygen. Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy, sketch comics and writers that make up Please Don’t Destroy, starred in a short about some very weird hard seltzers that replicated the style of videos that have seen them go viral on social media in recent months.

The concept is simple: the three were in Studio 8H late at night working on the show when one of them decides it’s time to unwind with a hard seltzer. But things go off the rails when the brand of seltzer is revealed: J.C. Penny.

These aren’t just weird companies making seltzers: they taste like JC Penny, too. Ben then arrives with Jiffy Lube-branded hard seltzers, including a seasonal variety pack that includes flavors like “leather seats” and “windows.”

The quick back-and-forth between the three is familiar to anyone who has watched their shorts about, say, a fictional Shailene Woodley video game.

It’s unclear just how often we’ll see Please Don’t Destroy in front of the SNL cameras, but it was certainly a welcome break from more boilerplate celebrity sketches like The People’s Kourt that aired on Saturday.

For the second straight week, SNL went political with its cold open. But with not much changing with an infrastructure bill dragged down by Democratic infighting and Republican obstructionism, the sketch comedy show settled on a new way to make fun of congressional inaction: Facebook.

It’s been a very bad week for Facebook, with evidence emerging that not only do those working for the company know they played a part in disinformation campaigns and the MAGA riot on January 6, but they actually tried to cover it all up. So a sketch where Facebook’s whistleblower is interviewed by Congress about all the wrong things certainly makes sense. The gist of the sketch is simple: most people in Congress are too old and out of touch to even really understand just how the social network’s algorithm can radicalize people. There were also, however, some opportunities for the cast to work on their political impressions.

Aidy Bryant’s Ted Cruz drew wild applause from the studio audience, as well as one of the bigger laughs of the sketch.

“‘Ted Cruz sucks’ isn’t misinformation it’s just one person’s opinion,” the whistleblower says at one point.

SNL newcomer James Auston Johnson also showed off a twist on a Lindsey Graham impression, framing the South Carolina senator as someone obsessed with working out to pull off a cosplay outfit.

“Everyone knows you need the V,” he said during the very suggestive bit. There was also, improbably, an Animorphs reference through some memes.

Facebook was also in the crosshairs of Weekend Update, with Colin Jost making jokes about his former Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg as well.

“Sometimes I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to college and find mark and say ‘Hey man! Can I be part of your company?’” Jost said.

The Austin City Limits music festival got underway last weekend from Zilker Park in Austin, Texas. The showcase is highlighted by performances from Billie Eilish, Miley Cyrus, Tyler The Creator, Doja Cat, and many more. One of the performers many fans looked forward to seeing is Phoebe Bridgers. The singers first set at the festival last weekend went smoothly, but that was not the case for the second weekend.

According to fans who were in attendance, the sound on Bridgers’ stage was cut after she barely went past her set’s allotted time.

As one could imagine, Bridgers and her fans did not respond well to the move from festival organizers. “Lol f*ck acl,” the singer wrote in a tweet after her performance. She also liked a few tweets from fans and peers who were also upset with the way her set came to an end. In one post, a Twitter user wrote, “Shame on the ACL sound techs who cut off Phoebe Bridgers during the climax of her finale for only going 1 minute after her time.”

Singers Jason Isbell and Margo Price even chimed in with thoughts of their own. Isbell wrote, “Make your own festival it’s more fun,” while Price said, “Holy sh*t, they cut your mic?! I would have taken a piss on the stage.”

The incident at Austin City Limits comes after Bridgers shared a studio version of her cover of Bo Burnham’s “That Funny Feeling.”