Category: News

The Browns came into Arrowhead Stadium with a monumental task in front of them. How were they going to upset the No. 1 seeded Kansas City Chiefs? The Chiefs are defending Super Bowl Champs, one of the most prolific offenses in football, and extremely dangerous anytime they get the ball in their hands. To have a chance, you have to make every possession count when you have the ball.

Down 16-3 late in the second quarter, the Browns needed a score of any kind to give them some positive momentum going into halftime. Driving towards the end zone it felt like Cleveland was going to be able to get a field goal at minimum. Then, on a beautiful pitch and catch, Baker Mayfield found Rashard Higgins with room to run. He dove for the pylon and met a Chiefs defender at the goal line. Then the worst rule in football struck. The Browns fumbled the ball into the end zone and it rolled out the side. This is now considered a touchback and Chiefs ball.

This is an absolute momentum killer for the Browns. Instead of going into halftime with a score and primed to get the ball back at the start of halftime, they have to go in with nothing at all. The refs made the correct call, because that’s the way the rule is written, but it makes such little sense that the ball isn’t just placed at the 1-yard line. That’s how a fumble out of bounds is treated everywhere else on the field and it’s frustrating that changes when it comes to the end zones.

To make Browns fans even more frustrated by this play, the replay shows the Chiefs tackler, Dan Sorensen, leading with the crown of his helmet into Higgins head when he makes the hit. Had this been called on the field the refs could have reviewed it and made an unnecessary roughness call, which Gene Steratore said should’ve been called on the CBS broadcast, which would have given the Browns the ball back. Unlike in college, though, helmet-to-helmet hits are not reviewable in the NFL.

After getting the ball on the turnover, the Chiefs managed to drive down the field into field goal range and kick a field goal to up 19-3 at halftime. One play swung potentially the entire game in a disastrous way — and certainly swung a lot of money for bettors who had Cleveland +6 in the first half and lost out on the push.

Ryan Reynolds is such a decent guy that his one public beef is fictitious. (That would be his longtime fake feud with Hugh Jackman.) Last week he even took the time to give one of his fans a special gift. That person is Brody Dery, an 11-year-old with stage 3B Hodgkins Lymphoma and Crohn’s disease. Brody loves Deadpool, and he and his mother, who had to leave her job to help him after he was diagnosed last year, even watched it the night before they got a video from its star (not to mention fellow Canadian).

“I just heard a little bit about your story and I wanted to send you this video and let you know that I’m thinking about you and I’m sending you tons of love and I’m sending you strength, whatever strength I’ve got,” Reynolds tells Brody. He continued:

”

Man, you have a ton of people in your life that love you so much. I know you’ve been going through it, I know it’s been a challenge lately but you know something, Brody, you’re just the man for the job. So I’m sending you lots of love. I hope I get to meet you in person one of these days and hang in there.”

It’s a pretty nice gift, and Brody reportedly flipped when he saw Reynolds addressing him directly “He keeps saying, ‘I feel special – I feel like I’m the movie star,’ ” his mother told local news.

You can watch Reynolds’ video in the tweet above, and it should offer some respite from our wild and crazy news cycle.

(Via EW)

Like most Republicans, Lindsey Graham was once a Donald Trump skeptic, warning of the damage he may do to his party. And like most Republicans, he had one of his unpredictable changes of heart. The South Carolina senator has had the outgoing president’s back for the entirety of his administration, including the last two months, helping him push election fraud lies, even demanding Georgia’s secretary of state illegally throw out votes. So when Graham called on Democrats in the Senate to dismiss Trump’s House impeachment, so the nation can heal, his plea was not met kindly.

Trump was impeached last week, but the Senate is not scheduled to reconvene until after he’s out of office, when the Majority Leader baton will be passed from Mitch McConnell to Chuck Schumer. Graham made public a letter he sent Schumer, in which he argued that they should not follow the House’s lead.

“But now, in your first act as majority leader, rather than begin the national healing that the country so desperately yearns for, you seek vengeance and political retaliation instead,” Graham continued in his letter to Schumer. “While the vice president and Senate Republicans rejected unconstitutional actions, you seek to force upon the Senate, what would itself be but one more unconstitutional action in this disgraceful saga— the impeachment trial of a former president.”

Graham added on Twitter, “We will be delaying indefinitely, if not forever, the healing of this great Nation if we do otherwise.”

But given Graham’s antics over the last couple months, a lot of people called bull.

“A call for healing from a Senator who pushed election lies, claimed Democrats were cheating, and asked @GaSecofState ‘whether Raffensperger had the power to toss all mail ballots in counties found to have higher rates of nonmatching signatures,’” tweeted Jake Tapper.

Others weren’t convinced either.

Some speculated on Graham’s motives.

Perhaps someone who isn’t Lindsey Graham should be the one who calls for unity after one of American history’s most tumultuous presidencies. Or maybe someone who played a key role in creating the division of the last four years shouldn’t be the one demanding forgiveness.

(Via Politico)

Donald Trump will leave office later this week despite, you know, everything. The fallout of the coup attempt that he incited at an early January rally will be felt for years to come, both for Trump in his second impeachment trial and other potential legal liabilities. Those legal consequences are certainly being felt by some of his supporters, hundreds of which have been identified by the FBI and are currently being arrested by authorities. And as it turned out, they got plenty of help not just from random people online, but from within the families of the rioters themselves.

According to The Guardian, a number of people contacted the FBI about members of their own family after they learned they were present in Washington and attended the rally and subsequent storming of the US Capitol. Some of the quotes in the piece really are stunning, especially given the context of how brazen some people were in revealing what they did.

Lopez found out about her in-law’s participation when the woman in question called her aunt from inside the Capitol to brag about “taking back the election”. Lopez, who is 42, said she had known the relative her whole life but had “no qualms” about reporting her.

“If I saw my grandmother making bombs in her basement, or my aunt breaking into a home, I would have to intervene as well – it’s just about doing what’s right,” she said.

Another teenager quoted in the piece revealed that their own mother had attended the riots, posting about it online and speaking to Good Morning America about why she felt the video needed to be made.

The Massachusetts teen Helena Duke received a flood of support this week when she posted a video outing her own mother, aunt and uncle as having attended the Capitol protests.

The 18-year-old said her mother, who appears to be harassing a Black woman in the video shared, previously condemned her for attending Black Lives Matter protests. “If I did nothing, I felt I was as bad as them,” Duke told Good Morning America.

For some of these of these folks, well, they didn’t need anyone to do much detective work because they told on themselves.

The election and its aftermath will certainly be felt by families across America for a long time — it seems, some significantly more than others.

Duke Bootee, born Edward Fletcher, died this past Wednesday at the age of 69 following end-stage congestive heart failure. His wife Rosita confirmed the news as well as his cause of death to Rolling Stone. Fletcher was best known for co-writing and appearing on Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s classic record, “The Message,” a song that has been widely celebrated in the hip-hop world since its release in 1982. Two decades later, in 2002, it became the first hip-hop record to be added to the National Registry and a decade after that, Rolling Stones ranked it at No. 1 on its list of the 100 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs Of All Time.

Fletcher would speak about “The Message” during a 2013 interview with The Guardian. “The neighborhood I was living in, the things I saw — it was like a jungle sometimes in Elizabeth, New Jersey,” he said. “Even though we lived in a nice area, I’d sit in the living room and watch things happening across the street in the park. The lyrics were sort of cinematic: I tried to hold a message up to society.” He added, “Rappers then were in their late teens and made feel-good, upbeat songs to party to, so this was completely new.”

He would eventually step out of the music business in the 1990s and take up teaching. He began as a high school teacher and college professor in New Jersey before he moving to Savannah, GA, in 2007. There, he became a Critical Thinking & Communication lecturer at Savannah State University up until his retirement in 2019.

(via Rolling Stone)

The first game of Sunday’s Divisional round doubleheader saw the Cleveland Browns take on the Chiefs in Kansas City, but for millions of people in the northeastern part of the United States, they were treated to a blank screen when they turned on CBS.

As it turns out some technical difficulties led to many people in Browns country and the tri-state area being without coverage of the start of the game — which was maybe merciful for Browns fans as the Chiefs marched, almost unimpeded, to a touchdown on the opening possession of the game. Still, that didn’t stop there from being a lot of angry NFL fans on Twitter wondering why they were looking at nothing during CBS’ biggest game of the weekend.

The good news is there are some workarounds. ESPN Deportes has the Spanish language broadcast of the game and, for Fios customers and others, that broadcast is working, just sans Romo and Nantz.

Other options include streaming on the NFL app or on NFL.com as you can log in with your TV provider and watch the stream that way. It’s not the ideal setup and people who pay hundreds of dollars a month for cable are understandably upset, but you can still get your Browns-Chiefs fix, it’ll just take a touch more effort than usual.

Griselda is coming off an extremely strong 2020 thanks to projects like Westside Gunn’s Pray For Paris, Amani Caesar’s The Liz, and Benny The Butcher’s Burden Of Proof. The group is already off to a good start in 2021: They recently shared their film, Conflicted, which arrived after the movie’s official soundtrack that saw contributions from Westside, Benny, Caesar, Boldy James, Dave East, Lloyd Banks, and more. However, a noticeable omission from both projects was Conway The Machine, who was nowhere to be found on the soundtrack or in the movie. Now, thanks to a few comments from the rapper on social media, some fans believe he’s on his way out of Griselda.

The @HiphopPedia Twitter shared a tweet with two images on Sunday morning. One image came from an Instagram comment section that sees one fan seemingly under a post from Conway and saying, “Please tell me you haven’t left GRISELDA!” Conway offers a one-word response saying, “sorry.”

In the second image the Buffalo rapper tweets, “Tired of bein silent… then n****s not real as me, that’s why I’m ME f*ck them n****s.” Conway would respond to the tweet from @HiphopPedia, but didn’t deny that there were issues within the group. “No I still have 1 album left,” he said, signaling that a departure could be possible after his next release. Another supporter chimed in with a question and asked, “are you not gonna work with them after that anymore?” Conway then pushed rumors of a departure even further by replying with a gif that showed his uncertainty for a relationship with the group.

Elsewhere, in response to one of his tweets, a Twitter user mentioned Conway and said, “No mention of Conway in the movie, soundtrack or in the nfl promo .. n****s moving funny.” He delivered another short reply to the tweet and simply said, “I don’t exist.” It remains to be seen how Griselda and Conway himself handles the situation moving forward. You can see the interaction between Conway and his fans above.

Life in quarantine is tough for everyone, but for millions of Americans the extended time spent at home amid the coronavirus pandemic has brought a lot more hours to watch TV and movies they may have missed. Or if that sounds boring, they can simply tweet about movies and get their stars to defend them on Twitter.

The latter happened over the weekend when someone on Twitter derided Master and Commander and its star, Russell Crowe, hopped online to slam the critic and praise both the film and its director. The 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World starred Crowe as a seafaring captain during the Napoleonic Wars. The film, though a bit anonymous 17 years later, has a respectable 81 rating on Metacritic (and 7.4 on IMDB if you’re feeling that instead) but the tweet that got things started described it more as a movie that will put you to bed.

The original tweet was from January 8, but it tagged Crowe, who has 2.7 million followers on the site and hopefully isn’t checking his mentions too thoroughly like the rest of us. But he did eventually get back to Ian, defending the film and lavishing praise on director Peter Weir along the way.

Crowe called it a movie for adults, implying the man criticizing him was simply a child. Unfortunately, his distaste for the film isn’t related to any boomer-millennial strife.

But the moment immediately went viral, with a lot of people weighing in on the movie, the critique, and Crowe’s response to boot. There were also a lot of people praising the film despite the viral tweet.

A number of critics were quite literally cheering Crowe on.

There was something fun about seeing a random movie from 17 years ago pop up on Twitter, especially given we are just a few weeks removed from Bean Dad.

If anything, the viral moment is likely to get a few more people watching Master and Commander again, or perhaps for the first time. It’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime, if you need it.

There are two NFL Divisional Playoff games happening on Sunday but once again the dominant talking point of a playoff Sunday is the status of quarterback Deshaun Watson’s discontent with the Houston Texans.

Watson’s frustration with the situation in Houston has been widely reported, and a week ago, word emerged that he could consider pushing for a trade if the Texans don’t make some major organizational changes. Houston has apparently, finally, reached out to interview Chiefs OC Eric Bienemy, who is Watson’s preferred head coaching candidate, and it’s possible that should they hire him things can be smoothed over with the superstar.

However, things only got worse for the Texans this week when the best player in franchise history, Andre Johnson, called out the organization and specifically VP Jack Easterby for regularly “wasting players careers” and telling Watson to stand his ground. On Sunday, reports shifted from “Watson may look to leave Houston” to a growing belief that he has played his last game, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter and Chris Mortensen.

It seems to be a matter of Bienemy or bust if the Texans are to keep Watson around, and as Schefter also reported, the job may not be all that appetizing to someone of Bienemy’s stature right now.

Mortensen and Schefter both went on Sunday NFL Countdown to note that Watson was likely done in Houston, with Miami still as a preferred destination, but what would be fascinating about a Watson trade sweepstakes is that nearly every team in the league would at least have to reach out to see what Houston is looking for. It should be noted that there is no reporting that a trade request is official and Watson hasn’t even spoken with the Texans brass about his future just yet, but the writing seems to be on the wall that barring something rather dramatic changing in the organization, this may be it.

As for trade possibilities, Miami fits the bill of being a team on the rise with an intriguing young QB that Houston could see as a long-term solution and tons of draft capital, but other teams can likewise make major offers. The Jets have tons of draft picks at their disposal as well, while teams like the 49ers could offer a QB swap with Jimmy Garoppolo as well as draft compensation. In total, you have to think two-thirds of the league, at least, would be putting in calls because it’s exceedingly rare that a quarterback of Watson’s caliber — a legit top-5 QB talent in the NFL — hits the trade market. Watson will have final say on the matter as he has a no-trade clause, but that also means other contenders might jump into the mix feeling they can convince him they provide the best opportunity to win now.

While it is the latest sign of dysfunction in Houston, it also presents them with the opportunity to remake their organization with one trade, and if Watson really is done with the Texans that will just have to be their viewpoint going forward.

Wednesday will mark two weeks since a failed MAGA coup saw people storm Capitol Hill in an attempt to undo Donald Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden and, according to some reports, cause harm to government leaders. According to Forbes, the FBI says it has identified more than 200 suspects and arrested over 100 suspects since the January 6 riot.

This includes Arkansas native Richard Barnett who was charged with unlawfully entering the US Capitol, disorderly conduct, and theft of public property. Initially, Barnett won permission from Arkansas-based U.S. magistrate judge Erin Weidemann to return home and await trial for his charges on house arrest with “very, very restrictive conditions,” but U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell would later block the release. However, before Judge Howell could overturn the ruling, Meek Mill took to Instagram to share his disappointment with the initial decision.

The rapper shared a screenshot of a tweet from Politico that announced Judge Weidemann’s initial decision to Instagram with a lengthy caption. “My whole race in jail for tryna protect themselves or some petty drugs! We living in the middle of a silent war! You can run in the state capitol and get house arrest?” Meek questioned. “Just pay attention to that part …ain’t no protest that can fix that! We have no protection in the system as black folks and it’s not no telling what’s next!!!! Didn’t people die in that sh*t ….we would of had conspiracy to terrorism or something they made up.”

You can read his post above.

Meek Mill is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.