The Los Angeles Chargers parted ways with longtime signal caller Philip Rivers this offseason, and as such, the team entered the 2020 NFL Draft with Tyrod Taylor as its nominal starter and a need for a quarterback of the future. With the sixth pick in the draft, the team addressed this need, opting to pick Oregon QB Justin Herbert.
The presumed No. 3 quarterback in the draft behind LSU’s Joe Burrow and Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa, Herbert had a productive career in Eugene. While there were concerns about consistency, Herbert was capable of doing some incredible things, to the point that his name was mentioned as a potential No. 1 pick during his collegiate tenure.
— Yahoo Sports College Football (@YahooSportsCFB) October 19, 2019
That, of course, did not come to fruition, but Herbert is heading to a spot that should suit him nicely. The Chargers can afford to be patient with him thanks to Taylor being on the roster, and whenever he’s ready to take over, he’ll be surrounded by some serious skill position talent in running back Austin Ekeler and wide receivers Keenan Allen and Mike Evans.
During his collegiate career, Herbert completed 64 percent of his passes for 10,541 yards with 95 touchdowns and 23 interceptions. While he’s not a runner by trade, he is comfortable using his legs when need be and accrued 13 touchdowns on the ground. He capped off his career with an impressive performance in Oregon’s Rose Bowl win over Wisconsin.
As a result of self-proclaimed “NBA boredom,” Shams Charania of Stadium of The Athletic, the young basketball newsbreaker who’s only ever covered the NBA, broke some NFL Draft news on Thursday night.
With the Miami Dolphins picking fifth overall and some questions about which quarterback they would take, Charania swooped in for a big NFL scoop, nailing the Tua Tagovailoa pick for Miami.
NBA boredom: Miami is drafting Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa with the No. 5 pick in the NFL Draft, sources say.
The pick, sure to be a relief for college football fans who saw the best of Tagovailoa prior to a hip injury late in the 2019 season, was seen as a decent possibility by many analysts, but it was far from a lock. Charania got in there and scooped most every NFL reporter aside from Albert Breer of SI’s MMQB.
Perhaps Charania was drawn to the means by which Miami ended up with Tagovailoa, after engineering a super NBA-like teardown and tanking for a top pick.
Looking a bit deeper, Tagovailoa hired longtime deal-maker Leigh Steinberg as his agent, and Steinberg at one point was an NBA agent in addition to having dozens of NFL clients. There’s a decent chance Charania and Steinberg crossed paths, but even considering that potential connection, it’s impressive that Charania was able to break some NFL news. Add it to the list of things that made the 2020 draft such a bizarre night.
Streaming video is the best thing that’s ever happened to documentaries. People who would never have paid for a ticket to a theatrical nonfiction film are now, thanks to Netflix’s robust selection, scarfing down the stuff by the barrel. But where to start among the masses? Here are 25 of the best documentaries on Netflix right now to get you going, covering a variety of themes and real stories.
Even if you’ve already witnessed the madness of this real-life horror story over on Hulu, you should see it again on Netflix. Hulu’s Fyre Fraud feels like more of a thinkpiece directed at the millennials who were suckered into buying tickets to a luxurious music fest on a secluded island in the Bahamas. Netflix’s Fyre does a better job of placing you in the action, giving you a real feel for the chaos and an understanding of how so many people could’ve been roped into this doomed venture.
Beyoncé’s history-making Coachella performance was enough to temporarily rename the music festival Beychella last year, and now fans who couldn’t afford to see Queen Bee perform live get a backstage pass to the show with this doc. Are there killer performances, musical mash-ups, and dance routines? Sure. But what really makes this music doc stand-out besides the talent of its star is the intimate look fans are given into Beyoncé’s personal life, from her surprise pregnancy to her struggle to get in shape before the event and all the in-between madness and heartbreak.
To understand the enigma that was the Trump campaign, one must first understand the man behind the historic presidential run. Roger Stone is a well-connected lobbyist, a Republican political trickster responsible for the campaigns of former presidents like Richard Nixon and Ronal Reagan. He’s well-versed in navigating morally-murky waters to help his horse win the race, and we see him do just that in this doc, which follows the mogul over a five-year period as he crafts Trump’s winning-campaign.
One of the strangest, most tragic sports stories in history is that of professional wrestler Dave Schulz and his friend, John du Pont. Du Pont was heir to the multi-million dollar Du Pont family fortune and used his inheritance to fund a professional wrestling team with the hopes of competing in the Olympics and other prestigious sports events. Mark Schulz was a wrestler struggling to get out of the shadow of his older brother’s more promising career. The two were roped into du Pont’s scheme, training wrestlers for him, but the partnership quickly soured and led to du Pont murdering Dave Schultz before barricading himself in his family compound to avoid arrest. It’s chilling, bizarre, and all the more riveting because of it.
Another sports doc, this one about a rag-tag group of baseball players in Oregon, feels decidedly more fun than its wrestling counterpart. The doc follows the Portland Mavericks, a defunct minor league baseball owned by actor Bing Russell that played for five seasons in the Class A-Short Season Northwest League. Kurt Russell, Bing’s son, also played on the team and served as its vice president. The film charts the Maverick’s origins, from underdogs to anti-establishment heroes.
David Gelb’s meditative-yet-jaunty peek inside sushi chef Jiro Ono’s long road to culinary perfection has proven such a sleeper hit on Netflix that the streaming service hired Gelb to make its nonfiction food series, Chef’s Table. Whet your appetite for foodie docs with Jiro, which, in addition to showing us the process behind maintaining the high standards of a three-Michelin-star sushi restaurant (even a tiny one), also doubles as a serious meditation on family legacy.
This 2016 documentary from Ava DuVernay won an Emmy and was nominated for an Oscar during awards season two years ago. The film chronicles the justice system’s abuses against black people, making a case for institutionalized racism being a problem in America that’s only emboldened by the prison cycle. DuVernay boldly explores how prisons and detention centers are making a profit off of free prison labor, most of it done by black men which begs the question, is slavery really dead?
Let’s be honest, Taylor Swift could’ve delivered a glossy, stylized, superficial doc about her life to promote her latest album, and her rabid fanbase would’ve eaten it up. Instead, the pop star took a risk and gave filmmakers no-holds-barred access to her personal and professional life, offering up intimate interviews with herself and her family, detailing difficult struggles with body dysmorphia and eating disorders, allowing cameras inside her sexual assault trial, revealing her mother’s cancer diagnosis, and unearthing home video footage of her youth to create a fuller picture of herself. It’s a film that reveals the human underneath the icon. It’s bold, brutally honest, and some of Swift’s best work yet.
Few environmental warrior films do more for the cause than Jeff Orlowski’s Chasing Coral. The doc rounds up a team of scientists, photographers, and divers from around the world to draw attention to an environmental crisis we’ve never seen before — the vanishing of the world’s coral reefs. It works on two levels: By giving us an underwater adventure that attempts to shed light on the mysteries of the deep and highlighting a problem we can see with our own eyes. There’s no denying this one, no looking away, and Orlowski’s crew takes full advantage of that.
’90s crime nostalgia is alive and well in this pseudo-doc from director Kitty Green. Everyone knows how tiny pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey died — bludgeoned to death in the basement of her family home — so Green is less interested in rehashing the investigation into the little girl’s death and more interested in reenacting her life and final moments. To do this, she enlists actors from the area where the family lived, all hoping to play JonBenet or her parents in an upcoming production. Over the course of the film, these thespians are forced to confront the reality of the Ramsey family’s situation which in turn helps viewers to take a look under the surface of this tabloid trauma.
Amy Winehouse was one of the most talented singers of a generation and her rise to fame was as meteoric as her eventual fall. This doc, that explores the ins-and-outs of her family life, her relationships, and her music career pulls archival footage taken by those closest to her, interviewing people that knew her best and chronicling her struggle with drugs and alcohol, a fight that she ultimately lost her life to.
his marks the first documentary to come from Netflix’s high-profile producing deal with Barack and Michelle Obama. The film takes a hard look at what happened to a General Motors plant in Ohio when it was closed down during the 2008 financial crisis, causing 2,000 workers to lose their jobs and destroying the small town of Moraine, Ohio. Things only get more complicated when a Chinese billionaire comes to town to transform the plant into a glass-making facility, promising thousands of new jobs before cultural divides threaten to derail the whole thing. It’s a fascinating view of consumerism, the American workforce, culture clashes, and how people can connect with each other despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
In 1992, Sandi Tan, along with her friends, made Singapore’s first indie film. She wrote and starred in it, a project called Shirkers, her two girlfriends produced and edited it, and a man named George Cardona directed. Cardona vanished one day, taking all the film materials with him, and propelling Tan on a decades-long journey to find the truth. It’s an engrossing study in betrayal and the dangers of collaboration, and it works mostly because Tan approaches it from a true-crime mystery angle, stripping it of any nostalgia that might tint her lense.
This gripping documentary confronts some hard truths about religion: its power to unite and its power to divide. Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady follow three members of New York’s notoriously insular Hasidic community as they try to break free from their religion while holding onto their families and sense of belonging.
Bryan Fogel’s Academy Award-winning documentary Icarus wasn’t supposed to involve Russians and doping scandal and cover-ups. Fortunately for Fogel, when the filmmaker decided to test his mettle by competing in one of the toughest cycling competitions in the world and chose to dope to help his chances, he ended up meeting Russian scientist, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of Russia’s national anti-doping laboratory. The result is this nearly 90-minute film that chronicles Russia’s extensive history with doping and Rodchenkov’s fight for his life after he blows the whistle on the country’s bad practices.
It seems as though we’re all now more aware than ever of how utterly screwed any of us can be in an instant if the system places us in its crosshairs for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and not behaving in a way perceived to be “normal” in the immediate aftermath. Recent true crime documentaries like The Staircase, Making a Murderer and Serial have certainly played a part in illuminating this frightening and unfortunate slice of reality. We can now add Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn’s Amanda Knox to that list. Prepare to be terrified and infuriated as the filmmakers detail how an overzealous Italian prosecutor and a global tabloid press thirsty for a sensational story joined forces to wreck a young woman’s life, largely for their own benefit. As Daily Mail journalist Nick Pisa freely admits on camera — without any trace of remorse or shame — about his work covering the case, “A murder always gets people going… And we have here this beautiful, picturesque hilltop town in the middle of Italy. It was a particularly gruesome murder; throat slit, semi-naked, blood everywhere. I mean, what more do you want in a story?”
Netflix delivers another worthy installment in the true crime series with this truly bizarre tale of a naive, church-going family and the man who preyed upon them. The Brobergs lived in a small town in Idaho with their three young daughters when they met Robert Berchtold, a seemingly-nice family man who doted on the girls, in particular, a 12-year-old Jan Broberg. Over time, Berchtold began grooming Jan and manipulating her parents, engaging in sexual acts with both her father and mother to cause a rift in the family before kidnapping her and brainwashing her into compliance. This saga went on for years and as strange as it sounds, nothing can prepare you for hearing the first-hand account of how this sociopath destroyed this loving family.
This documentary features never-before-seen footage of Jim Carrey in character as Andy Kaufman on the set of his 1999 film Man on the Moon. Directed by Chris Smith, the film shows Carrey, who was a celebrated comedic actor at the time, going method for his dramatic role as the brilliant on-stage comedian. There’s plenty of behind-the-scenes drama on this one, including Carrey’s backstage antics while shooting the movie, but what’s really interesting about the film is watching the actor’s thorough process and how he’s approached his colorful careers.
We live in a world connected with most of our interactions happening online. It’s great but, as this doc shows, it’s also terrifying. Terrifying because the way our data changes hands so quickly and indiscriminately — as long as companies shell out the cash for it — skirts all kinds of privacy laws and moral boundaries. This doc, told from the perspective of a journalist attempting to get his search data, the enormous fight with big tech to do it, and how his journey connects to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that may have influenced multiple elections in the States and abroad, is full of fascinating information and shocking tell-alls that could bring this whole internet empire down if people finally decide to start listening.
This political doc made its way from Sundance to Netflix and we couldn’t think of a better time to watch it than leading up to the 2020 election. It follows the grassroots campaign of the right’s favorite punching bag, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, showcasing her charisma and approachability while also diving into more intimate parts of her life, like her relationship with her late father. It’s a feel-good story from Capitol Hill and really, we need more of that.
Before he scored his own MTV show, filmmaker Nev Schulman was exposing cons on the internet in this documentary, that basically introduces the term “catfish” to the cultural lexicon. The film captures Nev’s growing online-only friendship with a young woman and her family, exposing the secrets and lies they’re keeping along the way and reminding us all: you really can’t trust people.
Clocking in at 24 minutes, the Oscar-nominated Extremis really would only work as a short, as its subject matter is almost unbearably heavy. Following terminal patients, their families, and their doctors, the tearjerker zeros in on the decision that many people are forced to make: whether to end a life or keep struggling to hold on. Netflix’s first foray into short documentary, it’s raw insight that can be rough for anyone who has been in similar shoes or spent any time facing dire choices in a hospital.
The alternately revolutionary and dispiriting saga of a combative, unapologetic and astoundingly gifted soul singer, Liz Garbus’s doc is a powerful rendering of the struggles Nina Simone faced throughout her career: the ways she became trapped in downward spirals, first of spousal abuse and then of bipolar disorder; and of her desperate, all-consuming urge to affect change on the country during the Civil Rights era. What happened? Watch for yourself.
We’re not sure why watching human beings dangling thousands of feet in the air with no safety net or cable cord to tether them to Earth is so irresistible, but it is, and this doc about free climber Tommy Caldwell and climbing partner Kevin Jorgeson might be Netflix’s most bingeable adventure flick. The two men attempt to scale the impossible 3000ft Dawn Wall of El Capitan, the Everest for free climbers, and if you can stomach over an hour of near-fatal slips, trips, and falls, this is the doc for you.
Warning: Netflix’s The Bleeding Edge will seriously piss you off. It might also make you swear off doctors for the rest of your life. The film is a deep dive into the medical device industry and the dangers that lurk there for unassuming patients. Like the pharmaceutical industry, there are few laws regulating the creation and implementation of medical devices — think everything from birth control to orthopedic instruments — and the doc shows how this is negatively affecting millions of Americans every year from the women unknowingly sterilized by an IUD device to a doctor whose own ortho-device slowly poisoned him. It’s a frustrating watch, but a necessary one.
The top of the NFL Draft went according to script, with Joe Burrow heading to Cincinnati, Chase Young going to Washington, and despite lots of buzz about the possibility of a trade, Jeffrey Okudah went to Detroit. The Giants likewise held on to their pick at No. 4, taking the coveted tackle Andrew Thomas out of the University of Georgia, setting the table for the most interesting decision of the draft.
The Miami Dolphins were rumored to be discussing all manner of possibilities with the fifth overall pick, including trading up to take Thomas before New York got the chance. That never materialized, and when we reached the fifth selection the question was which quarterback would they be taking: Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa or Oregon’s Justin Herbert.
In the end, they made the decision most thought they should in taking Tagovailoa, who was expected to be the top overall pick in this year’s draft entering last season before Burrow’s meteoric rise.
Tagovailoa is a special talent, whose biggest question in this draft process was his health as he was banged up at times at Alabama and suffered a season-ending dislocated hip and fracture. His medicals were apparently all clear and despite chatter some had Herbert higher on their draft board than Tua, the former national championship winning QB from Hawaii is headed to South Beach.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, LSU quarterback Joe Burrow was the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, completing a journey that began at Ohio State and ended with a Heisman Trophy and a national championship. While Burrow probably didn’t need any more accolades to go with his perch as the top pick, he contributed to history on Thursday evening, joining forces with a pair of former Ohio State teammates in Chase Young and Jeffrey Okudah.
Young, as expected, was selected by Washington with the No. 2 pick, and when Okudah got the nod from the Detroit Lions at No. 3 overall, the trio of Buckeyes left their mark.
This marks the first time in NFL draft history that the first three picks were teammates in college at one time: Joe Burrow, Chase Young and Jeffrey Okudah were all at Ohio State together.
This is a bit of a technicality since Burrow did the majority of his collegiate damage in Baton Rouge, but the talented quarterback did appear in two different seasons for Ohio State. Things worked out quite well for him elsewhere but, in Columbus, the Buckeyes were enjoying big-time success in their own right and it isn’t a big surprise that Young and Okudah would be recognized as elite-level talents.
Outside of the South, Ohio State recruits at a level that is essentially unmatched and, with that in mind, they would be a natural team to pull off this kind of feat. Still, it is worth noting that inherent difficulty of having three players from the same roster taken in 1-2-3 order in the NFL Draft and it happened for Ohio State in 2020.
Joe Burrow is headed home. The Athens, Ohio native who turned into a phenomenon during his record-setting senior season at LSU en route to a Heisman Trophy and a national championship was taken with the No. 1 pick in the 2020 Cincinnati Bengals on Thursday evening, a long-presumed move that finally came to fruition.
The pick is hardly a surprise. Ever since the Bengals got the No. 1 selection, Burrow was viewed as the favorite, and according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, any final remaining bits of doubt went out the window on Wednesday, when Bengals owner Mike Brown sent a letter to Burrow welcoming him to the organization.
Bengals president Mike Brown officially welcomed LSU QB Joe Burrow to Cincinnati on Wednesday, one day before the Draft. Brown sent Burrow a letter that said, amongst other things, that he looks forward “to building championship football teams with you for many years to come.”
Brown also made it official that Burrow will wear No. 9, the same number he wore in Baton Rouge.
Mike Brown also sent Joe Burrow and his parents No. 9 Bengals jerseys – jerseys for all of them — which now officially will be the number that he will wear in Cincinnati. https://t.co/l0BDOnJJnx
Burrow spent the first three years of his collegiate career at Ohio State before opting to transfer to LSU. He put up pedestrian numbers during his first year with the Tigers, then had the greatest individual season any quarterback has had in the sport’s history. As a redshirt senior, Burrow became a program icon, completing 76.3 percent of his passes for 5,671 yards with 60 touchdowns and six interceptions. With him at the helm, LSU ran the table, capping things off with a pair of dominant victories in the College Football Playoff: a 63-28 thrashing of Oklahoma and a 42-25 win over Clemson in the title game.
Now, he heads to a Bengals team with some skill position talent on offense. The AFC North is a competitive division, but thanks to Burrow, Cincinnati has a potential face of the franchise for at least the next decade.
Just a few days ago Travis Scott and his Cactus Jack Records imprint confirmed that Travis would be the first rapper to appear in a live concert on Fortnite, thanks to The Astronomical Experience. The concert Thursday arrived after a Fortnite skin that resembled Travis leaked online, leaving fans to believe that the Houston rapper and the gamemakers were collaborating on a new project. To make the experience that much better for fans, Travis also premiered a new collaboration with Kid Cudi during the in-game concert.
The song — entitled “The Scotts,” as Kid Cudi’s birth name, Scott Mescudi, also contains a “Scott” — the track marks the second time that Cudi and Travis have worked together. Their first collaboration was “Through The Night,” on Travis’ sophomore album, Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight. The two played the song from a spacecraft, allowing gamers to approach the craft to get a better listen.
Most artists have set their eyes on TikTok as a good way to keep quarantining listeners happy, so by using Fortnite Travis may have directed artists to another venue, especially since it’s filled with gamers who quarantined long before the world became familiar with the word.
Check out the two videos above to hear a snippet of “The Scotts,” which is available for purchase on Travis’ website.
This is literally the best news you’ll have all day, and not only because the news is relentlessly grim: As per The Hollywood Reporter, the cast of Parks and Recreation is reuniting for a quarantine episode, allowing us to bask in the good vibes of not only Pawnee, Indiana, but also the fantasy of a government that actually works.
The episode will air on NBC next Thursday, on April 30, and everyone’s back: Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Pratt, Adam Scott, Rob Lowe, Jim O’Heir and Retta. Presumably it’ll largely take place from webcams, allowing us to see how each beloved Pawnee-an quarantines. How clean is Leslie and Ben’s home? How swank are Tom’s digs? Do Andy and April still live amongst filth?
Of course, we already learned what happened to the government functionaries of Parks and Rec, when the final episode jumped far into the future, offering happy endings to characters who deserved them. But we didn’t see what happened to them in 2020, when all of a sudden they were faced with a poorly managed pandemic!
The other great news: It’s all for charity. The special will raise money for Feeding America’s COVID-19 Response Fund, which as per THR, “helps food banks secure the resources they need to serve the most vulnerable members of their communities.” The special’s sponsors, State Farm and Subaru, will make matching donations of $150,000 each, while NBCUniversal, the cast, and the producers have pledged $500,000 in matching donations to be made through May 21.
The Parks and Rec special airs Thurs., April 30 at 8:30pm on NBC. Make sure you bust out a bottle of Tom’s signature drink, Snake Juice.
Taking a page out of the WNBA playbook, University of Iowa tackle Tristan Wirfs busted out his best grey hoodie and strongest hairdo in his driveway, in lieu of a traditional catwalk down the NFL Draft red carpet.
Like every NFL player with a great head of hair, Wirfs attributes his style and health to Head and Shoulders, with whom he’s already landed a nice endorsement from the looks of his tweet. He made sure to give his mom the special red carpet treatment in their front yard, complete with a bouquet of flowers.
Who needs Vegas? Highly-rated OT Tristan Wirfs invites his mom, Sarah, to walk the red carpet in front of their home in Mount Vernon, Iowa. They lived in a trailer park until Tristan was 5. In a few hours, he will be a first-round pick. #NFLDraftpic.twitter.com/yO7iUxE9WH
Typically, NFL draft picks get to appear on-location in their best suits, flaunt their style, hang out in the green room, and grab a hat from the commissioner as they’re selected. Without that opportunity, Wirfs and others took matters into his own hands to show off some more casual red carpet looks at home.
The former Cyclones standout donned some nice blue jeans and a comfy grey hoodie, then traipsed up and down his own driveway at home in Iowa rather than in front of the cameras in Las Vegas, as he might have expected. Wirfs sits atop the Uproxx offensive tackle big board and is widely expected to go in the top 10 on Thursday night, as teams such as the Dolphins are potentially eyeing a move up to nab an offensive tackle like Wirfs based on his impressive size and athleticism.
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(@LaFlame_FRA) 
. Excited to still have my