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The Miami Dolphins couldn’t get much of anything going in the first 20-plus minutes against the Chargers on Sunday Night Football, as Tua Tagovailoa started off 2-of-9 for 13 yards and their running backs had a combined seven yards rushing. Despite that, they still managed to pull within 10-7 thanks to one of the strangest plays of the season, as a Jeff Wilson Jr. fumble turned into a scrum for the ball. Tyreek Hill was just lingering behind the pile when the ball just happened to shoot out of the sea of bodies right to the fastest man on the field, who ran it all the way for a touchdown.

It’s as serendipitous a bounce as the Dolphins could have hoped for, because initially it looked like it’d be Chargers ball for certain. However, when you play a sport with an oddly shaped ball, you get funky bounces and no one could get their arms around it, sending it shooting out right to the one person fast enough to run all the way around everyone to the sideline and take it to the house.

We’ll see if that’s the play that unlocks the Dolphins offense which couldn’t get out of first gear, as Hill found a way to make an impact despite Tua’s early struggles.

The San Francisco 49ers entered Sunday afternoon with Brock Purdy set to make his first start of the season after seeing Jimmy Garoppolo suffer a broken foot early in their win over the Dolphins last week. Garoppolo was already starting in place of Trey Lance, who was lost for the season in Week 2, and the Niners could ill afford to lose any more key stars on offense if they are to keep title dreams alive with Purdy now under center.

Unfortunately, after a tremendous 21-0 start against Tampa on Sunday, the Niners saw their biggest offensive weapon, Deebo Samuel, get carted off the field after he got rolled up on in the second quarter on a rushing attempt.

Samuel fumbled the ball because of the pain, and immediately grabbed at his left knee. He would get carted off the field, with his teammates coming over to give him encouragement while he was in tears headed to the locker room, still holding that knee.

It is obviously a massive blow for the Niners, who rely so heavily on Samuel and the recently acquired Christian McCaffrey to apply pressure to opposing defenses with their unique abilities to both run and catch the ball. Samuel had 64 combined yards and a touchdown already against the Bucs, and now much more attention shifts to McCaffrey and receivers like Brandon Aiyuk to try and fill the massive shoes left by the injured Samuel.

It’s been nearly two years since the Jan. 6 riot, when armed Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Has the GOP learned any lessons? Not really! Instead they’ve downplayed it and refused to cooperate in investigations. Leaders have even embraced those who helped promote it. One of them is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who not only wasn’t horrified by that deadly day, but is now openly fantasizing about how she and jailbound podcaster Steve Bannon could have made it worse.

As per The New York Post (in a bit teased out by The Daily Beast), Greene spoke at the star-studded New York Young Republicans Club gala on Saturday night, where she reflected on what could have been.

“I want to tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won,” she said. She then added, chillingly, “Not to mention, we would’ve been armed.”

What would they have “won”? Well, they would have overturned the will of the people as well as democracy itself. And they would have done it with arms, which certainly doesn’t sound terrifying. It was a line tailor-made for the crowd, which features not only young Republicans but also figures like Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, and Donald Trump Jr., who spent his speech making Hunter Biden jokes.

One person not present at the gala was Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who isn’t much liked by the MAGA wing of his party — nor by the officers who defended him and his colleagues that fateful day.

(Via NY Post and The Daily Beast)

Patrick Mahomes has done it again, coming up with a new way to throw a touchdown pass against the Denver Broncos. On 3rd and 2 from his own 44, Mahomes rolled right and looked like he’d get brought down well short of the line to gain, but somehow flipped the ball across his body to Jerick McKinnon — while breaking loose of a diving tackle attempt — which McKinnon then took to the house.

This is just preposterous stuff that has become unbelievably common for Mahomes. It’s a great job by McKinnon of recognizing there’s a chance to break up field into space, but there’s such little time for Mahomes to get rid of that ball and for him to get that much on it and lead McKinnon so he can keep running in stride is unreal.

It is they kind of play that drives defenses crazy, because you cannot defend this any better. They got pressure, flushed him out of the pocket, had contain on his scramble, and it didn’t matter. The defensive back has to step up there to stop a scrambling Mahomes from getting the line to gain, which creates an opening for McKinnon, but no one else is going to have the ability or vision to make that throw happen so you shouldn’t have to worry about that. You do when 15 is on the other side, though, and the Broncos found themselves down 13-0 with haste thanks to the latest Mahomes magic trick.

Metro Boomin is finishing 2022 with a bang. The acclaimed producer dropped Heroes & Villains, his sophomore solo album, on December 2 after a bit of a false start. Metro Boomin compared the 15-track project to Dr. Dre’s 2001 as the latest GQ Hype cover star. But unlike 2001, Heroes & Villains is a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

According to Billboard, Heroes & Villains debuts at No. 1 on the chart dated December 17, with Metro Boomin’s biggest week of his career at 185,000 equivalent US album units in its first week. It marks Metro Boomin’s third career No. 1 album, following in the footsteps of its 2018 predecessor Not All Heroes Wear Capes and the 2020 collaborative album Savage Mode II with 21 Savage.

Heroes & Villains dethrones Taylor Swift’s Midnights, which has five nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 to its name. Midnights moves to No. 2 (143,000 equivalent units), and the top five is rounded out by Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss at No. 3 (78,000), Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti (55,000) at No. 4, and Michael Bublé’s Christmas at No. 5 (54,000).

Metro Boomin pulled out all the stops for the Heroes & Villains. The track list features John Legend, Future, Chris Brown, Don Toliver, Travis Scott, Young Thug, Gunna, 21 Savage, The Weeknd, Mustafa, and a posthumous verse from Takeoff.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Missy Elliott announced that she would be donating at least $20,000 to Norfolk State University during the institution’s Fall 2022 commencement ceremony over the weekend. The four-time Grammy winner joined the students of Norfolk State University to encourage the ’22 class of nearly 400 students never to give up and follow their dreams, ABC affiliate 13 News Now reports.

Elliott, a Norfolk, Virginia native, took a moment to share how proud she was of the students and pointed out how they should be proud of themselves, too.

“I am proud of y’all, and y’all should be proud of y’all self,” Elliott said. “I want you to look at each other and say, ‘You already won.’ Let ’em know! Ain’t no winning, you already the one. ‘Cause y’all coulda been doing anything else the last few years, y’all coulda been wildin’ out, but y’all decided to finish the course. And that’s major.”

Toward the end of the ceremony, Elliott presented a $20,000 donation, requesting that the funds go “to the area of greatest need,” a spokesperson for the school said.

During the event, the multi-hyphenate was also awarded a special honor from the university, the Presidential Commencement Medallion, and an honorary doctorate — making this her second honorary doctorate. In 2019, Elliott was bestowed with her first honorary doctorate from the prestigious Berklee College of Music alongside Justin Timberlake and conductor Alex Lacamoire.

Missy Elliott is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The 5-7 Detroit Lions being favorites at home against the 10-2 Minnesota Vikings was the betting line that raised the most eyebrows this week, but the books knew what they were doing as Detroit rolled to a 34-23 win. They lit up the Vikings defense with 464 total yards of offense including 330 through the air, but it was their last completion that was the standout.

The Lions lined up their young star right tackle as a slot receiver on 3rd and 7 with two minutes to play and had him come in motion from left to right, but instead of acting as a pulling blocker, Sewell just kept running and caught the game-sealing first down completion from Jared Goff on an incredible play call.

It’s really a spectacular play design, because the edge player for the Vikings is bracing to get smoked by Sewell coming across on a block, so he just ducks and tries to absorb contact. When Sewell just keeps running, that means there is no one on the empty side available to cover him and it just comes down to whether Goff can get the ball out there and the big fella can show the soft hands to make the catch and reach the marker.

I particularly love the belly flop at the end to make sure he gets the first down, doesn’t try to do too much and fumble the ball, and also stay in bounds to force the Vikings to burn their second timeout. That play didn’t completely ice the game, as that honor went to the field goal the Lions kicked later in the drive, but it did ensure Minnesota would, at best, have under 30 seconds to try and pull off a miracle to force overtime. With the win the Lions improved to 6-7 and keep hope of a playoff berth alive in the bizarre NFC playoff race, while the Vikings finally succumb to a poor defensive performance after playing with fire for much of the year, falling to 10-3.

Ticketmaster’s blunders aren’t exclusive to Swifties. Bad Bunny completed his World’s Hottest Tour at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on Friday night, and some fans weren’t allowed to witness the year’s top-grossing touring artist. According to Billboard, Ticketmaster Mexico canceled several people’s tickets “at the entrance to the show saying they were fake.”

“Dozens of people who had arrived hours and some days earlier — coming from different places in Mexico and the U.S. — were not able to get inside,” Billboard reported. They relayed an individual tearful account from the scene and adding, “some desperate fans climbed over the main gates of the stadium trying to get inside but were blocked by security.”

Ticketmaster Mexico released a statement on Saturday about the debacle:

The statement begins by apologizing to those affected by the scam and promising “a full refund to legitimate ticket holders who were unable to access” the concert. The company also pinpointed “an unprecedented number of false tickets” on the platform as the issue. “This generated confusion and complicated the entrance to the stadium, with the unfortunate consequence that some legitimate tickets were denied entry,” the statement continues.

Ticketmaster Mexico shared it will work with PROFECO to sort out the aftermath and assist in preventing future ticket fraud.

Unfortunately, fans will likely have to wait awhile for a redo. Bad Bunny pulled off two headlining tours in 2022: El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo 2022 and World’s Hottest Tour. According to his new Billboard cover story, he became the first-ever artist to earn at least $100 million on two separate shows in one year.

Bad Bunny told the publication that he plans to take a break in 2023, citing his “physical health, my emotional health to breathe, enjoy my achievements.” One thing assuredly penciled into his 2023 calendar is the Grammys, where his Un Verano Sin Ti will be the first-ever Spanish-language album up for the Album Of The Year category.

SZA’s latest project seems to have us all in our feelings, including big stars like Lizzo. Fans and celebrities alike have been sharing their thoughts about the TDE’s artist highly anticipated second studio album, S.O.S.

A clip from Lizzo’s Instagram Live has been circulating where the “About Damn Time” singer can be seen giving a teary-eyed reaction to one of the album’s tracks, “Nobody Gets Me,” complete with a nice glass of wine.

Maybe celebrities aren’t so different from us after all.

Fans seem to agree with Lizzo’s sentiments. SZA definitely has a knack for making us all reflect on past relationships and the pitfalls of love.

“Same, girl,” one fan tweeted.

Another person pointed out how relatable Lizzo’s reaction was and admitted we all get a little emotional sometimes.

“She just like me,” they wrote.

Over the weekend, the 33-year-old singer dropped a video to the new song, tapping into her emo side. Shot in greyscale, the video gives off a relatable moody vibe. SZA can be seen atop a roof overlooking the city, adorned with her trademark baggy clothes, as she sings, “How am I supposed to let you go? / Only like myself when I’m with you.”

Watch SZA’s “Nobody Gets Me” video below.

Lizzo is a Warner Music Artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The DCEU is a mess right now. The comics movie line has two new bosses now, James Gunn and Peter Safran, and they have big plans on the horizon. There are a lot of surprising rumors floating around about what they have in store, and Gunn himself has acknowledged that some of them are true (though he won’t say which ones just yet). One project that’s reportedly safe from harm is Joker: Folie à Deux, the sequel to the stand-alone spin-off that turned Joaquin Phoenix into the second person to win an Oscar as the clown that fights Batman. And to prove that all is fine with it, its director shared a picture from the first day of filming.

It’s a simple image, showing Phoenix in what appears to be a barber’s chair, his face being shaved by someone next to him. “Day 1. Our boy,” wrote director Todd Phillips in the caption. There’s not much to tease out of the image. Is he still at Arkham Asylum? Who knows. It does share the same gloomy look as the first one. That’s not to say round two with Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck won’t be radically different. For one thing, it’s a musical. For another, it sounds like Arthur’s got himself a girlfriend this time in Lady Gaga’s spin on Harley Quinn.

In any case, Joker 2 seems to be safe from whatever Gunn and Safran are planning for the DC wing of Warner Bros. Discovery. Then again, those who made Batgirl assumed their film would actually see the light of day — although if one of its actors, Brendan Fraser, wins an Oscar this spring, maybe it will.

(Via THR)