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When the Chicago Bears drafted Georgia linebacker Roquan Smith with the eighth overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft, it seemed like a perfect fit. Here was one of the best middle linebacker prospects in years going to a franchise that has arguably the greatest lineage of middle linebackers of any team in the NFL.

Since being drafted, Smith has played in 61 of a possible 65 games, missing four games to injury in 2019, and has eclipsed 101 tackles in every season, including a preposterous 163 last year (95 solo). He has five career interceptions and 43 career tackles for loss, serving as the central cog in the Bears stout defense, but entering a contract year, Smith has not received the offer he feels he deserves for being one of the best middle linebackers in all of football.

As such, on Tuesday, Smith publicly requested a trade from the organization, asking to be dealt to a team that “truly values what I bring to the table” after being offered a “take it or leave it” contract that Smith says would’ve been bad for him and the linebacker market as a whole to take.

According to Ian Rapoport, the deal in question featured backloaded money that would’ve left his deal shy of being the highest among middle linebackers in the league, along with de-escalators that no one else making his kind of money has in their deal.

As Smith notes, it’s possible the Bears could come correct with an offer and salvage the relationship, but as of this moment, he won’t be putting pen to paper on any deal that’s similar to what they’ve offered him. It’d be one thing if this was an issue of a guarantee amount and signing bonus, but to backload a deal and put de-escalators in it that could pay him less when literally no one else of his stature has those in their contract is pretty blatantly disrespectful of Smith and it’s hard to blame him for making this decision — although surely some will.

Someone out there will happily pay for a tackling machine in the middle of their defense and we’ll just have to wait to find out who that is — but it’ll more likely than not be a contender or fringe contender.

Following Monday’s surprise FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, Republicans have been dutifully falling in line to defend Donald Trump, who is naturally fuming bad about the whole thing. (They broke into his safe, folks!)

Ever the faithful GOP soldier, Marco Rubio entered into the fray on Monday night where he proceeded to launch into somber diatribes about how America is becoming a third world country while also threatening retaliation against President Joe Biden.

“Biden is playing with fire by using a document dispute to get the @TheJusticeDept to persecute a likely future election opponent,” Rubio tweeted. “Because one day what goes around is going to come around. And then we become Nicaragua under Ortega.”

Rubio also made a video where he doubled down on settling the score with Biden.

Via Newsweek:

“I’m telling you, you’re playing with fire,” Rubio said. “This is dangerous, because someone else will be in power one day, and now you have created the precedent for them to do this back to you. And then we become the Third World, and then we lose our country, and our system of government and the meaning of being one nation under a real constitution.

“This needs to stop and the people responsible for this decision, [Attorney General] Merrick Garland, the director of the FBI [Christopher Wray], need to be held to account for going along with something so undemocratic, unconstitutional, and flat out destructive and dangerous to our republic.”

Of course, it didn’t take long for someone to point out the hypocrisy of Rubio’s lecturing. Florida State Rep. Anna Eskamani took Rubio down by a notch pulling out an old tweet where he was completely fine with the FBI announcing an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails right before the 2016 election.

“This you in 2016?” Eskamani tweeted along with a screenshot of Rubio saying that Clinton’s mishandling of classified emails “proves that she is DQ’d from being Commander in Chief.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is getting a similar treatment as Twitter users have latched onto an old tweet from October 2016 where she wrote, “When you’re attacking FBI agents because you’re under criminal investigation, you’re losing.” Whoops.

(Via Rep. Anna V. Eskamani on Twitter)

Fans are eager for new music from SZA. Back in May, The “Good Days” singer hinted at “a SZA summer,” and while we’ve received an expanded edition of her 2017 debut album, CTRL, as well as a remix of her labelmate Doechii’s “Persuasive,” we still have heard nary a title, release date, or even a single from her much-anticipated sophomore album.

Last month, SZA hinted at a disagreement between her Top Dawg Entertainment label head Punch, as well as RCA Records. In a recent interview with Vulture, Punch indicated that he and SZA have since reached an agreement. According to Punch, a release date is imminent.

“We know exactly when it’s coming out,” he said. “But on the internet, you only get a certain amount of characters. You don’t have time to really go into a full explanation of what’s going on like that when you’re in the moment and tweeting something.”

In the past, SZA has mentioned that her and Punch’s relationship has been tumultuous, but elsewhere in the interview, Punch insisted that there is more than meets the eye.

“I’m not going to say there’s never been contention,” he said. “There’s always contention, especially when you’re dealing with creative. Difference in opinions, it happens, but that doesn’t mean somebody is unhappy or anything. It could’ve been a conversation in the moment. Then a lot of speculation happens. I get it. We have to remember that context is important and you never get the full story through tweets.”

Kevin Smith is returning to New Jersey in Clerks III — and by purchasing the movie theater of his childhood. The weed-loving filmmaker revealed that he’s buying the Atlantic Moviehouse in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, “where I’d go to the movies with my Dad and where I spent the many frivolous Friday nights of my Jersey teenage youth,” he wrote on Instagram. The theater will be renamed SModcastle Cinemas.

The deal to co-own the 250-seat property with his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith (the inspiration for The Tweet), and other business partners isn’t expected to close until September 14, but Smith is already dealing with the perils of proprietorship: bomb threats. “So… @SModcastle Keeper @ernieodonnell7 forwarded me this text from Tony, our friend who runs the movie theater we’re buying (and will also run @SmodCinemas),” he tweeted, along with a screenshot of the message. It reads:

“I don’t want to alarm you but, we just got a call at the theater. The person asked my manager if Kevin Smith was buying the theater. They said that we shouldn’t do that and that if we did, there would be bomb threats. I have informed Fred Rast who instructed us to inform the police. My manager has called the police to report it. The number is a California number. I’m sure it was some a-hole kids. But I thought you should know. I’ll keep you updated.”

[extremely old man voice] Back in the 1990s, teenagers hung out by convenience stores and argued about Star Wars. Now they’re making bomb threats to movie theaters and, well, they’re still arguing about Star Wars. I guess some things never change.

Smith’s daughter, Harley Quinn Smith, is “worried” that this is a legitimate threat, but he thinks “it’s a joke about how my movies have ‘bombed’ in theaters. Thoughts?” Come on, Yoga Hosers wasn’t that bad… OK, yes, it was, but not “bomb threat” bad.

(Via NJ.com)

The Rock and Kevin Hart are pulling out the stops to promote the DC League of Super-Pets, in which the former voices Krypto and the latter takes on Ace. That includes doing things like smacking each other with tortillas to fulfill an online challenge that’s not quite as weird as the Cinnamon Challenge. That wasn’t as palatable as The Rock delivering his verdict on In-N-Out burger, so a one-upping was in order.

That’s precisely what happened in the below Instagram video, in which Johnson’s asked which celebrity that he’d like to be a pet for, and his answer is unequivocal: Megan Thee Stallion.

Yep, he fired that answer off without hesitation.

Naturally, Twitter was totally into this answer. “LMFAOOOOO I FEEL YOU MY BOY” is definitely a thing.

From there, everyone joined in on the laughter (with slightly inappropriate dog videos and other clips) and also in wondering how The Rock’s wife, Lauren Hashian, might feel about this development.

In very related news, BET reports that Megan Thee Stallion’s boyfriend, Pardison Fontaine, responded (and deleted) on social media as follows: “All our dogs named after #s. Just teach your wife to use seasoning … You’ll be iiight … Moana is the sh*t tho.” Well, The Rock’s initial answer had Kevin Hart totally amused, and that’s what it’s all about.

The greatest women’s tennis player will officially step away from the game at the end of this year, as Serena Williams announced her retirement from the sport at 41 years old on Tuesday in a lengthy piece she penned for Vogue.

As of now, Williams carries a career 855-153 singles record including 23 grand slam championship wins — 7 Australian Opens, 7 Wimbledons, 6 U.S. Opens, and 3 French Opens — the most in the Open era and one shy of Margaret Court’s 24. She also has 14 doubles grand slam titles with her sister Venus, and a pair of mixed doubles grand slams from 1998 in her trophy room that is so large she sometimes forgets what’s in there. Williams first ascended to the No. 1 ranking in the world in 2002 and has held that title for 319 weeks overall, including a record 186 consecutive week stretch where she dominated the sport.

However, Williams says it’s time for her to focus on her other passions, citing growing her family and pursuit of business interests as the things pulling her away from the court. Even so, there’s some frustration in Williams’ announcement, as she notes that while many of her friends in tennis and other sports feel relief when they retire, she “hates it,” noting that if she was a man she wouldn’t have to make this decision and could pursue a Tom Brady or Tiger Woods-like longevity.

Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. I don’t think it’s fair. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family. Maybe I’d be more of a Tom Brady if I had that opportunity. Don’t get me wrong: I love being a woman, and I loved every second of being pregnant with Olympia. I was one of those annoying women who adored being pregnant and was working until the day I had to report to the hospital—although things got super complicated on the other side. And I almost did do the impossible: A lot of people don’t realize that I was two months pregnant when I won the Australian Open in 2017. But I’m turning 41 this month, and something’s got to give.
…
I’m going to be honest. There is no happiness in this topic for me. I know it’s not the usual thing to say, but I feel a great deal of pain. It’s the hardest thing that I could ever imagine. I hate it. I hate that I have to be at this crossroads. I keep saying to myself, I wish it could be easy for me, but it’s not. I’m torn: I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I’m ready for what’s next. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to look at this magazine when it comes out, knowing that this is it, the end of a story that started in Compton, California, with a little Black girl who just wanted to play tennis. This sport has given me so much. I love to win. I love the battle. I love to entertain. I’m not sure every player sees it that way, but I love the performance aspect of it—to be able to entertain people week after week. Some of the happiest times in my life were spent waiting in that hallway in Melbourne, and walking out into Rod Laver Arena with my earphones in and trying to stay focused and drown out the noise but still feeling the energy of the crowd. Night matches in Arthur Ashe Stadium at Flushing Meadows. Hitting an ace on set point.

Williams says she will dive into the business world further with her venture capital firm, Serena Ventures, as well as looking to have another child with husband Alexis Ohanian after their daughter, Olympia, has been not so subtle about her desire to be a big sister.

For the past few years every time Serena has stepped on the court at a grand slam there’s been a sense that it could be the end, but the hope that we’d get to keep watching her play forever. That, of course, wasn’t going to happen, but with an all-time great it’s hard to say goodbye — for them or for us — and the next few tournaments leading into her farewell at the U.S. Open will be emotional for everyone involved, a bittersweet celebration of the greatest tennis career any of us have ever seen.

Idris Elba makes a memorable appearance on Jay-Z’s 2007 album American Gangster, speaking on and producing “Intro.” Now Elba has spoken a bit more about how that came to be, telling Jimmy Fallon he “hustled [his] way onto” the album

On The Tonight Show yesterday, Elba (who was in the American Gangster movie on which the album was based) said:

“I was in American Gangster and at the time, I heard Jay was about to do an album associated with the film and I was like, ‘I need to get on that.’ As you do. You’re like, ‘I’m Idris, I need to be on that Jay-Z album!’ I had no idea why Jay would be like, ‘Yeah, sure, do it.’ So Lenny S., who works with Jay, was a good friend of Oronde and Oronde’s my guy, and I said, ‘Yo, I’m gonna write this thing.’ And I wrote this long poem… a friend of mine, we wrote this long poem, we put it to a beat. Actually, it was a rap, but it didn’t sound good as a rap. […] I said, ‘Maybe I should speak this,’ because Jay might be a little more accommodating to my speaking voice. And I sent it to him and we got this text back from Jay saying, ‘I don’t love this… I f*cking love it.”

Check out the full interview above.

What’s got two thumbs and wants everyone to know that he was “the guy” who first learned that Mar-a-Lago was being raided? THIS guy! (Well, that guy above.) Eric Trump was all up in Sean Hannity’s business on Monday night to make sure Fox News viewers understood that it was he—not Donald Trump’s favorite child Ivanka or his unhinged and perpetually amped up big brother Don Jr.—who was the one who had to deliver the news to dear old dad that the FBI may have finally caught up with his presumably illegal shenanigans and was rifling through his belongings at his Palm Beach, Florida home and golf club. They even broke into his safe!

Also, it turns out that Eric might not know which decade we’re in. As Insider reports, while chatting with Hannity on Monday night, Eric relayed that:

I was the guy that got the call this morning. I called my father to let him know that it happened. So I was involved in this all day. And, you know, welcome to politics in, you know, in… in the 2000s.

(Note: It’s 2022.)

Trump went on to attempt to exonerate his father of any wrongdoing, explaining that Saint Trump “never got so much as a speeding ticket in his entire life until he made one decision. And that’s to go… and spend a lot of money to fight for this country for the first time.” (We assume Eric is talking about his father’s presidential election and not about his status as a five-time draft dodger.)

Also, Eric may not fully comprehend the scope of an FBI raid, as he also complained about 30 FBI agents descending on Mar-a-Lago without giving any notice that they were coming. (Pssst… Eric: That’s how these things work.)

Eric went on to state that Trump “did a better job” as president “than anybody has ever done,” which seems debatable.

(Via Insider)

Rootin’ tootin’ Lauren Boebert, die-hard MAGA cheerleaders that she is, was obviously not going to respond well to the FBI raiding Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home to uncover those 15 boxes of squirreled away (by Donald Trump) classified documents. This also led Fox News’ Jesse Watters to freak out on-air, and Boebert took her response (of course) to Twitter. She’s a great defender of “freedom” and (of course) being American, and she’s taking it one step further than Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Gazpacho Police” flub.

Boebert’s no stranger to a good flub, but what she delivered on Monday night was a straight-up round of doom-and-gloom hysterics. In part, she fired off a video rant and continued to lose her mind after the “Totally Un-American” FBI raid. In this clip, she calls the raid “Gestapo Crap” and apparently refers to the FBI as the #DepartmentOfInjustice.

So, the FBI will be raiding everyone soon? That’s what it sounds like Boebert is saying. She posted a lengthy Twitter thread, in which she actually writes, “You may not realize it yet, but they’re coming for all of us.” She declares that the FBI has been weaponized to distract from Biden’s “failed agenda!” The Rifle Republican doesn’t seem to care that the FBI was simply putting their hands on documents that Trump shouldn’t have removed from the White House, and that’s, you know, illegal. That doesn’t matter because, according to Boebert, the IRS will soon be weaponized and will come for you, too.

Boebert’s also telling everyone to act before it’s too late to defend themselves, and she wants a “Select Committee to investigate the FBI’s politically-motivated raid on Mar-a-Lago and on ALL the fraudulent persecution of President Trump from our government.”

It’s wild stuff, to say the very least, and surely, much of this is a cry about “guns” even if she’s not putting that at the forefront, as well as a rally for campaign donations. It’s not as though Trump’s been arrested or anyone is threatening anyone’s freedom. The feds simply wanted those very federally owned documents back, and they got them.

(Spoilers for Better Call Saul‘s final season will be found below.)

Maybe, in retrospect, it was silly that we spent so much time worrying about the fate of Kim Wexler. Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, & Co. are cruel (R.I.P. Jane), but they’re not that cruel. As we learned in the penultimate episode of Better Call Saul, “Waterworks,” Kim is not exactly thriving in Florida, where she’s basically Bob from Bob’s Burgers stuck in an office nightmare, but at least she’s alive. Possibly going to jail, but alive.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gilligan discussed the decision to not kill Kim. “There probably also was an element of us being loath to kill off her character,” he said. “There were so many elements of this story that were preordained. You can’t kill off Jimmy McGill in his own show, you can’t kill off any character whom we know the fate of from Breaking Bad.” Gilligan explained that “it just didn’t feel right” to have Kim join Howard in the afterlife, and “that was probably never on the table, honestly.” He continued:

“We certainly kept silently smiling while people stopped us on the street and said, ‘You’re not gonna kill Kim, are you?’ We let people think that maybe we would, but none of us wanted to do it. But figuring out where she wound up, it was in little baby steps, little fits and starts, like every other bit of plotting we do.”

I take it back: Gilligan is a monster for making Kim have that mayonnaise discussion with her dopey Florida boyfriend. A fate worse than death, indeed. We’ll have much more on “Waterworks” throughout the day, including the Lie Detector Test recap.

(Via Rolling Stone)