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Nov 04, 2024

NFL teams going streaking, plus MLB offseason primer - The Athletic

The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! We hope you ate too many gummy clusters this weekend.

The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.

Good morning! We hope you ate too many gummy clusters this weekend.

Lately, there’s been a lot of philosophizing about momentum in sports. Is it real? Does it matter? Is it just a narrative that helps us make sense of results that don’t have much to do with each other? Who knows.

Football might be the sport where it’s hardest to assess. All we know about you is who you’ve been for only a few games, just a handful per month.

Coincidentally, yesterday, we had a couple of games that served as arguments on which teams have the best and worst momentum as of this minute, if momentum is real. For instance:

On the flipside:

Then there’s the other version: two teams streaking past each other in opposite directions. The Eagles, 6-2 after holding off the 2-7 Jaguars yesterday, can make it five wins in a row by beating Dallas next week. That would just about do it for the 3-5 Cowboys, who lost their third in a row yesterday, 27-21 in Atlanta, while also suffering an onslaught of injuries, including a Dak Prescott hamstring situation pending evaluation.

Speaking of the Eagles, Saquon Barkley did something that isn’t even in any football video games. This looks more like a Super Mario move:

THE 180 HURDLE??? DID SAQUON JUST INVENT THIS?!

📺: #JAXvsPHI on CBS/Paramount+📱: https://t.co/waVpO8ZBqG pic.twitter.com/tYThjnbdgG

— NFL (@NFL) November 3, 2024

Who even thinks of doing that, let alone pulls it off?? Minds were blown.

Elsewhere, since I probably didn’t mention your team, be sure to read yesterday’s takeaways on the AFC’s elites handling business, ponder Mike Sando on whether Detroit should go all in at Tuesday’s trade deadline and listen to “The Athletic Football Show” break down dominant Baltimore and resurgent Joe Burrow.

Next up:

It took less than a day for the MLB offseason to spring into action, so we’ve barely had a chance to regroup post-World Series and mentally prepare for offseason news. But here we are, a weekend later, and things are only picking up. So we turned to Windup scribe Levi Weaver to set the stage with a Q&A:

Let’s get Soto out of the way. As we enter the offseason, do you have an instinct on where he ends up?

Soto was adamant during the World Series that he was going to be “available for all 30 teams,” but let’s be serious, the Pirates aren’t signing him (to be clear, they absolutely should, though). The truth is, there are only a handful of teams with the financial heft to land Soto. Two of them are in New York. It would be really funny if the Dodgers used some of that deferred Ohtani money to swoop in. But my gut says it’s either the Yankees or the Mets.

There are plenty more free agents. Who do you think has the biggest impact outside of Soto?

I’m really interested to see what happens with Alex Bregman. The Astros had a pretty long tradition of letting their stars walk when it came time to pay up, but between the Jose Altuve extension and the Josh Hader contract, there are maybe some signs that they could be more amenable to signing bigger checks. Bregman has been a core piece of the dynasty, and an enormous leadership presence in the clubhouse. Wherever he lands, it should have an impact beyond his on-field contributions.

Give us one team that’s a move or two away from contending next year for a title.

Could I bring it full circle and say the Pirates? If they’re able to boost their lineup a bit. It won’t be Soto, but if they could jump in somewhere in the Ha-Seong Kim/Anthony Santander range, it could go a long way toward supporting a pitching staff that is coming into bloom.

Thank you, Levi! Subscribe to The Windup to receive a more comprehensive offseason guide in your inbox later this morning.

Fresh KD vs. Stephen A. beefAfter Stephen A. Smith called out Kevin Durant’s leadership abilities in a “First Take” segment last month, our Doug Haller talked to the Suns star 1-on-1 this weekend. Durant didn’t hold back: “Yeah, Stephen A., I don’t understand how people even listen to Stephen A. I’ve been in the league for 18 years. I’ve never seen Stephen A. at a practice, or a film session, or a shoot-around. I’ve never seen him anywhere but on TV talking s— about players. … He’s a clown to me. He’s always been a clown.” More here.

More news

So you found a box of trading cards in the basement during the pandemic card boom and are still thinking of getting them graded … welcome to the club, apparently. Some stats we thought were striking from Michael Salfino’s latest piece:

Ken Griffey Jr. has, by far, the most graded PSA cards; baseball still dominates the industry. Now, time for a quiz: Who are the most-graded athletes across basketball, golf, football, hockey and tennis? Bonus points if you can somehow guess the exact card. Answers here.

📺 NBA: Bucks at Cavaliers, 7 p.m. ET on NBA TVThe 7-0 Cavs protected their undefeated start with a one-point win over the Bucks (1-5) in Milwaukee on Saturday. The teams are at it again tonight, this time in Cleveland, before the NBA takes tomorrow off for Election Day.

📺 NFL: Buccaneers at Chiefs, 8:15 p.m. ET on ABC/ESPNThe other Bucs are also going up against a 7-0 squad — fun! In this one, a win would go a long way in the divisional race for Tampa Bay (4-4), which is trying to get right after dropping two straight.

Get tickets to games like these here.

Andrew Marchand and Scott Dochterman have a thoughtful and thorough story on the decades of work that made the Caitlin Clark phenomenon possible. It’s worth your time today.

The NBA season is less than two weeks old, but that’s enough time for our staff to have noticed some trends. For starters, they identified each team’s biggest surprise so far.

Over in the NHL, meanwhile, we identified each team’s biggest concern after a month of play.

Before Tuesday’s first 12-team College Football Playoff rankings reveal, check out Stewart Mandel’s and Austin Mock’s latest bracket projections.

Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Our news story on the Jason Kelce situation.

Most-read on the website yesterday: ☝️

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(Top photo: Larry Radloff/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)