Sports

J.J. Watt could’ve gone to just about any team he wanted in free agency last year. At age 32 and in his 11th year in the league, it’s more probable than not that he’s entered the twilight of his career, but with three DPOY awards under his belt, anyone would’ve taken him. Advertisement In every major sports league today, just about every great, aging player who hasn’t won a ring signs with a contender to try and get one. And who can blame them? Athletic careers are extremely finite, but championships last forever. You gotta take those opportunities while you can. That’s why everyone and their momma is signing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Maybe we as fans are so used to it at this point that it’s shocking when they still want to compete. When J.J. Watt decided to join an Arizona team that had just gone 8-8 and finished third in their division, the sentiment was that Watt doesn’t care about winning a Super Bowl. A great player who is a free agent …

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I know better than to write the Dodgers’ eulogy now. We’re just where we’ve been before. The series should be over, and if it wasn’t for Cody Bellinger guessing right on a high fastball on Tuesday, it would be. The Braves’ 9-2 win in Game 4 only makes it 3-1, which is exactly where they were against the Dodgers last October. You may have forgotten, because it was such a weird set-up and we’re all trying to erase 2020 from our minds. This time around, the Dodgers would have to win two games on the road instead of three in a neutral venue, which is certainly not beyond them. But this one feels a bit different. The Braves have Max Fried lined up for Game 5, the Dodgers don’t have any idea who will start, and they’ve been burning through their pen already. Advertisement Once again, a starter that manager Dave Roberts just had to use out of the pen came back flaccid for his start the next time out. First it was Max Scherzer in Game 2, who willingly came out of the …

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This is not about ripping Keith Olbermann. If you want to do that, you can start with “Why I Think Trump Is Finished (And My Work Is Done),” from November 28, 2017 , a time at which Trump was far from finished. You can go forward or backward from there, it doesn’t really matter, and he’d admit himself that he can rub people the wrong way. Advertisement The best thing about Olbermann is his obsession with getting dogs adopted and saving them from death. The former SportsCenter anchor also is a passionate baseball memorabilia collector, and he’s selling the ball from Carlton Fisk’s 1975 World Series home run to raise money to help dogs. That’s great! What’s not great is Olbermann’s choice of how to sell the Fisk ball, on a “fractional investing platform” called Collectable. What does that mean? According to Collectable’s website, “fractional ownership allows many people to share ownership in one item. With Collectable, users can purchase …

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NASCAR 21: Ignition releases on October 28, and it’s a big deal for Motorsport Games, the newly minted publisher that has been inking licensing deals with racing series left and right and acquired rFactor developer Studio 397 earlier this year. NASCAR 21 is built on a wealth of technology new to the franchise — Unreal Engine 4 underpinned by Studio 397's rFactor physics. On paper, it should make for the most realistic, engaging NASCAR simulation yet. Unfortunately, things haven’t quite panned out that way. Advertisement Reviewers and influencers got their hands on the game this week, and early impressions have been discouraging. Davin, who streams under the name DriveThrough, noted in a Twitter thread that while NASCAR 21 looks stunning visually, it’s hindered by a number of shortcomings. The stages present in real NASCAR races aren’t yet in the game, for example. Davin also took issue with a general lack of caution flags, inconsistent …

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You might have heard that Konami’s new football game eFootball 2022 , is bad . I am here today to tell you exactly why it is bad, and just how bad it is. Advertisement First, some background: since the 1990s, Konami has been in the business of making football games, and for much of that time, they have been very good. Indeed, during much of the 00s, the Pro Evolution Soccer series was vastly superior to competitor FIFA , despite EA’s overwhelming advantages with stuff like marketing and licenses (the rights to use the official names, badges and kits of real teams). Over the last decade, however, that pendulum started swinging the other way. FIFA started getting better on the field while only furthering its advantages off it, and by the time Ultimate Team got its hooks into a generation of kids, the writing was on the wall for Konami. With EA raising the stakes to a level Konami simply couldn’t afford to match, PES began scrambling for a way to …

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Welcome to the Year Of Bad Sports Video Games. I’ve been doing this head-to-head review for years now , the only one of its kind in Kotaku’s critical arsenal, because this is the only space in video games where it makes sense to do it. FIFA v PES is the last significant battleground in sports, and it happens every year, so it feels right (to me, at least) to pretend that there’s a large audience of people out there who want to play a football game, but would like help deciding which one. Advertisement To recap and see where exactly we’re at in this eternal and undying struggle, here’s what I said at the conclusion of last year’s showdown : The overwhelming impression I got playing both games this year is that they’re just tired . Both series are in need of a fresh shot of adrenaline (and a fresh coat of paint), and they were never going to get it in 2019, in the twilight of the sixth console generation. We can only hope that this year’s stagnation …

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