The Bears are finalizing a trade that will send Khalil Mack to the Chargers, sources told ESPN on Thursday. The Chargers are expected to send a 2022 second-round draft pick and a 2023 sixth-rounder to the Bears in return.
Lawyers for Alexandra Davis, who is suing Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, say their client just wants a judge to toss out an agreement that “attempts to prohibit her from stating who her real father is.”
Wide receiver Sterling Shepard will be back with the Giants this coming season on a reworked one-year deal, a source said.
Former Vikings cornerback Jeff Gladney was found not guilty on felony assault charges Thursday by a Dallas jury.
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Tommy Fleetwood narrowly qualified for THE PLAYERS Championship and then endured a long, wet start at the TPC Sawgrass with a 6-under 66 to share the early lead with AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am winner Tom Hoge. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Jon Rahm switches back to U.S. Open-winning putter Where that leaves them after the opening round could take time to determine. The PGA TOUR enjoyed ideal weather with no delays for nine weeks in four states across five time zones to start the year. And then for its biggest event, it barely got started. More than an inch of overnight rain delayed the start by an hour. Storms in the area resulted in another delay of more than four hours. Fleetwood, a Ryder Cup star in Paris in 2018 who has gone two years since his last victory, returned from the long delay to complete a string of three straight birdies around the turn and then kept his round together with two big putts, one for par and another for birdie. Hoge had an eagle on the par-5 second hole, his 11th of the round, and shot 31 on the front nine to join him in the clubhouse at 66. Keith Mitchell was poised to join the until his approach to the 18th was right of the flag and landed on the slope of gnarly rough in the mounds, and he failed to save par. He was at 67, along with Genesis Invitational winner Joaquin Niemann, Anirban Lahiri and Kramer Hickok. The stop-and-start nature might not be over. The forecast called for a slightly lower chance of rain Friday — 99% instead of 100% — and there was a chance those who finished the round might not see the course again until Saturday. Six players from the early side of the draw did not finish, meaning they return at 7:15 a.m. Friday to play one or two holes before getting the rest of the day off. Twelve players never even hit a tee shot. Ian Poulter can rest easy, even if it takes time for his heart rate to steady. The 46-year-old could sense the horn about to sound to suspend play for darkness. By rule, players can finish the hole that anyone in the group has started. Poulter was on the tee at the par-3 17th, the island green with a back pin and soft greens, when he fired is shot and barely saw it land 4 feet from the cup. He jogged all the way to the green, holed the birdie putt, ran through the tunnel beneath the bleachers and onto the 18th tee. He hit his tee shot as the group in front cleared out of the way from the fairway. He did the same thing 11 years ago. Even with only 66 players completing the round, that was enough time for the Stadium Course to provide its share of thrills and spills, mostly the latter. Harold Varner III, needing good results to stay in the top 50 and make a trip to the Masters, had a two-shot lead when he stepped to the 17th tee. His shot spun sharply down the slope, across the light cut of rough and into the water. His next shot from the drop zone nearly did the same. He made triple bogey, dropped another shot on the 18th and shot 69. “Just was in between clubs and didn’t execute the shot, and that’s what you get a lot of out here,” Varner said. Amazingly, that was the only ball in the water out of 69 tee shots. No need telling that to Adam Scott. The former PLAYERS champion pumped two tee shots into the water off the 18th tee and took a quadruple bogey on his way to a 78. Fleetwood has reason to be happy just to have a tee time. He missed the cut at the Honda Classic and narrowly stayed inside the top 50, one of the criterium for THE PLAYERS Championship. For the most part, it was safe and steady play, far from perfect though Sawgrass rarely demands that. He was 6 under through 14 holes when he hit a wild drive into the pine straw to the right of the sixth fairway, leading to bogey. He was even further to the right on the seventh, but a superb save from behind the green kept him from dropping another shot, and then he holed a 25-foot birdie on the par-3 eighth. “I’m chuffed to be in on that score,” Fleetwood said. “I felt like I drove the ball well aside from a couple, and I felt like I chipped and putted great. For sure, that was the most I could have got out of the round. So days like that are very, very pleasing.” Long. Wet. But pleasing.
With the AFC West loading up on passers, getting Mack gives the Chargers another top-flight pass rusher to combat the division’s aerial assault.
MLB’s owners on Thursday voted to ratify a new CBA, ending the league’s 99-day lockout and salvaging a 162-game season.
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Perhaps rumors about the demise of Jon Rahm’s putter were greatly exaggerated. The beloved Odyssey White Hot OG Rossie S prototype with which Rahm won last year’s U.S. Open was back in the bag Thursday after sitting on the bench for the past five rounds. “It just needed a timeout last week,” Rahm said Thursday after shooting 69 in the opening round of THE PLAYERS. He gained more than two strokes on the greens Thursday, rolling in three putts from outside 15 feet. Rahm’s short-game struggles have been a focal point this year, especially in contrast to his consistently exceptional ballstriking. He leads the TOUR in greens in regulation, Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, ranks second in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green and is fourth in driving distance. He sits outside the top 125 in both Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green and Strokes Gained: Putting, however. Rahm’s short game saved him on Thursday, however, a sharp contrast to the trend this year. “I would say it wasn’t my best day tee to green, maybe not my best day with the irons, but luckily short game was good,” he said. “Kind of reverse to what it’s been the last few months. I was able to post a score.” He is 15th in this season’s FedExCup standings, thanks to a runner-up finish at the Sentry Tournament of Championship and third-place finish at the Farmers Insurance Open. Rahm switched putters in the final round of last month’s The Genesis Invitational after watching too many putts slide by the edge of the hole. According to GolfWRX, who spoke to Odyssey tour rep Joe Toulon, Rahm’s stroke was getting a bit steep with the former Rossie putter and lifting too much off the putting surface. That was negatively impacting his release of the putter head. That’s why Rahm switched to an Odyssey White Hot OG #7S, a model that Rahm occasionally practices with at home. “His path looked very good with it, stayed lower to the ground during the backstroke, which allowed it to arc nicely and put him in a great position to release the putter through impact,” Toulon told GolfWRX. The Rossie is a rounder, mallet-style head, while the OG #7S has two protruding fangs. He told PGATOUR.COM that choosing between the two came down to this: He stood 40 feet from the hole, devoted one putt to each putter and said to himself, “Whichever one I make it with first, I’m going with.” “I was right in between the two of them,” Rahm told PGATOUR.COM last week. “I could have picked either/or when I did. Both of them felt great.” The persistent focus on his short game has frustrated the world No. 1, however, and it showed Thursday after another series of questions on the topic. “I had one bad month,” he said. “Why is everybody panicking? Perhaps Thursday was the start of things trending in the right direction.
Georgia men’s basketball coach Tom Crean will not return for his fifth season with the Bulldogs, the school announced on Thursday.
MLB’s owners on Thursday voted to ratify a new CBA, ending the league’s 99-day lockout and salvaging a 162-game season, sources told ESPN’s Jeff Passan.
