Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
Ryan Callahan scored for the fifth time in four days and defenseman Ryan McDonagh snapped a second-period tie to lift the New York Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Sunday.
Kobe Bryant hit a baseline jump shot with 4.2 seconds left and the Los Angeles Lakers wrapped up a six-game road trip by holding on to beat the Raptors 94-92 on Sunday, their eighth victory in nine meetings with Toronto
Arc's five up, five down: After No. 11 Michigan State's 58-48 upset of No. 3 Ohio State, you'd be a fool to discount the Spartans' national title chances now.
Miami coach Al Golden says the worst is behind him, but his headaches figure to continue now that former booster Nevin Shapiro, now in jail, says his involvement with the Hurricanes program will result in stiff penalties.
Eleven shots separated Phil and Tiger Sunday at Pebble Beach as Lefty secured his 40th Tour win. Jason Sobel had hole-by-hole reports.
The United States completed a 5-0 rout of Switzerland in the Davis Cup on Sunday, with 19-year-old Ryan Harrison and John Isner winning closing singles matches.
Zambia has won the African Cup of Nations, beating pre-tournament favorite Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in a dramatic final at Stade de l'Amitie.
Tessa Worley of France fought off gusting winds to win a second consecutive World Cup giant slalom Sunday in the Andorran Pyrenees. Overall leader Lindsey Vonn was more than a second behind and finished eighth.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
APBut rhetoric aside, the Jets had to fire Mangini, who neither showed passion on the sidelines during games nor communicated any to his team. Along with him have to go the coordinators who crafted a predictable offense and a defense that rose to mighty heights with those wins over the Titans and the Patriots, then failed to meet challenges the rest of the way.
You can’t blame Tannenbaum and Johnson for Mangini’s failures. There are no guarantees in hiring coaches. Some highly touted candidates turn into Tony Sparano, the guy who engineered the 10-game turnaround in Miami, and Mike Smith, the genius who installed Matt Ryan as the quarterback in Atlanta and woke up four months later in the playoffs. Others turn into Romeo Crennel and Mangini.
If there was a way to know in advance which ones were going to be Sparanos and which Manginis, every team would be great. But it doesn’t work that way. All you can do is hire someone you believe in and, if he doesn’t work out, get rid of him and try again. It’s a lot like drafting quarterbacks: You keep running through them until you find the one that’s a keeper.
It’s 40 years and counting since the Jets stunned the NFL with the Super Bowl win that had been guaranteed by Joe Namath. They haven’t had a quarterback with anything like Broadway Joe’s charisma since. They’ve gotten to the AFC Championship game a couple of times, but they’ve never gotten back to the Super Bowl.
They are the Phillies, the Red Sox, the Cubs of the NFL — a team that spends the money and often has big stars and never wins. There’s hope in that analogy: If the Phillies and Red Sox can win, anybody can. But there’s also despair: It’s 100 years since last the Cubs celebrated a championship.
Jets fans are painfully aware of that. They’re also painfully aware that their team always finds a way to mess things up. They started this season with hope, got to the end of November with wild expectations, and landed with a spirit-shattering thud three days after Christmas.
So now it’s another coaching search, another quarterback controversy, another descent into chaos. In other words, it’s just like old times.
Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
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Zambia has won the African Cup of Nations, beating pre-tournament favorite Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in a dramatic final at Stade de l'Amitie.
Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
Paul Pierce has been around long enough to know what Rajon Rondo's performance can mean for the aging Boston Celtics.