Author: Michael

The 2023-24 NFL season kick-off is almost here! OutKick is unveiling its team-by-team preview series. Last week, we covered the AFC and NFC West. This week, we’re tackling the AFC North and NFC North. We finished the NFC North on Thursday and now conclude the AFC North with last year’s champion, the Cincinnati Bengals.
Cincinnati Bengals 2022-23 Record: 12-4

Cincinnati Bengals 2023-24 Win Total Over/Under: 10.5

Offseason Moves
The Cincinnati Bengals did something that they don’t normally do — they spent some money in free agency.

Zach Johnson will be faced with tough decisions in less than two weeks’ time when he makes his captain’s picks for the upcoming Ryder Cup in Rome. Brooks Koepka shouldn’t play a factor in the U.S. captain’s looming decisions, or so we thought.
After picking up his third PGA Championship earlier this year and a T-2 finish at the Masters in April, Koepka currently finds himself fifth in the U.S. team standings. The top six in the standings after the conclusion of this week’s BMW Championship will automatically earn a spot on the team headed to Rome.

There was a time when running backs ruled the fantasy football world. Now, with NFL offenses going so pass-heavy, the top teams are drafting wide receivers early and often.

For today’s MLB bet we are going to try a two-game parlay to get us to plus money. I like both of these plays on their own, but they pay much better when played together (+115).
Phillies ML (-188)
Michael Lorenzen has allowed only two runs across 17 innings pitched since joining the rotation in Philadelphia, and in his last outing he faced this same Nationals team and delivered a complete game no-hitter. His post All-Star break ERA is a mere 1.45, and there’s no reason to think he won’t be sharp again tonight.

Von Miller considers the fate of the modern-day pass rusher like a philosopher mulls the meaning of life. For the Bills’ sack master there’s not much difference, which is to say that Miller thinks about the purpose of his existence—dropping quarterbacks like bad habits—incessantly, in or out of season, awake or asleep, growing more obsessed each day.

Photo by Darren Heath/Getty Images
Felipe Massa is revisiting the 2008 F1 Drivers’ Championship. Here is why
The 2008 Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship remains one of the closest in the sport’s history, and is still hotly debated to this day. Like the infamous 2021 Drivers’ Championship, which was decided on the final lapo f the season between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, the 2008 campaign also came down to the final corner of the calendar. Felipe Massa came across the line to win his home race, the Brazilian Grand Prix, in the season’s final race.

Northwestern’s hazing scandal won’t stop the university’s massive new football field project.
The Wildcats have been planning massive renovations to Ryan Field that would turn it into a world class events venue, and it’s expected the total cost of the project would be around $800 million.
Ryan Field is one of the worst major venues in America. It’s long past due for some serious upgrades, and Northwestern had been planning to do it for a long time.

The Baltimore Orioles recently suspended play-by-play announcer Kevin Brown for more than two weeks for telling the truth. But at least, he got to return to the booth on Aug. 11.
Former Orioles play-by-play man Jon Miller has basically been on suspension for 27 years from Baltimore for the same thing, but he’s loving every minute of it.
Miller has been the voice of the San Francisco Giants since 1997 and completed 20 years on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball in 2010.

During the first U.S. Senate hearing about the PGA Tour’s proposed merger with the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF) we only heard one side of the story as the two people to testify were Tour officials Jimmy Dunne and Ron Price. Senator Richard Blumenthal wouldn’t like that to be the case the next time around, he wants to hear from the PIF governor himself, Yasir Al-Rumayyan.
Al-Rumayyan has explained that he would be an “inappropriate witness” for the investigation into the PGA Tour’s dealings and plans with Saudi Arabia.

It’s not enough to have comprehensive player rankings ahead of your fantasy football draft. You need to know how players fit into different tiers.
If, for instance, you miss out on an elite quarterback — let’s say Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen or Jalen Hurts — these tiers suggest that you might want to go in a different direction and grab a Tier 1 running back or wide receiver before targeting a quarterback that falls into the next level.