Actually a Sports Blog

Best: Buffalo Bills One of two teams with less than 100 points yielded (along with New Orleans) One of two teams with more than 200 points scored (along with Dallas) In the Middle: Kansas City Chiefs Only four teams have scored more points so far this season, but they're only ahead of three teams in terms of fewest points yielded   Worst: Miami Dolphins The only team in the bottom five of both most points scored and fewest points yielded   Best Offense: Dallas Cowboys They lead the NFL with 205 points  Worst Offense: New York Jets The have just 67 points in five games for just under two touchdowns per game Best Defense: New Orleans They've allowed 91 points in five games, or around 18 points per   Worst Defense: Washington With 186 points given up in six games, that's a little over four TDs a game   

1. New Orleans (91) 2. Buffalo (98) 3. Arizona (109) 4. Cincinnati (111) 5. San Francisco (119) 6. NY Jets/Carolina (121) 7. Baltimore (123) 8. Chicago (124) 9. New England/Denver/LA Rams (127) 10. Indianapolis (131) 11. Pittsburgh (132) 12. Green Bay (136) 13. Minnesota (137) 14. Las Vegas/Tampa Bay (144) 15. Dallas (146) 16. Atlanta (148) 17. Seattle (149) 18. LA Chargers (150) 19. Philadelphia (152) 20. Tennessee (161) 21. Cleveland (165) 22. Houston/Jacksonville/Detroit (172) 23. Kansas City (176) 24. Miami/NY Giants (177) 25. Washington (186)

1. Dallas (205) 2. Buffalo (203) 3. Tampa Bay (195)  4. Arizona (194) 5. Kansas City (185) 6. LA Rams (179) 7. Cleveland (173) 8. Baltimore (170) 9. Tennessee (166) 10. Cincinnati/LA Chargers (148) 11. Minnesota/Green Bay/Las Vegas (147)   12. Green Bay (144) 13. Carolina (143) 14. Denver/Seattle (140) 15. Indianapolis (139) 16. Philadelphia (137)  17. Washington (136) 18. New Orleans (127) 19. New England (125) 20. Pittsburgh/San Francisco (117) 21. Jacksonville (116) 22. NY Giants (114)  23. Detroit (109) 24. Atlanta (105) 25. Miami (99) 26. Chicago (98) 27. Houston (92) 28. NY Jets (67)

Prediction #1: Colby Covington to WWE Colby has a lot of things going for him if he wants to make the transition. He has the wrestling background, courtesy of two Pac-10 titles at Oregon State. And his public persona could make him a natural heel right off the bat. So maybe he gets a matchup with Roman Reigns? Or he takes on Rob Gronkowski for the 24/7 title? The possibilities are certainly out there.  Prediction #2: Holloway to Bellator The one obstacle here is that Holloway's facing Yair Rodriguez next month.  However, Max Holloway, often known as the "pride of Hawaii", could be a fairly major acquisition for Bellator, given that they've certainly been closer to putting on fight cards in Honolulu than the UFC over the years. Think about how many tickets Bellator could sell for a fight card in Honolulu if they have a fighter born in Honolulu in the main event.  But who could Bellator send to the UFC? I was thinking Julia Budd, as she'd give Amanda Nunes a sellabl...

If we just look at the MMA fights we could've gotten this year, there are a lot of fights that've been scheduled but didn't make it to the cage. 1. Donald Cerrone v. Diego Sanchez 2. Luke Rockhold v. Sean Strickland 3. Holly Holm v. Norma Dumont 4. Aspen Ladd v. Macy Chiasson 5. Aljamain Sterling v. Petr Yan 2 6. Rafael dos Anjos v. Islam Makhachev  7. Maycee Barber v. Montana De La Rosa *And dozens of others. And that's just in the UFC. Bellator has also seen two high-profile matchups fall through in the span of the last couple of months. First it was Yoel Romero v. Anthony Johnson in the opening round of the light heavyweight Grand Prix, then it was Anthony Johnson v. Vadim Nemkov in the semifinal round. So that's nine huge bouts that've fallen through since January, which begs the question of whether or not the MMA gods are pulling the strings somehow to put together a huge fight card in the coming years. My guess is that this has something to do with UFC 300...

UFC 235 in March of 2019 was supposed to feature a women's bantamweight contest between Aspen Ladd and Holly Holm among the other bouts on the card. Ladd at the time was 7-0 and coming off stoppage wins over Lina Lansberg and Yana Kunitskaya.  However, the bout was removed from the card in a month or so out and not rescheduled.  Had Ladd beaten Holm, particularly by stoppage, I feel confident in saying that she would've gotten the next title shot against Nunes and it would've come earlier than December 2019, maybe in the June through September time frame or maybe October. No disrespect to Sijara Eubanks, but Holm has the name value that being a former bantamweight champion and former featherweight title challenger will do for you.  Had Holm won, she would've also gotten the title shot, but potentially just because women's bantamweight, even two years ago, had a talent problem where it was Nunes at the top and then everyone else.  So basically, this would've been...

In case you've forgotten, UFC 234 in February 2019 was supposed to see then-champion Robert Whittaker defending his middleweight title against challenger Kelvin Gastelum, who'd gotten the title shot off of wins against Michael Bisping and Ronaldo Souza. Hours before the fight, however, Whittaker pulled out due to emergency surgery.  It's pretty safe to say that UFC 236 nine weekends later wouldn't have seen Gastelum-Adesanya for the interim middleweight title in the co-main.  Let's say that Whittaker beats Gastelum at UFC 234. The UFC opts to have Whittaker-Adesanya as the co-main for UFC 241 in August 2019, which of course was headlined by Cormier-Miocic 2 for the heavyweight title. We can assume, as well, that Nate Diaz wouldn't have competed there- Dana White wouldn't want one of his top PPV needle-movers playing second fiddle to the co-main and would instead book McGregor-Diaz 3 at lightweight for the October 2019 PPV main event at UFC 243. Think it'...

And by "ghost town", I mean the women's featherweight division.   Seriously, the four women in action in the next two months include three of the six women's featherweights under the Zuffa banner and a bantamweight taking a short-notice fight on Saturday. So the question remains, where does this leave Amanda Nunes? The most obvious option is to have the winner of Saturday's Ladd-Dumont main event take on Nunes for the title, for a couple of reasons. Dumont will make it three straight with a win, not to mention she's unofficially ranked second behind Nunes. And if Ladd wins, the UFC might book a title fight against Nunes on name value alone. It's tough to say if Holm being in the main event would do much- given that Holm had challenged Cyborg for the 145 belt some years ago, a win over Dumont might get her another title shot. Honestly, who knows at this point.   Next month will see Felicia Spencer v. Leah Letson, and I would suggest Danyelle Wolf take on th...

UFC 269 on December 11th is a near-perfect year-end fight card.  You have Oliveira-Poirier for the lightweight title, which is the fight that should've been made for the belt in the first place, instead of Oliveira-Chandler. You have Cody Garbrandt's flyweight debut. You have Sean O'Malley taking on a ranked opponent. You have the return of Dominick Cruz. And you have the Lioness in action- Amanda Nunes, the greatest women's mixed martial artist (or on the shortlist).  There's one bout, however, that I'm not excited about- Brandon Moreno will be defending his flyweight belt against the top contender... Deiveson Figueiredo in an immediate rematch. I'm sorry... what? Why is this happening? Here are a few reasons why I'm not looking forward to this bout. 1. Immediate rematches should only be for dominant champions. Let's look at a quick timeline, shall we? February 2020: Figueiredo takes on Joseph Benavidez for the vacant title. Figueiredo wins but th...

Remember Henry Cejudo? The former UFC flyweight and bantamweight champion? Now he's saying that not only does he want a shot at the featherweight title, he's saying that he's the most deserving contender because of his previous resume- defeating Demetrious Johnson, knocking out TJ Dillashaw and knocking out Marlon Moraes and Dominick Cruz.  Well, let's go through that one thought at a time.  Henry: I'm the most deserving contender and I should jump the line. That's false right out of the gate. The winner of Max Holloway v. Yair Rodriguez on November 13th is almost certainly getting the next crack at the title. Behind them, you have Chan Sung Jung, Calvin Kattar, Arnold Allen, Josh Emmett, Giga Chikadze, Dan Ige and Edson Barboza rounding out the top ten, not to mention Brian Ortega. The difference between them and Cejudo? All of them are career featherweights. Now, if Cejudo had said he wanted a tune-up fight at featherweight my tune would be different. Might I ...