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Off the bat, Jordan Walker seemed to have a read on the sinking liner hit to right field. His first step was quick and his route was direct as he sprinted at the ball. But as he closed in, an all-too-familiar scene unraveled for Walker, the fledgling outfielder who has become the latest young player set up to fail by the St. Louis Cardinals.

A split-second hesitation left him scrambling. Walker made a sliding attempt, though his body language betrayed the helplessness that comes from losing a ball in the lights. He hit the ground awkwardly, his glove outstretched to protect his face. The ball sailed over it and rolled to the right-field wall for a double.

Walker got up on one knee and pointed toward the stadium lights with his glove. The frustration on his face was clear. Walker has become accustomed to plays like this — a mistake that Cardinals prospects for years were taught so well in the minors to avoid.

But now, players like Walker reach the major leagues less prepared to prosper. Instead their imperfections highlight what people in the organization describe as the withering of a once-thriving player development operation, a machine that was once the envy of the sport.

“We’re in trouble,” one team employee said. “This is not easily fixable within the next year, or year after. This is going to take some time.

“I don’t know how this was f—ed up so bad over the last few years.”

The Cardinals have lost their way, according to people within the organization interviewed by The Athletic, all of whom were granted anonymity in exchange for their candor. All described an outdated player development department, one that has hurt players like Walker. Some lamented the organization’s emphasis on directing more money to the big-league payroll, even if it meant skimping on hiring the coaches, instructors and modern technology that are vital to refining players as they progress through the minors. Those decisions have left the organization to reckon with the harsh reality that they have fallen behind their rivals.

“People would always ask in the minors, do you care about winning or do you care about developing players?” one staffer said. “The answer would be, we develop winning players.

“We are no longer developing winning players.”

Walker, the club’s No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft, joined the Cardinals with more upside than nearly any other amateur player in the organization’s draft history. He has since joined a growing list of Cardinals top prospects who have faltered in the major leagues, having twice been demoted to Triple A in the past two seasons. Two recent first-rounders, Nolan Gorman (2018) and Zack Thompson (2019), both finished this season in the minors. Two first-rounders from the 2016 draft, Dylan Carlson and Dakota Hudson, flamed out of the organization.

The fallout, years in the making, has now hit the major leagues.

The Cardinals missed the postseason for the second consecutive year and appear ready to revive the infrastructure that once served as a conveyor belt for polished homegrown players. Though they do not plan on tanking, people briefed on the Cardinals’ plans say the organization is preparing to shift its focus on upgrading the minor leagues and the player development department, even if it means going down a path seldom taken in baseball-mad St. Louis: accepting the possibility of not putting the major-league team in position to contend.

President of baseball operations John Mozeliak plans to publicly address the team’s future shortly after the regular season ends, though he and general manager Mike Girsch declined multiple requests for comment for this story. Representatives of the ownership group headed up by chief executive officer Bill DeWitt II did not respond to The Athletic’s interview requests. But according to people briefed on the situation, the Cardinals intend to take sweeping action, and at least one of those changes has already been made.

Chaim Bloom, who helped shape the Tampa Bay Rays into a player development powerhouse before enduring a turbulent stint as general manager of the Boston Red Sox, joined the Cardinals earlier this year as a consultant to audit the club’s minor-league operations. Bloom has since joined the front office full-time. He will be charged with making changes in the Cardinals’ farm system based on his findings.

His first and most pressing task: hiring a new director of player development.

Cardinals outfielder Jordan Walker. (Orlando Ramirez / USA Today)

To understand how far the Cardinals have fallen in player development, it helps to understand how far ahead of the curve they were two decades ago. One of baseball’s winningest franchises, the Cardinals long avoided a period where winning in the majors was not the top priority. They did it largely by finding talented players and developing them into polished homegrown major leaguers.

Under former scouting executive Jeff Luhnow, the Cardinals were one of the first teams willing to incorporate advanced analytics into their amateur draft model.

From 2005 to 2010, the Cardinals were arguably baseball’s best team at using analytics to evaluate and identify talent. They refined their drafting and development process, targeting young, under-the-radar players who usually didn’t make the top-100 lists of other organizations. It helped that most of these prospects were college players, who tend to ascend through the minors faster than their prep counterparts. That blueprint propelled St. Louis to the 2011 World Series title.

When they made the postseason again in 2012, homegrown players comprised more than 60 percent of the playoff roster, the most in baseball at the time. Players drafted and developed in the late 2000s — a list that includes Allen Craig, Daniel Descalso, Skip Schumaker, Joe Kelly and Jon Jay — became key supplementary pieces to a consistent winner.

Though they have not won the World Series since that 2011 championship, the Cardinals made the postseason each of the next four seasons, including winning another pennant in 2013.

The Cardinals knew their model worked.

But high-profile success almost always ensures that other organizations take notice, and eventually rivals built similar analytical models. Over time, a key difference emerged: Other clubs invested more in their models than the Cardinals were investing in theirs. As innovation spread through the industry the Cardinals stagnated. Their advantage began to slip.

At first, it wasn’t easy to notice. After reaching the National League Championship Series in 2019, the Cardinals made the postseason the next three years, a run that included a division title in 2022. But despite the success, internal concerns were growing.

By the time the club suffered its jarring 91-loss season in 2023, it was too late. A shaky infrastructure had finally collapsed.

“It’s broken,” one staffer said. “Our system is broken in a way. How it got there, I don’t know.”

How it got there, according to multiple staffers, is a matter of numbers.

The Cardinals have always operated with a relatively small player development team. But in recent years, team insiders say, the Cardinals failed to keep up as rival teams increased the size of their staffs. Not including affiliate coaches, special advisors or medical coordinators, the Cardinals have five full-time minor-league instructors, which marks their leanest staffing level in the past decade.

That number becomes even more conspicuous when compared to other teams in the National League. The Phillies boast 14 full-time field staff members. The Mets employ 15 staffers, including coordinators for catching, base running, infield and outfield. The Brewers, winners of the National League Central three times in the past four seasons, retain 17 staffers.

By contrast, the Cardinals do not have an infield, outfield or catching coordinator, nor do they employ any full-time roving instructors or any full-time coordinator position in Latin America. Instead, a small crew led by instructing coordinator José Oquendo oversees the entire operation, with help from long-time pitching coordinator Tim Leveque and hitting coordinator Russ Steinhorn. The Cardinals have an assistant hitting coordinator, Brock Hammit, and a pitching coordinator dedicated solely to the Jupiter Complex in Rick Harig.

The Cardinals have paid a steep price for their lack of coordinators.

“When guys get to the majors, they’re not ready,” one staffer said. “They have so many warts that have to get taken care of in the big leagues.”

Over the past three seasons, plenty of Cardinals prospects have floundered in the major leagues. Though Walker has been the most prominent case, others in the organization found examples in Gorman, Thompson, Matthew Liberatore and Iván Herrera. Fundamentals, one staffer said, is “where we’re seeing guys really take a hit. I mean, these guys do not know the fundamentals of the game.”

Catcher Iván Herrera talks with pitcher Matthew Liberatore (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)

Taking secondary leads, looking in for signs, throwing to the right base, hitting the right cutoff man and taking the correct route on a fly ball may often be inconsequential in the box score, at least in the minors. But for some Cardinals players, deficiencies in those areas have required corrective action by coaches in the majors, where failure to execute on such finer points is often a recipe for disaster.

There is a push from some in the organization to add more staff positions to the minor leagues. Some staffers cringed when recalling some of Walker’s routes, and one noted how much an outfield coordinator would have helped the struggling young player, who spent just four months in the minors playing in the outfield before being expected to continue learning the position in the majors. That experiment has saddled Walker with a career minus-17 outs above average.

Another employee pointed out Herrera’s struggles behind the plate, particularly in controlling the run game; Herrera has thrown out just four runners in 59 stolen-base attempts this season. Herrera “is the one who has been impacted the most,” the employee said, while also acknowledging the organization’s reliance on two decades of Yadier Molina, whose presence in a way allowed them to let catching development slip through the cracks.

“You can’t cut yourself thin and expect two to three guys to cover all of those areas,” the employee said. “It’s hurting our minor leagues. It kills you. Not having guys individually going into cities, specifically focusing on areas of the game to tell guys to get better? A manager can only do so much within the course of the season.”

“That’s what coordinators are for, to be able to scour (the system) and hold people accountable,” another employee added. “Hold coaches accountable for teaching, hold players accountable for doing the work and executing it. To leave it up to one guy (Oquendo), that’s not fair to him.”

A handful of employees acknowledged the temptation to rush young talent through the system, an industry-wide trend that is hardly unique to the Cardinals. But multiple staffers pointed out that the Cardinals’ lack of coaches has made them particularly vulnerable.

“It’s a lack of resources,” one staffer said. “It’s also the game itself, the way it’s changed. It’s pushing these kids through the system and then they’re getting put into positions that they shouldn’t be in. It’s detrimental to them because they get up here, and they fail.

“They’re making mistakes that should have been fixed already. Or they make a mistake that should’ve been fixed, and they make it again and again and again. That’s the stuff that should happen in the minor leagues. That’s what the minor leagues are for.”

For all the gripes, some employees say the Cardinals’ problems in player development are not entirely a problem of staff size. The overarching issue, they say, comes down to money.

To make up for the slippage in the Cardinals’ homegrown player pipeline, major-league payroll has climbed in order to keep pace with attempts to field a strong major-league product every season. But the team’s investment in player development has not followed suit, staffers believe, and as a result they have neglected the foundation that for so long had allowed the franchise to remain competitive.

“We have gotten ourselves into a cycle,” one employee said.

Breaking that cycle has proven to be a complex task.

Dating to their last World Series championship, COVID-19-shortened season aside, the Cardinals’ Opening Day payroll has climbed incrementally. The team’s Opening Day payroll for the 2024 season exceeded $175 million for the second straight season, topping the 2022 payroll by nearly $20 million.

This would suggest that ownership has been willing to spend more to win more. But according to people familiar with the organization’s business decisions, Mozeliak has been operating with a set amount of money to split between the Cardinals’ entire baseball operations department, and the front office has repeatedly chosen to invest in the big-league team. Those decisions resulted in repeated cuts to player development, both stateside and in Latin America.

To make matters worse, the money that the front office has spent on the major-league team has too often failed to pan out. Aside from the additions of Goldschmidt and Arenado, Mozeliak’s recent track record of free-agent signings and trades has been pockmarked by misses.

The Cardinals built their 2024 Opening Day starting rotation solely out of free agency. That alone cost them over $62 million in payroll. It’s difficult — if not impossible — to piece together a competitive rotation through free-agent signings every year, especially when a front office faces financial restraints.

The Cardinals’ analytics department, headed by Girsch, has also missed on multiple internal evaluations. The Cardinals kept Tyler O’Neill and Dylan Carlson past their peak value, and when they did get traded, the organization whiffed on the returns.

And so the cycle has continued. The breakdown of the Cardinals’ homegrown pipeline means that the team is no longer receiving an infusion of payroll-friendly, team-controlled talent. It has led to a reliance on more expensive free agents to fill too many critical needs.

“Free agency is for supplementing your roster,” one employee said.

All five pitchers in the Opening Day rotation this season were bought in free agency, all at market price. That’s not sustainable for the Cardinals, especially when considering the rising cost of pitching. Mozeliak’s job over the last decade has not been easy. He’s had to balance developing players at a high level while simultaneously investing in the big-league club at a high level — all under financial parameters set by an ownership group that views its team as a small-market club.

For the better part of his tenure, Mozeliak excelled. Since he took over the baseball operations department in 2008, St. Louis has posted just one losing season and advanced to the postseason 10 times. In a way, the Cardinals’ consistency made it difficult to address their pressing needs away from the major-league team.

How does the organization justify a pivot from a major-league team that just keeps winning?

At this point, the Cardinals don’t believe they have a choice.

Chaim Bloom has been tasked with fixing the farm system. (Winslow Townson / Associated Press)

For many in the organization, questions will arise about the future.

Paul Goldschmidt is an impending free agent. Ryan Helsley, who is vying for the most saves in baseball this year, is due for a major raise in his final year of arbitration. Nolan Arenado, Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras all have contracts that could keep them in St. Louis through 2027, and all have full no-trade clauses. Still, all three players were brought to the organization under the premise that the major-league team would be competitive. A change in that direction could change their minds. It’s not apparent if the Cardinals’ plans will make an impact but discussions will be had — likely in the beginning of the offseason — to better gauge where each player stands.

Those decisions will likely now also involve an executive who is relatively new to the organization. The Cardinals hired Bloom before the 2024 season as a special advisor to Mozeliak. He spent the year canvassing the minor leagues, observing the staff in place and evaluating what technology was being used. More notably, he took note of what technology was absent. Mozeliak’s hiring of Bloom was strategic in that regard. Bloom’s extensive background in player development and analytics, specifically during his 16 seasons with Rays, was precisely what Mozeliak thought would help the Cardinals.

“It will be good to get an outside perspective of our organization from someone who is as well-respected as Chaim,” Mozeliak said after Bloom’s hiring. “Having a fresh set of eyes on all aspects of our baseball operations should be helpful.”

It was clear from the start that Bloom would be asked to survey the minor leagues. Now he’ll be responsible for fixing them. What Bloom’s promotion means for Mozeliak and his eventual successor is not yet clear. Mozeliak’s contract is up after 2025, and he’s said publicly he plans to step down from his position after this term.

As for manager Oli Marmol, the expectation is he’ll return for the 2025 season, along with the majority of his staff. Marmol signed a two-year contract extension before the season that will take him through 2026.

Bench coach Daniel Descalso is signed through 2025, as is pitching coach Dusty Blake. Third-base coach Pop Warner signed an extension through 2026 in spring training, shortly after Marmol. Five coaches are up for negotiation after the season: hitting coaches Turner Ward and Brandon Allen, game-planning coach Packy Elkins, first-base coach Stubby Clapp and assistant pitching coach Julio Rangel. Though the Cardinals were one of the National League’s worst offensive teams this season, there is mutual interest in retaining all of this year’s coaching staff, including the hitting coaches.

The Cardinals are structured to field a youth movement next year if necessary. Brendan Donovan, Masyn Winn, Lars Nootbaar and Alec Burleson are looking to make big steps in their careers. It will also be a pivotal season for Walker and Gorman, both who spent substantial time this year in Triple A. Homegrown pitchers like Andre Pallante and Michael McGreevy will have a chance to compete for the starting rotation. Top pitching prospect Tink Hence and up-and-comer Quinn Mathews have also piqued interest.

Next year’s roster could lack star power, but it’s a risk the Cardinals are willing to take as they attempt to address what they believe to be the root of their issues. The extent to which St. Louis retools and what their incoming transition period looks like will become more apparent over the offseason. Ask around the organization, however, and one thing is abundantly clear.

A new chapter is about to begin, and the Cardinals know they must find their way.

(Illustration by Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos of Chaim Bloom, John Mozeliak and Jordan Walker: Billie Weiss, Mike Carlson, Michael Zagaris / Getty Images, Boston Red Sox, Oakland Athletics, MLB Photos)

FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. — About 20 minutes after walking into opening day at the Minnesota State Fair, with microphone in hand, fanny pack around his waist, and baseball cap covering the faded “Monsters, Inc.” character painted on his head, Dragan Kesich wanders past the line for Pronto Pups corn dogs. He says he smells camels. Or cows. Or something.

It’s probably horses. Mostly horses, anyway. The 27,500-square-foot barn is off to the right.

“Ooh, you wanna go see some horses?” Kesich suggests to the small group tailing him. “Let’s see some horses.”

Nearly 2 million people will attend this 12-day spectacle. The country’s most colorful kicker, a 6-foot-4, 240-pound left-footer who thinks he could beat a cheetah in a fight, is one of one. He records an episode of his preseason vlog, “Kamp With Kesich,” in which fairgoers must correctly pronounce the names of three teammates to win a Gophers towel. He rides the Rock Star, discusses Brett Favre with a total stranger, sits in the audience for a taping of P.J. Fleck’s coach’s show, eats a turkey leg, takes pictures with fans, plots a stop at Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar and tries to win a stuffed animal for the fifth straight year. For two hours, Dragan Kesich happens to the State Fair, and not the other way around.

“He’s the most interesting guy I’ve ever met in my life, I reckon, by a mile,” says Minnesota punter Mark Crawford, who, at age 30, has lived a bit.

There is, unavoidably, a binary side to Kesich’s existence. Make or miss. Black or white. He’ll feel that acutely nine days from this moment. And it’s up to him to be a light, even when things get a little dark.

For now, Kesich loops through the horse barn, marveling at the Clydesdales while also trying to interview one. Upon finding an empty stall, he walks in to explore it. Linebacker Cody Lindenberg, one of his best friends, then spies a nearby stack of bales.

“You’re not feeding me hay, bro,” Kesich declares. “We’re not doing that.”

In moments, the reigning Big Ten kicker of the year gnaws at a handful of hay strands.

Upon leaving the barn, Kesich visits a smoothie stand and orders a palate-cleansing Strawberry Squeeze. He makes one additional request.

“Can I get the Tiki cup?” he asks.

It’s Aug. 29, 2024. Two seconds left against North Carolina. Minnesota trails by two and Dragan Kesich has another chance to win a season opener with a 47-yard field goal. This is how he began his breakout 2023 season, too: same distance, tie game against Nebraska, three seconds on the clock, and the kick split the uprights. Everyone thought he’d make that one. Everyone knew he’d make this one. And the ball leaves Kesich’s foot and hooks wide right.

He walks off the Huntington Bank Stadium field, head hung low. Teammates console him. Fleck declares unwavering belief during a postgame news conference. Still, in the locker room, the glow drains from one of college football’s most vibrant personalities … for a while.

Around 1 a.m., Kesich decides to be in a happy place.

“Let’s go to Taco Bell,” he declares to his roommates.

The tradition started in 2021 with Crawford and linebacker Derik LeCaptain. After every game, whatever time it is, they decompress at a nearby Taco Bell. This night would be no different. Kesich would be gutted, then stuff his gut with a Cheesy Gordita Crunch box. “You can’t ride the emotional roller coaster as a kicker,” he says. “Let’s say I would’ve made that kick. I can’t act any differently, you feel me? I just gotta be who I am.”

It’s how a human kaleidoscope does this job. How he makes his way through missing as many kicks (four) in the first four games of 2024 as he did in all of 2023. There are people in the world trying to be what they’re supposed to be, Fleck muses. Or they try to be different. His kicker does not try. Dragan Kesich is, the Gophers coach says, “100 percent authentic,” no matter what.

Let us count the ways.

The family history. Kesich’s great-grandfather was bound for Belgrade, Serbia, for work when the Croatian army stopped his train. The Serbians were pulled off the train, tied together in pairs and thrown into a pit with water at the bottom. Kesich’s great-grandfather caught hold of something – “My grandpa said a tree branch,” Kesich says – and held on until dark. He then climbed out and was rescued by the Serbian army.

In the mid-1990s, with war seizing the region, his grandparents fled on a seven-day tractor ride from Golubic, a village in the city of Knin, Croatia, to Belgrade. They flew back to America. A bomb fell on their house not long after. Harrowing stuff. But there’s something about having steel in your blood. “It doesn’t feel real,” Kesich says. “I’m like, I don’t know how you guys went through that.”

The soccer punt. By eighth grade, Kesich began to take kicking seriously enough to start getting noticed. There was still the matter of his family’s love for soccer – Kesich says he has a plaque for scoring 100 goals in one season as a youth player, and his brother played at Division II Wisconsin-Parkside – until a fateful coaching change at Oak Creek (Wis.) High. The new boys soccer coach made running two miles in 12 minutes mandatory for training. This prompted Kesich’s early retirement. “And, of course, they didn’t even end up doing it,” he says now. “I was like, well, that was just a tactic to get a guy like me out of there. So it worked.”

The hair. For the sake of change, Kesich decided to bleach his hair in 2022. At practice, Fleck offered a thought: It was a blank canvas. Kesich should paint it.

Kesich commissioned Crawford’s then-girlfriend, an art major, for the work. The first design was flames. Then, a cheetah print. Pokemon Go was big with Minnesota football in early 2023, so Squirtle – “a great Pokemon,” Kesich notes – appeared on his dome. There has been a blue arrow inspired by “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” a playing-card theme and, lastly, the face of Mike Wazowski from “Monsters, Inc.” It’s been a preseason-only ritual, and not accidentally, it’s created some levity for a group in need of it during the grind. “How easy is it to go up and have a conversation with the guy who’s got Mike Wazowski from ‘Monsters, Inc.’ painted in his hair?” LeCaptain says.

(Courtesy of University of Minnesota)

Miscellaneous Dragan tales. To begin with, it’s pronounced Drag-AHN, but people call him “Dragon” anyway. Kesich took a bowling class at Minnesota, decided to buy his own ball and says he’s rolled a high game of 244. He spent the bulk of a Saturday night three years ago attempting to break the record on a Pop-A-Shot machine in the players’ lounge, while LeCaptain cheered him on. (He did set the record.) He loves animated movies and spent a recent off-day rewatching “Ratatouille” and “The Incredibles.” He is an avid sleeper who once asked Crawford to wake him up shortly before a massage appointment. “It was like 9:30 at night,” the punter says. The massage was at 12:55 p.m. the next day.

When Kesich discovered his beloved Milwaukee Bucks were using Minnesota’s basketball facility for a workout, he dropped everything, donned a green Bucks jumpsuit and waited outside for autographs. Only Giannis Antetokounmpo turned him down.

“He’s a kid at heart,” Crawford says, “but it’s a big heart, that’s for sure.”

The Great Animal Fight Debate. One day, as they are wont to do, Kesich and Crawford started a locker room discussion about a dumb topic: Wild animals you could defeat in a fight.

An elephant was a no. So were lions and giraffes and grizzly bears, though Kesich added an asterisk to black bears. “Because black bears eat fruit,” he reasons. Then someone brought up a cheetah. Binary challenge. Him and a carnivore from the wilds of Africa. Do or die.

Guess where Dragan Kesich landed on that.

“If it’s to the death? I think I could,” Kesich says. “There’s the cheetah. I’m right here. Like, my life depends on it. I think I could take it. … Hopefully I’m never in that position. But if I am, I think I can come out victorious.”

He may indeed be, as his buddies put it, delusional. But there’s a reason Dragan Kesich is in the middle of everything for Minnesota and not a sideshow.

Because the stories don’t end there.

Here’s the other thing Kesich once was: a pudgy teenager with a big leg but not enough accuracy to be a reliable Big Ten kicker.

“He looked a little bit more like a high school right guard,” Fleck says of Kesich, the prospect. He weighed in at 270 pounds after arriving at Minnesota. Little of it could be considered good weight. “It was not a good place,” Kesich concedes.

So he started running again. He quit drinking soda. He cut out Twix bars as a bedtime snack, among other processed-sugar temptations. All that and the dedicated conditioning program for Gophers specialists shaved 40 pounds off his frame. Dragan Kesich got serious and quickly worked his way into looking like a college football player.

Performing like one took longer.

As a true freshman in 2020, Kesich only handled kickoffs. What might’ve been an open door for 2021 closed to a crack in the offseason: Minnesota plucked Matthew Trickett, an all-MAC kicker from Kent State, out of the transfer portal. Kesich was happy to let the best man win the job. He was less thrilled when that wasn’t him. “I was like, dang, maybe they don’t believe in me, maybe they don’t trust me here,” he says. Trickett attempted 43 field goals over the next two seasons. Kesich attempted one. Understanding why that happened was precisely what Kesich needed. “I learned so much under him in those two years,” he says of Trickett now. “He got me to where I am.”

Kesich obsessed over consistency in his approach, staying light on his feet, getting his placement right. If he wasn’t spending hours working with his kicking coach, Luke Radke, when home in Wisconsin, he was texting Radke for drills to do behind the curtain at Minnesota. He learned how to manage his temperament. He won the starting job for 2023 and connected on 23 of 27 attempts, without missing an extra point. Everyone remembers the Nebraska winner, but Kesich is prouder of his four makes in an upset win at Iowa. The Big Ten kicker of the year award was a validation – “It’s something you never think would happen,” Kesich says – but it was also trimming. For years, the light was there only if he squinted. He marched toward it anyway and now is the program’s all-time leader in field goals from 50 yards and beyond.

That’s how a kicker works his way into the heart of everything.

“He’s one of the most influential leaders on our team, and it’s not even a question,” LeCaptain says.

Part of it is acting like the life of an everyday party and the magnetism that creates. But the blue water bottle Minnesota players must carry around in training camp as a reminder to hydrate? Kesich carries it all season. If lyrics get a little profane over the locker room speaker system, Kesich shuts off the music, lest it offend someone passing through the building. Should a player challenge him on that, well, he’s a 6-4, 240-pound guy who knows the rules. “You don’t see that,” Lindenberg says. “You don’t really see kickers as involved. He’s holding people accountable. He’s doing all the right things.”

Says Fleck: “He’s different from the normal perception of what a kicker is mentally and emotionally. He is a football player. That’s what makes him so connected to our team.”

With things to straighten out in every sense, and with rival Iowa visiting last weekend, Kesich got to work. Again. He focused on finishing his motion downfield. Keeping his club (left) foot open longer. Keeping his eyes back so his hips didn’t turn as much. He even wondered if anyone would let him bring the Floyd of Rosedale trophy to Taco Bell if Minnesota won.

There would be no reprise of 2023. Again. Kesich didn’t attempt a field goal in a 31-14 loss, much less make four. But here comes Michigan, the defending national champions. Such is the life. Another week, and he has to believe the light is out there somewhere.

“A quarterback, they’ve got, what, 40 throws a game?” Kesich says. “A kicker, you got two on average a game? So when you miss one it’s kind of just like that: All right, boom, whatever, next one. I’d say I’ve always had that.”

Dragan Kesich celebrates with P. J. Fleck after defeating Nebraska in the 2023 season opener. (Bailey Hillesheim / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

At 10:58 a.m., a throng of large humans in matching gold T-shirts and maroon shorts enters the Minnesota State Fair through a gate off Randall Avenue. Without much ado, Dragan Kesich sorts through some papers with his teammates’ names on them, separating the easy ones to pronounce from the hard ones, and collects a few Gophers to stand behind him as he records an intro for this “Kamp With Kesich” featurette.

He tells everyone to enjoy the ride.

And we’re off.

“Last time, I rode the slingshot – you know the one that shoots you into the air?” Kesich says, walking past lampposts affixed with “12 Days of Fun” banners. “I’m never doing that again.”

So there are places past the edge of the map in Dragan’s world, but only because he’s already visited and doesn’t want to go back.

Most everything else, today and every day, is fair game.

Kesich cracks up when he sees offensive linemen trying on samurai hats. (“We gotta get that.”) He notes how convenient Sweet Martha’s, with its literal buckets of chocolate chip cookies, is to the way out. (“We’ll get those later. I gotta savor those.”) He wonders aloud if a kid walking around with a recorder can play “Hot Cross Buns.” He talks Packers and Vikings with a complete stranger who has a very complicated and somewhat unintelligible theory about Brett Favre, locked into the conversation the whole time. He does not cut the first two “Kamp With Kesich” contestants any slack for mispronouncing the third and most difficult name he gives them, though the one who can’t get “Oberhiri Eyafe” correct walks away unaware that he has company.

“Guys, I gotta be honest,” Kesich says, after moving along. “I have no idea how to pronounce Obie’s name.”

After touring the horse barn, he tells a woman who asks for a picture that it’ll cost her 50 bucks, and then bursts out laughing. He hands out a prize to a fairgoer who gets Eyafe as the third name to pronounce – “Give him his towel, baby!” – while also conceding he still has no idea if it was right. After 40 minutes of this, Kesich’s attention turns to the Mighty Midway, and he asks Lindenberg if he wants to go on the Rock Star. Lindenberg says the pendulum-like ride isn’t good enough.

A couple minutes later, the Rock Star line comprises four people: Two kids, and two Big Ten football players.

“You ever been on this ride?” Kesich asks one of the boys in front of him. “Let me tell you, it’s the greatest thing ever. Best thing you’ll ever do in your life.”

Upon descending the ride platform – “That was amazing,” Kesich reports – he calculates there is enough time to win a stuffed animal. He’s 4-for-4 in bringing one back for support staff member Chandler Buning. He cannot leave here without a fifth. Which brings him to a football-throwing game.

One toss. Fit it through a star-shaped hole, get a prize. Make or miss. All or nothing.

First toss is high. Second is, too. Third goes low.

“What am I doing?” Kesich shouts.

His luck does not improve, nor does his mood. So Kesich moves next door to the Cat Rack. Knock over three feline-shaped targets with baseballs, and he can complete his mission with an elephant or frog or purple panda.

All or nothing, again.

He doesn’t win on his first turn, or his second.

“Run it back, run it back,” he says.

He hits two and misses the third.

“DUDE!” Kesich exclaims. “Run it back!”

He misses all three throws. On the next try, he connects on just one. He is both beside himself and out of time, if he wants to catch Fleck’s coaches’ show.

“All right,” Kesich tells the Cat Rack proprietor. “I’ll be back with $100.”

It only takes 70. And it’s a different game, two booths away, with slightly lower stakes: three throws to knock over beer bottles, but the prize increases in size with every successful consecutive try.

Kesich never goes 3-for-3, but he does hit one a bunch of times and two in a row twice. So Buning gets a gray elephant to keep the streak alive. Kesich gives Lindenberg a panda to pass on to his girlfriend. He hands out the smaller prizes to random people at the fair. Mission accomplished.

There is belief, and there is stubbornness, and there is Dragan Kesich, coloring in the overlap.

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos courtesy of University of Minnesota)

At his darkest moment, when the worst thoughts flooded his soul, Mike Pereira wondered whether it was time to give up. Nothing alleviated his back pain — not yoga, not pilates, not any of the various methods of pain management his doctors recommended. Something we take for granted, stepping out of bed each morning, became too excruciating to endure.

Pereira had spent 14 years as an NFL sideline judge and vice president for league officiating before transitioning into a broadcasting pioneer — the first rules analyst for NFL broadcasts when Fox Sports hired him in 2010. But last year, at age 73 and in deep agony, his mind wandered to a dark place. He said he had suicidal thoughts.

“I had never experienced anything like the pain I had,” Pereira said. “I almost gave up. I mean, I almost gave up on life as I knew it. I became such a burden to anybody around me and in so much pain that I laid in my bed saying, ‘Is it really worth this?’ I never thought of myself as someone who would contemplate that. When you’re in that much pain and it slips into your mind one time, it keeps going around your mind. You have to fight it.”

Now, after missing the entire 2023 NFL season, Pereira is back on television for Fox, working a full schedule of college football and NFL games. That’s the result of successful spinal surgery in November at a San Francisco hospital, an 8 1/2-hour procedure that involved fusing seven levels of Pereira’s spinal vertebrae. Pereira was hospital-bound for a week after the surgery, followed by another in-patient week at a rehab facility in Sacramento, Calif.

He was told the surgery was successful, but it didn’t feel that way as he lay helpless in his hospital bed in November. He couldn’t sleep, he could barely move, and his blood pressure would crash anytime he attempted to get out of bed. Finally, he was able to get into a wheelchair, then he moved up to navigating a walker.

“I felt a sense of accomplishment over the simplest things,” he said. “When you’ve been that low and then you feel the accomplishment of being able to achieve something that you couldn’t do before, your attitude changes.”

The healing continued, and Pereira was strong enough to travel to the NFC Championship Game in San Francisco in January. He surprised Fox’s top NFL crew during a production meeting at their hotel and was overwhelmed by his colleagues leaping out of their chairs to greet him.

“The sincere and genuine love that I felt at that moment was overwhelming,” Pereira said. “That moment convinced me I was coming back to work.”

I’m back and well in Cleveland. I’m so thankful! pic.twitter.com/N7bggnmRo4

— Mike Pereira (@MikePereira) September 8, 2024

Pereira said his top bosses at Fox Sports — CEO Eric Shanks and executive producer Brad Zager — asked him prior to the season how much travel he wanted to do, and he has opted for eight or nine regular-season games on the road (he switches off with fellow rules analyst Dean Blandino) and the rest working from Fox’s Century City studios. (When Pereira and Blandino work from the studio, they watch games from what Fox Sports employees call the “Sky Box,” which is where the pregame show is done.) His road trips so far have included Cleveland for Week 1 and Dallas last week. This week, Pereira will work from Los Angeles — one college game Friday night, nine college games Saturday and four NFL games Sunday.

“I’m now almost 10 1/2 months from the surgery, and I can walk 2 miles a day,” he said. “I can do just about everything that I could before with the exception of I can’t put shoes on by myself. I’ve been after Howie Long to give me some Skechers, but he’s not come through yet (laughs). But I don’t care about any of the small issues because I have my life back. I mean, it was gone and now I have it back.”

We now take for granted rules analysts working on sports television and streaming, but Pereira was a genuine game-changer when Fox created the role for him in 2010. Viewers had longed for broadcasters to provide accurate explanations from the NFL’s Byzantine rule book, and Pereira took the burden off the announcers. Joe Buck once told me he considered Pereira the best hire in Fox Sports history. Pereira said he could have never seen his hiring in 2010 as a precursor for the many rules analysts we now see on television across sports.

Mike Pereira before the Week 1 game between the Dallas Cowboys and Cleveland Browns. He missed the 2023 season due to his injury. (Nick Cammett / Diamond Images via Getty Images)

“It’s wonderment because I never in my mind saw this job coming,” Pereira said. “I never thought when it was my time to retire from the NFL, I would have something like this available. I’m not only proud of the fact of what it has meant to us as former football officials and the role of trying to educate the fans, but I also take pride in the fact that I watch a soccer game, there’s a rules analyst. Same with the NBA. I now see networks with golf rules analysts. Fox started it, but at least I was decent enough at it that everybody felt it was a good idea. I take pride in that. I really do.”

Talking to Pereira these days, it’s hard not to come away with some perspective on mortality. He said he feels like a new person and has such little pain that he no longer has to take Tylenol or any kind of pain reliever. There was even an unexpected result from the surgery: He measures 2 inches taller in height.

“There are things I can’t do, but I’m living my absolute best life at home and at work,” Pereira said. “Some people might say that, but because of the appreciation of where I’ve been, I really believe I’m living my best life today.”

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

(Top photo of Mike Pereira on the field before last week’s Baltimore Ravens-Dallas Cowboys game: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)

The Chicago Sky fired coach Teresa Weatherspoon after just one season, the team announced Friday.

The Sky hired Weatherspoon as the franchise’s head coach on Oct. 12, 2023, after spending four seasons with the New Orleans Pelicans as an assistant.

“After careful consideration, we have decided it is in the best interest of the organization to part ways with Head Coach Teresa Weatherspoon,” Chicago co-owner and operating chairman, Nadia Rawlinson, said in a statement. “We are deeply appreciative of Coach TSpoon’s contributions to the Chicago Sky, and the energy and passion she brought to the head coaching role. We thank her for inspiring a competitive, resilient spirit across the team, synonymous with Chicago Sky basketball.

“We remain steadfastly committed to being a playoff and championship contender every year, and we will be embarking on a thorough search for our next head coach. TSpoon will always be a part of the Skytown family, and we wish her the very best.”

The Chicago Sky announced today that Teresa Weatherspoon will not retain the role of Head Coach for the 2025 season. pic.twitter.com/A9Sc3dL9vF

— Chicago Sky (@chicagosky) September 27, 2024

The Sky finished 13-27 in Weatherspoon’s first season as coach, failing to make the playoffs. Weatherspoon coached a young Chicago team that consisted of two top-10 picks in the 2024 WNBA Draft: Kamilla Cardoso (No. 3) and Angel Reese (No. 7).

Reese, a 2024 WNBA All-Star, set several rookie and WNBA records during her first season in the league. Reese’s 446 single-season total rebounds surpassed the previous WNBA record that belonged to Sylvia Fowles (404). She also set a WNBA record in consecutive double-doubles with 15.

Reese said she was “heartbroken” about Weatherspoon’s firing, in a post shared to X on Thursday night.

“She was the only person that believed in me,” Reese said. “You didn’t deserve this but I can’t thank you enough. I love you Tspoon.”

Before serving as the Pelicans assistant coach, Weatherspoon coached Louisiana Tech from 2009 to 2014. As a player, Weatherspoon was named to the WNBA Top 20@20 list, awarded to the best players in WNBA history as part of the league’s 20-year anniversary celebration.

Weatherspoon played for the New York Liberty as one of the league’s original players (1997 to 2003) before joining the Los Angeles Sparks in 2004. Weatherspoon was a five-time All-Star and two-time WNBA Defensive Player of the Year in her eight-year career.

For the second consecutive offseason, the Sky will be searching for a head coach. James Wade stepped down as the Sky coach and general manager on July 1, 2023 to become an assistant coach with the Toronto Raptors. Wade coached the Sky to the franchise’s maiden WNBA championship in 2021. Emre Vatansever served as the interim coach and GM until the end of the 2023 season, before the Sky announced that he wasn’t returning.

Despite missing playoffs, Weatherspoon helped develop young core

Through the first half of the season, the Sky were one of the league’s biggest positive surprises. Though they were eighth in the standings, they were sixth in net rating, showing improvement on offense. Rookie forward Reese appeared to blossom under Weatherspoon, who also played under Kim Mulkey when she was an athlete at Louisiana Tech.

“I love Coach [Weatherspoon], she’s kind of like Coach Mulkey,” Reese said during the first half of the season. “Being able to be a tough coach that you have to have thick skin [around]. You also have to be willing to be coached by her.”

Reese wasn’t the only rookie to thrive under Weatherspoon. After missing the start of the season with an injury, center Cardoso came on of late, scoring in double digits in all but two games in the second half of the season. Chennedy Carter also appeared to find a coach and system that believed in her and brought out her best.

“One thing that I’m super proud of with this team is how competitive they are and how hard they continued to play each and every night,” Weatherspoon said Friday. — Ben Pickman, women’s basketball staff writer

Who might replace Weatherspoon?

Weatherspoon was hired before first-year general manager Jeff Pagliocca. And though the team stressed their relationship as a partnership, the upcoming head coaching hire will be Pagliocca’s first since assuming the position.

Chicago becomes the second franchise to change head coaches this week, after the Los Angeles Sparks parted ways with Curt Miller. The Golden State Valkyries have also not yet announced their inaugural head coach.

Chicago, presumably, will again leave the GM and coach jobs separate (something the franchise did for the first time last year). As the coaching market heats up, look at Connecticut Sun assistant Briann January, Phoenix Mercury assistant Kristi Toliver and Las Vegas Aces assistant Natalie Nakase as potential names to watch in the cycle.

Like Pagliocca, Aces assistant Tyler Marsh has a player development background and could be an option for a young team. During last year’s coaching search, the Sky spoke with former Memphis Grizzlies assistant coach Sonia Raman. Her background before the NBA was in women’s basketball — as an assistant at Wellesley from 2002-08 and the head coach at MIT from 2008 to 2020 — and she could be an option as well.

One other name to watch is Storm assistant Pokey Chatman, who was Chicago’s head coach from 2011-2016 and later also the head coach of the Indiana Fever — Pickman

Required reading

(Photo: Mike Lawrie / Getty Images)

Football’s dark arts. You may have read, heard or watched a bit about that subject this week.

Wind-up merchants, rule benders, injury fakers, divers, pinchers, medical staff who love running on the pitch, time-wasters… every club has them, but how dark arts-y is your team?

We can — and will — use metrics and data to help discover the best/worst offenders, but nefarious behaviour cannot always be quantified: teams should also be subjected to the eye test.

Two points.

First, this is a (reasonably) light-hearted exercise so, please, no nasty messages.

Second, this is not a hall of shame. Far from it; teams who best utilise the dark arts tend to be more successful. A bit of devilment can go a long way and, well, nice guys finish last. Or, nice guys don’t tend to win anything.

Talking of which, in reverse order, let’s start our list.

GO DEEPER

Infuriating, embarrassing – and funny: What players really think of ‘shithousing’

Ange Postecoglou. Principled. Strong moral core. Hates cheating. Fair dinkum.

Spurs play the game quickly, in a “We’ve got no time for time-wasting” manner. They were the quickest team in the league last season for getting the game moving again (24.4 seconds per restart).

“I don’t believe in the dark arts,” Postecoglou said at a press conference this week. “I don’t know how to do it; it’s just not in my make up. My thing has always been, if teams are going to go down that way we’ve got to be even more disciplined to make sure we don’t get distracted.”

Richarlison probably wouldn’t agree… maybe that’s why he’s been out of favour? James Maddison is always on the wind-up, but with a Del Boy-esque knowing smile and cheeky wink.

Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg was the king at falling on the ball, talking to the ref, slowing things down and managing the game. But now? It’s just not what Spurs do, mate.

xSH (expected s***housery) – 1/10

Bournemouth had a fine reputation for the dark arts in the Championship when they were managed by Eddie Howe (everyone pretend to be shocked) but only West Ham and Manchester City had fewer bookings for time-wasting or not retreating last season.

Plus they’ve loaned out goalkeeper Neto — renowned for winding up opposition fans or taking the sting out of a game with an achingly long goal kick. He’s gone to Arsenal (everyone pretend to be shocked).

xSH – 1/10

Palace were probably too nice anyway — perhaps a legacy from gentleman Roy Hodgson’s era — but since losing serial free-kick-winner Jordan Ayew, or Joachim Andersen (who helped earn Darwin Nunez a red card for headbutting on his home Liverpool debut a couple of years ago) and Wilfried Zaha, for so long a strong contender for the Premier League’s most annoying player award, Palace are even softer now.

Maybe if they toughened up they’d finish higher than 12th.

xSH – 1/10

17. West Ham United

Only six bookings for time-wasting/not retreating last season, the second-nicest record in the league.

David Moyes just wasn’t that kind of manager. When told before the Europa Conference League final in 2023 that Fiorentina were going to deliberately stop counter-attacks with fouls, he said: “It will be down to the referees to sort that out. We’ll try to play a fair game. From my point of view that’s always the best way to try and do it.”

Julen Lopetegui hasn’t enlisted many dark arts from his players yet. To be fair, he’s got other things to work on first.

xSH – 1/10

GO DEEPER

Who is the best exponent of the ‘dark arts’ at your Premier League club?

The fresh-faced Premier League newbies took 37.2 seconds with their restarts against Manchester City in August, the sixth-highest of any side this season, as they desperately attempted to hold on to a *checks notes* 4-1 defeat.

It’s far too soon to tell how easily they’re going to be corrupted by a bloodthirsty lust for Premier League survival.

xSH – 2/10

Being really annoying won’t guarantee you Premier League survival — Sheffield United took a league-high average of 31.2 seconds with their restarts last season but were relegated before May — but it might help.

Leicester haven’t had many opportunities to delay/see out victories this season yet but even against Crystal Palace, when they were winning from minutes 21 to 90+2, they arguably didn’t disrupt the game enough and paid the price with a stoppage-time equaliser.

Only one player won more free kicks than Jordan Ayew last season, so he’s a welcome addition to the s***housery stakes, while Jamie Vardy has always played on the edge. They could do with a Robert Huth-type figure — a true dark arts master.

xSH – 2/10

Jamie Vardy plays on the edge (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

Brighton seem more preoccupied with frivolous matters like playing nice football.

They do have Joel Veltman though: he gives the impression that butter wouldn’t melt but, as Declan Rice’s red card at Arsenal the other week shows, he has another side to him.

He can often be spotted positioning his body in front of the ball to be easily nudged over, and will happily take a yellow for the team with a pull of the shirt or a foul to stop a counter-attacking threat.

He’s smart, too; in four seasons he’s earned 24 bookings but has never been suspended.

xSH – 2/10

There’s a smidgen of evidence this season that suggests Everton aren’t good at seeing a game out.

In their past four games they’ve been 2-0 up against Bournemouth and Aston Villa and 1-0 up against Southampton (in the Carabao Cup) and Leicester, but only have one point and a cup exit to show for their efforts.

If anything, they’re just too nice. Jordan Pickford can take a while with goal kicks and James Tarkowski isn’t afraid of some argy-bargy, but streetwise, underhand dark arts? This lot are an honest bunch.

xSH – 2/10

James Tarkowski (right, with James Garner) can mix it up for Everton (Carl Recine/Getty Images)

Well, they have got four yellow cards for time-wasting this season and took seven minutes out of the game for goal kicks in their victory over Newcastle. But are very firmly middle of the road.

xSH – 3/10

11. Liverpool

“We didn’t waste time, we didn’t invent new cheeky things for set pieces, getting rid of gloves or whatever,” Jurgen Klopp said in May. “We just tried to fight harder than other teams. It was an incredible time.”

He would say that, of course, but Klopp’s claims pretty much pass the eye and data tests — Liverpool, after Spurs, were the second-quickest at restarts last season with an average of 24.2 seconds. No wonder they only won a Carabao Cup between them.

It seems Arne Slot has picked up where Klopp left off. They have no time-wasting bookings this season or any notable examples of underhand behaviour. Give it time.

There is Andy Robertson, though. He brings their rating up a level.

xSH – 3/10

GO DEEPER

We need to learn to live with time-wasting – dark arts make football more fun

10. Manchester City

“We are an honest team,” Pep Guardiola said after the draw with Arsenal.

How true is that? Or are City just too busy blitzing the opposition with goals to have to worry about being proper s***houses?

There’s often been talk about City’s tactical fouls — one of their assistants was seen telling players to do it on an Amazon documentary in 2018 (his name was Mikel something?).

But they are very good at winning fouls when in a tight spot. For example, if they’re penned in to a corner when trying to play out, or challenging for a second ball, they’ll get across the man and draw the foul, relieving the pressure. They s***housed Atletico Madrid at their own game in the Champions League in 2022 — Koke said in the aftermath that they were “falling on the floor and wasting time” — which is no mean feat.

Good at winning fouls? Yes. Rotational fouls? Well, they’ve been known to do that, too. But you wouldn’t call them masters. They also had the fewest number of bookings (five) for time-wasting or not retreating last season and were the third-quickest for restarts (25.2 seconds).

xSH – 4/10

United tend to spend their time scratching their heads at the goal they’ve just conceded/failed to score, but they have their s***house moments.

Andre Onana was booked five times for time-wasting last season, while Bruno Fernandes’ gamesmanship, pestering of referees, dramatically falling to the floor, exaggerating injuries and holding onto the ball to delay play is of an extremely high level.

xSH – 5/10

Bruno Fernandes – not averse to falling over (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)

8. Aston Villa

Thirteen bookings for time-wasting or not retreating last season, the second-highest in the league.

And, with Neal Maupay’s departure to France, they surely have the undisputed biggest s***house in the Premier League, nay the country, in Emi Martinez, the king of the delayed penalty, or the delayed goal kick, or the winder-up of opposition fans, players, managers, anybody.

“I think it’s natural,” he told The Guardian last month. “I don’t think about it, I just do it. I’m just a normal guy, a family man.”

Just a normal guy. And a natural-born s***house.

xSH – 6/10

7. Southampton

Only just back in the Premier League and therefore any data from this season is too small a sample size, although it should be noted their restarts took 40.3 seconds on average against Ipswich last weekend as they tried to help see out a 1-0 win having taken the lead in the fifth minute (narrator: “They lasted until the 95th minute”).

However, Southampton, the club who helped pioneer the tactic of stopping play to have a team talk under Ralph Hasenhuttl, are definitely no strangers to the dark arts, if West Bromwich Albion boss Carlos Corberan’s opinion counts for anything.

During the second leg of their play-off semi-final at St Mary’s in May, Corberan seemed to accuse Southampton of delaying West Brom’s entry into the stadium, saying: “We were on the bus for 15 minutes waiting to find the entrance to the stadium. I don’t know why nobody came to help us or followed normal protocol.”

Southampton also brought advertising hoardings in try and negate the threat of Darnell Furlong’s long throws.

“They did things they probably didn’t need to,” Corberan added. Big dark arts potential here.

xSH – 6/10

It’s hard to have the dark arts ingrained in your team when the players and manager keep changing every five minutes, but Chelsea give it a go.

They brilliantly s***housed their way to a 2-1 victory at Brighton in May, taking a season-high 50 seconds per restart in a game that saw Reece James sent off in the 88th minute before 11 minutes of stoppage time.

They also had the most bookings in the league last year for time-wasting or not retreating (17).

xSH – 7/10

Gary O’Neil may be the perennial “lovely guy, to be fair”, but that hasn’t stopped him enlisting suspect methods in a bid to win football matches.

Wolves were the second-worst offenders in the Premier League last season for cards given for time-wasting or not retreating, with 15. Five of those were given to Nelson Semedo, the league’s joint-biggest waster of time. Important ‘r’, there.

Yerson Mosquera escalated matters when he appeared to stick his finger in a place that Arsenal’s Gabriel Jesus really didn’t appreciate on the opening day of the season. Matheus Cunha will go to ground very easily. And Jose Sa earned a reputation for staying down ‘injured’ during tense moments to break up play that season, often leading to a completely impromptu team talk. However, now that the unfortunate Mosquera is out for the season injured and Sa is on the bench, Wolves are a bit nicer.

xSH – 7/10

Brentford may have lost Ivan Toney and Neal Maupay from last year’s squad, offering a severe blow to their dark arts rating, but anyone who has watched the Bees since their promotion to the Premier League will know that Thomas Frank loves a good s***house.

They were third in the delays league last season, taking 30.1 seconds on average per restart, plus nine bookings for time-wasting or not retreating. When then-Wolves manager Bruno Lage accused Brentford of time-wasting in 2021, Frank didn’t deny it, saying: “I could ask him what he would have done if he was leading a newly promoted team?”

Jurgen Klopp complimented “smart” Brentford after they beat Liverpool in 2023: “When I say they stretch the rules in offensive set pieces — and they do, don’t get me wrong, they are smart but they do — if you singled out every situation you would find five fouls.”

xSH – 7/10

Brentford can cause chaos at set pieces (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

Ironically for a team who had so many decisions go against them last season, Forest more than enjoy a dabble in football’s underhand tactics. In 2023-24 they took the second longest over restarts (30.2 seconds on average) and already have four cards this season for either time-wasting or not retreating.

Nuno Espirito Santo and his backroom team have long had a reputation for being touchline rapscallions, even going back to their Wolves days in the Championship when then-Aston Villa boss Steve Bruce said: “They are vociferous all the time. That’s their prerogative — we don’t quite behave like that.”

In Ryan Yates, Forest probably have one of the Premier League’s most underhand free-kick winners. Yates has mastered the art of waiting for a player to make contact and then falling dramatically, all in one fluid movement, on to the ball, before transitioning into an impassioned appeal for a free kick. On average, he wins 3.05 free kicks per game.

Yates is also an exceptional wind-up merchant, adept at riling opposition players with subtle fouls or leaving a bit on them after the ball has gone.

xSH – 8/10

Ryan Yates (left) has a penchant for the dark arts (Carl Recine/Getty Images)

2. Arsenal

“Yes, I don’t think there are many better than them at it,” Manchester City’s Manuel Akanji said last weekend.

Arsenal almost gave a masterclass in seeing out a game, while having just 12 per cent possession of the ball in that second half at the Etihad.

David Raya took a whole nine minutes out of the game purely by taking 45 seconds per goal kick (there were 12 of them) — a minute more than any team has taken with theirs so far this season.

The average delay of their 32 restarts was 42.7 seconds, the second-highest of any team in 2024-25, while Arsenal now have six yellow cards for timewasting/not retreating this season — two more than anyone else.

“You can call it clever or dirty, but they break up the game, which upsets the rhythm,” City defender John Stones told Sky Sports. “They’ve done it for a few years.”

Manchester City were not happy with Arsenal last weekend (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

In mitigation, Arsenal have been down to 10 men in two games this season when trying to see out games, which will up their numbers, and it’s something Arteta has spoken about.

In February after a defeat by Porto in the Champions League, the Arsenal manager said: “There are ways to do it. It is the way you talk to them, showing them clips, training — putting them through scenarios, pinching them a few times as well, learning from other players who do it really well and teams who are masters at it. It is something that has to be developed.”

He’s managed it.

xSH – 9/10

1. Newcastle United

Newcastle have a reputation for dark arts under Eddie Howe that has been very well earned.

Assistant manager Jason Tindall remains one of the league’s biggest wind-up merchants, playing the role of Howe’s attack dog in the fourth official’s ear, generally being active and vocal on the touchline.

Goalkeeper Nick Pope is prone to getting an “injury” at opportune moments when Newcastle need to have a breather and Howe needs to have a word with his team.

Nick Pope goes down against Tottenham (George Wood/Getty Images)

You can almost guarantee that Fabian Schar will go down with an apparent head injury in most matches, yet never comes off because of them, while Jacob Murphy is very much a s***houser — he waved Southampton’s Duje Caleta-Car off the field when he was sent off against Newcastle in the Carabao Cup a couple of seasons ago. And a couple of seasons ago Jamaal Lascelles picked up two separate cautions while warming up on the touchline for delaying opposition throw-ins.

In April, after Newcastle won at Brentford, their manager Thomas Frank was furious with Newcastle’s tactics: “We need to look into the dark arts of football and be aware of the sportsmanship,” he said in a press conference, while also revealing that Brentford’s staff were more vocal with the fourth official because “we know that Newcastle have that strategy”, calling out Tindall specifically.

Bruno Guimaraes was, by a distance, the most fouled player in the Premier League last season and he’s at it again this year, with 22 fouls won — more than any other. Second on the list? Anthony Gordon on 17.

Newcastle remain the standard-bearers for the phrase by the philosopher Joey Tribbiani: “If you’re going to do something wrong, do it right.”

xSH – 10/10

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

It was one of the ugliest off-court moments in recent NBA history. After Derrick Rose was found not liable for the alleged gang rape of his former girlfriend in 2016, jurors took pictures with the former league MVP outside the Los Angeles courthouse.

Rose, the longtime Chicago Bull, was free to start his career with the New York Knicks as just a basketball player, a former superstar felled by injuries who was trying to approach his previous heights after repeated recoveries knocked him off his seemingly divined path. That is a story, as sports fans, we have seen before and innately understand. He wouldn’t have to face the pesky distractions of an ongoing case or the incongruous blemish a different verdict would have caused. The verdict made it easier to forget about the case and focus on his career, if you were so inclined.

Rose went on to play in the NBA for eight more seasons, a noble professional career he ended officially on Thursday when he announced his retirement. After some rocky years trying to relocate his early brilliance, he became a valuable depth guard and a veteran mentor. Rose’s path, strictly on the court, is similar to the career arc of Vince Carter, who will go into the Hall of Fame next month in no small part for figuring out that transition better than any player ever.

With Rose, it isn’t that easy, is it? Nor should it be. Being found not liable is not the same thing as being found innocent. And if Rose is allowed to speak glowingly about how basketball was his first love and how it has allowed him to grow and evolve, then it is only right that his retirement serves as an opportunity to remind us who he was as one of the league’s brightest stars.

And for at least one moment, he was awful — and it showed us how unwell our culture was at the same time.

Almost by definition, a civil trial asks a jury to determine whether the plaintiff’s or defendant’s version of events is more believable. Even without spending time getting into the history of women’s sexual history being used against them in cases like this one — and that is a hell of a sentence fragment to consider — what Rose conceded did happen was and remains jarring.

• Yes, he and his friends went over to have sex with the woman, who was Rose’s girlfriend for two years.

• Yes, Rose repeatedly sent sexually explicit videos to the woman, asking her to engage in group sex, despite her refusal.

• No, Rose did not understand the concept of consent.

Those things aren’t up for debate. Sure, it would be naive to think some of those things don’t happen regularly with other athletes, celebrities and just regular people. That does not make it OK to slide the findings of the case under the on-court moments of a memorable and unique career. Those things did happen; that was how he operated in this instance.

That it happened 11 years ago and was tried eight years ago is irrelevant. Yes, Rose put together a remarkable career, a hometown player bringing one of the league’s marquee teams out of a lost decade and into the thick of title contention. It is understandable that Rose’s fans, and particularly his Chicagoan fans, developed a deep emotional link to him.

That doesn’t condone us forgetting about the people for whom Rose’s continued presence in the league made it harder to follow the sport. Rose’s case reminded us of the entitlement that athletes can enjoy and from which they can benefit. Rose likely wouldn’t have been impacted by this, but the NBA and NBPA collectively bargained a new policy on domestic abuse, sexual violence and child abuse that went into effect within a year of Rose’s case ending. It is an imperfect policy because we live in an imperfect society, and we cannot say if it has changed the behavior of people within the league. Incidents still occur, of course, and it can sometimes feel as if the main thing the policy has done is make team-building easier.

All of that makes Rose’s retirement complex. It is nearly impossible to hold what he did on the court and what the trial revealed about him together, but it is also irresponsible not to try. We don’t live in a world that affords us that luxury. Any attempt to separate the two is fundamentally selfish, an effort to neatly cordon off the brilliant from the brutal.

The best thing about being a sports fan is discovering what humans are capable of in exceptional circumstances. It’s the worst thing, too.

(Photo: Elsa/Getty Images)

UNCASVILLE, Conn. — The Indiana Fever started their season coming up short against the Connecticut Sun. In the aftermath of that May opening-night defeat, they acknowledged their young roster — even if led by a phenom at point guard and the reigning Rookie of the Year in the post — had some learning to do when it came to winning in the WNBA.

After four years of playing a specific style at Iowa, Caitlin Clark had to figure out how to run a new offensive system. Everyone else had to learn how to play off of her: Aliyah Boston would have to make decisions out of the short roll, Kelsey Mitchell would have the ball in her hands less. All of the Fever players would have to run. A lot.

After a 2-9 start, Indiana made quick progress on those fronts. The Fever won seven more games than last season, breaking a seven-year playoff drought. They finished in the top half of league standings and were a trendy pick to upset Connecticut in the first round, or at least take a game from the Sun.

GO DEEPER

From shaky start to playoff bound, how Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever revived their season

Instead, Indiana once again exited Connecticut acutely aware of the gap between itself and the league’s top tier after being swept in two games. Four months after her welcome-to-the-WNBA moment, Clark and her teammates got another lesson in postseason execution, one that they’ll have to sit with during the offseason as they continue their franchise rebuild.

“When you’re looking at a rebuild year, everyone wants to obviously jump to the championships and bring home the ring and everything,” Boston said. “But I think when you look at basketball as a whole and when you look at where you start to where you are now, it’s about stepping stones.”

The most critical part of the Fever’s rebuild is over: They have accumulated their star talent. What comes next?

When Lin Dunn returned to Indiana as the interim general manager in 2022, she set a three-year timeline for the Fever to return to the postseason. Coach Christie Sides thought it would take an additional season when she signed on in 2023, but drafting Boston and Clark kept Dunn’s plan in motion. The Fever got to the playoffs in her third season at the helm, and now they move on to the next phase.

That means playing for championships, Dunn said.

The 2024 season proved that Clark and Boston can be foundational pieces on a title team, but their internal improvement will be key for Indiana’s progress.

Clark got stronger as the year wore on, making her a more effective shooter and driver. However, she was still too reliant on her 3-point shot against better defenses. Of her 40 shot attempts against Connecticut, 25 came from beyond the arc, despite limited success (20 percent). She struggled similarly in a two-game set against the Aces earlier this month, shooting 3 of 18. Clark needs to diversify her shot diet to maintain her efficiency when competition increases.

Defense also needs to become more of a focus for Clark. She had multiple lapses against Marina Mabrey in Game 1, and the Fever once again spoke about miscues down the stretch of the elimination game. Perhaps better conditioning, and more time off before the 2025 season, will enable Clark to play harder on both ends, considering how the Olympic break supercharged her performance in the second half of 2024. But she needs to impact the game as a two-way player for Indiana to take the next step forward.

Although ESPN reported that Clark wasn’t planning on playing overseas, she said she hasn’t yet made that decision. She plans to take a couple weeks off before resuming basketball activities, only jokingly committing to playing a lot of golf in the near future. At the moment, Clark isn’t attached to any non-WNBA leagues, including the new upcoming three-on-three league Unrivaled. Dunn said she’d like to see Clark play some additional five-on-five before her sophomore WNBA season.

What a rookie season for Caitlin Clark 👏

🏀 2024 WNBA All-Star
🏀 2024 WNBA assists leader
🏀 Led Indiana to their first playoff appearance in 8 years
🏀 19.2 PPG
🏀 8.4 APG
🏀 5.7 RPG pic.twitter.com/921IzxXnyD

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) September 26, 2024

With their abundance of young talent, Sides said Indiana has everything it needs to get to the next level, the first-round exit exposed some gaps in the roster’s construction – chief among them, experience.

“We met a veteran team in their home arena that had enormous playoff experience and we didn’t,” Dunn said. “So now we’ve had some, and let’s see how we respond to that. There’s no way you can talk about what it’s like, you just have to experience it. And It sends another message that as we move forward in free agency, we need to get some veterans that have played for championships.”

When the Seattle Storm won two titles after drafting Breanna Stewart and Jewell Loyd with the top pick in consecutive years, they had Sue Bird — already a two-time champ — leading them. The Aces had three No. 1 picks from 2017-19, but Las Vegas still needed the veteran hand of Chelsea Gray, and then Candace Parker, to get over the hump.

The Fever don’t necessarily require a starting point guard with Clark around, but a veteran who can take some pressure off of Clark in the second unit and play next to her at times to push her off the ball would be a smart addition. Perhaps Courtney Vandersloot, currently marginalized in New York with the Liberty playing bigger lineups, would want to spend some of the twilight of her career in Indiana. Vandersloot, who won the 2021 championship with the Sky, is the consummate floor general who could help Clark grow as a point guard and guide the other Fever youngsters.

If Indiana wants to go all-in offensively, Kelsey Plum is an upcoming free agent, which would bring three of the top four leading scorers in women’s college basketball history together. That lineup would likely be too small and flammable defensively, but the Fever should dream big this offseason now that they have established a proof of concept.

Indiana also needs to resolve its frontcourt dilemma. Despite starting the season touting the pairing of Boston with fellow lottery pick NaLyssa Smith, in the biggest games of the year, Smith was glued to the bench, even falling out of the starting lineup in Game 2. The Fever favored putting a spacing big next to Boston, whether that was Damiris Dantas or Temi Fagbenle, and Connecticut coach Stephanie White was quick to bring up the challenges of defending Indiana when it played a lineup with five players who could space the floor.

The Fever likely won’t be able to protect all of their regular starters (Clark, Kelsey Mitchell, Lexie Hull, Smith and Boston) plus Fagbenle and Dantas in the upcoming expansion draft, meaning an inflection point is arriving shortly. If Indiana doesn’t think it can maximize Smith’s skill set while building a team around its All-Star trio of Clark, Mitchell and Boston, this is the time to move on, especially while her rookie contract is still a tradeable asset.

NaLyssa Smith’s future is not assured to be in Indiana. (Kamil Krzaczynski / USA Today Sports via Imagn Images)

The organization realizes the imperative of capitalizing on this window, even though Clark and Boston likely have many great years ahead of them. The Fever just hired former GM Kelly Krauskopf to return to Indiana as the president of basketball and business operations. Dunn highlighted the need for “great leadership” at this unprecedented moment for the WNBA, especially with a new media rights deal and potential new CBA on the horizon. The front office needed more support to actualize the next step of its rebuild, and that help is on the way.

To compete for titles, Indiana needs to behave like one from the top down. Learning how to execute in the last two minutes of an elimination game is one piece of the puzzle, but being a franchise that invests throughout is another crucial element in the ever-escalating WNBA arms race.

The Fever’s 2024 season has to be categorized as a success considering the gains they made in their business and on the court. Indiana is a feared opponent for the first time in nearly a decade and the stars feel like they are just scratching the surface of what they can become.

“It was special,” Clark said. “There was a lot of things that this group accomplished that a lot of people probably didn’t think was possible, one, to start the season, and two, after the start we had to the season. … It’s a good little taste of what’s possible for this organization and for this franchise, and there’s a lot for us to hold our heads high about.”

The honeymoon phase won’t last forever. The timeline moves on. At this point next year, the Fever want to be where the Sun are, protecting their home court instead of rueing ending their season on the road and winning a playoff series for the first time in 10 seasons. Anything is in play for Indiana, but the real work begins now.

(Photo of Aliyah Boston, left, and Caitlin Clark: Joe Buglewicz / Getty Images)

This was never how Daniel Ricciardo’s Formula One career was supposed to end.

For a driver who once looked like a potential world champion and quickly won over fans through his affable nature and infectious personality, he deserved a proper send-off after 13 years on the grid.

Instead, he was left in limbo. To treat last Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix as, unofficially, his last grand prix, without any closure or a decision over whether he’d be back in Austin next month.

That didn’t arrive until Thursday, four days after Ricciardo had said what he anticipated would be his final farewells to the F1 paddock, when Red Bull confirmed his departure.

It put an end to what had turned into Schrödinger’s driver decision: Ricciardo was both leaving and yet to leave. Ricciardo’s emotion on Sunday made clear what was going to happen. Yet he’d been robbed of the chance to properly say goodbye to F1. It was all done with an asterisk.

Through his media sessions on Thursday in Singapore, Ricciardo acknowledged the speculation that he could be replaced by Liam Lawson, Red Bull’s reserve driver, as early as the next race. But he seemed more worried about 2025 than the remainder of the season. He didn’t appear to seriously think that it was his last F1 race.

By Saturday, as Ricciardo digested his Q1 exit that left him 16th on the grid, while RB teammate Yuki Tsunoda made it through to Q3, his tone and body language suggested there’d been a shift. What became a possibility had now become assumed as fact.

He made a concerted effort to soak up every single moment of Sunday, knowing this could be the final time he raced in F1. That even extended to taking a little extra time to sit in his car before getting out after the checkered flag. It had been his home for over a decade.

“The cockpit is something that … I got very used to for many years,” Ricciardo said in an emotional interview with F1 TV after the race, fighting back tears. “I just wanted to savor the moment.”

Danny Ric ❤️

An emotional Daniel Ricciardo speaks after the #SingaporeGP pic.twitter.com/53hD09HZ4z

— Formula 1 (@F1) September 22, 2024

Ricciardo may not be the grand-prix driver he once was at Red Bull. The one who burst onto the scene and immediately put Sebastian Vettel, then the reigning four-time world champion, in the shade in 2014. Or who produced magic around the streets of Monaco in 2018, redemption for his heartbreaking loss two years earlier. Or who put up a genuine challenge to Max Verstappen, now recognized as an F1 great, in their time as teammates.

But he deserved so much better than this protracted, awkward exit that ended up dragging out into a situation where there were zero winners.

Even as Ricciardo spoke like a man who’d raced for the final time in F1 on Sunday, the official line from Red Bull and RB was that no decision had been taken. The only acknowledgement of the potential change in driver lineup came in RB’s post-race press release when, in explaining the decision to pit Ricciardo for the fast lap late on, team principal Laurent Mekies noted it “may have been Daniel’s last race.” Red Bull F1 chief Christian Horner said on Sunday that the break before Austin was a chance to review the driver performances across Red Bull’s two teams, and that Ricciardo was “just one part of the jigsaw.”

The reason that review had to take place now is Lawson, and the need to make a call on his future or risk losing him due to clauses in his contract. If Red Bull had failed to get him on the F1 grid, then he’d be free to leave its driver setup. Given how well he performed during his five-race stint while Ricciardo was out injured last year, Red Bull didn’t want to lose a talent that could play a big part in its F1 future.

But for Ricciardo, the timing meant that, if Red Bull wanted to pull the trigger and make a change with six races left in the season, there was always this risk he’d be robbed of a proper F1 farewell unless a decision were made prior to Singapore.

Daniel Ricciardo sports a cowboy hat ahead of the 2018 U.S. Grand Prix in Austin, Texas. His affable personality won over many fans. (Mark Thompson / Getty Images)

And of all races to not be at, the United States Grand Prix in Austin, where Ricciardo leans fully into the spirit of the race — he’s sported Texas Longhorns jerseys, cowboy hats, and even entered the paddock on horseback one year — feels like the worst one to make a change before. His commercial appeal, especially in the United States, remains undeniable.

The performance reasons behind the decision are understandable. Ricciardo has only one point in the last seven races, and Lawson showed what he can do during his five-race cameo last year. With Haas closing in on RB in the constructors’ championship standings, sometimes tough calls must be taken for the sake of the wider team.

It’s the waiting that turned this situation into a lose-lose for Red Bull. Had it been announced that Singapore would be Ricciardo’s last race, he’d have received the chance to fully embrace the grand prix weekend and get a proper send-off. There wouldn’t have been the strange uncertainty, the doubt-laden answers. Nothing able to be said with any assurance or confidence.

That all left the F1 community to say a soft goodbye. Social media has been rife with videos of Ricciardo’s emotional chats in Singapore, edits set to “Pink Skies,” his favorite song by Zach Bryan, and clips of his famous “enjoy the butterflies” interview. All of it was on the assumption of a decision that didn’t get confirmed until days later.

No, we’re not losing one of F1’s all-time greats, or even one of the best drivers on the grid right now. It is nevertheless an abrupt, sad farewell to someone who has played a big role in defining F1 through the 2010s and played a significant part in Red Bull’s F1 history.

F1 can be ruthless. That’s no secret. But for someone who has put so much of his heart and personality into being more than just another F1 driver, Ricciardo deserved better.

Daniel Ricciardo celebrates in style after winning the 2018 Monaco Grand Prix, two years after a bad pit stop cost him the victory there. (Dan Istitene / Getty Images)

(Top photo of Daniel Ricciardo after the Singapore Grand Prix: Rudy Carezzevoli / Getty Images)