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The person in the photo above is not a strange wanderer whose arrival at the local inn coincided with that of a growing pestilence. That is Chicago Cubs third baseman Alex Bregman, photographed in the dugout two nights ago. Bregman looks like that because he was struck by a foul ball while standing in the on-deck circle during last Sunday's game against the Reds. He suffered multiple facial fractures, which is obvious by the look of him. Here he is this morning arriving at Wrigley Field: https://bsky.app/profile/sambernero.bsky.social/post/3mwbixcj6tc2d

The second project is probably always the hardest. This is especially true if it follows a successful debut. You make something great, and by some act of the gods it catches fire and becomes the new, hot thing—a one-in-a-million shot. But then comes the next thing, the followup to your great big deal of a project. It’s a haunting and intense proposition. When I was at NYU for an MFA, I met a lot of famous and successful authors, and I remember one of the pieces of advice was to just write the next book as fast as you can. The more you put it off, the more you will paralyze yourself.  There’s no question that Rivers Cuomo felt some paralysis after Weezer's 1994 self-titled album. Known colloquially as The Blue Album, it is a true achievement of '90s power pop-punk. Twelve perfect songs, produced by The Cars' Ric Ocasek, full of nerdy irreverence and offbeat songwriting that manages to stick like it’s the fucking Beatles or something. But on top of this newly signed band releasing a well-constructed album, they became MTV darlings thanks to Spike Jonze's videos for "Undone (The Sweater Song)" and "Buddy Holly." https://youtu.be/kemivUKb4f4?si=po0-0MLY-g-_PN2k

The NFL schedule is not likely to renew the fading historical rivalry between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks. The two teams are now separated by the conference divide, and, though both teams are currently good, you'd be a fool to bet on the Super Bowl producing any particular matchup, especially one featuring Bo Nix's ass. But though proximity cannot suffice, the rivalry was juiced up this week by an out-of-nowhere controversy involving the teams' head coaches and some shit that went down behind the scenes two years ago. Mike Macdonald took over as head coach of the Seahawks in January 2024. Months later, in the run-up to the season, Macdonald prepared his team for a Week 1 matchup with the Broncos in part by finding and reviewing fan footage of Denver's training camp. Macdonald, recounting this episode in a sit-down interview for the widely syndicated In Depth with Graham Bensinger, says that his Seahawks cobbled together roughly 100 clips; they then went out and beat the Broncos, 26–20, ruining Nix's regular-season debut. You are allowed whatever feelings about this. To Macdonald, if the Broncos permitted filming, and the videos were swirling around on social media, then this was legitimate scouting. The Seahawks, under Macdonald, do not permit filming at training camp: Per a "Know Before You Go" page on the team's website, an announcement at the end of the "Team Stretch" portion of each session will direct fans to "refrain from taking photos and videos of the practice field." I'm not sure how closely this is policed, but the Seahawks Fan Code of Conduct warns that "staff will proactively intervene" when fans fail "to follow instructions of stadium personnel," up to and including ejection and "permanent revocation of ticket privileges." It's not that Macdonald feels that every team should have video of every other team's training camp. It's that he views managing that as the responsibility of Seattle's opponents: If you don't want fan videos to become scouting tools, simply do not permit fans to take videos.

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. An internet lifetime ago, ESPN football columnist Gregg Easterbrook was one of my go-to reads. Easterbrook was a pundit for The Atlantic by day, but moonlit over at ESPN's Page 2 to write his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column every week during the NFL season. TMQ included tons of snooty jokes that only George Will would find funny, but it also served as the tip of the spear in introducing analytics to the mainstream football discourse. I hate giving Greggggggg credit for anything, because he’s an eternally haughty dipshit. But he was a notable part of my education as a football fan, and I was an easier mark for his shtick back then than I am now. For 20-something me, it was worth enduring Easterbrook’s preciousness to read his more entertaining copy, which often recounted strategic errors that NFL teams routinely made simply because those teams hadn’t looked at the data. It was through Easterbrook’s column that I first understood, mathematically, why punting was dumb. And it was Easterbrook who conditioned me to believe that blitzing too often, particularly on third downs, was a recipe for disaster. He had a recurring section in TMQ for failed blitzes titled "Stop Me Before I Blitz Again!" I read that every word of that section, every week. That was because I had watched my own team’s defense get burned in such instances enough times to believe that Easterbrook’s line of thinking was sound, and that his methodology was airtight.

The 2026 NWSL season has provided some astonishingly fun soccer, and many off-field successes too: The league has boasted some record attendances, salaries, and goal-scoring this year, not to mention a few signings from at least a couple of the big European clubs it lusts after. But recently there have been too many reminders that although the NWSL has raised its ceiling, the floor is still in hell. On Sept. 13, Savannah DeMelo, the star Racing Louisville midfielder who suffered a cardiac arrest during a game in Seattle in September 2025, filed a lawsuit against the team’s medical provider, UofL Health, as well as two of her doctors, for negligence. The lawsuit states that the doctors should have caught the heart condition that was a substantial cause of her cardiac arrest—it was instead caught by doctors in Seattle after the fact. The suit stated that DeMelo "has incurred medical, hospital, and other care-related expenses, and will continue to incur such expenses in the future, has lost income, has suffered a permanent impairment in her power to labor and earn money, and has experienced severe physical and mental pain and suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life, and will continue to so suffer into the future."

A week ago, we explained in scabrous detail the multiplicity of shortcomings of the American League by focusing on the Central division and blaming it at least indirectly on the Pope's inability to close. But like most short-term trend stories in baseball, it quickly proved to be in error. Defector regrets not just the misidentification but also hiring the nitwit who made the observation. Steps, we assure you, will be taken. In fact, it is not the AL Central that was dragging down the class but the AL West, where mediocrity is a possibly unreachable goal rather than a curse and some aggressively mediocre team will win the division. Having committed to this bit so deep into the season, the winner of the division will do well to avoid finishing below .500; there is nothing to do but embrace the AL West of it all. A week ago, when we mocked the AL Central, we failed to take into account Cleveland's upcoming series with West Sacramento, which of course the Guardians swept because that's what a baseball team does when the A's come to town. (If you have to go to them, you just win two out of three and feel like you let a golden opportunity pass.) The Guards now lead the division with a gaudy 82-76 record and cannot finish below .500, a familiar late-season push that has elevated them to bland and dull rather than charmingly embarrassing. A suiting division champ, in other words.

When we set out to do a supersized season of Normal Gossip, it was all tee-hee, ha ha, look at all these funny goofs we have! And then we went through The Process and made 12 actual episodes of silly, unhinged, or just plain weird stories. Now? We need a nap. Luckily for everyone, we saved the best for last! There was no way we were going to do a season of all-stars without bringing back our dowager queen, Kelsey McKinney! For our finale (for real this time), we brought Kelsey a story about a power struggle amongst the staff of a pediatrician's office, with grievances so petty and machinations so cursed that we actually had Kelsey sympathizing with management. (Possibly the first and last time that will ever happen.) If you’ve got feelings about plant parenthood, sound bowls, efficiency in the workplace, mysterious white powders, or the collective quest of office managers everywhere to get a five-star rating on the apps, this one is just for you. But if all you want is to listen to Rachelle and Kelsey laugh for an hour—hey, we’re not judging—we’ve got you covered there too!

Barstool Sports podcaster Ryen Russillo has an urgent message for you: He will be dead in 72 hours unless $12 million is wired to the following bank acc—sorry, my mistake. I just assumed that's what he was going to say based on the haunting thumbnail on this video. Now that I've played it, I see that Russillo is simply interested in selling you some appallingly lit food. https://twitter.com/TheRyenRussillo/status/2102566992217776535 The video appears to have been shot in a study room at the local library, and Russillo looks like he was told that recording this was the only way to ensure his family will be allowed to stay alive in West Germany. Did he film this thing by himself with an iPhone and a tripod? The abrupt cuts to stuttering first-person footage of troughs of bread and fries would seem to suggest so.

Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas, where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at minordilemmas@defector.com. This week, Giri answers a question about how to encourage your child to love your favorite sport.

In the grand scheme of things, Week 1 of the NFL season means nothing. There are still 16 games to go afterward, and a lot of teams use that first game as a kind of unofficial preseason game to iron out all the kinks. After just one week, it wouldn’t be fair to make such grand pronouncements as “The Falcons may never win another game,” or “Boy, the Lions are kinda fucked,” or “Justin Herbert has gone from overrated to just plain sucking ass.” But after two games? Well now, I think that’s a large enough sample size to make the kind of sweeping generalizations that make for good football radio. So that’s exactly what Arif Hasan and I do this week on All Ball. https://art19.com/shows/the-distraction/episodes/de74fc48-90f0-4703-b864-1530be9ac8bb