Sports
Wife of slain NY Times exec alleged disturbing book given to children
Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of alleged domestic abuse. If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233 in the U.S.
Candice Jang and Jonathan McKinsey’s relationship began nearly two decades before he was shot dead in an East Bay park. Their early careers appear to have overlapped at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. During the course of their relationship, McKinsey underwent a gender transition. They married, had children and eventually asked a court to protect them from each other.
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Now, Jang’s parents face murder charges. McKinsey, a 40-year-old engineering director for New York Times Games, was shot dead Saturday afternoon at the Dublin Sports Grounds as kids played nearby. Police arrested his parents-in-law, Shili Chen and Shouyong Zhang, within minutes. Prosecutors charged both suspects with murder Wednesday, alleging that they intentionally fired guns and killed McKinsey by lying in wait. Investigators have not yet publicly established a motive.
On Thursday, an attorney appointed to represent McKinsey’s mother-in-law, Shili Chen, said she intends to plead not guilty and make McKinsey’s alleged abuse a focus of her defense. Chen and her husband, Shouyong Zhang, both 77, requested more time before formally entering pleas.
What we know about Candice Jang and Jonathan McKinsey’s marriage
Jang is McKinsey’s estranged wife, the mother of their three children and the daughter of the two people accused of killing him.
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A LinkedIn profile bearing the name Candice J. lists a background in technology and information security, with education at Carnegie Mellon University, internships at Qualcomm, Hewlett-Packard and CERT, and an IT analyst role at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her time at JPL overlapped with McKinsey’s software engineering internship there, including in July 2008, when Jang said they met.
They married on July 23, 2011. In her October 2025 restraining order petition, Jang described herself as a stay-at-home mother who has not worked since 2010. Their court filings describe sharply conflicting versions of the relationship.
McKinsey accused Jang of physically abusing him, isolating him from friends and relatives, and repeatedly accusing him of infidelity, according to the restraining order he filed, reviewed by SFGATE. He alleged that after an argument involving a co-worker, he deleted his social media accounts and changed jobs because of her jealousy. According to McKinsey’s court filings, he suspected she was sending messages in his name and established a safe word so people close to him could authenticate his communications.
His family court filings also alleged that Jang beat him with a frying pan until he agreed to eat a cockroach and that he revived a cat after she submerged it in a bucket.
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In an August court filing reviewed by SFGATE, Jang rejected McKinsey’s accusations and described feeling frightened by a birthday gift he allegedly gave their daughter: a children’s book about a girl mourning her mother’s death, named “The Memory String.”
“Jonathan has previously threatened to kill me and my parents,” Jang wrote. “… I cannot know what Jonathan intended by selecting that particular book,” she continued, but given the alleged threats, she said she found the choice “deeply disturbing and frightening.”
Their accounts also describe conflict surrounding his transition. McKinsey alleged Jang tried to pull a drainage bulb from his body following a double mastectomy and that her father punched him in the chest during his recovery. He alleged Jang encouraged him to kill himself in 2010, saying no one would want someone as “f—ked up and transgender” as him. Jang wrote that McKinsey was hospitalized following two suicide attempts after she tried to end their relationship.
McKinsey also described carrying a pregnancy conceived using an embryo from Jang. He alleged she threw a cup at his stomach and pressured him to lift heavy boxes while pregnant. He said their son was born prematurely and died about an hour later.
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Jang, meanwhile, accused McKinsey of injuring her and abusing their children. She kept an “abuse log” for therapy, describing alleged incidents over several years. McKinsey pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor charges involving alleged child endangerment and corporal injury to a child. Records reviewed by SFGATE describe an allegation that he slapped their 6-year-old son and a separate incident in which police found a toddler alone at home while he was shopping.
McKinsey headed famed New York Times division
McKinsey’s engineering career brought him to a part of the New York Times familiar to millions — the games app, home to Wordle and Connections. According to his LinkedIn profile, he joined the Times in 2023 and became director of engineering for games player experience in December 2025.
His earlier career included the JPL internship, a systems software engineering position at Hewlett-Packard in the Houston area from 2010 to 2014, and a senior software engineering role at Oracle in the Bay Area beginning in 2015.
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He also listed teaching work at Georgia Tech and UC Berkeley and computer science degrees from both universities. In 2022, he appeared on the speaker roster for the Lesbians Who Tech & Allies San Francisco Summit, identified as an engineering manager at Splunk.
Parenthood featured in his public comments about work. Responding to a LinkedIn post encouraging employers to embrace visible parenthood, he wrote that NYT Games colleagues shared pictures of their children and pets in a Slack channel. “I love normalizing visible parenthood,” he wrote.
In his August court declaration, McKinsey asked for more time with his children, citing supervised visitation reports that described them playing, reading and seeking affection from him. One monitor recorded his daughter asking for more time at the end of a July visit.
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“I miss our children deeply and am pleading with this court to allow me more time with them,” he wrote.
On a Facebook photo McKinsey posted in September, his father, William Finney II, left a message asking him to visit. “Mom and Dad love you so much and miss you,” he wrote. “Hope everything goes well with you and Candice and the kids.” The message was posted Sept. 8, 18 days before McKinsey’s death.
McKinsey’s misdemeanor case was still unresolved when he was killed. Court records reviewed by SFGATE show he posted a $50,000 bond and was ordered to take parenting classes. A mental health diversion petition was pending.
The alleged surprise attack
Shortly after 3 p.m. on Sept. 26, a police sergeant driving through the Dublin Sports Grounds saw a man lying behind a white SUV with its rear hatch open. It was Jonathan McKinsey. Dispatchers had received multiple 911 calls reporting gunfire. McKinsey had suffered several gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to filings made by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, reviewed by SFGATE.
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It was a Saturday afternoon, and the parking lot was crowded, with several children nearby. Surveillance footage showed Chen and Zhang shooting McKinsey “in concert,” a police officer wrote, describing their actions as showing “blatant disregard for public safety.” The couple were still in the parking lot when witnesses directed officers toward a black Honda Civic traveling west toward Civic Plaza. Police stopped the car, finding Chen behind the wheel and Zhang in the passenger seat. Their arrest records list the time as 3:15 p.m., about seven minutes after the shooting was reported.
Officers allegedly found a firearm in Chen’s possession. A search of the car under a warrant yielded a second gun, which Zhang later admitted using to shoot McKinsey, according to law enforcement. Both were subsequently booked into Santa Rita Jail.
Investigators have not publicly explained what brought McKinsey and his in-laws to the park that afternoon.
Little public information has emerged about Candice Jang’s parents, Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, who are accused of killing her estranged husband. Their arrest records list the same birthday, Sept. 30, 1949. Both were 76 when McKinsey was killed and turned 77 on the day prosecutors filed the murder complaint.
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McKinsey’s restraining order request described alleged hostility from his in-laws years before the shooting. He accused Chen of directing anti-LGBTQ+ slurs at him and one of his sons after the child wanted to wear his sister’s dresses.
The criminal filings do not explain why both allegedly shot at McKinsey or if they discussed their intentions with their daughter.
On Tuesday evening, officers entered Jang’s home, according to the California Post. The outlet reported that police arrived around 7 p.m. and left by about 9 p.m., making no arrests and seizing no property. The purpose of the visit has not been explained.
Chen and Zhang appeared together behind thick glass in a Dublin courtroom Wednesday afternoon. Chen wore dark blue clothing and a surgical mask, her silver hair cut in a bob. Beside her, Zhang wore yellow. Both spoke quietly through a Mandarin interpreter as Judge Diane Meier addressed them.
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Chen and Zhang have been charged with murder and a lying-in-wait special circumstance, plus charges that each personally and intentionally discharged a firearm. If convicted of first-degree murder with the special circumstance proved, they could face life in prison without parole.
Neither entered a plea Thursday. Chen’s newly appointed attorney, Curtis Briggs, said she plans to plead not guilty and indicated that her defense would focus on McKinsey’s alleged abuse. He also told KTVU-TV he was working to secure her release from jail. “My client weighs about 80 pounds,” Briggs said outside the courthouse, Thursday. “She’s in one of the toughest jails in the county. She’s a loving, devoted grandmother. So my concerns are that any person in that kind of situation probably couldn’t handle being in custody.”
Sports
Aaron Judge, who played exactly zero innings this postseason, sends blunt message to Yankees front office
Aaron Judge, who played as many innings for the New York Yankees as I did this postseason, sent the front office a clear message after Wednesday’s ALDS loss to the Tampa Bay Rays …
Fix it. Now.
I’m paraphrasing, of course, but I’m not far off.
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RAYS SWEEP YANKEES IN ALDS AFTER CONTROVERSIAL SPECTATOR INTERFERENCE DENIES ANTHONY VOLPE’S HOMER
For those who missed it, the Judge-less Yankees were swept by the Rays in a controversial Game 3 that saw Anthony Volpe’s game-tying home run get called back because of fan interference. New York would go on to lose, 4-3.
As for Judge … he couldn’t do anything about it. The Yankees superstar missed every postseason game with a right calf strain, and played just 66 games this season — a career-low, not counting the silly COVID season in 2020.
It was a lost season for Judge. A frustrating one. A contentious one, especially towards the end with manager Aaron Boone.
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And it all came to a head after Wednesday’s loss:
Yanks fans aren’t buying it
“We’re the Yankees. I feel like they [the front office] should go all-in and do what they need to do,” Judge said. “If we’ve got holes, if it’s finding certain players or personnel, whatever we need, you’ve got to go out there and get it. That’s why I signed back here with the Yankees, to fight for a championship every single year. To go all in.”
Yeah, a pretty clear message to Brian Cashman and everyone in the front office from Aaron Judge.
Essentially, “Go fix it.”
Now, a couple things …
The Yankees have the best rotation in the American League, by a lot. They also have one of the top bullpens in the game.
The Yankees have the third-highest payroll in all of baseball. They spent a whopping $308 million this season. The Rays spent $95.6 million.
Judge himself costs $40 million. He alone costs nearly half of the entire Rays roster combined.
Again, Judge played 66 games this season and wasn’t even on the postseason roster.
YANKEES STAR AARON JUDGE HEADS BACK TO INJURED LIST WEEKS AFTER RETURNING FROM BROKEN RIB
Fan, by the way, were quick to point out that last one:
I could go on and on. It’s a bloodbath right now on Yankees social media. Everyone is miserable.
Fans are miserable. Players are, clearly, miserable.
We’ve already reached the “fire Aaron Boone!” portion of the offseason, and it’s not even 24 hours old yet.
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These comments from Judge seem to have struck a particular nerve, though. It’s one thing to make them after playing 150 games and performing in the postseason.
It’s another thing to say something when you’ve barely seen the field since June.
All rise!
Sports
Shaquille O’Neal addresses Fever’s Kelsey Mitchell’s remarks on Caitlin Clark, says to leverage the spotlight
Shaquille O’Neal is no stranger to having a lot of eyeballs on him, both literally and figuratively. For Indiana Fever star Kelsey Mitchell, it’s been an adjustment.
During the Fever’s end-of-season press conference on Saturday, Mitchell said that with the attention Caitlin Clark draws, she and her teammates get a lot of flak for being on the same team as Clark. O’Neal, having played in large and small markets next to superstars like Kobe Bryant throughout his career and dealt with criticism from fans, said Mitchell should take advantage of the attention.
“My advice is to take advantage of all the eyes that are. If the eyes are on one person and you’re next to that person, take advantage of them,” O’Neal told OutKick in a recent interview.
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O’Neal reflected on his journey and the different markets he played in throughout his illustrious career.
“(I went to) a small high school, still being the No. 1 player in the country, starting off in a small market, eventually going to a big market, but then returning back to a small market and win another championship,” O’Neal said.
Mitchell is a free agent at the end of the season and will be in high demand, as the 30-year-old has been an All-Star in each of the last four seasons and averaged a career-high 24.7 points per game this year. While Mitchell praised the organization, her comments drew speculation about whether she may leave the franchise with which she has spent the first nine seasons of her career.
O’Neal called Mitchell a “beautiful young lady and a fabulous young lady” and said he didn’t want to speak for her or about her to avoid breaking the athlete code, but he said he would advise her to stay in Clark’s orbit.
“I wish her well, but my advice if you’re playing next to somebody that has eyes that can bring you extra income, make sure you always stay next to that person,” O’Neal said.
Mitchell will enter free agency in late January, when the Fever will anxiously await her decision.
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Importance of an athlete’s brand
No athlete, current or former, may brand himself or herself better than O’Neal. The Basketball Hall of Famer wanted to make sure he surrounded himself with the right people when he began his career.
“I would say the first thing you do, you have to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you,” O’Neal said. “Fifty-two percent of all professional athletes went down and playing have nothing, so we maximized my potential. You know, learned a lot, did a lot, dreamed a lot, created a lot. I think in 1992, the way he marketed me and the way I marketed myself, a lot of a lot of athletes follow that even still to this day.”
O’Neal’s renowned brand manager, Leonard Armato, told OutKick that the epitome of having a successful brand as an athlete is to not only promote oneself but also to make good business decisions. In today’s day and age, Armato said athletes can be their own media companies.
With social media being born during O’Neal’s career, Armato said that the four-time NBA champion was the first to embrace social media and that technology can amplify an athlete’s capabilities. For O’Neal, it was paramount that no matter what he did, he stay true to himself.
“But you always have to be true to yourself. You know, we went first time with Leonard, we had a meeting with the image consulting firm and they tried to create a different image and he stopped the guy in the meeting. He says, ‘I know you’re an expert. I respect you what to do, but image is reality.’ So you definitely have to stay true to yourself,” O’Neal said.
“A lot of people who form characters that they can’t live up to. So, me for example, I am who I am. You know, my image is all about fun. I would love to be known as the ambassador of fun.”
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While O’Neal’s brand is strong, he said he has made many mistakes. After making those mistakes, he leaned into his core values and stayed true to himself.
“Every time I fail, I try to memorize what I did wrong and just create a new program. But I don’t like to say ‘You do this, you do this, you do that to each (mistake),’ but if you follow certain core values. To build relationships you have to stay true to yourself to learn from your failures and you have to do things the right in a consistent way, you could create a brand that will be known well beyond after your years of playing and you could be around forever,” O’Neal said.
Armato said a key mistake athletes make is surrounding themselves with the wrong people. Armato has a book coming out in November called “MAXIMIZE,” which details how to build and manage an athlete’s brand. O’Neal wrote the foreword to the book.
Sports
Taking Aim At The iPad Pro For Less Than Half The Price
When it comes to tablets, only a few names are left standing: iPads, Galaxy Tabs, Surface and Fire. Amazon’s Fire tablets have acquired a bit of a cult following, thanks mostly to the value they deliver for their relatively low prices. So it’s a bit of a risky move for the company to announce today that it’s completely replacing that line with a new family of Alexa tablets. The good news is, you’ll still find the new 8-inch and 11-inch models fairly comparable to the Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 10. And the (probably) better news? The new Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro looks set to take on the iPad Pro.
The 12-inch device starts at $499, with a more premium variant going up to $549. At that price, the latter version comes with 16GB of RAM and a texturized screen that the company calls a “nanomatte” display. It’s powered by a 4-nanometer 8-core processor by MediaTek (specifically, the Dimensity 8400) and has some powerhouse display specs. It can refresh at up to 120Hz, has a 3:2 aspect ratio and a pixel density of 280ppi. It also has four speakers onboard with Dolby Atmos support for a surround sound-like experience, along with a promised 16-hour battery life. And as its new name suggests, Alexa is deeply integrated into the tablet’s interface. I’ll get into how all that felt in person in a bit.
I was able to speak with Panos Panay, the company’s head of devices, Alexa and Leo this week, along with a couple of reporters. Acknowledging the Fire tablet’s popularity, Panay said millions of units have been sold, as “they’re fairly inexpensive and different.”
The Alexa tablets, he added, are the result of 2.5 years of work. He said it was rebuilt from the ground up to offer “the most premium experience we possibly could” at “an affordable price point.”
Panay said Amazon had three areas of focus when designing the Alexa tablets: All the apps users want (via, for the first time, the Google Play Store) and “Alexa intertwined throughout the entire OS.” The third one, which actually was the first one he mentioned, seems to be a mix of the redesign and hardware.
Panay then went on to say that his philosophy whenever building a product is “What’s the one thing?” This one thing is slightly different from those three things we mentioned earlier. It’s the one thing that, according to Panay, should not be compromised on, no matter what. And for the Alexa tablet, “the one thing on this product was we were going to go reinvent the screen. No matter what.”
The thing that differentiates Amazon from Apple in this case though, is Kindle mode. “We challenged the team, because of the nanomatte display and what we could do with it and how it feels when you put a pen on it,” Panay said. “Shouldn’t this be a Kindle? Shouldn’t it be a Kindle Scribe?”
As the story goes, the team delivered. Kindle Mode is available across the entire Amazon Alexa tablet lineup, and it’s basically a focused fullscreen reading environment that mutes notifications and reduces blue light. It also extends battery life to allow for 20 hours of reading. You can customize what contacts or apps can break through when you’re in this mode, and for now it appears the only app that works with Kindle mode is, well, the Kindle app.
Since Kindle Mode only kicks in when you launch the Kindle app, there’s not a lot of setup you have to do. There’s also a pleasant animation when you enter and exit the app that has colors fade in and out, serving as a visual indicator of which mode you’re in.
You can tweak the software to default to one of three color schemes in this view: Ink Paper, Color Paper and Standard. The first is a grayscale rendering, the second is a muted effect similar to newspaper comics and the third is somewhat like the glossy pages of a magazine. On the nanomatte model I tried, the effects were even more appealing. In that Color Paper option, something about the textured screen added a visual grit that scratched a nostalgic itch somewhere deep in the recesses of my almost-40-year-old brain.
With its page-turn animations and fullscreen two-page layout, it’s pretty easy to imagine Kindle mode on any other tablet, like the iPad Pro with nano-texture glass I’ve mentioned a few times. And sure, it feels like you can simply buy a Kindle for the privilege of reading on a gadget that won’t bother you with alerts. Even Panay conceded “You could argue that I’m challenging my own Kindle business by creating an Alexa tablet that does incredible Kindle work.”
“But I think it’s rad for the customer,” he said. I guess if you’re a person who mostly wants a tablet that can sometimes double as a pretty effective distraction-free Kindle, then the Alexa tablet could be right for you.
You can also use the company’s new Pro Pen with these tablets, which will cost an extra $90. It felt quite similar to the Kindle Scribe’s stylus in my brief experience doodling with it, but I need more time to fully evaluate it.
One of the most noteworthy additions to the Alexa tablets is the Google Play Store. Whereas the previous Fire tablets ran the company’s FireOS and could only install apps via its included App store, the new versions allow you to easily access the entire ecosystem of Android apps. Because you’re getting them via the Play Store, you’ll also benefit from the vetting and security policies of Google’s system.
As for the Alexa tablets’ interface, there’s a mostly familiar skeleton here that is based on Android. On top of it are some Alexa+ integrations, like a box in the top right corner of the home page that Amazon is calling the “Dynamic Tab.” Unlike the Dynamic Island in Apple’s products, this isn’t an area that expands and contracts depending on the activities running in the background. It’s just a 3-inch-wide box that’s almost 2 inches tall and stays that size no matter what you’re doing. In it are suggestions by Alexa+ based on your recent activity, whether that be the city you’re visiting, the last show you watched on Prime Video or a book you’re reading.
On the bottom right is a little rectangular cutout that houses the Alexa+ input bar with the A-shaped logo, the words “Ask Alexa” and a microphone button to start a voice chat. This is fairly straightforward – just tap the bar or microphone and start typing or saying what you need. A window will pop up to show your request and the assistant’s responses to you.
More interesting, however, is the systemwide gesture of dragging in from the bottom right. No matter what app you’re on, when you drag in from the bottom right, Alexa+ will detect what’s on your screen. A glowing blue halo appears along the screen’s edges to indicate it’s looking at your tablet, and then a window pops up to show you a handful of suggestions about what Alexa thinks you want to ask. You can either choose from one of the options or just initiate a conversation.
During my hands-on session, I tried this on TikTok videos and the Engadget website in Amazon’s Silk browser (which still comes preinstalled, though so does Chrome). In all those cases, the AI took a few seconds to analyze what I was looking at and generate suggested questions like “Get today’s top tech news headlines,” “Learn more about Nintendo Switch Sports Resort” and “Shop for Nintendo Switch accessories on Amazon.” That’s all in addition to the typical “Summarize this page” that most AI systems suggest when encountering any long-ish website.
Cherlynn Low for Engadget
On TikTok videos of people clearing snow from their driveways, the assistant suggested “Check the weather for this afternoon,” “Find a snow removal service nearby” and “How do I clear snow from a driveway.” All of them felt almost relevant, and if I had clicked one of the options that suggested shopping on Amazon, the results included individual items with buttons to buy them or add them to my Amazon cart. Impulse buyers will definitely need to be careful with this one.
This gesture feels like the most baked into the OS that Alexa has been. It still exists to the left of your home screen (sometimes referred to as the “minus one” page) and surfaces your smart home controls, daily schedule and reminders, as well as news articles that might suit your interests. You’ll also find tweaked versions of Android 12L features here, like a taskbar with pinnable apps and the ability to launch apps in split screen view.
All this software is housed in an aluminum unibody that feels smooth and sturdy. I didn’t encounter any flex, though I wasn’t trying very hard to twist or bend it. And I was impressed by how responsive the device felt so far. The little bits of book-reading and watching Project Hail Mary I did during my time with the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro were convincing of its display’s quality so far.
I also made sure to type on the Pro Keyboard, an optional $149 accessory which had a surprisingly satisfying amount of travel and responsiveness for the super thin profile. The trackpad was not only capable of recognizing my taps and swipes, but picked up my two-finger gestures to scroll as well.
My main gripe with the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro so far is that it doesn’t come in the fun colors that the smaller models do. You can only get it in a boring graphite, while the others are available in greenish (Teal and Matcha) and burgundy-ish (Amethyst and Rosette) hues.
As for how the tablet holds up in the real world, and whether it measures up to the competition, we’ll have to wait till we can get units in for testing. For now though, at a starting price of $499, and even at $549 for the nanomatte model, the Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is a very compelling package for the money.
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NFL Thursday Night Football preview: Cowboys get a break by facing shorthanded Buccaneers
Sometimes the NFL makes bad decisions on its primetime games. But there are other instances in which the league is just unlucky.
When the schedule came out in May, the Thursday night game for Week 5 was a reasonable choice. The Dallas Cowboys are always interesting and were an offseason darling. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers struggled in the second half of last season but they had plenty of stars and were the preseason favorite to win the NFC South. At the very least, Buccaneers at Cowboys should have held our interest.
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Nobody figured on the Bucs being this bad by Week 5.
The Buccaneers were 0-3 when they lost Baker Mayfield to a dislocated right thumb. They had a curious backup quarterback plan for the season, going with undrafted rookie Jalon Daniels. When Mayfield went down, Daniels became the first undrafted rookie quarterback since the AFL/NFL merger in 1970 to start a game in Week 4 or earlier. And the results were predictable, with Daniels playing well considering the circumstances but Tampa Bay still losing 17-14 to the Green Bay Packers to fall to 0-4. The Buccaneers are 2-11 in their last 13 games. Head coach Todd Bowles might be on the hot seat.
And while anything can happen in the NFL, facing a winless Buccaneers team with an undrafted rookie at quarterback is clearly a fortunate break for the Cowboys. Dallas rallied last week to beat the Houston Texans 34-30. That bumped Dallas’ record back to 2-2, which is not bad shape considering the rest of the NFC East has issues. The Cowboys have their own issues too. The Cowboys defense is 31st in EPA (expected points added) allowed per play, ahead of only the Detroit Lions. The offense has been good, as expected. The defense hasn’t shown much improvement from last season, when it gave up the most points in franchise history.
The good news for the Cowboys is the Buccaneers, in their current status, are one of the few teams that might not be able to exploit that defense.
Who needs it more?
It depends if you think the Buccaneers’ season is over at 0-4. It might be. Perhaps Baker Mayfield can return as early as Week 6, and if so, 1-4 in the NFC South isn’t completely out of the race. No team in NFL history has made the playoffs after starting 0-5 though. Considering the Buccaneers have shown so few signs of life, the game probably means more to the Cowboys. They’re 2-2 and trailing only the New York Giants, who are without quarterback Jaxson Dart for the rest of the season, in the NFC East. A loss to Jalon Daniels and the Buccaneers wouldn’t just be bad in the NFC East, it would cause a firestorm that would last for 10 days until Dallas plays again.
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Key player: Cowboys WR CeeDee Lamb
Lamb has been an elite receiver for many years, and he’s on pace to smash his career highs. Lamb is averaging an NFL-best 124.5 yards per game, which is well ahead of his former career best of 102.9 yards. He also is averaging 9.3 receptions per game, and he has never been above eight per game. Last week’s monster game, with 17 catches for 189 yards and a game-winning touchdown, was an extension of his hot streak. It was Lamb’s third straight 100-yard game. The Buccaneers’ pass defense has been solid. It hasn’t allowed more than 245 passing yards in a game this season. But it will be a challenge to slow down Lamb, the hottest receiver in the NFL.
Betting market watch, by Ben Fawkes
This game was Cowboys -3.5 and it was -9.5 on the lookahead, due to how bad Tampa Bay has looked (and Baker Mayfield’s injury), along with the potency of Dallas’ offense. The Bucs are 0-4 both straight up and against the spread, and the Jalon Daniels-led offense only put up 134 passing yards and 14 points against Green Bay. While Daniels should be able to throw on the Cowboys D, it’s hard to see Tampa Bay matching points here. A raucous Cowboys Stadium in primetime is also very different than a 1 p.m. ET start at home on a Sunday. This line has come down a bit, but ranges from Cowboys -7.5 to -8.5 in the market. I expect Dallas to cover — as do public bettors loading up on them.
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Check out more of Ben’s work at the Yahoo Sports betting hub.
The Cowboys are expected to roll over Tampa Bay in the Week 5 opener, but you know what they say in this league, Any Given Thursday. Here are three fantasy themes to track as you watch the game.
1. Will Jalon Daniels be improved in his second start? Daniels was put in a difficult position last week, an undrafted rookie asked to start a month into his NFL career. Predictably, he produced just 148 passing yards and no one in the Buccaneers’ offense got past 40 yards receiving. We’re pulling for Daniels, in part so we can squeeze some value from the Tampa Bay receiving room.
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2. What’s the distribution in the Dallas passing game? CeeDee Lamb went bonkers in the win at Houston last week, a 17-189-1 detonation on 21 targets. Meanwhile, George Pickens was limited to just three targets, though he did produce 75 yards and drew two defensive penalties. Lamb has clearly reestablished himself as the alpha in Dallas, but the Cowboys know it’s important to keep Pickens engaged, too.
3. What will Bucky Irving’s usage look like? Although Irving had a credible 16-61-0 rushing line last week, teammates stole from his bottom line — Sean Tucker punched in a short touchdown run, and Kenneth Gainwell had a touchdown catch. Perhaps more concerning for Irving managers, he wasn’t targeted in the passing game. Irving had seven catches in the season opener at Cincinnati — that feels like a year ago.
Sports
The L.A. Dodgers, self-proclaimed ‘dinosaurs,’ are moving on to the NLCS once again after dispatching the Braves
ATLANTA — For at least the 30th time in the past 10 years, Dave Roberts addressed a crowd of hulking, goggled men eager to douse one another in booze.
As the Dodgers manager lavished deserved praise on his victorious ballclub, the 54-year-old gripped a gold-tipped bottle of bubbly in his left hand. Meanwhile, another 750 milliliters of joy rested snugly in the back pocket of his baseball pants. The Dodgers players weren’t the only ones ready to party.
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But first, Roberts had some words of affirmation.
“There’s no more talented team than the Los Angeles Dodgers,” the three-time World Series-winning skipper boasted. “It’s the best organization in sports, top to bottom. We’re smarter, we’re better, and we’re tougher.”
“And we’re dinosaurs!” outfielder Teoscar Hernández, 33, interjected.
The room erupted in laughter, drowning out Roberts. Hernández’s self-deprecating quip was a reference to a comment made earlier this season by newly minted San Diego Padres owner José E. Feliciano, who proclaimed, “The owner of the Dodgers owns a lot of dinosaurs.” And while the Dodgers’ chairman and top dog, Mark Walter, does indeed own a large number of prehistoric animal fossils, Feliciano’s remark was interpreted as a slight toward Los Angeles’ aging core of position players.
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Hernández, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Will Smith, Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy, Tommy Edman and Kiké Hernández are all over 30. Freeman is 37. Muncy is 36. Betts turned 34 on Wednesday. Gray hairs, both real and proverbial, are starting to sprout.
“We’re old! We’re f***ing old, yes,” veteran infielder Miguel Rojas, 37 and nursing a back injury, belted over the revelrous din.
Old, yes, but still damn good.
The Dodgers dinosaurs dispatched the Atlanta Braves 4-1 on Wednesday in an NLDS Game 4 that felt much more one-sided than that. Granted, the contest hung in the balance for much of the night, as starters Tyler Glasnow and Tyler Mahle traded zeroes after each team scored a sloppy run in the first inning. The score remained knotted at one as Glasnow and Mahle exited the stage, thrusting the bullpens into the spotlight.
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Los Angeles’ held. Atlanta’s did not.
Game 2 hero Didier Fuentes entered for Mahle in the seventh with one on and one out. He coaxed Max Muncy into a groundout but promptly issued free passes to the next two Dodgers: Josue De Paula, a 21-year-old with 42 career regular-season plate appearances, and Kyle Tucker, the highest-paid man in MLB history. That brought Atlanta skipper Walt Weiss out of the dugout and flame-throwing reliever Robert Suarez into the game. Up to the dish stepped Los Angeles outfielder Andy Pages, a most fascinating character in the Dodgers extended universe.
Pages, 25, is not old. Had he been born in the U.S. and not Cuba, he might still be on his parents’ health insurance. Last autumn, Pages delivered one of the all-time putrid postseason statistical performances, going 4-for-51 with one measly RBI. That earned him a benching for Games 5, 6 and 7 of the World Series, though he more than made up for his lackluster bat with a season-saving snag in that dramatic Game 7.
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This season, Pages leveled up as a hitter, earning a spot as the National League’s starting center fielder in the All-Star Game. But a late-summer injury derailed his rhythm as October approached. He began this NLDS 0-for-7 with four strikeouts. It looked concerningly familiar. Roberts, though, didn’t lose confidence.
“I’m gonna continue to give Andy leash,” the skipper said before Game 3. “I believe in him. I feel that for us to win the World Series this year, we’re gonna need him to be an active part of our team.”
In Game 3, Pages collected two knocks and scored a run. In Game 4, he provided the definitive blow.
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With the bases juiced and the count full, Pages roped a 100-mph Suarez heater back up the middle for a two-run, backbreaking single. Teoscar Hernández and pinch runner Edman scurried home. Muncy added a solo shot in the ninth. The Dodgers’ bullpen did the rest. Los Angeles, once more, ended an October evening soaked in alcohol and smelling of cigars.
“When you’re spraying champagne and beer on everybody, there’s nothing cooler than this, man,” Muncy said amidst the bacchanal. “You work seven, eight months to get to this point. You gotta take advantage of this. This is why you play baseball.”
But not all the Dodgers played good baseball this week, including some of the most important ones, the older ones.
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Ohtani went 2-for-13 and did not record an extra-base hit. He looks discombobulated, far from the world-beater we’ve come to expect. Roberts batted him fifth in Game 3, for goodness’ sake. Betts was 3-for-14 with all singles. Catcher Will Smith (1-for-16) looked the worst of the lot. It was far from a reassuring offensive showing. L.A. scored just 3.5 runs per game. The lineup’s .264 collective OBP in this NLDS was the lowest mark posted by a 21st-century Dodgers team in a victorious playoff series.
Their relatively comprehensive series victory, then, is a testament to an otherworldly pitching staff. It turns out that a rotation of Tarik Skubal, Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow can win you some low-scoring ballgames. The bullpen, thought to be this club’s Achilles’ heel, also stepped up to surrender just four earned across 14 2/3 innings of work, including 4 1/3 scoreless to close out Game 4. That’s how a club overcomes a .203 team batting average — by holding its opponents to a .145/.259/.242 slash line.
“The Dodgers have something to do with that,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said after the game about his team’s offensive struggles. “They’re going for their third straight world championship for a reason. Their arms just keep coming at you.”
And next week, they’ll keep on coming in the NLCS. An enticing rematch against a souped-up Brewers team awaits. Milwaukee’s lineup is sure to put up a better fight than it did last year and almost certainly a better fight than Atlanta’s hitters just mustered. Game 1 will be Sunday in Wisconsin, and it should be a battle.
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But that impending showdown was most certainly not front of mind for the Dodgers after their victory Wednesday. Imitation champagne flowed freely. No reporter, player or staff member was safe from a chilly Budweiser shower. Rojas, the elder statesman of this aging empire, bad back and all, bounced around the room with a bright green, $150 bottle of tequila in his hand. He chanted along to the TikTok viral house remix bumping from the locker room speakers.
“Get money, stay pretty, handle your business, enjoy life, stay sexy and don’t give a f***.”
Quite the mantra for a group of dinosaurs.
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