For Guitarricadelafuente and Miguel Bernardeau, the romance that fuels “La Bola Negra” wasn’t the challenge.
“It wasn’t hard to fall in love with him,” Bernardeau says, looking at his co-star. The two men, both 29-year-old Spaniards, haven’t tired of one another yet, despite a global tour that began in Cannes this spring and has now brought them to New York. “It was hard to create war.”
Those two forces, love and war, coexist painfully in what may be the most ambitious film of this year’s Oscar season. Directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, the two-man team known as Los Javis, “La Bola Negra” depicts the lives of multiple gay men in Spain over three separate timelines: In 1932, young Carlos (Milo Quifes) is blackballed — hence the film’s title — from a social club over his sexuality. In 1937, at the height of the Spanish Civil War, Guitarricadelafuente and Bernardeau play, respectively, a soldier and the prisoner of war he must guard, as their affections blossom inexplicably across political lines. And in 2017, historian Alberto (Carlos González) struggles to figure out how the two preceding tales intersect, stumped until an academic (Glenn Close in a brief, striking cameo) steps in to help.
The story of Spain’s rupture and its fall into repressive dictatorship wasn’t news to the actors. “It’s something that has touched everybody — our great-grandparents were all involved,” Guitarricadelafuente says. “It’s common in our DNA in Spanish society.” But to make the history feel real and immediate, they had to learn how to behave like soldiers. “We received military preparation — how to hold a rifle,” says Guitarricadelafuente, who has a gentle, soft-spoken bearing both in person and onscreen. His Sebastián would rather be playing his trumpet — he fights only reluctantly; he’s more at home in his feelings than in combat. “There’s a naiveness to him,” he continues, “but he’s not stupid. Playing the trumpet is what makes him have hope in the future — one day, he’ll be able to go to Madrid and be a musician.” Indeed, an encounter with a vivacious lounge singer, played by Penélope Cruz, convinces Sebastián that the world is broader than he ever suspected, in a dazzling scene at the heart of the movie.
At least one stakeholder in “La Bola Negra” wanted to be sure Guitarricadelafuente could be credible as a fighter as well as a lover: Meeting him for the first time, Pedro Almodóvar, one of the movie’s producers, asked whether the singer had any edge at all.
Guitarricadelafuente relates Almodóvar’s question first in Spanish before translating it: “Is he gonna avoid just being, like … nice?”
He’s going to need some armor as he gears up for awards season. After it blew up a sleepy Cannes earlier this year, earning a 20-minute standing ovation, winning a shared best director prize and selling to Netflix, “La Bola Negra” has been an object of fascination across the film world. And since it became the first non-English-language film since 2011 to win the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, it’s been perceived as the only Oscar contender that might topple “The Odyssey” come March. (“The Odyssey” is a technically dazzling, timeline-toggling examination of the power of love set against the madness of war, while “La Bola Negra” is … also all of those things, just made on a much smaller budget. And for those who consider Los Javis too out of nowhere to get past Nolan — well, who’d heard of the Daniels before they beat Steven Spielberg?)
Which means that these two actors, not yet well-known in the U.S., are about to be everywhere. And that niceness that Almodóvar identified might take Guitarricadelafuente a long way. The singer has a sweetly earnest disposition, with a floaty tendency to remember the emotional truth of working with Los Javis, while Bernardeau is more plainspoken, analytical and forthright, and never once slips into speaking Spanish, even as his co-star lets off soft “Sí”s like punctuation. Together, though, they are comfortable enough to pick up sentences where the other leaves off, and to chuckle — sometimes ruefully, sometimes giddily — while remembering the film shoot that made Guitarricadelafuente an actor, and that changed both their lives.
If the film does score at the Academy Awards, it’ll be a milestone for global cinema, for Netflix and for queer artists: Although Bernardeau doesn’t identify as queer, Guitarricadelafuente is among several out gay actors playing gay characters in the Oscar race, including Andrew Scott of “Elsinore” and Jordan Firstman of “Club Kid.” That makes this year, perhaps, an even gayer Oscar race than the one where “Moonlight” beat a musical, befuddling Faye Dunaway.
But more than 20 years after 2005’s “Brokeback Mountain” won nearly every precursor but lost on Oscar night, are audiences ready for a movie this steamy and provocative? What’s onscreen is potent, so much so that the actors say they had to take care to keep the romance from becoming so overwhelming that it strained credulity. “We had to work against it and try to manage the volume of that love,” Bernardeau says, “because it’s an impossible love.”
Through their efforts, something universal emerges — assuming a post-“Brokeback,” post-“Moonlight” audience is open to it. “Older generations that would have been scandalized by this 20 years ago are gonna understand it right now,” Guitarricadelafuente says. “And this transcends: It’s a story about love that everybody can feel linked to.”
“La Bola Negra” links itself to the audience’s sentiments through deep specificity. It refuses to hold our hand, trusting us to keep up as the work and life story of Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca grow increasingly woven into the text, or when a notification sound from gay sex app Grindr is the cue that first shunts us into modern times. “I don’t like movies that treat me like I’m dumb,” says Calvo, 35, via Zoom during a joint interview with Ambrossi. “The audience is smart enough. When I see ‘Chernobyl,’ I maybe don’t get some nuclear stuff, but I’m in it. In the gay world — no difference.”
In an unprecedented show of confidence, Netflix is giving the film a 47-day theatrical release, starting Oct. 16.
“We made this movie for the screen,” says Ambrossi, 42. “We shot it in 35mm. So that was good news, that people can experience the movie as we thought they would. But Netflix, you can rewatch — you can see all of Penélope Cruz’s numbers again and again.”
“And over and over and over again!” Calvo jumps in.
Netflix’s acquisition deal was announced on the festival’s last day. For a streamer that has earned Oscars — but, frustratingly for its ambitious leadership, never best picture — for films by global cinema stalwarts like Jane Campion, Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro, the relative upstarts Los Javis may, surprisingly, represent its best chance yet at Oscar’s top prize. Two years ago, the company bet on a different Cannes prize winner about queerness told in the Spanish language, and the fate “Emilia Pérez” met after lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón’s incendiary old tweets emerged may help account for why team “La Bola Negra” speaks, to a one, thoughtfully and deliberately. The directors are eager to make the leap into being globally known auteurs: Los Javis previously created the biographical TV series “Veneno,” about trans Spanish singer Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez, which aired stateside on HBO Max in 2020. In their home country, they’re famous as judges on “Drag Race España,” and became the subject of speculation over their romantic relationship — they broke up during the making of “La Bola Negra,” but remain creative partners.
Calvo mentions that while both “Brokeback Mountain” and “Moonlight” boosted acceptance of queer love, he hopes that “La Bola Negra,” which is more direct in its depiction of gay sensuality and the male body, can push still further. “There’s no better way to get people to understand things than art and movies,” he says. “They’re a really good vehicle for creating empathy — because when you cry with someone, you’re always bonded to that story, to that person, to that community.”
He sees the change films have made, though, as incremental rather than revolutionary. “Thanks to the work of activists, artists, step by step, it’s a better place. But hate is a shadow that still haunts us.” The success of “La Bola Negra” may indicate something hopeful in our dark historical moment — that a love story, especially a seemingly impossible one, can stop us in our tracks and make us feel.
But to get there, the directors needed to find their perfect leading men. What Almodóvar may have deemed simply nice, Calvo calls “this sad-eyes, little-gay-soldier look” — an easily wounded, fragile quality that had shown through in Guitarricadelafuente’s music. As a singer, he’s collaborated with the Australian pop star Troye Sivan, and, sylphlike and dreamy, he cuts a similar figure, just in the Spanish language; though he hasn’t crossed over stateside, Guitarricadelafuente sells out arenas in Spain.
The singer’s casting also felt political: As a young actor, Calvo played a gay character in the issue-driven teen drama “Física o Química.” “And then nobody hired me anymore,” he says. “People tend to hire straight stars because they don’t want to risk money, which I think is homophobic. We wanted to make this statement.”
The directors approached Guitarricadelafuente at Primavera Sound, a music festival held in Barcelona, where he lives. “You’re saying this because everybody’s drinking right now,” the singer recalls telling them. “You’ve had too many drinks!” The next day, though, Calvo messaged Guitarricadelafuente and asked him to come to Madrid, where Los Javis live. They explained the character they had in mind, one they hadn’t yet started writing but knew was right for him. It was a “Star Is Born” moment — which Guitarricadelafuente has now heard a thousand times.
“Gaga is the exact example that everybody talks to me about!” he laughs. “You’re Lady Gaga! You’re Lady Gaga!” (He relates more to Rosario Flores, a Latin Grammy-winning songstress who appeared in Almodóvar’s “Talk to Her.”) While he was uncertain about acting, his character’s sweetness and connection to music, felt legible to the newly minted actor. “If I was born in that village, in those circumstances,” Guitarricadelafuente says, “that would exactly be me.” Among the points “La Bola Negra” makes is that our contemporary understanding of queerness isn’t a historical constant — that it was learned, and fought for, by people following their hearts despite colossal opposition. A young man in a small town in 1937 might never have realized what lay beyond.
Guitarricadelafuente’s background as a musician only helped make his case to his prospective directors. “All the decisions you take when you’re singing to make things one line louder, one line softer — everything is an acting decision,” Calvo remembers telling him. “So we’ll guide you. We’ve been acting teachers — we know how to work with newcomers.” But Guitarricadelafuente’s scene partner needed to be someone less green. “We couldn’t have two nonactors,” Calvo says. “There’s something interesting in having a wildness in a newcomer that is ready to give all of himself, reminding actors with long careers that they have to let themselves go, and the technique of the professional actors teaching the newcomers.”
Enter Bernardeau, who studied acting in Los Angeles but returned to Spain to find fame on the Netflix teen soap “Elite.” In it, he played the popular stud at an exclusive prep school. The show ran eight seasons, but Bernardeau departed after the fourth. “I learned a lot doing ‘Elite’ about what I wanted and what I didn’t want,” he says. The practice of being on camera on a major production was helpful, he says, but global popularity on a Netflix hit brought tabloid fame. Not every actor wants their Wikipedia to have a “Personal life” section, as Bernardeau’s does.
“What happened later was something that we didn’t expect, and changed our lives and made us reconsider everything,” he says. “I had to protect myself from not getting too busy in what people were saying. It helped me to know what I want — the kind of actor I want to be.”
Bernardeau met Los Javis at the Goya Awards, and they told him that they wanted him to read for them. A week later, he did, and felt he’d botched it. “I woke up every morning and I was like, ‘Please give me another chance.’ Then the casting directors called me again.” At their next meeting, the directors offered Bernardeau the role.
“I hate auditions!” Ambrossi says — he doesn’t even recall that first audition. Los Javis knew they wanted Bernardeau, and the rest was a formality. “We trust ourselves a lot as actors’ directors. It’s what I told Álvaro.” (Guitarricadelafuente’s real name is Álvaro Lafuente Calvo; his grandmother gave him his nickname, which combines “guitarrica,” a diminutive that means “small guitar,” with his surname.) “It’s not your song, but you will have to find a middle point between our text and your voice.”
It had been important to the directors to give an out gay performer a chance to lead their movie. But Bernardeau’s straightness didn’t stand in the way of his being cast. “I totally get why straight actors want to play gay roles,” says Ambrossi. “It’s their craft to portray people that are different from them. I’m not against that. The political statement is still there with the LGBTQ+ people on camera and behind the camera. I guess Miguel is in such a good moment in his career that he wanted a challenge.” Bernardeau’s character, Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, was a real person — an activist and actor who’d been Lorca’s romantic partner before the poet’s 1936 assassination by Franco’s forces, spurring Rodríguez Rapún to fight the fascists. Ambrossi notes that his sexuality was a source of confusion. “Rafael was not an open gay man. He was confused — someone that was not able to say what he wanted.”
For his part, Bernardeau says he felt no doubt whatsoever about playing a gay role, even though, until the last decade or so, many actors shied away from onscreen intimacy with other men. “I never thought about it like that, or cared what people would think about my sexuality,” he says.
Once shooting was underway, Los Javis leaned on the trust they’d built with their leading men during the casting process. Though there are credited intimacy coordinators, “we just worked it out with the Javis,” Bernardeau says.
“Sí,” adds Guitarricadelafuente. “I remember Ambrossi saying, Just kiss. Just a little bit more.” The cast and crew were living in the northern town of Comillas, where they were shooting in an old hospital. They gathered one night in Ambrossi’s kitchen to “go, How are we gonna do this?” Guitarricadelafuente says. “We wrote the script of what’s going to happen the next day between us — meeting ourselves, thanks to the direction of the Javis.”
“We learned how to be directors doing our thing and learning by ourselves,” Ambrossi says, “so we are super aware how much you need the space to make mistakes, to try new things, to get mistaken. We always wanted to give them that space of freedom.”
Bernardeau had a teen TV-hunk image that he was subverting not just by playing gay but by allowing himself to be objectified by Sebastián. And yet he didn’t feel conflicted about it when shooting a nude scene where his character is recovering from his injuries on an army cot. “I was very comfortable doing everything,” he says, “because I understood exactly what they needed. And they were not like these directors that are on the monitors and have this tent where they’re away. They’re holding your hand, crying with you many times and telling you, Thank you for this.”
It wasn’t just during the love scenes that the directors shed tears. “They cry with you,” Guitarricadelafuente agrees. “When we were preparing the character, I went to Madrid to meet them and to do some acting exercises to reach the emotion — places of your inner self that you didn’t reach before.” He offers an example: Because the innocent Sebastián is deeply connected to his mother, Calvo and Ambrossi asked Guitarricadelafuente to imagine being held in his mother’s arms. On shooting days, they would pull him aside, put on music and discuss what the singer calls “the traumas” — they’d weep, then get ready to shoot.
“There was a very therapeutic thing about it,” Guitarricadelafuente says.
“We cried so many times together.”
Los Javis speak with me the day of the movie’s Toronto debut, and they present a study in contrasts. Ambrossi can’t sit still, and has left his hotel to speed-walk through the city, speaking rapidly and barely glancing at his phone screen. Calvo, meanwhile, sits at a desk in his hotel room, gazing into the camera lens placidly while idly sketching on a sheet of paper.
As we speak, the film’s success at TIFF lies ahead. And waiting doesn’t suit them. Indeed, at Cannes, Calvo sat through the screening in a state of torment. He’d shown up at the theater at 3 a.m. the night before to set the volume. “I was so tired, and I was like, Play it really loud. And then when we were there, I was like, I think I put it too loud. Javi was like, Shut up! Let me enjoy it!” It was only after the movie ended that Calvo dialed back into the experience, and began to cry.
Ambrossi is accustomed to micromanaging — because he’s always had to. “The posters, the merchandising, calling networks — Please, I need more money — I’m very used to that. So this movie — everything was very hard. It was the biggest effort I ever made.” So Cannes provided a moment of serenity. “I felt peaceful, and it was a new feeling for me to feel peaceful. I saw Tilda Swinton’s face in the next row — Oh my God, what’s happening?”
Diva worship is a thread that connects the ex-lovers: Calvo gravely corrects my statement that, between Cannes and “Drag Race España,” the pair toggle between high and low culture. “For me,” he intones, “drag is high art.” For their part, the stars of “La Bola Negra” marvel at their directors’ varied interests. “I think it would be cool to have Christopher Nolan as a ‘Drag Race’ juror,” Bernardeau says. “Woody Allen!” Guitarricadelafuente fires back drily.
Calvo uses drag-club slang to describe Cruz’s character, Nené Romero — “She is mothering!” he says. Nené is a cupletista, a Spanish singer whose bawdy, openly sexual acts were inspired by the goings-on at the Moulin Rouge. “They talked about sex, drugs, all the experiences in the street, and they were friends with gay and lesbian writers. They were the first pop stars you get in Spain,” Calvo says. Cruz’s performance — which has, despite its brevity, sparked Oscar chatter, and which might, along with her work in Olivia Wilde’s “The Invite,” make her the first performer to get two nominations in one category under the Academy’s new rules — recalls Liza Minnelli’s in “Cabaret.” Minnelli’s Sally Bowles lived loud and hard in the last days before Weimar Berlin fell to Adolf Hitler. On the precipice of Franco’s dictatorship, Cruz’s character is doing the same.
Nené — outrageous and drag-inflected — opens Sebastián up to the power of queerness, and Cruz played a similar role for Guitarricadelafuente. “She was a godmother in every single aspect,” Ambrossi says. “Guitarricadelafuente, she took such care of him. But she was so generous — she wanted to support the message of this movie and the importance of the political statement behind it.”
“She was so generous and gentle and trying to encourage you,” Guitarricadelafuente says. “This poor guy in the middle of the civil war, this beautiful show is the first time you see him smiling. And her role in this is very important, because she’s going to be a mother for a lot of queer people that are going to see this.” Guitarricadelafuente notes that Nené seems to intuit that about his sexuality that Sebastián cannot yet put into words. “She’s like the English teacher who encourages you to see beautiful things — she already knows. She knows before you know.”
In the midst of telling a story about self-discovery and new love, Los Javis transitioned from romantic and creative partners to solely creative partners. Endlessly protective of their actors, they kept their breakup under wraps during the shoot.
“I didn’t even notice,” Guitarricadelafuente says. “I noticed after we ended filming.”
“They told me on my last day,” says Bernardeau.
Guitarricadelafuente didn’t want to believe the news, despite gossip swirling around the production. “There was like a fuss, because they are very known in Spain,” he says. “I was like, I’m having dinner with them every day, and they’re so close.”
Today the directors are philosophical about their split. “When we get into a project, it’s a road to the unknown,” says Calvo, “and we always trust that by the end of the road, we are going to be different people.”
“Yeah!” interjects Ambrossi.
“And that’s the good thing about doing what we do,” Calvo says. “The way I see creation is: You can’t make a project that is not going to change your life forever, and I was grateful for this project to make us evolve and make us explore new ways of living.”
This evolution happened at the moment the pair’s stature on the film scene was about to shift, first with Cannes and possibly again next March. But they’re not allowing themselves to think as far ahead as the Oscars, even as Netflix, with “La Bola Negra” as the crown jewel in its 2026 slate, clearly is.
“Javi Ambrossi — I think he’s a witch. Not a witch, but he has a spiritual thing. He knows things about the future, and he’s not telling us,” Guitarricadelafuente says.
“And his phrase is always ‘Step by step, step by step,’” Bernardeau adds. “And you’re like, ‘Step by step’?! These are big leaps!”
Ambrossi learned this incrementalism from moviemaking. He used to be an actor, too, and becoming a director — with so many tasks competing for his attention all at once — was terrifying until he simplified the process for himself. “You have to go frame by frame — it’s the only way to do things,” he says. “Day by day, frame by frame. You do your best every single second, and it will be OK. Today is the Toronto premiere. Hopefully, people will connect. We’ll see tomorrow.”
For his part, Calvo emphasizes the film’s potential impact — illuminating a story of queer hope during a dark stretch of history, then as now. His ambitions reach beyond the Oscar race. Academy attention, he says, “would be a dream come true, but you should remember why you made the movie. Making the movie was a dream. Everything is a dream. So we just keep dreaming.”
Style Director: Alex Badia; Senior Market Editor, Accessories: Thomas Waller; Senior Market Editor: Emily Mercer; Associate Market Editor: Ari Stark; Fashion Assistant: Madison Collins; Grooming for Bernardeau: Adam Markarian; Grooming for Guitarricadelafuente: Kazuto Shimomura; Production: Alexey Galetskiy/AGP; Look 1 (cover): (Bernardeau) Shirt: Wales Bonner; Pants: Stone Island; Boxers: Hermès. (Guitarricadelafuente) Pants: Dsquared2; Look 2 (On the stairs): (Bernardeau) T-shirt: Vintage available at Bangbangbrooklyn; Shorts: Dsquared2; Boots: Berluti. (Guitarricadelafuente) Jersey: Vintage available at Bangbangbrooklyn; Jeans and belt: Ann Demeulemeester; Boots: Dior; Look 3 (On the couch): (Guitarricadelafuente) Cape: Ann Demeulemeester; Pants: Nili Lotan; Boots: Jimmy Choo. (Bernardeau) Coat and pants: Polo Ralph Lauren; Tank top: Hermès; Look 4 (Piano): (Bernardeau) Pants and belt: Brunello Cucinelli; Shoes: Church’s. (Guitarricadelafuente) Sweater: Vintage available at Bangbangbrooklyn; Pants: Brunello Cucinelli; Shoes: Canali

Yes. Yes. Yes.
Let me say it again: Yes.
After a horror show in Week 4 with my NFL picks, I got back on track in a big way this past week. I was 10-4-1 straight up and 9-6-1 against the spread. That brings my season record straight up to 48-30-1 and the ATS record to 34-43-2.
The ATS mark will be a slow climb to get back above .500 after that really bad Week 3. But I felt good about the picks this week.
Time to build some momentum. Two good weeks in a row?
You bet.
All lines via DraftKings; All times ET
Seattle Seahawks (-3) at Denver Broncos
Thursday, 8:15 p.m. on Amazon Prime
The Seahawks lost a tough one to the 49ers last week and now face a short week on the road against Denver. The Broncos’ offense has struggled, even with Sean Payton taking over as the play-caller. Bo Nix has to pick it up, but this is a tough defense to try and fix things. Seattle takes a tough road game.
Pick: Seahawks 23, Broncos 17
Houston Texans at Jacksonville Jaguars (-3)
London on Sunday, 9:30 a.m. on NFL Network (Stream: Fubo — try for free)
The Jaguars will have been in London for two weeks, which makes this a challenge for the Texans, who went this week. Houston won for the first time on the road last week and now their division chances probably rest on this game. The Jaguars were sloppy last week, which will get them back focused. Jaguars will win a tight one.
Pick: Jaguars 24, Texans 20
Chicago Bears at Atlanta Falcons (+3)
Sunday, 1 p.m. on Fox (Stream: Fubo — try for free)
The Bears are off a horrible showing in Green Bay, in which the defense was shredded. But the Falcons lost in overtime to the Ravens and quarterback Michael Penix was hurt. He will likely play here, and that’s a good thing since he can light up the Chicago defense. Falcons win it.
Pick: Falcons 27, Bears 21
Baltimore Ravens (-4.5) at Cleveland Browns
Sunday, 1 p.m. on Fox (Stream: Fubo — try for free)
There is a chance that Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson will be back for this game after missing last week with an ankle injury. Even if he isn’t, I think the Ravens defense will be up to the task of slowing down the Browns offense. If Jackson is back, the Ravens offense will move the ball.
Pick: Ravens 24, Browns 13
Tennessee Titans at Indianapolis Colts (-7)
Sunday, 1 p.m. on Fox (Stream: Fubo — try for free)
The winless Titans head out on the road to play a Colts team that has been inconsistent. The Colts’ defense has improved in recent weeks, which will challenge Cam Ward and the Titans’ limited offense. Look for the Colts to get a division victory as Jonathan Taylor has a big game.
Pick: Colts 28, Titans 17
New York Jets at New England Patriots (-7.5)
Sunday, 1 p.m. on CBS (Stream on Paramount+)
The Patriots have turned their season around with consecutive victories as Drake Maye has come alive. The Jets played better on defense against Cleveland last week with eight sacks, but this is a bigger challenge. Look for Maye to keep it going as the Pats win a third straight.
Pick: Patriots 28, Jets 13
New Orleans Saints at New York Giants (+1.5)
Sunday, 1 p.m. on Fox (Stream: Fubo — try for free)
The Saints have lost three straight and have fallen to 1-4. They didn’t play well against the Vikings last week, but this is a chance to get right. The Giants tied last week, but Jameis Winston played well. I think this will be about defenses. Giants in a close one.
Pick: Giants 19, Saints 16
Carolina Panthers at Philadelphia Eagles (-1.5)
Sunday, 1 p.m. on CBS (Stream on Paramount+)
The Panthers are off a bye, while the Eagles are off a trip to London where they lost in brutal fashion to the Jaguars. This is desperation time for the Eagles, but the injuries have piled up. Somehow, though, they will get off the deck to win this behind their defense.
Pick: Eagles 23, Panthers 20
Pittsburgh Steelers at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (+3)
Sunday, 1 p.m. on CBS (Stream on Paramount+)
Both of these teams righted the ship a bit with victories last week. The Bucs badly needed it after losing their first four. Tampa Bay ran it with Bucky Irving to beat the Cowboys and I think they can do that here as well. The defense played better in that game and will limit Aaron Rodgers somewhat. Bucs win it.
Pick: Bucs 26, Steelers 21
Arizona Cardinals at Los Angeles Rams (-13.5)
Sunday, 4:05 p.m. on Fox (Stream: Fubo — try for free)
The “Dream Team” Rams are 2-3 and haven’t looked the part of a Super Bowl champ. The offense got it going against the Bills, but the defense was a non-factor in the fourth quarter and overtime. They will play better here against the Cardinals. Meanwhile, Matt Stafford will have a big day.
Pick: Rams 35, Cardinals 20
Los Angeles Chargers (+8.5) at Kansas City Chiefs
Sunday, 4:25 p.m. on CBS (Stream on Paramount+)
The Chargers limp into this one at 0-5, while the Chiefs are undefeated off a bye. The Chargers are desperate and need a win or their season will be over. This is not a good place to try to get that first victory. Look for Patrick Mahomes to play well. Chiefs coach Andy Reid is outstanding in his career off a bye.
Pick: Chiefs 28, Chargers 21
Buffalo Bills (-6) at Las Vegas Raiders
Sunday, 4:25 p.m. on CBS (Stream on Paramount+)
The Bills are playing consecutive road games, but they stayed on the West Coast after beating the Rams in overtime Monday night. That was a tough, physical game, which will make it a challenge on a short week. The Raiders were awful against the Pats, but they will play better on offense here. They just won’t stop the Bills.
Pick: Bills 35, Raiders 21
Dallas Cowboys at Green Bay Packers (-1.5)
Sunday, 8:20 p.m. on NBC (Stream: Fubo — try for free)
The Packers blew out the Bears Sunday as Jordan Love lit up the skies. Look for more of that in this one against a bad Dallas secondary. The Cowboys struggled on defense against the Bucs, and that will continue in this one. Love continues to play well. Packers win a shootout.
Pick: Packers 31, Cowboys 27
Washington Commanders at San Francisco 49ers (-7.5)
Monday, 8:15 p.m. on ESPN (Stream: Fubo — try for free)
This is a long road trip for the Commanders off a brutal tie last week to face the league’s best team right now. That’s a tough combination. They can only hope for a letdown by the 49ers after they beat Seattle last week. It won’t happen. The 49ers continue to roll as Brock Purdy continues to make a claim as a legitimate MVP candidate.

HOUSTON — The district attorney for Harris County, Texas, is investigating whether an ICE agent driving a vehicle, who hit a man who was on foot, could be charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
District Attorney Sean Teare told NBC News on Tuesday that his office of investigators with years of experience watched surveillance video of the ICE vehicle hitting Miguel Parra Hernandez and believe the collision was not accidental.
Teare’s office announced late Monday that it had launched an independent investigation of the ICE vehicle striking Parra, 48.
The Saturday collision left Parra with leg and hip injuries and a shattered ankle after the officer’s vehicle struck Parra during a pursuit Saturday, said Cesar Espinosa, a co-founder and the executive director of FIEL, a Houston-based immigrant civil rights group, who was speaking on Parra’s behalf at a press conference on Monday.
Parra had surgery on his leg, but needs additional procedures to reconstruct his leg and other parts of his body, Espinosa said. Parra must must wait for swelling to reduce before doctors can perform additional surgery, he said.
Espinosa said Parra — who had gotten out of a vehicle and was on foot — was hit “in a violent and brutal fashion.”
A senior official at the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News on Tuesday that multiple ICE officers on the scene at the time were wearing body cameras. ICE currently is reviewing footage of the scene as part of an internal investigation, the official said.
NBC News has reached out to DHS for a response to the district attorney’s statements. DHS did not respond to a request for comment on Monday following the remarks from Parra’s attorney and advocates.
But in a statement over the weekend, ICE said it attempted a vehicle stop and the people in the car ran away. The officers tried to apprehend the fleeing men, and “Miguel Parra Hernandez ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck,” the ICE spokesperson stated.
ICE said Parra was not the target of the attempted stop.
Espinosa said Parra told him that he fled because it was unclear there were officials in the vehicles, which he said were unmarked, did not use sirens and had dark, tinted windows.
Video obtained by NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston shows a white truck headed in the opposite direction of traffic on a busy roadway. The video shows a vehicle jumping a yellow median and heading in the direction that Parra is running.
It then appears to show the vehicle, which is not marked, swerving left toward Parra’s path, in front of a truck stopped in the shopping center. The parked truck leaves, and a man can be seen on the pavement behind the ICE vehicle, the video shows.
Juan Proaño, CEO for the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights group, said ICE often accuses those arrested of using vehicles as a weapon, but he believes this case shows the opposite.
In previous encounters between ICE and targets of their arrests in vehicle stops, including some who have been killed such as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, ICE has alleged the people they tried to arrest weaponized their vehicle.
Parra was at a Houston area hospital Monday morning when his attorney and Espinosa visited him, Espinosa said. But they had only 10 or 15 minutes before ICE officers came in and began recording their conversation and forced them out, Parra’s attorney Kim Bruno said.
“To add insult to injury, Mr. Miguel is in the custody of the ICE agents who ran him down,” Espinosa said. “This is so disheartening and so angering that Miguel has to face the people that brutally attacked them every single day, 24 hours a day.”
Parra has lived in the U.S. for 34 years, having arrived at age 14, and he has no criminal record, Bruno told NBC News. DHS said he was in the country without legal permission.
Bruno said he has never had encounters with immigration authorities. He and the man with him in the car do stucco work, she said.
Neither Parra nor the other man in the car was the target of ICE in Saturday’s traffic stop, Bruno and Espinosa said.
ICE identified the man it was targeting as Jose Mendoza Cervantes, who it said is not legally in the country and had been removed twice and entered the U.S. illegally five times. It said that Mendoza Cervantes had been arrested multiple times for drunken driving and once for unlawful possession of a firearm and that he had an active removal order.
Bruno and Espinosa countered that neither Parra nor the man in the car with him, whom he had picked up for work, knew Mendoza Cervantes.
The Civil Rights Division of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office sent investigators to the intersection where Parra was hit, said Damali Keith, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.
Parra was struck less than two weeks after the Trump administration issued guidance setting tighter rules for vehicle stops.
The guidance says only agents who have completed specific training should make vehicle stops. The memo also says that vehicles used for traffic stops must have lights and sirens and that all officers on the scenes of vehicle stops must wear and activate their body cameras.

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football, where Bill Belichick (!) engaged in a little whimsy by wishing the University of North Carolina happy birthday. First Quarter: Mamas, Don’t Let Your Sons Grow Up to Be Five-Star QBs. Second Quarter: We Regret to Inform You That Your Team Is a Bust. Third Quarter: Promotion/Relegation Fantasy Island.
Fourth Quarter: Home Games of Great Consequence
We are heading toward another big weekend in the sport, with several Saturday matchups carrying extra payload for the home team. The Dash list, with picks:
Notre Dame at BYU (32)
Biggest home game in Cougars history? It might be. BYU fans have long pointed to a 1990 game against No. 1, defending national champion Miami as the biggest, with the Cougars’ win over the Hurricanes helping launch Ty Detmer to the Heisman Trophy. This one seemingly comes with bigger trappings.
It’s the first matchup of top-10 teams in Provo, Utah, with the Fighting Irish coming in at No. 2 and the Cougars at No. 8. The College Football Playoff implications are massive for both teams, since neither has played a ranked team to date. Big 12 credibility is also very much at stake, with the league’s only true take-notice win in nonconference play being Oklahoma State over Oregon. College GameDay will be there for the first time since 2009.
Line: Notre Dame by 10.
Dash pick: Notre Dame 21, BYU 12. This should be a low-scoring slugfest, with both teams in the top 10 nationally in total defense and scoring defense. The Irish have the better firepower, and the better defense.
Ohio State at Indiana (33)
The only thing that could compare to this in Indiana home game history might be the 1967 Old Oaken Bucket game against No. 3 Purdue. The Hoosiers won that one as a major underdog on their way to their first Rose Bowl—and only Rose Bowl until last season. This is the first matchup of top-five teams Indiana has ever hosted.
Past Ohio State visits to Bloomington, Ind., have been virtual home games for the Buckeyes, with their massive fan base flooding west into neighboring Indiana and taking over. That’s not likely to be the case this time, now that the Hoosiers have discovered football fever.
Line: Ohio State by 3.5.
Dash pick: Indiana 23, Ohio State 21. Jeremiah Smith is a matchup nightmare for anyone, the Hoosiers included. But that was also the case last year in the Big Ten championship, when Smith had eight catches for 144 yards but no touchdowns. Indiana’s defense near the goal line was the difference in that game and it will have to be good again to win this game.
Wisconsin at UCLA (34)
The Big Ten showdown nobody saw coming, and hopefully one that a few Bruins fans will bother to see in person. (Undefeated, 12th-ranked UCLA is averaging 31,446 fans per home game, which is 72nd nationally. That ranks behind nine schools from outside the Power 4.)
The Badgers’ only loss was in the opener to Notre Dame. With a win, Luke Fickell would add another layer of support for extending his tenure. If UCLA wins, Bob Chesney might be asked to coach the Chargers, too.
Line: UCLA by 3.5.
Dash pick: Wisconsin 17, UCLA 14. That line may move considerably with the news that Bruins QB Nico Iamaleava is reportedly out for the season. Cal Poly transfer Ty Dieffenbach is a great story, and he did a fine job as an emergency fill-in at Oregon, getting his first FBS game action in four years as a collegian. But a Wisconsin defense that has allowed just one rushing touchdown might be able to load up on UCLA’s formidable running game.
Alabama at Tennessee (35)
What happens when the Crimson Tide goes to Knoxville, Tenn.? The goalposts come down. Tennessee fans made off with them in 2022 and tossed one in the river outside Neyland Stadium, then took one down again in ’24 but never got it out of the stadium. The school has been quite cavalier about paying SEC fines for field storms in the past, but the price tag is now a half-million per storm.
Line: Alabama by 8.5.
Dash pick: Alabama 27, Tennessee 17. The Vols are a struggling offensive unit and the Tide should be coming in hot after losing in controversial fashion to Georgia. Kalen DeBoer has never lost back-to-back games at Alabama, and has done so only twice in his 150 games as a college head coach.
Kansas at Kansas State (36)
This game is not noteworthy for any impact on the national scene, or even the Big 12 race—both are 0–2 in the league. The storyline is whether the Wildcats can extend their incredible ownership of the Jayhawks to an 18th straight meeting. Last time Kansas won in the Sunflower Showdown was 2008, when current K-State coach Collin Klein was sitting out the season as a redshirt freshman for the Wildcats.
Line: Kansas State by 4.5.
Dash pick: Kansas State 35, Kansas 28. Wildcats quarterback Avery Johnson is mercurial, but he’s lit up the Jayhawks the last two years and should do it again Saturday.
Reunion games (37) in Eugene, Ore.; Oxford, Miss.; and East Lansing, Mich. Oregon QB Dylan Raiola—whose place on the Ducks’ depth chart is quite uncertain at this point—faces his old team, Nebraska. Missouri quarterback Austin Simmons faces his old team, Mississippi, where he was Wally Pipped out of the lineup by Trinidad Chambliss. And Northwestern takes on its former coach, Pat Fitzgerald, at Michigan State.
Lines: Oregon by 7.5; Mississippi by 6; Northwestern by 7.5.
Dash picks: Oregon 24, Nebraska 17; Ole Miss 38, Missouri 35; Northwestern 31, Michigan State 21.
Coach Who Earned His Comp Car This Week
Kirk Ferentz (38), Iowa
Sure, his comp car is probably a perfectly sensible Ford Taurus, but let him have what fits his personality. He’s doing some classic Ferentzian coaching with the current Hawkeyes, who are 5–1 coming off delivering a woodshed whipping to Washington. Floyd of Rosedale is on the line at Minnesota on Saturday, and that brings out the best in Ferentz. His team has won the bronze pig 10 of the last 11 years.
Coach Who Should Take the Bus to Work
Mike Norvell (39), Florida State
When you’re on the hot seat and you make a dubious coaching decision that completely turns around a game you were dominating, that’s not good. Norvell did that at Louisville on Friday night, up 14–0 and facing a fourth down inside the 5-yard line. Instead of kicking the field goal to take a three-score lead and maintain the Seminoles’ opening role, they went for it and were stopped. One play later, Louisville scored on a 97-yard run and erupted for a 44–20 blowout. Tallahassee bus drivers might not even open their doors for Norvell this week.
Point After
When hungry and thirsty in Atlanta, The Dash recommends the wings and cajun fries at Clay’s Sports Cafe (40), which looks modest on the outside in a Sandy Springs strip mall. But the wings have a unique sauce and plenty of spice, and the Friday afternoon clientele will probably be talking about college football. Check it out and thank The Dash later.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The message on the Buffalo Bills sideline was simple, profane, and repeated until the field-goal-block unit ran onto the SoFi Stadium turf in overtime Monday night.
“We were just saying, block this s—, over and over,” Greg Rousseau said.
Rousseau did. His fingertip deflection of Harrison Mevis’ 48-yard try, Mevis’ second miss of the night, came after James Cook’s fumble had handed the Rams a chance to win it. Five plays later, Tyler Bass hit a 45-yarder with 1:55 left in overtime, and the Bills escaped with a 37-34 win to move to 4-1.
At 6-foot-7, Rousseau has the length for the job. He busted through the line, turned his shoulders toward the ball and got his hands up. One finger was enough to slow the kick, which died short of the crossbar.
Bills coach Joe Brady said he was peeking up at the scoreboard as the field-goal-block unit tried to keep Buffalo alive, knowing he had to be ready to shift gears and call plays if something went right.
After the block, Josh Allen picked up right where he left off. Cook carried once, then Allen ran twice for 32 yards, putting the Bills in field-goal range. When Cook was stopped for no gain on first down, Brady didn’t wait. He sent Bass out on second-and-10, and Bass drilled the winner.
On a night the Bills defense again struggled to slow a high-powered Rams offense, Brady said the moment fit Rousseau’s season.
“Greg made an outstanding job of being able to go block that and sell out, and it’s just kind of who he’s been all year,” Brady said.
Buffalo’s defense needed that play, because it didn’t make many others. The Rams never turned the ball over. They ran 78 plays, piled up 454 yards and 33 first downs, and kept the Bills offense on the sideline for nearly 38 minutes. Matthew Stafford went 40 of 54 for 383 yards and three touchdowns, two of them to Davante Adams, and he picked the Bills apart underneath all night. Los Angeles put up 20 points in the fourth quarter alone. Kyren Williams’ 1-yard plunge with 4 seconds left forced overtime.
That’s five weeks now of a defense that bends, and Monday it nearly broke. The difference was the kicking. Mevis had already missed from beyond 50 in the first half, and Bass went 3 for 3. In a game this close, that’s the margin, and the Bills defense can’t count on getting it every week.
Rousseau made the big play, but he wanted to share the credit. He rushed alongside defensive tackle Deone Walker and fellow edge rusher Michael Hoecht. Before the play, Hoecht was on the sideline with special teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers, working out how the Bills would attack.
“Greg and I had been working Swim-C, and my job on that is to get their tight end out of the way,” Hoecht said.
Hoecht executed it to perfection. He exploded out of his stance and immediately contacted the Rams’ edge blocker, freeing Rousseau to swim through the gap and turn toward the ball for the jump and the block.
“We said, ‘We’re just gonna go knock the h— out of them, and Greg is gonna swim through,’ and that’s exactly what happened,” Hoecht said. “And it’s in perfect fashion. Greg tips it and the ball is still tracking and we’re sitting there (saying), ‘Oh no’ — (and then), ‘Yes!’”
The block also handed Allen something he’d never had. He entered Monday 0-7 in overtime games in his career, a list that includes playoff losses in Kansas City in January 2022 and in Denver this past January. Both times, Allen never got the last word. This time, the defense gave him one more chance, and he used his legs to take it.