Even a Brock Purdy stinker in Sunday’s NFC championship game between the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles won’t be enough to cost him next year’s starting quarterback job, says former NFL player and current ESPN pundit Ryan Clark.
On Friday’s episode of “First Take,” Clark was unequivocal on two counts. First, Purdy has earned the starting nod after going undefeated at least through the NFL title game (and possibly beyond!). “It’s zero question,” Clark said. “… No matter what happens on Sunday, going into next year, Brock Purdy is the quarterback, without competition.”
Clark noted that Purdy has clearly outperformed Jimmy Garoppolo; he’s been more consistent, and he’s shown more ability outside the pocket. And then Clark made his second bold pronouncement: Trey Lance time has already come and gone in the Bay Area.
“They have to finally say, whether it was Kyle Shanahan’s decision or John Lynch’s decision, ‘We made a mistake with Trey Lance. If we were going to go talent, if we were going to look for the guy with the greatest potential athletically, we should’ve picked Justin Fields. We got the wrong one,'” Clark said. “But, as life would have it, as fate and destiny would determine, at Mr. Irrelevant, [they] picked Brock Purdy. As of now, he don’t even know how to lose in the NFL.”
.@Realrclark25 believes Brock Purdy has earned himself the 49ers starting QB position next season ?‘? pic.twitter.com/xjCCZMjMOK
— First Take (@FirstTake) January 27, 2023
Even just a few weeks ago, such a pronouncement would’ve still been considered outlandish. That’s no longer the case. Lance, the No. 3 pick in the 2021 NFL draft, still just 22 years old, is going to have a hell of a time usurping Purdy, pick No. 262 in 2022, next season. That means Clark is right, as strange as it may sound: Lance’s future in San Francisco is certainly up in the air.
Patrick Reed is the latest member of the LIV Golf Series to turn from the course to the courts, as the 2018 Masters champion has filed a $750m defamation lawsuit against Golf Channel and commentator Brandel Chamblee.
The civil suit filed on Tuesday in US district court for the southern district of Texas in Houston, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, alleges that Chamblee and the cable network conspired with the PGA Tour and commissioner Jay Monahan to defame Reed “since he was 23 years old”.
Reed’s allegations in the 30-page complaint include “misreporting information with falsity and/or reckless disregard of the truth, that is with actual and constitutional malice, purposely omitting pertinent key material facts to mislead the public, and actively targeting (Reed) to destroy his reputation, create hate, and a hostile work environment for him”.
“It is well-known on tour that Mr Reed has been abused and endured more than any other golfer from fans or spectators who have been allowed to scream obscenities only to be glorified by NBC’s Golf Channel for doing so,” the lawsuit reads. “[Chamblee] has become Golf Channel’s primary mouthpiece and agent to push this defamatory agenda and inflict severe damage to Mr Reed, LIV, and other golfers signed with LIV.”
In January 2020, Reed’s lawyer sent Chamblee a cease-and-desist letter demanding he not repeat accusations that Reed cheated during a tournament. Reed was penalized two strokes at the Hero World Challenge in 2019 for improving his lie in a bunker, but he claimed he didn’t intend to do so.
Chamblee continued to take Reed to task over the years, not only for cheating allegations but also for his decision to defect from the PGA Tour to LIV Golf earlier this year.
The complaint also takes objection to Chamblee’s remarks that Reed “would have no problem playing golf for Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Vladimir Putin”.
“This statement is false because Mr Reed never aligned himself with a ‘tyrannical, murderous leader.’” the suit reads. “He is playing golf for LIV, which simply happens to be financed by the PIF, which has invested in and financed some of the nation’s and the world’s largest and respected corporations.
“This would be akin to stating that LeBron James has aligned himself with a ‘tyrannical, murderous leader’ because he plays in the National Basketball Association, which has intricate ties to the People’s Republic of China, whose government is accused of a current and ongoing genocide against the Muslim Uyghur people.”
Reed, 32, maintains that Chamblee’s opinions have led to fans heckling him and calling him a cheater at tournaments.
According to the complaint:
These induced personal attacks include but are not limited to: “Now on the tee the excavator!,” “You suck!,” “You f….. ing suck!,” “You jackass!,” “You coward!,” “Shovel!,” Why don’t you dig a grave and bury yourself in it!,” “You piece of shit!,” “No one likes you!,” Everyone hates you Reed!,” “Good luck digging yourself out of this one!,” “Where are your parents coward?!,” “You cheater!,” “Cheat!,” “Everyone hates you cheater!,” “You’re going to miss this you cheater!,” “You cheat in college and on tour and you’re a piece of shit!,” “Beat the cheater’s ass!,” “Sorry Webb for having to play with the cheat! Who did you piss off?!,” “Why don’t you introduce your children to their grandparents you ungrateful bitch?!” This is just a sampling of what Defendants maliciously and intentionally caused and furthered with actual malice.
Though a nine-time winner on the PGA Tour, Reed apparently felt Monahan and the tour were after him.
The suit continues: “Despite his exceptional world-class golfing achievements, in June of 2022, Mr Reed was constructively terminated as a member of the PGA Tour, as a result of threats made and action taken by it’s (sic) Commissioner Jay Monahan and his PGA Tour, and signed with LIV Golf.”
The PGA Tour indefinitely suspended its members who played in the first LIV event in June without the tour’s consent. Reed did not join LIV until the second event of their eight-tournament schedule in North Plains, Oregon, last month. He was suspended as a result.
The lawsuit, which is seeking in excess of $750m in damages, was filed by Larry Klayman, founder of the conservative group Freedom Watch, who has previously failed in prosecuting defamation suits on behalf of one-time US Senate candidate Roy Moore against the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and former Maricopa county sheriff Joe Arpaio against a phalanx of national media outlets.
Russia’s war in Ukraine may be a “rehearsal” for a possible large-scale conflict with NATO countries, a leading Russian political scientist has warned.
Alexei Fenenko, a research fellow at the Institute of International Security Studies and associate professor at Moscow State University’s School of World Politics, appeared on the state TV talk show “60 Minutes” airing on the Russia-1 channel and raised the prospect of a broader clash with the West.
“For us, the war in Ukraine … is a rehearsal for a possibly larger conflict in the future,” he said. “And that is why we’ll test and go up against NATO weapons, and will see on the battlefield how much stronger our weapons really are compared to theirs.”
“Maybe it will be a learning experience for a future conflict,” he added.
Olga Skabeyeva, the host of the show, who is considered to be a chief Kremlin propagandist, then chimed in, observing that “it’s a terrifying experiment.”
Destroyed Russian armored vehicles are piled together on a wasteland on the outskirts of the Bucha war zone. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
More coverage on the Ukraine war
Fenenko is not the first guest on Russia-1 to raise the possibility of a broader conflict between Russia and the West.
A convoy of Russian armored vehicles drives along a road in the course of the Ukraine-Russia conflict near Mariupol on May 20. Alexander Ermochenko/REUTERS
Alexei Zhuravlyov, a member of the nationalist Rodina political party, said during a recent appearance on the channel that “one Sarmat missile and the British Isles will be gone,” Newsweek reported.
Retired four-star US Gen. Barry R. McCaffery described Feneko’s NATO war remarks as “astonishing.”
“The economic and conventional military power of NATO/EU is multiple times that of Russia,” the three-time Purple Heart recipient tweeted Thursday. “A rehearsal for a war with NATO against a much smaller adversary in Ukraine that’s going very badly for Russia.”
By Ukraine’s estimates, since the start of the invasion on Feb. 24, Russian forces have lost 28,000 soldiers and countless pieces of military equipment, including tanks and the nation’s Black Sea flagship, the Moskva.
NATO has refrained from getting directly involved in the Ukraine war, but many of its member states, led by the US, have supplied tens of billions of dollars in financial and humanitarian aid, as well as a wide range of weapons, to Ukraine in its struggle against Russia.
