The Zimbabwe women's team have become the first to feel the full brunt of the ICC's suspension of Zimbabwe Cricket. Four players - and a coach - selected for the Women's Global Development Squad have been barred from travelling to England to take part in a series of T20 games against Kia Super League teams at the end of July.

Zimbabwe women's captain Mary-Anne Musonda and squad members Anesu Mushangwe, Tasmeen Granger, and Sharne Mayers were all due to take part in the series, while coach Adam Chifo was to have accompanied them to gain vital experience. All five of them have been blocked from participating.

"As I'm sure you are aware, the ICC Board has taken the decision to suspend Zimbabwe Cricket with immediate effect and place a restriction on the Zimbabwe national team participating in ICC events," ICC Women's Cricket manager Holly Colvin wrote in an email to Chifo.

"Unfortunately this also extends to their participation in the Women's Global Development Squad program, and so it is with great regret that I write to inform you that Adam as Head Coach and the four Zimbabwe players will no longer be able to take part in the UK edition of the tour next week," Colvin wrote.

While at least one member of the men's squad, allrounder Solomon Mire, has already announced his international retirement, Zimbabwe's women cricketers have been hit particularly hard by the fallout between the Sports and Recreation Commission and Zimbabwe Cricket, and the resultant suspension of Zimbabwe by the ICC.

As soon as the SRC stepped in to dissolve the ZC board in June, claiming electoral irregularities - amid various other allegations against ZC - the ICC moved to freeze all funding to Zimbabwe. That meant that no contracted players would be paid match fees or salaries, and also that the Zimbabwe women's tour to Ireland and the Netherlands, which was supposed to have run concurrently with the men's tour, was cancelled at the last minute.

The suspension also means that Zimbabwean representative teams will not be able to take part in any ICC events. The women's squad had been scheduled to travel to Scotland for the Women's T20 World Cup Qualifiers at the end of August, having gained entry to the event by winning the Africa Region qualifying tournament in May.

Several squad members took to social media to voice their despair at the unfolding events:

"Was broken after the @ICC ruling last Thursday," wrote allrounder Granger.

"I'm gutted," wrote captain Musonda. "This is wrong and unjust. We can't be the team that almost made it. No! Do the right thing. We are bleeding to death. You are watching."

"My heart bleeds as I have watched these ladies work hard for this," wrote ZC Women's Cricket Coordinator Samu Nkiwane. "The determination, sacrifices, hard work, team spirit and achievements so far, for them not to go to the Global Qualifiers?"

"This might not mean anything to others but it means a lot to us and Women in general...This is our life..this is our game..we have invested years and years into this...why now should we be denied a chance to qualify for the WORLD CUP and emulate what the Zim Gems have done!!! Why are women not taken seriously in anything?" wrote former national player and assistant coach Sinikiwe Mpofu.

"After all the hard work we cannot suffer like this, our hearts are bleeding and nothing is being done," wrote national squad member Nomatter Mutasa.

FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. -- Atlanta Falcons coach Dan Quinn expressed support for DJ Durkin, the former Maryland coach who was placed on leave following the practice-related death of Terrapins player Jordan McNair and subsequently fired.

Durkin was one of four coaches announced as assistants for training camp. Lance Schulters, Jamel Mutunga and Tracy Zimmer were added as Bill Walsh Coaching Fellows, while Durkin was announced as a guest coach for the camp.

Of the Maryland tragedy, Quinn said, "Unfortunate situation, of course.''

When pressed on why he added Durkin considering the controversy at Maryland, Quinn stood his ground.

"I hope people would understand, and people know me well enough, that nothing is more important than team,'' Quinn said. "The fact that I know this coach firsthand, I know what his character is, and then the due diligence that goes with that, I would certainly hope that anyone covering the team or the fan base knows that I always have the team's best interest in mind and would never put anybody in a space that would be otherwise.

"That said, it's not that unusual for me to have people come to be a part of our program and add value to it for a smaller period of time. I've done it before, and I'll do it again in the future."

Quinn started off Monday's post-practice news conference by addressing the Durkin story, even before recapping the first day of training camp.

"I know DJ firsthand, about what he is as a coach,'' Quinn said. "I've coached with him. And I know what his character is. We did all of our due diligence of calling everybody at Maryland and had our own follow-up to there. So what I would know is in the past, we've had Ron Wolf come to help me with another set of eyes. Last year, Darrell Bevell coming into the same role.

"I think it's a huge advantage that you can have somebody of respect and can look at some certain things to help your team in the evaluation.''

Durkin spent five years at Florida, working two seasons (2011-12) on Quinn's defensive staff.

Quinn said he has no reservations because he is familiar with Durkin's character and understands his value as a defensive and special-teams coach.

Durkin is bringing 14 years of coaching experience to the Falcons training camp including three seasons as the head coach at Maryland. Durkin was the defensive coordinator/linebackers coach for Michigan in 2015. That season the Wolverines' defense only allowed 16.4 points per game, which was sixth in the FBS.

Odell Beckham Jr. revealed in a new GQ cover story that he felt "disrespected" by the New York Giants when they traded him to the Cleveland Browns earlier this offseason and that things got so bad at times the past few years that he had contemplated stepping away from the game.

The wide-ranging interview covered Beckham's happiness (he says he's happier now than ever), his musical taste, rumors about his being gay (he said he found it humorous, adding, "I have no problem with anyone's sexual orientation"), his hair, The Catch, the trade and the Giants.

Beckham was drafted by the Giants in the first round in 2014. He became a superstar and record-smashing receiver in New York before he was traded in March.

"My initial reaction was not disappointment. ... I felt disrespected. Like, after everything I've done for them," Beckham said in the interview. "This is me being honest: This team has not been good for the last six years. Period. Even the year we went to the playoffs and everyone was talking about this and that. And we went there, and I didn't have a great playoff game. Don't get me wrong, I had a terrible game. But I left the game with seven targets, and I'm supposed to be your number one receiver. I left the game with seven targets. We lost. They scored 40 points. It's just all bad.

"I felt disrespected, because I felt like I was a main reason at keeping that brand alive. They were getting prime-time games, still, as a 5-and-11 team. Why? Because people want to see the show. You want to see me play. That's just real rap. I'm not sitting here like, 'It's because of me.' But let's just be real. That's why we're still getting prime-time games. I felt disrespected they weren't even man enough to even sit me down to my face and tell me what's going on."

Beckham's anger was directed at general manager Dave Gettleman and coach Pat Shurmur. Gettleman famously said on multiple occasions that the Giants didn't sign Beckham to trade him. Shurmur has said that the trade wasn't personal but instead a football decision.

Neither seems to be at the top of Beckham's Christmas card list, although his relationship with co-owner John Mara seems much more amicable post-trade.

"I'll forever have respect for [Giants president and CEO] Mr. Mara. Everything he's ever done for me, he's shown nothing but love," Beckham said. "Even when we were having our talks, it was coming from a place of love. I could always feel it. So I'll forever have respect for him.

"But then to be called like that and then be texted by your coach and be like, 'Oh, yeah, I heard the news.' Yeah, you heard the news? It happened because of you. The reason I'm gone is because of you. It was just tough because of the way I initially felt. On the other side of it, I was excited about a new start because I had been ... honestly, I had been praying to God the season before this season for a change."

Beckham said there were times last season when he was pacing up and down the sideline asking, "Why did you sign me?" He signed a then-record five-year extension potentially worth $95 million before the season.

The Giants finished 5-11 and he missed the final four games of the season with a leg injury. It was the final chapter of a rocky five-year run in New York that included memorable and questionable moments, like his one-handed catch during his rookie year against the Dallas Cowboys, and celebrating by pretending to pee on the field in Philadelphia during the 2017 season.

The spotlight in the big city was on Beckham from the moment he arrived. It took on new levels with the catch and his on-field scuffle with cornerback Josh Norman.

The intense scrutiny sometimes got the best of Beckham. Football was becoming a business, not a game. That was what he was hoping to avoid, he said, but it forced him to contemplate retirement and think about how life would be different had he chosen a different sport.

"All the time, bro. Literally every day. Especially on those days I'm down," Beckham said. "I could've done any sport in the world. Not many people know, but I used to talk to my momma and I'd be like, 'Ma, if I was done doing this now, would you still be proud of me?' And this was a couple of years ago, about two or three years ago."

Beckham was setting records two or three years ago. He had the most receptions and second-most receiving yards in NFL history through 50 career games.

Still, it was a roller coaster he contemplated disembarking.

"Twenty-four years old. Just off it. To love something so much to a place where it is my everything, and to watch it be tainted, or all kinds of things be in the middle of it. Like, it hurt me to my soul," Beckham said. "It be like loving someone and putting them on such a level to where life is about them and you love that person through anything. Through the good, the bad. And to watch them do something so heinous and vulgar. Something just so, like, almost unforgivable. You still love them, but it's, like, wow."

An NFL season lasts only 16 games, but in terms of our memories, it seems to be the only football we can possibly remember. Both fans and analysts alike are subject to recency bias, in which we treat the most recent information we have as the most important information in understanding and projecting a complex game. The NFL moves quickly and has an impossibly high attrition rate. It's easy to forget what happened years ago.

In most cases, though, we can look through history to get a sense of what's likely to reoccur from season to season. What happened in 2018 will stay in the record books forever, but there will be plenty of elements and stories from 2018 that won't happen again in 2019, even if it seems as if the circumstances or the talents involved are staying the same.

Let's run through a few of those 2018 stories which might seem likely to reoccur in 2019 and detail why they're not likely to happen again:

Jump to a team:
BAL | CHI | DAL
KC | LAC | NE | SF

Don't be surprised if ... Amari Cooper's touchdowns dry up

It's hard to argue against the idea that Cooper transformed the Cowboys in 2018. After Dallas sent a first-round pick to the Raiders to acquire the former Alabama star, Cooper turned around both his own season and his new team. Dallas won seven of its final eight games with Cooper in the lineup, and the star wideout clearly made the difference in two crucial divisional victories. Cooper went off for 180 yards and two touchdowns in a 31-23 win over Washington and topped that with a 213-yard, three-score effort against the Eagles in a 29-23 overtime victory two weeks later. It's a trade the Cowboys clearly won't regret anytime soon.

Cooper racked up 53 catches on 76 targets for 725 yards and six touchdowns over nine games with the Cowboys. Those numbers were good for 105.6 fantasy points, which was seventh in the league over that stretch and ahead of stars like Michael Thomas and Mike Evans. It was a major leap on Cooper's prior nine games with the Raiders, which had produced 28 catches for 461 yards and three touchdowns. Is this the new normal for him?

At the very least, it's fair to figure his touchdown rate will decline. Cooper scored seven touchdowns in nine games with the Cowboys, which prorates to 12.5 scores over a 16-game season. In Oakland, Cooper scored only 19 times in 52 games, for a prorated figure of just under six scores per 16 contests. In an offense in which Ezekiel Elliott will gobble up red zone touches, it's difficult to see Cooper topping 12 touchdowns over a full season.

Some of Cooper's scores came on big plays which might not be repeatable. He scored a 90-yard touchdown on a play in which he was surrounded after the catch by three Washington defensive backs who inexplicably failed to make a tackle. Cooper's three-score game against a banged-up Eagles secondary included a 75-yard score in which safety Corey Graham appeared to lose the ball in the lights. Those plays still count in the record books, of course, but fans expecting multiple games approaching 200 yards with multiple touchdowns might be disappointed by Cooper in 2019.

Don't be surprised if ... the 49ers improve with (or without) Jimmy Garoppolo

A trendy pick to make the postseason this time last year after going 5-0 with Garoppolo as their starter in 2017, the 49ers started 1-1 before Garoppolo tore his ACL in the middle of a loss to the Chiefs. Kyle Shanahan's team proceeded to lose eight of its next nine games and eventually finished with the league's second-worst record at 4-12. It's unclear whether the 49ers would have made it into the playoffs in a division in which the Rams and Seahawks were both impressive, but once Garoppolo went down, the Niners had no hope.

I mentioned the injury concerns surrounding Garoppolo when I profiled the former Patriots backup last August, and last season did little to quell the biggest question for him. Garoppolo lasted two starts filling in for Tom Brady in 2016 before going down because of a serious sprain of the AC joint in his shoulder. We still haven't seen the 27-year-old make even six starts in a row without getting injured. Health is a skill, and until Garoppolo actually plays a full 16-game season, the 49ers can't count on him for 16 games at a time.

The good news is that Jimmy G will almost surely make it through more than three games this season. I also don't think the 49ers will be doomed in 2019 if they lose their starting quarterback again. For one, they have one of the league's more promising backups in Nick Mullens, who held his own after taking over for C.J. Beathard last season. These stats can't possibly tell the whole story between these two quarterbacks, but it is fair to note that Mullens basically impersonated Garoppolo's performance in the Shanahan offense when you look at their respective numbers in San Francisco:

San Francisco's issues had much more to do with the rest of the team than it did with the play of its quarterback in 2018. For one, the famed Shanahan rushing attack ranked 32nd in rushing DVOA. While Matt Breida posted a superficially impressive 5.3 yards per carry while playing on an ankle that seemed to re-sprain itself several times per game, his inconsistency meant the second-year back was just 30th in the league in success rate. The 49ers gave 177 less impressive carries to Alfred Morris and Jeff Wilson and fumbled a league-high 31 times. With a healthier Breida supplemented by Tevin Coleman and Jerick McKinnon, the 49ers should have more talented runners touching the football in 2019.

San Francisco's defense ranked 27th against the pass by DVOA, but the key number here is two. The 49ers had two interceptions in 2018, and if you find that impossible, I would urge you to look it up. Antone Exum took a Philip Rivers pass to the house in Week 4, and Jaquiski Tartt intercepted Josh Rosen four weeks later. Unsurprisingly, the 49ers set an NFL record for the fewest intercepted passes in one season. The weight of every other team in NFL history suggests that the 49ers will pick off more passes this season.

This should also be a much-improved pass rush after adding Dee Ford and second overall pick Nick Bosa on the edge to replace the likes of Cassius Marsh and Arik Armstead. The 49ers already have an interior pass-rushing star in DeForest Buckner, who had 12 sacks and 20 knockdowns a year ago, and while they haven't been overwhelmed by the production of former first-round picks Armstead and Solomon Thomas, this is suddenly a deep defensive line. There are questions about the secondary, but this should be a much-improved pass defense at multiple levels.

Is the ceiling for the 49ers higher with a full season from the quarterback they signed to a five-year, $137.5 million deal last February? Of course. It would be naive to pretend otherwise. Once Garoppolo went down last season, though, the 49ers weren't good enough in the other elements of the game to stay afloat. This year, some regression toward the mean and improvements on both sides of the ball should raise the floor of their performance.

Don't be surprised if ... the Bears' takeaway rate nosedives

When I wrote last summer about how the Bears were one of the league's most likely teams to improve, I mentioned that a key driver of their improvement was likely to be their interception rate. In 2017, they ranked 14th in defensive DVOA while posting the league's fourth-worst interception rate. Kyle Fuller & Co. racked up only eight interceptions on 529 pass attempts for a Tom Brady-esque pick rate of 1.5%.

In 2018, Chicago returned a virtually identical secondary, with the same five starters who lined up for coordinator Vic Fangio the previous season. With an improved pass rush thanks to the arrival of Khalil Mack, the Bears promptly picked off 27 passes on 615 attempts, with their 4.4% interception rate nearly tripling their prior mark. Fuller, who had six interceptions across his first three seasons as a pro, nearly topped the team's mark from the prior season with seven.

The Bears comfortably led the league in interception rate and total picks; after their 27, the only other team to top 18 picks was the Dolphins at 21. Unsurprisingly, the Bears also led the league in total takeaways with 36, five more than any other team. This offseason, Chicago lost Fangio and slot corner Bryce Callahan to the Broncos, and safety Adrian Amos to the divisional rival Packers, but with most of their core returning, the Bears might reasonably expect to be a takeaway machine on defense in 2019.

I think they will still be good on defense, of course, but it's tough to see them topping 30 takeaways for the second consecutive season. There's not a strong year-to-year relationship for interception rate, and interceptions on the whole continue to decline. No team has posted an interception rate of 4% or more in back-to-back seasons since the Packers in 2010-11. That was only eight years ago, but from 2011 to 2018, the league's interception rate fell from 2.9% to 2.4%.

Take a look at the breakout defense of 2017 for a recent example. The Jaguars led the league with an interception rate of 4.1% and returned the same secondary (minus nickelback Aaron Colvin) for another season, but managed to pick off only 2.2% of opposing passes in 2018. The Jags fell from second in takeaways to 22nd. Jacksonville still had an effective defense -- it finished sixth in defensive DVOA -- but the flood of takeaways wasn't there.

In Vegas, the Caesars sportsbook posted a prop bet for the Bears' defense in 2019 and set the over/under on their takeaway total at 26. That would still rank among the likely league leaders, even given that it would be a drop of 10 takeaways from Chicago's mark of 2018.

If we're looking for a team that might lead the league in interception rate in 2019, I would look for opportunistic defenses that ranked in the middle of the pack a year ago and point toward the Vikings (15th in interception rate), Chargers (16th), and even the aforementioned Jaguars (18th) as potential candidates.

Don't be surprised if ... Patrick Mahomes is better on deep balls

The most exciting moment in any given week of the NFL season was Mahomes looking downfield and firing. The second-year quarterback produced a stunning debut campaign as the Chiefs' starter, as the league MVP became the second member of the 5,000-50 club with 5,097 passing yards and 50 passing touchdowns in a single season.

Typically, this would be the moment where I'd point out how unlikely it is for any quarterback to produce those numbers in a single season. It's fair to say Mahomes probably won't make it back to the 5,000-50 club again in 2019, if only because a lot has to go right for any passer to make it there in a given year.

In terms of deep passes, though, Mahomes left a fair number of big-play opportunities on the table. The first half of the regular-season loss to the Patriots comes to mind as a place where Mahomes narrowly missed scores. He more than made up for the misses, of course, but it's scary to say that there might even be more chances for him to make magic happen in 2019.

The NFL's Next-Gen Stats define deep passes as throws traveling 20 or more yards in the air and open targets as receivers with three or more yards of separation between themselves and the closest defender. Mahomes attempted 28 deep passes to open receivers last season, 11 more than anybody else in football. He completed 14 of those passes for an even 50%; the rest of the league completed just over 62% of those same throws. Next-Gen Stats also estimates the likelihood of Mahomes completing each of those attempts and projected a completion percentage of 59.3% on those passes, much closer to the league average than his actual mark.

Chances are that Mahomes won't have quite as many receivers running totally free in the secondary as he did in 2018, but given how talented the brilliant Texas Tech product looked last season, I wouldn't be surprised if he was more efficient when those receivers do come free in 2019.

Don't be surprised if ... Sony Michel breaks out

The Patriots rarely commit meaningful resources to running backs, so it was a surprise when they used one of their first-round picks in 2018 to draft Michel out of Georgia. His debut season in the NFL was about what we would have expected, mixing efficient production with a knee injury and ending with a Super Bowl victory. Michel missed three games and a huge chunk of a fourth with knee issues, but he racked up 931 yards and six touchdowns during the regular season and then added 336 yards with six more scores during the postseason.

There was one thing missing from Michel's profile, though. The 24-year-old posted the league's 11th-best success rate, but he averaged only 4.5 yards per carry, which was 29th among qualifying backs. When you have a back who posts a high success rate with a modest yards per carry figure, that back typically isn't making many big plays. Indeed, on 209 carries, Michel had only four runs of 20 yards or more, and no run of longer than 40 yards.

To put that in context, I went and calculated the same rates for each of the 13 other backs who carried the ball at least 200 times last season. They ran for 20-plus yards on 3.1% of their carries and hit a home run of 40 yards or more 0.8% of the time. Given Michel's 209 carries, we would have expected him to rack up seven runs of 20 yards or more and two 40-plus runs.

Of course, it's fair to point out that a back like Alvin Kamara is way more likely to break a big run than, say, Peyton Barber. What makes Michel's season feel more of an aberration, though, is that he had no trouble creating big plays at Georgia; in particular, the home runs we didn't see from Michel last season. In his three years in a regular role from 2015 to 2017, he had 34 carries of 20 yards or more and nine of 40 yards or more. The guy who ran for a 75-yard score in the Rose Bowl against Oklahoma sure seems like someone who could break big runs at the pro level.

I think the missing big plays amount to an aberration, and we'll see Michel break more big gains this season. The biggest argument against a bounceback might be those knees, given that he has already now undergone two knee operations as a member of the Patriots before starting his second NFL season. Rookie Damien Harris could also eat into Michel's role, but the Patriots didn't use a first-round pick on Michel to use him for six or seven carries per game. The touchdown opportunities will be there for Michel, and if he stays healthy -- admittedly a big if -- we could see an even more impressive season outside of the end zone, too.

Don't be surprised if ... Lamar Jackson's running workload is reduced

If you watched Jackson at Louisville, you knew the 2016 Heisman Trophy winner was going to threaten NFL teams with his feet. When Jackson took over for an injured Joe Flacco last season and led what had been a 4-5 Ravens team on a 6-1 ride to the postseason, it was no surprise to see him stretch opposing defenses as a runner.

What was surprising, though, is just how frequently the Ravens left the ball in Jackson's hands. Including his first-half stretch as an occasional interloper, he carried the ball 147 times. That's the most for any quarterback (minimum: 50 passes) since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, and it even sells short his workload. Baltimore's first-round pick carried the ball 119 times across his seven starts, averaging 17 carries per contest.

To put that in context, the previous record-holder for the largest rushing workload in NFL history was Bobby Douglass in 1972, who averaged 10.1 carries per game as a 14-game starter. In a similar midseason role, Tim Tebow took over for the Broncos in 2011 and averaged 10.5 carries per start, but even that doesn't come close to what Jackson shouldered as a starter last season.

That's not a sustainable workload for a quarterback. Jackson wasn't even able to sustain seven complete starts under that strain a year ago, as he was replaced by Robert Griffin for stretches in Weeks 13 and 14, including the final two plays of an overtime loss to the Chiefs. Jackson has a solid frame at 212 pounds and is certainly smart enough to avoid unnecessary hits, but you're asking a lot of any player to carry the ball 17 times per week in the modern NFL. That's 272 carries over a full season, a figure only Ezekiel Elliott topped a year ago.

The Ravens promoted Greg Roman to offensive coordinator this offseason, which should have been of no surprise given his success building offenses around running quarterbacks like Colin Kaepernick and Tyrod Taylor in years past. Jackson is a more talented and accomplished runner than either of those predecessors, but neither Kaepernick nor Taylor carried the ball anywhere near as frequently as Jackson did a year ago. The peak for either player came when Taylor racked up 104 carries across 14 starts in 2015, an average of 7.4 carries per contest.

I would expect Jackson to fall back to around 10 carries per game in 2019. The Ravens will still use Jackson as a threat to hold the ball on read-option looks, and he will still scramble for big plays, but they'll hand the ball more to new starter Mark Ingram and count on Jackson to be a more effective passer in his first full season as a starter.

Don't be surprised if ... Melvin Gordon takes a step back

I wrote about the Gordon conundrum in February, before the former first-round pick announced that he was holding out in the hopes of getting a new deal from the Chargers. The Wisconsin standout is entering the fifth year of his rookie deal and coming off what was unquestionably his best season as a pro. If you're making a list of the ways to tell whether a back was an elite talent, though, Gordon would fail most of the criteria.

Last season was the first in which Gordon was an efficient back in four tries. It was the first time he topped 4.0 yards per carry as a pro, and while yards per carry can be a misleading stat, his inefficiency is further confirmed by the infrequency with which he increased his team's chances of scoring by ESPN's Expected Points model. Last season was the first in which Gordon's runs increased his team's expected points rate more than 38% of the time. League average over that time frame for running backs is 39%.

Gordon adds value as a receiver, but he racked up 182 catches for 1,577 receiving yards from 2015 to 2018, which is about what Gio Bernard (166 catches for 1,415 yards) generated with far fewer snaps. You can succeed with this profile if you stay healthy and rack up a bunch of huge runs like Saquon Barkley did a year ago, but Gordon has just one play of more than 50 yards across 1,079 career touches, and he has missed nine games over four seasons, including four in 2018.

Also disconcerting for Gordon's case as a franchise running back is that the Chargers haven't missed him when he has been absent. Over Gordon's four seasons, the Chargers are 26-29 (.472) with Gordon in the lineup, averaging 23.7 points. Without Gordon, the same Chargers have gone 4-5 (.444) while averaging 23.1 points.

To put that in context, the Chargers have also spent a huge chunk of that time without star wideout Keenan Allen, and his absence has been far more meaningful. Philip Rivers & Co. are 23-18 (.561) with Allen in the lineup and just 7-16 (.304) otherwise; they average 24.4 points with Allen in the fold and 22.3 points when the Cal product has been sidelined.

The number that comes up as proof of Gordon's excellence, invariably, is touchdowns. It's ironic given that Gordon failed to score on 217 touches as a rookie, an anomaly which immediately corrected itself the following season. Analyses looking to back Gordon's claims will throw that season out as if it doesn't count, but over his full four-year career, he has now scored 38 touchdowns.

Those touchdowns are the fifth most of any NFL player since 2015. Does Gordon have a knack for scoring more than a typical player in the same situations? I'm skeptical. When you look at how he has performed inside the 5-yard line, where backs are going to accrue the bulk of their touchdowns, he has been about average. Given the chances of any NFL back scoring from each spot inside the 5-yard line and Gordon's various opportunities from those spots, we would have expected Gordon's 41 attempts to deliver 17.5 touchdowns. Gordon has topped that mark by scoring ... 18 touchdowns, or an extra half-touchdown every four years. He has been an average back near the goal line.

The case for Gordon as a transcendent back relies upon his ability to score TDs outside of goal-to-go situations and playing the way he did on a carry-by-carry basis in 2018 while simultaneously staying healthy. It's certainly possible that the guy we saw last season shows up for a second time and plays 16 games in 2019, but history suggests that Gordon is likely to fall short.

The Washington Wizards have announced the hiring of Tommy Sheppard as the team's new general manager and the inclusion of a few new faces in a reorganized management structure.

Sashi Brown, the former executive vice president of the Cleveland Browns, will serve as chief planning and operations officer for Monumental Basketball -- a group that includes the Wizards, the WNBA's Washington Mystics and the Capital City Go-Go of the G League.

Meanwhile, former Georgetown head coach John Thompson III will be in charge of a newly formed athlete development and engagement department.

In his new role, Brown will "manage efforts relating to technology, finance, communications, security, research and player engagement," the Wizards said in a statement.

The Browns fired Brown during the 2017 season, and they went 1-27 with him in charge of personnel. His maneuvering, however, opened the door for the team to make the moves that have turned Cleveland into a buzzworthy team heading into this NFL season.

Thompson's family is considered D.C. hoops royalty, as his father, John Thompson Jr., was a Hall of Fame coach at Georgetown. The elder Thompson led the Hoyas to the 1984 national championship and two other NCAA finals appearances. The younger Thompson did not reach the same levels of success but went 278-151 and made one Final Four appearance in 13 seasons at Georgetown. Thompson III also has served as an ESPN analyst since his coaching tenure ended in 2017. His younger brother Ron has also covered the Wizards as a member of their broadcast team.

For Sheppard, his elevation to general manager of the Wizards comes after he held the job on an interim basis for the past three and a half months. His predecessor, longtime GM Ernie Grunfeld, was fired in early April. Sheppard has been with the organization for close to two decades.

Since taking over for Grunfeld, Sheppard has made several moves to infuse the organization with youth and future assets. He drafted Gonzaga forward Rui Hachimura with the ninth overall pick in last month's NBA draft and made three trades that brought in multiple second-round picks -- as well as several young players to begin an overhaul of Washington's roster.

ESPN's Tim Bontemps and Adrian Wojnarowski contributed to this report.

Washington Wizards star Bradley Beal has pulled out of playing with Team USA in the World Cup this summer, agent Mark Bartelstein told ESPN.

Beal is awaiting the birth of his second son during World Cup preparation and competition, which led to the decision. He is the fifth player to withdraw from the team in the past two weeks, joining Anthony Davis, James Harden, Eric Gordon and CJ McCollum as the guard ranks have taken a significant blow.

Bartelstein said Beal had been mulling the decision for weeks and that it was gut-wrenching because he'd been competing with USA Basketball since he was in high school.

The event runs from Sept. 1-15, but Team USA is spending a week in Australia playing exhibition games before going to Asia. The change in the World Cup schedule -- it now will be competed the year before the Olympics -- and pushing it later in the calendar and closer to the season seems to be a factor for players deciding to play.

Additionally, the NBA has increased the number of teams going overseas to start the season. Davis is scheduled to travel to China with the Los Angeles Lakers in October and Harden is scheduled to go to Japan with the Houston Rockets in the preseason as well.

With MLB's July 31 trade deadline just around the corner, the rumor mill is in high gear. But what happens when the mill stops making gossip and starts producing good old-fashioned deals? What happens when the deadline dust settles and players actually have to, ya know, change teams?

From beer coolers to beard shaving, from replacement woobies to replacement uniforms, from squatting to sewing, here's what goes down once a rumor becomes real.

The player

"I didn't want to shave," says Andrew Cashner. A couple of weeks before going from the Baltimore Orioles to the Boston Red Sox in the first major deal of this deadline season, the veteran hurler is remembering what it was like to be traded. The year was 2016, and Cashner went from the San Diego Padres to the Miami Marlins, where beards were forbidden. A native of Texas who hadn't shaved in five years, he thought long and hard about hanging it up instead of shearing it off.

"I contemplated going home. Like, not showing up. In this game, you don't really have a lot of decisions. So if it's something you don't really want to do, you don't have to do it." But the financial risk was too great. "I hadn't really made enough money at the time," says Cashner, who hit free agency for the first time following that season and signed a one-year, $10 million pact with the Texas Rangers, then inked a two-year, $16 million deal with Baltimore after that. So he caved.

"Never will I do it again. Mark my words. I'll go home."

Red Sox pitcher Andrew Cashner on having to shave his beard to comply with team policy after being traded to the Marlins in 2016

Now that his pockets are deeper, the big righty insists he'd have no problem walking away if he found himself in a must-shave situation again (i.e. with the New York Yankees).

"Never will I do it again. Mark my words. I'll go home." Fortunately for Cashner, he landed in beard-friendly Beantown.

When Ian Kinsler was traded to Boston last July 30, it was pretty last-minute, and by that time, he didn't think anything was going to happen. He had just spent an off day in Tampa, ahead of a series against the Rays.

Minutes after he got to the Vinoy in St. Petersburg, where his Los Angeles Angels were staying, Kinsler heard a knock on the door. He opened it to find his agent standing there with a Red Sox-branded cooler filled with beer.

Jay Franklin, who heads up BBI Sports Group and who represents Kinsler, just so happened to be visiting Tampa and had gone fishing with his client earlier that day. When Franklin got the call from Angels GM Billy Eppler that Kinsler was going to Boston, he managed to wrangle the cooler and filled it to the top with Coors Light. Then, chilled beverages in tow, he headed over for a toast. "It was definitely a memorable experience," Franklin says.

Though Kinsler had heard about the deal before opening the door, his agent's visit only heightened his enthusiasm. His reaction to learning he was headed from the fourth-place Halos to the first-place Sox? "Super excited," Kinsler says. "I'm going to a playoff team that has a really good chance to win the World Series. I'm thinking about the guys on the team, where they're at, how many games they're up in the standings, who they have left to play."

The next morning, Kinsler hopped the first flight to Boston and got there in time to face Jake Arrieta and the Philadelphia Phillies that night.

"It was crazy," the 37-year-old husband and father of two says. "A lot of fun on my part. Honestly, it's a lot more difficult on the family."

The family

It was supposed to be a mini-vacation.

Last summer, Brad Hand and his wife, Morgan, were having breakfast on a Wednesday morning with their two small children. The night before, Hand had pitched in the All-Star Game at Nationals Park, and now the family was holed up at a quiet resort on the outskirts of D.C., looking forward to a couple days of R&R.

Until Hand's phone started buzzing.

On the other end was Padres GM A.J. Preller, calling to inform the reliever he'd been traded to the Cleveland Indians.

Says Morgan: "That's when crunch time started."

Morgan's first call was to her mother-in-law in Minnesota. If she was going to stand any chance of packing up their lives in no time flat, she needed someone to watch the kids. She flew down to their home in West Palm Beach on Friday, dropped off her daughter Lila (then 2 years old) and son Cuyler (5 months) with their grandmother, who'd flown down to help, then hightailed it to San Diego, where she proceeded to pack up their three-bedroom rental in Coronado over the space of one short weekend. Then she flew back to Florida, grabbed the kids, and headed for Ohio.

"Now we have four Mr. Twos. Just in case." Brad Hand's wife, Morgan, on the perils of shipping their daughter Lila's beloved plush bunny

"I didn't think he was going to get traded," says Morgan, whose husband also had been the subject of deadline rumors in 2017 but ended up staying with the Padres, who signed him to a three-year contract in January 2018. "I kind of got too settled in San Diego and bought too many things."

Many of those things -- the big things, especially -- never made it to Cleveland. The Pack 'n Play. The Jumperoo. The TV.

"I didn't have time to deal with everything," says Morgan. Instead, she secured a pod and shipped the large stuff to Florida. The rest of their belongings either went in suitcases on the plane, or in their two cars, which she had shipped to Ohio. Only one problem: The vehicles took several days longer than expected to arrive. "Everything was in there," Morgan says. "That was rough."

It was roughest on Lila, who was missing her favorite pajamas. Making matters worse, the toddler's suitcase got lost on the flight from West Palm Beach to Cleveland. Inside it was a little bunny that's known in the Hand household as Mr. Two. Soft and brown with little flowers on the ears, it was everything to Lila.

Although the lovey eventually arrived, Morgan -- whose hubby has once again been prominently featured in trade buzz this season -- made sure it would never happen again: Their first night in Cleveland, when she realized the suitcase was lost, she went on Amazon and splurged on bunny inventory.

"Now we have four Mr. Twos," she says. "Just in case."

The travel director

The phone call after The Phone Call usually comes from the travel director.

"Once the trade is going to go through, we take control from a logistical standpoint," Chris Westmoreland says. Known to Tampa Bay Rays players and staffers as "Westy," he has been with the franchise since its inception in 1998. He spent a decade running the clubhouse, then in 2014 transitioned to his current gig. In that role, he's in charge of getting Tampa Bay's deadline acquisitions on a plane and with the team as quickly as possible.

Once they arrive, he's also responsible for getting a roof over their heads and cash in their pockets. Known as "seven and seven" to big leaguers, the current collective bargaining agreement stipulates that any new player who joins the active roster is entitled to seven days of meal money and seven days in a hotel. At a rate of $31.50 per day, the meal money comes out to about $220, which Westmoreland typically distributes to players in cash upon arrival. For lodging, the Rays stash guys at the upscale Vinoy if it's available. If not, they divert them to the Hilton Bayfront.

During that first week, Westmoreland makes sure to put players in touch with realtors so that by the time their seven and seven runs out, they've got a place to crash. Given the short time window, and the fact that most deadline deals involve players whose contracts aren't far from expiring, purchasing a home right off the bat is a rarity. While some choose to stay in the hotel on their own dime or go the traditional rental route, Airbnb is becoming an increasingly popular option.

Regardless of which path a player chooses, the travel director's job is to make it a smooth one.

"We want to make that transition as seamless as possible," says Westmoreland, who's on high alert with the contending Rays expected to be active in this year's deadline doings. "We want them to forget about the transition they're going through and just be comfortable."

The real estate agent

In a perfect world, two players going opposite directions in a deadline deal can simply swap places -- like Brian Dozier did last July when he went from the Minnesota Twins to the Los Angeles Dodgers and rented out the Glendale house of pal Logan Forsythe, who went from L.A. to Minnesota in the same trade. But thanks to divergent tax brackets and non-matching family components, situations like that are a rarity. That's where someone like Patti Seghi comes in.

Three decades ago, Seghi was in her 30s and raising a family in Cleveland. Whenever a new addition would join the Indians, the young mother of two -- whose father-in-law, Phil Seghi, was the team's GM at the time, and whose husband, Mike Seghi, was and still is the club's travel director -- ended up chaperoning the player's wife around town, showing the newcomer the different neighborhoods and making recommendations on where the family should live.

"It helps the ballclub to have somebody on call that knows what they're doing. I know what they're looking for, I know what's available. Short-term rentals aren't easy to come by, especially in the luxury market. But that's what I specialize in." Cleveland real estate agent Patti Seghi

One day in November 1989, Seghi found herself cornered by a duo consisting of her mother-in-law and Nancy Score (wife of Indians legend Herb Score). Their not-so-subtle suggestion/ultimatum: You should be a real estate agent. Thirty years later, Seghi is a seasoned realtor who, along with her hubby, essentially offers one-stop shopping to the Tribe's new acquisitions. It's a relationship that's mutually beneficial.

"It helps the ballclub to have somebody on call that knows what they're doing," says Seghi, who last summer helped the Hand family in landing a three-month rental on a four-bedroom Colonial in Westlake. "I know what they're looking for, I know what's available. Short-term rentals aren't easy to come by, especially in the luxury market. But that's what I specialize in."

These days, she gets an assist from folks who are in situations similar to the one she was in back in the late 1980s. When Cleveland traded for Hand last July, Amanda Kluber (Corey's wife) and Jenna Gomes (Yan's better half) reached out to Morgan to offer advice on where the Hands should settle.

Looking back, Seghi readily admits that she was a less-than-willing participant in her mother-in-law's vocation initiative. That she would have preferred to maintain her amateur status.

"I didn't want to go work," she says, "but that's what happened. I got backed into it." Not that she minds one bit now. "I'm very happy I did. Now that my children are grown and have their own lives, I have something to do."

The clubbie

Look good, play good.

If you subscribe to the old baseball adage, then there's nothing more crucial to a deadline deal than getting the new guy properly outfitted in his new threads. Although Fanatics, the apparel company that bought MLB uni-maker Majestic a couple of years ago, is technically responsible for cranking out new uniforms once a player gets traded, it takes time for fresh jerseys to get shipped from the company's production facility in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Enter the seamstress.

"We just Googled: 'Learn how to sew D.C.'" Nationals visitors clubhouse assistant Greg Melnick on how he and his brother, Andrew, became the team's seamsters

The Washington Nationals used to be like most teams in that they used a local contractor to come in and sew numbers and letters on a temporary jersey whenever a trade went down (once the official shirt arrives, the temp becomes a backup). But a couple of years ago, when Washington was looking for a new seamstress, the Melnick brothers took matters into their own hands.

"We just Googled: 'Learn how to sew D.C.,'" says Greg Melnick, who along with bro Andrew helps keep the Nationals Park clubhouses running smoothly (Greg is the visitors assistant; Andrew handles the home side). After a quick one-hour class in the capital's Adams Morgan neighborhood, the siblings were off and running.

Aided by a Brother 6000 sewing machine they ordered online and that lives in the equipment room at Nationals Park, the bearded and brawny 30-somethings are responsible for crafting new jerseys any time a player joins the home or visiting team while in D.C. If Washington finalizes a deal while on the road (like in 2017 when the Sean Doolittle trade went down while the team was in Anaheim), the host club handles production. That means that whenever a team travels, whether it's deadline time or not, they have to schlep a giant trunk filled with blank jerseys of all sizes (typically low 40s to mid 50s), not to mention all the letters, numbers, punctuation marks and accents. For the Melnicks, it's a labor of love.

"I really enjoy it," says Andrew, who estimates that he has sewn about 100 jerseys (including call-ups and special occasion one-offs) during his tenure as Washington's co-seamster. Thanks to all the reps, his production time has dropped from three hours on his first endeavor (Matt Wieters, 2017) to about an hour these days. His proudest accomplishment? The one-off he recently made for Patrick Corbin, who wore No. 45 to honor late friend Tyler Skaggs. "That was pretty special."

Corbin and the Nationals won that game, just like they've been winning most of their games lately. As a result, they've climbed right into the thick of playoff contention, meaning there's a good chance GM Mike Rizzo strikes a deal or two before the end of July.

In other words, the Melnicks might be churning out some new gear real soon.

Cornish Pirates have signed New Zealand-born centre Shae Tucker.

The 23-year-old has signed a two-year contract and has previously played Mitre 10 Cup rugby for Hawkes Bay and North Harbour in his homeland.

Tucker has also played for New Zealand Universities and North Otago in the Heartland Championship.

"He is a player who has all the attributes to succeed in professional rugby," Pirates director of rugby Chris Stirling said.

CALIFORNIA, Mo. — Tyler Blank raced to his eighth winged 360 sprint car victory of the season Sunday night at Double-X Speedway.

Blank took the lead from the start and survived several restarts and a late-race challenge from Ayrton Gennetten for the victory. Gennetten ran out of real estate while challenging for the lead on the white flag lap, allowing Taylor Walton to finish second.

Tyler Utz, Cody Baker and Riley Kreisel rounded out the top five.

John Clancy won the street stock feature and Kyle Smith topped the hobby stock main event.