Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson are many things -- quarterbacks, playmakers, artists and friends. But right now, one thing they are most certainly not is rivals.

Mahomes is too good to have a rival. He proved Monday night that he is playing a different game than everybody else, with the same wonderment in his eye he had as a kid shagging flies at the World Series that his father's Mets played against the Yankees two decades ago.

A fake jump pass. Precise throws against the grain. A perfectly placed long ball into the back of the end zone. A touchdown strike while taking a shot to the ribs. A six-point softball pitch to a fullback. A six-point lob to a left tackle. It all added up to pro football's Big Two being reduced to pro football's Big One.

The quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs threw for four touchdowns and 385 yards and ran for a score, while the quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens threw for one touchdown and 97 yards and ran for no scores. The Ravens lost 34-20 in a fashion that felt a bit similar to their flameout loss to the Tennessee Titans in January, convincing nobody that they represent a good bet to ultimately unseat the Chiefs as AFC champs.

The night was rightfully advertised as a historic matchup of young megastars who have done their teams and their league proud through performance and generosity of spirit. Mahomes had a Super Bowl ring and a league MVP award at age 24. Jackson became the youngest quarterback to win a league MVP award at 23. The distance between the two of them, today, is wider than that sounds. Mahomes is 3-0 against Jackson and, of course, holds a 1-0 lead in Super Bowl titles.

Monday night offered a clash of the NFL's two most exciting franchise players and their distinct styles. Unlike the quarterbacks who defined the sport's last epic rivalry -- Tom Brady and Peyton Manning -- Jackson and Mahomes don't quite play the same game. Jackson has great feet and a very good arm. Mahomes has a great arm and very good feet. When they decide to abandon the pass and take off with the ball, they deploy a different approach to the process.

One looks like he is ripping the heart out of the defense. The other looks like he is playing a practical joke on the defense.

"Mahomes makes great runs, but his runs are like free-form, off-the-cuff," said Joshua Harris, Jackson's personal coach. "Even his running style is almost playground-ish; it's almost like he's laughing while he's running. He doesn't look like he's really moving, but he's getting chunks.

"Lamar runs on a mission. He runs with bad intentions, and he's trying to score. Nobody runs like Lamar runs. I don't even think running backs run like him."

Mahomes ran mischievously for a 3-yard touchdown in the first quarter. Jackson rushed with more force for 83 yards, or 57 more than his counterpart did, but never found the end zone. Edge, and a big one, to the reigning Super Bowl MVP.

The good news for Baltimore fans? This was a hyped-up regular-season game, and Jackson has plenty of time to catch up to Mahomes to make this a true rivalry. Manning lost his first six meetings with Brady but ended up winning six of the final 11, including their last three duels in the AFC Championship Game.

The better news for NFL fans everywhere? Sometime in the not-too-distant future, people might look at the classic pocket passer the way they now look at a rotary phone, a typewriter or grainy film of a basketball player taking a two-hand set shot.

"In our minds," said Harris, "when we're talking 10 years from now, that generation will be like, 'What, the quarterback didn't run in the past? What were you idiots thinking? You just wanted him to stand there and get pummeled?'"

Pro football has finally embraced the obvious, more than a few decades too late, allowing Jackson and Mahomes to turn Monday Night Football into a showcase for arguably the two most accomplished young quarterbacks ever.

Jackson's inability to beat his friend isn't for a lack of trying. This past offseason, Jackson again worked on his game with his tutor, the 39-year-old Harris, a former college defensive end who has been a throwing coach, a serviceman in the Air Force, a lawyer, an English teacher and a college team chaplain -- a Renaissance man who has helped Baltimore's quarterback redefine the position. Harris thought Jackson didn't throw the deep ball late last year as consistently as he did earlier in the season, so they worked on tilting his shoulders for an improved trajectory and an easier ball for receivers to find in midflight. Coach and pupil also worked on aligning Jackson's feet and using his lower half to achieve maximum velocity on passes traveling outside the numbers.

Harris half-jokingly asked Jackson to ease up on his fascination with sidearm passes. "It's effective," Harris told him, "but let's not do it all the time."

Jackson's stated goal, according to Harris, is "to be Tom Brady with 4.4. speed." But if he wants to go down among the greats, Jackson knows he needs to win the Super Bowl, more than once. And as much as he says he focuses on an opposing team's defense, not its quarterback, Jackson had to be motivated by Mahomes' MVP performance in the Chiefs' Super Bowl victory over the San Francisco 49ers.

"It was a source of inspiration," Harris confirmed. "But I love the way it formed and shaped in Lamar's mind. It was, 'Let me be a part of that club. Man, that's awesome for Pat; now I want to join that same team.'

"Lamar wants to be the best, but he genuinely loves every other player. He's a fan of Mahomes, and Deshaun Watson and Kyler Murray. The rivalry is Lamar vs. Lamar, and I love that about him. He's the right guy to be one of the leaders of this revolution and new way to play the game, and probably the right way to play the game."

Archie Manning laughed the other day when told that the NFL had finally come back around to his style of quarterbacking, passing the lead-footed likes of his sons Peyton and Eli along the way. Archie ran for his life more than he actually ran for the horrid New Orleans Saints of the 1970s, but he did rush for 14 touchdowns and more than 500 yards during one season at Ole Miss, and he did run a 10.2 in the 100-yard dash. Players weren't regularly timed in the 40 back then, but when Archie was asked to do it -- by an Oakland Raiders scout before the 1971 draft -- he ran a 4.6 with a cast on his broken arm. Archie wasn't Lamar Jackson, but the man could move.

Archie said he is proud of the success of his former Manning Passing Academy counselors, Jackson and Mahomes, who were among the 40 top college quarterbacks who attend the camp every year.

"I loved watching Lamar play in college," Archie said. "This is a different thing happening at the quarterback position now, and Lamar and Patrick are leading the way. I think there will always be a place in pro football for a pocket passer, for a Brady or a Peyton, but I think what these young quarterbacks are doing now is great for the league. I just want them to get down.

"With the athleticism and size and strength of linebackers and safeties, it's more dangerous now than when I played."

On the rivalry that he lived every day with his son, Archie said that Peyton always felt he was competing against Bill Belichick more than he was competing against Brady. But Archie conceded that Peyton's AFC Championship Game victories over the New England Patriots minimized the legacy damage done by Brady's considerable advantage in Super Bowl rings (6-2) and in their 17 head-to-head meetings (11-6).

Lamar Jackson does not have to worry about climbing out of those kinds of depths -- yet. For now, Jackson cannot spend any time or energy on winning his rivalry with Patrick Mahomes.

He needs to focus on making it a rivalry first.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban picked up Delonte West at a Dallas gas station on Monday and is attempting to help the homeless former NBA player get his life back on track, Cuban confirmed to ESPN.

Sources close to West told TMZ that his family and friends have been trying to get West to go to a drug rehabilitation facility and that Cuban has offered to pay for his treatment.

Cuban is among several people involved in the NBA who in recent years have been attempting to help West, who publicly discussed his diagnosis of bipolar disorder during his NBA career. Cuban renewed those efforts after pictures circulated last week of West panhandling at an intersection in Dallas.

West, 37, averaged 9.7 points and 3.6 assists per game over eight NBA seasons while playing for four franchises. He last played for the Mavericks in 2011-12.

It seemed a contest that would never end, but after six hours and five minutes - the second longest in Roland Garros history - qualifier Lorenzo Giustino finally saw off Frenchman Corentin Moutet in their French Open epic.

"I don't feel anything in my body right now. I feel empty," Moutet said.

The longest match at Roland Garros remains the 2004 first-round encounter between Spaniard Fabrice Santoro and Frenchman Arnaud Clement, which lasted six hours and 33 minutes.

Of course, that is some way off the Wimbledon encounter between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut in 2010 - the longest tennis match ever, which took 11 hours and five minutes and was played over three days.

What was remarkable about Italian world number 157 Giustino's win was that this was his first in a Grand Slam main draw, and he had also lost his previous four matches on the main tour.

Giustino will play Argentine 12th seed Diego Schwartzman in the next round.

Novak Djokovic says he wants to avoid a repeat of the incident that led to his US Open expulsion but will not hide his emotions when he begins his French Open campaign on Tuesday.

"I will make sure I don't make the same mistake twice," the top seed, 33, said.

"I try to keep my negative reactions as less as I can. But I guess it happens."

The Serb, who will play Swede Mikael Ymer in the third match on Philippe Chatrier, won the Italian Open clay tournament a week after the incident at Flushing Meadows.

"I did not feel any kind of emotional disturbance or difficulty to actually be able to play or still express my emotions in whatever way," he said.

The 2016 champion said he had now moved on from the events in New York, where he was seeking to win his 18th major singles title.

"I really want to be my best version as a player, as a human being on the court, and win a tennis match," he said. "Because of the care that I have for that, I sometimes express my emotions in a good way or maybe less good way.

"I don't think significantly it does impact me that I'm unable now to show the fist pump or scream or something like that. It has happened in Rome already and everything is fine. I'm back to normal."

Elsewhere in the men's tournament, seventh seed Matteo Berrettini, a 2019 semi-finalist, faces Canada's Vasek Pospisil, while Greek fifth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas plays Spain's Jaume Munar.

Heather Watson will be hoping that she can progress past the second round for the first time. The British number two is up against Italy's Fiona Ferro in the second match on court 14.

Czech second seed Karolina Pliskova opens up on Philippe Chatrier with her match against Mayar Sherif - the first Egyptian to make the main draw at Roland Garros. Sherif beat American Caty McNally, who reached the US Open third round, in the qualifiers.

Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin, seeded fourth, faces Russian Ludmilla Samsonova in the second match on Suzanne Lenglen.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Kathryn Mead stood out during the 98th Broadmoor Pikes Peak Int’l Hill Climb.

Mead was the lone woman competing this year during the Race to the Clouds, but she wasn’t intimidated by the 12.42-mile course that features 156 turns. Competing in the Porsche Pikes Peak Trophy by Yokohama division, Mead finished third in class with a time of 11:36.345.

Her time not only earned her a place on the podium in her division, but it was also the fastest time of any rookie climbing the mountain this year, earning her Rookie of the Year honors.

The best part of the entire experience for Mead was crossing the finish line at the top of the mountain.

“If I had to choose one thing, it was race day and the feeling I had when I crossed the finish line. Without the hard work to get there, it would not have felt so rewarding,” Mead said.

Racing as a rookie in anything is tricky, but being a rookie at the Race to the Clouds provides an added level of difficulty. Luckily for all the newbies to the mountain, the world of hill climbing is a welcoming community with many drivers willing to offer advice to first-time racers.

Mead says the best advice she received was from Pikes Peak Hill Climb Hall of Fame driver Jeff Zwart.

“He coached me in practice and told me to always leave time on the table in each practice run so I could learn and get faster each session,” Mead said. “He also emphasized that you race the mountain, not the other competitors.”

Mead’s racing career began in 2016, however the first time she heard of Pikes Peak she was was an active runner and heard about the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon. When she began auto racing and learned about the opportunity to run the mountain on four tires instead of her own two feet, it seemed crazy and not something she would do.

When the Porsche division was created and her car fit the profile, she knew she had to go for it.

Her original plan to visit Pikes Peak in early April to check out the course and the mountain had to be scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She had practiced in a driving simulator and spent hours watching onboard videos in her hometown of Austin, Texas, but it was not until early August that she actually experienced the race course in person.

Not only did she compete, but Mead designed the wrap for her race car.

“With so many things outside my control, the one thing I could control was how this car looked,” Mead said. “I think it looks happy. Every time I get behind the wheel, I know it makes me happy.”

Mead was happy to finish, happy to capture third in her division and happy to be named Rookie of the Year on Pikes Peak.

“My goal was to get to the summit on race day. Getting a trophy for fastest rookie was the cherry on top,” Mead said. “Beyond that, it would take too long to explain. It was about more than just racing.”

SEEKONK, Mass. – Tickets for the $10,000-to-win Tri-Track Open Modified Series debut at Stafford Motor Speedway on Saturday, Oct. 24, are now on sale.

All tickets sales done prior to race day will be through the Stafford Motor Speedway website and their online ticket portal.

Grandstand tickets for this race are priced at $35 per adult, while those children ages six to 14 will enter for just $10. Any children that are 5 years old and younger are free in the grandstands. Pit passes for the event are also available and will be sold for $50.

Due to capacity limits in the state of Connecticut because of COVID-19, there is a chance tickets sell out, so fans are encouraged to act quickly.

“This is going to be race fans won’t want to miss,” Wayne Darling, managing partner of the Tri-Track Open Modified Series, said. “The entry list is already stacking up, and we can’t wait to end our season with one of the most marquee races of the entire season in the Northeast.”

Call Before You Dig, a longtime supporter and sponsor at Stafford, has agreed to sponsor the event, titled the Call Before You Dig Modified Classic 81. The race will pin some of Tri-Track’s top talent – names like Matt Hirschman, Chase Dowling and Ronnie Williams – against some Stafford regulars like Keith Rocco and Todd Owen, among others. It’s already been confirmed that southern modified star and multiple-time Bowman Gray Stadium champion Burt Myers will be competing in the event.

With $10,000 on the line to the winner and a total purse nearing $50,000, the race is expected to draw a large car count to end the season. So far, the Tri-Track Open Modified Series has run three races this year – two at Monadnock Speedway, with victories by Craig Lutz and Sam Rameau – and one at Star Speedway, where Matt Hirschman went to victory lane in the annual SBM.

LAS VEGAS — While it wasn’t the long-awaited 100th win for Wood Brothers Racing that he hoped for, Matt DiBenedetto’s runner-up finish Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was important in other ways.

His run to second was part audition, considering DiBenedetto is reportedly required to be notified this week whether his contract option will be picked up for 2021. It was also part confidence-rebuilder, after a disappointing three-week stretch knocked him out of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs in round one.

“This was big. Much needed for our team, for sure,” DiBenedetto told reporters after the race. “I’m proud of the effort and the team. This shows the strength that we’ve had. We’ve had the speed and the strength as a team, so it was tough to have a (rough) run first round in the playoffs because I knew that we had and have the speed as a team to really contend for wins. We showed it tonight and we have a lot of really strong tracks coming up. But we have a lot to race for the rest of the season, a lot of positions and points, and tonight was just an example of the frustrating luck we’ve had recently.

“It’s not all luck, but we just had a couple races that weren’t good ones for us where we missed it a little bit with no practice and such in 2020,” DiBenedetto continued. “We had rough luck at Bristol. We cut a tire down at the end when we had rebounded from three laps down. We got on a little streak of just some rough luck, but Vegas is just one example of the speed and strength that we have as a team.”

DIBenedetto snagged the lead by virtue of being on pit road when a perfectly timed debris caution waved with 32 laps left. He beat the pace car off pit road after completing his stop and stayed out when the remaining cars on the lead lap pitted for tires and fuel.

Though he took control of the race at that point, DiBenedetto couldn’t hold off a hard-charging Kurt Busch when the green flag waved with 25 laps to go. Busch dropped DiBenedetto back to second at that point, and the Grass Valley, Calif., driver had to restart on the less preferred inside lane afterward.

Though DiBenedetto did all he could to catch Busch and challenge on two more restarts in the waning laps — including one in overtime — he just couldn’t overcome the momentum Busch had in the high groove.

“We had the lead and we chose the outside and we lost control of the lead; (Kurt Busch) got a good push and it got him the lead. I thought to myself, ‘Oh man, this is tough,’ because I knew the remaining restarts he had a really big advantage on us as far as our differences in gear ratios,” DiBenedetto explained. “Kurt is a smart guy. He’s a veteran and I knew he was going to play his strengths to his advantage and do the right things on the restarts to maximize his deal.

“But yeah, that hurt us, and it made it tough for the rest of the race,” DiBenedetto added. “I know my (corporate) teammate, Ryan Blaney, tried to push me on that last one — I appreciate that — but we had a car that if it was out in clean air, we definitely could have won. I’m just proud that we had a shot at it.”

Sunday marked DiBenedetto’s second-straight runner-up finish in Sin City, following a similar effort in February. He refused to take any of the credit, however, turning the nod back in the direction of his No. 21 Ford Mustang team.

“The credit all goes to my team. It’s the fast Ford (No.) 21 car, the Wood Brothers, this team, our alliance with Team Penske, Roush Yates engines, all that stuff. I was just lucky enough to hop behind the wheel of this thing, and it goes fast. It’s not me,” DiBenedetto noted. “My job is just to always take whatever I’m sitting in and make the most of it and drive it as fast as it’ll go, and when they go as fast as it did here, we can contend for the win. It wasn’t an easy race; we had to work on it throughout the race. Greg Erwin had to make really good adjustments and we didn’t have to stick any wrenches in the window, so that makes it easy. My pit crew kept us up toward the front all night. It was all those things combined.

“It just goes to show how this is a true, total team sport and you’re nothing without all the guys around you and the equipment you’re sitting in.”

Knowing his performance is trending up again, DiBenedetto is optimistic about his future, even though he’s unsure at this point whether that will be with the Wood Brothers or back on the job hunt.

One thing is certain, however. If it were solely up to DiBenedetto, he’d stay in a heartbeat.

“I feel like the Wood Brothers are an amazing family, and you can tell they ooze confidence in me, and that’s such an amazing feeling,” he said. “It’s the same with Team Penske and our alliance with them. I can feel that everyone has confidence in me and our team and knows we’re only going to continue to get much better. So I don’t feel much (worry) on that side. I think it’s more just a lot of logistics and things that they’re really trying to work out to get everything, hopefully, set for next year … because I want to drive for this team for a long time to come.

“I love driving for the Woods. I would hope and expect to be back with them.”

LAS VEGAS — By all accounts, Denny Hamlin’s third-place run in Sunday’s South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway should have been classified as a success.

After all, Hamlin led four times for a race-high 121 laps, won the first stage and was in command for much of the second half of the race at the 1.5-mile Nevada oval.

However, circumstances worked against Hamlin during the closing laps Sunday night, leading to an outcome that the Virginia native called “disappointing,” given how strong his No. 11 FedEx Toyota Camry was.

A late-race debris caution in the middle of the final round of green-flag pit stops left Hamlin and the majority of the other playoff contenders a lap down and forced to try and rally back.

Hamlin did, taking on fresh tires during the race’s penultimate caution period and rocketing forward. He got to the top five before a final yellow sent the race into overtime, but ran out of time to catch eventual winner Kurt Busch — settling for third following a last-lap battle with Matt DiBenedetto.

“We had a dominant car today and I’m proud of the whole FedEx team for giving me such a great car. It’s by far the best car I’ve had in Las Vegas in a long time,” Hamlin said. “It was really, really good. We’re happy with it and this new tire here. We’ll run that a few more times this year. I’m really encouraged by the way we ran, but very disappointed that we didn’t get a win. It’s just been the way that the playoffs have gone.

“Whoever stays out the longest puts themselves in a great spot to win.”

Hamlin noted that the three late-race restarts Sunday night were each slightly different, but all generated plenty of chaos that was difficult to navigate, at times.

“It was tough to try to figure out where to be. When my car is on the bottom, I’d be faster than everyone, but when the train got going up top and the draft got going, you couldn’t overcome it,” Hamlin noted. “I was really happy with the push that I got. I don’t know if I would have made a different move (at the end) or not. I just drove to the bottom there and I got all the way beside the 21 (DiBenedetto), but nobody was on the bottom there to help us push … and that was all she wrote.”

Leaving Sin City and heading into the middle race of the second round of the playoffs at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, Hamlin is 58 points above the elimination line and in a somewhat-comfortable position prior to the biggest wild-card event of the postseason.

While Hamlin knows things can certainly change quickly at Talladega, he’s optimistic the points buffer he has and speed his team has shown will be enough to help carry him into the third round.

“I feel good about it. I certainly had a great day,” Hamlin said. “It’s something I’m happy about; it’s about how we ran and how fast we were. We restarted 13th there with just a few laps (to go), and then the top got shuffled and we were able to make some ground on the bottom. If either one of the cautions don’t happen, we still would have been in great shape, but it took them like seven laps to get a piece of debris off and then we had debris right in the fuel window.

“It’s just been really unfortunate circumstances for our FedEx team that have been keeping us out of victory lane, but I really am happy with the way we’re running.”