Biggest sports turkeys of 2017

This gets bonus points for happening on the first day of 2017, as the Buffalo Bills immediately broke their New Year’s resolution: “Be a competent football team for once.” Trailing 23-2, Bills kick returner Mike Gillislee was confused by a kickoff and the long-standing rules of football. He overran a simple kick, which bounced at the 12. Gillislee tracked it to the end zone and then totally ignored the ball as the Jets pounced on it for a touchdown. Maybe he thought it was a touchback, maybe he was nursing a New Year’s hangover, or maybe two seasons playing in Buffalo finally broke him.

The Atlanta Falcons built a 28-3 lead in the Super Bowl, then through a combination of turnovers, questionable play-calling, and good old-fashioned Brady-Belichick magic, the Patriots trimmed the lead to 28-20. But then Devonta Freeman made a catch-and-run, Julio Jones made a miracle sideline catch, and the Falcons had first-and-ten at the 22 with just under five minutes left. The recipe was simple: three runs, bleed the clock and/or New England’s timeouts, and at worst, kick a field goal for a two-score lead with three-plus minutes left. Instead? A pass play went for a sack, another pass led to a holding call, and suddenly the Falcons were punting. The Pats tied the game, and the stunned Falcons had the ball for only 46 more seconds before New England won in OT. After taking the L(I), Shanahan left for the 49ers after the season, where has won one game.

Nikola Jokic was emerging, Jusuf Nurkic was pouting, and the Denver Nuggets were holding onto the No. 8 seed when they violated the Number One rule of NBA trading: Don’t trade for a Plumlee! Thinking he would provide injury insurance and a frontcourt partner for Jokic, the Nuggets dealt Nurkic for Mason Plumlee – and threw in a 2017 first-round pick. Instead, the trade ignited a playoff push for Portland, who rode the Bosnian Beast to the postseason. Meanwhile Denver got drunk and ordered a bunch of extra power forwards off eBay.

Joakim Noah was the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year in 2013-14, but went into a sharp decline afterward. His scoring average dropped to single digits the next year, and he played only 29 games in 2015-16. That didn’t stop Phil Jackson from giving him a four-year, $72 million deal. Noah responded with a truly putrid season, averaging five points per game as he struggled with a shoulder injury. Then in March, Noah was suspended for using a performance-enhancing drug, which may be the least steroids have ever enhanced a performance. Knicks fans can celebrate the 20 guaranteed Noah-free games that will result, but sadly, he’s signed for over 200 more of them.

Gonzaga and North Carolina faced off in the final of the NCAA Tournament, but the most memorable participants were the referees. The first 78 seconds of the second half saw four foul calls, and they’d called nine before the first TV timeout. Overall there were 44 fouls in 40 minutes. As if the game weren’t slow enough with all the trips to the foul line, the referees also went to replay review over and over, which still didn’t keep them from botching simple out-of-bounds calls. Thanks to all the free throws, American had an unwatchable game, and an NCAA champ who shot 4-27 on threes in a title game.

At the end of Game 5, James Harden and the Rockets had a chance to put a hobbled Kawhi Leonard and the rest of the Spurs down 3-2 as the series went to Houston. Instead, the Rockets offense got stagnant, the Spurs took it to overtime, and people kept stealing the ball from James Harden. The game ended with Manu Ginobili swatting Harden’s shot like it was a trespassing bat. Harden barely showed up in Game 6, finishing with ten points on 2-11 shooting, including zero shot attempts in the first quarter. He racked up six turnovers and six fouls, and the Rockets lost – at home! – by a whopping 39 points.

Pekka Rinne is the longest-tenured member of the Nashville Predators, and helped carry them to their first Stanley Cup Final this summer where he was stellar! But only in home games. For games played in Pittsburgh, it was a nightmare series of scoring flurries, deflected pucks, and benchings. Rinne gave up three goals in a 4:11 stretch of Game 1, ultimately yielding four goals on only 11 shots. In Game 2, he gave up three goals in 3:18 and got pulled early. In Game 5, it was three goals – two of which were deflected – in the first period, and another early exit. Rinne was amazing at home in Nashville, but with 90 seconds to go in Game 6, a goal banked off his back ensured there’d be no Music City Miracle On Ice.

Phil Jackson’s final year in New York was a master class in getting fired. He openly feuded with both of his team’s superstars all year. He took shots at Carmelo Anthony all season, trying to get him to waive his no-trade clause, and even taking shots at his friend, LeBron James. Kristaps Porzingis was so annoyed he skipped his exit interview. He also fell asleep during draft workouts, went on vacation at the trade deadline, and bizarrely, made Dennis Smith Jr. eat an octopus tentacle at a pre-draft meeting . Still, the final straw was putting Porzingis on the trading block after the season. Even the two years left on Phil’s deal couldn’t save him from getting the Charles Oakley treatment: ejected from the Garden.

In the first days of the U.S. Open, star tennis players were dropping like flies. Caroline Wozniacki and Alexander Zverev lost early, and No. 2 seed Andy Murray withdrew, but nothing was as bad as defending champ Angelique Kerber losing in her very first match. Kerber was ranked No. 1 overall after winning the 2016 Open, but 2017 saw her fail to get past the fourth round at any major, including a first-round loss at the French Open. Still, Flushing Meadows had to sting the most, going down 6-3, 6-1 to unranked Naomi Osaka.

Albert Pujols is a three-time MVP and a sure-fire Hall of Famer, but in 2017, he was terrible. He hit .242/.288/.389, and tied a career high with 93 strikeouts. He provided negative defensive value at first base, and was a key reason the Angels couldn’t make the playoffs. FiveThirtyEight him the worst player in baseball, their first accurate prediction since 2012. Oh, and there’s over $100 million left on his contract through 2021. Pujols may have submarined his team this year, but the one thing he did was make it clear that RBIs are a junky stat. Hitting behind Mickey Mantle 2.0, AKA Mike Trout, Pujols still racked up 100 of the easiest RBIs in baseball history.

The Browns lost Terrelle Pryor in free agency, so they replaced him with former Ram Kenny Britt, who got $10.5 million guaranteed. Even on this receiver-starved team, with Corey Coleman missing nine games, Britt can barely get on the field. Bayonne, New Jersey’s fourth-most famous son (behind Ed McMahon, George R.R. Martin, and Mike Lisk) has only 12 catches for 166 yards. That’s over $63,000 per yard! With Josh Gordon coming, Britt may be facing the ignominy of getting released because he’s not good enough to play for a winless team. This was the worst NFL free agent singing of the spring.

Robert Mueller’s investigation is still ongoing, but we already know who will not be having contact with Russia: the U.S. Men’s National Team. Going into the final game of qualifying, they simply needed to win or tie against Trinidad & Tobago, a twin island nation with the same population as Dallas, Texas. But first Omar Gonzalez sliced in an own goal, then T&T notched another, and when Clint Dempsey’s shot hit the post, that was it for the United States. They won't play a meaningful international game until 2019, *at which point most young talent will have switched to lacrosse.* They never pictured it quite like this, but the US soccer team has finally successfully emulated Italy.

Overall, the Cleveland Indians had a magical 2017 season. They repeated as Central Division champs, won a record 22 games in a row – then lost three closeout games in a row. This was one year after blowing three straight closeout games in the World Series. Who knew that the months of 3-1 lead jokes from Cleveland fans after the NBA Finals would end up being a harbinger of doom for their baseball team? Luckily, the Browns have avoided this fate by never ever taking a lead at all.

Rick Pitino survived a series of scandals over his 16 years at Louisville. He slept with a woman who was not his wife in a restaurant bathroom. She later went on to marry a Louisville coaching aide, then blackmailed Pitino for millions. For years, Louisville was hiring escorts to party with top recruits – that is, they hired prostitutes for high school students. But the FBI investigation over a $100K payment to at least one recruit – on behalf of Adidas, a company that was paying Pitino ninety-eight percent of the money from the Cardinals’ shoe deal – finally got him fired. Pitino’s going to need a lawyer, but unfortunately, Clarence Darrow’s not walking through that door! Johnny Cochran’s not walking through that door!

(CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this slide misstated that Sypher married Louisville's strength coach. Sypher married Tim Sypher, who was a coach's aide, not the strength coach. We regret the error and apologize for any confusion it may have caused.)

On Halloween night, Jahlil Okafor became only the first No. 3 pick in history to have his fourth-year rookie contract option declined. Once a first team All-American and a national champion at Duke, he got to the point in Philadelphia where he couldn't beat out Richaun Holmes – picked 34 selections after him – for the backup center job. It’s been a disappointing season for Okafor, but especially so since he became a vegan in the offseason. Now he can’t even take solace in a pint of ice cream after another night on the bench.

Travis Benjamin has had some memorable moments as a wide receiver, but a punt return against the Patriots ensured his place in history - with the worst punt return of all time. Benjamin started standing at the twenty, muffed it at the ten-yard-line, and then decided to just keep running backwards. He decided that the way out his hole was to keep digging, and sprinted all the way back into the end zone, where he was dropped for a safety - a rare example of the NFL's "negative forward progress" rule. 

The Dodgers traded for superstar pitcher Yu Darvish at the trade deadline, bolstering an already-strong rotation for October. And Darvish pitched well in the first two rounds, but in the World Series, the wheels came off. Maybe it was the slippery baseballs that limited breaking pitches, maybe it was the homer-riffic Minute Maid Park, but Darvish couldn’t get anyone out in some ugly World Series outings. Darvish couldn’t get out of the second inning in Game 3 or Game 7, ultimately giving up nine runs in three and third innings. By the time Clayton Kershaw came in to pitch on one day’s rest, the Series was lost. Still it wasn’t the most shameful World Series performance…  

The Astros’ first baseman, Yuli Gurriel, hit a huge home run off Darvish in Game 3, but then the international broadcast caught him making a wildly racist gesture and yelling “Chinito” at the Dodgers pitcher. Baseball responded quickly, with Commissioner Rob Manfred suspending him for five games – at the beginning of the 2018 season. Maybe the league was worried about his appeal, but the overall impression was that Gurriel was a bigot, and baseball didn’t care about their Asian-American fans.

Jerry Jones has done controversial things before. He signed Greg Hardy to a massive contract after his domestic violence trial. He helped the Raiders abandon Oakland and the Rams bail on St. Louis, and in 2014, he was sued by an exotic dancer for assault. But this year, Jerry Jones did the unthinkable: He made people defend Roger Goodell. Jones opposed Goodell’s contract extension, publicly clashed with him about anthem protesters, and his business partner (and hip-hop producer) Papa John coincidentally complained about “NFL leadership.” But it’s clear that what’s really bothering Jones is that Goodell suspended his star player, Ezekiel Elliott, for six games. Jerry Jones may not support Goodell, but with Hardy and Zeke, it appears he does support winning – over anything else.

Jeff Fisher took over as coach of the Rams in 2012, and he went 7-8-1. Then he went 7-9. Then 6-10, then, you guessed it, 7-9. Once he hit 4-9 last season, the Rams couldn’t bear to see him run off a three-game winning streak and hit 7-9 again. So they fired him on December 12th, even though he’d signed a contract extension on December 4th. Now, with almost all the same players, the Rams are a powerhouse. And on November 12th, they’d already clinched at least a 7-9 season! Even though the HBO show is long over, Jeff Fisher is still taking hard knocks in 2017.