The most dominating individual performances of 2019

McCaffrey is the NFL's best dual-threat running back, and he proved it against the Jaguars in Week 5. He ran for 176 yards and two touchdowns on just 19 carries and caught six passes for 61 yards and another score. McCaffrey tortured Jacksonville's linebackers on the way to a 34-27 Panthers victory. How rare was his performance? No other player in the league has a game with at least 225 scrimmage yards and three touchdowns this season.

Shane Lowry isn’t a household name in the golf world. He’s gregarious, fan-friendly and has an appealing “everyman” vibe about him, but he entered The Open Championship short on accomplishments. Lowry had just one PGA Tour win to his credit and five European Tour wins. He had just three top 10s in major championships. None of that mattered at Royal Portrush, as Lowry dusted the field, shooting 67-67-63-72 to cruise to a six-shot victory over Tommy Fleetwood. Lowry’s third-round 63 was a new course record.

The Giants aren't good, and their offensive line is a mess, but what linebacker Shaq Barrett did to them in Week 3 was still jaw-dropping. Barrett posted four sacks, three tackles for loss and two forced fumbles. Alas, his phenomenal individual effort went for naught, as the Giants managed to eke out a 32-31 victory in Daniel Jones' first career start. 

Verlander took home his second Cy Young this year, and the top effort of his 21-6 season was a no-hitter against Toronto on Sept. 1. Verlander whiffed 14 Blue Jays hitters while walking only one, and facing just one hitter over the minimum. It was Verlander's third career no-hitter, placing him behind only Sandy Koufax and Nolan Ryan on the all-time list. Verlander's game score of 100 was the highest by a major league pitcher this year.

The questions dogged Jackson and the Ravens all offseason: Would their totally revamped offense work? The opponent in Week 1 might have been the lowly Dolphins, but Jackson and the Ravens showed right away that they were going to be a major problem for opposing defenses. Jackson turned in a sublime performance, doing all of his damage with his arm. He completed 17-of-20 passes for 324 yards and five touchdowns, posting a perfect passer rating as the Ravens rolled, 59-10.

Many all-time greats have suited up for the Lakers, but only five before Anthony Davis had managed to post a 40-point, 20-rebound game. Not only did Davis join that exclusive club against the Grizzlies on Oct. 29, he did so in just 30 minutes, sitting out the entire fourth quarter of a 120-91 rout. Davis became the first player in league history to accomplish the feat in less than 32 minutes, breaking Elgin Baylor's record of 33. Davis also went 26-of-27 from the foul line, falling two free throws short of tying the single-game record held by Wilt Chamberlain.

It has been a tough year for the Giants offensive line. First, it got scorched for four sacks by Shaq Barrett in Week 3. Then Chandler Jones came to town in Week 7 and repeated the feat, adding in three tackles for loss and a forced fumble to his tally. Somewhat surprisingly, it was only Jones' second career game with at least three sacks. To compound Big Blue's misery, Jones' Cardinals won the game, 27-21.

In one of the biggest college football games in years, LSU's Burrow seized control of the Heisman Trophy race and outplayed Tua Tagovailoa in Alabama. Burrow was nearly flawless against the Crimson Tide, completing 31-of-39 passes for 393 yards and three touchdowns, and he also ran the ball 14 times for 64 yards. LSU needed every bit of his brilliance to hold off Alabama, as its 46-41 win sent shock waves through the top of the college football world.

Young made his case as the best overall player in college football by completely annihilating any semblance of an offensive game plan that the Badgers brought with them to Columbus. The defensive end spent all day in Wisconsin's backfield, racking up four sacks, a total of five tackles for loss and two forced fumbles. He was the main reason why a showdown between Big Ten title hopefuls turned into a 38-7 Buckeyes rout and a statement to the rest of the country.

In case you forgot, LeBron James is still the greatest basketball player on the planet. James proved that in a three-game stretch, all of them on the road, when he posted back-to-back-to-back triple-doubles against the Mavericks, Spurs and Bulls, respectively. Over the three games, James averaged 30 points, 13.3 assists and 11 rebounds. Not bad for a guy barely a month shy of 35 years old. Oh, and the Lakers won all three games.

Technically it was just an exhibition game, but top-ranked Oregon and Ionescu, the odds-on favorite for national Player of the Year, pulled off a major shocker, beating the U.S. Women's National Team. Ionescu scored 30 points, 20 of them in the third quarter, to pace the Ducks. To put this in perspective, imagine Zion Williamson — while still in college — smashing a team filled with the likes of LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Kawhi Leonard and others. So yes, dominant probably isn't a strong enough word for what Ionescu did.

Red Sox-Yankees games always bring out the best in both sides. No one was better in a single game this year than Mookie Betts, who smacked three home runs in his first three at-bats against New York on July 26. Betts added in a double and knocked in five runs, as the Red Sox won, 10-5. Betts' 14 total bases were tied for the single game high in the majors in 2019, and coincidentally enough, the other player to reach 14 did so two days earlier. And he was...

...St. Louis' Paul DeJong, who put up the exact same line as Betts, but for one thing: DeJong was also hit by a pitch, making his line a perfect 4-for-4 at the plate. DeJong's outburst also made history, as he was the first everyday shortstop in Cardinals history to hit three home runs in one game. Considering the team goes back 125 years, that's no small feat. 

Crazy stat lines are becoming more and more the norm in the NBA, and the Greek Freak got into the act on March 17 against the rival 76ers, when he shredded them for a career-high 52 points to go along with 16 rebounds and seven assists. Antetokounmpo did much of his damage from the line, going 19-of-21 from the charity stripe and needing just 26 field goal attempts to reach his milestone. Alas, Philadelphia won the game, 130-125.

Big games always seem to mean more in Madison Square Garden, and James Harden, love him or hate him, tied Kobe Bryant for the biggest one by a visiting player in the current building. Harden dropped 61 on the Knicks in a 114-110 Rockets win. He went 22-of-25 from the foul line, and while he was not exactly efficient, shooting 17-of-38 overall, and 5-of-20 from three-point range, 61 points is 61 points. Incredibly enough, it was the third time in five games that the Rockets star went over 50 points, to go with 57- and 58-point outbursts days prior.

Tagovailoa's season is over due to a hip injury, but he put up some eye-popping stats while healthy. His best performance of the season came against Ole Miss when he shredded the Rebels defense for six passing touchdowns and 418 yards and also ran for a touchdown. The outburst marked the end of a three-game run that saw Tagovailoa throw for 16 touchdowns and no interceptions, all the while completing 76.3 percent of his passes. 

Sometimes a dominant performance isn't about eye-popping numbers. Ross certainly posted impressive stats in the College Football Playoff championship game against Alabama, but it was the quality of the freshman's six catches for 153 yards and a touchdown that stood out. Virtually every catch was of the contested, spectacular variety, and given Alabama's overall talent level, a performance that made some of the best players in college look helpless is the definition of dominance.

Hurts lost the starting job at Alabama but landed on his feet, becoming the latest quarterback to thrive in Lincoln Riley's system. He wasted no time in announcing himself as just as dangerous as Kyler Murray and Baker Mayfield. Hurts completely outclassed Houston, throwing for 332 yards and three touchdowns while completing 87 percent of his passes. Those numbers were spectacular enough, but what really made his performance special was the damage he did with his feet. Hurts ran for 176 yards and three more touchdowns, and Oklahoma cruised, 49-31.

Justin Verlander may have thrown the no-hitter and won the Cy Young, but Cole was arguably baseball's most purely dominant starter for the majority of the year. He struck out 326 hitters, becoming just the fifth pitcher since integration to punch out at least 325. Cole's masterpiece came in a 21-1 blowout of the Seattle Mariners on Sept. 8. Cole whiffed 15 batters in just eight innings, allowing one hit — a home run — and facing just one batter over the minimum during his time in the game. 

Chris Sale deserved much, much better. The Red Sox ace recorded 21 outs in the Boston's 5-4 loss to Colorado, 17 of them coming via strikeout, and turned over a 3-2 lead to the bullpen, which promptly blew it before eventually losing the game in 11 innings. Sale set a record for most strikeouts by a pitcher who went no more than seven innings and became the first left-handed pitcher to strike out 17 since Johan Santana did it in 2007.

This one might not have happened at Madison Square Garden, but it was unquestionably the more aesthetically pleasing of Harden's 61-point games. He brought Houston back from a late deficit against the Spurs and also shot better than he did in January against the Knicks, going 19-of-34 from the field, 9-of-13 from three-point range and 14-of-17 from the foul line. Harden scored 27 points in the first quarter, second-most in franchise history behind Vernon Maxwell's 30, and his 61 points were the most ever scored against a Gregg Popovich-coached team.

Chappell's second round at A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier started innocuously enough, when he parred his first hole of the day, the 10th. He proceeded to rip off nine straight birdies on his way to shooting 59, the 11th sub-60 round in PGA Tour history. Chappell had a chance to make even more history by becoming just the second player to fire a 58 on the PGA Tour, but his 11-foot birdie putt on the final hole came up short. 

Only one running back has topped 200 yards on the ground so far in 2019, and it was Jacksonville's Fournette, who rumbled for 225 yards on 29 carries against Denver on Sept. 29. The Jaguars won the game, 26-24, and Fournette became just the seventh running back this century, and 11th since the merger, to run for at least 200 yards and not score a touchdown. You'd hope he at least got a game ball for his troubles. 

The two-hour barrier has been a topic of discussion for marathon fans for years now. Kipchoge, the best marathoner in the world, finally broke it, running 1:59:40 in Vienna, Austria. Critics pointed out that the entire purpose of the event was to help Kipchoge break the two-hour mark, as he had a team present to help him deflect wind and keep his pace and cars to provide him with fluids and fuel. But allow me to counter that: Kipchoge had to run just under a 4:35 pace for 26.2 miles. Go to your local gym, set the treadmill to about a 12 (that's a five-minute mile) and tell me how long you last. I'd say what he did was dominant.

The Atlanta Falcons were reeling at 1-3 when they met the Houston Texans on Oct. 6. Their strategy was to take away DeAndre Hopkins and force a different Houston skill player to beat them. Bad idea. Fuller utterly obliterated Atlanta's secondary, catching 14 passes for 217 yards and three touchdowns. It was very much the definition of a career game for Fuller, as each of those numbers was a single-game personal best.