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The Niners kick off week 3 with a dominant win over the Giants.
The U.S. Women's National Team says goodbye to Julie Erts on a memorable night in Cincinnati.
And Travis Kelsey gives us some clarity, kind of on the rampant Taylor Swift rumors.
From Wondering, I'm Sarah Kazelle.
And I am Matt Straup.
It's Friday, September 22nd, and this is starting 5 sports stories to start your day.
Alright, we are starting off this episode with Thursday night football where week 3
got underway with the 49ers crushing the Giants, 30 to 12 to move to 3 and 0 on the season.
Yes, Sarah.
A tough spot here for the Giants traveling across the country on a short week without
sake one, Barkley, who by the way, confirmed on Thursday that he does indeed have a high
ankle sprain and without their left tackle, Andrew Thomas.
And as you might guess, this was pretty much complete domination by the Niners at the
end of the day.
They had 441 total yards to 150 for New York, 141 rushing yards to 29 for the Giants, 26
first downs to 10 in this game.
And San Francisco had pretty close to double at the time of possession.
You get the idea.
It was ugly.
And ultimately, the Giants never led in this game.
And the centerpiece of the Niners attack, Christian McCaffrey put his team up by two touchdowns
late in the first half.
McCaffrey.
End of the end zone touchdown, 40 Niners.
McCaffrey now has scored a touchdown in 12 consecutive games, including the playoffs.
McCaffrey finished with 119 yards from scrimmage and his third straight game with a rushing
touchdown to open the season.
The Niners also got a huge game from Debo Samuel, 129 receiving yards in a touchdown with
some vintage after the catchwork from him.
San Francisco has scored exactly 30 points in each of their three games this season.
And as for the Giants, remember, they trail 28 to seven in the second half against the
Cardinals before fighting back to win in week two.
So I do remember that.
Yeah.
So this is a team that has barely avoided going on three to start the year.
And obviously the Niners defense on the road is a tough matchup.
But without Barclay right now, this offense is looking for some answers.
And they now have a lot of time to think about it for a matchup with the Seahawks on Monday
night in week four.
As for the Niners, they are the first team in the NFL to reach three wins on the season.
And in some other NFC news from Thursday, the number one overall pick, Bryce Young is
expected to miss week three due to an ankle injury, which means veteran Andy Dalton is set
to get the start for the reeling Carolina Panthers.
All right, sticking with the NFL, the Dallas Cowboys suffered a major loss to their defense
on Thursday with quarterback Trayvon Diggs now out for the year with a torn ACL.
Yeah.
Just two weeks into the season, Matt Diggs went down in practice during one-on-one drills
on Thursday and an MRI not long after confirmed an ACL tear in his left knee.
And as you said, this is a huge loss for the Cowboys who have the number one ranked defense
in the NFL in yards allowed and points per game.
They've allowed just 10 points through two games.
How about that?
And in games against the, as you previously mentioned, struggling giants and the Jets, those
were both wins for Dallas.
Diggs accrued an interception, a forced fumble and three pass breakups.
The all pro corner has pulled down 18 interceptions since coming into the league in 2020.
He is actually tied with the Chargers JC Jackson for the most picks in the league in that
time period.
Now the corner posted on social media on Thursday after the news broke saying quote, thank
you for all the prayers and I appreciate everyone for checking on me.
This is just God's plan.
I will be back and better in the meantime though.
How much will his absence impact the Cowboys season, which so far is looking pretty promising.
Yeah.
Obviously you want your stars out there, Matt, that's not rocket science, but this Cowboys
defense really seems deep enough to keep doing what they are doing without him.
Dallas's D line and pass rush still monstrous last we saw, that's the foundation of what
they do.
And the team seems to have enough faith in drawn bland their second year corner to step
in opposite Stefan Gilmore as a rookie last season bland logged a team high five interceptions.
So while it's no fun at all to lose your star corner, one of the faces of your team,
this doesn't have to derail the Cowboys during a season when they are widely seen as
a potential Super Bowl contender, yeah, nevertheless, just brutal.
If you're a Cowboys fan after such a dominant star for this defense and for this team.
And next up for Dallas and week three is a matchup against the fearsome passing attack
of the 0 and 2 Arizona Cardinals.
Oh boy.
Now we're moving over to major league baseball where the NL Central leading and surging
Milwaukee Brewers, inched that much closer to clinching a playoff birth on Thursday when
they beat the St. Louis Cardinals six to nothing.
Yes, sir, we haven't talked about the Brewers a ton this season, but they have been playing
some really impressive baseball lately.
And that was certainly the case on Thursday when they continued their trend of getting
excellent pitching this time from left-hander Wade Miley, one, two, swing in a mess.
He struck him out, change up down and away and Wade Miley with his seventh strike out
of the day, gets himself through six scoreless here this afternoon in St. Louis.
As you heard there, six scoreless innings from Miley, the seven strikeouts on the day were
just one off his season best.
And he lowered his ERA to 320 on the season as the Brewers improved their NL leading team
ERA to 374.
And according to MLB.com, they have not allowed double digit hits in 26 straight games.
Now that's kind of a random stat.
But it does give you some perspective on how well they've been pitching.
And now for a less random stat, after Thursday's win, the Brewers are 22 and nine in their
last 31 games, again, via MLB.com.
That's the best record in baseball in that span.
And at this point, they have all but clinched the NL Central.
Their division lead over the Cubs is eight games with nine games left to play.
Real close to that magic number there.
As an update from the American League playoff picture, the Blue Jays who are fighting for
a wildcard birth lost to the Yankees 5-3 on Thursday.
New York got an absolute gem from Garrett Cole and the Jays currently holding the second
wildcard birth are just a half game ahead of the Rangers and the Mariners.
Now to women's soccer, we witness the end of an era for the US women's national team
on Thursday as Julie Eerts played the final match of her career, Sarah.
Yeah, she really is or was a true cornerstone of US soccer.
She made her debut for the US women's national team all the way back in February of 2013,
10 years ago.
And on Thursday and a friendly against South Africa in Cincinnati, which the US ended
up winning 3-0.
She walked off the pitch for the final time in the 35th minute, not long after the US
went up to goals.
You can see that her teammates really were trying to feed her for a goal, but she exited
the game to a standing ovation with tears in her eyes and also a huge smile on her face.
She stopped to take off her captains arm band and handed it to Lindsay Haran and then
she blew kisses to the crowd as she trotted toward the bench a very heartfelt moment.
And as you may remember, she made her return to soccer this spring after 18 months away
due to injury and having a baby and then she announced in August that she would be retiring
so that she could spend more time with her son, Madden, who is now one.
Here is Earth's addressing that part of her life in a video from the US women's national
team prior to her final game.
I'm really excited for my next chapter and I'm grateful to find something that I love
even more, which is being a mom.
I've just kind of relied soccer.
I love you.
It's not you.
It's me.
I've changed.
It is hard to see her leave the game at this point when she clearly still has so much
left to give Matt, but she said pre match on Thursday that time with her family is irreplaceable
and you certainly cannot argue with that.
So farewell to you, Julie Earth's 123 caps for the US women's national team and three world
cup appearances, including back-to-back titles in 2015 and 2019 and everyone take a couple
days to recover because we will see another changing of the guard moment on Sunday as Megan
Rapinoe plays her farewell match for the US in another friendly against South Africa.
Okay, we are closing out this episode and the week with another extremely important
NFL story.
And that is the latest on the silly but very persistent rumors about chiefs tight and
Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift.
Yes, Sarah.
So the latest is that Kelsey appeared on the Pat McAfee show on Thursday.
Shocker.
He was asked about this whole thing and one thing that Travis Kelsey made clear is that his
brother Jason may not be a reliable source.
I mean, the guy is absolutely ridiculous.
They can't stay out of the freaking headlines.
He was on the show yesterday saying not that he wants to be, but the fact that everyone thinks
he's in rap report of my dating relationship.
He's everybody's not asking my brother in rap report for my relationship.
That's amazing.
And Sarah, answer the big question of, are they dating or aren't they?
Because this is first and foremost a gossip show.
The closest we got to Kelsey confirming anything on Thursday was this.
It's life.
I threw it out there.
I threw the ball in our court.
And you know, I told her, you know, maybe I've seen you rock the stage in Arrowhead.
You might have to come see me rock the stage in Arrowhead and see which one's a little
more lit.
So we'll see what happens in near future.
Okay.
So Sarah, I need you to put on your analyst hat here for a second.
Take a ways.
Do we actually learn anything here?
I'm not sure we did, but I want to hear your thoughts.
Yeah, I don't, I don't know if we learned anything either, except for the fact that, you
know, Travis Kelsey clearly just really hates the attention he's getting here.
Yeah.
His long national nightmare soon will end.
We hope this guy does not like the spot, but just to recap, Travis Kelsey confirms that
he has made the first move, but he has not confirmed if it's actually worked.
So basically, this whole, are they or aren't they think is going to continue dragging
on until the TV cameras catch Taylor Swift in one of the suites at Arrowhead.
I assume I for one cannot wait to do at least five to ten more updates on this very important
story right here on starting five.
Yeah, I'm certainly looking forward to the next one, Sarah.
And that is it for us this week.
Thanks for listening.
Starting five is produced by Ian Hurley, production assistants and mixing by Daniel
Gonzalez and Adrian Tapia, our host are me, Matt Straub, John Gonzalez, Tiffany Oshinsky
and the person I've been talking to here, Sarah Kazel.
Our executive producer is Anders Kelto.
The show is executive produced by Dave Easton, Marshall Louie and Jen Sargent for Wondery.
From Wondery, I am Matt Straub.
And I'm Sarah Kazel, have a great weekend.
We will talk to you next week.
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I'm Vincent Cunningham and this is Critics at Large, a New Yorker podcast for the culturally
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Each week, we're going to talk about a big idea that's showing up across the cultural
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