The inability of Netflix to deliver an acceptable and consistent experience during the Jake Paul real-world boxing fantasy camp featuring Mike Tyson has already spawned litigation.
Via multiple reports, at least two class actions have already been filed by customers seeking compensation for Netflix’s failure to deliver the promised product.
It’s relevant to the NFL for two reasons. First, if a similar problem happens with one or both of the Christmas games to be streamed by Netflix five weeks from today, Netflix and the NFL could face legal scrutiny. Especially since the NFL now has reason to know that Netflix might not be able to accomplish the task of delivering the games to viewers.
Second, it shows how easy it is for class-action lawsuits to be filed. The NFL faces the constant risk of such claims as a result of wagers gone bad due to bad calls that the NFL has failed to reasonably eradicate, or because of the failure of teams to disclose injury information.
As to the Paul-Tyson fight, separate liability could emerge for similar reasons. Anyone who bet on Paul to win by KO or TKO could craft a lawsuit based on this comment from Paul, when asked whether he took his foot off the gas during the third round: “Yeah, definitely. Definitely a bit. I wanted to give the fans a show, but I didn’t want to hurt someone that didn’t need to be hurt.”
Hell, he’s admitting it. Admitting that he didn’t go all out. Admitting that he passed on a chance to knock Tyson out.
Why would Paul do it? By not knocking out or otherwise embarrassing the 58-year-old fighter who looked every minute of his age, Paul could fight more over-the-hill boxers — and make a bunch of money for doing it. Carry them, don’t humiliate them, and keep doing it. Again. And again. And again.
Until, of course, the audience gets wise to it. But if the audience isn’t wise to it already, the audience never will be.
Ravens kicker Justin Tucker missed two field goals in the first half of last Sunday’s loss to the Steelers and he’s now missed seven kicks over the course of the entire season, which has led some to wonder if one of the league’s best all-time kickers has lost it.
The Ravens have not wavered in their support for Tucker, however, and Tucker believes that he’ll be able to get himself back on track. Tucker’s misses have gone to the left and he said on Wednesday that he was cognizant of changing his aiming point on a 54-yard field goal in the second half. That kick went in and Tucker thinks he just has to keep doing the same thing.
“The adjustment is pretty clear,” Tucker said, via Jeff Zrebiec of TheAthletic.com. “I just need to make a point to not let the ball go left.”
Tucker’s track record buys him time to show that he can adjust, but the Ravens may have to revisit the limit to their faith in him if things aren’t as clear as the kicker makes them sound.
Linebacker Roquan Smith left last Sunday’s loss to the Steelers with a hamstring injury and the team said he was not back on the field for the Ravens at Wednesday’s practice.
Head coach John Harbaugh didn’t provide much of an update on Smith’s condition when he spoke to reporters on Monday and said the team would see how things play out over the week. Smith has never missed a game since joining the Ravens midway through the 2022 season.
The Ravens play the Chargers on Monday, so the first official injury report of the week will come on Thursday.
Defensive lineman Travis Jones (ankle), cornerback Arthur Maulet (calf), and safety Sanoussi Kane (ankle) also did not practice with the Ravens on Wednesday.
Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis is a candidate to become the head coach at Florida Atlantic. Unless he isn’t.
The initial tweet from Adam Schefter of ESPN.com said this: “Following the Deion Sanders-to-Colorado model, Hall-of-Fame linebacker Ray Lewis has emerged as a candidate to become the next head coach at Florida Atlantic University, sources tell ESPN.” However, the item posted at ESPN.com paints a very different picture.
“Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis has been floated as a candidate to become the next head coach at Florida Atlantic, though sources told ESPN that any talk of hiring Lewis is premature,” the article without a byline explains. “Sources told ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Wednesday that Lewis had emerged as a candidate for his first head-coaching job. But other sources told ESPN that FAU is focused in on other candidates at this time.”
The headline to the article says it’s “unlikely” that Lewis will get an offer to coach the team.
This isn’t surprising. Someone who wants Lewis to be a candidate sold Schefter on the notion that Lewis is a candidate. So Schefter posted his tweet as part of the broader source back-scratching ritual that keeps him at the front of the line for news nuggets five minutes before they’re announced.
But then ESPN heard some from someone at Florida Atlantic who said the school is focused on other candidates, and that Lewis isn’t one of them.
The ESPN.com article cleans up the tweet, even if the tweet hasn’t been clarified or supplemented.
It’s all part of the broader dance in which plenty of journalists engage. Sometimes, you’ve got to eat a little shit now to get good shit later.
Netflix’s livestream technology sputtered on Friday night, during the latest chapter of Jake Paul’s real-life boxing fantasy camp. Is the NFL worried about Netflix’s ability to handle a massive concurrent audience, given the looming Christmas Day doubleheader?
“No, we’re not worried,” NFL executive Brian Rolapp said at SBJ’s Media Innovators conference in New York, via Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal.
Rolapp said the league believes Netflix has diagnosed the problem and will fix it.
“We’ve worked a ton with Netflix getting ready for this,” Rolapp said. “I think there’s a reason they did the fight when they did the fight.”
They were supposed to do the fight in July, which would have given Netflix even more time to fix the issues. But an injury to Mike Tyson delayed the event until last week.
As it stands, Netflix has 35 days. Five weeks until either Santa arrives with a pair of significant NFL presents — or the Grinch gets involved.
The failure of Netflix to use Nielsen to provide an accurate measurement of the audience for the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight raises a fair question as to whether Netflix will do the same thing for its pair of Christmas Day NFL games.
As it turns out, that question has already been answered. Last week. Just days before Paul-Tyson.
So, yes, the numbers for Chiefs-Steelers and Ravens-Steelers will be real. And presumably spectacular.
And here’s the next question. If Netflix will be using Nielsen for the NFL games, why didn’t Netflix use Nielsen for the fight?
The most likely answer is that the NFL required Netflix to use Nielsen. Without such a requirement, Netflix was able to rely on less objective numbers that could be potentially manipulated and inflated.
Veteran defensive back Desmond King is joining the Ravens.
The Ravens announced that they have signed King to their practice squad on Tuesday. King was released by the Texans last week and returned two punts for two yards in his lone regular season appearance with the team.
King also played in 40 games for the Texans over the previous three seasons and he was an All-Pro as a defensive back and punt returner while with the Chargers during the 2017 season. He gives the team another veteran option in the secondary and on special teams for the back stretch of the 2024 season.
Cornerback Ryan Cooper was released from the practice squad in a corresponding move.
The Netflix numbers keep getting bigger and bigger in the aftermath of the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight. They continue, for the most part, to be unverified.
The latest statement claims that an “estimated” average minute audience (AMA) for the main event “from opening to closing bell” was 108 million.
The release doesn’t explain how the number was estimated or who did the estimating. And even though the number is global and not domestic, it seems really high.
The release also interjects some third-party verification into the mix, but not for the 108 million AMA figure. Netflix claims that, according to TVision, 56 percent of all United States TV viewing between 12am and 1am EST was devoted to the Paul vs Tyson fight.
If that’s the case, there should be a hard number for the domestic audience. There isn’t.
Maybe that’ll be in the next press release touting the viewership.
As Fox’s Mike Mulvihill pointed out over the weekend, Nielsen could have produced accurate audience numbers. But Netflix didn’t ask for that.
Which raises an important question. Will the Christmas NFL games have Nielsen-calculated numbers? Or will they be whatever unverified figures Netflix types up and sends out to an email distribution list?
The Panthers were on their off week this week, so kicker Eddy Piñeiro went to Florida to visit with his father, Eddy Sr., who recently had a heart attack.
While he was away, Piñeiro became the NFL’s all-time most accurate kicker.
Ravens kicker Justin Tucker missed two field goals in Sunday’s loss to the Steelers, dropping his career accuracy to 89.348 percent (411-of-460). Piñeiro has a career mark of 89.381 percent (101-of-113).
“I would definitely rather get it hitting a kick or something, obviously not on somebody else’s downfall,” Piñeiro said, via Darin Gantt of the team website. “But at the end of the day, Justin Tucker is the greatest of all time. From the amount of kicks that he’s kicked and I’ve kicked, he’s kicked four times the amount of kicks that I’ve kicked. And to stay at that level, him being a seven-time Pro Bowler, I mean, there’s no question: He’s the greatest of all time.”
Tucker has made 61-of-92 kicks of 50 yards or longer in his career. Piñeiro has attempted only 13 such kicks, making 11.
Still, it’s Piñeiro who currently is atop the all-time record book, having discovered the news from friends alerting him to that fact after seeing it on social media.
“When I got in, the first person I saw was [punter/holder] Johnny Hekker, and I turned to Johnny and I said, ‘Do you think he knows?’” long snapper JJ Jansen said. “And Johnny looked at me with kind of a wry smile, and he said, ‘I think he knows. I think he knows.’ Eddy is like a lot of kickers: very competitive and very aware of what’s going on around the league. It’s just kind of that position, and everyone’s kind of comparing themselves, and it’s how all those guys stay motivated.
“So an opportunity to get up and into that upper echelon, whether it be number one or over 90 percent for her career, all those different things, they’re always looking for extra motivation. And so this is just another example of that.”
Justin Tucker was the best kicker in the NFL for the better part of a decade, but this year he has been one of the worst. The Ravens are not, however, thinking of replacing him.
That’s the word from Ravens coach John Harbaugh, who said today that his team is not even considering bringing in other kickers to compete for Tucker’s job, despite Tucker going 1-for-3 on field goals in Sunday’s 18-16 loss to the Steelers.
“No, no, there’s no thought to that,” Harbaugh said. “The best option right now is to get Justin back on point. Because he’s fully capable of doing it, certainly haven’t lost any confidence in Justin Tucker. You saw that on the 54-yarder we sent him out for, and he drilled it. That’s the Justin Tucker that he wants to see and we all want to see on every kick. He’s definitely our best option, and he’s going to make a lot of kicks, I really believe that, going forward. But it’s up to him. It’s up to him and the guys he works with every day to make those balls go straight. Competition right now, at this time, no, that’s not something we want for Justin. We’ve just got to compete to get better and make those kicks.”
Tucker, who will turn 35 on Thursday, is having the worst season of his career, having made just 72.7 percent of his field goals. It’s hard to believe Harbaugh hasn’t lost any confidence in Tucker, but at this point in the season the Ravens are probably stuck with Tucker simply because of the lack of better options available.
