The Sweep, October 8 — Stephen A. Smith Takes a Whole Day to Get It Right, the NFL Decides a Juice Box Is Not a Beer, and a Michigan Tight End Learns What a Group Chat Is

Thursday, October 8 — Stephen A. Smith needs twenty-four hours and then does it properly. On Wednesday's First Take he treated Lane Johnson's retirement, and Johnson's stated reason for it, as a cover story: you walk away, he said, "because it's a very, very, very, very bad situation," meaning the Eagles' season. On Thursday he came back with it: "I messed up." "I was wrong to Lane Johnson. I was wrong to the Philadelphia Eagles." He added the part most on-air apologies skip — "It doesn't matter what my intent was; it's how it was perceived" — and said what worried him was discouraging someone else from asking for help. Marc Zumoff and Jay Glazer had both gone at him publicly in between. Judgment: we are not going to be clever about this one. An All-Pro tackle said he was leaving football for his mental health, a very large platform implied he was lying, and that platform corrected itself in full, by name, within a day, without a publicist's passive voice. Smith has talked about his own depression on camera before, which is presumably how he knew exactly what he had done.

Thursday, October 8 — the NFL tells the Supreme Court that gambling needs serious regulators. The league filed an amicus brief in Flaherty v. KalshiEX, No. 26-299, arguing that sports event contracts are wagers, that states should regulate them, and that the CFTC has declined to adopt either a prohibited-wagers list or a minimum age of 21. It is a real argument and we have written about it separately today. Judgment: it is also the same fortnight in which this league fined Broncos guard Quinn Meinerz and receiver Jaylen Waddle $14,926 each for pantomiming a dice roll after a Week 3 two-point conversion against the Rams, classifying it as "illegal celebrations and vulgar acts." Meinerz: "We were playing Yahtzee." He is appealing. An institution can hold the line on gambling imagery in the end zone and hold a position on event-contract jurisdiction at the same time; it just has to accept that one of those two looks extremely silly next to the other, and it is not the Supreme Court brief.

Wednesday, October 7 — the NFL gives Kyle Juszczyk his $14,926 back because it turns out to have been a juice box. The 49ers fullback was fined on September 23 for a touchdown celebration the league read as chugging a beer. Juszczyk has done the same celebration for years and it is a juice box. He appealed, and on September 24 set up a media session with a jug labelled "Not Beer" at his locker and a thigh pad with a juice box printed on it as his exhibits. The league rescinded on Wednesday, conceding the misread and — per ABC7's account — acknowledging his point about the volume of Bud Light sponsorship surrounding its own broadcasts. Juszczyk's actual position: "Even if it was beer, which it wasn't, I still felt like it wasn't an infraction." Judgment: the "Not Beer" jug is the single most effective piece of appellate advocacy in football this year, and it cost about four dollars.

Wednesday, October 7 — a man in a navy jacket becomes the most discussed person in New York. Sixth inning, Yankee Stadium, Tampa Bay up 4-2. Anthony Volpe hit a Griffin Jax sinker 357 feet to left; a spectator reached over the wall and the ball came off his hands. Replay ruled interference — "the ball would not have left the playing field nor would it have been caught" — scored the runner, put Volpe on second, and the fan was walked out of the building. 4-3, and that was the final; the Rays swept. Judgment: the call took exactly one run off the board, not two, because the replay official awarded the run that would have scored on the double. One pitch earlier, a Rays challenge under the automated ball-strike system turned a walk to Austin Wells into a strikeout, removing the man who might also have scored on that double. Nobody is mad about that one. It did not have a face.

Tuesday, October 6 — a Michigan tight end discovers that a group chat is a publishing platform. Messages attributed to senior tight end Zack Marshall leaked on Monday, after Saturday's 20-14 loss to Minnesota. In them, offensive coordinator Jason Beck "had a meeting w all the tights and told us none of us are valuable to this offense," and "our offense sucks cause if you blitz us we have no answers," with Beck rather than quarterback Bryce Underwood named as the problem. Marshall confirmed they were his on Tuesday with an apology on X: "I made some inappropriate comments that I regret. The game is won and lost as a team, and I pointed fingers instead of taking accountability." He was Michigan's most improved offensive player in 2025 and has not caught a pass in 2026. Judgment: the apology is the right move and the underlying complaint is probably accurate, which is the thing that makes these so grim to watch. A player who has been told he is not valuable to the offence, and who then produces evidence that he was told that, ends up apologising for the leak rather than anyone answering the meeting.

Wednesday, October 7 — Odell Beckham Jr. signs with a practice squad. The Vikings added the 33-year-old receiver eight days after the Giants released him on September 29. He says he had other offers and chose Minnesota because Kevin O'Connell called; O'Connell coached him on the 2021 Rams, and assistant head coach Frank Smith was with him in Miami in 2024. Judgment: the practice-squad line is going to be the joke and it should not be. A player whose name still moves merchandise taking a developmental contract to play for a coach who actually wants him is a more dignified ending than most of this position group gets, and Minnesota's receiving room has been thin enough that the football reason is real.

Wednesday, October 7 — Golden State is two wins from a Finals in its second season. The Valkyries beat the Aces 83-81 to go up 2-0 in the WNBA semifinals. The fourth-seeded Dream did the same to the eighth-seeded Liberty, 101-98 in overtime, also for a 2-0 lead. The Finals start October 17. Judgment: an expansion team that began play in 2025 is two games from the championship round and the national conversation is still mostly about who is not in these series. Two 2-0 semifinal leads, one of them over the Aces, is the story; the attention will arrive in about a week and will pretend it was always there.

What we are not running, and why

The Clippers' $30 million fine. It is in several preseason roundups this week as if it broke this week. The NBA announced it on September 3: $30m, a one-year suspension for Steve Ballmer, a year for Gillian Zucker, six months for Lawrence Frank, five forfeited first-round picks and a $700,000 payment from Kawhi Leonard. Five weeks old. Seasons starting is not the same as news happening.

A number for Josh Jacobs' suspension. We now have two accounts in direct conflict — one describing him as activated from the commissioner's exempt list and facing four to six games, one describing him as still on it with no timetable — and the four-to-six figure continues to travel without a named source attached. We are not going to publish a suspension length on a domestic-violence disposition on the strength of an aggregator's adjective, and we are not going to run the disagreement as drama either. When the league rules, we will write it.

"NHL opening night, October 7." A search for it returns that framing confidently. ESPN's own scoreboard for October 7 shows three games — Washington 5, Pittsburgh 3; Winnipeg 3, Colorado 2; Edmonton 5, Anaheim 2 — and team records already at 2-0 and 3-1, because this season began earlier than any in league history. A date being early in a season is not the same as a date being the start of one.

A college football coaching-carousel item. The firings surfacing at the top of this week's searches — James Franklin at Penn State, Hugh Freeze at Auburn — are from the 2025 cycle. There is a live carousel story this autumn. These are not it, and we were not able to date a new head-coaching change inside the last 48 hours.

The result of White Sox–Guardians Game 4. Chicago led 2-1 and Game 4 was scheduled for Thursday night, after this column filed. We will have an ALCS matchup tomorrow. We are not going to have one tonight by guessing.