New on Sports Illustrated: Vikings Wanted to Trade Up to Draft Justin Fields But Panthers Refused

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In this weekend's Hot Clicks: The Vikings' low-ball trade offer to draft Justin Fields, professional tag and more.

“No.”

Four days after the Minnesota Vikings traded down in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft, and later selected

Kellen Mond in the third round, we found out they were targeting Justin Fields.

“As Minnesota watched Carolina and Denver pass on Fields at Nos. 8 and 9, their distant dream suddenly felt like it could become a reality,” reported ESPN’s Courtney Cronin on May 3. “With Vikings ownership in the main draft room, front-office personnel worked the phones and tried to see where they might have to move up to land Fields."

Turns out, the Vikings’ dream involved the Panthers’ No. 8 pick, which they attempted to acquire but a low-ball offer was quickly rejected:

Minnesota will be seeing a lot of Fields moving forward as the former Ohio State quarterback was drafted by the Chicago Bears at No. 11.

World Chase Tag

I stumbled across professional tag this morning. And it’s unbelievably entertaining.

World Chase Tag was founded by two brothers, Christian and Damien Devaux, in 2011, and has since grown into an international championship with media deals, including NBC Sports. It’s basically parkour on steroids:

The rules are simple: In a 12-square-meter (130 square feet) quad, one player chases and one player evades for up to 20 seconds. The winner earns a point for their team and remains in the quad as the evader. The losing player is substituted for a teammate who chases. Teams consist of five players, and the squad with the most points after 16 rounds is the winner.

Doink Points

The NFL should consider “outside-the-box” ideas to score more points, Sports Illustrated's Conor Orr argued in a recent article. And by score more points, he means new ways to score more points.

“The solution doesn’t have to be ‘doink points,’ though [for when a kicker hits the post or crossbar on a made field goal or PAT]. Maybe a team could get an extra point for a non-quarterback throwing a touchdown pass. Maybe a team could get extra points for the distance from which it scores.

“Maybe field goals could be scored in tiers, and, if the goalposts narrowed, could provide an increased number of points based on the distance from which a particular kick is booted. Maybe two-point conversions could be awarded on a make-it-take-it basis. You score two points, you get to line up and do it again. We already saw version 2.0 of the XFL offer one-, two- and three-point conversions, with teams choosing where to line up.”

Honestly, I despise the idea of doink points, distance incentives on touchdowns or three-point conversions. However, there’s no denying we’ve reached a point of entertainment greed in which leagues are pushing the boundaries on altering their game for more scoring.

Happy Anny

3-Ball Walk

Something tells me Rob Manfred will try to institute 3-ball walks and 2-strike strikeouts in the near future...

LeBron v. Jae

New Trailers

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