1st Down: Jimmy Garoppolo might be headed out of San Francisco. The latest reports state that the team have given the quarterback, who has one year left on his deal, permission to seek out a trade partner so that he can find playing time in the coming season. At 30, he would be a big cap hit to teams looking to make a flier on him, so if he does land elsewhere, it is expected that he would work with them to get the per-season cost down. Trey Lance is expected at the moment to start under center for the 49ers when the new season kicks off, and there is no word as of yet on possible landing spots for Jimmy G.
2nd Down: Football might just be coming home after all. For 80 minutes on Wednesday night, it looked as if England were heading home from the European Championships as Spain held them down. Dominating the ball and holding a 1-0 advantage following a 54th minute strike from Esther Gonzalez, they seemingly had the game in hand before the hosts were buoyed back into by their home faithful. Ella Toone scored in the 84th minute to equalize and force extra time before Georgia Stanway scored a screamer six minutes into ET that proved to be the winner. The Spaniards did threaten late, but the Three Lionesses held them off and have advanced to the semis where they will await the winner of Sweden and Belgium on Friday.
3rd Down: The UFC continues to make big match after big match, booking one of their newest and up-and-comers into a potentially career-defining showdown at UFC 280 on Wednesday. The federation announced that Sean O’Malley, labeled ‘Suga,’ will take on former bantamweight champion Petr Yan in Abu Dhabi, backing up a card that already has a lightweight clash between former champ Charles Oliveira and Islam Makhachev included on it. Yan is ranked #2 in the division at present while O’Malley, coming off a no decision due to an eye poke against Pedro Munhoz at UFC 276, will look to take that ranking from him and keep up his crawl toward stardom.
4th Down: The Tour de France is nearing its conclusion, and Wednesday’s penultimate mountain stage most definitely did not disappoint. Tadej Pogacar was hoping to reduce his gap to yellow jacket-wearing Jonas Vingegaard, but he was unable to do so by more than few seconds as he narrowly overcame his rival at the line to win the next-to-last mountain stage of the arduous tour. The two went back-and-forth in the final climb, with Pogacar out-dueling the Dane on the day but still ending up 2:22 behind him. Thursday will be the final mountain stage of the Tour before a time trial on Saturday and then the procession into Paris to wrap it up on Sunday. It’s almost complete for Vingegaard, but there is still work to be done.
