Sports briefs
By NewsPress Now
Browns star running back Nick Chubb to begin season on PUP list
CLEVELAND | Nick Chubb’s comeback needs more time.
As expected, Cleveland’s star running back will remain on the physically unable to perform list to start the season while he recovers from two surgeries on his left knee, keeping him out for at least the Browns’ first four games.
Chubb has made significant progress in his recovery after he suffered a grotesque, season-ending knee injury in Week 2 last year against Pittsburgh. However, the 28-year-old hasn’t been cleared to practice.
Chubb injured the same knee in college while playing at Georgia.
The Browns are confident Chubb will play at some point this season, but both he and the team have not offered a timeline. He’s been doing running and cutting drills on the field during training camp.
“I get to see him every day, so he’s working very, very hard,” coach Kevin Stefanski said Monday on a Zoom call. “The outlook for him is a day-by-day type of thing, and that’s kind of how Nick operates, how I operate.
“I’ll tell you today, I’m watching him. He’s working hard, he’ll continue to do that. He’s a huge part of everything we’re doing, he’s in every meeting.”
A four-time Pro Bowler, Chubb rushed for a career-high 1,525 yards and 12 touchdowns in 2022.
The Browns restructured Chubb’s contract during the offseason. He was entering the final year of a three-year, $36.6 million deal he signed in 2021. Chubb’s new contract will allow him to make back money through incentives.
While Chubb works his way back, Jerome Ford will be Cleveland’s primary back. Ford rushed for 813 yards and four TDs last season. He added 44 receptions for 319 yards and five touchdowns.
Cleveland is a little thin behind Ford at the moment as D’Onta Foreman and Pierre Strong Jr. have been dealing with injuries.
As they wait for Chubb to return, the Browns are getting back some key pieces ahead of the Sept. 8 opener against Dallas.
Stefanski said starting right tackle Jack Conklin, cornerback Greg Newsome II, defensive tackle Dalvin Tomlinson and safety D’Anthony Bell will all practice Tuesday after being sidelined for all of camp with injuries.
Left tackle Jedrick Wills Jr. will come off the PUP but won’t practice, Stefanski said.
Conklin’s return after suffering a season-ending knee injury in last year’s opener is significant because he’s a proven two-time Pro Bowler and the Browns have been thinned by injuries up front.
It’s possible the Browns could slide Conklin over to left tackle while Wills works his way back.
The Browns will make several other roster moves ahead of Tuesday’s 4 p.m. Eastern deadline, and the team is expecting rookie defensive tackle Mike Hall Jr. to be placed on the commissioner’s exempt list.
Hall was charged with domestic violence on Aug. 13, and the league is investigating the incident.
Alabama high school football player who died
is remembered
SELMA, Ala. | An Alabama high school football player, who died after being critically injured during a game, was remembered at a Monday memorial service as a caring and talented athlete who accomplished much in his 16 years.
Morgan Academy quarterback Caden Tellier died Saturday after being injured during the school’s Friday night game against Southern Academy in Selma. Tellier, a 16-year-old junior, suffered a brain injury, according to a statement from the Alabama Independent School Association.
Students, parents and teachers, wearing school colors of maroon and gold, gathered at a memorial and prayer service held in the gym of the small private school. Members of his family sat in the first row of the memorial service.
“There has been an outpouring of love that we have received from everyone in this room, people across the country,” Jamie Tellier, the teen’s father, told the community that gathered in the gym.
“I could tell you a lot about who my son was, who my son is,” said Tellier. “My son was an exceptional athlete. But the thing he loved the most was to talk about Jesus.”
He told the school’s football players that he would still be around because, “Caden is not going to want me to stop doing things.”
“Caden was only here for 16 years. But my son accomplished so much. He accomplished so much. He loved,” said Tellier, though tears.
The second oldest of nine cousins, Tellier would always go out of his way to play with the youngest in the group, even when his peers were around, his grandmother, whom he called Mimi, said. Before he died, Caden was teaching his 4-year-old cousin how to throw a baseball, she said.
“We could call him and say, ‘Can you come help us’ and he was there,” his grandmother, Dale Dobbs, said. He would never accept money or allowance for the work he did for the family, she added.
Outside the school, flowers, balloons with his 17 jersey number, and notes were placed in the student parking lot in remembrance of Tellier. “Miss U Buddy,” was scrawled in chalk next to a heart.
Tackle football, at the professional, school and youth league level, can cause injuries that damage the brain, leaving parents and families to balance the risks against the opportunities and benefits.
Tellier’s parents indicated in a social media post that announced their son’s death that he would save lives through organ donation. Morgan Academy Headmaster Bryan Oliver confirmed to al.com that Tellier was an organ donor.
“Everyone who knows Caden has known kindness, generosity and love, and true to his nature, he is giving of himself one more time. Lives have been touched by the way he lived and now lives will be saved through his passing,” his parents wrote in a social media post that announced his death.
The school is canceling all sports activities for the coming week, including this Friday’s scheduled football game at Wilcox Academy.
“The story is not about an injury on the field, the story is that we loved Caden, and he loved the lord,” Oliver said.
Seahawks add Jaguars’ Trevis Gipson in trade
for draft pick
SEATTLE | Seattle acquired pass rusher Trevis Gipson from Jacksonville on Monday for a late-round draft pick in 2025, a trade that gives the Seahawks an insurance policy in case Uchenna Nwosu misses games.
Nwosu, the team’s best edge rusher, was injured on the opening drive of Saturday’s preseason finale against Cleveland.
Gipson has 11 sacks in four seasons, the first three in Chicago and the most recent one in Tennessee. He signed a one-year, $1.3 million deal in free agency that included $42,500 guaranteed. He would behind Josh Hines-Allen, Travon Walker and veteran Arik Armstead on Jacksonville’s depth chart.
The Jaguars expected Gipson to be an upgrade from K’Lavon Chaisson, but Gipson was seemingly beaten out in training camp by rookie Myles Cole and second-year pro D.J. Coleman.
“When you have good players and other teams have needs, you’re obviously going to listen,” Jaguars coach Doug Pederson said. “You’re going to listen to other teams. It’s no different than during the draft process or a free agency or anything like that.
“Trevis has done an outstanding job for us. I think it’s a good situation for him. It’s a good situation for the team he’s going to and obviously the compensation for us. It’s a win-win. It gives him an opportunity to play.”
Appeal officer upholds decision to revoke Austin Dillon’s playoff berth
CONCORD, N.C. | Austin Dillon’s overly aggressive victory at Richmond Raceway won’t land him a spot in the Cup Series playoffs.
A NASCAR appeal officer on Monday upheld the sanctioning body’s decision to revoke Dillon’s automatic postseason berth that came with his controversial win at Richmond on Aug. 11. Dillon intentionally wrecked Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano coming out of the final turn to take the checkered flag for his first victory in two years.
Three days later, NASCAR announced that Dillon’s victory “crossed a line.” Officials allowed Dillon to keep the trophy and the prize money but stripped his spot in the 16-driver playoffs, saying his actions were “detrimental to stock car auto racing.”
Dillon and Richard Childress Racing were docked 25 points in both the drivers’ and owners’ standings. Dillon’s spotter, Brandon Benesch, was suspended for three races for yelling “wreck him!” over the radio as the driver battled with Hamlin down the stretch.
RCR appealed, and National Motorsports Final Appeal Officer Bill Mullis said in his ruling Monday that race data indicated “that more likely than not a rule violation did occur.”
The decision could cost RCR millions since NASCAR’s charter system pays based on final points standings.
Dillon, though, has one final chance to drive his way into the playoffs; he will need to win at Darlington Raceway on Sunday to make the field.
In NASCAR’s view, Dillon’s moves at Richmond went beyond the hard-racing ethos that’s been part of the Cup Series’ DNA since its 1948 inception. Dillon said he was trying to move Logano’s car, but hitting and turning Hamlin was more of an instant reaction.
“I’ve seen Denny and Joey make moves that have been running people up the track to win,” Dillon said. “This was the first opportunity in two years for me to be able to get a win. … I’ve seen a lot of stuff over the years in NASCAR where people move people, and it’s just part of our sport.”
It was his first win since Aug. 28, 2022, at Daytona. He had just two top-10 finishes this year. Dillon emerged from the chaos in his No. 3 Chevrolet and was roundly booed. That car number was famously driven — often aggressively — by Dale Earnhardt.
“That’s not the way we want our races to end,” said Elton Sawyer, the senior vice president of competition. “That’s not the way we want to decide a champion. That’s not the way we want to decide an event.”
NASCAR goes international for first points race of modern era
NASCAR will take its elite Cup Series international for the first points-paying race outside the United States with a June stop in Mexico City.
The Cup Series will race at storied Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, where NASCAR and track officials have a Tuesday morning news conference to announce the June 15 race, track officials told The Associated Press.
NASCAR’s second-tier Xfinity Series and NASCAR Mexico Series will be part of the weekend.
The Xfinity Series ran in Mexico City from 2005 to 2008 and current Cup Series stars Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. were winners during the four-year stretch.
But the Cup Series has never gone international in the modern era for anything besides exhibition races. The Cup Series held exhibitions in Japan between 1996 and 1998, and once in Australia in 1988.
The only two points-paying Cup races previously held internationally were in Canada. The first was at Stamford Park in Ontario, Canada, in 1952, then Canadian Exposition Center in Toronto in 1958.
Now NASCAR will take its stars — including Mexican driver Daniel Suarez — to the same circuit beloved by Formula 1 fans. The Mexico City Grand Prix was voted the best event on the F1 calendar until the fan-decided polling ended during the pandemic.
The 17-turn road course is 2.674-miles long and sits at an elevation of 7,342 feet. The track was built in 1959 and named for racing brothers Pedro and Ricardo Rodríguez. The circuit has hosted eight F1 races since a 2015 remodel.
—From AP reports
