OTAs started this week, and many eyes are on the New Orleans Saints’ quarterback room. Most of the focus is on the battle for QB 1 between Spencer Rattler, Tyler Shough, and Jake Haener, but there is also another battle for the third QB spot on the roster. The Saints recently signed UDFA Hunter Dekkers to a contract, while also creating a roster spot for him. Looking a bit more into this, the Saints clearly like Dekkers and believe he can make this roster, which is not great news for one of the quarterbacks. Jake Haener is the third man in the starting competition, but he is the odd man out, and it’s doubtful he will even become the Saints’ backup. This moves him down to the third spot, but with Dekkers signed to the roster, these two quarterbacks will be competing against each other throughout the rest of the offseason. The only issue is that today, it was announced that Jake Haener is set to miss the rest of OTAs with an oblique injury, per Adam Schefter.

An injury like this could make a massive difference in the quarterback battle. Being available is vital to a position battle due to how little amount of time these players need to show their worth to the team, especially when a coaching staff is completely new. If Dennis Allen and the previous regime was still with the team, a short-term injury for Haener may have not made a massive impact. With Kellen Moore as coach, he has no ties to Haener and already really likes the quarterback currently battling for the third roster spot. There is still time to change minds, but for Haener, this process is going to be an uphill battle.

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Eagles reach multi-year contract extension with Nick Sirianni – Dave Zangaro, NBC Sports Philadelphia

Nick Sirianni will be in Philadelphia for years to come.

The Eagles and Super Bowl-winning head coach Nick Sirianni have agreed on a multi-year contract extension, the team announced on Monday afternoon.

Sirianni, 43, was set to enter the final year of his initial five-year contract in 2025 but is now locked up beyond this upcoming season.

“As an organization, we have always strived to create a championship culture of sustained success,” Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said in a statement. “Nothing is more important to fostering such an environment than having tremendous leadership.

“Nick has embodied everything we were looking for in a head coach since we hired him four years ago. His authentic style of leadership, football intelligence, passion for the game, and growth mindset have helped to bring out the best in our team. I am excited for what the future holds for the Philadelphia Eagles.”

In his four years as Eagles head coach, Sirianni has a 48-20 regular season record and has gotten the Eagles into the playoffs four times with two Super Bowl appearances and one Super Bowl victory. Sirianni has a postseason record of 6-3, including a 40-22 win over the Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX in February.

While Sirianni was set to enter the final season of his contract in 2025, there was no doubt the Eagles were going to give him an extension at some point this offseason. Lurie basically said as much at the NFL’s annual meetings in early April and before the Super Bowl in New Orleans.

“Nick’s going to be our coach and we don’t talk publicly (about contracts), never have,” Lurie said earlier this offseason. “I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough that Nick will be our coach going forward and he’s done an outstanding job.”

What if Washington Commanders’ $18 million star is past his prime? – David Harrison, Commanders on SI

A Commanders trade from last season is a big question mark this year.

Instead of signing big names in free agency, the Commanders’ GM opted to go out and spend some capital to get some, bringing in receiver Deebo Samuel and offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil in the process.

While there are mixed opinions about what Washington is getting with those two, there’s another trade acquisition who might present the team with its biggest roster decision of 2025, at least according to Sports Illustrated’s John Pluym, who asks: What happens if Marshon Lattimore struggles?

“Lattimore is a four-time Pro Bowler, but he’s struggled to stay healthy and it’s fair to wonder if his best days are behind him,” says Pluym. “Washington gave up a slew of draft picks for him at the trade deadline last year, including third-, fourth- and sixth-round selections. Lattimore has played only 26 games over the past three seasons, and should the Commanders release him, they’d save $34.5 million over the next two years with $2 million in dead money.”

Malik Nabers crashes NFL’s under-25 elite after meteoric rise – Matt Sidney, GMenHQ.com

It turns out New York hit the nail on the head with last year’s first-round pick.

Malik Nabers’ rookie campaign was nothing short of sensational. Even during a miserable 3-14 season that felt like rock bottom for the New York Giants, Nabers gave fans a reason to tune in. While the rest of the offense was barely holding on, Nabers looked more like a tenured vet than some rookie. He proved he belonged and showed he could elevate an entire offense by himself.

Despite catching passes from a quarterback carousel that included Daniel Jones, Tommy DeVito, Drew Lock, and Tim Boyle, Nabers still shattered the Giants’ single-season receptions record. His exceptional playmaking ability, route running, and dynamic run-after-catch ability saw him become one of the most electric receivers in the league.

Malik Nabers’ rookie campaign was nothing short of sensational. Even during a miserable 3-14 season that felt like rock bottom for the New York Giants, Nabers gave fans a reason to tune in. While the rest of the offense was barely holding on, Nabers looked more like a tenured vet than some rookie. He proved he belonged and showed he could elevate an entire offense by himself.

Despite catching passes from a quarterback carousel that included Daniel Jones, Tommy DeVito, Drew Lock, and Tim Boyle, Nabers still shattered the Giants’ single-season receptions record. His exceptional playmaking ability, route running, and dynamic run-after-catch ability saw him become one of the most electric receivers in the league.

And that’s exactly why general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll are building the offense around him—signing veterans like Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston and drafting Jaxson Dart to find a long-term solution under center.

If the G-Men were looking for a reason to believe they could turn things around, Nabers is doing an awfully good job at convincing them.

Giants have a true superstar in Malik Nabers

Jonathon Macri of Pro Football Focus clearly sees what Giants fans have been screaming from the rooftops. In his latest ranking of the top 25 players under 25 heading into the 2025 season, Macri slotted Malik Nabers at No. 15 overall.

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When Hurricane Helene plowed over the Southeast last September, it caused more inland deaths than any hurricane in recorded history. The highest per capita death toll occurred in Yancey County, a rural expanse in the rugged Black Mountains of North Carolina devastated by flash flooding and landslides.

On Monday, we published a story recounting what happened in Yancey. Our intent was to show, through those horrific events, how highly accurate weather warnings did not reach many of those most in harm’s way — and that inland communities are not nearly as prepared for catastrophic storms as coastal ones. No one in Yancey received evacuation orders — and many, including those living in high-risk areas and caring for young children and frail older people, didn’t flee because they didn’t see clearer signs of urgency from the county.

Much has been written about Helene, but very little focused on evacuation orders. During four months of reporting, we found that the responses of local officials across western North Carolina’s mountain counties differed a great deal. We also found that the state lags behind others in terms of what it requires of its county-level emergency managers and that legislators paused for almost a decade an effort to map landslide hazards in the counties that were hardest hit by Helene.

Here are five key discoveries from our reporting:

1. Some counties in harm’s way issued evacuation orders. Others did not.

To determine which cities and counties communicated evacuation orders, we reviewed more than 500 social media posts and other types of messaging that more than three dozen North Carolina jurisdictions shared with their residents in the lead-up to the storm. We compared that with a letter Gov. Roy Cooper sent to then-President Joe Biden seeking expedited disaster relief.

We found that by nightfall on Sept. 26, the day before Helene hit, three counties near Yancey issued mandatory evacuations, targeted toward people living close to specific dams and rivers, and at least five counties issued voluntary evacuation orders.

McDowell County, just southeast of Yancey, took particularly robust actions to warn residents about the storm, including issuing both mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders in enough time for people to leave. Henderson County, southwest of Yancey, targeted a voluntary evacuation order at residents living in floodplains that have a 1 in 500 chance of flooding annually, and its directions were clear: “The time is now for residents to self-evacuate.”

Yancey and at least four other nearby counties also did not issue evacuation orders. Yancey’s emergency manager, Jeff Howell, told us he doubted the county commissioners would support issuing orders or that local residents would heed them given the area’s culture of self-reliance and disdain for government mandates, especially regarding property rights. But some Yancey residents said they would have left or at least prepared better.

Although local officials received repeated warnings — including one that said the storm would be among the worst weather events “in the modern era” — some argued that they couldn’t have done more to prepare because the storm’s ferocity was so unprecedented.

We found that inland mountain communities too often lack the infrastructure or planning to use evacuations to get residents out of harm’s way in advance of a destructive storm like Helene. Some officials in Yancey, for instance, said that they weren’t sure where they would have directed people to go in the face of such an unprecedented onslaught of rain and wind.

In recent years, far more people died in the continental U.S. from hurricanes’ freshwater flooding than from their coastal storm surges — a dramatic reversal from a decade earlier. That’s largely due to improved evacuations along the coasts.

Several Eastern states — including Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia — have adopted plans called Know Your Zone to execute targeted evacuations when storms approach. But these plans don’t often extend very far inland, even though warming ocean temperatures create stronger storms. Powerful storms that are not hurricanes can also turn deadly. In February, storms killed at least 24 people in Kentucky. More have died since in other storms.

2. Disaster messaging varied considerably by county.

To understand how local officials communicated disaster warnings to their residents, we compiled a timeline of alerts and warnings sent out by the National Weather Service and then scoured contemporaneous social media posts that more than three dozen jurisdictions were sharing with their residents. We found big disparities.

For instance, in addition to issuing evacuation orders, McDowell County put out flyers in English and Spanish that warned of life-threatening flash floods and urged all people in vulnerable areas to “evacuate as soon as possible.” Many did.

And about 36 hours before Helene hit, Haywood County’s sheriff warned in a brief video message that a “catastrophic, life-threatening event is about to befall” the county, which has one of the larger populations in western North Carolina. The emergency services director, standing beside him, emphasized: “This message is urgent.” The sheriff then asked residents, starting that night, to “make plans or preparations to leave low-lying areas or areas that are threatened by flooding.” He ended with: “Please, seek safety — and do so now.”

Almost an entire day later, with Helene closing in, officials in rural Yancey were among those who used less-direct wording. In Facebook posts, they asked residents to “please prepare to move to higher ground as soon as you are able” and advised “now is the time to make plans” to go elsewhere as the final hours to leave before nightfall wound down. In one post, they softened the message, adding, “This information is not to frighten anyone.”

ProPublica interviewed dozens of survivors in Yancey, including many who told us that in retrospect they were looking for clearer directives from their leaders.

3. Unlike several nearby states, North Carolina does not require training for local emergency managers.

At the heart of evacuations are emergency managers, the often little-known public officials tasked with preparing their areas for potential disasters. Yet, education and training requirements for these posts vary considerably by state and community.

Yancey’s emergency manager had taken the job seven years before Helene hit after a long and robust Army career. He had no emergency management experience, however. In the years before Helene, he had been asking the county for more help — but by the time the storm arrived, it was still only him and a part-time employee.

Florida recently enacted a law mandating minimum training, experience and education for its counties’ emergency managers starting in 2026. Georgia requires its emergency managers to get the state’s emergency management certification within six months. But North Carolina doesn’t require any specific training for its local emergency managers.

4. North Carolina began examining landslide risks by county, but powerful interests stood in the way.

More than 20 years ago, North Carolina legislators passed a law requiring that landslide hazards be mapped across 19 mountain counties. They did so after two hurricanes drenched the mountains, dumping more than 27 inches of rain that caused at least 85 landslides and multiple deaths.

But a few years later, after only four of those counties were mapped, a majority of largely Republican lawmakers gave in to real estate agents and developers who said the work could harm property values and curb growth. They halted the program, cutting the funding and laying off the six geologists at work on it.

Almost a decade later, in 2018, lawmakers jump-started the program after still more landslide deaths. But it takes at least a year to map one county, so by the time Helene hit, Yancey and four others in the storm’s path of destruction weren’t yet mapped.

Without this detailed hazard mapping, emergency managers and residents in those areas lacked the detailed assessment of risk to specific areas to make plans before landslides clawed down the mountains, killing far more people. The U.S. Geological Survey has so far identified 2,015 Helene-induced landslides across western North Carolina.

The geologists back at work on the project are almost done mapping McDowell County. They would have finished it last year, but Helene derailed their work for a time.

5. We could find no comprehensive effort (yet) to examine lessons learned from Helene to determine how counties can prevent deaths from future inland storms.

Helene left many lessons to be learned among inland communities in the paths of increasingly virulent storms. But as North Carolina figures out how to direct millions of dollars in rebuilding aid, there has so far been no state inquiry into the preparedness of local areas — or what could better equip them for the next unprecedented storm.

Yancey County’s board chair said that he expects the county will do so later, but for now its officials are focused on rebuilding efforts.

A review commissioned by North Carolina Emergency Management examined its own actions and how its staff interacted with local officials. It found the agency severely understaffed. But it didn’t examine such preparedness issues as planning for evacuations or the training requirements for local emergency managers.

The post Prescient Warnings About Helene Didn’t Reach People in Harm’s Way. Here Are 5 Lessons for the Next Hurricane. appeared first on HostingPurple.com.

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Takopi’s Original Sin Premiere Date Announced

An update has arrived for the Takopi’s Original Sin anime, lining the adaption up for a June 28 premiere. The six-episode series will be available on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, ABEMA and other streaming platforms.

Along with that news comes a new trailer and art, as well as information about the theme songs. ano performs opening song “Happy Lucky Chappy,” while Tele performs ending song “Glass no Sen.”

Visual:

Shinya Iino (Dr. STONE) writes series composition and directs Takopi’s Original Sin, with Keita Nagahara on character designs for the ENISHIYA production.

In English, the original manga by Taizan5 is available from Viz and on Manga Plus. Here’s the official description:

Cute little alien Takopi lands on Earth. What is his mission? To be taken to our leader? No. To spread happiness throughout the universe!

The first person Takopi meets is depressed fourth grader Shizuka. (Or is it…?) Takopi is determined to do whatever it takes to make Shizuka smile again. But his misguided attempts to help her by using his advanced technology to turn back time only result in mayhem and death.

What is the truth Takopi can’t remember? And what must the pink alien octopus with a heart of gold sacrifice to truly help Shizuka and her friends…?

Source: Crunchyroll News

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News

Crushing it

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Update [Sat 17th May 2025, 4am]: Nintendo’s new San Francisco store is now officially open! Nintendo of America’s president Doug Bowser was on site for the grand opening alongside the San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie.

Here are some official photos from the opening and you can also check out a thorough tour of the entire store in Kit & Krysta’s latest video upload on YouTube.

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Original Story: It’s not every day Nintendo opens a new store to the public, but this week happens to be one of those very special occasions.

In case you somehow missed this news, Nintendo San Francisco opens its doors this week and the US branch has been teasing all things related to it – including special merch as well as some photos. Select individuals have also been able to visit the store ahead of it opening its doors to the general public.

Here’s a quick round up of some of the footage from the official Nintendo social media account as well as screenshots from its website – showing off a sneak peek of parts of the store:

If you are planning on making the trip to the San Francisco store, be on the lookout for the special sculpture replicas of Nintendo’s real-life statues. The store will also offer a service which allows you to customise your Switch and Joy-Con bundle.

In some related news, this opening also happens to line up with the 20th anniversary of the Nintendo New York store. Nintendo shared a quick “now and then” comparison, showing off Nintendo World back in the day:

Nintendo: “Now and then. Today marks the 20th anniversary of Nintendo NEW YORK, where we’ve been bringing smiles to guests of all ages near and far for 2 decades!”

Will you be making the trip to the new store? Have you visited any official Nintendo sites or stores previously? Let us know in the comments.

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Jaxson Dart in good hands with Brian Daboll, New York Giants — renowned QB coach – Ed Valentine, BigBlueView.com

Maybe Daboll’s magic with Josh Allen will transfer to Jaxson Dart.

Quarterback coach Jordan Palmer has never worked with or met Jaxson Dart. Palmer and I had never met, either. When I reached out to Palmer’s reps about having him on my podcast to talk about Dart and quarterback development, though, Palmer couldn’t wait to make it happen.

“I’m happy to talk about him because I’ve got a lot of good things to say,” Palmer told me. “If I didn’t have anything good to say I wouldn’t have said anything at all.

“I don’t do a ton of interviews but when this was set up I was like ‘I’d love to talk about Jaxson Dart.’ I literally don’t know him. I’ve watched almost every snap he’s played, I know everybody who trains him, guys who played with him. I have two clients who backed him up last year. I got to know a lot about this kid.”

Palmer’s list of quarterback clients includes Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, Sam Darnold, Bo Nix and Josh Allen. His work with Allen, of course, makes him intimately familiar with Giants head coach Brian Daboll works with quarterbacks.

“I genuinely feel like it’s a great fit,” Palmer said. “I’ve got a couple buddies that are diehard Giants fans. You guys should have something to be excited about right now, for sure.”

Palmer has referred to Allen as “the best athlete to ever play that position” of quarterback. So, let’s dispense with the idea that Daboll can or will turn Dart into Allen. That is not realistic.

Palmer, though, does believe Dart is in good hands.

“I really like this marriage between Jaxson and Brian Daboll and his staff because I do see a lot of things in Jaxson’s game,” Palmer said. “I don’t work with Jaxson, but I certainly look at the game differently. I break down every single guy in the draft. I do my own draft grades.

“I’ve been right a lot more than I’ve been wrong, and I was really high on Jaxson.”

Eagles’ Saquon Barkley Has Message For Ravens’ Derrick Henry – Patrick McAvoy, Sports Illustrated

Star running backs support star running backs that get new contracts.

It’s no secret that the running back position has had an odd few years in the National Football League.

The running back position as a whole likely has been underpaid and unappreciated. This is something that has been specifically shown in free agency. But, times are starting to change. Philadelphia Eagles superstar Saquon Barkley has helped to break the mold. Last year, he signed a three-year, $37.75 million deal with the Eagles after the New York Giants refused to pay him what he’s worth.

Barkley responded by having one of the best season by a running back in National Football League history. He racked up over 2,000 rushing yards in the regular season and over 2,500 yards overall including the playoffs. Barkley landed a new two-year, $41.2 million extension this offseason with Philadelphia.

The running back position is starting to at least see the beginning of a sort of renaissance and another guy who has helped with this fact is Baltimore Ravens superstar Derrick Henry. He somehow only landed a two-year, $16 million deal last year with the Ravens but after yet another great campaign landed a two-year, $30 million extension on Wednesday.

Barkley had a brief message for his fellow superstar.

Times are changing and these two are leading the charge. The running back position is starting to get the respect it deserves and the performance of generational stars like Barkley and Henry will significantly help those that will come next.

Commanders will face four opponents coming off byes in 2025 – Michael David Smith, NBC Sports

Washington’s opponents will have plenty of rest this season.

The Commanders will play some well-rested opponents this season.

The NFL schedule makers gave Washington four games against teams coming off their bye weeks, which is the most of any team in the NFL this season.

The Commanders will see the Bears in Week Six, Seahawks in Week Nine, Broncos in Week 13, and Giants in Week 15, all coming off their byes. The Commanders’ bye is in Week 12 at the same time as the Broncos, so Washington does not get to play a less-rested team after its own bye week.

According to Seth Walder of ESPN, only 10 teams since 2002 have had to play four different opponents coming off their byes.

The good news for the Commanders is that bye weeks have become less important in recent years, and last year teams coming off their byes actually had a losing record. So the extra rest may not help the Commanders’ opponents all that much.

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