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[Popular This Week] Sunday, December 26, 2021 [1. Does Scoring First In The NFL Make You A Good Team? Or Do Good Teams Just Score First?]( [New Orleans Saints v Tampa Bay Buccaneers]( In the NFL, the team that scores more points wins. Itâs a statement as true as it is prosaic. As the league has evolved, the volume of points scored has increased, and teams are getting more aggressive in their search for points. âScore early and oftenâ seems the order of the day. But just how much does the early part matter? Put another way: How often does the team that scores first end up winning? [Read more]( [2. With NFL Playoff Spots Up For Grabs, Donât Be Surprised If These Divisions Get Greedy]( [Las Vegas Raiders v Cleveland Browns]( The Cleveland Browns just lost a crucial game they easily could have won, the Baltimore Ravens are a M.A.S.H. unit, the Cincinnati Bengals have been playing over their skis and the Pittsburgh Steelers might not make it to eight wins for the first time since 2003. Three of the AFC Northâs four teams have taken turns as the oddsmakersâ division favorite since the season began â and the only one that hasnât, Cincinnati, currently sits in second. It might feel like the division doesnât have any good teams, but it certainly has four decent ones that are all remarkably evenly matched. [Read more]( [3. We Crunched The Numbers On 2021’s Best (And Worst) Teams]( [2021 NHL Stanley Cup Final – Game Five]( As we look back on the highs and lows of 2021âs sports calendar, itâs tempting to crown certain teams as the best â or worst â in all of sports, not just their sport. Thatâs been difficult to do across the pro sports landscape ⦠until now. [Read more]( [4. Do You Have An Abortion Story? We Want to Hear From You.]( [An ultrasound machine sits next to an exam table in an examination room]( Nearly 1 in 4 American women will have an abortion before the age of 45. But over the past decade, access to abortion in America has changed dramatically. There are fewer clinics and more restrictions. And now it seems likely that the Supreme Court will limit the right to abortion even further. As we document the impact of these shifts, we want to include the voices of people who have had abortions in the U.S. [Read more]( [5. More NBA Teams Are Using A Pick And Roll Hack: Sticking Two Guys In The Corners]( [Bojan Bogdanovic, John Collins]( On Nov. 4, the Utah Jazz and Atlanta Hawks played whatâs known in video game terminology as a âmirror match.â Less than a minute into the game, Trae Young dribbled into a pick and roll while John Collins and Bogdan BogdanoviÄ stood in the corners. He made a layup. The very next possession on the other end, Mike Conley led a pick and roll with Bojan BogdanoviÄ and Royce OâNeale in the corners. He missed a triple. [Read more]( [6. These Freshmen Might Be The Next Big Names In Womenâs College Basketball]( [Aneesah Morrow,McKinzie Green]( We are approximately a third of the way through the 2021-22 NCAA womenâs basketball season, and it is clear that the talented freshman crop lacks a top end of superstars that powered last seasonâs contenders. [Read more]( [7. What Was The Most Important Election Of The Past 75 Years?]( [SlackChat_1221-4×3]( Welcome to FiveThirtyEightâs politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited. [Read more]( [8. The NFL Keeps Chugging Along Through The Chaos, On And Off The Field]( [SportsChat-12204×3]( sara.ziegler (Sara Ziegler, sports editor): At this point in Week 15, I was expecting the only game outstanding to be tonightâs Vikings-Bears game, which we could blissfully ignore. But instead, we still have four games left: The regularly scheduled Monday Night Football game is joined tonight by the Raiders-Browns game, which was moved from Saturday, and two Tuesday night games â Seahawks-Rams and Football Team-Eagles. All we need is a Wednesday game, and it will be 2020 all over again. [Read more]( [9. The New Technology That May Upend How We Watch Basketball]( [wnba-rendering-2-4×3]( Advanced technology is everywhere in basketball, and itâs only gaining steam. Some tech elements are already considered essential to the sportâs operations, such as rafter camera tracking technology thatâs been in the NBA for nearly a decade; others, like detailed basket tracking provided by companies like Noah Basketball, are still in the early stages of public consciousness. [Read more]( [10. Our 51 Best (And Weirdest) Charts Of 2021]( [WEIRD-CHARTS-4×3]( In 2021, FiveThirtyEightâs visual journalists told stories of the pandemic, political gridlock and the world of sports. Weâve fought to make our work more accessible and to sharpen our storytelling. Through it all, we kept it weird. Now we continue our tradition of celebrating our best â and wackiest â charts of the year. Here are some of our favorites, grouped by topic but in no particular order beyond that. If you want more context for these (weird and wonderful) charts, donât be shy! You can click any of them to read the stories in which they originally ran. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen
[Play]( [Politics Podcast: The Biggest Political Surprises Of 2021]( Lastly, The Riddler By [Zach Wissner-Gross]( [riddler_4x3_default]( Reader Betts Slingluff enjoys holiday cryptarithms with the family and suggested that now was a good time for such a puzzle on The Riddler. This weekâs Express is a spin on a cryptarithm originally by [Frank Mrazik]( [A cryptarithm. HAPPY + HOLIDAYS = HOHOHOHO] As with any cryptarithm, each letter represents one of the digits from 0 to 9, and different letters represent different digits. The catch? This puzzle has two possible solutions â that is, two distinct sets of letter-to-number assignments. Can you find both solutions? [Solve it!]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser](
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