Weekend Sports Review Starting With Pro Football

The New Orleans Saints are staking their claim to be being the NFL’s best team in smashing style.

The 9-1 Saints – and those are nine straight wins – destroyed the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles 48-7 on Sunday. No defending Super Bowl winner has ever lost a game the following season by that margin. Drew Brees completed 22 of 30 passes (73.3 percent) for 363 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions.

The Houston Texans (7-3) won their seventh straight, defeating the Washington Redskins 23-21. The Redskins lost quarterback Alex Smith (broken tibia, fibia) for the season, and play in four days against the Dallas Cowboys (5-5), who nipped the Atlanta Falcons 22-19.

One more cool NFL note: Lamar Jackson, the 2016 Heisman Trophy winner, made his first start at quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens and rushed for 127 yards in a 24-21 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.

NASCAR:
Joey Logano took the checkered flag and the NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series championship on Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. It was Logano’s first championship and he finished ahead of Martin Truex Jr., who won last year, Kevin Harvick, the 2014 titlist, and Kyle Busch, who won it in 2015.

Elsewhere:
Nothing new at the top of the Associated Press college football poll. Led by unanimous No. 1 Alabama, the top six stayed the same as last week. Clemson was No. 2, followed by Notre Dame, Michigan, Georgia and Oklahoma. Army jumped into the poll at No. 22, the first time it has been ranked since 1996.

In golf, Abraham Ancer won the Australian Open by five strokes, Thompson shot a 2-under 70 to finish at 18-under 270 and win the LPGA’s season-ending CME Group Tour Championship by four strokes over Nelly Korda in Naples, Florida. The win makes this the sixth consecutive year that Thompson has won at least once, extending the longest such active streak on the LPGA Tour.

 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman