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Welcome to the latest episode of Hot Takedown, FiveThirtyEight’s sports podcast. On this week’s show (Aug. 30, 2016), we preview the new English Premier League season with ESPN’s Mike Goodman and ask if Leicester City has any hope of repeating last year’s shock title win. Then we talk to FiveThirtyEight’s Carl Bialik about the U.S. Open and hear how FiveThirtyEight is using Elo ratings to try to predict this year’s tournament. Finally, FiveThirtyEight’s Blythe Terrell makes her Hot Takedown debut to chat about what happened when her team, the St. Louis Rams, skipped town and how she’s enlisting the help of Neil Paine to pick a new favorite. Plus, we share a significant digit on the rookie quarterback about to take a starring role with the Dallas Cowboys.
Hot Takedown also has a spin-off podcast about the U.S. Open for the next couple weeks. It’s called Baseline, and it can be found here.
Links to what we discuss are here:
- ESPN’s Gabriele Marcotti explains why this season’s English Premier League is shaping up to be a battle of the managers.
- Here’s the Guardian’s interactive guide to the EPL summer transfer window.
- Ryan Rosenblatt on Fox Sports thinks Leicester doesn’t have a chance of repeating its 2016 title win.
- Carl Bialik explains the method behind FiveThirtyEight’s U.S. Open model. You can find our predictions here.
- FiveThirtyEight is forecasting that Serena Williams has a 55 percent chance of winning the U.S. Open.
- Allison McCann breaks down the numbers behind domestic violence cases in the NFL.
- Here are ESPN The Magazine’s standings for every sports team according to fan surveys and the value fans get for the money they spend on the team.
- Significant Digit: 135th. That’s the draft pick the Dallas Cowboys used to take their new starting quarterback, Dak Prescott, in the 2016 NFL draft. That’s the lowest draft pick for a rookie starting quarterback since Randy Hedberg started for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1977. Earlier this week, Chase Stuart wrote about how Tony Romo’s injury thrust Prescott into the starting role.
