Houston Texans defensive lineman Denico Autry has been suspended for the first six games of the NFL season for violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs.

Autry said in a statement that he has ‘never engaged in the use of performance enhancing drugs’ during his professional career and was ‘stunned’ to learn he had tested positive for the banned substance. He blamed a pharmacy filling a prescription for a new medication.

While Autry said he intends to ‘explore legal options’ related to his positive test, he will not appeal the ban from the league.

Autry will be eligible to return when the Texans face the Green Bay Packers on Oct. 20.

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ST. JOSEPH, Mo. – No, Patrick Mahomes is not suddenly in a panic over his paycheck.

He knows. Emerging quarterbacks Tua Tagovailoa and Jordan Love struck deals last Friday for massive new contracts that place them in the top five in the NFL for average salary.

Tagovailoa, who led the NFL in passing yards last season, signed a four-year, $212.4 million extension with the Miami Dolphins that averages $53.1 million. The Green Bay Packers signed Love to a four-year, $220 million pact with an average of $55 million.

“It’s awesome for the game of football,” Mahomes told USA TODAY Sports during an exclusive interview following the Kansas City Chiefs training camp practice on Sunday.

“It’s awesome for the quarterback position, but I think all positions. I know every time a contract comes up, everybody looks at my APY (average per year) and everything like that. I’m doing pretty well myself. For me, it’s just about going out there trying to win football games, trying to make money for my family at the end of the day. I feel like I’m doing a great job of that.”

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Still, when considering that APY alongside Mahomes’ three Super Bowl MVPs, something seems off. The star quarterback, who has led the Chiefs to three title triumphs in five years, averages $45 million on the 10-year, $450 million deal he signed in 2020.

By at least that APY measure, Mahomes, 28, is grossly underpaid.

I mean, if these guys are averaging well over $50 million – and according to Spotrac.com, there are actually 10 quarterbacks, including Joe Burrow ($55 million), Trevor Lawrence ($55 million) and Jared Goff ($53 million) averaging more than the NFL’s best player – what is Mahomes really worth?

You could say the brilliance and Super Bowl rings justify that the eighth-year veteran should average at least $200 million per year. And maybe you’d still come up short. I mean, by whatever measure, Mahomes – who has never led the Chiefs to anything less than an AFC title game appearance since becoming a starter in 2018, his second year as a pro – has outplayed the contract that was done way back during the pandemic.

Mahomes, though, hardly feels slighted when weighing another essential element of contract value: cash flow. For all of the fluidity with the rankings of average salaries that has come with the new deals on the market, Mahomes still tops the charts when it comes to cash over four years.

According to figures reported by Pro Football Talk, Mahomes’ cash payment for the four-year period extending through the 2027 season will be $215.6 million, followed by Burrow’s $213.9 million. For the period from 2023-26, Mahomes’ number is $210.6, followed by Lamar Jackson’s $208 million.

That’s why Mahomes is not poised to round up his agents, Chris Cabott and Leigh Steinberg, and storm the office of Chiefs owner Clark Hunt while seeking a new deal.

His record-breaking contract is a reminder that total cash and guaranteed money are the best barometers of a contract’s value, given that players – especially non-quarterbacks – oftentimes don’t collect every penny of the contracts that make headlines.

But doesn’t Mahomes feel just a bit underpaid? After all, in chasing a three-peat he is the face of a league that many estimate generates more than $20 billion per year in revenues.

“Not necessarily,” Mahomes said, alluding to a big-picture approach that another multiple-time Super Bowl MVP winner, Tom Brady, maintained during his heyday.

“I think we do a great job of managing my money, to be able to pay me a lot of money and keep a good team around me. I know we’ve kind of restructured it a couple of times and got the cash flow up in certain spots and certain years. It’s about having a good dialogue, good communication with the front office, with ownership. We’ve done that here. And as we’ve been able to allow me to be a highly-paid guy while at the same time build a great team around me.”

Mahomes, who spoke more candidly about money matters than most players, clearly gets it while speaking contractual peace. His flexibility in re-working his contract has not only bolstered the guaranteed money, but it has also provided the Chiefs the ability to secure long-term deals with other pillars.

In March, the Chiefs signed Chris Jones to a five-year extension worth $158.75 million that makes him the NFL’s highest-paid defensive tackle, averaging $31.75 million with $95 million guaranteed. And Travis Kelce, who signed a two-year, $34.25 million extension in April, has the highest average salary among NFL tight ends at $17.125 million.

When Mahomes signed his deal in 2020, it guaranteed more than $141 million. With multiple revisions in form of a restructure or other maneuvers, he not only allowed the Chiefs to clear in the neighborhood of $50 million in cap room, the guarantees increased to more than $208 million, according to Spotrac. With a restructure in Sept. 2023, more than $43 million was converted into his payout for the 2023-2026 league years.

“We do a great job,” Mahomes said, referring to his agents and the Chiefs front office. “When I restructured, kind of moving money around the last time, we talked about a certain year when we were going to go back and do it again.

“It’s about having that plan, that constant communication. And we have that here. I’m happy to see guys going out and getting as much money as possible. That’s awesome for the sport. But here we have a great communication system where I feel like we’ve done the best with what we can do.”

In other words, another monster deal looms for Mahomes, but now is not the time.

PARIS — Simone Biles doesn’t want a break, not when there’s a Olympic gold medal to win.

Biles will do all four events in women’s gymnastics team finals at the 2024 Paris Olympics, passing on the chance to get a little bit of rest in a competition that is both lengthy and stressful. This despite tweaking her left calf during qualifying.

Biles will anchor the U.S. women’s gymnastics team on vault, balance beam and floor exercise, and go second-to-last on uneven bars. Jordan Chiles, who got aced out of the all-around final because of the silly two-per-country rule, also will do four events. She’ll lead off on vault, bars and balance beam, and will go second on floor exercise.

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Biles was visibly limping between events Sunday after a flare up of a calf injury. But she posted a photo that appeared to be from practice Monday, and her mother Nellie said on NBC’s TODAY show that she was doing fine.

Chellsie Memmel, the technical lead for the U.S. women’s team, said last week it would be up to Biles to decide how many events in team finals she wanted to do. USA Gymnastics is trying to be conscious of both her schedule — she has qualified for four individual finals, including the all-around — and not wanting her to feel as if she has to carry the team.

Biles said last year that someone with USA Gymnastics told her in Tokyo she was the team’s “gold-medal token,” which contributed to her anxiety. Biles wound up withdrawing after one event in the team final with a case of “the twisties,” which caused her to lose her sense of where she was in the air.

“I don’t say that to her. Or, ‘You are keeping us all together and we rely on you and you alone,’” Memmel said, emphatically. “If (not doing all four) is what she needs to continue to be at her best for the team and for herself, that’s what we’re going to do, because there are still four other members on our team.”

But Biles is looking for redemption in Paris, so much so she powered through qualifying after tweaking her calf in warmups on floor exercise. Biles briefly left the floor and then had her ankle heavily taped, but she delivered a monster score on floor, did her signature Yurchenko double pike and then finished with a solid uneven bars routine.

The Americans finished with 172.296 points, more than five points ahead of Italy. Though scores start over in team finals, the Americans will begin on vault Tuesday, which should give them a big cushion.

Biles will be doing either the most difficult vault in the world if she does her Yurchenko double pike or the second-hardest vault being done now If she does the Cheng. Carey and Chiles were third and fourth on vault in qualifying, behind reigning Olympic and world champion Rebeca Andrade.

Should the Americans win the team gold, it would be their fourth at the Olympics and third since 2012. It also would give Biles eight Olympic medals, breaking her tie with Shannon Miller for most by a U.S. gymnast.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics were a watershed moment for men’s swimming in the United States and globally.

Sixteen years later, the 2008 Games are perhaps best remembered for Michael Phelps’ dominant performance in the pool, where he racked up eight gold medals to break Mark Spitz’s long-standing record for most gold medals by an individual at a single Olympics.

Some of the iconic images of Phelps from those Games feature an anachronism. It’s not Phelps himself, though seeing him on NBC’s Olympics coverage this year with a ponytail and some gray hairs in his beard shows how much time has passed since those fateful days in China. It’s the swimsuit he and others are seen wearing.

The 2008 Olympics were the zenith for the full-body swimsuit, which athletes like Phelps used to glide through the water and set record times. Viewers tuning in from around the world to watch men’s swimming at the 2024 Paris Olympics will notice those suits are no longer used in competition — and they haven’t been for some time.

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Here’s what you need to know about full-body suits in men’s swimming at the Olympics, and why they aren’t at the 2024 Paris Games:

Why are full-body swimsuits not allowed at the Olympics?

The full-body swimsuits that appeared during the 2008 Beijing Olympics had a short, albeit decorated, existence. The suits debuted for the Beijing Games and by the time of the 2012 London Olympics, they were gone, never to return (at least as of now).

It was a grand opening following just as quickly by a grand closing.

Their disappearance was the result of a 2009 decision from FINA, now known as World Aquatics, which banned the worldwide use of polyurethane and neoprene suits during competition. The regulations, which mandated textile-only fabric suits, went into effect on Jan. 1, 2010.

The design of the suits, which covered up most of a man’s body rather than the traditional Speedo, wasn’t the main issue. Rather, it was what they were made of.

Due to their material and their polyurethane panels, the suits increased swimmers’ buoyancy and speed while cutting down on fatigue over the course of a race. Upon their introduction in 2008, they led to nearly 200 world records, including 43 at the 2009 World Aquatics Championships in Rome.

While wearing the Speedo LZR, a 50% polyurethane suit, Phelps set seven world records during his landmark 2008 Olympics.

‘I’m glad they’re banning them, but they should have done them almost two years ago, before the damage was done to the history of swimming,’ USA TODAY Sports’ Christine Brennan said to ABC News in 2009 at the time of FINA’s ruling. ‘Unfortunately, it has rendered its record book worthless. It sadly is a joke because so many records have been broken with the new suit. These records will not be touched for years, if ever, because they were broken by swimmers using suits that will now be illegal.’

USA Swimming had reached the same conclusion months earlier, banning the suits in the United States in October 2009.

Full-body suits had existed before the Beijing Games, appearing as early as the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Over the previous decades, male swimmers wore suits that resembled underwear briefs while taking other steps like shaving body hair to make themselves more aerodynamic in the water and shave fractions of a second off their times.

The material that came to dominate suits for men and women during the 2008 Games represented a new and ultimately untenable step.

Swimsuits at 2024 Paris Olympics

At the 2024 Paris Olympics, male and female swimmers will be wearing suits that adhere to certain specifications, all of which are reviewed by World Aquatics before each competition.

Men’s suits, which are commonly referred to as ‘jammers,’ can only extend from the waist to the knee. For women, their suits go from the shoulder to the knee.

It was a quicker-than-expected Olympic Games for broadcaster Bob Ballard.

The former BBC reporter made waves during his on-air commentary for Eurosport at the swimming competition Saturday after the Australian women’s 4x100m freestyle relay team won the gold medal.

The team members were making their way off the pool deck when, according to a BBC report, Ballard said the women swimmers were ‘finishing up’ and ‘you know what women are like… hanging around, doing their make-up.’

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No official word about what the Australian swimmers thought of Ballard’s remark, but Eurosport, Ballard’s employer, has made its sentiments clear.

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‘During a segment of Eurosport’s coverage last night, commentator Bob Ballard made an inappropriate comment,’ the television network said in a statement. ‘To that end, he has been removed from our commentary roster with immediate effect.’

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The Canadian Olympic committee has filed a formal appeal after soccer’s governing body deducted six points from the Canadian women’s soccer team at the 2024 Paris Olympics for using drones to spy on opponents.

FIFA’s punishment also included a $226,000 fine, and Canada Soccer issued a one-year suspension for head coach Beverly Priestman and assistants Joseph Lombardi and Jasmine Mander after coaches were caught using drones to spy on New Zealand’s practices before the team’s first game.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport has an Olympic court set up in Paris, and an expedited hearing is ‘likely to take place’ on Tuesday, according to the CAS statement. A decision will follow Wednesday on the final day of group stage matches and as the knockout rund schedule is finalized.

Under interim coach Andy Spence, the defending Olympic champions defeated New Zealand and France in their first two matches in Group A play. Team Canada could still advance in the tournament, even if the deduction is upheld, but must win its final game of group play on Wednesday night in Nice.

The top two teams from each of the three groups, plus two third-place teams, will move on to the knockout stage.

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PARIS – The blockbuster matchup went the way of Blockbuster.

It’s a relic of another time, a memory we’ll have forever. But the idea that Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal are on the same planet as tennis players in the year 2024 turned out to be wishful thinking.

Djokovic, the No. 1 seed in the men’s singles draw, needed just fewer than two hours to sweep away Nadal 6-1, 6-4, in what might well be his last singles match at the venue where his statue will forever greet those who enter.

Their 60th meeting, at the Paris Olympics and on a court where Nadal has won 14 French Open titles, wasn’t just a dud. It was the kind of mismatch that suggests Nadal’s time in the sport where he became a global icon is running perilously short.

As festive as the atmosphere was inside Philippe-Chatrier Court as the match began on a cloudless and hot Monday afternoon, it took only a few minutes for the thousands of fans waving Spanish flags to realize that Nadal was not going to be up to the task.

His forehand, which may well be the most destructive in the history of the sport, was mostly either dropping short or sailing long. His serve was only producing a handful of easy points. His movement out of the corners too often left him exposed.

This is not the first time over the course of their previous 59 meetings where a highly anticipated match between Djokovic and Nadal ended in a wipeout in either direction. But given the context of Nadal’s broken-down 38-year-old body, this one hits different.

And it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Since winning the 2022 French Open, Nadal has struggled for the last two years to solve multiple injury issues. Every time it seemed he was on the verge of a comeback or getting a series of matches under his belt to get his game back into rhythm, another issue emerged.

Foot, abdominal, hip. It all adds up.

But Nadal dutifully worked to try and play at these Olympics, given the venue and the opportunity to play a best-of-three tournament rather than the physically grinding best-of-five required at Grand Slams. He’s so linked with this place, he was one of the notable sportsmen who was given the honor of carrying the Olympic torch at the opening ceremony despite not being French.

Nadal was so locked-in on this event – he’s also playing doubles with Carlos Alcaraz – he even skipped Wimbledon, opting instead to enter a tournament in Sweden on clay. Though Nadal reached the final there, he was dominated by little-known Portuguese player Nuno Borges. And even more concerning was that another injury popped up. He arrived in Paris with heavy strapping on his right thigh and was undecided whether to even play singles until after his warm-up Monday morning before playing Hungary’s Marton Fucsovics.

To add insult to literal injury, he drew Djokovic as a second-round opponent. And after needing to squeak out a win over Fucsovics in a tight third set, Nadal essentially warned the public that he and Djokovic, who lost to Alcaraz in the Wimbledon final earlier this month, were not coming into this match on equal footing as they had for most of the last decade and a half.

“Of course different situations in our careers,” Nadal said. “His moment is coming from being in the final of a Grand Slam. I come without being very competitive the last (two) years. Let’s see. It’s in a special place and just try to give my best and enjoy as much as possible.”

Djokovic, too, is not the player he once was. After winning three of the four Grand Slams last year, giving him 24 overall and cementing his legacy as the most accomplished men’s tennis player in history, he has not won a title in 2024 and has admitted to struggling with his motivation at age 37. Whenever Nadal officially exits the game, Djokovic probably won’t be too many years behind.

Djokovic has also had to come back from a knee injury suffered on this very court at the French Open, requiring surgery for a torn meniscus. Djokovic managed to train his way back into playing Wimbledon and caught a soft draw before Alcaraz crushed him in what looked very much like tennis’ long-awaited pass-the-torch moment.

But Djokovic really only had one overarching goal in mind for 2024: Win the Olympics, which is the only big prize he’s never won. With No. 1-ranked Jannik Sinner pulling out of the event with toncilitis as well as a handful of other top players, Djokovic has a real chance.

At the same time, it was difficult to gauge Djokovic’s form Monday because the reality is that Nadal was simply not effective in much of anything he tried. It’s a cliché, but it’s true: Father Time really does come for everyone, even the sporting immortals.

The only glimmer of the old Nadal came after falling behind two breaks in the second set, when for about 10 magical minutes he managed to flip the script out of nowhere. With the crowd chanting “Rafa! Rafa!” and waving those red-and-yellow flags that had been scrunched up in their laps for most of the afternoon, Nadal somehow erased the entire deficit and pulled even at 4-4.

But in the ensuing game, Nadal’s forehand let him down again. A wild swing out wide. A complete mis-hit. A short ball in the middle of the court left for Djokovic to crush. All of them allowed Djokovic to break back and hold off the last gasp.

In the end, it wasn’t as embarrassing as it could have been for Nadal. He can leave Chatrier as a singles player with his pride intact and his head held high. Maybe – probably – for the last time.