Latest news with #Whitworth
USA Today
07-07-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Rams' Davante Adams among NFL greats playing in star-studded celebrity golf tournament
Josh Allen and Steph Curry are also teeing it up in the American Century Championship this week Before hitting the practice fields at Loyola Marymount for training camp in a few weeks, Los Angeles Rams receiver Davante Adams will be competing in a more relaxed setting this week. He's teeing it up in the American Century Championship in Lake Tahoe, the biggest celebrity golf tournament each year. It draws a star-studded year after year and the 2025 edition is no different. The likes of Josh Allen, Steph Curry, Roger Clemens, Charles Barkley, Ray Romano and Colin Jost are playing in this awesome event, as will Adams for the third straight year. Other NFL greats who are playing include Marcus Allen, Larry Fitzgerald, Travis Kelce, Jason Kelce, George Kittle, Aaron Rodgers, DeMarcus Ware and Charles Woodson. There are other former players with ties to the Rams in the field, as well. Andrew Whitworth always loves playing in this tournament and he's in the field once again. Former Rams running back Jerome Bettis and quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick are playing, too. They'll play three rounds at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course in a modified stableford format, beginning on Friday with the tournament wrapping up on Sunday afternoon. Adams came in 43rd last year in the 90-player field, with Whitworth finishing 23rd, Fitzpatrick 41st and Bettis 44th. Former tennis champion Mardy Fish won for the second time last year. During the Rams' recent trip to Maui, Whitworth, Adams and several players played a round of golf and Whitworth specifically recalls being impressed by Adams' game. Adams is a big golfer when he's not catching passes and he's got some talent on the course, just as he does on he field.
USA Today
05-07-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Bengals' legendary draft picks make best-ever lists
The Cincinnati Bengals don't often come up in national praise, although the tides continue to shift during the Joe Burrow era, at least. There are some big exceptions, though. When it comes time to look at some of the biggest hits in franchise history, well, the Bengals have some best-ever candidates. While running down the best draft picks ever at every pick, ESPN's Ben Solak singled out the Bengals in the No. 55 slot for a guy named Andrew Whitworth: 'Whitworth played 239 games over 16 seasons (wow!), and he needed all 16 of those seasons to get his ring with the Rams. Whit worked his way into a dominant back half of his career, making his first Pro Bowl at 31 and first All-Pro team at 34. The Bengals, who drafted him, will appreciate him for his 11 seasons of quality play, and the Rams enjoyed his strong sunset.' RELATED: Cincinnati Bengals' 53-man roster projection following 2025 offseason Despite the messy exit from Cincinnati due to ineptitude on the part of the Bengals at the time, Whitworth is one of the best players in franchise history and all parties certainly deserve the nod here. Not far down the list from Whitworth? A guy named Ken Anderson at No. 67: 'A 16-year vet of the Bengals, Anderson's 1981 season won him an MVP and took Cincinnati to its first-ever Super Bowl. I strived to avoid overweighting quarterbacks in this exercise, but even without a positional value bump, Anderson still clears the value of Alvin Kamara, also taken at No. 67 overall and one of the best third-round picks ever.' Not a bad duo when thinking about all-time Bengals picks in the top 100 of drafts. There's still plenty of time for some of the modern guys like Burrow to start making their case for much more competitive slots higher up the all-time order, too. RELATED: Joe Burrow feelings on Trey Hendrickson contract standoff revealed
The Guardian
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘They came for our land, our wood, our gold': Santiago Yahuarcani, Peruvian painter of dancing dolphins
Santiago Yahuarcani's Amazon is no longer the place he painted as a child. The rainforest scenes of parrots, anacondas and jaguars that he and his brothers used to sell to riverboat tourists for a dollar apiece have given way to visions of a landscape that is darker, more despoiled and more desperate than it was six decades ago. However, as his first solo international exhibition – at the Whitworth in Manchester – will show, the old beauties and mysteries have not faded completely. His work is populated by shape-shifting spirits, mermaids waltzing with pink river dolphins, enormous pipe-smoking lizards and shamans who trap their adversaries in rum bottles, but they exist alongside depictions of the genocidal crimes of the past and the ecocidal crimes of the present. Oil refineries are consumed by fire, rubber trees weep tears of sap, forest spirits are displaced by drought, and memories of a century-old slaughter – replete with torn and branded flesh – echo through the forest and down the generations. 'When I was a child, there was a huge abundance of animals and fish in the Amazon,' says the 65-year-old Indigenous Peruvian painter, when we meet in Madrid, at a joint exhibition of work by him and his partner Nereyda López. 'There was a lot of land to make into farmsteads and there were a lot of animals to hunt. But people have come and taken land – hectares of land, kilometres of land – and they've come for the wood and the gold, too.' The artist and his family are all too aware of what happens when the Amazon attracts the greedy gaze of the outside world. Today, they are the last 12 members of the White Heron clan of the Uitoto nation still living in Peru. Just over a century ago, Yahuarcani's grandfather, then 16, was forced from Colombia to Peru during the genocide that was waged against the Indigenous population of the Putumayo region during the rubber boom. The painter was five or six when he learned what had happened at La Chorrera rubber station. 'My grandfather would call us together at night and tell us about the era of rubber,' he says. 'He told us how the bosses arrived with rifles and started to force the Indigenous people to collect the sap of trees for rubber. They demanded 50kg of sap from each person every two to three weeks. They gave them the materials they needed to get the sap and they gave them food, but not enough food.' Anyone coming back with less than 50kg was punished. Some were thrown into a hole 15 metres deep. Others had an ear hacked off. 'There was also a guy, my grandfather told me, who'd make everyone watch as he cut off a lump of your flesh with a knife. They wanted to scare people so they'd get their 50 kilos.' Then came the time when the bosses decided to plant sugar cane, coffee and corn for the women to harvest. 'These women worked with their babies on their backs,' says Yahuarcani. 'One baby started to cry because of the heat of the sun. The overseers came and took the little boy from his mother's back and threw him on the fire.' When the inevitable uprising took place, the response was characteristically barbaric. Men, women and children were burned alive in a large house where they had sought refuge. Those who escaped the flames were shot. 'My grandfather told me that, a month after the fire, thousands of butterflies of a kind never before seen in the Amazon began to sprout from the site,' says Yahuacari. 'All different kinds of butterflies with all different kinds of colours. My grandfather told me they were the spirits of the victims, of the people who had been burned.' Those atrocities are recounted in one painting – called The Stone-Hearted Man – that shows gangs of pale men in white hats and with pistols in their belts branding, decapitating and burning their way across a stretch of rainforest that has become a hell. All around them are the charred and broken bodies of Indigenous people. A century later, the rainforest is once again besieged. 'Today, Indigenous groups are having to fight back,' says Yahuarcani. 'We have to fight to protect our vegetation, our trees and to reforest.' But the odds are not in their favour. While more and more outsiders are coming to the Amazon in search of land, timber, gold and oil, many of the region's young people are abandoning their homes in search of education and employment. Respect for the rainforest is dwindling. Whenever they set out to hunt or fish, the Uitoto make an offering to the guardian of the forest animals: 'He's small and furry like a monkey and has the face of an 80-year-old person.' And, unlike the logging and mining corporations, they never take more than they need. 'In the Amazon,' he says, 'when we want to eat, we go to our supermarket – it's in the mountains, in the jungle, where there are fish and fruits. You bring home what you need and you don't destroy everything. God has said that man should not destroy nature, he should take care of it, because it is his home, too. You can't destroy your own house.' If the artist's subject matter has changed over the years, his techniques have not. Yahuarcani has always created his works by applying paint prepared from pigments, seeds, leaves and roots, to large sheets of llanchama, a cloth made from the bark of the ojé tree. His works are often inspired by the hallucinations brought on by the ritual ingestion of tobacco, coca, ayahuasca and mushrooms – substances long used by the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon when in search of help, knowledge or revelation. While getting llanchama requires the skills he learned from his bark-cutter grandfather, the use of hallucinogens harnesses and honours the cosmology, myths and traditions of Yahuarcani's people as he strives to draw attention to the threats they and the forest face. Perhaps the greatest of those menaces is indifference. Yahuarcani's home town of Pebas, which lies on a bend in the river as it meanders from north-east Peru towards Colombia, is as far removed as it could be from the artistic, political and media centres of the coastal capital, Lima. As a result, getting his work and its messages noticed has been a struggle. Yahuarcani is polite but insistent as he reflects on the difficulties that he and other Indigenous artists – not least his son Rember - experience when it comes to visibility and exhibition space. 'I use my work to show our myths,' he says. 'How our culture used to be, how we came to have the problems we now have. But it's been very tough because we were from the Amazon and we were Indigenous. We weren't allowed to exhibit in the museums, or do the interviews, because we were always put to one side.' Artists from Lima 'have always had more opportunities and more press'. Part of the problem, he says, lies in Peru's own view of its culture and history. 'When we were in school, we were taught about the Incas. About how the Incas built Machu Picchu, and so on. But there was nothing about us or our history, and that's been one of our complaints. Our stories aren't in the textbooks.' Yet he is adamant that this is a history people need – and want – to know about. When he exhibited a picture of the Putumayo atrocities in Lima a decade ago, 'the newspapers and the magazines were saying, 'Look at this! Look at this!' But the authorities were not at all interested.' Yahuarcani has been buoyed by the enthusiastic reaction to the Madrid show – even if it has meant braving the heat and chaos of the Spanish summer. He hopes the Manchester exhibition will be equally well received. But the recognition has been as hard won as it has been belated. Time is running out and, as one of his recent works plainly shows, the Amazon is changing rapidly and irrevocably. Painted earlier this year, Optic Fibre in the Depths of the Amazon River is a riotous, funny and faintly disturbing picture that shows dolphins, frogs, fish and turtles clutching mobile phones as technology reaches ever farther into the rainforest. One or two of the smarter fish are ringing their friends to let them know where the fishers are gathered so they can avoid them. The current cycle of expansion, encroachment and exploitation appears unstoppable. And if the forest goes then so does a branch of the Uitoto, their way of life, and their half-forgotten history. 'I hope Peru will do something about these issues,' says Yahuarcani. 'That there will be a book of these stories so young people can learn what happened to their grandparents. Today, we are the only family of the White Heron clan. There are no more. When we disappear, the White Heron ends.' Santiago Yahuarcani: The Beginning of Knowledge is at the Whitworth, Manchester, 4 July to 4 January; part of Manchester International Festival, 3-20 July.
USA Today
22-06-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Davante Adams still looks like 'one of the best receivers in the NFL' to Andrew Whitworth
The Los Angeles Rams raised some eyebrows when they gave Davante Adams a two-year, $44 million contract this offseason – not because he lacks talent, but because he's 32 years old. Receivers on the wrong side of 30 tend to see their production decline pretty significantly but the Rams are confident Adams will continue being one of the top playmakers in football for them. Andrew Whitworth has visited some of the Rams' practices this offseason and what he's seen from Adams has been impressive. Adams has still shown the ability to separate and get off the line with excellent releases, which is why Whitworth has no concerns about his age. He thinks Adams still looks like 'one of the best receivers in the NFL.' 'When you look at Davante and Stafford, I think it's going to be something where you look at his ability – I've been to a couple OTAs – to just separate and get off the line and just watch how good this guy still is at his age,' Whitworth said on the 'Rich Eisen Show' Thursday. 'I'm not worried about what his number of days he's been alive is because this dude looks like one of the best receivers in the NFL still. He's still that kind of talent. Talking to him personally, that means a lot to him. He wants to be one of the best receivers in the league every single year. he doesn't want to be playing if anybody thinks he's a liability or he's not that. He's passionate to prove he's still that guy and I think Stafford, just by his demeanor and happiness, is pretty happy to see him out on the football field.' Though the Rams signed Adams before they cut Cooper Kupp, they had already planned to move on from the former Super Bowl MVP so they effectively replaced him with Adams. Puka Nacua will still probably be the No. 1 option on offense, but Adams is viewed by many as an upgrade over Kupp. Whitworth didn't flat-out say that, which isn't surprising considering he's good friends with Kupp, but he does think the Rams offense will be 'different' with Adams in the picture. Adams is a better one-on-one weapon and wins as an isolated X-receiver on the left side, something the Rams had been lacking previously. 'Obviously, Cooper Kupp was an unbelievable player and those situations anytime in the end are tough for an organization and as a whole, not just the players, everybody in that building that Cooper had a chance to touch,' Whitworth said. 'But this team will be different with Davante because now you're starting to see a team where there's a lot of different ways they can beat you because Davante's just a different player than Coop was in that sense. Not about how good he was, but a different situational guy, a one-on-one nightmare. I think it really puts this team in a (position) where they can run it, they can throw it, they can do stuff with Puka and really focus on him and when they get in those situations on third down and you want a one-on-one isolation guy, Davante Adams can win.' Stafford and Adams have been building chemistry all offseason already and that'll continue in training camp next month. Stafford has a history of helping receivers put up big numbers in their first season together and Adams could be the next beneficiary in 2025.
USA Today
20-06-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
'It's different': Andrew Whitworth feels confidence oozing from Rams' building
Whitworth says there's an 'arrogance' about this team, but 'in a good way' Andrew Whitworth just got back home after spending a few days with the Los Angeles Rams in Maui for minicamp and he seems to have a good feeling about Sean McVay's squad in 2025. Having been around the Rams for part of the offseason, Whitworth sees a team that's exuding confidence and arrogance – 'in a good way.' During an interview with Rich Eisen, Whitworth said he would put the Rams in the category of being Super Bowl contenders and believes there's no question they feel the same way about themselves. 'There's no doubt about that. I would definitely put them in that category,' Whitworth said. 'In that building, being around them, being around them this week, there's a confidence that these guys carry of who they think they are right now and where they think they can go. You can definitely feel that. It's different. I can tell that they really believe this football team is built – if it stays healthy – to try to go after winning a Lombardi. Not that that's, like, 'Hey, that's the only thing we care about and the only thing we're saying.' But they really have this arrogance in a good way of, 'You know what? We're a good football team and we're going to go to work every single day, have a whole lot of fun doing it.'' Davante Adams, Sean McVay and Matthew Stafford have all talked about the close-knit locker room the Rams have this year, blending young energy with veteran leadership. Whitworth loves the camaraderie he's seen from the team, too, whether it's on the practice field or outside of football. 'They've got a great locker room and one that's going to be really competitive on the football field this year so I'm excited to see what their year looks like,' he added. While in Maui with the Rams, Whitworth went out and played a round of golf with several players, including Stafford, Adams, Tyler Higbee and Colby Parkinson. He was particularly impressed by Adams' golf game, saying the receiver shot 76 and has a ton of talent on the course. As Whitworth said, the Rams are going to be a fun and exciting team to watch this season. They could be building something special as they pursue another Super Bowl ring.
