Oct 4, 2019 4 min read

In the NFL

Sam Darnold’s return will have to wait at least another week.

The New York Jets quarterback was ruled out for the team’s game at Philadelphia on Sunday as he continues to recover from mononucleosis.

Darnold was originally scheduled to have medical tests Friday, but the doctors instead ran them Thursday.

“The labs didn’t come back the way that we were hoping,” Gase said Friday. “I know Sam’s disappointed, but we’re able to adjust and work quickly. Our guys have done a good job with any kind of changes that we’ve had to make.”

• The Jacksonville Jaguars will be without cornerback Jalen Ramsey for a second straight week, and now they want their disgruntled star to see a back specialist.

Coach Doug Marrone ruled Ramsey out Friday, saying he has been “working extremely hard to get back with this low-back issue and it hasn’t been getting any better.”

Marrone said he didn’t know when Ramsey would visit a specialist.

• Los Angeles Rams linebacker Clay Matthews will be out for several weeks after breaking his jaw during their loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

Matthews was hurt while attempting to tackle Seattle running back Chris Carson with about 3:20 left in the Rams’ 30-29 defeat Thursday. Carson’s back foot inadvertently kicked Matthews in the face while Carson evaded the tackle.

In the NHL

Travis Konecny had two goals and coach Alain Vigneault won his debut with Philadelphia, directing the Flyers to a season-opening 4-3 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday.

Oskar Lindblom and Michael Raffl also scored for the Flyers in front of a sellout crowd of 17,463 at Prague’s O2 Arena as part of the NHL’s Global Series. Carter Hart stopped 28 shots.

It was the first regular-season game outside of North America in Philadelphia’s 52-year history.

Booted from D-III, school gets D-I invite

St. Thomas is seeking to become Minnesota’s second NCAA Division I institution.

The university that will soon to be ousted from the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference due to its recent dominance of smaller schools in its longtime Division III home has received an invitation to join the Summit League with the goal of cranking up the competition for its 20 sports teams and going Division I.

St. Thomas President Julie Sullivan announced Friday that the university has submitted a request to the NCAA for a waiver of the reclassification rules that would allow it to bypass Division II.

If the waiver is granted, St. Thomas would become the 10th member of the Summit League, a mid-major mixture of public and private institutions mostly in the Upper Midwest, in fall 2021. The Tommies would then have to find a different conference for their football and men’s and women’s hockey teams, sports that aren’t sponsored by the Summit League.

In May, the MIAC announced that St. Thomas, the largest school in the league and one of its founding members in 1920, was being “involuntarily removed.” Conference presidents cited athletic parity as their primary concern about the Tommies, who have won 12 consecutive MIAC all-sports trophies. The private Catholic liberal arts university has about 6,200 undergraduates, double the enrollment of the next-closest schools in the league.

In golf

Las Vegas resident Kevin Na had two back-nine eagles and shot a 9-under 62 on Friday for a share of the second-round lead in the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open.

Playing alongside Phil Mickelson at TPC Summerlin, Na eagled the par-5 13th and 16th holes and added birdies on the par-3 17th and par-4 18th to match Lucas Glover, 2017 winner Patrick Cantlay and Brian Stuard at 12-under 130.

Na won the 2011 tournament for the first of his three tour titles. He made four long putts on the back nine Friday, holing out from 43 and 35 feet for the eagles and 23 and 22 feet on the closing birdies.