Weekend winners
Tom Brady. We’ll get more into the NFL in a moment, but what a year for Brady. Near career-high numbers at 43. But more than anything, dude just dropped the hammer on the Bill or Brady debate. His win Sunday got him a ticket to his 14th conference championship. (Yes really, it’s 14.) Did we mention he’s Forty-Bleepin’-3 years old. How about this for a Ruthian-type stat: Brady has 14 conference title game appearances, easily the most of any QB in history. Second place belongs to Joe Montana who has half that.
Disney+. We have stated around these parts before that Mandalorian was excellent. And surely with your binge time. (Yes, I will stop calling you Shirley.) WandaVison is going to be a smash, friends.
Disc golf. Yeah, really. As I was making lunch Sunday, I was enthralled with the ESPN coverage of a Disc Golf major event. It was part British Open, part Dodgeball. “It’s a bold strategy Cotton.” The announcers were whispering and called the throws ‘shots.’ The competitors took, for a lack of better phrase, ‘practice swings,’ a female competitor went full Jean van de Velve with a quad on 17 to go from up 2 to down 2 because she had the yips, or should that be the whips or even the flips in disc golf?
Chris Kirk. Yes, Kevin Na won the PGA Sony Invitational, but Kirk finished tied for second. It was good enough to secure his Tour card in his last medical exemption after going through rehab. Way to go Chris.
McKinley Erves and his friends. McKinley is color-blind and his friends got him special glasses for his birthday to help his condition. His reaction was everything that’s good about social media.
Bonus pick: The fans known as the Bills Mafia donated 10s of thousands of dollars to Lamar Jackson’s charity after the Ravens QB was injured and left the game. Classy move from a group that recently donated thousands to Andy Dalton’s charitable efforts when Dalton and the Bengals won a Week 17 game that pushed the Bills into the playoffs.
Weekend losers
Houston Texans. This is the kind of move that wrecks a franchise, gang. You have a future Hall of Fame QB demanding to be dealt – and the Texans need to make that happen sooner rather than later because the longer this drags, the lower the price becomes – and that never works out well for the club. Then your best offensive player in franchise history – Andre Johnson – encourages Watson to high-step out of Houston. It’s lose-lose for Houston, in terms of return and certainly in terms of acquiring talent for the years to come. If I am the Houston GM, I am calling Jacksonville right now and saying, “Watson for the 1?” Which begs the question, if you’re Jacksonville, do you agree to deal Trevor Lawrence for Watson?
The fumble-is-a-touchback rule. Yes, we have this conversation every time it pops up. It also got me thinking about the worst rules in sports. A buddy thinks the O-linemen getting 3 yards down the field in college football – and the explosion of the RPO that has come with it – is right there. I don’t have as big a problem with the fumble-touchback rule, because hey, if you don’t want it to affect the game, then don’t fumble. But I understand the unevenness of it. I understand that there’s not a change of possession, and the stakes are enormous – just ask Cleveland.
Reviewable calls. Uh, in large part, the football reviews were put in place and then expanded because at first we didn’t even know what a catch was, and then a few years ago, one dude egregiously missed a pass interference call in a Saints playoff loss. OK. But, on the game-changing play mentioned above, Cleveland lost the football on what should have been a helmet-to-helmet hit on the Chiefs safety. Now, please do not take this as a request for more replays – goodness knows, the pace of NFL games already is disjointed because of multiple replay reviews – but more clarity on the process. Why can’t anything be reviewed by coaches? (And know this, the after-the-fact second-guessing that college football does on that very call is bad too. Because the conversation on targeting and helmet-to-helmet is so split-second and filled with moving targets.)
Lamar Jackson. He was bad, gang. And yes, he got a playoff win 10 days ago. His accuracy from the pocket Saturday night was flat out bad. I’m not sold you can win a Super Bowl with him, and every QB depending on running for success ages in dog years in the NFL.
Kentucky. And UNC. Kentucky looked fractured against Auburn, which is a fringe NCAA team in its own right. As for UNC, other than the uniforms, they also looked bad Saturday. Yes, UNC lost to an FSU team that is tournament-worthy, but FSU was without its best player and had its leader roll an ankle in Saturday’s contest. Also, while we’re here, Duke is no great shakes either. When was the last time that those three power brokers in college hoops were this mediocre or worst.
Then there were four
I think we can all agree that Sunday’s games > Saturday’s games.
I think we can also all agree that the value of a great quarterback was emphasized this weekend.
You know what else was highlighted this weekend? Coaches with huevoes. We have been writing and saying this for years, football’s evolution has led us to the place that possession of the ball is more important than position on the field. And it appears coaches – hi Andy Reid – at the highest level are embracing that too.
There were so many storylines, ranging from whether this is the end of the line for Drew Bress or what happened to Michael Thomas in New Orleans to questions whether losing teams this weekend are ascending moving forward (Cleveland) or if they have already peaked. (Do you really think Baltimore or L.A. can win it all with those QBs on cap-changing deals?)
But the biggest story arc of this weekend – yes, even bigger than Patrick Mahomes’ concussion and why we all know #Hennethingispossible and Brady’s accomplishments and Rodgers’ excellence and Josh Allen’s growth – was clear and easy to see.
We owe the NFL a great deal of thanks, friends.
Look around and everything is spiraling into places that set new depths of angst and outrage, only to be reset within weeks, days or even hours.
But the NFL – an NFL that did not cancel a single regular-season game despite the COVID – allowed us a weekend to discuss the amazing exploits of athleticism and fantastic feats of fearlessness.
In the most surreal times of any of our lives, the NFL allowed us to feel normal and reminded me at least of how good that can be.
So thanks NFL, and here’s looking forward to next Sunday already.