Weekend winners
Stephan Jaeger. Yeah, we kind of knew this was a done deal a while back, but it became official over the weekend. Ol’ Herr 58 himself got his third ticket to the PGA Tour. He finished as the top-ranked player on the Korn Ferry Tour, and here’s hoping Jaeger takes his 2021 form into 2022 and is done with the KFT for good. The former Baylor School and UTC star is one more dominant Korn Ferry run from being golf’s Crash Davis. Jaeger’s promotion will once again give Baylor School four alumni competing on the highest level of the PGA Tour.
Bonus golf pick: Chasson Hadley, who had an ace Sunday – his first ever hole-in-one – on his way to a 62 that moved him up the leaderboard, which is a great thing when the Sunday checks are passed out. But for Hadley, it meant so, So, SO much more. After his round, he jumped from the mid-130s to 126th on the Fed Ex points list. And yes, the top 125 get their PGA Tour cards for next season. So Hadley waited and watched, and when Justin Rose bogeyed 18 by missing a 7-footer for par, Hadley moved to 125th by a single point. Wow.
NFL unders. Egad, betting folks who paid attention saw a monster trend of 19-16 – which also was directly proportional to the number of second- and third-string QBs who got the majority of snaps in the first weekend of preseason action – made a pretty penny. The under went 14-3 across the first round (plus one) of the preseason.
Braves bats, especially Dansby and Ozzie. Dansby has been the best hitter in baseball in July – which is a good thing because he was one of the most disappointing hitters in the game from April to June. Since July 1, Dansby is 51-for-156 with 11 homers and 36 RBIs and 28 runs scored. Prorated over a league average of roughly 600 ABs for everyday players, well, that’s your shortstop hitting .327 with 44 homers and 124 RBIs. Yeah, that works. Now paired with Ozzie Albies, the Braves have the Bash Brothers 2.0 as their double-play combination. The Braves are now 10-3 in the 13 games Albies has filled the lead-off spot. In the last week, Albies has hit four homers and the Braves’ 8-2 run in their last 10 gives them sole possession of first place with three against Miami and three more against Baltimore this week. Make the hay while you can, boys.
High school football game week. Let’s go.
Tyler Gilbert. A no-no in your first career MLB start? Yeah, that qualifies. Have I told you guys about the time I threw a no-hitter against Paulding County in 1988? Yeah. Sure? OK, moving along.
Everything and everyone involved in Donato Dominguez’ story and journey from being a 6-year-old who had his left arm amputated because of an accident to becoming a historic one-armed basketball player with a scholarship offer from Tennessee State.
Weekend losers
Not to pile on, but that Sunday performance from Russell Henley is going to leave a mark. Dude started with a three-shot lead, and looked completely prepared to be the Tour’s first wire-to-wire winner this season. Sunday started poorly for the former UGA star. (Side note: Man, UGA golfers are everywhere on the PGA Tour these days, including Sunday’s winner Kevin Kisner. Not that that will ease Henley’s angst all that much.) An agonizing three-putt on the 72nd hole left Henley one shot out of the playoff.
Sunday bad beats for a certain morning interweb columnist. OK, all things considered, it was a better-than-good weekend for our picks. Riding the Braves – and the above-mentioned hitters – in a couple of parlays paid nicely. (Saturday was Duvall to homer, Fried 4+ Ks, Braves money line and Braves first half at +584; Sunday it was Albies to get 1+ hit, Braves first half, over 9.5 and Paolo Espino under 4.5 Ks at +428. Thank you, and there were a few more.) But, because there’s always a big but and I cannot lie, the weekend was full of bad beats. Suppose if just Sunday alone, someone had Panthers on the money line vs. the Colts and watch Carolina give it away, Denny Hamlin at +300 to finish top three and watch on like the 200th playoff and penultimate lap, Hamlin – who led almost all of the race – get spun from the top spot to 23rd, and for the third time in a week, a multi-leg MLB parlay hit every leg but one and that one missed by one strikeout. (Yeah, had Dodgers first half, over 7.5 and Max Scherzer to fan 8+ last night. Scherzer got seven Mets before being pulled in a Dodgers’ rout.) So it goes.
NFL fans overreacting to preseason. C’mon gang, that was milieu toast football at best. Sure, the Bears have reason to be excited about Justin Fields. Same with the 49ers and Trey Lance. But it’s one game against the most vanilla of defenses filled with at least 50% of dudes who will be on taxi squads later this month. That said, the Atlanta Falcons are the worst and will be lucky to win a game this season.
Auburn offense. Yep, we will have our annual SEC over/under win totals later this week. But here’s a tip: We’re riding under 7 (and even 6.5). Hardest schedule in the country, that includes three out-of-conference dunks in Akron, Alabama State and Georgia State, one extreme OOC challenge – at Penn State – and eight SEC games. Of those eight SEC games the crossovers are Georgia at South Carolina. Auburn figures to be favored in half of its SEC games – at home against the two Mississippi schools, at Arkansas and at South Carolina – but none of those games will be more than a TD line, if I had to guess. That means for Auburn to get to north of seven, it handles those three weak sisters on the OOC schedule, wins all of its toss-up SEC games and finds a way to win at Penn State, A&M or LSU or beat either Georgia or Alabama in Jordan-Hare. And the details from this scrimmage report were hardly encouraging.
Moves and bluffs
A lot was made over the weekend about the ACC, Big 10 and Pac 12 looking at alliances to combat the Super SEC that is coming when Texas and Oklahoma join in the not-too-distant future.
OK. Not sure how that would work. Here’s Dennis Dodd’s take on it, though.
But there are too many unknowns currently, even with a few of the murky scenarios becoming a little more clear.