Weekend winners (other than Bama because well, it’s tiring)
Andrew Whitworth. The Rams starting left tackle is headed foremother Pro Bowl and may make an All-Pro team. He’s that good of a player. How good of a dude is Whitworth? He donated Sunday’s game check – $60,000 – to a fund to help the families of the Thousand Oaks shootings. He also was part of a group of Rams – Todd Gurley and Jared Goff among them – that auctioned off Sunday’s jerseys from the 36-31 win over Seattle to raise money to help those who have been impacted by the California fires.
Tennessee Titans. I have been undersold and even at times over-criticized the Titans for most of the season. Have not been a believers. Well, it’s impossible to downplay anything about the supremely impressive 34-10 win over the New England Patriots.
Tennessee Vols. A very impressive win for a program looking for positives. That puts UT at five wins, which may be enough to get to a bowl if there are not enough teams 6-6 or better. Still that was the best defensive performance from the Vols all season, and it assured UT of a) having a better record than last year and b) a win from reaching a legit bowl invite, which would assuredly signify Year One of Jeremy Pruitt as a success. (Side note: Wes Rucker, who is aces covering the Vols for 247sports.com, had this stat over the weekend: Under Pruiit, UT is 2-3 against ranked teams this year; UT was 5-40 against ranked teams in the previous 10 seasons. Egad.)
Fab 4 picks. Well, that was entertaining, no? We hit Syracuse (crushing Louisville), Georgia (beating Auburn by 17), Texas A&M (beating Ole Miss by 14) and THE Ohio State (comfortably beating Michigan State). We pushed on Alabama minus-24 (which for those who have wondered about our lines, that game at kickoff on VegasInsider.com was Alabama minus-22, but we had it at 24). We missed Cincinatti (minus 13.5) in a 35-23 win over South Florida. (Bad beat alert: Cincinatti missed a 36-yard field goal and had six plays inside the South Florida 16 – including an 8-yard run from the 9 and taking a delay of game on first and goal at the 1 with more than 90 second left – before letting the clock expire on our one loss.) So that’s 4-1-1 (75 percent) which takes us 43-27-2 (61.1 percent) on the season against the number friends. (We started using the half for ties to be more accurate rather than just throwing the push out of the percentage.)
D’Andre Swift. Dude is a dude. That is all.
Louisville head coach Bobby Petrino gets dunked by players as time runs out in the fourth quarter of the Music City Bowl NCAA college football game between Louisville and Texas A&M Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015, in Nashville, Tenn. Louisville won 27-21. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) Weekend losers
Bobby Petrino. OK, dude got chance after chance despite public miscue after public miscue. Why, because he called ball payers like few others. So in some ways, the scene Sunday morning, where the news on the ticker announced Petrino’s termination during the Louisville Coaches Show with Petrino scowling on screen were almost perfect. (That said, Petrino’s $14 million buyout makes it hard to feel super sorry for him.)
Zach Smith. Wow. THE former coach of THE wide receivers at THE Ohio State, unloaded every chamber in a Twitter rant at Texas Longhorns coach Tom Herman on Sunday night. Seriously, wow. This one – more than a half-dozen posts – has so many salvos with almost all of them claiming either adultery or alcoholism or everything in between, just go read them for yourself.
Atlanta Falcons. That was a floater at the worst possible time. Since we are speeding beyond the halfway point and starting to make Thanksgiving plans, if the Falcons realistically want a spot in the tournament, at 4-5 – four full games behind the Saints with seven to play – it will be a wildcard. Here are the teams with better records than the Falcons on this cold and harsh morning. Chicago (6-3), Minnesota (5-3-1), Green Bay (4-4-1), Washington (6-3), New Orleans (8-1), Carolina (6-3), and L.A. (9-1). Three others also are 4-5 – Dallas, Philly and Seattle. The North is anyone’s guess with the Bears, Vikings and Packers. Washington and New Orleans have strong two-game leads and the Rams have all-but clinched the West. (They have a five-game lead and swept second-place Seattle with only six games left.) So Sunday’s painful loss at Cleveland for the Falcons leaves them facing the real challenge of needing at least five and more than likely six wins in their final seven games. And if we truly needed to see the true impact of the injuries at safety and the ineffectiveness of the two recent first-round pass rushers, well, Baker Mayfield looked like Joe Montana on Sunday and Nick Chubb looked like Jim Brown. (And now for our Vic Beasley update. Beasley played 50 snaps on defense Sunday and one on special teams. According to the ESPN unofficial stats, he has the same number of tackles, assists, sacks and tackles for loss as I did Sunday. In the last five weeks – five – Beasley has played 233 defensive snaps and has one tackle. That’s hard to fathom.)
The end of Carmelo Anthony’s career. Dude is a first ballot basketball hall of famed. Period. (NCAA champ; career 24.0 points per game scorer over a 16-year NBA career.) But the end has been plagued by awfulness. This story has the computer model saying the Rockets would have a 20-percent better chance to make the playoffs if they simply cut Carmelo. Think about that. One dude makes their entire team 20 percent worse.
Mark Richt and Gus Malzahn. Guys, starting the year in the top-10 and then finding a way to lose nine games between you – Nick Saban has lost nine games total since the start of the 2011 season – is not a long-term plan for success. Or job security.
Now that’s improvement
OK, we took issue with Saturday Night Live earlier this year, primarily because of the mockery it made of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. (Hey every public official is going to take their turn in the satire spotlight. It happens and it will continue to happen. But we do not think any mockery of the #MeToo stuff is a wise play, especially with the way Hollywood and SNL has avoided the entertainment world’s shortcomings in that movement.)
Anyhoo, SNL actually impressed me this weekend.
OK, background: Pete Davidson looked like a buffoon nine days ago, which by most calculations is a weekly part of his schtick on the program.
On Nov. 3, though, Davidson was making a gag at the expense of a newly elected Texas congressman and former Navy SEAL who lost his eye fighting in Afghanistan.
Two days ago, Davidson rightly apologized on this week’s SNL and they all went a step further and had Dan Crenshaw on the show and let him bask in the Veterans Day spotlight.
To his credit, Crenshaw has handled this entire thing – down-playing it and saying “Americans are not a people that shatter at the first sign of offense” – with the grace needed by our leaders regardless of party.
And if we were going to list a real winner from from the weekend, it likely would be Crenshaw, who playfully took some shots back at Davidson and seemed to enjoy the moment.
Yep, on a football-crazy weekend, Crenshaw was a real winner. So too were we all, considering that this was not only the right thing to do, it was also a grand example of realizing that getting all bent out of shape and supremely offended is silly.
Here was Crenshaw’s closing soliloquy. (And for those wondering, yes, I remain out on SNL. Got the transcript from New York papers.)” There’s a lot of lessons to learn here. Not just that the left and right can still agree on some things. But also this: Americans can forgive one another. We can remember what brings us together as a country and still see the good in each other. This is Veterans Day weekend. Which means that it’s a good time for every American to connect with a veteran. Maybe say, “Thanks for your service.” But I would actually encourage you to say something else. Tell a veteran, “Never forget.” When you say “never forget” to a veteran, you are implying that, as an American, you are in it with them – not separated by some imaginary barrier between civilians and veterans, but connected together as grateful fellow Americans who will never forget the sacrifices made by veterans past and present. And never forget those we lost on 9/11, heroes like Pete’s father. So I’ll just say, Pete, never forget.”
Well-played all the way around.
This and that
– Want a fun storyline to follow this week? The Chiefs-Rams play next Monday night in Mexico City. It is the exact opposite of tonight’s San Fran-New York Giants Monday nighter. (Think about the preseason predictions and which game may be more attractive on paper. Jimmy GC vs. Eli and those weapons or the Rams vs. a first-year starting QB.) The over/under listed this morning for the Chiefs-Rams is 64, the highest on record since such records were kept. The previous NFL high was 62 for the Rams-49ers in 2009. Of course 64, is the over/under for a mid-level Big 12 game all things considered.
– Brent Musberger apologized over the weekend if anyone was offended by his Twitter jab at Elizabeth Warren’s ‘relatives’ with a caption under a photo of several Native Americans in full head gear behind President Trump earlier last week.
– Tough 13-9 loss for the UTC Mocs on Saturday. The defense holds Mercer to 149 total yards, but a fumble at the Mercer 1, a couple of missed field goals, and a back-breaking 91-yard kickoff return that set-up the Bears at the UTC 1 with less than three minutes left for the game-winning score was too much to overcome.
Today’s questions
Weekend winners and losers. Go.
Al Michaels is 74 today.
Rushmore of all-time TV sports play-by-play guys.