Fab 4
So, 4-3 out of the gate for the wildcard round is entertaining. Not overly entertaining - we're not taking that bounty and paying for the first year of trade school for the tots mind you - but entertaining nonetheless.
So, where do we go now?
Well, like old-school fruit farmers before modernization, pickers gotta pick.
Tennessee minus-3.5 over Cincinnati. I love Joe Burrow. Seriously. Dude has moved into the conversation with Herbert and a couple of others behind Josh Allen and Patty Mahomes on who has next. But the vibe and the toughness of this Titans team is a) undeniably impressive and b) impressively undeniable. That starts with Mike Vrabel, who may not get coach of the year, but will be in that CoY conversation every year for the foreseeable future. And if the Titans get a fresh-legged Derrick Henry back for a playoff push, well, look out.
Green Bay minus-6 over San Francisco. Let's see, one side had an official week off after closing the regular season with an unofficial open week, and the other is playing its third must-win game in 13 days. One side has Aaron Rodgers, the other is hoping Jimmy G is healthy enough to try to play. Yeah, I'd get on this one now before it goes north of 7 friends. And count me even more positive since Rodgers is openly discussing what this playoff run would mean to his legacy.
Los Angeles plus-3 over Tampa Bay. Yep, I can read your thought bubble through cyberspace: "What? The fat-faced TFP columnist has lost it. He's backing Matt Stafford over Tom Brady. In a playoff game!?!?! Someone call his wife, he may have started kicking back CoColas while he was making apple-cinnamon pancakes this morning for the kids." If it was Stafford vs. Brady with equally balanced situations, then your concerns would be valid. (Hiccup.) But these casts are far from equal. Brady's weapons have been severely limited by injuries. No Chris Godwin, no Antonio Brown, no Ronald Jones and a limited Leonard Fournette. That's less than desirable. Even more so is the ailments All-Pro tackle Tristan Wirfs suffered last weekend. Now, factor in the best way to frustrate and contain Brady is pressure through the middle with the knowledge that the Rams have the best middle-pressure presence since Warren Sapp in Aaron Donald. Plus, Sean McVay is a much better game-planner than Bruce Arians. So there you go. (Hiccup.)
Buffalo plus-2 over Kansas City. Gang, make sure the spread is presented and the beverages iced, because the Divisional finale at 6:30 on Sunday night is gonna be a dandy. And while I'm now officially on Team Allen - hey, I've never been more wrong on a predraft QB projection in my life so let's come full circle right - this one not only has the "Face of the League" feel in the Josh Allen vs. Patrick Mahomes conversation. It also has the look of what will be the league's next decade-long rivalry between these Bills and those Chiefs.
Wildcard week: 4-3 against the spread (57.1%)
QB conversation
So, there are several fun QB questions heading into this weekend, right?
There's the Allen-Mahomes one. There's the Rodgers' legacy chat, as well as the Jimmy Garropolo ramifications, which range from being the face of the 49ers to being a guy who is shuttled off to Houston or somewhere else to make room for Trey Lance.
There is the Ryan "Rodney Dangerfield, 'He gets no respect'" Tannehill angle as well as the Joe Burrow discussion which centers on this great quote from "Die Hard" when John McClane says, "Welcome to the party, Pal."
(Side question: If I started the 'Action movies at least a quarter-century old that hold up amazingly well' Rushmore with "Terminator 2" and "Die Hard," anyone got a problem with that? Discuss.)
And of course the biggest leap from compiler to surefire Hall of Famer is at stake on Matt Stafford's performances over the next few weeks.
But the one legacy that can't be changed, really, in these playoffs belongs to Brady, right? He wins, we kind of expected it. He loses, well, he's done it so many times, it's certainly not his shortcoming, you know.
It also pointed me to an interesting computer ranking crafted by the invaluable folks at Pro Football Reference.
They crafted a metric that evaluates every player through the prism of Hall of Fame predictor stats similar to what Bill James' system and Jay Jaffe's WAR Score for baseball greats.
The details and explainers on the main page are pretty simple and very thorough and include this nugget: Every player save one who calculated a score of 150 was a first-ballot Hall of Famer. The lone exception was Alan Page, who made it on his second time on the ballot. Could have been voter fraud, who knows?
This year, Tom Brady finally passed Peyton Manning as the best ever in the eyes of those metrics. Brady, who threw for more than 5,300 yards and led the league in TD passes at the age of 44, is at 259.32. Manning is at 257.80.
As crazy as it is to think that Brady has just now passed Peyton, this is equally as crazy: The gap between Manning and third is enormous. Brett Favre is third all-time in this statistical analysis at 179.96 with Aaron Rodgers next at 174.76.
That means the difference between the top two - Brady and Manning - and Favre at No. 3 is 77.84 points. Looking at the rankings, that is roughly the difference between Favre and Mat Ryan, who is 12th on the list at 102.6.
The next big thing
And I mean that literally.
Meet James Hart du Preez, friends. He's gonna be hard to miss.
The PGA Tour rookie looks more comfortable as a power forward than using a power fade, standing 6-foot-9 and weighing 260 pounds.
And he kills golf balls. Like a driving average of 373.1 last year on the South African mini-tour.
Yes, average. So that's almost 50 full yards longer than beefy Bryson's PGA-leading 323.7 average last year.
But don't let the big stature or the big swing fool you. According to what du Preez told reporters this week before his debut at the American Express event this week, he sounds like a golfing version of David Robinson in a lot of ways.
"When people see me, obviously they don't see 6-9 golfers come around very often so the first thing they gravitate towards is the long-hitting," du Preez told the media. "But funny enough, putting is the best part of my game and has been since I was a little kid. I didn't grow until late in my life, until about 16 or 17, so before then I never hit the ball far so I had to learn how to score chipping and putting."
Robinson credited his ahead-of-his-time perimeter skills as a 7-footer to the fact that he was somewhat normal size through high school and entered the Naval Academy at 6-foot-5ish before growing 7 inches after enrolling. A similar situation happened to Anthony Davis during high school, too.
So tee it up and let the big du Preez eat.
This and that
- The Name, Image and Likeness trendsetters that are Fresno State twins Haley and Hannah Cavinder continue to cash in. They signed with an apparel company that folks on workout shorts and the social media influencers and college hoopsters took 25% of the company and a board seat to promote the shorts manufacturer.
- Here's a story on everyone's favorite former Gators QB Tim Tebow, who was at a golf event at the famed TPC Sawgrass. Tebow offered a member of the gallery a swing at the iconic island green at No. 17, and if said spectator hit the green, Tebow would throw him in the lake. He did, and Tebow did. Not sure of the incentive there, shouldn't the bet have been, if the fan hits the green, Tebow goes in? Turns out the ball landed safely on and Tebow scooped up the fan and jumped in with him. So there's that.
- Side note: I played Sawgrass many moons ago. Hit a smooth 9 into the middle of 17 and two-putted for par. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy. Sawgrrass barely cracks the top five of courses I've been blessed to play. Augusta National is 1 (duh), East Lake is 2, followed by The Honors, Sawgrass and Moc Bend. Thoughts?
- My NBA consumption has been limited to this point, but sweet buckets did you see the stat line Nikola Jokic posted last night? In an overtime win over the Clippers, the Nuggets center and reigning MVP scored 49 with 14 boards and 10 assists and slashed 64.0/60.0/87.5 shooting. Wow. Talk about a unicorn. Is Jokic the greatest non-first-round NBA player ever? George Gervin is in that team picture. So is Manu Ginobli. Thoughts.
- So Stetson Bennett is coming back to Athens. And JT Daniels is entering the portal. (Side question: Do you think you can reserve a preferred seat on your second and third trips into the portal?) Here's more from Paschall, because, well, it's college football and he does that better than the rest. Paschall also shares that UT and Washington will start a border war in football in 2029 and 2030. (Side question, part II: Is anyone else tickled by the big-picture view of these games being scheduled that far in advance? Oh, I understand the need and the protocols, but looking that far into the future, how many of the head coaches at current SEC schools will still be at their jobs to start the 2029 season? Half? Less than? Just seems kind of nonsensical in some ways.)
- Here's some more details and insight to the powerful "1883" episode from last weekend. Good stuff.
- So who had the over/under in Alabama-LSU being the speed bump to our four-leg SEC parlay last night? Anyone? Good win for Alabama over LSU, much-needed win for Florida over MSU or really anyone for that matter for the Gators, especially without their big guy. Gutsy win for Kentucky at College Station. Side note: What we thought Arkansas might be is what A&M kind of appears to be. And Auburn predictably cruised.
Today's questions
OK, it's a free-for-all Thursday. And if you're so inclined, we have a spot of two for the mailbag. Fire away.
And there are a couple of open-ended questions above to chew on, and here's another one heading into what will be a much-hyped UK trip to Auburn.
Which is more impressive: That Bruce Pearl has Auburn to No. 2 in the country or that Pearl has crafted what most analysts are calling the best home-court advantage in college basketball at Auburn? Discuss.
As for today, well, it was a year ago that Joe Biden was inaugurated. I had hoped for more, especially in regards to his campaign pledges about COVID-19 and trying to work across the aisles.
Not sure how much control he - or anyone else for that matter - has ultimately in either of those categories, but they were his campaign promises. According to most polls, including this story from NBC News (and yes, polls fall into Twain's accurate assessment of their "lies, damn lies and statistics" almost all of the time) Biden's first-year approval rating is a dismal 43%, ahead of only Trump's 39% four years ago among presidents after year one in the history of the NBC polling.
Also on this day 14 years ago, "Breaking Bad" premiered on AMC. Easily a top-five TV show ever in my book.
American hero Buzz Aldrin is 92 today. Cool.
Rushmore of Buzz, and be creative. (Hiccup.)