ASTRAL GEEKS S09E03: Grit

“Even a bullet to the head isn’t enough to take me out of the game!”

“It’s like if you were taking AP Spanish all year and you showed up on Wednesday and someone told you you have an AP French exam on Sunday.”

-former aerospace engineering major Josh Dobbs, talking about the experience of playing quarterback for a Vikings offense he had barely practiced with, running a playbook he’d barely even glimpsed, and throwing to guys whose names he didn’t know.

Dobbs was a last minute trade-deadline band-aid QB for the Vikings, who had just lost Kirk Cousins for the remainder of 2023 and, at 4-4, apparently weren’t yet ready to call it quits on the season. Dobbs was traded from the Cardinals on Tuesday. He had his first practice with his new team on Wednesday, and over that week gradually became acquainted with the offense. However, since rookie Jaren Hall was all set to be the starter for Week 1, Dobbs never took a single rep with the first-team offense (!!!). The first time he took a snap from center Garrett Bradbury was on the field, 45 seconds into the second quarter of a 3-3 tie game with the Falcons. He had stepped in to replace Hall, who’d been concussed on the previous drive. Two plays later, Dobbs, flustered and clearly way out of his depth, gave up a safety. On two of his next three drives he fumbled away the ball. And just like that, the Vikings looked to be in for an extremely long and painful morning.

Except all of a sudden, with Kevin O’ Connell’s voice in his headset, breaking down each play to its essential parts, and players  in the huddle showing him routes on their palm like they were a gaggle of kids playing ball in the street, Dobbs pulled out of the nose dive and began, well, kicking complete ass.  Though he went 20 for 30 for a measly 158 yards, he tossed two touchdowns (to guys whose names he did not know). He added 66 yards rushing and another TD on the ground. Once he got his sea legs, throughout the second half he looked poised and sharp, using the threat of his running ability to buy time for precise short area passes that slowly matriculated down the field. He capped off this astonishing performance with a 90-second, ice-in-his-veins, come-from-behind game-winning drive that included a heart-stopping fourth and seven conversion where he yanked free of a defender’s grasp and scrambled for the first. 

Now, one mustn’t forget that he was facing a Falcons team coached by none other than King Dipshit Artie Smith. Yes, that Arthur Smith – the once-but-no-longer mustachioed Nepo Goober who lives to antagonize the press (and Kurt Warner) and refuses to play his supposed generational talent of an RB because… let’s see…. uh, he hates fantasy football?  Thus, it goes without saying that maybe the upcoming teams on the schedule will present more of a challenge to the Dobbs-led Vikings. (Actually, after the Saints in Week 10 they have a very winnable slate of the Broncos, Bears, and Raiders – Go Dobbs Mob!).

So I guess for the foreseeable future the real question for Dobbs is going to be now that he knows everybody’s name and has a basic grasp of the playbook – will that be an advantage or disadvantage? I say, just to be safe, he has to go out there wearing a blindfold, with twenty thumbtacks pressed into the soles of his feet. Kid’s gonna be unstoppable!

“Well, if you really want an answer, you pathetic, devil-worshipping scumwhore, I shaved it because I’d already sucked all the leftover soup out of it and I didn’t need it anymore. I’ve got plenty of soup at home in the cupboard.”

“Smell it. Any questions?”

-Uh, apparently professional shitdick Josh McDaniels, according to former Broncos tight end Nate Jackson in Defector.

What is he referring to, you ask? Why, Tom Brady’s unwashed jockstrap, naturally. The one that he stole from the GOAT’s locker during his first stint with the Patriots and carried around in his back pocket at all times. Apparently, McDaniels would throw it at anyone who questioned his football acumen and demand they “smell” it, thus solidifying his, uh, credibility.

Now, truthfully, I think ol’ Nate is shining us on a little bit. He’s giving us an arresting visual metaphor for what a petty, disgusting little toad McDicklehead was. But, I dunno, maybe it’s actually true? In the same blog post Jackson relates numerous other stories about Mr. Beefy Visor Boy, his former coach, and all of them are presented as verifiably true. Joshy McJosh came in as the head coach of the Broncos and turned a well-oiled Mike Shanahan machine into a miserable, dysfunctional dungeon in less than 18 months — all by doing shit like firing running back Peyton Hillis because Jawsh McMotherfucker was convinced his wife was attracted to the poor guy. 

Meanwhile, the 2023 Raiders had a joyous, cigar-puffing celebration after drubbing the Giants 30-6 in interim coach Antonio Pierce’s first game. Except everybody knows what the real celebration was about. It’s not hard to beat the Giants, after all. The boys were letting loose because Ding Dong, the Shitdick’s Dead. No more “walking on eggshells everywhere,” declared a grinning, visibly relieved Hunter Renfrow. Said Davante Adams: “You know, we not going to light up cigars every single week, but based off of the changes that were made and the way this team rallied together, it was definitely warranted.” (translation: “Piss off and die in a wet hole, you petty little ratfuck.”)

That swollen roid head is going to pop any second. Don’t be around when it does.

Supposed offensive mastermind Josh McDickface was not only an appallingly bad playcaller, as a head coach he was just a monumental vibe killer. Mr. Beefy Bumblefuck was nothing more than another joyless Bellichick disciple trying and failing to export the so-called “Patriot Way” – the long-decayed football philosophy based on abject cruelty and mirthlessness, geared toward destroying the players’ spirit and making each day feel like a grueling 18 hour shift in a Siberian ice mine rather than the glorious, fun-loving sport they’ve devoted their lives to. The Patriot Way is the North Korea of football cultures, successful only when driven by The One True Tyrant, Smiling Bill himself. When it’s propagated by eleventh generation photocopy tyrants like McTrashbag and all the other Bellichick toadies, all it does it bring everybody down. Mayor McShithead represents everything terrible about the NFL – petty, weak, tightass, right wing assholery all rolled into one dude with a head so obscenely swollen by roids that it is eventually going to pop, showering bright pink soul-shit all over any unfortunate bystanders who happen to be standingnearby. I hope the bastard falls into an open sewer.

Happy for the Raiders. Time to have fun, take a deep breath, and maybe even win some games before ol’ Chunk Davis hires Coach Prime to drive this franchise right into the molten core of the earth.

ASTRAL GEEKS S09E02: Traylor’s (Sus) Tush Push Parade

I can’t read lips, but it looks like she’s asking Travis out by yelling: “Let’s get Fro-Yo!!”

“…coaching…”

-Justin Fields, during a Wednesday press conference following the Bears’ Week 3 loss to the Bucs, when asked why he thought, in his own words, that he was playing “robotically” and not like himself. To be fair the full quote was “Could be coaching…” but those are some big, juicy lines to read between.

“We just lost a game in overtime, Jeff, so how do you think the mood is?”

-Odds on favorite First Coach to Be Fired, Charger Honcho Brandon Staley, getting testy with Jeff Miller of the L.A. Times after bitterly dismissing the theory that last year’s historic Wild Card collapse against the Jaguars was still affecting the team. 

“We got our ass kicked…  if I knew, it wouldn’t have happened. That’s a BS question, man.”

-Feisty beard guy, Matt LaFleur, after the Thursday night drubbing by division rival Detroit Lions, after being asked why his Packers fell behind 27-3 in the first half.

“I just finished telling you. Next question.”

-Laff-a-Minute UberCoach, Sean Payton, after a historic disembowelment by sly nerdboy genius Mike McDaniel and his speed demon Dolphins. 

Mopey, irascible press conferences are as old as the sport itself (usually after a loss, but also Bill Bellichick exists). Historically, despite the grumbling, they tend to be couched in the same old platitudes and disingenuous go-getterism that plagues all NFL media appearances. Lately, much to our collective amusement (or mine, at least), a little more venom has seeped into these chats from coaches who have already lost the willingness to put up any kind of front. But it isn’t just coaches. Here we also have quarterback Justin Fields’ refreshing candor about the painfully shitty coaches on his (then?) painfully shitty team, which was in the midst of an epic freefall that included a 14-game losing streak, going all the way back to last year (and which ended this past Thursday – more on that in a minute). Fields didn’t have it in him to publicly spout the same play-nice bullshit anymore, though he wasn’t quite willing to go all the way and wax about his own shortcomings as well. Now that would be worth tuning in for.

These little outbursts are amusing and watching some of the most tightly wound people in the world snap, crackle, and pop is preferable to a litany of side-stepping cliches. But don’t get me wrong — Fuck these coaches. They deserve everything they get. That said, it’s true that most of the time the press does ask a lot of dumb questions, eliciting even dumber answers from guys who have no incentive whatsoever to be candid. Based on nothing but my own mild hunch, I attribute this rash of emoting to years of Dan Campbell fighting big, juicy tears after each of the Lions’ many, many ugly losses. A big, dumb, lovable bear like Campbell letting his feelings show through may be awkward for those in the room, but overall they seem to stem from the passions of a man who just wants good things for his team. With some of these other guys, though, once you start to peel away the layers, you realize that that obsessive drive to compete masks a whole cauldron of unresolved rage, narcissism, control issues, and a potent mix of dangerous personality disorders. I mean, good on them for forsaking their own mental health and serenity to be a pathologically overworked cog in this great sport we all love so much. But it sure makes it easy to dislike them all the same.

Which, I know, isn’t exactly fair. Staley, in his own right, has given us some genuinely exciting moments as the Chargers head coach. It’s not too hard to have some pity for the guy, who clearly just doesn’t have enough of what it takes to carry this trove of elite talent deep into the playoffs. Chargers are gonna Charger now and then, we all know it, but still, every year since Herbert showed up, they should be the team you really don’t want to see in the playoffs. Yet you, me, your dog,  that B.O.-smelling dude who does your taxes, your pervo uncle Morris, all the way up to Staley himself – we all know full well that come January, this team is invariably going to shoot itself in the dick in the fourth quarter of a Wild Card game that never should have been that close in the first place.

Morris would like to buy you young ladies a drink.

Meanwhile, Lafleur and his impeccably groomed facial hair seem like all right guys. After all, the man looks just like your personal trainer, and that guy turned you on to those “vitamins” that make your muscles bulge and take away the need for superfluous time-wasting shit like sleep. You know, at the very least you have to pity the man for all the years he was held hostage by child king Ayahuasca Rodgers, making his life hell for not letting him just “go with the flow and feel the energy out there, man, like Nate always let me do. That guy’s a true believer, you know, and who doesn’t love a guy that loves Goldmember more than he loves his own family and who also lets me just breathe through my eyelids and make magic happen with Davante on every play…”

Now, when it comes to Sean Payton… HA HA HA HA HA HA!! Truly, fuck that guy. Watching the Taciturn Taskmaster take 70 straight kicks to the nuts was the most hilariously satisfying thing I’ve seen in a long time. Look, I rooted for his Saints against the Colts in Super Bowl 45, mostly because I have my own pathological soft spot for the underdog (and that surprise onside kick was fun as hell).  I enjoyed Robert Mays’ deep dive into his dynamic and successful relationship with Drew Brees, and since Mays’ enthusiasm is contagious I too felt enthusiastic. But Payton has always been a dickhead. From tacitly abetting Bountygate to chewing out the poor delivery guy who brought him the wrong ice cream during his post-no-call-DPI loss-to-the-Rams-in-the-NFC-Championship depressive isolation to the recent bit of ill-considered candor where he called out everybody’s favorite Goldmember Lover for “one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL.” 

“Take a hit of these *ahem* ‘supplements’ and you too will feel like a G!”

Which, let’s face it, is not inaccurate, though any such conversation has to start with Hue Jackson and his 3-36-1 tenure with the Browns. However, regardless of whether you’re saying something that everybody already knows to be true, if you’re gonna publicly shank another coach, you better back that shit up with more than just a resume of past accomplishments. Payton came a-swaggering into Broncos HQ with his big fat salary and stern, get-down-ta-bizniz ‘tude, thinking his dirty azz don’t stank, acting like the Big Bad Final Boss… and just got absolutely leveled right out of the gate. Weeks 1 through 3 he got every one of his teeth kicked in and then in Week 4, barely managed to escape with his life from the Ass Bowl, which turned into a surprising shootout with the massively (then?) cursed Bears team.

In the midst of all that, Payton suffered an historic 50-point loss to the Dolphins, delicious payback for his monumental arrogance. A lotta people out there calling McDaniel classy for not kicking the field goal and going for the record at the end of the game. Whereas, by all appearances his ruthless and relentless attack on his opponent, running the score into unprecedented territory, was surely a message on behalf of the Dolphins and the rest of the league for Payton to either Put Up or Shut the Fuck Up Forever. Not kicking the field goal had its own practical purpose. Publicly, it made McDaniel seem like a real mensch for “showing mercy,” which after 10 touchdowns, lol ok sure, I guess could be called “mercy.” Either way the message to Payton was clear: I can choose at will whether to score or not score on you, Big Man. The fact that I don’t have to is the clearest kind of Fuck You there is. Mebbe think about that next time you open your mouth about “bad coaching.”

Of course, McDaniel and his Fins then turned around and immediately got ka-thwonked by a resurgent Bills team, losing 212-10 or whatever. After all, in the NFL what comes around almost always goes around eventually. Even the Bears managed to snap their endless losing streak with convincing style, kicking the ever-living tamales out of the C-Words, 40-20, with DJ Moore finally looking like the high value trade acquisition everyone had been waiting for. Dude had like 4000 yards and 17 TDs in one game, so good luck if you are facing him this week. 

Payton, meanwhile, is still as mirthless and grumbly as ever. It’s not like I can stand to watch a bunch of Broncos post-game pressers or anything, so I don’t know this firsthand — but it has been pointed out that not once, from training camp on, has Payton publicly talked about his players in a positive, complimentary way. If anything, he appears to see them as obstacles, holding him back from where he wants to get to. If that’s the case, I see a lot more rage-fueled pressers in his future. And for me, that’s not exactly a bad thing – especially if he continues to take it out on Russ.

ASTRAL GEEKS S09E01: Gouge Away

There goes my hero… (jk)

“I would argue there is no better feeling in fantasy football than your kicker having one of those random 30-point games. It’s better than any other outcome. It’s better than your quarterback throwing for seven touchdowns or Kamara running for five. Your kicker putting up 28 points is like the best feeling in fantasy.”

-Craig Horlbeck – The Ringer Fantasy Football Show

Craig is also the originator of such gems as “There should be a whale tax. If you don’t make the playoffs you [the team owner] should have to relocate a whale from captivity,” and “Handshakes are hard. There’s too many now.”

In the fantasy community, when it comes to kickers there is the age-old argument between purist snobs and old school lovers of randomness. For a long while now the snobs have been winning. They would like to pare down the game of fantasy to just QBs, RBs, and WRs, because they want a streamlined block of predictable numbers and nothing more. Tight Ends are too shitty, get them out! Single QBs aren’t valuable enough – real fantasy players stick to Superflex! DST scoring is stupid (it is). And kickers are too random!

Now, I too am a lover of fine things and better ways of doing stuff. But I’m also a lifelong anti-snob. I too have flirted with the above ideas, and have played in a number of leagues that have adopted some or all of these more streamlined rules. However, not because I think they are better, but merely because I approach fantasy like I do every other appetite in my life: Give me the smorgasbord! I want to try it all. 

But when it comes to what I’m cooking for myself, in our home league we’ve mostly stuck to the old formats. We roll single QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 2 Flex, TE, DST, and K. Why? Partly because we got some old school cats who fear too much change and vote on any new proposals the same way rural Minnesotans vote on local ballot measures. But also because our roster includes a breadth of different elements and most clearly reflects, in my mind, the sport of football — without being needlessly complicated. In general, yes, Tight Ends suck. But they also add an interesting wrinkle to draft strategy. Standard DST scoring is stupid and boring, but defenses and special teams do matter immensely to the sport of football. So instead of going full IDP (again, grumpy Boomers) we addressed that by implementing dynamic DST scoring, which rewards defenses for the little things they do that affect the game. Single QB not valuable enough? Well, then we tweaked the scoring so that the good QBs are worth drafting a lot higher. And kickers… well, we just like the randomness! I tried a few times to get rid of them myself, but the proposal just got voted down every time. Now I’ve come back full circle on them. Football is a game of odd bounces, double-doinks, wide rights. So why not keep some of that chaos in the mix?

The argument around kickers has even extended to the sport itself. Remove it all together, they say. It’s not worth the potential injury, it’s almost always boring, and it adds extra time to an already long game. But personally,  I like the weird vestigial limb left over from football’s history and its origins in rugby. Football fans don’t quite embrace the ancient history of the sport like baseball fans do, but it’s all the strange little rules an elements, some incongruous, that make these sports so interesting. Let’s not just give all that up for a few more downs of running and passing, which we already get up the wazoo. America is already actively suppressing its own history in favor of the juiced up white supremacist view of its own supposed perfection. History is messy, and it still lives with us every day. It always more interesting (and valuable) to acknowledge it.

I saw Pixies the other night at Edgefield with Modest Mouse and Cat Power. It was a very sedate show, all of us onstage and in the crowd officially old now, but they played this song and I forgot how much I love it live. I’ve seen this band half a dozen times, but this was the year I discovered them and first saw them live. This performance kicks ass.

This video isn’t quite as good of a performance, but I had to throw this in for the fun visual things. Black Francis with hair! Kim Deal has always had that effortless don’t give a fuck coolness. Joey Santiago looks super slick with his pompadour and cool black Gibson and the cigarette in the strings, and then he flubs a note and makes a funny face. I love this band so much.

Football is finally back! It’s the most wonderful (and soul-crushing) time of the year, and to celebrate I bit the bullet and purchased Youtube’s Sunday Ticket, trying to get in before the $50 discount went away. Yippee dippity doodle. As a service it…. hmmm… I guess the word I’m looking for is… SUCKS. Oh yes that’s it. At twice the price of European Game Pass (which moved to DAZN this year, a streaming service that chokes off VPNs with ruthless efficiency), it offers much less. I already knew that it wouldn’t be offering prime time games. When it comes to those, it doesn’t matter how much money you paid, you can fuck off like all the other peasants (which I am anyway, having spent my next ten paychecks on Sundae Tickle) and go cram into a sports bar and get COVID and die a slow, agonizing death, leaving Youtube to forcibly seize what remains of my earthly possessions, as spelled out in the fine print of my contract. But besides all that, it’s cheap-looking, jankily organized, and weird to navigate, with the games all jumbled up arbitrarily like any other random collection of videos on the site. The whole thing is decidedly inferior to the streamlined user interface of Game Pass. Also, just randomly, at least two (not-local, mind you) games on the Sunday slate will just be blacked out with no explanation because, once again, Fuck You, Peasant. 

Now, the ubiquitous cutesy commercials all focus on Sunday Ticky Tack being the only way to watch all of your out of market team’s games, which is hilarious, since my very much out-of-market team’s game was not available. Fuck me then, and remember NO REFUNDS on your way out to the gutter, Piss Boy. But other than that blithering nonsense, their Money Shot Selling Point is the fact that you can watch (oooooo) multiple games at once with their Quad Box feature. Well now, if you are a sports bar, a two-bit bookie, or Bill Simmons wiling away an entire Sunday with Cousin Petey, Bonko, and Hark the Shark, I can see how appealing this feature might be. But me, I just use Red Zone like a normal person (also, very few of the quad boxes worked, because besides the Seahawk game, every combo I picked included some mysteriously blacked out game). 

And look, all I really want is a reliable way to watch the Niners every week that doesn’t involve 23 different viruses crippling my computer (Ha ha ha, good luck, scum-ridden Serf!). But I also enjoyed Game Pass features like All-22, condensed games, and replays on demand. Unsurprisingly, Little Tick Energy does not offer any of that. It claims to offer “condensed” games, but they’re really just the cheap 11-minute highlight vids anyone can watch for free (and they have Youtube ads in them, because of course they do). 

ASTRAL GEEKS S08E05: We’ve Got the Dudes

Art by Pixel NFL (@pixelnfl on Twitter and Instagram)

Solak’s emotional whiplash reflects in real time what the rest of us were going through in the course of that heart-stopping, high speed, off the rails train-car-full-of-exploding-zombies death ride that was Bills/Vikings. Stefon Diggs, currently the highest scoring WR in Astral Geeks (and the more impressive half of the Minneapolis Miracle, the former Greatest Catch in Recent Vikings History), had a robust 12 receptions for 128 yards against his former team – one of which was an utterly spectacular leaping, one-handed grab, where he snatched a high-flying Josh Allen bullet right out of the air on a 3rd and 15 that, unfortunately, nobody will even remember in a month or two. Because not only was it overshadowed 13 minutes later by an even more spectacular, more impossible, more do-or-die 4th and 18 catch by Jefferson, but an absolutely bonkers series of events that took place in the final two minutes of regulation time, in which each teams’ Winning % rocketed up and down as erratically as John Belushi’s blood pressure.

This all-timer had everything: A 17-point comeback. Josh Allen running wild, impossible to tackle in the open field, racking up 84 yards rushing. Dalvin Cook breaking off an 81-yard TD. Two elite WRs facing off, fighting for dominance (and yeah, JJ won). Two Patrick Peterson INTs, one to seal the victory for the Purple People Eaterz on the final play. Back to back failed QB sneaks – the first a foiled go-ahead TD for the Vikings and the second a Josh Allen fumble ending in a go-ahead TD for the Vikings. Elite displays of athleticism alternating with head-smacking ineptitude, all of it combining for 60 minutes of pure, platinum-grade entertainment. This was top shelf football, and at its best the NFL is unmatched in its ability to consistently deliver extemporaneous drama and surprise. I am routinely fed up with the poisonous fuckknuckles who run this league, but I must admit that I’ve never seriously considered giving it up. When it’s good, it’s just too damn good.

Now, let’s talk about that Jefferson catch. Field Yates immediately called it the Catch of the Century on Twitter, and a consensus seemed to form quickly around the idea that this had surpassed Odell’s legendary one-hander as the Mother of All Catches. Maybe you agree with this or maybe you don’t, but the reasoning put forward was that beyond the difficulty (using one hand to snatch the ball away from a defender who already had two hands on it and then to secure it, all while falling upside down and backwards through the air) was that the context was far more important. The pressure was cranked up by the dire circumstances of a 4th and 18 play with the game on the line, in a contest between two top-tier contenders fighting for supremacy in their respective conferences. It was also pointed out that while Odell’s catch was a TD, it came early in the second quarter of a relatively meaningless game that the Giants eventually lost, in a season where they went 6-10, rendering it less impressive overall.

Showoff.

These arguments are all fine and good, but as far as I’m concerned, Odell’s iconic catch reigns supreme on sheer athletic prowess alone (and superhero visuals). These days, our collective memory is cut so short by the immediacy of social media meme-ry (not sorry) and recency bias is so powerful that it seems to completely wipe away even recent history. I mean, it was less than two months ago that George Pickens made a backward one-handed catch so astonishing that it had people asking aloud if it had surpassed Odell’s (answer: not quite, but still worthy of even a Top 5 2022 highlight reel) and everybody already seems to have forgotten about it. But even if we do subscribe to the (very reasonable) argument that the import of the circumstances surrounding a catch elevates it to a higher level, then there are still a few others from this century that have to rank above it, no? What about Hopkins’ last second game-winner two years ago where he beat out three defenders in the end zone, snatching it from the air with his fingertips? That was in a game between contenders, and the catch helped beat (who else?) the 7-2 Bills and newly minted murder cyborg Josh Allen 2.0. (The Bills went on to lose to {the motherfucking relentless} Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game, while the then 6-3 Cards did that Kingsbury thing of going 2-5 the rest of the way and missing the playoffs altogether. More on that later.)

But if we are truly combining impossible athleticism and historic circumstances, the Catch of the Century has to be the Helmet Catch, no? I mean, its credentials are impeccable. It came in the final two minutes of probably the greatest Super Bowl ever (even if you don’t have it Number 1, it has to be Top Five at the very least), extending the eventual game-winning drive on a play where Eli Manning also did some heart-stoppingly impossible shit by pulling out of a defender’s grasp and avoiding getting sacked by at least three different Patriots before planting his feet and hucking it 30 yards downfield. And while the catch itself wasn’t exactly balletic one-handed flying god type shit, Tyree still had to leap up to catch it behind his head and then secure it against – well, his helmet – as he fell backwards onto a Patriot defender. And the visuals are as iconic as Odell’s catch, if not more so. 

Okay, so maybe you think the Helmet Catch is overrated (clearly, you are a spoiled rotten Patriots fan, but whatever). Then what about any other number of impossibly clutch Super Bowl catches? You could go one year after the Pats/Giants and pick Santonio Holmes’ gravity-defying, triple-covered toe-tapper in the corner of the end zone with 39 seconds left to seal the comeback victory for the Steelers against Kurt Warner’s surprisingly feisty Cardinals. Or what about Edelman snatching a deflected ball away from three Falcon defenders as the Patriots marched down the field on the game-tying drive after being down *ahem* 28-3 less than fifteen minutes earlier in the greatest (and most annoying) comeback of all time? Or does anyone remember Kearse’s bobbling catch against the Pats in 2014 that was so improbable that it made Tom Brady shake his head in utter disbelief as he watched the replay live? Sure, it came in a game that the Seahawks lost on the very next play (one of the most controversial WTF play calls of all-time), but in such a tightly contested match, that catch put the Seahawks within spitting distance of the end zone and their second consecutive title. (The hallmark of every single one of these catches is Collinsworth ecstatically moaning and exclaiming that he’s never seen anything like it before.)

Now, my point is not to diminish everybody’s fun in regards to Jefferson’s baller play by bringing up all these other possibly more impressive plays. People want to feel like what is happening now is the most amazing thing that has ever happened, that they are witnessing history in the making, and who am I to say they are not? If the Vikings end up winning the Super Bowl in February, well obviously this catch will be immortalized forever as a crucial part of the greatest season in the franchise’s history. But why not, just for fun and context, place it next to some of the other greatest catches of the 21st Century?

I have included down below the videos of all the catches I have mentioned so far (sorry they won’t embed, the NFL flags everything). It’s 1000% likely that I have overlooked some crucial ones, so please let me know what I missed in the comments. After you watch them all, cast your vote for which one is truly the Catch of the Century!

The Jefferson Catch

The Pickens Grab

The Odell Catch

The Hopkins Hail Mary

The Helmet Catch

Santonio’s Toe-Tapper

The Kearse Bobble Catch

The Edelman Snag

ASTRAL GEEKS S08E04: What the Fuck Are We Doing?

One man gathers what another man spills.

“There’s no argument… we’re going where Zeke goes. He’s that integral to our success.”

Jerry Jones, talking about how (snicker) Zeke Elliott (snort) is still the (lol, you have to be fucking kidding me) starting running back for the (har har) Dallas Cowpokes, immediately after a game where (I just can’t even) Pollard played in such a dynamic, explosive manner, running for 131 yards and 3 TDs, that it proved without a doubt what any of us who have seen the Cowshits play for more than fifteen minutes over the last year and half have already known, which is that Zeke has long been washed and Pollard is a fucking superstar.

The man was either 27 Johnnie Walker Blues in when he said this or he’d recently had a series of mini-strokes from having poured an entire shaker of salt on his daily Sausage McMuffin, which is basically a greasy slab of sodium, every morning for the past 225 years, or however fuck long he has been alive — because how the fuck else do explain this absolute blithering nonsense? Who the fuck asked him anyway? He’s not the coach. And even if he was, he better get those fucking cataracts checked because you could be standing on the moon and still see that Pollard is at least a thousand times better than that mediocre, woman-beating piece of shit with the gratuitous half-shirts, idiotic belly tattoo, and stupid nose-ring.

Oh my God. Why does this make me so fucking mad? I have loathed the Reverse Cowgirls for 40 straight years and actively root against them every chance I get. Jerry being an absolute stubborn senile dumbass and stifling the potential for a wildly dynamic offense because he somehow thinks he will look less stupid that way, should be both hilarious and encouraged. “Do it!” I should shout from the rooftops. Waste your quarterback’s prime even more after you already pissed away a good chunk of it making him play with Jason Garrett for 42 interminable seasons, then hired Mike McDumbfuck to call a run play with 12 seconds left on the clock in the Division round, no timeouts, at midfield, blowing yet another chance for Dem Butt Boyz to go deep into the playoffs. I should be happy that these Texas-sized numbnuts are going to once again torpedo this team and alienate all their obnoxious fans, while getting the fuck out of my team’s way in the NFC, all because Jumpin’ Jerry’s fragile pride demands that he micromanage every single thing his drunken, shriveled pervert hands ever touch until he inevitably suffocates it to death.

But it just fucking boils my blood even thinking about it. First of all, I absolutely detest that drawly old crone and every word that comes out of his mouth in that little bullshit folksy accent. But more so I loathe what he represents. This is a situation where it is oh so clear that the NFL is run by the dumbest fucking people alive. Mega billionaires ruined this fucking country and they will forever do everything in their power to ruin the sport of football. It is monumentally infuriating. Pollard is a genuine talent who for absolutely no good reason has been stuck as a backup behind somebody who very clearly sucks and is never going to unsuck, and he finally gets a chance to show you exactly how amazing he is and you tell him to go fuck off back into his dark, grimy little hole?

I dunno, man. I guess the amount of mega-rich jackasses in the world destroying everything good and real with their egomaniacal stupidity (just take a look a Twitter collapsing as we speak) has finally made me snap, because I feel incredibly violent right now. I am literally going right now to go carve a Jerry Jones jack o’ lantern and smash the fuck out of it because I have no idea what else to do with myself right now.

Don’t worry, I will film it.

FREE POLLARD YOU MISERABLE OLD BAT!!!

“What the fuck are we doing?”

-Aaron Rodgers to Romeo Doubs (and lip-readers everywhere), after the rookie dropped a third down pass in the midst of a 23-21 loss to Taylor Heinicke and the Washingtonian Commies in Week 7.

I’m gonna assume that Doubs did not answer this question to the disgruntled QB’s satisfaction, but I feel like I can take a pretty good crack at it: Ahem. Uh, let’s see… spiraling the drain of an already lost season after only 7 games [ed: Now 8, after getting hammered into paste by the Bills the following week]? Losing to Daniel Jones, Zach Wilson, and Taylor Heinecke in consecutive weeks? Hmmm. Oh yeah, averaging only 18.7 points per game, despite having entered the season as the betting favorite to win the top seed in the NFC? Drunktexting Taylor Swift lyrics to Davante at 3 AM? Smoking spice and trying to figure out where Hulk Hogan and Kelsey Grammer fit into the Illuminati? Finally acting our age, which is  a creaky and perpetually sourpussed 38 going on 90? And obviously, I don’t mean maturity-wise, as our QB’s’ interests, critical thinking skills, and ability to emotionally regulate seem to be on par with this writer’s – when he was a sixteen year-old Deadhead dropping acid and skipping 5th and 6th period to go play guitar in the woods every other week. No I’m referring to the inevitable entropy of aging. As in “things fall apart, the center cannot hold.” (Yeats, via Chinua Achebe – aw shit, he’s getting all collegiate again.) As in: “He not busy being born is busy going from back-to-back MVP seasons to being 27th in QBR and looking on the sideline like he’d rather be getting his nuts waxed by a chimpanzee than to have to throw the ball to another generically ineffectual MVS clone ever again.” (My absolute favorite Bob Dylan lyric.)

It’s miserable to watch. Not because it’s the Packers, because obviously, fuck the Packers with a 2 by 4 full of splinters. And not even because I drafted Rodgers in one of my leagues, hoping to mine another late round QB steal for a three’s a charm MVP season (MVP of Ass, maybe). Football just sucks more when one of the most talented QBs to ever play the game and several of his generational compatriots – Brady, Ryan, Wilson, Stafford – all seem to be hitting the wall at once. Look, we all saw this coming at some point. But I’m not sure any of us were ready for it to happen quite like this. Brady tricked us all into forgetting that getting your ass beat all day by superhuman beasts who are literally half your age has a clear and finite expiration date — and it usually comes on a lot quicker than any of us ever expect. Lest we forget, in the course of 12 months, Peyton Manning went from having one of the greatest QB seasons ever to looking like grandpa Matt Damon shaking and weeping in a cemetery at the end of Saving Private Ryan. 

Once again, despite having fervently rooted against most of these guys in nearly every game I’ve watched them play (with few notable exceptions) and generally disliking them as people, there’s no real pleasure in watching them fall apart like this… Okay, that’s not entirely true. Wilson’s evolution into his pure unadulterated Super Kook Final Form as he becomes more and more of a liability at quarterback has been one of the 2022 season’s most entertaining storylines. And watching Brady and Rodgers frisbee Microsoft Surfaces at the heads of random assistants and scream at their teammates like a couple of elderly royals chastising the help has certainly inspired a schadenfreude-laced chuckle or two.

But in particular, whatever Brady is going through right now is not the kind of thing I would wish on… well, even him. As a recovering addict myself, I feel pretty confident saying that the guy is behaving like a straight up junkie. Addicts consume their drug at the expense of everything else in their life. And it only gets worse when the drug no longer works the way it used to. In the depths of end-stage alcoholism, you get no pleasure or relief from drinking, which only makes you drink more in the insane hope that you might find even the tiniest bit of either. Every alcoholic’s self-annihilating quest comes from chasing the ease and comfort of that first drink, when troubles melt away and the world and its possibilities open up wide. But in the end, all we ever find is tragedy and oblivion. The insidiousness of addiction is that it is not only a fatal obsession, but as it destroys everything in a person’s life it becomes one’s only purpose for existing. We drink to live and we only live to drink.

“Let me throw just one more pass. I’ll give you the best handy you ever had. I just need to touch the football one more time.”

If you substitute football for booze, does this not sound exactly like our man? The guy has had more success than anyone who ever played the game, and yet it’s still never enough. Except the harder he tries, the further away he gets from how football used to make him feel. Now he’s determined to wring every drop of dignity and respectability from his career, as long as he can get just a little more juice. He begrudgingly “retired” after last season, and then like a drunk who has yet to admit his own powerlessness, he relapsed after only forty days. That was the final straw that broke his marriage, and now he is divorced from his beautiful wife and estranged from his family. And for what? To be stuck on a 3-5 team with an O-line he can’t trust and receivers who routinely drop touchdown passes, out there scrambling about like that 102 year-old Thai man who went viral for running the 100 meter “dash” in a fleet 27 seconds. The dude is at rock bottom, which would be when any sane person would quit for good. Go home and try to salvage what little is left of life outside of football.

Not ol’ TB12. Now that his family is out of the picture, he may keep at it till he’s fifty, out there thin as a sheet of paper, wearing adult diapers, and bleeding from every orifice, and hell, who’s gonna tell him no? The NFL is like the all-time enabler organization that ever existed. You know fuckin Jerry Jones will hire him in 2025 and never let him quit: “Tom’s our guy for forever and a day, ain’t a dog-diggity thang gone’ change that. Not even when he gets to poopin’ his adult man-diapey more than I do, which is pretty frickin’ often.”

*sharts and fills his diaper* *screams at the top of his lungs* *23 year-old super model dressed as a slutty nurse enters the room to help him change it* *weeps, remembering the time his own fans murdered his best friend Zeke in cold blood so that they could finally see their team get more than 35 yards rushing per game*

ASTRAL GEEKS S08E03: The History of Violence

You know when the guy who fumbles five times a game is looking at you like this, yer Cooked.

“Quarterback.”

-Ron Rivera, coach of the Washington C-Words, when asked why the other teams in the NFC East were further ahead in terms of successful development, rebuilding, and… well, winning.

LO fucking L. Rivera went on to say some sort of nice things about his QB, I guess, but not really. The other three teams are a combined 13-2 while the C-Words are 1-4 and he just looked that motherfucker dead in the eye and said: 

“Yeah, so basically Bob, as far as I am concerned, Cooper Rush and Daniel Jones are ten times better than the Number 2 overall pick that this godforsaken team has stuck me with (whose only locker room nickname I can say out loud on network TV is “The Ginger Trainwreck” – the rest all contain some really, just creatively awful synonyms for ‘fecal matter’ – but alas, I digress). Maybe he should go back to North Dakota and hunt some fuckin’ marmots or something because I can assure you that numb-brained ‘neck doesn’t listen to a goddamn word I say. You may have also noticed he’s determined to murder my entire receiving corps. Just throwing fuckin’ cloud balls to the middle of the field so this poor kid Dotson and Logan and toothpick man Curtis who can’t take another direct hit without all his bones exploding, are just floatin’ up there in the middle of a warzone like balloons, so some beast like Micah Parsons can just run along and yank those poor fuckers down and pop ’em right under his cleats. It’s sickening. I might as well kneecap each wideout with a crowbar and then dump him in with the lions at the zoo during feeding time. He’d have a better chance of surviving. Send this scarlet-domed pox of a QB back Wentz he came, I say. How’s that for a fuckin’ quote? Shit, I’d take Alex Smith with one gangrenous leg if I never had to look at this bastard’s puffy pink face again, I swear to God above. What’s that? Oh, I’m being rude? You try having a receiver corps so talented that Terry McLaurin is an afterthought and yet you find yourself miles behind Daniel fucking Jones, who is throwing to whom exactly? A couple of New York sanitation workers and a defiled headless mannequin he found on the subway? Years I’ve watched that wide-eyed Jones runt play so scared you could spook him with one of the latter Harry Potter books. You know when Voldemort is really rippin and runnin’? What?  I don’t fuckin’ know. I’m a grown adult, I don’t read that garbage. I’m riffing here, pig giblets. All I’m saying is I’ve been in the same division as this Weenie Jones out there looking like the kid from The fuckin’ Sixth Sense for sixty regulation minutes every Sunday, seeing dead people everywhere, openly weeping under center, and now he just hops on a plane and flies over to London and beats Aaron fucking Rodgers?!! Meanwhile Buckshot here is sad because I don’t talk in fuckin’ Bible verses like his bubby wubby wooby best buddy Reich? I swear to you, I come up to this walking sunburn last Sunday on the sideline to ask why he just threw the ball directly to the safety… like directly… the shit was so accurate it had touch, like he was delivering it special, just for him. And I say ‘Why the hell did you do that?!! That dude was clearly wearing a completely different jersey and meanwhile Samuel was standing ten feet away wide open!!’ And l kid you not, this little bitch just dead ass looks right at me, smiles, and says ‘John: 13:19.’ I kid you the fuck not! Like that is all there is to say! And then he just walks away! I’m telling you, every single day I’ve been calling Snyder’s 800 “Red[acted]” phone ( I swear to you, he still uses that slur like it was his alone) which goes straight to his mega-super-duper yacht in Serbia or wherever the hell that frothing psychopath was until recently, and screaming until the message hits its limit, begging him to send his assassins after either the QB1 or me. One of us is going to end up dead before the end of Week 8, I am sure of it. But anyway, yeah, we’ve got some areas to improve on. We’re working on them with Carson, and he’s putting in the work, and he’s taking things in a positive direction. The team is behind him. Next question.”***

***PS – Four days after the initial quote above, and inspired by questions related to the Snyder story referenced below, Rivera had a fuckin’ meltdown after the Thursday Night.. ahem… “win” over the Bears, shouting at the press for asking about the part in the report that implies Wentz was chosen entirely by Snyder, without Rivera’s input. The man is hanging on by a very thin thread.

The Giants’ practice squad receivers take a short rest.

“I could have walked in.”

Broncos receiver KJ Hamler, who is clearly missing Drew Lock something fierce, in the aftermath of the final play of the Thursday night loss to the Colts, a game I’m dubbing an “Instant Classic of Ass.” Danger Bus’s final pass to Courtland Sutton was swatted away by Stephen Gillmore, in an admittedly baller play, but as you can see in the link Hamler was wide open for the entirety of his route. 

Let’s Ride… this buckin’, sloppy bitch right off a 200-ft cliff into a sea of battery acid!

I’ll tell you one thing, at least Rivera doesn’t have to deal with Senor Mallet Finger. Oy vey, Yippie ki-yay, you poor poor Horsies. What a shitshow. Biblical, even. Right out of Revelation 16:9, as Wentz would happily tell you. A $245 million migraine for everyone involved, and while I don’t know the exact medical science behind it, I’m fairly sure that migraines are even worse at high elevation. Nobody knows exactly what to make of this situation in Denver, and what happened to a QB that only two years ago began the season as the clear MVP favorite. Watching these guys in the Red Zone is like watching a pack of toddlers try to juggle flaming torches. It is beyond painful. Obviously Nate Hackett, P.I. (credit: BS) is a big part of the problem here, but it doesn’t explain why Russ suddenly looks like the highest paid practice squad QB of all time. And despite what would appear to be clear evidence, I think it’s also way too simple to look at the Seahawks killing it with Geno Smith and then at the Broncos stabbing themselves in the nuts 20 times a game and say well, clearly Russ was the problem the whole time. 

But he’s clearly a fucking problem. Is this sudden downward spiral related to his shoulder injury? Undoubtedly, that is part of the equation, but does a torn labrum turn you into an idiot? The guy is out there making Zach look like the far superior Wilson with some of his decision-making under center. All he needed to do on that final play was make a basic NFL read beyond Sutton to see Hamler streaking wide open, a read he has supposedly made thousands of times before, and they go home with a win that should have been well within their grasp. Now, you might mention Hamler is technically the third read on that play, but Pusboy had plenty of time in the pocket to look around, and besides, it’s not like he was going to throw it to Jeudy anyway. Those two have clearly not been smashing subs down at Jimmie John’s together during lunch, but then again who is going to take up any invitation to hang out with Mr. Ciara more than they have to?

Has ol’ Russ cooked himself? Talent-wise, I’m going to say no. It is just too precipitous a decline in too short a time (something I can only say if I completely ignore what happened to Cam Newton). Is it something personal fucking with his head? Is Ciara withholding the yab-yum because he bought her a house with a way too high bathroom to bedroom ratio? Is he only getting four hours of shut-eye because he’s doing da Vinci sleep all night so he can treat his bum shoulder with electro-shock therapy? Are DK and Lockett just that much better than Sutton and Jeudy? Is Danger Pus actually only good when he’s scrambling for his life and chucking deep balls to a guy he has years of rapport with? 

“This one just says ‘Throw it to DK and let him do some lit YAC shit.’ Now, uh, Russ— sorry, Danger Russ — remember the last play like this ended with Albert O taking a 19 yard loss. Right. Okay then, you’re the boss—sorry, Danger Boss. Another shot to Courtland in triple coverage. Roger that, Danger Pus. Sorry… Russ..”

This all remains to be seen, but one thing we can say for sure is that the partnership between Hackett and Wilson is a complete disaster. It seems that the plan in Denver was to bring in a coach that would “let Russ cook,” which could really mean any number of things at this point – most of them bad. I think what that meant in Seattle was stop trying to grind out 20-14 wins with bend-don’t-break defense and Chris Carson smashing into people 25 times a game and let Russ huck the ball 60 yards to Tyler Lockett on every play so the games can be more like 35-21. That seemed fine and good for awhile in 2020, but then it all started to fall apart and Petey Cakes had to reign it back in to his little grindy comfort zone. Russ, dialed in as he once so frequently was, was still an efficiency monster, going 22 of 25 passing with 3 TDs on a regular basis. No longer, sadly, because I think what “Let Russ Cook” was supposed to mean here was Russ designs his ideal offense and Hackett, little more than a surrogate, calls what the QB wants on every play. If that is the case, then either whatever grand vision the Pus Bus has been seeing in his head that his old coach forever held him back from manifesting is a complete fucking mess, or Hackett is so inept that he is unable to make it work. I’m going to go with both here. Because Wilson might think he’s Curly Lambeau, but if he’s any kind of player-coach I’m going to say it’s more the Charlie Brown type. I’m not sure who Hackett might think he is, but I bet he wishes it was still the guy who gets screamed at by a perpetual woke-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-ayahuasca-party Aaron Rodgers, rather than have to watch Russ Don’t Cuss looking like a declawed cat trying to hunt as he whips a series of incompletions at the first object he sees in the end zone that appears vaguely orange.

Whatever is happening, it’s clear Wilson has earned about as much respect from his new teammates as the beleaguered Peanut Captain in the yellow ziz-zag shirt garners from Lucy. As Peter King pointed out, you don’t have unproven third receivers chucking helmets on national TV and talking shit to the press unless it’s a case of full-blown mutiny. I’d like to think the QB has plenty of good years left, and under more stable and dynamic coaching he can return to his old self (that is, everybody in the locker room resenting the hell out of him but putting up with it because he wins football games {and more importantly, fantasy matchups}). I mean he’s only 33. As ol’ Buckshot will tell you, that was Jesus’ peak year. Maybe he’s due for a Russ-urrection! (Don’t hit me.) I’m holding onto him for now in Astral Geeks, if only because Cousins has his own track record of extracting tears and resentments from everybody around him, and the wire is a collection of asbestos flakes, loose tumors, and fiberglass lint. But if he doesn’t put up at least two or three TDs in each of his next two games he is absolutely the first motherfucker getting dropped from Milkshake Drunk when the bye-nado comes. Hope he realizes that, and uses it as motivation to get his shit together.

ASTRAL GEEKS S08E02: You Know Where You Stand in a Hellhole

This game was a real ass-kicking.

“I couldn’t believe what I saw last Sunday. It was just something that was just astonishing to see. I’ve been coaching for 40 years … never seen anything like it before. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.” 

-John Harbaugh, speaking Friday about Tua coming back into the game in Week 3 after being (clearly) concussed so badly that he couldn’t walk two feet without falling down. Tua, of course was then subsequently cleared to play four days later in a game where he suffered such a brutal head injury in a primetime game that millions of people watched as his hands did the gruesome “fencing reflex,” a neurological reaction to severe brain trauma.

I’ll try not to get too deep into the weeds on this one, as you are gonna be bombarded for days and weeks about it by people somehow way more annoying than me. But as I am finishing this up the day after the Dolphins/Bengals game it feels remiss to not at least chime in. 

Mina Kimes commented on Twitter how stunned she was to hear a coach speaking so candidly about the situation, which just goes to show how far up its own ass the NFL is about literally everything. Harbaugh only vaguely hinted at condemnation, which he would most certainly deny if pressed further. He merely expressed the same level of incredulity that one might over any number of Nathaniel Hackett’s coaching decisions (which, admittedly is a lot). Yet, this is somehow revolutionary, because by nature, most NFL coaches are borderline sociopaths who inherently toe even the most detestable party-line.

Two separate neurologists apparently cleared Tua to go back into the game last Sunday, and they later ruled it a back injury (seriously, wtf), and the stumbling induced by a temporary (and  somehow not serious?) nerve response. They also claim Tua was checked for concussion symptoms every day between Sunday and Thursday. Which, if I may be candid (am I ever not?), is some all-time Republican-grade bullshit. I’ve seen every early-era Tyson fight (and most of the others) and Tua was straight-up KO’d. That’s how people walk when you knock them the fuck out.

Someone else asked on Twitter: “[T]hrow out ‘the doctor cleared him’… If your kid suffered an injury like Tua did on Sunday would you support them playing in a thursday game?” A lot of the responses were along the lines of “He’s a professional adult who gets paid millions of dollars, not a kid. He gets to make his own decision.” Which is also some all-time codswallop. Tua is an NFL quarterback. On a hot streak. Playing for a rising AFC contender. He’s trained to feel invincible. He’s never going to voluntarily sit. He’d go in to play with a broken neck and two broken ankles if you let him, and the Grit is the Only Thing That Matters crowd would praise him for it. He’d play with his skull split open and his brains spilling out his ears, and they would lionize the performance like it was the Bloody Sock Game (fuck Curt Schilling till he dies, btw). So he is innately incapable of making short-term decisions about his long-term health when every single win matters so much. 

His coach is the one who has to make the call for him, and McDaniel chose the win over his QB’s long-term health. The Dolphin’s first year coach is avidly denying responsibility for putting Tua in harm’s way, just as anyone who clearly made such a heinously selfish mistake would do. In that case, the NFL has to do it for him, but we know how that goes. They are only swayed by public opinion when it might affect their bottom line, and perhaps this is bad enough to qualify. But as usual, they’ll lop off the head of somebody insignificant like the neurologist, throw some completely ineffectual band-aids at the situation, and wait till it blows over and everyone forgets so they can get back to business. A mere flea flicked from the back of a monstrosity, fueled by a culture of denial and greed. 

Look, I get that people want to see Tua play over Bridgewater. So do I! It absolutely sucks that he shouldn’t. The 2022 Dolphins are a fun team, representing a franchise that hasn’t won shit since 1974. I’ve got Tyreek on my fantasy team. I too admire NFL players’ seemingly superhuman ability to play through intense pain and put their bodies on the line for our entertainment. But in a purely pragmatic manner, instead of Tua missing one and half games by caring about his safety, he might now miss a whole lot more. But even if he doesn’t, on a human level, these players aren’t robots. They deserve our empathy. Every NFL player knows that broken bones, torn ligaments, lacerated organs are possible consequences from the game. But a broken brain can destroy a guy’s life. The instinct to gut it out through any and all adversity makes the sport great. But sometimes we gotta care enough about these guys to protect them from their own greatness.

“That’s Tom Brady, what do you want me to do?”

-Bucs WR Mike Evans to the refs that threw him out of the game against New Orleans, after he charged into the middle of a quickly escalating fracas that the 5-years-from-qualifying-for-AARP QB was in the midst of, and leveled his arch-nemesis, Saints Corner Marshon Lattimore, setting off a full-fledged, sideline-clearing brawl.

We’re all happy to have a WR/CB duo that is fueled by pure animosity on our screens again, aren’t we? Intra-divisional battles between teams that genuinely dislike each other are always fun. Guys who charge in to protect their teammates, even if they way overdo it? Good shit. 

But wait a second… Hold Up [*record scratch*] More importantly, are we sure that’s Tom Brady? Have you seen his (its) face recently? No? Well, here you go:

Reading the room like a Cyberdine Systems T-800.

Remember when Brady mysteriously disappeared from training camp for eleven days in August? The picture above is from his first press conference upon returning from the sudden absence, and boy did it roil up a pretty robust Twitter theory that he had used his time off to undergo some pretty significant facial enhancement surgery. 

Which is patently ridiculous, of course. I don’t mean it’s ridiculous to think that he would do such a thing, because Tom Brady is a weird fucking dude who has a very long history of questionable aesthetic choices. Making his jaw look like it belongs to a cartoon villain is exactly the kind of thing Alex Guererro, the Wormtongue of TB12, might talk him into as part of becoming The Perfect Specimen. Yet I still have a hard time believing that, barring a serious injury to his face, Brady would consider an elective cosmetic procedure a worthwhile reason to miss crucial prep time with his coaches and teammates. Sure, the HOFer has seen every little thing there is to see in the NFL, and camp doesn’t really mean as much to him as it does to literally every other player on the team, and possibly in the league. What’s new that Brady’s gonna learn? He knows how to win already, and he has even done it with pretty much this same offense. 

So sure, if anyone has earned the right to miss 11 days of camp, it’s the dude who has been to ten Super Bowls and only lost three of them (and oh what satisfying losses they were). But Brady also has an obsessive work ethic (remember this is a guy who could not even retire for more than 40 days), a razor sharp attention to detail, and a compulsive desire to get every single thing right. He’s not giving that up for a little bit of GigaChad vanity. 

The prevailing theory is, of course, that he left to save his marriage, which he imperiled by unretiring before St. Patrick’s Day even hit. Sure, okay. But I think that’s only part of it. I think it’s pretty obvious that what happened was that at some point during the spring Brady (with the NFL’s help) enlisted the military (big sponsor of the NFL, if you hadn’t noticed – politically, the organization remains firmly lodged in 2004), Boston Dynamics, IBM, and Amazon’s Next Gen Stats to create a cyborg version of himself, in order to save both his health and his marriage. It was finally ready in August, so he went to go help with the final touches before having it secretly delivered to camp. Then he went to hide out with the family, I think this is the only reasonable explanation, and also explains why he hasn’t looked quite the same under center. It certainly can’t be because he the entire offense is a walking infirmary and he is literally as old as Jason Alexander is in this picture:

“And she licked every single stamp with the poison glue on it and she died. And I was finally, mercifully free. Thanks be to God. Now, you might be happy to know I know I can get get more of this glue. You don’t even have to speak. Just nod once and you too can be free.”

ASTRAL GEEKS S08E01: Season EI8HT Launch – Isn’t It Iconic

“Football is the best, and if I ever tell you otherwise, I am lying. It is not a moral sport, but it’s also not an ugly one. Far from it. It’s a fucking gorgeous sport, one that will forever turn my head. And even in football’s worst moments, there is the field to redeem it. That field has been painted with lines and numbers in a hubristic attempt to give it structure, but within those strained boundaries there occurs a conflagration of violence, beauty, and absurdity that all fields, lined or not, host without complaint.”

-Drew Magary, in the inaugural Jamboroo of 2022

You know I heartily agree that football is the best, but Drew is even better. He is not only possibly the funniest writer alive, but when he’s being genuinely earnest he’s always dead the fuck on. A lotta wisdom and self-awareness in that cracked up skull of his, and he’s got a massively kind and generous heart, despite his tendency to publicly seethe over seemingly minute annoyances (part of his charm). These qualities only deepened when he nearly died of a severe brain hemorrhage a few years back. I was genuinely worried when it happened, as he fell off the map almost entirely and hardly anyone knew what had happened for almost a year. He is the kind of writer that you feel like you know personally, and I really would have been pretty shook up if he passed. No doubt I have cribbed a good bit of my writing style from the guy (as well as his arch-nemesis Simmons, who would blather on endlessly, outstaying his welcome well past any reasonable sort of threshold, just as yours truly is wont to do). But I’m not ashamed. Steal from the best if you are going to steal at all.

The other day, while I was reading the Why Your Team Sucks archives, I was struck with how happy I was that Drew had survived his near-fatal ordeal and was okay, still able to keep writing and making me and so many others laugh. So I wrote him a little note telling him so and a few days later he sent me a genuinely thoughtful reply from his personal email, which I did not expect. So now we are best friends and my life is complete. He lives in Maryland, so I probably can’t make the barbecue at his house next week, but I am quite positive we will be exchanging Xmas presents this year. I’ll let you know what he gets me, but I’m sure it will be something both thoughtful and hilarious!

Me at the Magary residence on Xmas Eve 2022. Just about to demonstrate the most annoying
sound in the world.

“I want to be iconic.”

-Russell Wilson, to The Ringer in August. 

We all know that despite being great fun to watch on the field, DangerPuss is a silly, silly man who is nearly impossible to take seriously outside the sixty minutes of regulation. Nevertheless, he raises an interesting question: What does it take to be an NFL icon? It can’t merely be success, because I think you could argue for a number of guys who have had more defeat than victory. Like, isn’t Cam Newton an icon? The best he ever got was that one (albeit astonishing) 15-1 season that ended with an ignominious loss to another icon, ol’ Peyton Manning, who at that point had a piece of overcooked macaroni for a throwing arm. So is it then a unique personality and style? To some degree, of course, but Joe Montana is clearly an icon, and outside of his famous John Candy moment, he is an exceedingly bland dude. Bellichick is an icon and his gruff unlikability and rumpled, oversized sleeveless sweatshirts became a kind of de facto signature style merely from the fact that the dude went to nine Super Bowls and was constantly on our TV screens. Sometimes it’s just an all-time picture that does the job, like Y. A. Tittle (the header image for this story) or good ol’ J. J. Watt (in our header photo on the site’s homepage).

But can you be an icon and have your entire team loathe you, the way the Seahawks did Russ for nearly his entire tenure? Can you be an icon and be short? (Russ is 5’11”, which is my height, and I strongly resent the implication that he is basically a dwarf, but nevertheless by QB standards he might as well be Tyrion Lannister. Minus, of course, the latter’s overflowing charm and wit). Name an NFL icon (a player, not a coach) shorter than six feet, and don’t say Kyler or I will force you to watch hours of his film, just like his coaches had to do to him. Does being a silly, silly man who nobody takes seriously any time you open your mouth in public preclude you from being an icon? I’m gonna say it does. Is it weird that I think Russ could win three more Super Bowls and still not be an icon? Maybe, but you totally know what I mean, right? Anyway, all that aside, Russ is my Astral Geeks QB this year, so if he wants to chase icon status by throwing for 6000 yards and 60 TDs, I am 100% for it.

Move over James Brown, there’s a new
icon in town!

By the way, did you know that Joe Namath, easily one of the greatest NFL icons of all time, in the Super Bowl he famously “guaranteed” to win against the highly favored Colts, completed 17 of 28 passes for 206 yards and threw zero TDs? I know it was a different game back then, but sheesh. Those are Zach Wilson rookie year numbers. Of course, the legend and icon on the other sideline, Johnny Unitas, was 11 for 24, for 110 yards, with no TDs and an interception. With those kinda stats, I wouldn’t pick either of these guys to captain my intramural flag team (I kid, I kid, calm down Boomer). Anyway, Namath’s team won 16 to 7, with the Jets scoring one 4-yard rushing TD and three field goals. That was his only Super Bowl. His audacity in making the guarantee and then backing it up, like Ruth’s legendary Called Shot, with the hipster playboy fur coat and shaggy hair thrown in for good measure, was enough to solidify his icon status for all time. Being that smooth in a sport full of toothless, monosyllabic ex-cons, where it was legal to beat the QB with a tire iron (oh, the good old days of football, I miss ‘em), makes a fella stand out. Of course, it always helps to get in on the ground floor of something, and he was right there at the spawning of the NFL empire. 

Well, this is the ground floor of the Astral Geeks Empire, Season EI8HT and shit’s about to get Madonna/Bowie/Prince-level iconic!!!! Leeeeeeeet’s GO!

Just kidding har har. I like that faded fourth generation copy of Lady Gaga just fine and it is insidiously catchy, but here is your real kickoff video:

ASTRAL GEEKS SEASON EI8HT LAUNCH PAWTAY

ASTRAL GEEKS S07E07: American Ball Juice

Newtonian Physics, as taught by Professor Madden

“It makes you feel better about America. The thing works.”

-The late John Madden, to Peter King in 1990, about the experience of traveling across America in the Madden Cruiser. 

Look, I’m not sure I have much to add to everything that has been said about the towering legend who was instrumental in creating the modern NFL, permanently altering the way we experience coaching, broadcasting, video games, the absurdity of Thanksgiving excess, and cross-country travel. But that’s kinda what we do around here: talk about subjects that dozens, if not hundreds, of other people with heaps more expertise have already exhausted weeks before. Nor are you likely to get much jaded revisionist straight talk here. If anyone in the world of football inspires hyperbole, it’s Madden. The man was hyperbole personified.

I’m not quite old enough to remember seeing him coach (though his sideline presence was legendary enough that I feel like I absorbed it pretty quickly through secondary sources), but his first Super Bowl as Summerall’s color guy was Super Bowl 16, the third SB I ever remember watching, and the first won by the Walsh/Montana 49ers, forever solidifying my lifelong Niner fandom (goddamnit). It was five days shy of my 9th birthday, and boy-o, it was a hell of a drug — fueled in no small part by Madden’s larger than life presence guiding us through the rhythms of the game. Is steady the right word? He was famously all over the place, a John Candy-esque goofball hired precisely for his ability to take over the broadcast by crashing around and bursting through the screen the same way he did in the Miller Lite ads. He might spend a full five minutes talking about sandwiches or Nate Newton’s steaming head, but you always knew you were in good hands. This was a guy who actually gave a shit about you, who truly wanted you to understand what was really exciting about what was happening on the field – not just what the guy with the ball had done, but what had happened with the other 21 guys on the field that made the play turn out the way it did. We are all smarter for it.

Teaching the world how to better watch and understand football is rightly lauded as his greatest achievement. In the course of his six-decade career, he was a professor as well as a coach, and he was a natural teacher, driven by insatiable curiosity about people and the world, and an innate gift for connection. He did it with his telestrator, he did it with the way he guided the design of the Madden games, and he did it in the way he talked to people. As young as I was, I remember the feeling that I was watching something new and revolutionary take place, that I was witnessing the birth of a giant in real time. He quickly became the standard bearer for NFL broadcasts, and whoever may have been second was so far behind they weren’t even in the same league. Because not only was he a great teacher of the game, he was a born entertainer. Too many broadcasters took an inherently fun game and made it drag. Madden always met the moment and somehow made it even more fun. 

See, I told you I wouldn’t have a cross word for the man. And why would I? As it is, I’ve never been one for the kill-your-idols posthumous piss-takes that are now standard online fare  – the “Didn’t you know that in 1971 Bowie used to glue small children together for fun” or “I know he isn’t dead yet, but Jimmy Carter is a War Criminal, so he might as well be dead and forgotten” type swill that pops up when the Righteous Truth-Bombing Heroes of Twitter decide that people are saying too many nice things about a recently departed legend. By all means, humans are complicated and when looking over the whole of an illustrious life, we should grapple with a person’s flaws as well as celebrate their triumphs and contributions, especially when those flaws are a glaring part of the equation. But this guy reigned over the sport I love (against all my better judgment, obviously) for what was essentially a half century. He is one of the enduring voices of my childhood and growing up and becoming an adult. Did he say some inappropriate shit at some point during his 85 years here on Earth? Undoubtedly. Did he glue the occasional kid or two together a few decades back? You’ll have to check Twitter, but odds are, probably. But I’m taking all the good shit he did (and there was a lot) and celebrating that. I’ll leave it to the people with more moral purity than I possess (there are lot of them, mostly slam poets) to properly smear his legacy.

A lot has changed since 1990. You’d have to have a worrisome head injury or live in the delusional fairy wonderland of Biden’s brain to say “This things works” about America in 2021. It clearly, uh, does not. It has been broken beyond repair by corporations, fundamentalists, fascist incels, burgeoning balkanization, and a weak, nominal opposition crippled by denial and cowardice. Not that we stood much of a chance, building all that hope, beauty, and innovation on a foundation of slavery and genocide in the first place. But you gotta love the genuineness of Madden’s optimism. Sure, it’s easy to love America when America overwhelmingly loves you back, but he doesn’t take it for granted. And he’s not wrong, in one sense. The political project of the United States may have failed miserably, but being out in it, seeing the vast landscapes of this country and talking to its myriad peoples face to face, you get much closer to the heart of what we tried to be; you can sense the depth of what we all share, whether we like it or not. In person, in the places we live, we can’t be merely reduced to the things we shout at the television when Hannity is a-frothin’, or which AR-toting Karens we follow on Twitter, or what we mark on our ballot (twice for Republicans, invalid hanging chads for anyone who is not white). It seems that way most of the time given the primary ways we interact with the world in 2021 (online shouting matches, Joe Rogan quackery, Hannity spittle), and Fox News and Facebook and all the other bullshit spewers of the world will continue to profit by making you believe it. It certainly seems easier to be able to write off 70 million people as traitors and fiends. If only we understood how much we really are alike, and how much we all stand to lose by refusing to see it. The only ones who win are the oligarchs. And they are laughing at every single one of us for falling for it like the “born every minute” suckers we are.

Licking the spittle off those lips is just like sucking out the marrow of the American Dream.

The obituary for the America we once knew and dreamed of is imminent. It is already being written. Our flaws are more than glaring, they are fatal. But I for one will long be celebrating what was good and beautiful about this larger-than-life, brilliant, too-good-to-be-true wayward colossus, and all that we lost in the fire. Lest we forget.

Let us not forget.

“You’re either with us or against us.”

–Bruce Arians, echoing a key moment in the aforementioned death spiral of our republic, and the continued calcification of the GOP into an ethno-nationalist death cult. However, ol’ BA wasn’t laying out fallacious groundwork for the invasion of Iraq, but referring to crazy fuckin’ Antonio Brown, who decided to shoot the gravy train golden goose in the face right in the middle of a game and essentially end his NFL career while wearing no shirt in 30 degree weather. I obviously don’t need to reiterate what happened. You’ve seen it. One thing the attention-whoring babyman excels at outside of catching footballs is a Trumpian knack for hogging the spotlight, lighting his own dick on fire, and slapping himself in the face with it insistently enough that people can’t bring themselves to look away, even when they know it’s in their best interest to do so. 

Talk about a fall from grace. Okay, “grace” is the wrong word. Mr. Koo Koo Nutty Fuckbutter never possessed any of that, nor any dignity or visible empathy for his fellow humans. But for a good stretch of years he was the unquestioned best receiver in the NFL, one year even going Number One Overall in fantasy drafts and supplanting the RBs that usually hold that position. Despite a long-time flirtation with a slot in the Top Five All Time WRs pantheon, he has repeatedly done everything in his power to sabotage his career and standing, getting kicked off the Steelers, Raiders, and Patriots, and acting like a world class piece of shit on his way to an improbably redemptive run to the Super Bowl with his buddy Tom Brady in 2020. He had a good shot at winning another, but his narcissistic, CTE-enhanced sociopathy couldn’t be contained, and he was already pouring the lighter fluid on his dick before the season started, when with characteristic short-sightedness he stiffed the poor fucker who acquired him a counterfeit vax card (Why NFL players? Whyyyyy? What is your fuckin deal with a simple, completely uncontroversial vaccine?). 

ASTRAL GEEKS S07E06: I Fucking Win

The world’s most poorly timed yoga pose.

“He was a great player, but he was a better person.”

–Bill Belichick, speaking about the late Demaryius Thomas, who died last week at his home from unspecified health complications. Look, Laughing Bill will blow smoke up just about anybody’s ass, particularly if they play special teams and they happen to be on the team he will be playing against this week. He’s also a notorious obfuscator of the the truth (read: he’s a fucking liar) and famously gruff (read: ruthless) with even the players he has deep affection for. Also, literally everybody who dies gets the “He was nice to children, he was a loyal and generous friend, he would give random homeless people the shirt off his back and the keys to his Escalade” treatment whenever anybody talks about them postmortem. But given everything I have seen and read, by all accounts this appears to be true about Number 88. A great player. An even greater dude.

I mean let’s be real, he could have been an unrepentant self-absorbed fuckboi who only cared about notching hoes and stacking paper and he would still be deeply missed for the magic he made on the field. It’s his prerogative to be a dickhead, and as we well know, he’d have plenty of company in the NFL. But he wasn’t, and the reason it’s worth mentioning is because this league is so full of Urban Meyers and Jon Grudens and Dan Snyders, we gotta celebrate the real ones. The people who genuinely put kindness and love into the world, along with incredible entertainment. Again, he was on one end of the ridiculous mega-upset Tebow TD, and he caught all of those passes from Peyton during a historic, magical run, and that is more than we could possibly have a right to ask for. But he is a Denver legend for much more than that, and a fantasy one as well, and he will be missed by all of us.

The 10-man huddle tribute last Sunday was a bit clumsy in how it was executed, but it didn’t matter. It had the intended effect. Bless ol Man Campbell for declining the delay of game penalty, cuz you absolutely know that Belichick would have dinged the poor Broncos for daring to expose their hearts on the field during regulation. The NFL is pretty fucking terrible at pulling off any kind of ceremony with real dignity and grace, but occasionally it happens. Peyton’s HOF speech was one and this was another.

DT came from extremely rough beginnings, but he persevered to become one of the most beloved players in Broncos history, and if the number of players and personnel around the league who got choked up when talking about him this week is any indication, he was beloved throughout the entire sport. Gone too young. Thanks for all the magic. Rest in peace and power, 88.

“It’s way more fun when you’re playing playoff games in December. Don’t you love it? The game’s more fun, right?”

–George Kittle, referring to the intense, gritty atmosphere of the Bengals-49ers game in week 14.

No the fuck it is not. Jesus Hippopotamus Christmas. Watching that game was like having someone yank out each of my nosehairs one by one as slowly as possible over the course of three hours while listening to Lauren Boebert and Laura Ingraham gab about how much they’d love to fellate a smoking hot .450 Bushmaster during the halftime show of the 2021 War on Christmas. I was extremely not content watching the patented Shanahan fourth quarter chokeboy playbook in action, shrinking up the offense’s balls and pissing away the clock while the defense ran out of gas and the 20-6 lead went up in flames. Of course Gould missed the 47 yard game-winning FG. Of course the Bengals won the toss in overtime and of course they moved down the field and scored on their first drive. Fortunately, the defense was able to hold them to a field goal, sealed by a clutch third down red zone sack from Bosa that prevented what seemed like an inevitable game-ending TD. Yet I was staunchly unconvinced that the stalled-out Niners offense could do anything but maybe tie it up with a field goal on the do or die next drive.

Well, pass me the gabagool, cuz just when I thought I was out… Jimmy G pulls a masterful, ice in his veins drive out of his ass, a 6 for 6 passing, 80 yard drive that ended with a skin of his teeth pylon score by Aiyuk. It was ruthless, Brady-esque efficiency that incongruously followed his final pass of regulation, when he literally threw it directly to a Bengals defender – who graciously dropped it, thus affording us all the nut-crushing agony of watching the missed field goal instead.

“I know it was you Jimmy Gabagool. You threw another pass into triple coverage after only making one read.”

These are both weird teams. Both are legitimate playoff contenders. Both have moments that make them terrifying for any team that has to face them in a win or go home situation – namely any time that Deebo or Chase or Kittle or Mixon start going into overdrive. Both teams also have a tendency to let dumb fucking shit like this happen: 

or this:

These two outfits are part of the big ol’ muddle of teams scrapping around the endless middle, trying to make it into the bottom of the top (Succession reference, not the last!). The cliche since about Week 7 is that there are no elite teams this year, but there are a whole lot of great and good ones with a few glaring flaws. While I don’t necessarily agree with this (I think the elite teams are making themselves known and will continue to solidify that status down the stretch), it is clear that the parity the NFL so badly wants to impose on the league is widespread this year. It does make it so a lot more games than normal are incredibly meaningful at this time of year. There are no easy paths to a playoff spot, no guaranteed berths. So yeah, I guess it does make the games more fun. But man, it’s painful when your team seems just as likely to beat itself as the other team. 

But at least we’re playing for something rather than nothing. And at least Kittle is happy. Kid deserves it. Can’t wait to be up 37-10 in the Wild Card Round with 11 minutes left, watching the Cowboys recover 4 onside kicks a row and go up 38-37 with 1:08 left and we go four and out because Jamycal Hasty runs three times for 4 yards and then Deebo gets a taunting penalty for not acting like Hamlet singing Robert Smith songs at a child’s funeral after he makes a first down catch.

Love this fucking game.