“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:
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:
“It’s difficult because the Bills offense is so electric and they can score at any point. And so, you have to be constantly, constantly on. That is draining, to constantly be operating at a very high level. But that’s what it takes to beat a team like that. You have to be perfect and that’s the standard you have to rise to.”
-Dolphins Safety Jevon Holland, to Peter King after Miami’s (mostly) surprising defeat of the hard-charging, unstoppable-looking Bills in Week 3.
Seeing Buffalo as mortal was jarring enough, but it was how good the Dolphins were (Butt Punt aside!) that was the real revelation. In the first two games, especially Tua’s 6-TD firebombing comeback against the Ravens, they showed a real frisky, here-goes-nothin’ contender quality, even in a seemingly stacked AFC. Taking down the Bills put the entire league on notice.
Unfortunately, Tua’s aforementioned recent troubles have the potential to derail the runaway train out of South Florida, but we can only hope he will eventually be okay enough to start in again close to where he left off without endangering his health too profoundly.
“It’s like Deniro and Pacino are in a movie but not in Heat, like 14 years later in Righteous Kill.”
-Bill Simmons talking about the then upcoming “marquee” matchup between Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady in Week 3.
Whatever your opinion of BS, however much of a preening, obnoxious Boston homer he is and however wack some (lots) of his takes are, sometimes he really nails it. Funny thing, one of his producers at The Ringer, Craig Horlbeck, said the exact same thing a few days later on The Ringer Fantasy Football Pod, claiming he hadn’t listened to his boss’s podcast once his co-hosts brought it to his attention. Simmons also said that Al Michaels being matched with Herb Street on Amazon and Cris Collisworth doing color for Mike Tirico on ESPN was like the Pictionary scene in When Harry Met Sally when they were dating other people, which cracked me up. And every time he calls the Denver coach “Nate Hackett, P.I.” it makes me laugh.
Anyway, his assessment of what would end up being a 14-12 slog was correct. Both legendary QBs looked unsupported, beat up, run down, and generally over it. Unfortunately, unless they meet each other in the playoffs later this year, and both teams get their receiving corps up to snuff, we may never get the real Rodgers/Brady showdown we’ve been hoping for for years.
As for Bill, I’ve soured on him plenty of times over the years, particularly when he’s in the NY Times talking shit about his writers or he’s cramming way too much Russillo down our throats. But I guess he’s enough in my navel-gazing Gen X wheelhouse that I’m willing to let most of that slide. Sometimes I just listen to him in a similar way that I read Vanity Fair, like man it must be nice to be so fuckin rich.
If you hate him, I get it. There are plenty of reasons to do so. Magary loathes the man, and for sure if I had to choose, I’m going Drew all day long. But when it comes to his occasional dead-on jokes, just remember that Clickhole meme about the Worst Person You Know Makes a Great Point and move on.
The Wire is glorified Law & Order.
This video is perfect. No notes.
I was away camping in Week 2. Up at Lost Lake, on the northwest side of Mt. Hood. No reception, no wi-fi over at the lodge as I was led to believe (by myself, most likely). Just the smell of trees and icy mountain lake water and more than a little rain. Saturday night we had to run back at dusk from the far side of the lake to put on the rain fly, as the downpour was unexpected. Our tent was under some dense pine trees, so our bedding and stuff was only a little damp before we got it covered. Still, we were in a hurry and didn’t think that putting it on inside out would make a difference. Except… well, it kinda did. Suddenly, as it starts raining really hard and we are all bundled up together trying to keep warm, the poor shivering dog thinking What the fuck, you two are out of your minds, why are we here? when all of sudden streams of water start pouring onto the bed from various spots in the hastily applied roof. Turns out there were little seams for aeration or something that if they were the right way up the water would have just slid harmlessly over them rather than directly onto my pillow. After about twenty minutes of wet, angry grunting, we managed to stuff one of our towels in there to absorb most of the water and were able to sleep through the night relatively dry and warm.
It was great. Classic fall Oregon camping trip. The sun came out enough the next day to dry our stuff and it all turned out fine. My wife and my dog went swimming in the freezing ass water while I lay in the hammock looking at Mt. Hood looming over the horizon and reading about the California Gold Rush. The best part of course was that I didn’t have to watch a minute of football or constantly track my scores as my season plunged even further toward futility. Yes, I managed to hold on and win in Astral Geeks that week, despite a furious Diggs-led Monday night comeback, but all around it was just another disaster weekend among what has become the norm for me. My year from Fantasy Hell last year was well-documented. I came in last or second to last in every single league I was in, got smacked to oblivion in every best ball league, and though I may have come close to breaking even in Fanduel, it was far from anything that might counter the futile disaster of my entire fantasy existence.
I’ve heard (though I’ve never sought out the physiological science to back it up) that a peculiar mental fog creeps into a mother’s mind a year or two postpartum, obscuring the visceral memory of the painful ordeal that is birth so that she might be willing to endure it again. (Yep, I’m doing it. You can’t stop me. I’m making the comparison between playing fantasy football and the miracle of life.) I entered this season full of fool’s hope, believing I’d earned a clean slate, the bone-crushing trauma of a Fantasy Debacle dulled in my mind by the pageantry, the crisp fall air, a pre-season relatively free of season-altering injuries. Then all of a sudden it’s Week 4 and I’m 1-8 in my three main leagues and looking down the barrel of another lost season. Somehow it carried over! What the hell! I picked all the wrong people again. Taylor, Ekeler, Russ, Herbert, Mitchell, Dobbins, Rodgers… literally every move I make is the wrong one! I’m either getting my teeth kicked in or I’m scoring the second most points but playing the team with the most!
The great David St. Hubbins once said “There’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” So true. He also said “You know where you stand in a hellhole. Folks lend a hand in a hellhole.” Truly inspiring words to live by. I’ve been down in the must and grime of this fantasy hellhole long enough that it’s starting to feel right. Happy Gilmore might ask me “Are you too good for your hole?” No, Happy. No I am not. I feel like I’ve found my place. Look, I’ve always been a broke-ass wanna-be poet. I ain’t never gonna drive a new Mercedes or live in a mansion. I’m lucky if I can be fucked to comb my hair. It’s fine. We’re all hanging on by our fingernails in America, as it is. Living paycheck to paycheck, one relatively major health crisis or economic crash or natural disaster and learning how to put that rain fly on correctly is going to become a necessity.
And now it’s finally dawning on me after too long that I ain’t never really been all that good at this game, either. I mean, I’ve had my moments. I’ve won the regular season a few times. I picked Rodgers at like QB10 in his last two MVP seasons and found value with Odell, Kittle, Waller, and Kareem Hunt in their breakout years. But I never made even a pile of salty Skittles out of it. Not a single trophy, trinket, or prize to show for a decade of sweat and stress-induced mini-strokes. I don’t play on Yahoo anymore if I can help it, but when I do it loves to mock me. It’s like “As a manager you’ve never done shit to get anywhere near our much vaunted Platinum status, but once upon a time you were respectable enough to be Gold. Then you sucked enough that you plummeted to Silver. Then you dribbled down into Piss Yellow. Now you are Soggy Lint & Flecks of Ass Dander. We are closing your account because it is too pitiful to even have to look at you.” Coming from you, Yahoo, that’s pretty rough, considering their whole operation is as stank as garbage left out on a blazing summer day in Riyadh. But I get it. Do what you gotta do.
But I am not ashamed. I’ll say it, well, not exactly proud, but I’ll say it loud: I am bad at fantasy football. So bad. Like atrocious. A six year-old could beat me. You know what, actually, now I am remembering the time I went to a Hold ‘Em Tournament with my buddy years back in my early sober days and I was the first one knocked out. Bullied around and smashed into oblivion by this eleven year-old kid who played with his dad every week. Afterward, my friend, who made the final table, just looked at me in the street and shook his head in wonder. “I had no idea you were that bad at poker.” Welp, neither did I, I guess. I spose I’d always played against people shittier than me. Same with fantasy. Now that I am consistently playing against all you fuckers I don’t stand a chance.
Oh well. Every great story needs that guy. That little mouthy shithead you kick around for laughs. Like what would Sam and Frodo’s heroic journey be without Andy Serkis being so fucking annoying? He’s necessary, because it makes you realize how far superior the practical effects are to the jerkoff CGI overkill that makes this creature go, which is basically the only misstep of the entire series. So I’m the Gollum of fantasy… football. A cautionary tale about stepping into realms of dark power you know nothing about and trying to play around with heavyweights when you are really just a weird little mutated junkie fur-foot who strangled your best bud for a taste of Sauron’s Fentanyl.
For real, though. Life can be good down in the dirt. I read a story years and years ago, like in the mid 90s, that has stuck with me ever since. This programmer from San Francisco quit his job and hitchhiked across the country to Cape Cod, hoping to get there with no money, depending purely on the kindness of strangers. And sure, there are a lot of qualifiers to this that weren’t discussed then that are second nature to interrogate now – in that he was white and straight and male and could have given up at any time and just gone home to his savings account – but nevertheless what he reported still seems just as true today. The people with the least gave the most. Families who barely had enough food to feed themselves or blankets and fuel to keep warm always gave him the largest portion and the warmest bed, went out of their way to provide for his comfort over theirs. They stopped to pick him up while the warm, fancy cars splashed him as they sped past. Truly, folks lend a hand in a Hellhole. So basically what I’m saying is yeah, you winners are dicks and us losers are the real ones. The good ones. Right? Who’s with me?
No? Fine!
WEEKS 1-3 BONEHEAD RANKINGS
Football is amazing. I feel like we have pretty well established that around here. We’ve had plenty of examples in the last few weeks of miraculous feats of athleticism and agility to prove that the excitement of NFL football is bottomless. We have Son of God Lamar running 79 yards for a TD in a game that was an unbelievable bruiser of a shootout. The Dolphins, as mentioned before, actually came back from this, what most teams would take as the last nail in a blowout coffin, and won this game. We have George Pickens’ pure, raw Herculean talent as he flies through the air horizontal to the ground and makes a one-handed snag in a catch they immediately had to show next to Odell’s and it didn’t seem hyperbolic to do so. (Check out both those links, it’s worth it).
Football is also cruel. Just ask Jason Street. Yet you don’t need a fictional 28 year-old teenager to tell you that. Trey Lance got in 73 minutes as a starter before breaking his ankle and going out for the season. At least we have Jimmy! Oh wait, somehow an even worse brand of cruelty. For what seems like the seventeenth season in a row (except last year when his 12 yard run saved my dumbass team’s playoff bacon) poor beleaguered Dak has horribly mangled yet another appendage (this one much smaller than the last one). Tua is probably permanently brain-damaged. The price these guys pay can be truly treacherous. Street, at least had a harem of hotties to mack as some sort of consolation.
The brutality. The adversity. The grind. These make the true champion. Rising above, pushing forward, persevering. You need all of that to reflect the magic off of, otherwise it can seem too easy.
Another thing the NFL is full of, in a sport that requires a lot of intelligence, creativity, and split-second improvisation, is some real, monumental stupidity. You gotta be smart to play this game, but the NFL somehow fosters legions of boneheads. There is so much to this excessively complicated game that even the smartest ones are idiots about certain things. Andy Reid is a genuinely brilliant offensive mind, but for years his clock management debacles made him the butt of endless jokes, which he only managed to curb by winning the Super Bowl and shutting everybody up. The first three weeks of games have been rife with Bonehead Maneuvers, the top six of which we are going to rank (very casually, I admit) right here, right now.
6. Coffee is For Closers and Dan Campbell Gets None – Dan Campbell has for the most part been aggressive on fourth downs and it has paid off. The Lions, who went toe to toe with the SB-favorite Eagles, losing 38-35 in Week 1, are clearly a better than average team and are able to justify his confidence most of the time. But an NFL game is 60 minutes long. You can’t just stop playing your game 58 minutes in, which is exactly what Coach Kneecaps did in Week 3 against the Vikings. Up 24-21, facing 4th and 4 at Minnesota’s 37, he could either go for it, punt, or kick a 54-yard field goal. Getting the first down would ice the game and Detroit would have a much-needed division win under their belts. Instead, he chose to have kicker Austin Seibert, who had already missed from 48 and has been suffering a bad enough groin issue that he will be out in Week 4, try to make the kick. Seibert missed. The Vikings scored the go-ahead TD in a mere three plays, and Sianara Lionara! Not trusting Cousins to orchestrate a one-minute comeback drive is far from the stupidest concept ever, but we still give it 6 out of 10 on the Bonehead Scale.
5. Call Off the Advance, Vance! – Remember when teams figured out last year that the best way to contain Mahomes (and other hotshot gunslinger QBs) was to play Cover 2 against him, and he’d get frustrated with the dink and dunk and eventually chuck it deep into coverage and get picked off? Then the Raiders, despite hours of game film, for some reason would stick to Cover 1 and he would rip them to shreds? So everyone was like WTF, just stick to the program if you want to beat The Chiefs! It’s how the unlikely Bengals beat them in the AFC Championship last year, for fuck’s sake! But here comes Cardinals DC Vance Joseph in Week 1 not only throwing Cover 1 at the kid 75% of the time, but blitzing on 54% of downs. Everybody and his uncle’s chiropractor knows that Mahomes destroys the blitz! He has a 133.1 passer rating against it! Even without Tyreek, his most reliable bail out during scrambles, he picked the sorry Birds apart all game long. He threw 4 TDs while being blitzed, and then tacked on another for good measure. Oof. 7.5 Numbskulls out of 10.
4. Nathaniel Can’t Hack It – The Broncos paid 487 billion dollars for their (theoretically) final Championship piece, filling the ever elusive quarterback spot with DangerPuss Wilson, who is clearly well into the downward part of his career, but nevertheless, as recently as two years ago started the season at an MVP-caliber pace. Then at the end of a pretty sorry slog between the Denver QB’s former team in Week 1, trailing 17-16, Nate Hackett, P.I. decided he wasn’t t-Russ-tworthy enough to get five yards. Facing fourth and five, he brought kicker Brandon McManus out to kick a 64-yard field goal! He, uh, missed. The Seahawks, a not-good team, pretty convincingly iced away the victory. This call was utterly egregious, among the worst of many bad calls so far in three games. Dude could be on this list 25 times. But really, his worst problem is his time-management. Or complete fucking lack of it. He has been responsible for countless (well I ain’t gonna go count them, at least – just trust me) delay of games and needless timeouts for shit like not sending a punt returner out on the field (!!!). This guy sucks so bad that the Broncos had to hire a gametime coordinator to assist him, which is definitely a good idea. It’s not going to help. The Broncos are fucked. At least they get to play the Raiders twice. 9 out of 10 and I’m being generous.
3. The Jimmy Orlovsky – What can I say? I have to admit I was happy we still had Jimmy G. I thought he may have used the offseason to grind himself a little bitterness and use the chip on his shoulder to step up his game. Instead, homey took ten steps back. Literally. Out of the end zone, for the kind of safety so rare and so dumb it’s referred by the name of the last guy who did it: Backup Lions QB Dan Orlovsky in 2008. To add to the indignity it was actually a good thing, because it nullified the horrendous fucking pick six he had just thrown. What the fuck, Jimmy. You gorgeous dim-witted fucking amateur. We’re done for. We are never winning another Super Bowl in my lifetime, no matter how amazing our defense and Kittle and Deebo are. Ugh. I fucking hate this sport. 10 out of 10, because everything sucks forever.
2. The Butt Punt!TM – Yes, Jimmy’s was the stupider safety, but the bonehead aesthetics of the Butt PuntTM will likely give it a longer life of infamy and thus propel it higher on this list. What can I say? It’s not really Thomas Morehead’s fault. Sherfield shoulda known the dude kicking the ball had a crazy short runway and stayed put. Instead, he got an assfull. Regardless of whose fault it was, this is some Class-A Hilarious Bonehead Shit. 11 out of 10!
1. Pete Carroll LOL WTF – Did you know that Pete Carroll went to my alma mater Redwood High with its most famous alumni, Robin Williams? Yep, that’s right! 100% fuck that guy. Now we all know Petey Sunshine (a Chris Harris nickname) loves the running game. For years it was seen as holding Russ back from his true culinary skills and efficiency with the deep ball. Well, The Professor (wtf?!!) is gone, and Petey is takin’ it up a notch with this shit. Against the 49ers in Week 2, on 2nd and 5 at SF’s goal line, he lined up 4 RBs in the backfield!! How novel! What could he be up to? What is he planning here? Better have a sharp eye, Niners, because anything could happen! Like say, a handoff to Deejay Dallas, who might attempt his first NFL pass ever and throw it in the general direction of Metcalf in the end zone but rather have it go directly into the hands of Niners CB “Mooney” Ward. Uh oh! Watch out, or Petey’s gonna get ya!! 25 out of 10 on the Dumbass Scale, just out of spite.
PLAYER, FANTASY OR OTHERWISE, WHO SHOULD BE THROWN INTO A LIVE VOLCANO
Drew Magary used to do something similar and I miss it, so I’m doing it now. I tried to crowdsource this from the league, but y’all ain’t responded with shit, so I’m borrowing this from poor Michael Jacob, long-suffering Raiders fan, venting in the Sleeper chat:
“Carr is such a fucking loser. I hate the Raiders. At least I have the Dodgers until they blow it.”
And there you have it, folks. Sorry this took so long. It’s been a hell of a few weeks. Hopefully it’ll be sooner than another three weeks till next time, but we’ll see. I get to a league roundup next time.
Keep Yer Powder Dry, Yer Lineups Set, and Make That Waiver Wire Your Beeatch,
tg
GO CHARGERS!!!!!!!!!!
ASTRAL GEEKS FFL 
