ASTRAL GEEKS S07E05: Thanks For the Lobotomy

Everybody Hurts…

“Pressure coming again, Josh in trouble … gets rid of it, fires it down the middle, picked off, intercepted by Josh Allen. Josh Allen of the Bills is picked off by Josh Allen of the Jaguars. Josh Allen of the Bills threw a horrible pass, under pressure again, and Josh Allen of the Jaguars was sitting there waiting for it.”

-Bills radio announcer John Murphy, stumbling ebbity ebbity ebbity uh Porky Pig-style through one hell of a mouthful on the play by play in Week 9. It didn’t get much easier for Murphy, or “Josh Allen of the Bills,” as “Josh Allen of the Jaguars” made his doppleganger’s life hell all day long. On top of the interception, he added a sack, a fumble recovery, and 4 tackles to his game log, all against the one time MVP favorite but now the clearly inferior Josh Allen. It was like some Looper from the future came back through time to hunt his mirror self all game long and finally put an end to him once and for all.

“Yer saying you’re here to intercept me, sack me, recover one of my fumbles, and tackle me all over the field, but not to worry about it, cuz yer really just doing it to yourself?”

This game was so bad for the Bills that in hindsight it appears to have been some kind of turning point in their season. Before it, their most recent loss had been a 34-31 slugfest with the Titans in Week 6, when Hammerin’ Henry was still healthy and steamrolling everyone in sight. It was a hard-fought game against a burgeoning AFC powerhouse, so there was little shame in it, and thus they remained the favorite to win the conference. They even tried to prove it by coming back the next week and man-handling the sorry Dolphins, though the final score was only a moderately convincing 26-11 against a team they had absolutely buried in a Week Two 35-0 rout.

Then came The Looper and the ugly 9-6 loss to the 1-6 Jag-offs, a dead-last in DVOA team the Bills were favored to beat by 15 points, and a game whose entire scoring consisted of 5 piddly field goals. Hey, any given Sunday, right? Even a top-tier team is capable of at least one stinker per season. They even did their best to wipe that vomit-fest from memory by going all Peaky Blinders and taking a rusty-nailed bat to a very bad Jets team, leaving Gang Green in a 45-17 puddle of blood, Bushmills, and shattered teeth. But then the Colts came and did the exact same thing to them in Week 11, thrashing them to the tune of 41-15, a beating so severe that even a casual viewer couldn’t help but notice that something was really wrong in Buffalo. Looking back, one can see that, with the exception of the Chiefs, all of the Bills wins have come against teams that currently hold losing records. It’s easy to look like a terrifying juggernaut when you play the Jets and Dolphins and Texans every week. But then a feisty little runt like the Jags go full-blown Psycho-Ralphie wailing on Scut Farkus (you don’t need a clip, you’ve seen it 4000 times on TNT), and expose them for the lily-livered frauds they really are. Then they let Jonathan Taylor run for 400 yards and 27 TDs against them, and you start to wonder if they’ll ever beat another above-.500 team again this season.

Uh oh, the Jags look like they are about to unleash the fury of three whole field goals on their opponent.

Part of the problem plaguing the Bills is the same one plaguing the rest of the go-for-broke offenses this season. One of the big stories in the NFL this year is the widespread rise in Cover 2 defenses, which has been successful almost across the board in containing gunslinging QBs like Allen and Mahomes. Hanging two high safeties in soft zone coverage works well to strangle  downfield passing attacks and forces the “win on every throw” guys to become methodical underneath passers, carving up the middle of the field with 5 and 6 yard dinks — a method to which restless, rocket-armed maniacs like Allen have a fundamental aversion. Instead, the scheme lures these guys into trying to throw perfectly into miniscule windows downfield in the middle of extremely dicey coverage, until inevitably they are less than perfect and turn the ball over. Despite the effectiveness of this defensive strategy, Allen actually is the most accurate QB on long passes this season, and has contributed to the highest number of “explosive” plays, according to Next Gen Stats. Yet the scheme is as much a psychological advantage as a strategic one. It frustrates QBs used to having their way with defenses, pushing them to think less clearly, force bad throws, and make dire mistakes, and as the QB falters, becomes angry and less confident, the whole offense falters right along with him. If there is no high-octane running game with which to right the ship, things can go south quickly.

The solution so far this season to the 2 high safety defenses has been to run the ball down the defense’s throat, but measly crumbums Singletary and Moss haven’t exactly stricken terror into the hearts of many defensive lines. Meanwhile, Big Josh wants to chuck it down the field to Diggs as much as possible, and failing that, run it himself (preferably leaping clear over at least two defenders in the process). He keeps waiting on tight man-coverage or a blitz, which he consistently destroys, and they are no longer appearing with any regularity (teams went from playing Man 39% of the time against him last year to 27% this year). He’s like a monster fastball hitter getting nothing but nasty breaking shit, but he’s either unable or just outright refusing to adjust to it. He wants to knock it out of the park on every play, and instead he’s striking out all day long.

The result of this is that the Bills have dropped to second in the division (as of Thanksgiving they are back in first, see below) and are in the familiar position of trailing the Patriots. Instead of being the runaway favorites for the top seed in the AFC, they are in the sludge pile, scrapping for a Wild Card spot with about 7 other teams. Which is not to say it will remain that way. If they can get a grip on things, and find ways to answer the defensive looks being thrown at them and start to beat good teams, they still have a shot at the division, and even the top seed (Tennessee appears to be slipping, while the Chiefs and Patriots are on the rise once again). They still have both games against the Patriots coming up, and if they win one or both, that will put them in a much better position to grab home field advantage and a possible bye.

But things are definitely looking down for ol’ Buffalo. And it started when “Josh Allen of the Jaguars” tore open the space-time continuum and terrorized his poor Joseph Gordon-Levitt self. Bills better do some serious badass George McFly shit at the Fish Under the Sea Dance, because their photograph is fading fast.

[PS — They toppled a Kamara-less, Siemian-led crapwagon on Thanksgiving, 31-6, a team that technically had a winning record before the game started, but all things considered it was an even less impressive win than the ones against the Jets and the Texans. The Bills play the Patriots a week from this Monday, which will give us a much clearer picture of who they are. At least they made a meal of a bad team they absolutely had to beat.]

He sure is baby! Just like old times. Makin’ big entrances, doin’ wild and crazy ass flips into the end zone, gettin’ the team fired up on the sideline, throwin’ only a single pass all game that goes further than 19 yards downfield, and most importantly, takin’ that muthafkn L!

I kid ol’ Cam, but really it’s good to see him out there again, even the C+/B- version we’ve been getting. We all wish we could see the old Cam, lighting the field on fire and making life miserable for defenses, taking over whole games and blasting off the charts as a fantasy QB. I miss that fuckin’ guy a whole lot. Kyler and Mahomes and Jalen Hurts are out there doing a lot of the same types of awesome shit and backing it up with much younger bodies. But there’s just something sleek and charismatic and reckless about peak Cam that nobody has quite been able to replicate — moving like a… well, like a panther I guess, flashing quick and dangerous out there in streaks of black and blue and silver. 

We are not hurting for fun, great quarterbacks in 2021. The new generation is special and exciting in its own right. But part of me wishes we could get a few more flashes of unstoppable 2015 Cam. I don’t think he’s capable of most of those feats anymore, or willing to take even a fraction of the brutal punishment he used to get handed on the reg. But give me a glimpse. Just one game where he is full-on balls to the wall superstar Cam again, and nobody can take their eyes off him for 60 full minutes, and he makes some starchy white bumpkin like Troy Aikman be all like: “The guy’s talented but I just don’t understand this hip-hoppity kinda football that Cam plays. Is he quarterbacking or break-dancing? Because if that’s quarterbacking, it’s not the kind of football I grew up with. We respected the game. And we certainly didn’t wear paisley scarves and designer sunglasses and big silly hats to post-game press conferences like we were on tour with Prince. I just really don’t get it, Joe.”

Joe Buck: (expertly letting only the tiniest smirk into his voice) “It’s a whole new generation, Troy… and it’s McCaffrey up the middle and he gets the first down!”

Cam is still 12 years younger than Brady, and look at that guy. Figgy Newton’s still got time for a second act. 

So let’s get this hip-hoppity party started!

ASTRAL GEEKS S07E04: Evil at the Crossroads

“My evil plan is to pick up Damien Williams and Kenyan Drake off the wire. As for FAAB, I’m going to spend… ONE MILLYON DOLLARS!”

“It’s Mike F’ing White. I said it on Monday, I’ll say it again and I’ll keep saying it: He’s a dog. He’s an animal. He’s a savage… Mike White is a stud.”***

-Jets RB Ty Johnson, referring to the team’s backup (not for long?) QB Mike White, who went 37 for 45 in his first ever NFL start, throwing 405 yards, 3 TDs, and 2 INTs, besting the supposed slugger to beat in the AFC North, the Bengals, 34-31 in a wild and unexpected Week 8 thriller. It was the first time a Jets QB had thrown for over 400 yards since Vinny Testaverde (All-Time Most Jets Name Ever) did it 21 years ago, and only the second time ever that a QB threw for more than 400 yards in his first start (the other being Cam Newton in 2011). It was the most completions by a QB in his first start ever. All by a fourth-year second and third string backup nobody had ever heard of, and if you had tried to Google him before the end of the game on Sunday you would have gotten nothing but White Lotus and Ned Schneebly results.

And not only did he win the game by stacking up these numbers, he did it by staging a late game comeback, down 31-20 with less than 8 minutes left in the fourth quarter, against a Bengals defense that hadn’t allowed any of the previous seven teams it had played to score more than 25 points. All with the help of a Jets team that had struggled to win just a single game so far this season with the number two overall pick at the helm. White got everybody involved — Michael Carter, Keelan Cole, Ty Johnson, Elijah Moore, Tyler Kroft (scoring the winning TD against his old team), Denzel Mims, Jamison Crowder, Braxton Berrios… a list that, with the exception of maybe the up and coming Carter, looks like a basement slush pile of spare parts and also-rans.

When Zach Wilson went down with a PCL strain in Week 7, the Jetsam… sorry, Jets… got some heat for not having an experienced backup on the roster, so they made an ineffectual jerkoff gesture toward acquiring one by picking up Joe Flotsam… sorry, Flacco… whose most recent “experience” was going 0-4 for them last year. Nevertheless, they were going to go ahead with White as their starter against Cincinnati. “We have faith in him,” declared coach Robert Saleh before the game. And boy howdy, did they. OC Mike LaFleur told White on Saturday “Prepare to let it rip!” which the QB clearly did (despite none of his passes traveling more than 15 yards through the air). Most teams would have gone run-heavy, tried to take the pressure off the kid by turning the game into a slog and probably losing 31-12. Instead, Lafleur, keenly aware that the Jets both had very little to lose as well as an unknown quantity behind center, just dink and dunked up and down the field all game long, Mac Jones style. Even after the Jets’ second and third drives ended in tipped pass interceptions, Lafleur kept his foot on the gas and White answered with a 107.9 passer rating.

The best part is that the Jets looked like they were actually having fun for the first time in years. Even the defense, 4th worst in the league in Defensive DVOA, got in on the party, forcing a crucial stop and a crucial turnover in the waning minutes of the game. Then, after scoring the comeback TD that put them ahead by 1, the Jets went for a two-point conversion to make it a three point difference — which they successfully converted by using the official Most Fun Play of the 21st Century; the hallowed, frisky domain of upstarts, scrappy backups (Nick Foles anyone?), and underdogs — the one and only Philly Special (re-dubbed the Grand Old Opry here, as it had been originally drawn up for use against the Titans). White handed it off to Moore, who went left and handed it to Crowder, who was in motion back to the right, and Crowder rainbowed it to White in the corner of the endzone. After catching the two-point score, White flailed with excitement on the ground, clearly having the night of his life.

As the Jets went into victory formation, the hometown crowd was chanting “Mike White!” at the top of their lungs, so loudly in fact that it took the hero QB several minutes to realize it was his name they were shouting. White will start again in Week 9, but it remains to be seen what will happen once Wilson is supposedly ready to return to action in week 10. It’s the NFL. Flukes happen every week. It is entirely possible that this was a singular devil-kissed Hallows Eve anomaly, and Satan himself is now in possession of yet another Western Kentucky White Boy’s soul; and Mr. White himself has already been transformed into 3 pennywhistles in a potato sack, crumpled over at the crossroads where the deal was struck (you can find it out on Hwy 9, where the Chick-fil-e and Hobby Lobby sit kitty corner from each other), doomed to dream eternally about the glory of his first and only decent NFL start. Or he could light up the Colts, another rising power in the AFC, in Week 9 and kick up an honest to gawd dustruffle of a QB controversy, which is clearly already a-brewin’. Yee haw, git yer fiddles boyzngalz!

Zach Wilson was the number two overall pick and unquestioned Jets starter from the moment he was drafted. He even avoided the same kind of farcical “competition” that Urban Meyer pretended to hold between Number One Pick Trevor Lawrence and… *checks notes* …uh, Gardner Minshew, who is no longer even on the team. Principle, precedent, and propriety (oh wait, who am I kidding, I’m talking about the NFL) would seem to point toward the starter, the assumed and hoped for “future of the franchise” (at least since the last “future of the franchise,” Sam Darnold, departed earlier this year), retaining his first-string status, regardless of how well his backup played while he was out. But then again, Wilson’s record is 1-5 with 9 INTs, tied for the most in the league until Mahomes (!!!) passed him for the lead in Week 8. 

Jets fans aren’t going to have a lot of patience waiting around for Wilson to figure out that throwing it to the other team tends to lose games, especially if it seems like they have a better answer right in front of them. They have been forced to eat vomit pancakes for too long — decades, really — and now there appear to be just regular old pancakes on the table. I don’t care how much draft capital we have invested in the VomCakes™ guy, hook me up with that Bisquick kid! I don’t think any fan is calling this the greatest Jets game since Super Bowl III (but given that this franchise is the living embodiment of the Butt Fumble, who could blame them if they did?), but it has still managed to breathe life into a brittle, sluggish organization, reminding players and fans alike that football doesn’t just have to be an endless swamp full of sadness and suffering — it can be fun too.

“Vinny, don’t give in! We can still probably land a top three pick that we can spend on that hot-shit Wyoming QB with the peg-leg. It’s gonna be different this time, Vinn-o!”

So if White goes out there and takes it to the Colts — or even manages to pull off a dignified, competitive loss high on excitement and low on bonehead turnovers — Saleh is going to have a full-fledged riot on his hands if he tries to pull him for Wilson in Week 10. He’s going to have to build a moat around MetLife Stadium, because every Sal and Gary in Staten Island is going to try and storm it, looking to put his and the INT-chucking rook’s head on spikes. Who knows, Ty Johnson may even lead the charge.

I’m not sure anyone believes Mike White is the Jets’ savior just yet. But so far he’s fun, and in the end that may be even more important.

***Since this was written, of course, the Conquering Hero of MetLife Stadium decided to smash his throwing arm into DeForest Buckner while tossing his only TD pass during the first quarter of Thursday Night’s tilt with the Colts, knocking himself out of the rest of the game. Despite being in tremendous pain on the sideline, he appears to have escaped breaking anything and should be ready to play if necessary in Week 10. All the Sals and Garys in Staten Island breathe a deep collective sigh of relief.

“What I was thinking was just ‘Don’t mess it up. Keep it running smooth. Have fun.’ I had so much frickin’ fun out there.”

-Saints third-string QB Trevor Siemian to Peter King, about coming into the game after a season-ending Jameis injury and defeating the defending World Champion Bucs (with the help of a monster Defense and some uncharacteristic Tom Brady boners, of course).

Look, I hope you’ll forgive me for momentarily rhapsodizing about a backup Jets QB who no one will probably even remember a year from now. I’ve obviously digested far too many underdog sports movies, and as a barely average athlete in every sport I played as a kid, far-fetched fantastical triumphs were about all I had. Plus, The Shirlies have one more win than the lowly NYJ, so let a guy dream. Nevertheless, a backup QB performing competently against a defense that has little to no experience with or film on him is not exactly uncommon. The key seems to be, as Siemian says, “Don’t mess it up.” (Also, try to have Alvin Kamara or Zeke Elliott on your team.)

Yet Week 8 was something else. Three, count ’em, three backup QBs beat good teams on Sunday. I mean, Daniel Jones is supposedly a starter, and he couldn’t even finish off a freefalling Chiefs team that repeatedly punched itself in the face every time it took the field (to be fair, Jones had Devin Booker instead of Kamara or Zeke leading his backfield, but still, that game was his to lose). Now granted, you might say Cooper Rush has the seemingly unfair advantage of having a quintessential White Quarterback Name, but what has that ever done for Colt McCoy I ask you?

ASTRAL GEEKS S07E03: Diarrhea of a Madman

The great Norm van Brocklin: “Nixon is an ass. The NFL: idiots. The AFL: morons. Sportswriters: whores and sunsabitches. Now bring me a bologna and gravel sandwich and then fuck off.”

“He’s always been a fraud to me. From day one, he’s been a used car salesman, and people bought it.”

Former Tampa Bay wideout Keyshawn Johnson, referring to who else but former Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who once, long before he brought his raspy loudmouth drama back to the Raiders to the modest tune of $100 million, coached Johnson’s 2002 Super Bowl-winning team — a team Gruden gets all the credit for, but Johnson claims he merely inherited from Tony Dungy and Rich McKay.

Move over Urby, there’s a new Number One NFL Skeezeball! (Non Dan Snyder division)

Look, I know you’ve heard more than you could ever possibly want to hear about Racist Chucky and his questionable email etiquette, but we would be remiss if we let such abject rottenness pass without comment.

The thing about this situation is that absolutely no one thinks this is some kind of anomaly, or that Gruden is a single bad seed that needs to be rooted out of the culture so that the true pearls beneath the crud can shine once and for all. The vast majority of the people in the NFL with any kind of power — namely a bunch of toothless liver spots who have all at one time in their lives worn blackface to a party, and whose accountants have ever-expanding line items for hookers, harassment lawsuits, and cutting-edge ED treatment — are right in line with Gruden’s spittle-laced misogyny, homophobia, racism, and general shittiness, and heartily endorse it behind closed doors. And most of the people they employ, from the coaches to the announcers to the players, are just variations of the same retrograde attitudes jacked up on HGH and Trump-roids. 

“Sure I’m a serial killer trapped inside a doll, but if you think that’s bad you should hear my views on immigration.”

Gruden is the norm, not the exception. He was just stupid (and arrogant) enough to permanently commit the evidence of his seething soul-rot to an email server.  And worse yet, the WFT’s email server — thusly, forever linking himself to a vile organization so full of malignant incompetence that every “f-slur” and racial epithet and Fox News dog whistle talking point was bound to come out whenever the inevitable misconduct investigation was triggered.

Even if he realized the folly of his indiscretion, he didn’t care. He figured he was too powerful, too essential, too untouchable for it to matter. And to no one’s surprise, he figured wrong. Who could have imagined that the guy whose entire brand is pretending like it’s still 1997 and who, just by way of one example, traded away Khalil Mack right before his most game-wrecking season and who in 2021 remains PFF’s Number 6 overall player (sandwiched between Davante Adams and Tom Brady) might be too myopic and swole-headed to see what’s right in front of his face? (To be fair, edge rusher Maxx Crosby is playing out of his mind, but Mack is the kind of force that elevates an entire defense and changes the culture for the better wherever he goes).

It is unclear why Gruden’s emails were the only ones leaked out of 650,000 documents accrued in the 10-month long investigation of the Washington Fuck Trumpets, or who exactly leaked them (I think those who buy into some sort of larger conspiracy against Gruden give the NFL far too much credit for being competent enough to pull such a thing off). The emails are indubitably appalling and worthy of their subsequent consequences, but pale in comparison to the sheer onslaught of horrendous deeds turned up in the wider investigation (widespread abuse, harassment, and exploitation of female employees, all endorsed by Snyder, and deeply ingrained in the culture of the team). Certainly, if Gruden’s emails inhabit the bloody, shrieking Fifth Ring of Hell, Snyder’s entire being is deeply ensconced in the icy lake of the Ninth, no? 

Gruden was forced  to resign because he was the throbbing whitehead protruding above a sprawling subdermal infection. He was drawing attention to too many others around him — those who may not necessarily run their franchises like Jeffrey Epstein running a frat house, but who casually endorse despicable shit like eugenics, conversion therapy, and putting kids in cages — and he had to be publicly lanced before the damage could spread any further. Like Waystar/Royco on Succession when the New York article exposed the tip of the scandal iceberg (death, rape, embezzlement, corruption) in the company’s cruise division (yes, I did a recent S2 rewatch before S3 debuted on Sunday), the NFL chose to “condemn and move on,” in hopes that the rest of the league’s open sores would be left to fester in the shadows, an open secret that nobody wants to look at any closer than they have to.

Gruden had to go, and it’s good that he is gone. He’s a rancid pus balloon. He has been a prominent face in the NFL for far too long, selling his brand of bass ackwards macho pragmatism (“Just Grind, Baby”) to any sucker who thinks analytics are for f-slurs and kneeling for justice is worse than shooting unarmed black people in the back. Of course, the question is always there: If we remove everyone in the NFL who says racist and homophobic shit, who assaults women, who exploits others, who is morally and ethically bankrupt, who voted for the likes of Trump or Kanye or Jorgensen, who is just generally shitty, who do we have left? Like three kickers, a Seattle hot dog vendor, and maybe, I dunno… Ryan Fitzpatrick? 

I’m absolutely not excusing any of the above. In fact, what I’m trying to say is that the NFL is a gargantuan shithole filled with charlatans, greedheads, fart sniffers, anti-vaxers, roid ragers, failsons, wife beaters, kid beaters, bigots, rapists, Nazis, morons, psychopaths, and wannabe plantation owners, and that pushing one of them out to sea changes absolutely nothing about the culture. It has always been morally bankrupt and it always will be. 

The NFL’s only real redeeming factor is the sport itself. And to our collective chagrin, it is such a goddamn unbelievably great product that no matter how ghastly the company selling it gets, we have a hard time looking away. Try as they might, they cannot dilute the magic of a horizontal Adam Thielen TD catch or Trevon Diggs snagging seven interceptions in his first six games this season. If they ever do manage to make the sport itself less appealing (boy do they try!) then the whole mega super mothership pus balloon is gonna burst and we’re all going to get caught in the flood.

Until then, keep throwing Thielen the ball while he levitates six inches off the ground, and keep the f-slurs to yourself, fuckos.

“We weren’t desperate… We were just a little bit off.”

Chargers coach Brandon Staley, who has been making Riverboat Ron look like a miserly old banker who only invests in blue chip stocks. In Week 5 Staley set the NFL abuzz with fervent chatter when he put his foot on the gas against Cleveland and never let up, eschewing punts and field goals by going for it on fourth down and converting four times. These days, NFL coaches are adhering more to analytics and win probabilities and going for it on fourth more than ever, but Staley was doing it in situations where nobody ever goes for it unless they are trailing in the fourth quarter: on 4th and 7 and 4th and 8 in field goal range, and on 4th and 2 at their own 24. Turns out they needed all those points, because they barely hung on to beat the Browns 47-42 in the preeminent barn-burner of the season. 

“When I was young, I had a wild streak. I’d go for the occasional two point conversion when I didn’t even need to. Just to keep the players fresh. But these coaches, these kids going for it on 4th and 8 on their own 24. Heathens I tell you! Ruining the sport! They must be stopped!”

Of course, it’s easier to make those calls when the guy you are handing the ball to is Justin Herbert. After last week, the Chargers were 7 for 7 on fourth down conversions, an unheard of conversion rate (and it turns out, unsustainable). Subsequently, in Week 6, when the points weren’t coming so easily and the Chargers were down multiple scores against the Ravens, they went for it another four times, including twice from inside their own territory. This time they only converted once. It ended up making a bad beatdown into a worse one and making Staley perhaps look more reckless than brilliant this time around. “Going for it” is an all or nothing prospect, like pushing all your chips to the center in poker. You better be able to back it up or you’re going home with ringing ears and empty pockets. Staley didn’t waver afterwards, however, and made it clear he will continue to stay aggressive. It’s the style he likes to play and he feels he has the personnel to back it up. Swing for the fences, I say. Play for the win. You love to see it. Even when it means falling into quicksand and never coming out. Hell, even quicksand can be entertaining in its own right.

ASTRAL GEEKS S07E02: Shoulda Coulda Woulda Been a Contendah, Not a Losah

Unleash the Ketchup Kid

“I should have left.”

–Urban Meyer, from inside a full to the brim teal-colored port-a-potty that for some reason he has purposely locked and pushed over, tumbling end over end down a steep hillside and saying what everybody who even has a passing interest in the NFL has long already been thinking for awhile now. Not about him leaving the bar in the viral video where the chick was grinding on his 0-4 jock, which is what he was ostensibly referring to here. That’s just another ho-hum drop in the bucket scandal for this sweaty football proto-Trump, who clearly has never possessed an ounce of social grace or shame. No, we mean leave the Jags. Leave football. Leave fucking earth on your skeezy incompetent chaos rocket and fly straight into the sun.

Never mind that this quote was pulled right from the middle of a string of pitiful, half-considered lies, another Meyer specialty. A group of fans were trying to pull him out on the dance floor, he claimed, in stark opposition to what we could all see with our own eyeballs: That this gal was trying to light his zipper on fire with her asscheeks and he was letting her, in what was clearly a mutual arrangement. Which really, in and of itself, is just dandy. I think we all agree that lapdances are God’s work, do we not? There should be far more of them in the world, and they should be readily accessible. Make them a well-funded public utility, I say (but still tip generously, of course). And the matter of Urb’s fidelity, (or lack thereof), is ultimately his business, even if it reflects his overall lack of character.

It’s just all the other shit about this classic Urb trainwreck that is so horrendous. The hubris. The cowardice. The bald-faced dishonesty. The pure laziness. All of it straight from the Donnie Dump playbook. Never mind his history of hiring, recruiting, and defending legions (even by football standards) of rapists, criminals, abusers, and literal fucking Nazis. Here is a dude who made all kinds of reckless demands and fuckups that resulted in this winless slide, who is wasting a consensus generational QB prospect’s inaugural season, and who has completely lost the respect and trust of the entire organization, from the players to the dudes who cut the grass — and he thinks that instead of circling the wagons and burning the midnight oil to find some way out of it like any halfway competent NFL coach would do, that he can not only take Saturday night off to get sauced and publicly “cheat” on his wife (who is no peach either, to be fair), but then lie (badly) about it, and THEN avoid his players by skipping out on the regular Monday team meeting (he apologized to each position group separately, like the true hero he is). That’s sure to turn this tailspin around and win everybody over.

This is the guy who famously said, “Every week is like playing Alabama in the NFL.” First of all, no the fuck it is not. We are going to settle this argument forever right here. The final word on the subject, are you ready? Urb, even your upside down port-a-potty of a Jags team would destroy Alabama 57-6, and we would all enjoy watching it happen and shutting the Bamalama Dickwads up once and for all. You hafta shoot much much higher than a team whose tuba player is considered essential personnel, my dude. This is not the Big 12, where you can hire Paulie Walnuts and Chris Moltisanti to coach your team and recruit an entire prison gang from the Northern Ohio Supermax to play on your D-Line; where you can stay up late Friday night smoking crushed Viagra mixed with laundry detergent and sniffing Hungarian mail order panties and call plays hungover from your bed on Saturday by texting your AC — and still beat Southwestern Illinois Tech Bible Institute 85-13. Everybody here is a fucking professional. Many of them get paid more than movie stars and tech CEOs for a reason. This is their job and nobody on the planet is better at what they do than they are. 

“Listen kid, when I played college ball, I didn’t wear no helmet cuz it’d fuck up my hair, and you shouldn’t wear one neither, nor no Covit mask, ifn you got any respeck for yourself. ZTE is a myth anyways, just like Covit-90. I should know, I been concussed 113 times. But not to worry, my neurologist is like the Jonas Salk of brains.”

Not so for you, of course. The meritocracy does not exist for coaches in the same way it does for players, but the Piper does come a-calling just the same, no matter how badly Pakistani PT Barnum wants you to stay. Your half ass third-tier mobster fraud approach will never ever cut it among real professionals, just as Trump is lost in any room where people have even the slightest idea what the fuck is actually going on. You are the Four Seasons Total Landscaping of football, and even that was a more dignified ending than you will get in the NFL.

So yeah we all agree, you definitely should have left. 

A long, long time ago.

“As the saying goes, there’s a Choosnay Wala born every minute.”

“I should have just thrown it to Demarcus in the flat.”

-Patrick Lavon Mahomes the Second, reflecting on his first interception of the 2021 season in Week 2, in which he tried to chuck it to Kelce while falling to the ground with a linebacker wrapped around his legs, and instead looped it right into the arms of Baltimore CB Tavon Young.

ASTRAL GEEKS S07E01: With a Little Help From My Schwetty, Schwollen Balls

This dude looks like he’s standing before the judge after being up for 8 days straight, fencing catalytic converters and watching cartoons with you in his tighty whities while you ate soggy Fruity Pebbles and your mom slept off her hangover

Everybody is so all in on science now more than I have ever seen. What happen to God’s will? https://t.co/rk50jjCKgm

— Cole Beasley (@Bease11) June 18, 2021

The most recent data I can find, from right before Week 1 began, says that 93.5% of NFL players are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. I have to say, this is actually a bit of a surprise, given that the two major player demographics are African-American and God-Slobbering Bumblefuck Red State Morons who consider any deed that would benefit the greater good a catastrophic affront to the founding principles of self-reliance¹ and the Great American Godhead of Christ, the NRA, and Oliver North. The majority of both groups have been deeply skeptical of the COVID vaccine, for generally very different reasons. The former, given the long, horrific history of medical abuse and malpractice toward black people in this country, are understandably wary of being injected en masse with anything a bunch of white people say is AOK. The latter, who believe Jesus rode a brontosaurus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Fauci runs a Satanic 5G-powered mutant pedophile ring, and would rather get a dozen Facemask Penalties than wear a mask inside a Walmart for even five minutes, have been so brain-melted by the Right Wing Propaganda Firehose (whose members are, across the board, vaccinated themselves) that they have all suddenly become devout Christian Scientists swearing off the likes of Tylenol, kidney dialysis, and life-saving heart surgery (everything but Viagra – that comes straight from God), and would happily spit the Bubonic Plague in their kids’ mouths just to stick it to Joe Biden.²

It turns out however, that despite widespread mixed feelings among players about the vaccine, the NFLPA came out early this year as very Pro, negotiating with the league for rigorous testing, incentives for getting the vaccine, and strict quarantine protocols for unvaccinated players who test positive or are exposed to the virus. Therefore, despite its waffling on the associated costs and hassle of such protocols, the NFL, motivated as ever by pure unadulterated greed, fell bass ackwards into doing something approximating the right thing. We all know they wouldn’t bat an eye if every single player melted into a puddle of bloody mucus and chicken bones in the locker room, as long as it didn’t cost them any money.  

Bubble Boy 2: Starring Kirk Cousins,
Directed by Kirk Cameron.

However, it turns out sick, virus-spewing players are bad for business. And the business end of the league, despite its carefully marketed brand of Loving the Troops and Ra Ra God Is Our Coach nonsense, believes in science (TB12-ish gobbledygook and its ilk the obvious exceptions). Because, when it comes to elite performance, health, analytics, and nearly everything that makes the NFL a successful multi-billion dollar product, science is the driving force. It doesn’t matter if you can’t spell “spaghetti” or are a braindead Q Anon devotee, you’re still going to use every bit of elite medicine, training, and research you can to optimize your performance and find the edge that can safeguard your multi-million dollar salary. For all of these athletes to willfully ignore this is madness.

Yet despite these rules being put forth by their own union, there have been several high-profile Anti-Vaxers of this type, from Kirk “Plexiglass” Cousins to Lamar Jackson to Nick Bosa — some more outspoken than others, some who, like Bosa, caved and got the vaccine because it was too much of a liability not to. But Cole Beasley, a proud member or the Even Daring to Talk Aloud About the Individual and Societal Benefits of the Vaccine Makes Thomas Jefferson Weep Red White and Blue Tears Society³, will absolutely not shut the fuck up about how unjust it all is, and we can expect him to blabber thusly until he either dies of asphyxiation in an ICU bed he is occupying in the place of a highway car crash victim, or the Bills once again get knocked out of the playoffs by the Mahomes Death Machine — whichever comes first. His newest Christo-Libertarian Death Cult gambit, in response to the Bills being one of four NFL teams to only allow vaxed fans to attend games at their home stadium, has promised to buy tickets for Bills fans attending away games who refuse to get vaccines (and who, one can only assume, have shrieked at at least one Cinnabon employee about the tyranny of their store’s Mask Up, Be Safe poster). Given all the despicable and egregious things the NFL has perpetrated, it’s good to see that requiring fans to not carelessly afflict others with a fatal disease is what has the Patrick Henry of the NFL all fired up. 

Gimme COVID or Give Me Death!

Oh no, Great Warrior of the Virus Crusades, if you perish what will we do without your 9.8 fantasy points every week?

“Nobody wants to see a player taunting another player.”

–NY Giants owner John Mara, a member of the NFL’s Competition Committee, and apparently the man responsible for the rash of utterly hideous “taunting” penalties in Week 2.

Ok, what the fobbledy fuck is this paste-eating dweeboid talking about? Literally everyone who watches football wants to see that. At least what they have been calling taunting, which to me looks like a bit of well-earned showboating mixed with some run-of-the-mill shit-talk. 

Look, the officiating over the weekend was garbage across the board, from the Julio Jones TD being pulled for no good reason whatsoever (the toe-tapping master’s foot was clearly in, but Henry made up for it in the long run), to Herbert getting called for a sack that was so erroneous it had Romo and Nance shouting “Noooo!” on live television, to the usual ghost PI calls and the Lebron treatment for guys like Brady and Mahomes.⁴

NYG Owner John Mara. Definitely a dude who
sharpens pencils in his butthole.

ASTRAL GEEKS S06E09: A New Year For Wile E. Coyote

Look at that smug little Road Runner fuck.

.

“I’m just not very good, Brooke.”

Big Ben, not telling us anything we don’t already know. Despite their comeback win against the Colts last week, the Steelers’ veneer of dominance has all but dissipated. The most overrated 11-0 team ever finally fell apart in Week 13, embarking on a 3-game losing streak that culminated in the sad sack loss to the 2-10-1 Bengals in Week 15. This is exactly where we are used to seeing the Steelers at this time of year. The sum somehow less than the individual parts; a team good enough to win a few playoff games, but destined to make an exit prior to to the Super Bowl. Steelers culture continues to be self-pitying and dysfunctional, even with supposed locker room cancers Bell and Brown gone. I’d empty my (admittedly modest) bank account for footage of Roethlisberger’s anti-Smalley routine before each game – looking in the mirror and declaring: “I’m not very good, I’m dumb as shit, and doggone it, nobody likes me!”

“I don’t want to use those words from me. We’ll just move on from there.”

Speaking of shitty team culture, this is recently fired Lions special teams coach Brayden Coombs, responding to a question about whether he was a bad fit for the team’s culture. One would think that not being a fit for The Lions Way in 2020 would be a good thing, but apparently aside from the sorry luck of having a boojee white trash Gen Z name like Brayden, his flaws included regularly being late to meetings, a relentless need for self-promotion, and a tendency to go rogue in unintentionally hilarious ways. Again, one might find this understandable, given the fact that the last slivers of respectabilty that may have existed in the team headquarters were probably swept out the door in the wake of Patricia’s sacking.

Uh… Minnesota X Wing Right… bubble left… oh fuck, that’s another 45 yard gain.

The final straw that led to Coombs’ dismissal was the disastrous fake punt he called from his team’s own 30-yard line… without telling the head coach or anyone else besides the players on the punt team. This is a dude who obviously DGAF and was just asking to get fired. But his absence, closely following Patricia’s, poured shit gravy on top of a disaster far worse than an ill-timed secret fake punt. Right before Week 16, Interim Head Coach Darrell Bevell and numerous other coaches and assistants were forced to miss the game because of COVID protocols. The Lions’ answer? Wide Receivers Coach Robert Prince took over as head coach, QB Coach Sean Ryan called plays on offense, and defensive play-calling fell to Evan Rothstein, an assistant in charge of research and analysis. The results of basically Jonah Hill’s character from Moneyball coordinating the defense were catastrophic. By the end of the first half, Brady already had 348 passing yards and 4 TDs. If you had anybody from the Bucs passing game that week, you got a serious leg up in your fantasy championship.

We gon beat him up for not Comin out earlier to witness 😭😂 https://t.co/VGeWaDQ2YN

— Alvin Kamara (@A_kamara6) December 27, 2020

Ironically, none of the teams in Astral Geeks on Championship weekend (the title game and the third place match) had any of the Bucs on their team. Nor did they have Kamara, who turned into an All-Time Fantasy Championship performance for the ages. He scored 6 TDs, resulting in 58.60 FP in Astral Geeks. He decided a whole lot of fantasy championship games before the weekend even started, making it a Christmas to remember for some, and possibly ruining it forever for millions of others. What’s more, his nephew was born not only on Christmas, but will hear his whole life about how he was born on the most magical Christmas ever. Impossible to live up to, no matter how much homework you do.

I know that kind of run, and it ain’t because of cramps lol… pic.twitter.com/icg4Wv9pgt

— Will Blackmon 🍷 (@WillBlackmon) December 15, 2020

“The second Lamar Jackson came back from wiping his ass, everything went downhill for Cleveland”

Drew Magary, on Lamar Jackson’s already legendary Paul Pierce moment. The official party line is still that he had “cramps,” which is a clever bit of obfuscation without explicitly lying. But man, wherever those cramps were, getting rid of them sure did the trick. On his first play back, he chucked a 45 yard, 4th and 5 TD pass to Marquise Brown, and the Ravens went on to beat the Browns. The Browns, meanwhile did beat the Giants the following week, but then lost to the suddenly surging Jets, putting their chance at a playoff berth in jeopardy. There are five 10-5 AFC teams vying for a playoff spot: the Titans, Colts, Dolphins, Ravens, and Browns. When the Week 17 musical chairs stop, some 10-win team is going to be left without a seat (while it is entirely possible that a 6-10 Giants team will host a playoff game next week). The Browns are currently in the midst of their own COVID outbreak, which could put them at a distinct disadvantage. Just please, whatever happens, give us a Myles Garrett/Mason Rudolph reunion.

ASTRAL GEEKS S06E08: Bonehead Chestnuts & The Electric Slide

Okay 2020, now you’re just getting weird.

“I feel bad for the cardboard fans.”

-Sean Payton, coach of the Saints, roasting the opposing Broncos in Week 12, who played a full game without an actual NFL-ready quarterback (Kendall Hinton, the poor patsy thrust into the eye of the storm of this particular farce, is a hell of a mensch for taking it on, which we will get to in a minute). Honestly, Payton should feel bad for actual human fans everywhere, because what was fielded that day at Mile High Stadium was an abomination that could hardly be called “professional football.” But he is an NFL coach, after all, a massive cog in a machine that chews up any and all empathy and spits it out in the form of bankable “content.”

Somewhere down there is the one thing that will finally fill the hole in my rotted out black heart…

Okay, maybe that’s overly harsh (probably not) but let’s not forget, those cardboard fans are there in the place of real fans because a fatal plague is raging unchecked across the country while major corporations (and the White House, basically a corporation, run about as successfully as Trump Steaks or any other shitty subsidiary of America’s worst brand) have treated this pandemic (a word that had to be invented, because “epidemic” wasn’t sufficient enough to describe how really, really, really fucking bad the next level of such a thing could be) like a minor inconvenience – just another easily surmountable obstacle preventing their highest executives from wallowing in yet more gold-plated troughs full of filthy, blood-soaked cash. Meanwhile, boot-licking access-merchants like Schefter parrot the party line to a comically absurd degree with Hearst-worthy tweets lauding the NFL for its “amazing” handling of the crisis.

Over a quarter of a million people are dead from the virus and a whole NFL team asked if they could put a coach at QB because of a COVID-19 mess…there’s nothing to celebrate here. https://t.co/ApYzBIBSt3

— Chris Williamson (@CWilliamson44) November 29, 2020

At a time when COVID cases are spiking across the country, the NFL had no players and no coaches test positive today, per source. Week 14 on track.

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) December 11, 2020

The whole “nothing to see here” approach to NFL/COVID-19 discourse is designed to make you think that some miracle has taken place because a super-spreader team like the Ravens was able to play a Wednesday night game six days after it was scheduled against the poor Steelers (actually, fuck the Steelers) who had no choice but to risk the health of their team in the midst of a campaign to go undefeated (no worries, Alex Smith and the Washington Fuck Tumblers took care of that last week). But the argument gets muddled as soon as the NFL, true to its nature, lets on that it has no idea what the fuck it is doing. When it comes to who gets to play when, who is postponed, and who is forced to play without an actual quarterback is about as arbitrary as the muddled catch rule, or the end-zone pylon ” fumble” that becomes a safety glitch, or what constitutes actual PI. The NFL is like Stupid Houdini on a good day, tying itself in impossible knots and never getting out of them. Present them with an actual genuine crisis and watch the fucking thing burn.

“All right, I’m ready! Let’s define what a catch is…”

Except somehow it doesn’t. Their soulless lack of empathy for the players who make them so much money helps prevent the flames from consuming too much of the golden goose. They don’t give a single rat fuck about concussions or opioid addiction or the movement to end racially motivated police violence, why should they care about them contracting coronavirus? That said, you would think they would at least care about the quality of “product” they are putting on the field. When it was disclosed to NFL authorities that QB Jeff Driskel had tested positive for COVID and had exposed all the other team QBs during a maskless in-person meeting (duh), the team requested that its game be postponed and was denied. The NFL also denied that this was a de facto “punishment” for flouting the league protocols and fucking everything up, claiming it was because Denver still had a large enough unaffected roster to field a full team. Which meant, of course, that the search for replacement QB was on.

At first the Broncos lobbied to have one of their quality-control coaches, both of whom had played quarterback in college, take the offensive reins, but were denied on account of the rule that bars coaches from playing and being used as extra “stash” spots outside of the 53-man roster.

ASTRAL GEEKS S06E07: Rising Tides, Sinking Ships

Listen up, Deandre-San…

“My brother and I used to watch a lot of Jet Li movies, so we used to always do quick things like kickboxing or catching things with our hands. One thing I remember we always used to do—we always used to catch flies with our hands. I was the only one that could catch them. I actually studied it, and I grew with it. I was like, ‘How do I catch flies?’ Flies always fly up. I would always just hit over it. And I thought: If I can catch flies, I know I can catch anything.”

–Deandre Fucking Hopkins, quoted in Peter King’s amazing breakdown of the “Hail Murray.”

He sure as shit can catch anything. You don’t have to tell me twice. I picture this little anecdote like a kids’ karate movie montage, ending with D Hop finally snatching one after another after another – his eyes fierce, his brow glistening with sweat, a sly, determined smile on his lips, in the background his brother and friends gaping on in wonder.

Now I want to see an NFL wide receiver fly-catching contest. Odell, Julio, Davante, Thomas, Keenan, Lockett, Diggs… and of course the magic man himself. Even crazy AB could have a crack, though the likelihood of him just smashing the shit out of the poor buggers with a nail-spiked baseball bat is unfortunately not out of the question. Now, you might be tempted to put your money on DeeHop given his past success at it, but who knows what dark horses lurk in this crowd. I wouldn’t put it past Julio to instinctively know how to catch those fuckers while flying backwards through the air with one hand tied behind his back and wearing a blindfold. Larry Fitz might quietly snatch his HOF-worthy fill and then move on to something else with zero fanfare and hardly anyone the wiser. Keenan would certainly run the best route to get to the flies in the first place.

But back to the play itself. I mean, they call it a Hail Mary for a reason, because it’s a one in a million moon-shot that prayers themselves can hardly touch. But the “Hail Murray” is its own distinct, one of a kind phenomenon (in fact, Lil Kyler is trying to trademark the phrase). Even beyond Hopkins’ one in a gazillion catch – snatching the ball out of the heavens, with three Buffalo defenders hanging off him, like it was the biggest fly anyone had ever seen outside of the Amazon Basin – it was an exceptional play.

The standard procedure for just about any Hail Mary is to pack the end zone with as many offensive (in this case red-colored) jerseys as possible and hope that when all the bodies go up it somehow gets tipped into a receiver’s hands. Luck (and the chaotic randomness of physics) is the core element of its design, rather than precision, or even brute force. It’s like trying to land a ring around the neck of a Coke bottle at the county fair – you’re not really meant to succeed.

Now, while the first option on this play was supposed to be 20-yard drag route to Isabella (and then get the fuck outta bounds), it was clear from the snap that it was all about the go-for-broke from Kyler to Hopkins. Get it to the best player now in the end zone, and don’t worry a shit about trying to make a second play. Fitz, Isabella, and Kirk all split out from the right side of the formation, none of them headed for the end zone itself – their routes intended to pull coverage away from Target Zero. It sorta worked. Three defenders still clung to Hopkins, who ran the lone route from the left and was the only Cardinal in the end zone. But who knows, maybe there woulda been five otherwise.

For a second or two, it looked like Kyler might not even get the throw off. As he rolled left, Bills DE Mario Addison broke through the line and appeared to have him dead to rights. But no dice, Mario. The way he flew past the scrambling quarterback at an odd angle made him resemble a tackler from an early 90s Madden game. Murray was pinned right up against the sideline as he launched a 43-yard pure fucking dime, hitting the exact spot where only his ace receiver (and nobody else) could catch the ball. It also helped that in addition to being a straight baller who earned his stripes catching flies, Hopkins had an inch of height and 3 inches of vertical on the next closest defenders, as well as famously gigantic 10” hands (the only receivers’ hands that have measured larger at the combine since 2013 were Kelvin Benjamin and Henry Ruggs III).

Hopkins against those three dudes…

Just downright unfair for those poor schmucks.

“Greg Roman is like if the new iPhone came out a year later and there was nothing different.”

-Craig Horlbeck, from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Aw, c’mon now Craig, you’re speaking ill of the former Niners OC who made Kaepernick a superstar and took us to the Super Bowl in 2012 (okay, so we lost that one too – to the fuckin’ Ravens, no less!). But homer distractions aside, I get your point. Everybody wants to know what happened to Lamar Jackson and the unstoppable, high-powered offense that was one of the highlights of last season. Well, besides COVID, that is (man, this fucking horrid year — get well asap, dudes!).

Craig and co-hosts, Danny and Danny, posit that it isn’t really poor Lamar at all, but an offense that changed little scheme-wise from 2019 (if it worked then, why wouldn’t the exact same thing work again?!). Hollywood Brown’s breakout never came. Mark Ingram II disappeared. Mark Andrews has had a few good games, but nothing like we expected. And JK Dobbins, the one new element in this scheme, fizzled before he even started.

Whatever opposing defenses couldn’t solve last year… welp, they seem to have solved this year.

Now, LJ is still on pace for like 950 rushing yards, and something in the neighborhood of 5 or 6 rushing TDs. And he will likely fall well short of his 36 passing TDs from last year, but the passing yardage is on pace. So we are getting like, what 75-80% of peak Lamar? Which is still pretty badass, of course. But in fantasy, it’s like Superman when he gives up his powers to be with Lois Lane. At some point, with the fate of the world at stake, Clark Kent ain’t enough to get the job done. Especially in a year when Kyler and Russ and Mahomes are doing the shit they’re doing, scoring twice as many fantasy points as everyone else, you can’t compete when your QB is seemingly all floor and very little upside. Especially when you took him as the first QB off the board (by the way, what more evidence do you need? Don’t do that).

I think it’ll shake out. Hopefully LJ will not have any lasting effects from the COVID and Greg et al will learn their lesson from this year’s stumbles. I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen the last of the Ravens powerhouse days, or Lamar’s fantasy domination.

Now as a random, sort of non-sequitur postscript to this, there’s a certain (former?) Ravens beat writer I used to follow on Twitter. She was obsessed with Flacco, was all Go Ravens! all week long, but when Lamar came on she never seemed to get on board. Even with his amazing season last year for whatever reason she still beat the drum for ol’ washed up, ain’t never been elite no matter how thin you slice it Flacco. Which fine, like who you like, I don’t care, even if it clearly has nothing to do with your team being good. It’s just football.

But, in addition to stanning for Flacco, she never missed an opportunity to rip on Matt Ryan. She fucking hates Matt Ryan, because… the Falcons picked him instead of Flacco, I guess? Something like that, I never fully gathered. The facts about that situation and her feelings about it don’t seem to make a lot of sense, but then again, that describes just about every aspect of sports fandom.

And as you can imagine, being a woman – and a rather comely one at that – on the internet, not only talking about football, but talking mad shit about basically an entire franchise (via its franchise QB) and its 28-3 collapse in the Super Bowl, she got… well, a lot of flak. From snotty condescension to the horrible, twisted shit dudes say to try and silence women. So – not because I think I’m chivalrous or anything, but because football bros fucking suck and deserve as many cowpies as can be thrown at them – I often liked her shitposts and chimed in on her side, because fuck ‘em.

ASTRAL GEEKS S06E06: The Best Worst Game

“Look right behind you Oldsters, the new generation of QBs has arrived.”

“We got our asses kicked. Everybody was pissed off. But too late now, we’ve got to get ready for Carolina.”

-Obligatory Bruce Arians quote, from the post-game presser after the shocking 38-3 massacre by the Saints, a game which was 31-0 at the half. It was a matchup that was billed as a battle of QB titans, Brees and Brady, but ended up as anything but. Funny enough, the other titanic battle involving Brady this season, against Rodgers and the Packers, was also a lopsided farce, though that time it was in favor of the Bucs. Most power rankings coming into Week 9 had the Bucs at 2 or even 1B, just behind the Steelers, billing them as the most complete team in the NFC — especially with Antonio Brown entering the lineup and set to give the receiving game a boost. Well, lolololololololololololololololololololololol to that motherfuckers. They were complete… pieces of stanky goat shite, if that’s what you mean.

It’s not easy to assess exactly what happened there. Both the Packers defeat and this flop by the Bucs had an air of the proverbial Any Given Sunday factor. But there has to be more to it than that. Perhaps the Saints defense just completely solved Tom Brady for this particular 60 minutes (not unlike they did in Week 1). After all, this game was all Tom Brady. The Bucs set the record for the least rush attempts ever in an NFL game, with 5 (one was a kneel down, so actually 4). Brady chucked three interceptions, adding to the four he had already this season, as if he was trying to resurrect the finger-slurping ghost of Jameis. That vaunted receiving corps, comprising three Pro Bowl caliber receivers, could do nothing at all to help him out of whatever hole he sank into, and the game quickly became a runaway train that nobody could stop.

In fact, one even has to wonder if introducing AB was like tossing a wrench into the gears of an already well-oiled machine. Everybody expected his bad juju to happen off the field, but is it possible it happened on the field? That might sound improbable for the guy who not that long ago was far and away the best receiver in the game, but now even backbiting scapegoater extraordinaire Arians is already talking about how AB got too many targets, a distracting shiny new toy for Brady while ever-the-bridesmaid Evans was open and ignored far too often.

Whatever the truth may be, one of the great joys of watching this Bucs team is the obvious dysfunctional power struggle between Arians and Brady, who both have zero qualms about constantly throwing each other under the bus, even when they win. Throw crazy AB in the mix and the potential for epic, fiery collapse becomes too delicious to bear. Reminds me of Coppola in Hearts of Darkness, talking about his pussyfooting push and pull with Brando, and then how perilous the whole thing became once he threw “crazy Dennis Hopper” into the mix.

It’ll be fun to see what happens to this team. Brady is Brady and could very well use the crucible of this humiliation to steel himself down the stretch on the way to his 10^th, yes count ‘em, 10th Super Bowl berth. Or it could go down in the most glorious fireball ever, to the delight of millions, myself included.

In another vein, I know the Bucs rolled out the red carpet for Brady’s supercalifragilistic charlatan “trainer” Alex Guerrero, but I’d kill for some deep background quotes from Arians about him. I’m sure they are “juicy, Junior, real juicy.”

Another loss like this, and he just may let loose. Hallelujah.

The league is in great hands with this next generation of great QBs. Kyler, Tua, Herbert, Flacco. Sky's the limit with these guys.

— Robert Mays (@robertmays) November 10, 2020

Hopefully you got the Flacco joke there. If you scroll through the replies, you’ll see that a bunch of people took Mays to task for not having a more thorough, definitive list of young stars leading up to the punchline, to which he just shrugs in amusement. Fuckin’ Twitter, you can’t never win, and people online just can’t resist the urge to ruin just about anything.

Jokes aside, Mays, of Grantland, The Ringer, and now The Athletic, is one of my favorite football minds, and the essence of the tweet is sincere. I quoted it because I have been thinking a lot about this very subject, and the sense of hope it gives me for the future. In fact, all things considered, I’ve been thinking a lot about hope in general, but we’ll get to more of that later. Hope emerges brightest after long periods of darkness. America may very well be emerging from a horrendously dark one soon. In my own life, almost nine years ago I felt hope for the first time after years of hopelessness and loss, when I finally put down the bottle and stepped into the light of a new kind of life.

By comparison, the state of young quarterbacks in the NFL is probably a bit less weighty, but no less interesting! It wasn’t that long ago, just a few years really, that the great quarterbacking generation of the 2000s, the Manning brothers, Brady, Roethlisberger, Rodgers, Rivers, and Brees, despite several of them still firing at their peak, started to wind down, and there was a clear dearth of greatness coming in to replace them. The great promise of Jameis and Mariota went sour real fast, and numerous other prospects, the Rosens and Osweilers, were over before they even started.

Guys like Andrew Luck and Russell Wilson and Cam Newton were youngish superstars, but even so NFL analysts saw the sky falling, even as they knew that this is an oft-repeated cycle. Part of this downturn was exacerbated by a year or two, 2016 and 17, where the overall quality of play seemed to really sag. There were no consensus dominant teams, high octane offenses lacked tough defenses and vice versa. The Super Bowl between the Falcons and the Pats, while exciting for what eventually transpired, felt like two sorta pretty good teams that had made it to the top of the sludge pile of uneven, above average teams. It was the Super Bowl, but if you took away all the pageantry and pressure, it wasn’t much more than a decently watchable Sunday Night regular season game.

Goff and Wentz came along, and the former was trapped in Jeff Fisher’s self-fulfilling 7-9 Nightmare World, while the latter erupted immediately, showing flashes of brilliance in his rookie season, then dominating the first 13 games of 2017, the year he had to watch from the sidelines with a torn MCL while his journeyman backup pulled off an amazing Super Bowl victory.

ASTRAL GEEKS S06E05: Highway to Helloween

The weirdest, saddest touchdown ever?

“I was mad as hell.”

And Falcons fans can’t take it anymore. This is Todd Gurley, when asked how he felt after scoring the fateful TD against the Lions that allowed Stafford (the real Matty Ice) and his Cirque de Soleil receiving corps to charge down the field in the final 62 seconds and win the game as the clock drained to zero. At this point, the Falcons’ epic quest to discover elaborate new ways to relinquish double-digit fourth quarter leads is so ridiculous it has veered into the cosmically sublime. “28-3” set some vicious curse in motion that craves ever more absurd methods of humiliation and won’t stop until the entire organization has gone mad and starts intentionally building up massive leads and then writhing in ecstasy while their opponent roars back and puts 30 points on them in ten minutes of game time – some dark, dysfunctional fetish born of the trauma stirred up by Tom Brady’s relentlessness and Kyle Shanahan’s aversion to controlling the clock when it counts most.

The biggest irony of course was that it was Gurley himself who made huge waves just two years ago during one of his two consecutive Fantasy RB1 seasons by going down at the two yard-line and not scoring a touchdown – for the exact same reason. His quick-thinking and suppression of his normal football instincts to score at any cost to life and limb affected the outcome of numerous Vegas over/unders and prop bets, as well as millions of individual fantasy games. Very little of that Gurley seems to be showing up in the present version, from his once heralded ability to create chunks of yardage on his own to a clear and focused mental game. It wasn’t until his momentum was carrying him over the goal line that he remembered he wasn’t supposed to score, and by then it was too late. Thus the sad, surreal picture above of him slumped on the goal line, defeated, while three Detroit Lions celebrate his touchdown.

Football is a weird game. Rarely boring, that’s for sure. Not a week goes by without at least a handful of unprecedented oddities occurring. Some teams – Falcons, Browns, Jets, Lions, Chargers, Bills – have found ways to not just make losing interesting, but have woven it into the fabric of who they are in ways unique to their team and era.

Tune in next week when The Falcons give up a 17-point lead by slashing Matt Ryan’s windpipe and letting him slowly bleed out for the entirety of the fourth quarter. Fun!

Me trying to make it through 2020. pic.twitter.com/AJHBf3gShi

— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) October 23, 2020

Stefon Diggs “He tripped the way people do when they running from the villain/bad guys.”

“He helped me win a much needed fantasy contest last week, so kudos!”

-Obligatory Bruce Arians quote. He’s talking about Gronk. Does Arians play for money? How much? What are the odds that the whole back and forth with Godwin, Evans, and Miller, or Jones II and Fournette depends on whether he’s going against them that week in fantasy? I mean, I bet he’s pretty competitive, so the odds aren’t zero!

“I basically got fired yesterday, and today my day consisted of Zoom meetings with the guy that fired me and sitting in a room with the guy who replaced me for four hours. My heart just hurt all day.”

-Big ol’ sad fuzzy wuzzy Fitzpatrick talking about how it felt after the Dolphins reported that his BFF Tua was going to replace him as the starting QB. This is definitely a tough one. While everyone knew from the beginning that the Lil’ Lefty from ‘Bama with the tongue-twister name was drafted to be the future of the franchise, the timing and circumstances of the switch do seem a bit dubious. No one thinks Fitzpatrick is going to the Super Bowl, but he has led Miami to a 3-3 record and put them in the hunt for their first playoff spot since 2016. Sharone Mitchell, a regular Thursday guest on Christopher Harris’ podcast, calls Fitzy the “embodiment of white privilege.” He’s being funny when he says it, implying that a black QB wouldn’t be able to get away with his brand of unhinged chaos and remain an NFL starter (Jameis anyone? Okay, point taken). But I also have to disagree with his premise, at least on the grounds of personality.

There’s a reason that Fitzpatrick is the premiere journeyman backup/part-time starter in the NFL, having made impactful starts for eight different teams. Guys generally just like playing for him. He’s extremely likable – he’s got a scruffy, Harvard-honed charisma (sort of if you combined Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake’s characters in The Social Network) and a sturdy, gregarious presence in the locker room, keeping things light even in dark moments. It’s true, his cavalier attitude doesn’t scream champion like say, Brady, who has that relentless Jordan-esque need to devour and dominate everyone in his path and cannot help screaming “Fuck” right into the camera each time on of his laser passes bounces right out of some poor hapless third string wideout’s hands. But he’s been around long enough and played every team multiple times, and he knows his shit. He’s got grit, taking hits all day so he can get off his patented 60-yard bombs into triple coverage…

Okay, so there’s that. With the wild, aw-fuck-it gunslinging fun comes a profusion of turnovers and usually a bloated Loss column in the standings. So I’m sure that makes this benching even tougher, because so far his play was relatively decent (70% completion rate, 1535 yards, 10-7 TD/INT ratio) and his record was even (3-3). Of course, “so far” is doing lots of heavy lifting in that sentence. If there are any betting folk in the football community (I feel like there must be a few), the smart money would probably be on Fitzmagic imploding somewhere shy of a Wild Card spot anyway.

So The Fish have decided to trot out their new toy, the OG “tanking for…” fella, to see what they have got. From where we all stand, it’s hard to tell whether the idea is “Playoffs be damned, let’s get this kid some reps!” or “You all have no idea what we are about to unleash upon you. Now that he is healthy, this kid is going to go the Full Mahomes (or Full Second Half of the National Championship) on the NFL, torching a path to the Dolphins’ first Super Bowl since the Marino days. And this time we’re gonna win the fucker!” Either way, all reports say that Fitzy took his mentoring duties seriously. The two have become so close, aligning their routines and doing everything together, that they’ve developed a shorthand of communication and a bevy of inside jokes. And if there were any doubt, their closeness can be a summed up by Tua’s reaction when Fitzpatrick threw one of his three TD passes against the 49ers in Week 5 – he celebrated by running onto the field and jumping into the Big Beard’s arms, who proceeded to hold him like a baby.

Well Papa, it’s time to push the little bear cub out the door on his own. Try not to be too sad. You will certainly get another chance to bring your beard mites, 220 to 168 TD-INT ratio, and infectious mirth to a needy franchise soon. I’ll certainly keep watching you play, and may even plug you into a future lineup – just in time for you to crater and give me 3 points. Ah, just like old times.