One of my favorite questions to ask myself while I am driving or doing dishes or engaging in some other behavior that requires me to not be actively distracted by my phone is: How desperate is everybody? Usually, I’m asking this about sports.
In anticipation of Wild Card Weekend, here’s how bad each remaining franchise wants a Super Bowl:
14. Los Angeles Rams
Not only are the Rams still redeveloping their Los Angeles identity and turning their fanbase from casually interested into obsessed, but they just won a Super Bowl a couple years ago. There is no urgency in LA right now. As it should be.
13. Philadelphia Eagles
The franchise would be thrilled with this, and fans would be too, but at this very moment, I think Eagles fans are so angry that they actually don’t want to win. Nothing would piss Eagles fans off more than beating the Bucs on Monday night. “You can win?? You guys can do that??? Why have you not done that this whole time????”
12. Pittsburgh Steelers
In a similar vein but with less vitriol, I think Steelers fans should be worried about what this team winning a Super Bowl would do to the value of Super Bowl titles in general, and therefore to their past Super Bowls and the overall identity of their franchise.
11. Green Bay Packers
As a Packers fan, I do think we know you need to take every Super Bowl you can possibly get—you always need to be a little desperate, and thoughts of “our quarterback rocks, we’ll win another eventually” are poison—but we are also very happy to be here. Very, very happy to be here. We smoked the Vikings two weeks ago, the Bears discourse is about to be hilarious regardless of whether they choose Fields or Williams, and we made the playoffs in a year in which our highest-paid players are Aaron Rodgers and David Bakhtiari. Now we get a no-lose game against old friend Mike McCarthy? Sign us up.
10. Houston Texans
Again, it’s not that Texans fans wouldn’t like a Super Bowl. It’s that there’s no desperation for one because the regular season was already so fun. The Texans are ahead of schedule! Being ahead of schedule is great, but it’s not a desperate playoff mindset.
9. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The Bucs aren’t desperate. But I do think that if you’re a Bucs fan, you’re looking around and feeling a little directionless, and while it’s been nice to win the South, it hasn’t been an overjoyed experience like those of the Packers and the Texans. The Bucs would like to beat the team whose fans hate it and then give the Niners or Cowboys or Lions a second-round scare.
8. Detroit Lions
I actually think the Browns might want this more than the Lions? The Lions aren’t ahead of schedule, but they’re on schedule, and that schedule includes an NFC Championship appearance. It does not, however, include winning the Super Bowl this year. There’s a little voice in the back of Lions fans’ heads. They want to savor this.
7. Cleveland Browns
There is no savoring in Cleveland. They’ve caught Joe Flacco magic in a bottle, and they need to chug that thing before the clock strikes midnight. (This metaphor matches no fairytale, but I think it works?) After this, they have to deal with Deshaun Watson. Things are not going to be fun for the Browns once this season ends. Unless they win a title and can just push the city of Cleveland into the lake and call it over.
6. Kansas City Chiefs
It’s weird to get this far before mentioning the reigning champs. I think that’s an issue with these playoffs. There are only four teams people really believe can win, and I’m not sure any is good enough that we’ll say, “Damn, remember that team?” in a handful of years. Anyway, the Chiefs are at that point in addiction where they need higher doses to get the same thrill. In that way, they need a win. Otherwise, withdrawal is going to start, and Mahomes’s big contract isn’t going to feel as good in a sport with an oligarchic salary cap.
5. Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins would like to win a Super Bowl, please. And maybe to be taken a little more seriously. Please?
4. Buffalo Bills
Bills fans should be exhausted by this point, but I do think they want this bad. They at least need a Super Bowl trip, and then when they get there, the feeling will kick in of needing to finally win one. The Bills don’t need this now, but they need something that will lead them to need this.
3. Baltimore Ravens
They’ve won most recently of these three teams.
2. Dallas Cowboys
Their expectations are a little lower than those of the Niners. They’re one where making the Super Bowl is a bigger deal than winning it, but I do think they desperately want to be taken seriously again, and I don’t think they think that winning the NFC is enough to make that happen.
1. San Francisco 49ers
If the Niners don’t win this Super Bowl, it will have been a failure, and the monkey will remain on all sorts of backs, from Kyle Shanahan’s to the whole city’s. These dudes have the joint mandate of 1) being an historic power who hasn’t won in forever and 2) being the model for how future NFL franchises are supposed to be run. Losing would mean a big offseason storyline questioning their approach combined with the pain of missing out again on the joy they used to know.
What’s Next for Washington?
Kalen DeBoer is reportedly set to take the Alabama job, if that isn’t official by the time you read this. Washington will need a new coach after losing a whole lot of playmakers to the NFL over the last few days.
Washington is not a great job. It’s a good job, but it’s not a great one. It’s not Oregon in terms of the booster support. It’s getting that pro-rated cut of Big Ten money for an introductory period, making it a little brother in ways to even Purdue and Rutgers. It’s set off in the corner of the country. Part of what makes DeBoer attractive enough that Alabama would take him (limited though the options ultimately were) is that he won there, at Washington of all places. It’s not a bad job, but it’s not a great job.
Were Washington returning a lot of talent, promoting offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb to head coach would make sense. Since so many of the stars are moving on, though, I don’t know if that’s the right move. If they can get Chris Klieman (NDSU, then Kansas State) or Lance Leipold (Kansas) or Jedd Fisch (Arizona), they should do it. A proven head coach is a great asset. After those three…you might be back to Grubb? I don’t know that bringing Barry Odom (UNLV) up to Seattle is certain enough of achieving success to justify giving him the nod over Grubb, the right-hand man at the moment of your program’s rebirth. I’d suggest Jimmy Rogers (South Dakota State), but now you’re getting really adjacent to Grubb. Rogers is Grubb but one year ahead on the timeline, having only taken the head job in Brookings last offseason after years as an assistant.
So, maybe it’s Grubb. Leipold might not want to move again at this stage. Klieman might be hard to pluck because of a buyout or because of a K-State extension offer (K-State is in a way better place to make the playoff than Washington is, looking at the competition each will face). Fisch is in the exact same spot as Klieman but with a lesser track record and more excitement, meaning he might cost more and is less of a sure thing.
Pete Thamel threw out Matt Campbell’s name (among a lot of others, including those five), and it’s worth worrying about for us Iowa State fans, but I think four things are true:
1. Washington is not in Campbell’s beloved Midwest, and it takes a big twist to say “he could still recruit Ohio” just because Washington will travel to the Rust Belt a few times a year. That narrative is a bit outdated anyway. There is one commit in the 2024 class from Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania combined.
2. I don’t know that Washington would prefer Campbell to Grubb.
3. The Kansas State/Arizona playoff phenomenon applies to Iowa State as well. It’s to a lesser extent, but Iowa State’s in a good position to start making some playoffs now that Texas and Oklahoma are out of the Big 12. I don’t know that the committee will fully adjust right away to treating the ACC and Big 12 like sub-Power conferences. I think that might take a minute. You might be able to get away with 10–2, and while 10–2 would be an extreme Iowa State result, it’s not impossible.
4. The Michigan job is expected to come open soon, and I don’t think Campbell will be on the radar for it, but he might want to leave that possibility open if things get really topsy-turvy with their search. I think Campbell would be a better option next time for Michigan, if Sherrone Moore gets the job and flops. But Campbell might think he has enough of a chance right now to not try to take over a dicey situation out west. He’s still got a good thing going, and he may have ridden out quite the storm in Ames.
The Tommy Rees Alabama Candidacy
Tommy Rees, Alabama’s offensive coordinator, did not get the Alabama job, but he was listed as a final candidate in some reporting, and here’s a theory on that:
I wonder if Alabama saw what happened at Texas A&M with Stoops and wanted to project confidence no matter who took over. I do think Rees was an option, but I think he was behind DeBoer, Mike Norvell (whom we’ll get to shortly), Steve Sarkisian & Dan Lanning & Kirby Smart, and maybe even Lane Kiffin. I think he was ahead of Dabo Swinney, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was the fallback plan, and it wouldn’t surprise me if at some point after Lanning said no, Alabama’s brass got together and someone said, “Look, if DeBoer and Norvell both say no, we’re going to need to promote Rees and ride the continuity angle. Let’s list him as a candidate proactively. If there’s an absolute uproar from the boosters, we don’t have to hire him, but if we do hire him, it’ll look like we chose him as opposed to falling back on him when everything else didn’t work.”
I paraphrase, of course.
What Did Florida State Do?
Mike Norvell didn’t take the Alabama job, and he may not have been offered it. Like Sarkisian, he and his employer agreed on an extension this morning. Norvell had the awkward circumstance of seeing his program hit with an NIL violation conviction and some accompanying punishments yesterday, and one theory that’s floated around some group chats is that Alabama didn’t want to risk bringing Norvell on board in the midst of that.
Personally? I think Norvell was Alabama’s top choice after Lanning said no. (I don’t think Sarkisian was ever a realistic option because Texas is a better job than Bama and capable of paying Sark more than Bama.) But I could see Norvell worrying he wasn’t going to get it and deciding to take the extension offer while it was there. That feels possible, even if the likeliest explanation is that he just chose Florida State over Alabama, which isn’t unreasonable given the benefits of the foundation he’s built and the ACC schedule he gets to play and the manageable expectations he gets to meet.
Regardless, DeBoer has the job. Alabama took a little risk on him. DeBoer has won everywhere he’s been, but he hasn’t won at a Big Ten or SEC level, and he hasn’t coached football in the South. I think it was the best move they could have made, and I think DeBoer will do just fine, but Alabama is a lot more similar to Tennessee and Florida than to what Alabama was on Wednesday morning.
Anyway, Florida State:
They offered to pay a transfer to play at Florida State.
Seriously.
That’s technically not allowed.
You can’t use NIL as an “inducement.”
This is dumb. Inducement is going to happen, and there’s no good way to police it, but evidently the NCAA is going to try, and they made an example of FSU in that effort, cutting a few scholarships and slapping an assistant on the wrist and forcing FSU to disassociate from their NIL collective for a year and disassociate from the involved booster for three years. There’s not a scratch on Norvell personally, but this hurts FSU, and it’s unfair, and what the NCAA is doing is making schools and boosters jump through stupid hoops and do a lot of winking when they talk about NIL opportunities rather than just talk about NIL opportunities in the open. It’s the dumbest thing the NCAA has done in a long time. This is a Mark Emmert’s NCAA move, not a Charlie Baker’s NCAA move.
Does Load Management Work?
The NBA did its own research (how Aaron Rodgers of them), and they don’t think load management works.
I’m kidding (a little).
What the NBA did was commission what turned into a 57-page report looking for relationships between how often players played and how often they got hurt. The results don’t indicate a relationship. Now, as the NBA has stressed, they also don’t indicate there isn’t a relationship. But it’s possible rest doesn’t really help prevent injuries.
Obviously, some amount of rest is necessary to avoid injury. If you continue playing basketball nonstop, you will eventually need to rest or you will get injured, and if you continue playing long enough, you will die. The body needs to sleep. That is not what we’re talking about here. What we’re talking about is that it’s possible the natural amount of rest included in an NBA schedule is sufficient to prevent injury, and that NBA players can play a lot more games than stars have recently played. The NBA wants teams to say, “You know? Let’s play Damian Lillard 79 games this year.”
The real question, though, is whether load management helps teams win. It might not save them from injury, but rest might keep them sharp. Do stars play better in the playoffs when they play less in the regular season? That’s not a study the NBA might want to commission, and that’s the crucial question for the NBA.
I do wonder, though, about the overuse of rest as a lever, and I’m actually more curious about it in baseball, where the skyrocketing interest in pitch count management—which took off in the 2000s—has become at times extreme.
It’s not that rest might hurt. But it might not help, or it might not help enough to provide a net benefit. The study I would personally like to see is one that looks at relationships between injury and A) rest and B) velocity/spin rate. My guess is that increases in velocity and spin rate, the things that have made pitchers more effective lately, have come less from raw strength gains and more from gains in physical efficiency, with both gains creating more stress on tendons and muscles. This is all a guess, of course, but I’d love to see that study. Stephen Strasburg followed the rest prescription to a T. Tyler Glasnow threw some nasty stuff during his brief stints of health.
Can Djokovic Lose the Australian Open?
The Australian Open starts this weekend, and Carlos Alcaraz—the 20-year-old who’s currently men’s tennis’s best hope at a challenger to Novak Djokovic—has been achieving mixed results. He beat Djokovic a few weeks ago in Riyadh, but it was pretty close to an exhibition, and before that his last match was a loss to Djokovic in November. He’s only 3–4 in his last seven matches, with losses to Grigor Dimitrov, Roman Safiullin, and Alexander Zverev in there in addition to the Djokovic loss. He missed some action due to minor foot and back injuries. Alcaraz just doesn’t look like the challenger right now that would make this a two-man tournament.
Instead, it’s Djokovic vs. the field, and the last time Djokovic played in and lost this tournament, the year was 2018 and Djokovic was only the 14th seed.
I’m confused about why Djokovic isn’t an odds on favorite.
We Keep Losing College Basketball Bets
Perhaps I’m not the guy to talk about favorites, though, given we keep losing college hoops bets. We righted the ship for a minute there, but we’re losing again. Losing a lot. Moneyline parlays—our approach of choice lately—worked very well for us the last two years in late January and early February, and we were hoping they’d work in early January as well. No such luck. We’ll try some different approaches the next few days, but we might have to throttle back on how many plays we’re making as we wait for the winds to change. We’re playing a dangerous game, and it is not going well.
That Gambia Flight
Also not going well? The Gambia’s soccer team’s travel to AFCON, the Africa Cup of Nations. The entire team almost died.
The story here is that the Gambian team was taking a small chartered plane over to the Ivory Coast but had to turn around right away because the plane didn’t have oxygen. The plane grew very hot inside and players began to lose consciousness. Insane, terrifying stuff.
Anyway, I don’t know if Gambia is going to make it to AFCON. The rest of Group C might have a good path to the knockout stage. Thankfully, it is not going to give a new meaning to “Group of Death.”
Nebraska vs. Iowa, and the Rest
It’s not the biggest college basketball game of the weekend, but with the way Nebraska’s been shooting, tonight’s game in Iowa City might be the most fun to watch. In my own world:
- Iowa State’s home against Oklahoma State, and they absolutely must win. This is not one they can afford to lose if they want to have any safety when it comes to making the NCAA Tournament. This would be a two or three-seed line loss, and it would open the door to some concerns about finishing too close to .500. Am I worried because of last year? Yes. Exactly. Also 2022. T.J. Otzelberger has yet to beat Oklahoma State in Ames, and I would like that to change.
- The Bulls host the Warriors and visit the Spurs, and we all know this is headed towards unrewarded begrudging excitement if they sweep this pair. We may know that to the point where even a loss tonight would be disappointing. This is all settling on me right now. I don’t like it. I’m going to move on.
- The Blackhawks gave the Jets a little scare but didn’t pull it off. Stars tomorrow. Back in Chicago for that.
- I can’t get over Shōta Imanaga’s press conference. From the Go Cubs Go intro to the Ben Zobrist anecdote (what a fascinating look at Imanaga, that Zobrist was who stood out to him), it made me feel like he loves the Cubs. That’s a special way to feel. Made me feel loved, too? Great introduction, sir.
#HireTommy