The Jets play primetime football again this weekend, and they’ll be playing Man Football, which is to say they’ll be playing football without a competent quarterback. The Jets will be trying to win the way our forefathers intended for football to be won, by bashing their opponents’ brains in and kicking field goals on 4th-and-2. The real men in football don’t throw the ball around, playing basketball on grass and lighting up SportsCenter with one-handed catches. The real men win football games by attrition, by being the ones holding the ball when they look up through their bloodied haze and see the blurry, dancing scoreboard at the end of the field flashing three sets of zeroes where the clock’s supposed to be.
There’s a chance this will work for the Jets. There’s a chance the Jets will win by accumulating safeties. Antonio Pierce touched his players last weekend, but that’s always more fun the first time it happens. The Raiders are still a mess, even with Josh McDaniels relieved of his duties in Las Vegas. (What is it with members of that Patriots Super Bowl coalition getting relieved in vacation destinations?)
Yes, Sunday Night Football will be ugly, and those who aren’t locked into Weber State/Saint Mary’s and Nevada/Washington are going to spend the broadcast asking: When is Aaron Rodgers going to return?
Rodgers can’t help himself when it comes to fostering this narrative. Give Aaron Rodgers midweek attention, and he will latch on to it like a newborn kitten. Add in that the man’s brain probably perceives Joe Biden, Anthony Fauci, Rupert Murdoch, and Taylor Swift (who betrayed him) to be currently sitting around a table in a Reston, Virginia penthouse frantically strategizing their spin zone should the quarterback defeat science on the grandest stage (Week 17 of the NFL season), and this is the most important Sunday Night Football game in Aaron Rodgers’s life. The nebulous spiritual force from whom Shailene Woodley gathers her water and Aubrey Marcus gathers his hundred-million-dollar supplement business led Aaron Rodgers to this moment for a reason, and that reason is to get a shit-ton of people to tune into his Pat McAfee interview this week and see him looking fucking sweet in his reflective sunglasses and ballcap. There is no greater pleasure in Aaron Rodgers’s life than knowing that society is interested in his interviews. They want it, Aaron Rodgers’s brain tells him. They want to see the shades.
The thing about Aaron Rodgers is that he has played a lot of football in his life, and he has watched a lot of football, and he knows a lot about football. Aaron Rodgers is a very smart man. Maybe not as smart as his life spent surrounded by severely concussed wide receivers has led him to believe, but Aaron Rodgers is a smart guy, and he is especially smart in the arena of football. Aaron Rodgers knows the Jets are bad. Aaron Rodgers knows the AFC is good. Aaron Rodgers knows that the Jets will soon have no realistic path to the playoffs.
There’s a mostly-joking theory going around that Aaron Rodgers didn’t actually tear his Achilles, that the injury was more minor and that he and the Jets announced it as an Achilles tear to open the possibility of winning the ESPY for Best Moment. I don’t think this is true. I do think, though, that Aaron Rodgers wants people to think he *could* come back early, and I could see him giving intentionally vague indications of when that historic return could happen in an attempt to have it both ways. It wouldn’t surprise me if Aaron Rodgers’s goal here is to, late in the season, say, “You know, I’d be out there right now, but since we’re eliminated, it’s just not worth it.” It also wouldn’t surprise me if Aaron Rodgers, responding to a report in July that he’s still not quite ready to play football, says, “What? It’s supposed to take a year to come back from my injury. My doctors and I chose a rehab approach that works for me, and I’m still on track to return on time. You guys try to spin everything.”
They say a trait of successful people is to look at bad situations and ask, What’s the best that could happen? For Aaron Rodgers, the answer post-Achilles tear is exactly what he sees in front of him: The powerful elite are terrified of what his body and mind and soul might do. He’s got a great selfie angle going for his McAfee interviews. He’s going to get to play football again next fall after completing a “collaborative” and “creative” rehab process. Aaron Rodgers is a successful person. Aaron Rodgers is having a blast right now.
Is James Madison This Year’s George Washington?
James Madison won again last night, and it again happened in dramatic fashion, taking two overtimes after Kent State allowed the Dukes to score five points in four seconds at the end of regulation. In the aftermath, Matt Norlander of CBS pointed out that JMU’s currently favored by kenpom in every game until January, then added: “Dukes have FAU-type potential this season.”
Matt, my friend (who never acknowledges my tweet replies).
Why dream so small?
A better comparison for the 2023–24 James Madison Dukes is the 2015–16 George Washington Colonials (we don’t say that anymore), who upset highly-ranked Virginia in their second game of the season and went on to win the NIT at the end of a 28–10 campaign. The parallels—founding father namesake, strong mid-major conference, loaded roster (2016 GW had Yuta Watanabe)—are endless.
I know James Madison wasn’t the tallest guy. But that doesn’t mean we should sell this team short.
Loaded slate tonight, and I will be missing most of it because my mom’s book club is in town (look out, Austin), but Memphis plays at Missouri and I’d call that the Game of the NITe of the Weekend. Mizzou is loudly on our radar, and possibly even welcomes the NIT potential. Memphis might hate being associated with us, but they respect us enough that they accepted the 2021 invite, and that will always make them a friend. Also, Memphis has trouble making friends. They’ve been trying to get a power conference invite for fifteen years and can’t swing it. I think they should be more grateful towards the NIT world.
Arch Manning Bust Watch: Is Quinn Ewers Rushing Back?
While the big news in Austin is my mom’s book club coming to town, and the other big news is that Fargo got to see her old groomer today, and the *other* big news is that UT is 1–0 heading into tonight’s matchup with Delaware State while Shaka Smart’s team is a 34.5-point favorite against the team many call the best in the MAAC, Quinn Ewers is allegedly preparing to start tomorrow in Fort Worth as the Horned Steers play the Horned Frogs. We’re working on a Bevo’s Fake Nuts revamp, but it’s not ready just yet (look, I had a wedding last night, ok?), so hopefully this suffices:
Is Quinn Ewers rushing back from this shoulder injury because Texas is worried they’ll get upset by TCU if they play Maalik Murphy? If so, what does that say about Arch Manning?
Orcas
After the most predictable Sens-ing in history on Wednesday, winning the Battle of Ontario in the midst of a disastrous stretch at the organizational level, the Senators returned to the ice last night and were predictably stomped by the Canucks. Artem Zub was back, which rocks, but the Sens looked like the Sens again, and not in the good way.
That’s not the point.
The Canucks have an orca in their logo, and why do we not have a major professional team named the Orcas? What—and I don’t say this lightly—the absolute fucking fuck is wrong with Seattle that they did not name their team the Orcas rather than the Kraken? Sure, the Kraken is a fun idea, but Orcas are real, and they’re badass, and they’re smart enough that if you make an ally of them they might help you win (I think this is the argument Dan Snyder used when he tried to keep the Washington Football Team from changing its name). They kill sharks! Imagine the social media opportunities of being named the Orcas and playing the Sharks.
But the Canucks, you say, They have the orca in their logo. As you noted! Did I say they’re named the Orcas? No. I said they’re named the Canucks. If they want to be the Orcas, they need to be the Orcas. Until then, I’m going to write Adam Silver so many letters demanding the NBA name the new Seattle franchise the Orcas that he’s forced to send a letter from his secretary in response explaining that 1) Adam Silver does not read letters, he reads teenagers’ Instagram comments and 2) the NBA does not use the term secretary because of its historic use as something demeaning towards women.
Build the Plane Out of Alex Caruso
The Bulls stink. They won after the players-only rendezvous (I was told it wasn’t a meeting), and last night we got the following tweet from Kevin Anderson of NBC Sports Chicago:
There are 45 3-man lineups in the NBA so far this season that have played 150+ mins together.
The Bulls trio of Vucevic-LaVine-DeRozan is:
44th in Offensive Rating (99.8)
42nd in Defensive Rating (119.5)
45th in Net Rating (-19.7)
Sounds about right. We want to be clear about something, though. This is a Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic problem. They’re the soft ones. DeMar DeRozan still has that dog. Just because the trio stinks doesn’t mean we should lump DeMar DeRozan in with children.
Speaking of having that dog: Alex Caruso.
Congratulations to the Tigers
Tigers fans are a little mad this morning, because Tigers fans’ friends are sending them texts saying, “Man, enjoy Jason Benetti. That’s awesome.” For context, if you don’t use MLB TV to watch out-of-market baseball games on summer days and summer nights, Jason Benetti was the White Sox’ play-by-play guy the last few years and is now going to the Tigers. He also does college basketball. He is the best. One of the absolute best play-by-play guys in all sports. A blossoming legend of the industry. In baseball, having a great play-by-play guy is a big, big deal, because a reasonably dedicated baseball fan spends at least ten hours a week with the play-by-play guy in his living room.
Why are Tigers fans mad about this? I think it’s the implication that the rest of us take it as a given that the Tigers aren’t going to be competitive. It isn’t, “Wow, you might get Ohtani!” It’s, “Hey, this is going to make your next miserable summer a lot more fun.”
Craig Counsell’s Not Moving?
On Wednesday, Brewers president of baseball ops Matt Arnold referred to Craig Counsell as “still my friend and neighbor,” and while I wouldn’t put it past a Brewers higher-up to live in Winnetka, I’m guessing this means that Matt Arnold thinks Craig Counsell is going to stay in whatever the nice suburb is of Milwaukee. (Wisconsin has an issue where if you ask where the cake eaters live, they just start talking about Chicago and Minneapolis. Not their best attribute. You have cake eaters, Wisconsin. It’s ok. We all do. Own it. Tell us where they are so we can cheer against their high school teams.)
If Counsell is staying in Milwaukee…
Why?
Ideally, it’s because Craig Counsell hates his family as much as he hates cookies and sunshine and the smell of a campfire on a brisk autumn night. Ideally, Craig Counsell wants to get away from them during the season and hunker down in some miserable overpriced hotel in the Loop, gnawing on almonds and spitting out the window at sidewalk passersby from thirty stories up.
I do think I like the concept of Craig Counsell as a mercenary. I like the idea of him saying, “Why would I move houses? I don’t need a connection to the place I work for. I’m here to coach a baseball team in the most miserable way imaginable and air petty unreasonable grievances while baseball media salivates over me and ignores how unimportant managers are.” I like the idea of Craig Counsell only being in Chicago to make money and win.
But Did You Hear About the Shoey Bar?
It’s nice that the F1 championship is clinched, because nobody has to pretend that the race in Las Vegas this weekend (at 1 AM Eastern Time on Saturday night) matters at all in any competitive sense. I went looking for some sort of preview of the race, and I found one article about how it’s going to be colder than most F1 races, and how that could make for unique tire considerations. The rest was about things like how hotel prices have started to drop and how there’s a bar at the Bellagio that will help you drink beer from a shoe like Daniel Ricciardo does, but in a way that complies with the requirements of the Southern Nevada Health District.
Again, this is good for F1. If you’re focusing on the competition within an F1 race, you’re going to be disappointed. What you want, with F1, is to be reminded that the thing looks super cool, especially when it’s a street race. That’s the piece that merits the most coverage this weekend: How cool will the race look, zooming down the Strip? Are camera angles going to show cars driving in front of some of the most iconic sights in America, or are they going to just do boring overheads where everything’s so blocked off by the walls and the fence that we forget this isn’t happening in some Emirate whose racetrack was built by slaves?
Thursday Weddings Might Be Good
As mentioned, we attended a wedding last night, and I will admit: I was not happy when I woke up about attending a Thursday wedding. It was inconvenient. Battling rush hour traffic in the rain to get out to a Thursday wedding? Not great, I thought, and that was in my own world, where I live in the city where the wedding took place. I hadn’t traveled into town for it, like most guests had.
Then, I got home, having had a good time, and I realized that Thursday weddings rock. That, or I just work weekends these days. All I missed in the sports world was the JMU/Kent State game. Everything else was still in front of me. The Thursday wedding defeats time. It sneaks a whole wedding in without taking away a Saturday. Thursday weddings are brilliant. Count me a supporter.
Prayers Up for Lyle
On a more serious note, our man Lyle Foster is going to be absent for the Burnleys this weekend against natural rival Arsenal while he tends to his mental health. Best wishes to him. I never put this together, but the man has played for six different clubs in five different countries on two different continents, and he’s only 23. I don’t know if that has any impact on his mental health or not, but it has to be hard. Hopefully he’s back soon, partly because Burnley’s on its way to relegation but more because that would hopefully signify he’s feeling better.
