Ten NFL Takes - Week Eight

 

Take number one: If you are a Washington football team fan (nb. I *hate* the “Commanders” name, awful), for 59 minutes and 48 seconds of Sunday’s game against the Bears it felt like déjà vu. Washington outplayed the Bears for most of the game but settled for field goals instead of touchdowns, allowing the Bears, with one long run and one good drive, to take the lead with less than 30 seconds to play. After shutting down Caleb Williams for three quarters and turning him back into Week 1 Caleb, the guy who was spraying throws around the field and chalked up less than 100 yards passing, the Washingtonians let Caleb spin some magic in the fourth quarter and it looked like the team had played just well enough to lose. We’ve seen this movie too many times to count in the last 25 years. Then, Jayden Daniels hurled a Hail Mary with the clock at zero that was tipped in the air directly into the waiting hands of Noah Brown for the game-winning touchdown and all “hail” broke loose. I am here for the Zapruder-film level of analysis that will take place of the winning play – Daniels eluding a tepid Bears rush for more than 10 seconds, Zach Ertz recognizing he could not make the catch but going up to keep the ball alive, the Chicago defender inexplicably doing the same, the ball dropping perfectly into Brown’s arms, all of it, and yes, Tyrique Stevenson posting up late to the play because he was too busy taunting the fans. That too. There is no telling how Williams’s and Daniels’s careers will turn out and Williams is having a good rookie season, but if any doubt remained about who the better quarterback is right now, Daniels’s last second magic put an end to that discussion.

Take number two: It is not just that the Jets are done, they were done last week, it is that the team, led by a no-doubt, first-ballot Hall of Fame quarterback, looks worse than it did with the guy the fans ran out of town and is currently sitting third on the depth chart in Denver. I watched (suffered through?) most of the Jets loss to New England and was just amazed at the low level of preparation and execution. The offense had to take multiple time outs because they could not run plays run in time. Sauce Gardner, a very talented defensive back, got burned on a deep pass by a guy who at best rates out as a wide receiver three on an average football team. The defensive line got pushed around all game long and the field goal kicker stinks. Losing by three when your kicker leaves four on the board is a very Jets way of losing, but the rot is much deeper. They went all in on Rodgers and it is now time to go all out. Start the fire sale now, not in the off season. You’re going to be picking in the top 10 (again) and selecting your third franchise quarterback in less than 10 years. Might as well harvest some of the talent you do have on your team for additional picks because you are now in full-on demolition and renovation mode.

Take number three: The Jameis Winston experience can be summarized in two plays that occurred back-to-back during the Browns’ game winning drive yesterday. On the first play, Winston badly overthrew his wide receiver and right into the hands of Ravens All-Pro safety Kyle Hamilton, who inexplicably dropped what would have been a game ending interception. On the very next play, Jameis avoided a blitz and launched a perfect bomb to Cedric Tillman in the end zone to win the game. He is either throwing a soul crushing pick or a game winning TD. There is no middle ground. On a side note, the Ravens are their own experience. They can pound teams into veal scaloppini week after week and then throw up a clunker that makes you question whether they can win a title.

Take number four: I probably hate the Eagles more than any team in the league, and it pains me to say this, but it looks like they (kind of) figured out that when you pay premium money for a running back, it makes sense to feature that player prominently in your offensive scheme. Even if Hurts has hit a ceiling (or even regressed) from his 2022 campaign, with the weapons this team has on offense and a defense that looks … decent (?), they are going to contend for the division title this year. Maybe not a Super Bowl quality team, but definitely playoff bound.

Take number five: Last week I mentioned the Chiefs were taking a page out of the 2018 Patriots playbook of stifling defense and a “mid” offense. This week let me suggest the Chiefs are also taking a page out of the 2003-04 Patriots playbook that resulted in 21 straight wins over two seasons. The Chiefs are now at 13 after escaping Vegas with a seven point win, but I think we are at that point where when the Chiefs take the field they know they are going to win, the other team knows they are going to win, and the Chiefs know that the other team knows they are going to win. The take havers in the media still look at this team as some variation on the Rams’s old Greatest Show On Turf offense, but it has not been that for going on two full seasons. Defenses have schemed to slow down Mahomes while the Chiefs defense just suffocates opponents like a boa constrictor. The Chiefs are not blowing out many teams any more, but they rarely lose either. Top to bottom, the Chiefs probably don’t have a top 5 roster, but they do have the best team and have to be the odds on favorite to complete the three-peat.

Take number six: Trevor Lawrence is a rich man’s Daniel Jones. No, really, he is. Here are their career stats:

Daniel Jones: 24-41-1 record. 64.1% completion percentage. 13,954 yards with 68 TDs and 44 INTs.

Trevor Lawrence: 22-36 record. 63.6% completion percentage. 13,605 yards with 69 TDs and 43 INTs.

One guy is going to be carrying a clipboard next year while the other guy continues getting fluffed in the media because of one season he had like seven years ago as a college freshman.  

Take number seven: Life comes at you fast in the NFL. The Saints started the season 2-0 and were the talk of the league. Six straight losses later, their coach is probably another loss away from being fired mid-season. Crazy.

Take number eight: Are the Broncos good? I am asking that question legitimately because I do not know. Their rookie QB is having the standard up and down performances, but the defense is legitimate and you can only beat the teams on your schedule. Yes, the Broncos are loading up on cupcakes like the Panthers and Saints, but the Jets, with a better roster, are losing winnable games against equally inferior talent.

Take number nine: Is there a team having more fun than the Detroit Lions? Go on the interwebz and watch Dan Campbell’s post-game speech in the locker room. Great energy, great vibes, and a team that plays for each other to the point that on a day when Jared Goff threw for 85 yards, the team put up 52 points without breaking much of a sweat and cruised to another W.

Take number ten: I grew up in a time when Brent Musberger and the NFL Today crew told you everything you needed to know about Sunday’s games in a neat and tidy 30 minutes. Now, the Sunday pre-game show on the NFL Network is four freaking hours. ESPN’s show is three hours. It’s exhausting and unnecessary. Please, for the love of God, ninety minutes, tops.  

Ten NFL Takes - Week Seven

Take number one: Lamar is in a different stratosphere than the mere mortals playing football right now. Brian Baldinger called Lamar the conductor of the Ravens’ offense and it was an apt term. We have the running back section with a 30-year-old freight train on pace to break the single season rushing record, backed up by a change-of-pace third down wizard and a lead blocker who is as big as an offensive lineman. Then we have the tight end section, with three studs who can block, catch, and get YAC. And let’s not forget the wide receiver section, who are getting favorable match ups because defenses have to guard against Derrick Henry randomly breaking off an 80-yard run. And, last but not least, an offensive line that is mauling defenses. All Lamar has done in the last five games is go 88 for 123 (71.5%) with 13 touchdowns and 1 interception while adding another 288 yards on the ground. Remember, the Ravens are half an Isaiah Likely foot and a fourth quarter defensive meltdown against the Raiders away from being 7-0.

Take number two: The 2024 Chiefs are morphing into the 2018 Patriots. You remember the last Patriots Super Bowl winner, right? Wide receiver room that included such forgettable names as Phillip Dorsett, Chris Hogan, and Matthew Slater. An over-the-hill Rob Gronkowski led the tight ends and their leading receiver was not a receiver at all, it was a running back named James White. What that team did have was a suffocating defense that turned Super Bowl 53 into the biggest snoozefest on record. But you can get away with that when you have the best quarterback in the league behind center and that’s basically what the Chiefs are doing right now. They lost their top two wide receivers (although as I’m writing, there is some buzz they are trading for DeAndre Hopkins) and their top running back, Travis Kelce has yet to sniff the end zone, and the last time the team scored 30 points was Week 12 of last season and yet they have now won 12 games in a row even though Mahomes is having the worst statistical year of his career because they have one of the two or three best defensive coordinators in the league and a dominant defense. So impressive.

Take number three: Not to get too philosophical with the 15 people who are going to read this, but I don’t think there is much justice in this world, but, maybe the closest you can come to it with a guy who was accused of sexually harassing and/or abusing two dozen women is having his Achilles pop like a guitar string on national television, likely ending his career. No, the money he almost certainly paid those women to make their lawsuits go away will not make up for the trauma he allegedly inflicted on them, and I am sure he still has enough money from his fully guaranteed contract to last for generations to come, but the one thing he devoted his life to being has been taken away from him. And, not for anything, a bit of karmic justice for Browns ownership too. You finally built a decent roster, put it in the hands of a terrible human being and now you’re in cap hell with a lousy record and an abundance of questions going forward.

Take number four: Among the four major North American sports leagues, the NFL’s trade deadline has historically been the least interesting, but here’s hoping that changes this year. The Chiefs’ undefeated record notwithstanding, both conferences have a bunch of teams with playoff and/or Super Bowl aspirations and on the other hand, there are a bunch of teams that are going nowhere fast but have desirable players for whom draft picks could be collected by sending them to one of those playoff-bound teams. I am Team Chaos.

Take number five: One trade that did work out for both teams is the quarterback swap Detroit and Los Angeles made a few years ago. The Rams got their ring, the Lions got a guy who is now at worst at top-2 contender for league MVP. It does not hurt that Jared Goff is surrounded by more weapons than a Navy SEAL unit and a brilliant offensive coordinator, but he’s the trigger man, he’s the one delivering those throws, making those reads, and leading that team. Detroit is one of the best stories in the league this year and apropos of my prior point, I do hope they make a deal for a defensive lineman. The NFC is there for the taking.

Take number six: I typically describe myself as a lapsed “R words” fan (the Commanders name is stupid, sorry). And can you blame me? For the last 25 years, the only thing worse than the product on the field has been the ownership of the team, but both those things changed during the off season and then of course, seven games into a new era, our transcendent talent of a rookie quarterback lands awkwardly on a 45-yard run and we hold our collective breath while we spend the rest of the season hoping Jayden Daniels’s ribs don’t crack and he doesn’t suffer any more injuries. And that’s the thing, rookies come into the league like new cars rolling off the showroom floor, but you have no idea when the first dings and scrapes are going to occur or god forbid the head on collisions that total them. Malik Nabers and Marvin Harrison, Jr. have already suffered concussions, Joe Alt sprained his MCL, and now Daniels is now week-to-week. That’s four of the top six picks in last year’s draft who have already missed time and we are not even halfway through the season.

Take number seven: Speaking of that R words game, the Carolina Panthers are not a functional professional football team right now. You might have forgotten that in 2022 they fired their head coach and went 6-6 down the stretch under interim coach Steve Wilks, who relied on a stingy defense and punishing running game. Instead of giving Wilks the gig full-time, owner David Tepper mortgaged the future to move up in the draft to pick Bryce Young and hired Frank Reich to coach him (he lasted 11 games). Since Wilks left, the Panthers have played exactly twice as many games (24) and won exactly half as many (3). Yes, there are other examples of inept franchises in recent memory – the 2017 Browns and the 2008 Lions both went 0-16 – so I guess the Panthers are simply the latest example of what happens when you get that mix of terrible ownership, awful player personnel decisions, and a revolving door at head coach.

Take number eight: Speaking of inept franchises, can we stop talking about the Jets now? The team is 2-5, is listless on offense and suddenly can’t play defense. They need to go a minimum of 8-2 the rest of the way and have already lost to two teams (Pittsburgh and Denver) they will probably be fighting for a wild card spot. They went all in on Rodgers and it is just not working.

Take number nine: Has any team suffered a worse loss this season than the Buccaneers did on Monday night? Their season likely ended with injuries to Mike Evans and Chris Godwin and it just bummed me out. I don’t think it was fair to criticize Todd Bowles for keeping Godwin in the game late in the fourth quarter for two reasons: 1) the rest of the first team offense was also on the field, it’s not like Godwin was out there along with a bunch of second stringers and 2) the game was technically not out of reach. Unlikely, sure, but over, no. Football is a violent sport where fluke injuries happen all the time.

Take number ten: Every football talking head show has one or more gimmick segments. I mean, they play *PICTIONARY* on the NFL Network’s Sunday pre-game show for god’s sakes, but for what it’s worth, here are my five favorites: number five, Big Man Ballin’ (Marcus Spears), number four, Sat ‘Em Down (Jeff Saturday), number three, Chill, Bruh (Adam Rank), number two, Team Tiers (Nick Wright), and number one, Angry Runs (Kyle Brandt), without a doubt the most simultaneously absurd and hilarious feature of them all.

Go Big Red

When Nebraska volleyball star Merritt Beason sets up for a back row attack, it is like watching a bird of prey preparing to take flight. The six foot four inch All-American stretches her body to meet the ball nine, nine-and-a-half feet in the air, coiling her right arm back and then driving it through the ball with such force and velocity it is a wonder a small dent does not appear in the court where the ball either lands out of the reach of a defender or ricochets harmlessly out of bounds off an attempted return. Point Nebraska.

Of the many ways my life changed during the pandemic, becoming a fan of women’s college volleyball might be the most surprising. I do not even remember when I started watching it, likely sometime in 2021, aimlessly scrolling the dial and landing on the BIG 10 network. I do not have a rooting interest in one team or the other, and since the BIG 10 is to women’s volleyball what the SEC is to men’s football, there is talent across the board, which allows me to experience the sport being played at the highest level for the pure sake of enjoyment and appreciation of athletic ability. And nowhere is that truer than in Lincoln, where volleyball is practically a religion.

If the Brazilians play a version of soccer called the beautiful game, Nebraska plays the volleyball version of it. When the team is “in system” as they say, watching the six players on the court move with a level of fluidity and grace that is a sight to behold. It all starts with sophomore setter Bergen Reilly. The setter is the on-the-court quarterback (or point guard if you prefer a basketball analogy), moving as the return of service dictates and then deciding where to distribute the ball. Reilly is a savant, subtly shifting as the serve crosses the net so she is in position to set one of her outside hitters or middle blockers. Like a pitching ace whose release point is identical regardless of the pitch he throws, so too is Reilly’s set, making it hell on the other team to line up their block. She might send her set to one of the two pins, where Beason or Harper Murray, a sophomore who was the BIG 10’s freshman of the year last year, send thunderbolt kills across the net, or opt for a slide attack from fellow sophomore Andi Jackson, whose vertical has to be close to three feet and whips her right arm around the ball with such torque that if it misses a defender’s arm, the ball bounces off the court and toward the stands. And just to keep the opponents honest, Reilly can show off her sky high volleyball IQ with the occasional (and admittedly awkwardly named) setter dump, dropping the ball herself over the tape for a point.

While Reilly apportions out sets that make the Big Red Machine hum, the team’s calling card is defense. On a squad littered with All-Americans and blue chip recruits, it would be easy for them to rely on their dominating offense to win, but for a team with so much talent, the Huskers are a gritty lot. While Reilly leads the offense, it is senior libero and All-American Lexi Rodriguez who sets the tempo on defense. Rodriguez is a marvel on the court, routinely digging out missiles sent by the opposing team’s best hitters, flinging her body across the court with abandon, and rarely failing to reach a ball. Her intensity is matched in the front court where Jackson, along with Rebekah Allick, lead the team’s middle block, but they are far from alone. Beason, Reilly, Murray, Lindsey Krause, along with star transfers Taylor Landfair and Leyla Blackwell are all willing defenders who use their height and physicality to stymie even the most potent line-ups.

When all three phases are clicking, as they usually are, it is a wonder to behold. Leading it all is head coach John Cook. He is not one to prowl the sidelines, rather, he sits on a chair with a slightly annoyed look you might refer to as “Resting Cook Face.” A Wyoming cowboy who comes across as irascible, Cook has 5 national titles and more than 700 wins under his belt at Nebraska, but if you burrow deep enough down the rabbit hole that is Husker social media, you can find him hamming it up with his players in a way that suggests his bark is probably worse than his bite.  

The results speak for themselves. The team has been volleyball royalty for three decades. Over the past two seasons, the Huskers are 51-3, their only losses coming last year against another powerhouse BIG 10 team (Wisconsin) in the regular season and in the national championship game to Texas. This season’s 18-1 mark is marred only by an uncharacteristic sweep at SMU early on, but the team has rolled to 15 straight wins since then. The Devaney Center, where the team plays its home matches, has been sold out for more than 300 matches in a row, a streak rivaled only by the Green Bay Packers at historic Lambeau Field. In the summer of 2023, Nebraska volleyball played a home match at the university’s football stadium, drawing a crowd of 92,003, which not only shattered the record for the largest crowd at a women’s volleyball match, but was the biggest crowd to attend any women’s sporting event in history. With the sport starting to garner more national attention via nationally broadcast matches on ESPN and now NBC, its popularity will grow as more people are drawn to the athleticism and skill these women display, and leading the charge will be Big Red.

Ten NFL Takes - Week Six

 

Take number one: There are plenty of teams with better records, but is there a better team for soap opera-level drama than the Dallas Cowboys? Four, count ‘em, four, playoff wins in the last 25 years, still living off the glory days of Aikman, Irving, and Smith, yet their owner has kept the America’s Team thing going strong. They got absolutely pasted at home and as the Lions were running their third offensive tackle eligible play you could almost hear the keyboards firing up in Bristol (ESPN) and L.A. (NFL Network) to start a new week of Cowboys discourse. And just when you thought that this defeat – the worst home loss of the Jerry Jones era occurring on his 82^nd birthday - was the icing on the cake, he stepped in it with both feet. First, in his post-game press availability when he got into it with a reporter and then the following day when he got into it EVEN WORSE during a radio interview where he threatened the host’s job. 10/10 on the Real Housewives drama scale, but 0/10 on the football field.

Take number two: If the Cowboys have a rival in the drama department, it is of course the New York Jets. Last week I said trading for Davante Adams was going to be like the couple in the shaky marriage deciding to have a baby to make things better and well, they went ahead and did it. Woody Johnson is fully embracing the sunk cost fallacy and mortgaging the future in hopes a team being put together on the fly with a revolving door among the coaching staff and led by a mercurial, soon-to-be 41-year-old with limited mobility and an eternal resting “b” face, will somehow win 8 of the next 11 games and backdoor their way into the playoffs.

Take number three: Speaking of the sunk cost fallacy, the Browns need to blow it up. Like, full-scale, strip it down to the studs rebuild because whatever they are putting on the field right now is not NFL-caliber football. Announce a fire sale and trade every asset you have to recoup (and then some) the picks you gave up for Watson, bury him on your bench or wait until next season to eat the cap hit you are going to take. Yes, I mean Miles Garrett. Yes, I mean Nick Chubb. Yes, I mean JOK. You’re Cleveland. Fans in your city are accustomed to lousy ownership, poor middle management, and a below average team, they’ll get over it.

Take number four: Caleb Williams is closing the rookie gap with Jayden Daniels and it is not because Daniels is regressing but rather because Williams is starting to find his groove. It is entirely possible by the end of the season Williams’s number will be better than Daniels’s, not because he is a better quarterback necessarily, but the team around him is better. Daniels is making it happen with lesser talent and a defense that just lost its best player, whereas Williams has three stud receivers, a solid tight end, and a strong running game to go along with a lock down defense that has not given up 20 points this entire season.

Take number five: Is there a fan base that travels better than the Pittsburgh Steelers? They played in Las Vegas this weekend and when CBS panned to the crowd, you would have thought you were at whatever they’re calling Heinz Field these days. The Terrible-Towel waving takeover of Reliant Stadium was really a sight to behold.

Take number six: Speaking of that game, maybe I’m showing my age, but I got irrationally angry seeing a fourth-round pick who has not done anything in this league trot out onto the field wearing Ken Stabler’s number 12 jersey. Like, no offense to Aiden O’Connell, I’m sure he’s a nice guy doing his best, but how is The Snake’s number not retired? My team, the former “R” words, are also a little chintzy with retired jerseys (although Darryl Green’s #28 is being retired this weekend), but what they do instead is refuse to issue certain numbers, like #44 (John Riggins), #7 (Joe Theismann (although he did grant a “waiver” a few years back for the unfortunate Dwayne Haskins (RIP) experience)), and #9 (Sonny Jergensen), but when some rumdum they pulled off the streets was given Mark Moseley’s #3, I had a similar reaction. Just don’t do it. Honor your legends and your team’s history.

Take number seven: The NFC is better, top to bottom this year, than the AFC. The AFC is basically a two-team race between the Chiefs and Ravens and maybe the Texans if they stay consistent, but the rest of the conference? Lots of question marks. The NFC on the other hand, has no one dominant team, but half-a-dozen teams that if they get hot and maybe make a trade or two (see below), could end up in the Super Bowl.

Take number eight: Remember the Rams had that famous “F those picks” motto a few years back and went all in on trading for/signing a bunch of veterans to get them that ring? If you’re the Detroit Lions, embrace this philosophy! The Lions were dealt a crushing blow when they lost Aiden Hutchinson for the season, but all is not lost. There are teams … the Raiders … cough … the Browns … cough … the Jets … cough … with more than serviceable replacements on their rosters they might be willing to part with if you F THOSE PICKS. You haven’t won a title since 1957, your offense is clicking on all cylinders, your fan base is rabid, and the conference is wide open. Go for it.

Take number nine: I hate all Philly teams. Like, just cannot stand the vibe in that city. The arrogance of their fans, their chestiness, their embrace of d-bag behavior, they are truly the worst. Since I am stuck in a part of New Jersey about 45 minutes from Philly and am subjected to local broadcasting from there, one thing I do enjoy is watching post-game shows after either the Phillies or the Eagles lose. It truly makes me happy to watch the local talking heads cry when their teams lose. So, while I was hoping the Eagles would lose last weekend, I got the next best thing – their pissy head coach jawing with HIS OWN FANS at the end of the game. Cannot think of a fan base and a head coach who deserve each other more. Just send all them on a space ship directly into the sun.

Take number ten: It is a small thing, and truly, no one outside the greater Washington, D.C. area cares, but when a Baltimore team and a Washington team play – whether it is in baseball or football – it is not a “Battle of the Beltway.” The Beltway, I-495 in and around Washington, is exactly that, a “belt” that wraps around Northern Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. You cannot get to Baltimore from Washington via the Beltway; you can get there by taking an *exit* off the Beltway onto I-95 or you can take the Baltimore-Washington (B/W) Parkway, but the only thing driving on the Beltway does is take you in a big circle around the nation’s capital.  

Ten NFL Takes - Week Five

 

Take number one: Deshaun Watson is broken. Whether you want to believe he “quit” on his team on 4^th down near the end of the first half or it was just a communications glitch in his helmet, he’s done. Draw your own conclusions as to why that is, but Kevin Stefanski’s stubborn refusal to bench him suggests one of two things, either he does not have the final say on who plays or he is trying to get fired, assuming his two coach-of-the-year awards will land him a gig somewhere else.

Take number two: Remember when Gary Kasparov was the world chess champion, IBM designed a computer chess program, and Kasparov “played” the computer? He won, but then there was a rematch and the computer won. That’s the New York Jets offense. They are the only team that relies entirely on their quarterback to get to the line of scrimmage, look at the defense, and call what he thinks is the best play against it. And yes, Aaron Rodgers is probably Kasparov-level good at doing that, but the defenses have become IBM-super computer sophisticated and too much for him to compute all the options in real time. It was assumed that so long as the Jet defense held teams to 20 points or fewer, they should be a playoff team. Well, in the last two games the defense gave up 10 and 17 and they lost both. The team is now 2-3 and trading for Devante Adams feels like the couple whose marriage is shaky and decide to have a kid to solve their problems. Really bad vibes right now.

Take number three: As a native Washingtonian who lived through the last quarter century of awful Commanders football, watching Jayden Daniels is a “pinch me” moment. I finally got to see a full game and he is all that and a bag of chips. Calm, in control of the offense, and his deep passes are a thing of beauty. Against a defense that ranked *number one* in the league last year, he never seemed rattled and picked them apart like a ten-year veteran. The stadium, which for so long had been half-full (and with a not insubstantial number of the visiting team’s fans) was loud, boisterous, and supportive throughout. If you look at the Commanders historically, they basically had about 80 years of mediocre to bad teams with a roughly 10 year period in the 1980s (and a fluke run to the Super Bowl in 1972-3) when they were one of the three best teams in the league. Fans tend to downplay the former and marinate in the latter, but with the stench of Snyder’s run as owner starting to abate and the potential for a return to D.C. in the offing with Daniels at the helm, things may be looking up again.

Take number four: How is it that the league tells us they care about player safety but somehow Josh Allen only missed like four plays after his head bounced off the turf at Reliant Stadium like a basketball and he appeared to be knocked unconscious? You can tell me all you want about helmet improvements and guardian caps, but the frequency with which players who appear severely injured somehow get back in the game is troubling. McDermott’s play calling at the end of the game was also a head scratcher and the Bills are now coming back down to Earth. If Allen was concussed or misses time, their season could go downhill fast.

Take number five: One of my favorite sports sayings, which I attribute to Tony Kornheiser, is that “the other team has coaches too.” I say that in regards to the Houston Texans, whose offense does not look nearly as explosive or dynamic as it did last year and you can’t blame it all on Joe Mixon’s injury because their running game was awful last year too. No, I think other teams have coaches and those coaches figured out how to scheme against Bobby Slowik and it’s now his job to counter their counter moves because this Texans team, while good, is not living up to its potential.

Take number six: Few things in football are more exciting than the 14-point flip. You know, Team A is near Team B’s goal line, about to punch it in for a score and then a fumble or interception happens, Team B takes it back for a touchdown and the whole game shifts. Now, imagine that happens twice on one Sunday. Gardner Minshew threw an awful interception that was returned the other way for a touchdown and a Giants running back fumbled at the goal line and Seattle took it back as well. Great stuff.

Take number seven: You know who I would not want to be today? Shane Steichen, who is in a classic no-win situation. His best option at quarterback is 39-year-old Joe Flacco, but last year his team drafted Anthony Richardson, a 21-year-old with fewer than 15 starts in college (by way of comparison, Jayden Daniels had 55) but raw athletic ability you rarely see in a signal caller. The problem is Richardson needs reps to get better but when he is on the field, the flashes of brilliance are few and the errors are many. If you stick with the old guy, you have a better chance of winning, but by doing so, you are tacitly admitting your young guy is not ready. On the other hand, if you give your young guy the reps he needs and the losses pile up with him behind center, you probably lose your job. Just a bad deal all around.

Take number eight: This Sunday marks the beginning of that weird, now two-week period where we pretend the Jacksonville Jaguars are somehow the “unofficial” team of London, England, like the two places are sister cities and the team is part of an exchange program, and I hate it. Making the Jaguars the “unofficial” team of Great Britain is cruel and unusual. I get that the league is almost pathologically motivated to squeeze every last penny of revenue it can out of the product, but you will never convince me those stadiums (sorry, pitches) in England are filled with Jaguars-loving Englishmen (and women) and not Americans who thought it would be a hoot to take a trip across the pond to watch an NFL game in another country. Fire all these games (and the ones in Germany, Brazil, and wherever else the league is going to do this) straight into the sun.

Take number nine: Speaking of ineptitude, we have seen this Bengals movie before. A Super Bowl contending team in the 1980s that slowly fell into irrelevance, a brief resurrection under Carson Palmer that never met its potential because he suffered a devastating knee injury, a few decent years with Andy Dalton that fizzled out because they would not re-sign their own players, and now this. I think we are going to look back at Cincinnati’s run in 2022 as the high water mark of the Joe Burrow era. The defense lost key contributors that have not been replaced, Tee Higgins will be leaving at the end of the year, and what they’ll be left with is a high priced quarterback/receiver combo without much else around them because Mike Brown is a notoriously cheap owner/GM who still runs his franchise like it’s the 1970s. They lost on Sunday to not one, but two guys who are cheat codes at their positions and a bad hold on a game winning field goal after some bizarre decision making by their head coach in overtime. At 1-4, their chances of making the playoffs are slim and their roster will be worse, not better, next year.

Take number ten: Non-football take. The tension generated in playoff baseball games is off the charts good. Now that each league lets in seven teams, the regular season is a boring, unnecessary six month slog, but when you have 45,000 people in a stadium living and dying on every pitch late in a one-run game, there are not many things better in sports.

Matlock

 The first word that popped into my head when I finished watching the pilot episode of Matlock is one not normally associated with CBS’s prime time programming: subversive. The network that churns out crime procedurals year after year has launched a reboot that is not really a reboot and a show about a law firm that is actually a show about revenge. The sleight of hand extends from the show’s title to its closing scene, which turns everything else that happened in the prior 40 minutes upside down.

If you invoke the name “Matlock” to people of a certain age, we immediately think of Andy Griffith’s whose intelligence was sometimes masked by an aw shucks, country lawyer vibe, so it was logical to think this new Matlock just updated the original version, cast a new lead (Kathy Bates) and moved the show to New York. And through much of the premiere, that assumption held true.

Like the original, Maddie Matlock is also a lawyer, albeit one we are told has reentered the legal field after three decades because of a husband who left her destitute and caring for her grandson after her own daughter passed away. Maddie also has that homespun, lilting southern drawl that disarms people. As she notes, once women get to be a certain age, society starts ignoring them but instead of being mad about it, she uses it to her advantage. It may look like she is struggling to pay for her coffee but she is actually eavesdropping on a chatty lawyer talking into his phone and discussing an amount he is willing to settle a case for.  She fumbles in her purse for an ID badge that does not exist so a younger employee while swipe her into a building. And so on.

The goal of all this subterfuge is gaining access to the law firm Jacobson Moore and the rest of the episode follow beats that will be familiar to anyone who has watched a legal procedural. There is of course the case of the week, here, a wrongly convicted former prisoner now seeking punitive damages and the law firm cast of characters. There is Olympia, the intense, sharp-as-a-tack partner, her ex-husband Julian, Julian’s father who is simply referred to as “Senior” (who is also the managing partner of the firm), Billy, Olympia’s new love interest, and the bumbling junior associates who can’t seem to do anything right. Maddie wends her way into a two-week tryout thanks to the settlement information she shares (it turns out the firm is representing the parties on the other side and her intel nets them an additional $4 million) and after a few fits and starts, also tracks down the smoking gun information that helps their former prisoner client net a massive jury award.

Admittedly, I was ready to bail on the show at this point. The plot was so predictable I even guessed the punitive damage award amount, but then Matlock paid homage to another pop culture icon, The Usual Suspects. In the show’s final moments, Maddie boards a city bus to what we expect will be a modest apartment she shares with her grandson. Instead, she gets off after one stop, turns a corner, and slips into the back of a chauffeured Town Car and is driven to a mansion where her husband and grandson await.

Maddie is a lawyer, but one who stopped practicing just 10 years ago, not 30, she is still married, and her grandson is a techie who helped create her Matlock alter ego, complete with a fictionalized résumé and references. See, it turns out FIRM covered up the dangers associated with opioid usage, allowing the pills to stay on the market for enough time that her daughter got hooked on them and ultimately died of an overdose. As Maddie explains, her goal is to find out which of the lawyers at the firm was responsible and bring them down.

What a great plot twist! A show I was prepared to write off suddenly got a lot more interesting. That said, I do wonder how they’ll balance the needs of a standard legal procedural, with its case-of-the-week format and interpersonal dynamics of the office, against this deeper story of what is basically corporate espionage. Elsbeth, the show Matlock is paired with, attempted something similar in its first season (a murder of the week combined with a longer story arc about police corruption) that was tonally awkward. Part of the problem is the limited runtime of each episode and the need to lay track for each story line within those 44 minutes. The other is that the energies are much different. Elsbeth, and, it appears Maddie, have what the kids might call good vibes even if they are solving murders or exonerating the innocent, whereas digging into corruption and bribery are darker subjects that just do not blend well with that type of aesthetic. Elsbeth (smartly) resolved the police corruption story to focus on being a quirky Columbo knock-off. Whether Matlock will be more like its namesake or Michael Clayton is to be determined.