The NFL season is about to kick off, and however preposterous the National Football League may be—each year it strives mightily to become more preposterous—the arrival of the king of sports will be a welcome diversion from the many forms of nonsense that swirl around us.
Savor this season, because it’s the beginning of the end. Future NFL seasons may decline rapidly in popularity and import. Not because of the anthem-kneeling controversy, not because of brain trauma caused by football at the youth and high-school levels, and not because of the endless corruption caused by the NCAA’s quest to destroy higher education.
The NFL is about to enter a spiral of decline because of gambling.
I don’t intend to sound like a Baptist-raised killjoy. Of course $10 office wagers are fun, just like friendly hands of small-stakes poker are fun. But serious gambling can become an addiction that ruins lives and breaks up families. Many states have embraced the casino business in order to get their skim, and many corporations do the same The result, as Derek Thompson has written, is national shame.
It’s true that outlawing wagering drives it underground. But making gambling legal and easily accessible increases the social harm by broadening its use, in the same way that if heroin were legal, then the needles would be clean but injections would go away up.
Suppose you don’t care about how harmful gambling is to society. Clearly many governors, mayors, and state legislatures don’t. Now professional basketball and ice hockey owners don’t care about harm to society so long as they get their cuts, and football owners are inching closer to this position.
The NBA and NHL have already jumped into bed with bookies, and the Supreme Court recently smiled on the affairs by saying states may allow sports wagering. NBA commissioner Adam Silver is an enthusiastic supporter of gambling on his league’s games, and a short time ago, the NBA made a deal with the MGM casino company through which LeBron James and other stars will urge you to put money down on basketball and spin that wheel. The NBA says MGM will use “official NBA data”—you’ll be able to see Kevin Durant’s official free-throw percentage!—and that the league is hoping to receive a royalty for every legal wager placed on a pro basketball game.
For its part the NHL says it considers hockey scores to be intellectual property for which it should receive payments whenever casinos and online betting websites post NHL scores.
Other aspects of what the baseball sportscaster Brian Kenny calls the “sports-industrial complex” seem only too happy to go along. As TMQ reader Tony de Jesus Chiang of Mai, Thailand, notes, Sports Illustrated—now owned by Meredith, which presents itself as a family-values firm—has begun to offer advice on wagering on sports, including encouragement that Americans wager on college sports.
Some NBA teams openly tank, while ice hockey has never been a major factor in Americans’ interests. So, one might ask, “Really, what do the NBA and NHL have to lose?”
But the NFL is the king of sports—in public imagination and in revenue. It’s got a lot to lose. And if people come to believe NFL games are fixed: Goodnight, Irene.
The NFL will move the Raiders to Las Vegas in 2019 or 2020 and has been sending signals about a pending endorsement of gambling on football games. The NFL already licenses its brand state-run lottos, while prissily saying the lottos are chance rather than bets on final scores. (This evades the issue that state-run lottos are intended to fleece the poor—the tickets sell in convenience stores and liquor stores, not at Nordstrom.) Should the NFL join the NBA and NHL in urging people to wager on games, the end will be nigh.
Whatever one may think of professional football, for decades product quality has been high. Games are terrific. Action is intense. Athletes offer impressive feats. The audience is confident both sides are trying their best to win. That is, the game has integrity.
If the NFL embraces gambling, integrity will vanish. Many if not most fans soon will believe the games are fixed. Trust is hard to obtain and easy to lose.
Football offers many opportunities to manipulate the point spread. For last season’s Saints at Vikings playoff game, the spread was Minnesota giving 5.5, meaning the bettor who put action on the Vikes needed Minnesota to win by at least 6 points, otherwise the pots would go to those who wagered on the Saints. During the game’s memorable time-expires snap, Minnesota scored a long touchdown to take a 29-24 lead and win. But the Vikings didn’t cover, because the lead was only five points. Officials waved the Vikings back onto the field for a try. Had they kicked the near-automatic PAT, they would have won by 6 points, covering and shifting the happiness from Saints bettors to Vikings bettors. Minnesota knelt, attempting no extra point.
Was this good sportsmanship—or manipulation of the spread because Vikes boosters and staff had bet against themselves? That question had resonance only in Nevada, since only there could an American have placed a legal wager on the result; anybody in any other state who complained about the Vikings not attempting a try was admitting to breaking the law. But if a day comes when anyone can place legal wagers on the NFL, moments like the try at the end of the Saints-Vikings playoff game will get national attention. And not just the Vikings’ decision to kneel—millions will think, “That New Orleans player fell down by accident, huh? Sure, sure. An accident.”
Generations ago the NFL struggled to establish a sense of integrity of the game, overcoming assumptions about mobsters fixing outcomes, including a 1963 betting scandal. The NFL succeeded in convincing the public the games were legitimate, and football popularity rose in sync. But if the NFL should embrace wagering on final scores—or cell-phone-based “micro-wagers” made during games, as are offered by British bookies for soccer—nobody will believe the results are real anymore.
The last 20 years have seen steep declines in faith in institutions, coupled with sharp rises in assumptions about fake news, fake results, fake this, and fake that. Many institutions may not deserve the criticism they are enduring, and “fake news” often turns out to mean “opinions I don’t agree with.” The entire contemporary understanding of the condition of society may be deeply distorted, as I argue in my new book It’s Better Than It Looks. But there’s no escaping that Americans increasingly view events through negative filters.
Should the NFL embrace wagering on professional sports—and it’s already put a foot in the door by embracing Vegas—the NFL will ruin its quality. In order to do what? To make its feudal billionaire ownership class even more filthy rich?
Enjoy the 2018 season—it may be the last great season of American professional football.
In Tuesday Morning Quarterback news, during the preseason I use only “vanilla” items designed to confuse scouts from other sports columns. Next week when the regular season begins, I will come at readers from all angles with unorthodox syntax, fast-paced no-huddle gerunds, and play-fake comments that start off sounding serious but then become jokes.
See below for Tuesday Morning Quarterback’s Super Bowl pick, bearing in mind the column motto: All Predictions Wrong or Your Money Back.
Hmm, Which Team Should I Circle in My Office Pool? #1. The Browns have lost 13 consecutive opening games; the Browns have lost six straight to the Steelers; on opening day, the Browns play the Steelers.
Hmm, Which Team Should I Circle in My Office Pool? #2. Kansas City is on an 8-0 streak versus the Chargers. On opening day, the Chargers play the Chiefs.
Hmm, Which Team Should I Circle in My Office Pool? #3. Tom Brady is 8-0 versus Jacksonville. On September 16, the Patriots play the Jaguars.
Hmm, Which Team Should I Circle in My Office Pool? #4. Tom Brady is 10-2 in Thursday contests. On Thursday, October 4, the Colts play at New England.
Hmm, Which Team Should I Circle in My Office Pool? #5. Washington is on a 2-13 stretch on Monday Night Football, including five straight losses. On October 8, the R*dsk*ns play New Orleans on Monday Night Football.
Hmm, Which Team Should I Circle in My Office Pool? #6 Teams coached by Andy Reid are 2-5 versus Bill Belichick’s Patriots. On October 14, the Chiefs play at New England.
Hmm, Which Team Should I Circle in My Office Pool? #7. The Bills are on a 3-27 stretch versus Brady and also on a 0-6 stretch on Monday Night Football. On October 29, Buffalo faces Brady on Monday Night Football.
Hmm, Which Team Should I Circle in My Office Pool? #8. The last seven consecutive Green Bay-Seattle matchups have been won by the home team. On November 15, Green Bay plays at Seattle.
Hmm, Which Team Should I Circle in My Office Pool? #9. Washington is on a 1-7 stretch in Thanksgiving contests versus Dallas. On Thanksgiving, Washington plays Dallas.
Hmm, Which Team Should I Circle in My Office Pool? #10. Kirk Cousins is 0-6 on Monday Night Football. On December 10, the Vikings play Seattle on Monday Night Football.
Hmm, Which Team Should I Circle in My Office Pool? (TMQ Has No Idea). The Patriots are 9-1 all-time versus the Texans. Houston opens at New England, which has won the conference three of the past four seasons and is 6-0 versus the Texans at home. But should a New England victory be assumed? TMQ thinks this opening-day event ought to be one of the best NFL games of the year.
More Evidence That Success on Fourth Down Equates to Wins. Last season four of the top five teams for 4th-down conversion percentage made the playoffs.
I’d Rather Be Blue. Back in the dim mists of prehistory, when Boise State installed blue turf it set off a wave of brightly colored fields in the collegiate and prep ranks. Why there are no colored fields in the pros continues to baffle TMQ. If the Cleveland Browns had a home field of Halloween orange, it would be like a four-point handicap. If the Chargers’ surface were lightning gold and powder blue, people would buy tickets just to gaze upon the field.
This year’s field-color news is that the University of Michigan installed maize-and-blue end zones in the publicly subsidized, but otherwise wonderous, Big House. Perhaps this will set off a wave of decorated end zones.
If you know of a high school or college (including small colleges) that has a fun end-zone palette, tweet me a picture or a URL @EasterbrookG.
Professional Sports Pay Increasingly Looks Like Aristocracy. In the runup to the start of the season, Aaron Rodgers, Aaron Donald, and Khalil Mack signed monster contracts. Between now and next winter, Rodgers will earn more than all other Packers combined; Donald, more than all other Rams combined; Mack, more than all other Bears combined.
One celebrity-level athlete is worth more than many pretty-good athletes, especially considering TMQ’s Rule of 90/90, which states: 90 percent of the fans have no idea who 90 percent of the players are. And even the guys covering punts for the league minimum for the Packers, Rams, and Bears are being paid nicely, especially considering there are hundreds of super-fit young men who would take the job at half the salary and be pleased to do so.
Still, mega-paydays to a small few on the field (and a small few in the owners’ boxes) while the typical NFL player is waived after three seasons (to prevent him from vesting for health care and retirement benefits) is another instance of the disturbing winner-take-all aspect of the American economy. Wouldn’t it set a better example for society if the NFL’s top stars earned less while the guys covering punts earned more? Anand Giriharadas expands this analysis to a disturbing height in his impressive and important new book Winners Take All.
The Economics of Trading Stars for Draft Choices. As the Packers and Rams were extending monster deals to retain stars, the Raiders sent Khalil Mack to Chicago, where he signed his monster paperwork. Oakland got two first-round draft choices in return.
How Mack will perform compared to whomever Oakland tabs is unknowable, but the salary cap economics are straightforward. First round NFL choices sign four-year contracts with one additional year at the team’s option, salaries set by a slotting scale that in most cases pay the newly drafted player somewhat less than a comparable free agent would command. This means that for about the same price they would have paid Mack to be on the field for three seasons (after three, Mack will either be waived or redo his deal), the Raiders receive eight to ten total seasons of first-round guys.
There’s roughly a one-third chance that any first-round draft choice will become a bust, and roughly a one-third chance that an established star will flame out. Roll these together and the Raiders are sure to be a worse team this season (no Mack); in two seasons may be a better team than if they’d kept Mack (two first-round guys added at a relatively low salary cap charge); and in four seasons are sure to be better than if they’d kept Mack (by then Mack will have gray hair in athletic terms).
TMQ often notes there is a fundamental choice in NFL management: Is the goal to win a title this season, or is the goal to be pretty good most of the time? If the former, Oakland just blundered. If the latter, Oakland did well.
Does Anyone Seriously Think the Bears Can Win a Title This Year? By the same logic, Chicago’s decision is puzzling. The Bears are scarcely one player away from being contenders. Chicago had already traded its second-round choice in 2019, sent to New England for wide receiver Anthony Miller. Now the Bears’ 2019 first-round pick is spent, too. New Orleans has already spent much of its 2019 draft capital, but the Saints have a realistic chance to grab the ring in 2018. The Bears? Not so much.
Weasel Coach Watch. TMQ’s Law of Weasel Coaches holds: When you hire a coach who’s only in it for himself, you get a coach who’s only in it for himself. Don’t marry them thinking you can change them!
In the runup to the 2017 Super Bowl, Atlanta offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan was negotiating a new deal for himself with the 49ers. Then he did a spectacularly poor job at the Super Bowl, making bad call after bad call as the Falcons lost a 28-3 second half lead. This couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with him being distracted the previous week over much money he’d get from a new team!
In the runup to the 2018 Super Bowl, both New England coordinators—Josh McDaniels on offense and Matt Patricia on defense—were negotiating new deals for themselves, with the Colts and Lions, respectively. Then both did so-so jobs as the defending champions lost to the Eagles. This couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with each spending the previous week distracted over how much money he’d get from a new team!
That McDaniels joined and then immediately quit Indianapolis isn’t the point—the point is that he was distracted, putting himself before the team. If any Falcons player just before the 2017 Super Bowl, or any Patriots player just before the 2018 Super Bowl, had been negotiating with a new team about the following season, the league, and the sportsyak world, would have screamed bloody murder. Labor has to focus on the game, yet somehow it’s just fine if management does what labor is forbidden to do.
Then there are management figures who do show integrity. As the 2018 Super Bowl approached, several teams wanted to negotiate with Eagles offensive coordinator Frank Reich. He said he would not talk to anybody until the game was over. Of Kyle Shanahan, Josh McDaniels, Matt Patricia, and Frank Reich—three weasels and a man of honor—who’d you want coaching your team?
Greatest Statement of the Football Offseason. “The Browns are more talented than their 0-16 record suggests”—Sports Illustrated.
Richard Russell Was Reprehensible—Get His Name Off Our Democracy! Let all decent people hope that soon the Russell Senate Office Building, a magnificent Beaux Arts structure on the north side of Capitol Hill, will be renamed for the late Senator John McCain of Arizona. This would both honor a great American and erase honor for a horrible human being. If the Senate cannot agree on renaming the building for McCain, at the least, get representation of the segregationist off a major federal structure. Choosing any name at random from a telephone book would be preferable to continued esteem for Richard Russell Jr.
Russell was an ardent segregationist—openly a “contemner,” in the words of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Russell dedicated much of his life to the repression of blacks, encapsulated in the odious Southern Manifesto, which he co-authored. It called on, for authority, Plessy v. Ferguson, the disgusting 1896 Supreme Court decision legalizing Jim Crow. (There are many other sources for evidence of Russell’s racism: Your columnist commends two of Robert Caro’s volumes, Master of the Senate and The Passage of Power.)
The United States should ask itself how the name of a doctrinaire racist stayed on a prominent Washington, D.C., structure from 1972, just after Russell died, till 2018. And how can, in 2018, removing the name of a vile man from a public building be controversial? (Some Republican senators reacted to talk of renaming the Russell Building for McCain with caution, as the Washington Post reported.)
In 1972, the United States Senate thought it appropriate to bestow a major honor on the memory of a man who desperately tried to block the desegregation of public schools. That Russell’s racism was expressed in a genteel manner is no excuse. Over the years, every time I’ve walked past the Senate office structures and passed our capital’s marbled-etched moment to the legislative support of Jim Crow, I’ve felt anger. Imagine how an African American feels!
If only this one office building were the only example. It’s not.
The federal courthouse in Atlanta where the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is based is the Richard B. Russell Federal Building. For two generations people in the mid-South region who are seeking justice have had to seek it in courtrooms named for a white supremacist, who himself laughed at the law.
As Jane Carr notes, many public works—damns, highways, libraries—bear Russell’s name. To want it removed is not “presentism,” or the imposition of present standards on the past. The name never should have been bestowed at the time! People knew at the time that Russell was a racist—since he boasted about it!
And if only Russell’s name were the only case of national honor of the dishonorable.
When the United States Navy sends its supercarrier strike groups to sea—there are 10 of them, each alone more powerful than the entire Chinese navy combined—the country sails the supercarriers Carl Vinson and John Stennis.
Both these men were ardent white supremacists. This wasn’t something shameful they did in secret, but rather something they did in public and boasted about. In 1956, both Rep. Vinson and Sen. Stennis signed the Southern Manifesto, which openly advocated oppression of blacks. Neither ever served in the U.S. military. Yet both these racists have their names on supercarriers.
USN supercarriers are the most advanced and prestigious vessels ever laid down. (China does not have any nuclear supercarriers either at sea or under construction; Russia and the United Kingdom have none; France has a small nuclear carrier that is similar to vessels the United States built half a century ago.) Have a look at the names: Of the 12 that are active or under construction, two are named for unrepentant racists, but only one is named for a great reformer (the Abraham Lincoln). There’s a supercarrier named for Gerald Ford, who was an admirable man but never elected to any national office. No supercarrier is named for America’s leading political liberals, among them FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, and Elizabeth Stanton. Why does the United States Navy consider it fine to honor racists but not okay to honor liberals?
Erasing names from public structures and vessels is not erasing them from memory: Every account of Congress, every museum of the South, and every college course on American political history should detail the lives of Russell, Stennis, and Vinson. But that is very different from honoring them!
Many aspects of society are dealing with this issue, if fitfully. Yale University has taken the names of racists, including John Calhoun, off some buildings. But mainly, Yale has discarded Southern-racist names while keeping the names of Northern racists. As Roger Kimball noted last year, Elihu Yale was a monstrous man who “had slaves flogged, hanged a stable boy for stealing a horse, and was eventually removed from his post in India for corruption.” It is not presentism to say that having slaves flogged should not be honored—this was wrong at the time. Yet Yale’s name remains.
Give Duke University some credit for recently taking the name of a white supremacist—who boasted in public about whipping blacks—off the name of a building. Which building had born the man’s name since 1930? The history department.
And give two high school students at Watkins Mill High, in the Maryland suburbs near Washington, D.C., credit for determining that three of their county’s public schools were named for slaveholders. Sarah Elbeshbishi and Kevin Finn didn’t just type a few words into Google, they went through Census records. It took Finn and Elbeshbishi a lot of effort to learn that Zadok Magruder, Richard Montgomery, and Thomas Wootton systematically mistreated their fellow human beings. It does not take any effort at all to know this about Russell, Vinson, and Stennis. Yet their names are on federal edifices and on supercarriers.
Here is a podcast in which The Weekly Standard’s Charlie Sykes and Jim Swift advocate removing Russell’s name.
Which Eight Will Fail? Eight of the 12 playoff teams from 2016 did not make the playoffs that followed the 2017 season. If the pattern repeats in 2018, only four of the Bills, Chiefs, Eagles, Falcons, Jaguars, Panthers, Patriots, Rams, Saints, Steelers, Titans, and Vikings will receive the postseason engraved invitation.
Beware of Multiple High Picks from the Same School. Two top-10 draft picks in 2018 were offensive linemen from Notre Dame: Quenton Nelson, guard, at sixth overall, and Mike Mcglinchey, tackle, at ninth overall. Did they make each other look better than they are?
Surely You Remember Anthony Bennett and Courtney Brown. In the last 20 years, the professional football and basketball teams of the city of Cleveland have had the first overall draft choice eight times. That’s eight of 40 first-overall choices in football and basketball in that period going to two of 62 franchises. This concentration of top picks in one metropolis has little precedent. What’s been the result? One basketball title and an awful football team.
Then Resets Automatically. Tissot’s New York Knicks chronometer includes a special dial that counts down to the Knicks’ next salary-cap blunder.
In Football, Now Everybody Wants an “Edge”; in Basketball, Now Everybody Wants a “Wing.” After the Knicks spent their 2018 first-round draft choice on forward Kevin Knox, the New York Times opined that his scoring “could increase dramatically if his shooting becomes more consistent.” So if he stops missing shots, his scoring will go up. Dramatically! The Times further supposed that Brooklyn first-round choice Dzanan Musa “will give the Nets some serious scoring potential.” Musa has a career scoring average of 6.7 points per game from his three years in the Croatian League.
In the NFL, trades for draft picks far into the future are rare—picks almost always come in the next year’s draft. In the NFL the “protected” pick is unknown. As an example of both, in May 2018 the Packers acquired a future first-round choice from the Saints. It is New Orleans’ 2019 pick, in the earliest possible draft, and there are no conditions. A basketball-styled “protected” pick would have one or more asterisk depending on how high the pick turns out to be.
Trading for far-future picks has become a fashion statement in professional basketball. The Chicago Bulls have traded for the right to exchange draft choices with the Detroit Pistons in 2022. Atlanta holds a draft choice of the Charlotte Hornets in 2023. The Cleveland Cavaliers have stockpiled choices in the 2024 draft, though since one is “top 55 protected”—an NBA draft has 60 slots—it is likely to prove about as valuable as a Papa John’s pizza franchise. Good luck figuring out what the Knicks will get in the 2019 draft.
In 2015, the Phoenix Suns acquired the Miami Heat’s 2021 first-round choice—six years in the future! Last June there was lively competition for this pick, because it has no conditions: The holder gets the choice no matter how high. Philadelphia ended up trading for Miami’s 2021 selection and since has had lively discussions with other teams interested in a pick that is still far in the future, but free of asterisks.
Then there’s the Boston Celtics, the King Croesus of draft picks. Multiple transactions in far-future picks resulted in Boston, already a strong club, landing star Jayson Tatum near the top of the 2017 draft. In 2019, the Celtics have five possible scenarios for bonus first-round choices, depending on various protection clauses.
The Celtics will be rooting like crazy for the Sacramento Kings to play poorly in the coming NBA season, then draw the second selection in the draft lottery in 2019, just as they did in 2018. A multi-asterisk deal gives Boston the Kings’ top draft choice in 2019 unless it is the first selection of the draft. Because the team is assured of multiple high choices in the next couple of years, Celtics roster stockpiling is far from finished.
Sure They Talk About the SEC in the Draft, But What About the NESCAC? After the Buccaneers used a third-round pick on a player from Division 2 Humboldt State—last season the Lumberjacks pasted Simon Fraser—in the fifth round, City of Tampa selected Justin Watson of Penn. With the Buccaneers, Watson joins Harvard products Ryan Fitzpatrick and Cameron Brate. Foye Oluokun of Yale went to the Falcons in the sixth round. In the 2017 season, 12 Ivy League grads were on NFL rosters, and two made the Pro Bowl. Can you name any of them without peeking?
Then there’s Stephen Hauschka of Middlebury, a Division 3 college in the NESCAC, some of whose schools equal the Ivy League in status and educational quality—Amherst, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Williams. Hauschka wears a Super Bowl ring from his days with the Seahawks, and last season at the Bills was six-of-six on placement kicks from beyond 50 yards.
Standing Around—a Team-Sports Universal. TMQ long has contended that high-scoring NFL offenses tend to falter at the last—defense almost always bests offense in the Super Bowl. In 2008, the highly ranked Giants defense held the New England Patriots, the highest-scoring offense in NFL history to that juncture, to 14 points in a Super Bowl win; in 2014 the highly ranked Seahawks defense held the Denver Broncos, which had become the highest scoring offense in NFL annals, to 8 points in a Super Bowl win; there are other similar examples. The New England-Philadelphia Super Bowl was dominated by offense, but this was an exception to the recent rule in the NFL.
Apparently the defense-first premise works in basketball, too. In Game 7 of the NBA’s Western Conference final, Golden State at Houston, the Warriors defeated the Rockets by holding Houston—the league’s highest-scoring team—to 38 points in the second half in its own gym. Based on Houston’s season output, about 55 points would have been expected. Had the Rockets scored anything over 50 points in that second half, they would have advanced to the NBA championship round.
Why does offense rule early in football and basketball seasons, then defense assert itself late? During the regular season, there’s always another day: Defenses do not necessarily go all-out, but rather hold something in reserve for the next game. In the single-elimination football postseason format, or in game sevens of the NBA format, there’s no tomorrow. Players give everything they have. This tends to favor defense, because things that work for offenses in the regular season suddenly do not work. Media plaudits regarding the Golden State-Houston final meeting went to the Warriors’ artistic ball movement. But Golden State’s frenetic defense—especially, not allowing uncontested threes—carried the day.
Another TMQ maxim about football is on almost every NFL play there is someone just standing there not doing anything. The Rockets took this to an extreme in the 2017-2018 NBA season by designing an “iso” offense that had either three or four Houston players deliberately standing around inert, doing anything as they watched James Harden go one-on-one or execute pick-and-roll actions with the Houston center. Scott Cacciola notes that Rockets’ players on offense “were so stationary the Warriors were able to conserve energy and send help whenever Harden did drive to the basket.”
In the fourth quarter with the score close, Harden threw an errant pass toward teammate Trevor Ariza. Rather than prevent a turnover—what a football receiver is supposed to do when an errant pass comes his way—Ariza just stood there, watching Stephen Curry pickpocket the pass and lead a fast break. Ariza did not trail the fast break, but simply stood like a piece of topiary as Golden State “got numbers” and scored in transition. A moment later, Ariza hoisted up a long three. The problem wasn’t that Ariza was 0-for-10 at that juncture. The problem was that as the ball went up, Ariza simply stood and watched his shot, rather than crashing the glass to rebound. Houston Rockets standing there not even trying to play, despite a no-tomorrow situation—the fourth quarter of a game 7—was exactly what one observes if one watches NFL film but looks away from the ball.
TMQ Super Bowl Prediction. Keen observers noticed the photo leads (“banners”) of Tuesday Morning Quarterback’s first two columns of the season depicted Drew Brees and Deshaun Watson. The Big Reveal is that happened because TMQ foresees a Super Bowl of Texans versus Saints, with an exact final score of 20-17. I’m just not sayin’ which team gets the 20.
My alternative-jersey Super Bowl prediction is a New England-Philadelphia rematch.
Many touts offer multiple, mutually contradictory forecasts and then, if one is correct, say, “See, I predicted it.” What a scam! Wait, that’s what I just did.
Texas is the center of gridiron culture, yet when Super Bowl LIII kicks off at VI:XXX Eastern on February III, MMXIX, it will have been XXIV years since a Lone Star State team appeared in the ultimate contest. TMQ thinks the Texans can end that streak. They had numerous crippling injuries in 2017. If they are healthy in 2018, their personnel will be stout, and they are well-coached by the Belichick-like Bill O’Brien.
As for the Saints, last season they came within one fluke snap of the NFC title contest. Last season they were top 10 both in points scored and points allowed. They’ve already spent most of their high 2019 draft choices to stockpile for 2018. And they have Drew Brees. Had Brees gone to the Patriots under Belichick while Tom Brady spent his days at the Saints, today Brees would be 5-3 in the Super Bowl while Brady would be appearing in NyQuil ads. Brees isn’t just a short guy who exceeds expectations: He is among the best professional athletes of our moment and calls the plays himself more often than anyone in the NFL since Jim Kelly. If Brees is to win another ring, it’s now or never.
The 600 Club. Shootouts have become so common in college football that TMQ doesn’t plan to do much this season with contests in which one side puts up amazing points and yards in a lost cause. Yet I cannot resist noting that before most of the nation’s major colleges had reached their opening day—on August 31, before it was September!—hosting Syracuse, Western Michigan gained 621 yards, and lost.
The 800 Club. Same for prep ball, but TMQ can’t resist noting, via reader Troy Jennings of Sioux City, Iowa, that already Sioux City North High put up 81 points, and lost.
Next Week. The football artificial universe expands anew, and not a moment too soon.
