Increasingly, marijuana is acceptable in American society. Several states have decriminalized weed. In last month’s voting, pro-marijuana referendums prevailed in three of four states, winning in Michigan, Missouri, and Utah, and losing only in North Dakota. More access to marijuana inevitably will lead to more weed abuse, but also may lead to less opioid abuse, less drunken driving, and less crime. States are becoming sufficiently friendly to reefer—the soft drink of the drug kingdom—that retailers are taxed and marijuana tourism is blossoming.
Meanwhile there is a public health crisis of addiction to opioids and of hard-drug overdose deaths. For several years running, a U.S. law enforcement officer has been more likely to be summoned to the scene of an overdose fatality than the scene of a homicide. The reefer-madness harm that marijuana was supposed to trigger has never occurred; the harm caused by narcotic painkillers is all too real. Last week the Centers for Disease Control reported that American longevity, which has been rising like an escalator for decades, declined slightly for the second consecutive year, with painkiller deaths a leading factor.
Here’s where these things intersect with football.
America has an abuse problem with OxyContin and oxycodone. The NFL, America’s king of sports, has a painkiller abuse problem with narcotics and with Toradol, often injected in the training room. The NFL aspires to be a leader institution. The league should lead by allowing players to use marijuana for pain alleviation, offering an example of getting off the hard stuff in exchange for smoking a plant.
Oxy-class painkillers are not bad, in and of themselves. Before their distribution became common roughly 20 years ago, pain was under-medicated for many people. If confined to short-term dosage—after surgery, an injury or a tooth extraction—oxy-class painkillers can be a godsend. But prescription pain drugs are now overused, resulting in a fivefold increase in painkiller deaths since 1999.
Marijuana has downsides—only the naïve pretend otherwise. But pot overdose deaths are very rare compared to overdose deaths from lawfully obtained narcotic painkillers. It’s possible to become habituated to marijuana but addiction is unusual. Addiction to oxy-class drugs is a big risk and insidious, since withdrawal can be awful.
Marijuana does not alleviate pain for everyone, but for many it does. Cancer victims have long sought cannabis for humane use. If football players and others who need to palliate pain could choose marijuana rather than narcotics, narcotic abuse would all but surely diminish.
For persons with chronic pain—there are millions in this category—marijuana makes more sense than narcotics that dull the senses and have profoundly negative side effects. For persons with short-term acute pain, such as athletes after competition, marijuana can be better than substances derived from the same chemical family as heroin. Weed can substitute for powerful chemicals for other conditions, too, such as being an alternative to Azilect for Parkinson’s.
The NFL Players Association supports lawful use of marijuana for pain palliation. The NFL doesn’t allow this (even in states where weed is legal), though it has promised to study the issue. Nothing has come of the study so far.
The NFL thinks it’s fine to pop painkillers and be injected with Toradol, but marijuana is not fine. Apparently the NFL’s concern is public relations. This, from a league that’s been covering up domestic violence by players, and in November dressed coaches who have never served in the military in outfits that look like combat uniforms—the goal was stolen glory—while waiving a quarterback who respectfully knelt during the Star Spangled Banner.
As marijuana legality spreads, painkiller abuse statistics should moderate. Wouldn’t it be nice if the king of sports played a leader role in this transition? Time for the NFL to allow weed use for pain while forbidding use of Toradol and narcotic painkillers except when medically necessary. That would set the right example.
In other football news, Georgia led number-one-ranked defending champion Alabama 28-14 late in the third quarter. When the Bulldogs lined up to punt on 4th-and-inches, Tuesday Morning Quarterback wrote “game over” in his notebook. It took the Crimson Tide just four snaps to pass the point where the ball would have been spotted, had Georgia gone for it and failed.
From the moment the Preposterous Punt boomed, Alabama outscored Georgia 21-0. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart sent his players the message that he was so frightened of Alabama, he was afraid to try to gain a couple of inches—even knowing that the last time Georgia and Alabama met, the Bulldogs did not score in the fourth quarter. As they would again not score in the fourth quarter. Everything was going Georgia’s way until the Preposterous Punt.
Reaching panic time, Georgia would try on 4th-and-11. The 4th-and-11 attempt was likely to fail, and it did. Yet when 4th-and-inches was available, and likely to succeed—Georgia averaged 5.7 yards per offensive snap on the night— Georgia did the “safe” thing and sent out the punter.
Sure, the 4th-and-inches came on the Georgia 12. But the Bulldogs were playing by far the best squad in college football over the past decade.
Had Georgia gone for it on 4th-and-inches from its own 12 while holding the lead, and failed, Smart would have been ridiculed by the sportsyak world—and by the Georgia boosters who are, in effect, his employers. Instead he did the “safe” thing, handing the ball, and the momentum, to Alabama. You can’t dance with the champ, you’ve to knock him down! Georgia had the champ reeling on the ropes and instead of attempting to knock him down, launched a punt.
Stats of the Week #1. Five quarterbacks in all of NFL history have thrown for at least 5,000 yards in a season. Currently four more—Ben Roethlisberger, Patrick Mahomes, Matt Ryan and Jared Goff—are on a pace to throw for 5,000 yards in the same season.
Stats of the Week #2. Case Keenum has gone four straight games without a turnover.
Stats of the Week #3. The Atlanta Falcons, who came into the game versus Baltimore averaging 400 yards of offense, were held to 131 yards on their own field.
Stats of the Week #4. Ryan Tannehill is on an 8-0 streak at home.
Stats of the Week #5. The Patriots are on a 59-11 stretch in December games started by Tom Brady.
Stats of the Week #6. Quarterback Cody Kessler, in his third NFL season, finally won a game as Jacksonville bested Indianapolis. Kessler came in 0-8, because previously, he quarterbacked the Browns.
Stats of the Week #7. Brandin Cooks of the Rams became the first NFL player to gain at least 1,000 receiving yards in three straight seasons—with three different teams.
Stats of the Week #8. The Cardinals won in Wisconsin for the first time in 69 years.
Stats of the Week #9. The R*dsk*ns are on a 1-10 stretch on Monday Night Football.
Stats of the Week #10. From the point TMQ predicted they would reach the Super Bowl to the point TMQ retracted the prediction, the Texans were 4-15. Since TMQ flipflopped and said they would not reach the Super Bowl, the Texans are 9-0.
Sweet Surge of the Week. Trailing 23-15 at the start of the fourth quarter, the visiting Bolts sacked Ben Roethlisberger to create a 3rd-and-29. Soon a punt boomed; LA/B returned the kick 73 yards for a touchdown.
That made it 23-21, and the Chargers went for the deuce. They lined up “three by two” with all eligible players split wide. Then a tailback went in motion from the trips side into the backfield. Remaining on what had been the trips side were two wide receivers, one of them Keenan Allen, who has one of the league’s most reliable sets of hands.
At the snap, Pittsburgh rushed five. Phillip Rivers did the increasingly rare seven-step drop, meaning he expected the play to be slow-developing. (“Slow” in this sense is relative.) Allen and the other guy on his side did a “combo”—the other guy cut in front, and Allen went under him. In a combo, the pass always goes to the second guy; the first guy is the distractor. Allen ran across the Chargers formation from left to right and was completely lost by the Steelers’ defense.
Allen was uncovered for two points, and the visitors would kick the winning field goal with double-zeds on the clock. LA/B has quietly posted a 15-4 stretch and could be a major player in the postseason.
Sour Play of the Week. Rams at Lions scoreless, Detroit was called for holding on third down. Zebras offered LA/A head coach Sean McVay this option: accept the penalty and give Detroit 3rd-and-21, or decline the penalty and give Detroit 4th-and-2. McVay chose the latter.
If you were the offense, wouldn’t you much rather face 4th-and-2 than 3rd-and-21? But McVay knew that on 4th-and-2, the Lions would punt—because that’s what NFL teams almost always do in that situation. Punt they did, and sour it was. It took just five snaps for the 100-octane Rams to pass the point where the ball would have been, had Detroit gone for the first down and failed. LA/A cruised to a 30-16 victory.
This column extols going on fourth down. At Jax, the Colts went on fourth down thrice and failed thrice. Going on fourth down is not a panacea: It just means that over the long run, there is more success than failure. At the end, Indianapolis had a chance to win, trailing by six on the Jaguars 29 with 9 seconds remaining, out of time outs. Inexplicably, Andrew Luck threw a short sideline pattern; the receiver failed to get out of bounds, and the clock expired. Why wasn’t Luck throwing to the end zone? Even if successful, the play would have gained only a few yards. Sour.
Sweet ‘n’ Sour Play. Dallas leading 13-10, New Orleans got possession just before the two-minute warning: the perfect position for Drew Brees to stage yet another buzzer-beater victory. Instead the Boys defense, which had a terrific outing, got pressure on Brees, forcing him into a rare bad throw—a fluttering ball that was well behind the intended receiver. Interception, Dallas wins.
Sweet for the home team, sour for the visitors. I don’t wish to alarm anyone, but the Cowboys may be a factor in the playoffs.
Yet the game could be viewed as sweet for the Saints, who were TMQ’s preseason pick to reach the Super Bowl from the NFC. The New Orleans offense has been playing lights-out. The law of averages says the Saints have to have a bad game at some juncture. Better now than in January.
New Ford Motto: You Can Have Any Car You Want As Long As It’s Not a Car. Recently I rented a Ford Fusion hybrid sedan. The car was roomy, powerful, had every luxury the mind can imagine, and I drove it 138 miles on 3.3 gallons of petrol. That’s 42 miles per gallon. I thought, “This is just what America needs: a big, comfortable high-mileage vehicle.”
Then I heard that Ford is ending production of the Fusion—in fact, is ending production of all cars other than the Mustang. As of the 2019 model car, Ford will sell in the United States SUVs, pickup trucks—most of which are used as suburban commuting vehicles, not in the construction trades—and the Mustang. No more traditional cars with the Ford badge.
This came to mind last week when General Motors announced it would shutter three factories that build cars, and for 2019 at least, essentially stop trying to sell regular cars, featuring SUVs, pickup trucks and SUV-like crossover models.
General Motors will end production of the new version of the Impala, a large, comfortable sedan that gets 25 MPG (all numbers in this item are the EPA’s “combined cycle” figure, the most reliable gauge of fuel use) and also stop building the Cruze, a funky small car that offers Japanese-class quality and gets 33 MPG. Volkswagen’s recent decision to end of production of the Beetle is similar. The modern Beetle is fun to drive, reliable, and gets 29 miles per gallon, plus made it nice that people could still purchase a flower-power motorcar called a “Beetle.”
But American buyers don’t want high-MPG vehicles like the Ford Fusion or Chevy Impala. With petroleum supply ample and inflated-adjusted fuel prices low, buyers want big, high-horsepower SUVs and truck-like stuff. Broadly across the auto industry in 2017, car sales fell 11 percent while sales of heavy high-horsepower vehicles rose 4 percent. This year’s figures are expected to be even more slanted toward heavy, low-MPG vehicles over regular cars.
Twice before—beginning around 1970, and ending around 2000—Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors entered a cycle of pushing heavy low-mileage vehicles. Twice before the result was a Detroit crash.
In the 1970s, Detroit rapidly lost market share to Japanese marques. In the aughts, General Motors and what’s now Fiat Chrysler ended up receiving about $70 billion in federal bailouts. Most of the bailout eventually was repaid, but without interest to the taxpayer—a hidden handout in the tens of billions of dollars.
Give Ford credit for not participating in the bailout: the company said no to federal funny-money, recovering on its own dime. But are Ford and General Motors, with their no-more-cars decision, shining Detroit’s headlights toward a third cycle of fiasco?
Right now there’s mucho gasoline at the pump. Adjusting for inflation, gasoline sells for what it cost in 1955, though today’s fuel is superior in chemical quality—no lead, other pollutants removed, engine detergents added. A much better product than in 1955, at the same adjusted-dollars cost. That’s quite an achievement for petroleum geologists, oil refinery engineers, and environmental regulators.
But lots of relatively cheap gasoline is the way things were just before the previous two cycles of Detroit products becoming too big, too heavy, and too thirsty. How long till the next fuel-economy reckoning for American car brands? If gasoline prices shoot up, the Big Three (Big 3.5, taking into account Fiat) better not hold their hands out to taxpayers again.
The only good news on this score is that Ford recently built the 10 millionth Mustang. It was cherry! A fully loaded convertible in Wimbledon White with sport options and a six-speed manual transmission. But the car records only 18 MPG. A contemporary high-tech 2+2 getting just 18 MPG is terrible in public policy terms and unimpressive in engineering terms.
Detroit note: As Ford continues to stamp out the Mustang, Chevy will keep making the Corvette. The latest top edition, the ZR1, is “schway,” the slang word—meaning “wow”—that Marvel recently began attempting to implant in American culture. (Budweiser implanted “dilly dilly,” making Marvel jealous.) Bursting with schway, the ZR1 also has a preposterously high 755 horsepower and a preposterously low 15 MPG. At least it’s still a car.
The new Corvette mounts a prominent rear spoiler. Rear spoilers are utile only at racetrack speeds and are illegal on public roads; at legal speeds, they are strictly cosmetic. Of course, you could take your Vette to a private racetrack and wind it out, but how many buyers do? Cars that have rear spoilers—many “tuners” in Southern California sport them—are supposed to say to the world: Baby, I’m bad. What they actually say to the world is: Baby, I have no idea what a spoiler does.
Disclaimer note 1: Television ads for Volkswagen’s Jetta say in tiny letters at the bottom, SIMULATED ANIMATION. So they film it for-real but want you to believe it’s animation?
Disclaimer note 2: The tiny crawl beneath ads for the Audi A7 say, PROFESSIONAL DRIVER CLOSED COURSE. As this crawl rolls, the car is shown parked.
So Long, Soldier. The death of George Bush at age 94 signals the conclusion of the involvement of World War II veterans in American politics. Few in political life matched his accomplishments—war hero, business success, public servant, president. He’s the last of the Greatest Generation to leave the stage.
Bush’s business career tends to be overlooked. Born into a prominent East Coast family, in the 1950s he moved to West Texas—then the ends of the Earth—to seek a fortune on his own. For the second half of his life Bush considered himself a Texan, which is telling since the Ivy League milieu in which he was raised looked down its nose at Texas. His willingness to trade northeast elitism for middle American entrepreneurship spoke well of Bush.
Bush’s environmental record also tends to be overlooked. Clean Air Act amendments that Bush strongly backed started the reductions of smog and acid rain that turned out more effective, and less expensive, than expected. (This is the main reason we should be optimistic another air pollution problem, greenhouse gases, can be solved affordably, too, if Congress would gird its loins and enact regulations.) His administration made strides in water-quality and land preservation. When campaigning in 1988 Bush promised to be “the environmental president.” In fact he was: an achievement for which he is insufficiently credited by MSM pundits, determined as they are to keep all environmental commentary negative.
Of course Bush had failings. He made many mistakes regarding the Middle East—few oil men think clearly about that region. On the other hand, Bush and his State Department did excellent work with something most Americans don’t even know happened—the 1990 Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. That document formally ended World War II and laid the groundwork for East Germany to change from police state to liberal democracy, which seems inevitable now, but at the time was considered unlikely.
When the 1990 treaty made East Germany free, Russians began to say, “We defeated them, yet they get something denied to us—we should be free, too.” In a month, Mikhail Gorbachev had taken office, and genuine reform began. Then, in summer 1991, Communist hardliners attempted a coup. Many grandees of the Washington lefty establishment counseled what they’d always counseled about Moscow dictators: Give them everything they want. Bush stood firm and the coup collapsed. Because in summer 1991, the United States was focused on the mess left by the end of the Gulf War, Bush’s refusal to blink with Soviet hardliners is insufficiently appreciated.
Sure, Bush and his Ivy League set, with their inherited wealth, Maine vacation estates, and sailing escapades, could be hoity-toity. But Bush exemplified the ethic of public service that has nearly vanished from the top of American politics—certainly, is absent from Donald Trump’s White House, where the sole things that matter are ego and profit.
Bush wanted to make money, as his years in the oil patch show. You don’t have to abjure money to accept an ethic of public service. You just have to care about labor for others. That’s the dividing line between an admirable man like Bush and hucksters such as Trump—and Bernie Sanders—who care only about themselves.
On Bush’s passing, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts called the 41st president “a fundamentally decent man.” Not one single person, not even his own children, ever will call Donald Trump “fundamentally decent.”
When Bush passed, Trump declared—using that weird capitalization that suggests his Tweets are translated from the original German—the thanks of “a grieving Nation.”
There’s nothing to grieve! George Bush lived a long, full, accomplished life and died a natural death in old age with friends and family nearby. Each among us can only hope to end as well.
Bush was a believing Christian. If his faith is true, he is now at the hand of God. If his faith is not true, then oblivion was always inevitable anyway. In either case, there’s nothing to grieve.
I hope the funeral is not an ostentatious Hadrianic event with dirges, black veils, and political phonies giving self-adoring speeches. As a believing Christian, I find it wrong that tomorrow is designated a National Day of Mourning. George Bush lived well, reached old age, and has gone to God: Why should anyone mourn? Don’t grieve, throw a party! Celebrate a great life!
The Football Gods Chortled. At Dallas last Thursday, Drew Brees had his first bad game of the 2018 campaign. What else happened last Thursday? A few hours before kickoff, Brees was on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
The Football Gods Covered Their Ears. During a sideline beef with Minnesota’s Adam Thielen, Bill Belichick shouted two words that were not “Merry Christmas.”
The Football Gods Reached for Sunglasses. Preseason, this column declared, “TMQ thinks little will change until the Buccaneers replace their utt-bugly uniforms.” Sunday, the Buccaneers went in the wrong direction, coming out dressed as malfunctioning screensavers. On the upside, the unis seemed to blind the Panthers. City of Tampa has the league’s number-one offense by yards, and is 5-7.
Wouldn’t You Rather Be “At” Than “Of?” From the point when Buffalo took at 29-10 third quarter lead in the MAC championship game, to panic time when Northern Illinois went ahead with 69 seconds remaining, the Bulls staged two possessions of less than two minutes, and no clock-killer drive. Buffalo did not turn the ball over, rather, stayed in a hurry-up pass-wacky offense, snapping quickly and throwing incompletions that stopped the clock. Northern Illinois played good defense in the fourth quarter. But the result showed a weakness of the Xbox tactics so popular today—in clock-killer situations, Xbox teams don’t know what to do.
The school in question is not the University of Buffalo, rather is, officially, the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. TMQ thinks this should be styled U/at/B.
“Houston, This Is Mike McCarthy, I’ve Put My Spacesuit On.” Woefully bad Arizona at Green Bay, where the Cardinals in their many iterations had not won since 1949, all Packers’ faithful assumed an automatic W. With the kickoff temperature 34 degrees—cool, but hardly frigid—Green Bay head coach Mike McCarthy came out so bundled up in environmental survival gear that he looked like he was preparing to go EVA from a Mercury capsule. Hot-weather team is visiting a cold-weather team, and the Packers’ coach is the one afraid of the cold!
When TMQ saw what McCarthy was wearing along the sideline, I thought, “Something bad is about to happen to Green Bay.” And yea, verily, right after the game, McCarthy was fired.
Traditionally, head coaches are cashiered on Black Monday. Already two—McCarthy and Hue Jackson of Cleveland—have been canned midseason. Somebody has to take the blame! A team cannot fire its players; a roster rebuild takes two years. Owners never face consequences of any kind. Firing the head coach is the most dramatic, immediate action a team can take to placate its fan base.
Did McCarthy deserve the ax? Packers fans will know the answer in 13 years, if the new Green Bay head coach has a Super Bowl trophy, a 125-77-2 record, and more postseason wins than Tony Dungy, Mike Tomlin, Jimmy Johnson, Sean Payton—or Vince Lombardi.
The team has seemed dispirited all season, and in a league where innovative tactics gain big yards, the Green Bay offensive scheme has become calcified. On the other hand, the soap opera that is the Green Bay front office did not provide McCarthy with a quality roster. As TMQ warned in August in my NFC preview, “The Standard’s many on-staff Wisconsin faithful may not want to hear this, but Tuesday Morning Quarterback thinks Green Bay has entered the down slope of a talent cycle. Titletown may be in for hard times.”
NFL Even Better at Blame-Shifting Than Washington, D.C. After a late November loss, the Jaguars fired offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett. After an October loss, Arizona fired offensive coordinator Mike McCoy. During the current season the Bengals have fired defensive coordinator Teryl Austin; during last season, the Bengals fired offensive coordinator Ken Zampese.
Firing the coordinator is all about blame-shifting—when the head coach, fearing for his job, wants to shift the blame to someone else. Such firings require you to believe that a team’s head coach spent the entire offseason working side-by-side with a coordinator and never noticed that the guy is incompetent. If true, what does that tell you about the head coach?
Of course, all NFL coaches know they are in a profession where pay and status are very high, but turnover is constant and nobody cares about anybody’s feelings. Still, McCoy’s recent saga is worse than most. After being head coach of the Chargers for four years, he was hired as offensive coordinator of the Broncos, only to be fired in the middle of his last season. Hired to the same post with the Cactus Wrens, he was fired in the middle of this season. McCoy managed to be fired by two different NFL franchises in less than 12 months.
Fortune Favors the Bold! A third quarter surprise onside was the decisive play in the Ohio high school championship game. To boot, as it were, the onside was the rare variety in which the kick goes straight in front of the placekicker.
Adventures in Officiating. The Chargers’ comeback at Pittsburgh was lots of fun unless you are a Steelers’ fan. Pittsburgh was “playing against 19 guys,” as the NFL-insider saying goes. (There are eight zebras.) On a long first quarter LA/B touchdown, an obvious false start against Los Angeles was not flagged. On the fourth quarter 73-yard punt return that changed the game, an obvious illegal block-in-the-back was not flagged. (“Illegal block-in-the-back” is called because some blocks in the back are kosher.) The three consecutive offsides against the Steelers at the end were, however, correctly called and well-handled by the crew.
Four times in the Buffalo at Miami contest—including on the Dolphins’ fourth quarter winning touchdown pass—a Miami lineman not only held Bills defensive end Jerry Hughes, he wrapped both arms around him and tackled him. No flags.
Officiating this season has consistently been poor. The zebras now get fulltime pay and have thanked the league and its fans by performing poorly. Occasional officiating errors are inevitable in athletics. Frequent officiating blunders in the NFL are a larger problem for the credibility of the sport than the league has been willing to acknowledge.
Obscure College Broadcast. Whilst working on this column, I had on, on my laptop, the local broadcast of Muhlenberg at Mount Union, a Division 3 playoff contest from Alliance, Ohio, featuring the Purple Raiders, the 800-pound gorilla of Division 3 football. As the Muhlenberg Mules were forced to a drive start deep in their own territory, in a game staged on a small-division field that’s squeezed into the midst of a college campus, the local announcer declared, “The Mules have their backs against the dorm rooms now.”
This coming weekend Mount Union takes on Johns Hopkins. Despite the school’s reputation as a geek wonderland, the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays are a Division 3 football power.
Single Worst Plays of the Season—So Far. Early in Buffalo at Miami, highly drafted Bills wide receiver Kelvin Benjamin—who is quick to denounce others—dropped a perfectly thrown touchdown pass in the end zone. It was Benjamin’s fourth drop in the end zone this season. Now it’s Miami leading 21-17, Buffalo facing fourth down on the Dolphins 30 with 1:05 remaining. The rookie quarterback Josh Allen scrambles back and forth to buy time. Charles Clay, one of the highest-paid tight ends in the league, breaks free and is uncovered in the end zone. Allen hit him in the hands and he dropped the ball.
The Bills have the league’s number-two defense, yet are 4-8. Injuries at quarterback are a factor, but so are many dropped passes in many games. Neither Clay nor Benjamin will still be with Buffalo next season. They are guilty of the single worst plays of the season—so far.
Next Week. Bill Belichick’s Christmas cards say PEACE ON EARTH AND GET OFF MY FRONT LAWN.
