Tuesday Morning Quarterback: Roger Goodell Is Not the Man His Father Was

Most NFL owners keep a low profile, either because they are unskilled in public, or because they don’t want to draw attention to their wealth being publicly subsidized. When any one owner is seen as rocking the boat, other owners take away his life vest. Other owners were not impressed, for instance, when Robert Kraft of the Patriots was openly furious at Goodell because Tom Brady was suspended for leading a vast international conspiracy to deflate footballs for a bad-weather contest, a scandal this column called PSICheated.

(Aside: A few years back, when the Brady-PSI mess had not yet happened, I was football coach of the middle-school affiliate of a large public high school in Maryland, where I live. Before my charges took the field on a rainy day, I called the varsity coach to ask if he had any tips for wet conditions. “Let a little air out of the balls your guys use,” the varsity coach advised.)

Many other owners are jealous of New England’s success, and were happy to see Kraft admonished—he couldn’t get any support for his attacks on Goodell. Many other owners consider Jerry Jones a pompous windbag, and were glad to see him fail in his coup against the commissioner. If you’re going to go after the king, you have to kill him! Jones didn’t so much as nick Goodell.

The big implication of the new contract is that Goodell’s mega-payday should draw attention to the very subsidies the owners don’t want talked about. Stadium construction and operating subsidies, plus tax exemptions—most NFL teams don’t pay property taxes on their stadia or practice facilities, or pay trivial amounts compared to similar businesses—represent around $2 billion per year diverted from typical taxpayers to the mega-rich pashas of the NFL. That means about 15 percent of the NFL’s current roughly $14 billion a year in revenue is public subsidy.

The true number may be far larger. U.S. law allows images taken in public stadia to be copyrighted. All but a few of the NFL’s stadia are either mostly paid for by the public—the next Super Bowl, in Minneapolis, will occur on a field mostly financed by Minnesota taxpayers—or are entirely publicly owned. Yet the NFL copyrights the images from these fields; television licensing of the copyrights brings in far more revenue than ticket sales. If the ability to copyright games played in publicly financed facilities were viewed as a subsidy to the NFL’s landed-aristocracy class—and it should be—as much as 90 percent of the league’s revenues would be seen as gifts from the working class to the aristocratic class.

But if we stick with the most-conservative view of 15 percent of NFL revenue coming from average people, that suggests Roger Goodell’s new deal will allow him to stuff about $30 million in taxpayer funds into his pockets. American households with a current median income of $59,000 will be taxed so that Goodell receives $30 million for his Park Avenue luxury suite, his Versailles-sized vacation home in Scarborough, Maine, his personal private jet, and other perks.

TMQ suspects that average people adding $30 million to Roger Goodell’s private portfolio would disgust Charles Goodell, Roger’s father.

At a moment when the Republican party is engaged in a race to the bottom against itself, the name Charles Goodell should be remembered. As a Republican member of the House of Representatives, then of the Senate, Charles Goodell was the epitome of the responsible legislator. He embodied a sensibility that has nearly disappeared from the American polis: the moderate Republican who views office as a public trust, not a power grab.

In 1959, Charles Goodell was elected to the House from the district around Jamestown, New York, an idyllic small city near the Chautauqua Institution, which, in the 19th century, and still today, symbolized reasoned discourse over screaming sound bites. In the House, Goodell championed both small government and environmental protection. In 1968, he was appointed to fill the New York Senate seat left vacant by the murder of Robert Kennedy.

Goodell became one of few prominent Republicans during the Richard Nixon presidency to protest the Vietnam War openly, with his own wartime service—in both World War II and the Korean War—giving his opinions heft. In 1970, Charles lost a three-way vote for his Senate seat; he died in 1987. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of contemporary national Republican office-holders who have the combination of responsibility, honesty, and conscience that Charles Goodell exemplified.

Senator Charles E. Goodell, (R-N.Y.) shown in the Senate studio. (Bettmann / Getty Images)

Roger Goodell’s failings are not just fleecing average people. He has engaged in for-show actions regarding vicious hits and neurological harm in football, but avoided substantive reforms.

Recent NFL games, such as last Monday’s Pittsburgh-Cincinnati contest, have had more than occasional sordid moments, vicious hit after vicious hit. There may be a small percentage of football fans who want to behold angry men trying to injure each other; most football fans want to watch athletic ability, grace, and exciting performances. NFL ratings are falling, and increasingly the sport is perceived as emphasizing pointless violence. Vicious hits, ratings decline—you really think this is just some weird coincidence? But don’t take my word for it, take Troy Aikman’s. Of the Steelers-Bengals slugfest, the Hall of Fame quarterback said, “This game is hard to watch for a number of reasons . . . terrible for the NFL and the game of football overall.”

Yet Goodell continues to give only lip service to safety. This season Danny Trevathan of the Bears, Rob Gronkowski of the Patriots, and, in the Steelers-Bengals contest, JuJu Smith-Schuster of Pittsburgh have made deliberate, late vicious hits to the heads of prone or defenseless players. Each received only a single-game suspension. Smith-Schuster stood over his victim taunting him, and the league—that is, Goodell—did nothing at all about that. Sunday’s Seattle at Jacksonville game ended, during a meaningless kneel-down, with Seahawks players diving at the legs of Jaguars players, trying to injure them. Will the league—that is, Goodell—do anything beyond saying tisk tisk? Most NFL owners have long viewed the players as glorified cattle, and only ranchers care if the cattle are harmed. Roger Goodell is the high-tech enabler of the owners’ low regard for safety.

All it would take is for one NFL player to be suspended without pay for a full season for a late vicious hit, and this behavior would stop. That the NFL imposes token punishments, administered with a nudge-nudge wink-wink, shows the NFL doesn’t care. But let a pound of air out of a football and the Spanish Inquisition arrives!

Readers of the great Ralph Ellison novel Invisible Man know the chilling “Battle Royal” sequence. In the Jim Crow south, wealthy landholders hire African American men to fight each other nearly to death, with the last one standing receiving a prize. The white men staging the Battle Royal, and profiting from wagers placed on it, consider this okay because the black men fight of their own free will. Ellison thought the metaphor described American society of the 1950s. It describes the National Football League of today. This is another thing about Roger Goodell that would horrify Charles Goodell.

Of course, NFL players are adults who knowingly assume a risk, just as the state and local legislators who shower subsidies on NFL owners know they are giving away the store. This does not make it right for Roger Goodell to look the other way on systematic abuses, in return for $30 mil a year and a private jet standing by.

As this column regularly notes, nearly all the football players in the United States are minors—high school students and younger. The example the NFL sets for them is disregard of head injuries, toleration of reckless behavior, and greed. If Charles Goodell had lived to see his son become a profiteer who stages raids on the public trust, putting his personal wealth above setting a good example for huge numbers of young people . . . well, you finish the sentence. Roger Goodell makes 100 times as much as Charles Goodell made, and does 1/100th the good.

In other football news, the Eagles became the fourteenth NFL team in the 15 most recent seasons to go worst-to-first—they finished last in their division in 2016, and won the division this season. But worst-to-first is not as improbable as it may sound. Since there are only four clubs in an NFL division, every season each division has a 25 percent chance of a worst-to-first.

Stats of the Week #1. The Chargers opened 0-4 and since are 7-2.

Stats of the Week #2. Since the juncture at which Cincinnati took a 17-0 lead at home versus the Steelers, the Bengals have been outscored 56-10.

Stats of the Week #3. The Steelers have won eight straight, with placekicker Chris Boswell hitting last-second winning field goals in three consecutive outings.

Stats of the Week #4. Santa Clara opened 0-9 and since is 3-1. The 49ers season finale—Santa Clara at LA/A—could be an exciting all-California affair to determine if the Chargers make the playoffs.

Stats of the Week #5. Kansas City has lost six of its last eight yet is in first place in its division.

Stats of the Week #6. To the point of the Carson Wentz injury, Jared Goff and Wentz, the first two choices of the 2016 draft, had combined for 55 touchdown passes versus just 13 interceptions.

Stats of the Week #7. This year’s Army-Navy game featured 95 rushes and three pass attempts.

Stats of the Week #8. Note that when Wentz went down on Sunday he was leading the league in touchdown passes—though, as a high school senior, Wentz received a zero-stars ranking from Rivals.com.

Stats of the Week #9. Tom Brady is 7-9 in Miami, and 211-55 in all other cities.

Stats of the Week #10. There were 60,222 people at the Buffalo game despite heavy snow and strong winds, leaving 12,000 empty seats; 67,752 in ideal conditions attending the Rams game at Los Angeles, leaving 27,000 empty seats. Fifteen times as many people live in Los Angeles as in Buffalo.

Sweet Blocking of the Week. A week ago New Orleans surprised Carolina, and won the game, by running straight ahead against the Panthers’ stout front seven. Now it’s Vikings at Carolina and the Panthers are facing one of the league’s top units versus the rush. Taking a page from the same book, Carolina ran straight into the opponent’s strength.

Third-and-1 on the first Cats possession, Carolina brought in an extra offensive lineman; power back Jonathan Stewart ran 60 yards for a touchdown behind a perfect trap block by guard Andrew Norwell. (Norwell’s leaving injured in the second half was an overlooked factor in Carolina’s Super Bowl loss to Denver.) Game tied just before the two-minute warning, Cam Newton ran 62 yards straight ahead behind a perfect block by left tackle Matt Khalil. Sweet blocking—and sweet strategy to do exactly what the opponent thinks you can’t.

Carolina running note: reaching 1st-and-goal at the Vikes’ 5 in the first half, Carolina lined up empty backfield; Newton ran a designed quarterback draw and was stuffed. The five receivers arrayed wide were supposed to look to the defense like a sure pass, leaving the middle of the line unguarded for a power rush. But at the snap, two Carolina offensive linemen went downfield: They knew it would be a run, and by going downfield, which is illegal on an NFL pass, told the Minnesota defense the play had to be a run, while all five receivers were all decoys.

This is the core reason why the college-style run-pass option action doesn’t work in the NFL. An upcoming TMQ will detail the difference between rules for blockers on passes versus rushes in the NFL and in college—and why NFL announcers don’t understand that difference, claiming they just saw an RPO (this year’s trendy thing for announcers to say) when the RPO is almost never called in the NFL.

White Walkers and Lord Snow’s army skirmish in the north on December 10, 2017, at New Era Field in Orchard Park, New York. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)

Sour Play of the Week. In the blizzard, the Bills played in all-red, the Colts wearing all-white. Essentially Indianapolis was in camouflage. On the late Colts touchdown, tight end Jack Doyle lined up in the backfield as a slotback then sneaked into the flat uncovered—an all-white receiver in a snowy whiteout was impossible for defenders to see. The day before, Army had defeated Navy in snow while wearing hard-to-see white uniforms with dull brown trim, inspired by the service’s renowned 10^th Mountain Division. Navy sported unis inspired by the equally renowned Blue Angels—but this outerwear, blue with shiny gold trim, was easy to see against the snow.

Score tied in regulation, the camouflaged Colts had 1st-and-10 on the Buffalo 28 with 52 seconds remaining and played for the field goal to win, making little attempt to advance the spot. But what were the odds of a long field goal in such bad conditions? Sour tactics, and the Colts failed in overtime, falling 13-7.

Sweet ‘n’ Sour Plays. Philadelphia had just pulled within 35-34 of the Rams with 8:26 remaining. Carson Wentz had limped to the locker room with what everyone suspected was a serious injury, later revealed to be a torn ACL. LA/A had 1st-and-10 on its 35 yard line, and was in position to take command of the contest. Head coach Sean McVay went for the dagger play by calling a deep-drop, max-protect pass with seven blockers and his receivers going long. Philadelphia rushed the standard four. Eagles rusher Chris Long, who has been called washed-up several times in his career, blew past Rams offensive tackle Darrell Williams for a strip-sack that was recovered by the visitors, and soon the Eagles led 37-35.

Now it’s LA/A 1st-and-10 on the home 25 with 3:45 remaining; a field goal puts the Rams ahead. On first down, Eagles linebacker Nigel Bradham “strung out” and dropped Todd Gurley for a loss. On second down, a standard four-man rush flushed Jared Goff from the pocket for a short gain. On 3rd-and-long, the Nesharim’s Fletcher Cox, who’s been one of the best players in the NFL this season, hurried Goff into a bad throw that clanged incomplete. The Rams punted, and did not get the ball back again till one second showing.

The final two Rams possessions were sweet for the Eagles’ defense, which must carry the load with Wentz heading under the knife. The same possessions were sour for the Rams, a scoreboard-spinning team that was stopped cold at home late in the biggest NFL game in Los Angeles in many moons.

TMQ’s Christmas List. Why turn on your own holiday lights when you could tell a machine to? Alexa-controlled holiday lighting combines all that is of the moment: high tech, automation, and fake companionship. “Alexa, make the lights bother the neighbors.”

This year I’ll be using bitcoins as stocking stuffers. On the current pace, by Christmas 2018, a single bitcoin will be worth $225,000. Or maybe will be completely worthless. Merry Christmas!

TMQ Seeks Corporate Sponsors for the Siesta Bowl Presented by Tuesday Morning Quarterback. More than a dozen colleges made Division-I bowl games despite not having winning records. Keep your eye on the Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl, which matches two squads, New Mexico State and Utah State, neither of which had a winning season.

Strictly speaking your columnist has no problem with this, since learning, not sports wins, is, on paper at least, the first concern of higher education. I’d much rather see college football teams produce strong graduation rates and weak won-loss records than the other way around.

Bowl games are great for promoters, boosters, and alums. For the players? Not so much. Earning admission to a major bowl in a desirable locale is one thing. But after being pounded from August until November, enduring injuries and lost class time, the college football team that makes a minor bowl practically is penalized for success. Do players on the Temple University football team really want to slog through another full month of practice just to be able to tell their grandchildren they once appeared in the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl?

This year’s loser of the bowl lottery is Duke University. Entering the fourth quarter of their last regular season contest with a 5-6 record, trailing by a touchdown, the Blue Devils staged a furious comeback at Wake Forest, becoming bowl-eligible as the final whistle sounded. Their penalty is the Quick Lane Bowl, in Detroit on the day after Christmas. Duke football players must give up Christmas at home in order to be in Detroit. That’ll teach you to win six games!

Reverse Stub Hub Watch. TMQ is seeking venture funding to found Reverse Stub Hub, in which people holding tix to bad NFL games pay others to take said tix off their hands. There would have been strong reverse bidding for 49ers at Texans (combined records 6-18), Cowboys at Jersey/A (combined records 8-16), and Jersey/B at Denver (combined records 8-16). The actual StubHub was offering Colts at Bills ducats for as little as $6, which, considering the weather forecast, seemed overpriced.

Donald Trump Says He “Plans” to Learn About Civics. Last week Al Franken said that although the accusations against him are false, he “plans” to resign from the Senate. Why should anyone quit over false accusations? If the charges are false, Franken should fight—quitting when falsely accused would only encourage phony allegations against blameless persons, adding still more toxin to our poisoned politics. If, on the other hand, Franken knows the jig is up, why “plan” to resign rather than just resign?

People in positions of power, or with great wealth, often appear to announce they are doing something perceived as admirable, when what they’ve really announced is they “plan” to do the admirable thing. Billionaires, for instance, may say they “plan” dramatic pledges to charity, bask in the public approval, then never get around the mailing the check—since they’ve already received what they sought, good press. Franken’s declaration that he “planned” to resign brought some admiring press and seemed to conclude the controversy regarding his actions. Don’t be shocked if after Christmas Franken says some turn of events makes it his duty to the American people to continue to blah, blah.

Last winter, as Donald Trump was preparing to be sworn in, Ford Motors announced a dramatic commitment to build cars in Michigan rather than Mexico. Ford won admiring press and praise from the new president. Turns out what Ford announced was “plans” to switch from Mexico to Michigan. Last week those plans changed. It’s an ideal outcome for Ford—praised for appearing to make a major concession, then did what it wanted to do anyway.

President Donald Trump greets CEO of Ford Motor Company Mark Fields during a meeting with auto industry leaders in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 24, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)

Perhaps you’re assuming Ford seeks the lower labor costs of Mexico. Maybe what the company seeks is to do export business from a country that remains in the Trans Pacific Partnership. Mexico had open trade with TPP nations; electric cars are selling better in Asia than in America; Ford can build electric cars in Mexico and export them to TPP member nations without onerous rules and tariffs; electric cars built in Michigan would be subject to many trade restrictions.

One of the numerous malfunctions of the 2016 presidential campaign was that Trump and Bernie Sanders managed to create an illusion that international trade was harming the United States, while the Trans Pacific Partnership would be a terrible giveaway to China. Trade is helping the United States, and is beneficial to nearly all of the working class of the Midwest. Extensive details are in my upcoming book It’s Better Than It Looks.

But voters wanted to believe everything was awful: Trump and Sanders catered to this. As for the Trans Pacific Partnership, China is not a party! The purpose of the Trans Pacific Partnership was to create a counterweight to Chinese trade. The major commercial nations party to that agreement were Singapore, Vietnam, Mexico, Malaysia, Australia, Japan, and the United States, plus Peru, Chile, and a few others. No China!

When Trump and Sanders scored points by denouncing the Trans Pacific Partnership, few in the media corrected their systematic misrepresentation of the agreement. Nothing bores the MSM more than public policy, especially when there’s an email scandal. More precisely, an email storage scandal. That’s a lot more important than international trade! Holy cow, put the email storage scandal on page one above the fold! Let Trump say any nonsense he wants about the TPP!

When the wind began to blow against the Trans Pacific Partnership, Hillary Clinton immediately abandoned the idea—previously she had praised it lavishly. This not only added to the misrepresentation, it suggested to voters she lacked the courage of her convictions on any topic other than personal self-promotion. Had Clinton stood by the Trans Pacific Partnership, she could have demonstrated she would take stands based on conscience rather popularity. Instead she botched the whole issue, her candidacy declined, and, in the process, the Trans Pacific Partnership came to be seen as something bad. It’s something good—for the nations that stayed in, the United States is no longer included—including for average workers in those nations.

A couple of weeks ago the remaining Trans Pacific Partnership signatories, including Mexico, reached agreement on the primary titles. That’s why Ford changed its plan—building cars for the Pacific Rim is now more attractive in Mexico than in the United States. Donald Trump gets most of the blame; Sanders and Clinton deserve their share, too; the mainstream media deserve blame. The result is that working-class Americans are shafted so the political and media elites can pretend to care about working-class Americans.

The Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment (1925) is a modified version of the Michelson-Morley experiment and the Sagnac-Interferometer. It measured the Sagnac effect due to Earth’s rotation, and thus tests the theories of special relativity and luminiferous ether along the rotating frame of Earth. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Images)

Authentic Games Standings. This super-sophisticated Tuesday Morning Quarterback metric tracks high-pressure games versus quality opponents.

The first two weeks of super-sophisticated Authentic Games research had the unexpected result of showing the Kansas City Chiefs as the league’s strongest team. Science is full of unintended consequences! Michelson and Morley thought they were going to prove the existence of luminiferous aether, and instead made the discovery that led to special relativity theory. Can’t get discouraged if the experiment does not find the expected!

Anyway, for two weeks I have been promising a flimsy excuse for cutting the Chiefs down to size. Here it is: a road loss to a crummy team reduces an Authentic Games win total by one, and a home loss to a crummy team reduces an Authentic Games win total by two. This new metric changed Kansas City from 5-1 to 2-3, solving my problem.

What’s the definition of a crummy team? I can’t disclose my methodology because I don’t have one. Note: If the Chiefs bounce back and go deep into the postseason, I will invent another flimsy excuse to raise their ranking.

The Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons drop out of the Authentic Games standings; the Cowboys, with a slight playoff chance, are added. The flea-flicker that for all intents and purposes ended Washington’s season, resulting in a long pass that positioned the Chargers for a 30-6 fourth-quarter margin, began with a speed guy faking the fly sweep. R*dsk*ns safeties came up in reaction, such that at the snap there were 10 defenders in the box and no help against the intended receiver running deep.

The Steelers advance to first in the AFC. Memories of Pittsburgh’s last-season collapse at New England in the conference title contest cannot be soothing to this team’s faithful. The Eagles advance to first in the NFC. This supports TMQ previous prediction of a Pittsburgh versus Philadelphia Pennsylvania Turnpike Super Bowl. But both of these clubs have key injuries.

Unlike certain others in the sports-analytics biz, at least I admit my numbers are entirely cooked-up. The new rankings:

AFC:

Pittsburgh 5-1

New England 5-2

Jacksonville 4-3

Chargers 3-4

Kansas City, Tennessee 2-3

Buffalo 3-6

Ravens 2-5

Raiders 2-7

NFC:

Eagles 5-2

Minnesota 5-3

Saints 5-4

Carolina 4-3

Atlanta 4-4

Seattle 3-5

Cowboys 3-6

Rams 2-4

Lions, Packers 1-6

Global Warming Comes to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Back in the dark ages before Instagram, your columnist proposed this maxim: All economic news is always bad. Or at least, is spun by the media as bad. Last Saturday, after yet another glittering jobs report, the New York Times national edition page-one lead headline was: SIZZLING ECONOMY HEIGHTENS FEARS OF OVERHEATING. (That was the print headline; the piece ran under a different head on the Internet.) Plenty of jobs—oh my god, it’s a crisis!

Passing the Torch, or the Scepter, or Something. Jacksonville, which went into Sunday’s contest versus Seattle with the league’s number-one defense against both yards and points, allowed the low-voltage Seahawks offense to gain 401 yards, including two long fourth-quarter touchdown receptions on which Jax had a coverage breakdown. Still, the game felt like one of those New Years’ Eve cartoons of the old man passing his timepiece to the swaddled babe—the Jaguars very tough young defense is taking over from Seattle’s aging, injured defense. If this puts Jax roughly where Seattle was five years ago, Florida spectators will be happy.

The Whiteboard Analytic of the NFL. Sunday’s Eagles at LA/A contest matched the first two players chosen in the 2016 draft, Jared Goff and Carson Wentz. Netting a series of transactions, the Rams and Eagles expended a total of four first-round choices, three second-round selections, three third-round picks, a fourth-rounder, and two starting players to obtain these gentlemen. Many thought the prices so high that the Rams and Eagles would be crippled for years to come. Instead the teams are a combined 20-6. These results sync with TMQ’s one-sentence Whiteboard Analytic of the NFL: There is having a franchise quarterback, and there is everything else.

Not only did the perpetually woeful Browns, desperate for a quarterback, pass on the chance to select Wentz, both the Rams and Eagles have made recent major trades with the perpetually woeful Bills. Los Angeles and Philadelphia came out ahead on both transactions, a reason they are playoff-bound while Buffalo has the league’s longest playoff drought.

The only downside for the Eagles and Rams is that both have already spent high picks in the 2018 draft, which will make it harder for them to replenish their non-glamor positions. Otherwise, the two kings-ransom trades of the 2016 draft worked out very well and reinforced the case that in the current NFL, whose rules strongly favor passing, no price is too high to obtain a franchise quarterback. This in turn suggests there will be furious deal-making to get to the top of the 2018 draft.

The Ravens had an opportunity to get a huge road win against division rival and first-place Pittsburgh Sunday night. But Baltimore turned to Joe Flacco’s arm too much in the late stages, with several incompletions leaving the Steelers plenty of time to mount a comeback victory. (Photo by Joe Sargent/Getty Images)

‘Tis Better to Have Rushed and Lost Than Never to Have Rushed at All. Baltimore seemed to have matters in hand when the Ravens held the Steelers to a field goal from the 6-yard line to start the fourth quarter at Pittsburgh, getting the ball back with a 31-23 margin. During the remainder of the contest, Baltimore staged two three-and-outs, possessions that included numerous incompletions that stopped the clock, leaving sufficient time for the winning field goal the Steelers launched with 46 seconds remaining. From the juncture of the 31-23 lead till panic time at the very end, Baltimore coaches radioed in more passes than runs—and kept stopping the clock. Had the Ravens simply run up the middle for no gain on those snaps, victory was likely.

That it’s a passing league was never shown more clearly than a cold-weather matchup between the Steelers and Ravens, both viewed as power teams, ending with (adjusting for sacks and scrambles) 105 called passes versus 41 rushes. Ben Roethlisberger heave-hoed 66 times while handing off 15 times. The Ravens anticipated a pass-wacky Pittsburgh game plan, and had a clever defensive adjustment. Often presnap there was a Baltimore safety low, as if to zone-blitz. Before the snap he frantically backpedaled toward whatever side Antonio Brown was on, in order to double the league’s leading receiver. Clever tactic—and Brown caught 11 passes for 213 yards anyway.

The Football Gods Chortled. The Buccaneers wheezed out at home to the Lions, placing head coach Dirk Koetter on the Black Monday shortlist. But at least they threw a touchdown pass to an offensive lineman! Detroit leading 21-14, City of Tampa reached 1st-and-goal on the Lions 2. Backup tackle Leonard Wester reported eligible and lined up as an extra blocker. He sold the fake by rocking back into a pass-block set—then sneaked into the end zone uncovered and made a nice catch.

The Football Gods Promised an Investigation. The elimination of the R*dsk*ns means that in the 18 years of ownership by Chainsaw Dan Snyder, the team has failed to reach the postseason 13 times, barely besting the Browns, Bills, and Titans for futility. At least with the arrival of Donald Trump, Chainsaw Dan is no longer the most incompetent executive in the Washington, D.C. area.

One (of Many) Differences Between the Raiders and Eagles. Before the Oakland versus New England contest in Mexico City, the Patriots spent a week training at high altitude, while the Raiders did nothing special to prepare. That’s all the information you need to know which team won. A week ago, Philadelphia played at Seattle. Rather than fly back to the East Coast then return to the West Coast for the Rams game, Philadelphia spent the week training in California. The acclimation helped the Eagles be fresh and focused in the fourth quarter.

Adventures in Officiating. Colts scoring to pull within 7-6 late in regulation in the blizzard at Buffalo, the visitors went for a deuce and the win, but were called for offensive pass interference. That pushed the spot back to the 12, too far for two in inclement weather. Zebras then made an error that didn’t matter, since Buffalo won in overtime, but would have been yet another officiating embarrassment had Indianapolis prevailed. On tries there is no game clock, but officials forgot to start the play clock following enforcement of the penalty. That gave Indianapolis a long time to have players kick snow away from the placekicker’s position. For a while, Indianapolis water boys also came out onto the field and kicked snow so the placekicker could gain footing.

When Seattle went for it on 4th-and-long near the endgame at Jacksonville, Jax cornerback Aaron Colvin grabbed a Blue Men Group wide receiver and dragged him to the ground. No call; the pass fell incomplete. Rather than 1st-and-10 at midfield at the two-minute warning for Seattle, it was Jacksonville ball. This was a serious blunder by the officiating crew lead by referee Gene Steratore.

Obscure College Score. Sam Houston State 34, Kennesaw State 27 (Division I-AA playoffs). Located in Kennesaw, Georgia, Kennesaw State University provides students with a sustainability map.

Next Week. The season finale of Obscure College Score: After next weekend, bowl games tend to host colleges that are pretty well-known.