The Intersection Of COVID-19 And Two Sports

Today, there is news from the International Olympic Committee (IOC).  Statistically, the IOC makes the news under one of two circumstances:

  1. Someone breaks a story revealing corruption or chicanery and the IOC swears that it will investigate and get to the bottom of it all because those sorts of things are not part of the “Olympic Movement”.  [Aside:  Ha!]
  2. They announce some phase of some upcoming Games; and normally, it evokes a head-scratching response.

Today’s news is much more of the latter.  According to a senior official of the IOC, the 2020 Games that were supposed to be in Tokyo in July and were postponed to 2021 will go on as scheduled with or without COVID-19 and with or without a viable vaccine.  Let that wash over you for just a moment while I ask – ever so politely and only for the purpose of clarification:

  • If you do not need a viable vaccine to put on the 2021 Games and you are going to stage the Games despite the status of the coronavirus that caused the 2020 postponement, why did you postpone the 2020 Games in the first place?

If the guy in China who ate the bat that caused the coronavirus to jump from bats to humans had ordered Italian food for that dinner, the 2020 Games might have been held under ordinary circumstances.  In that case, the expectation was that approximately 11,000 athletes would have assembled in Tokyo from every corner of the Earth and participated in the Games.  I am going to go out on a limb here:

  • If there is no viable vaccine – – nor presumably a highly effective therapeutic – – for COVID-19 by the Summer of 2021, I doubt that 11,000 Olympic athletes will participate in those Games.

The basis for my assertion there is that I believe that many Olympic athletes are smarter than your average rutabaga.  Some will decide that an infection risk is not worth the gamble and simply go on with some other phase of their lives.  Moreover, the ones who do show up will need to think much more carefully about “normal behavior” in the Olympic Village as the Games run their course.  Recall that in most of the recent Games, there have been reports of hundreds of thousands or condoms being supplied to athletes in the Olympic Village to prevent the spread of AIDS.  I am neither a physician nor an epidemiologist, but I feel as if I am on firm ground here:

  • Folks who recognize the wisdom of using condoms in social interactions are not practicing social distancing.
  • The employment of that which prevents the spread of AIDS might accelerate the spread of the COVID-19 virus – – in the absence of a viable vaccine.

I am not sure why the IOC felt the need to make such a definitive statement at this point, but I try never to be in the business of understanding IOC actions to the point that I can replicate the decision making processes there.

Let me pivot here to the intersection of COVID-19 and another sport – one about to begin its season – the NFL.  Other than the flurry of false positive coronavirus tests affecting about 10 teams a few weeks ago, the NFL seems to have gotten to a very comfortable place at the end of training camp.  There has not been a “team outbreak” and the latest data reported out said that the positivity rate for the frequent testing done is less than 1%.  Frankly, the NFL should not have realistically counted on anything better than that when it finalized its plans for a 2020 season.

Things have gotten to the current positive place because the NFL and the NFLPA agreed to a reasonable testing regime and to team behaviors that were both effective in preventing viral spread and tolerable to the players such that they held to the rules.  Congratulations to both sides of the table for that demonstration of rational adult behavior.

It will be interesting to see how the league will conduct contact tracing in the event of something more than a single positive test that become confirmed as positive tests.  Imagine if 5 players on a team test positive and those positive tests are confirmed.  At that point, the element of contact tracing becomes particularly important.  Consider:

  • The NFL teams do not live in a “Bubble”.  Therefore, players come in contact with people outside the “team environment” meaning that all contact tracing involving that aspect of a player’s life will rely on the candid and thorough recall of the infected player.
  • It has been established that one can spread the virus without showing symptoms which means to me that it is possible for a player to be infected to the point of being a source of viral spread before he is tested and shows positive for the COVID-19 virus.  That being the case, he could have been part of regular team functions – – meetings, film study, practices – – for a day or two or three as a virus spreader before the test results came in.  Ignoring for a moment any outside  contacts that might shed light on how he became infected or to whom outside the team he may have spread the infection, how would a team determine which of his teammates he had been with for a sufficient amount of time and in sufficiently close proximity to put those other teammates at risk?

Those challenges are non-trivial for a single player on a team testing positive; the challenge increases exponentially for multiple players who crisscross one another within the team.  Practices would be real challenges there.  A real practice – – not just a walk-through – – puts players in situations where they are aerosol droplet producers meaning there is always the potential for viral spread in a practice if there is an infected player involved.  Now, imagine the contact tracing challenge if the infected player is part of the defensive unit, the punt and kickoff defense unit, the punt coverage unit and the placekicking unit.  YOWZA!

Finally, let me leave you with this Tweet by WSOP commentator, Norman Chad:

“They say the early bird gets the worm. If the worm were smart, he would start sleeping in.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Rest In Peace, Lou Brock

Lou Brock died last weekend at the age of 81.  After a 19-year career in MLB, he was enshrined in the Hall of Fame; his ”calling card” was the stolen base.  For his career, Lou Brock stole 938 bases including 118 steals in 1974.  He was involved in one of the most lopsided trades in MLB history; there were 6 players involved but the two that headlined the trade were Lou Brock and Ernie Broglio.  Broglio went to the Cubs and did nothing special there; Brock went to the Cards where he played for 16 years, made the All-Star team 6 times and then entered the Hall of Fame.

Rest in peace, Lou Brock.

The most unusual occurrence over the weekend had to come from the world of tennis where Novak Djokovic was defaulted in a match in the US Open.  Djokovic is currently ranked as the #1 player in the world and while the tennis term is that he “was defaulted”, the more colloquial way to say this is that he was thrown out of the tournament.  What happened is that Djokovic hit ball at a line judge and caught the judge in the throat; the judge was having trouble breathing and had to be assisted off the court.  Reports say that he hit the ball “in anger” and that this was not an accident; that sort of behavior interpreted in that way would get any athlete thrown out of any event save a pro ‘rassling encounter;.

Djokovic has some history with “anger issues” but this is the first time his behavior has cost him a match – and a chance to win another major tournament.  Elite tennis players in the past have also had “anger issues”.  Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe and Nick Kyrgios are men who come to mind there; Serena Williams has also been known to be less than polite when it comes to dealing with match officials.  There is probably a PhD dissertation in psychology wrapped up in this situation…

Steve Nash has been hired as the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets.  Nash is a Hall of Fame player but has no coaching experience of any note prior to this undertaking.  Stephen A. Smith of ESPN said that this was an example of “white privilege”.

I like Stephen A. Smith and have liked him since he was a beat reporter and then a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.  When he was in that phase of his career,  the term “NBA Insider” had not yet entered the American language, but Stephen A. Smith was as much an “NBA Insider” then as anyone who lives in the glow of that term today.  Having said that, I completely disagree with him on this point.

I have written here several times my sense that great players do not make great coaches.  Nonetheless, great players – of every color and ethnicity – have a trump card to play within the confines of the game at which they excelled.

  • Billy Cunningham and Larry Bird were hired as head coaches after their playing days were over; those hires were not “white privilege”; those hires were “basketball privilege”.
  • Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Paul Silas and Magic Johnson were hired as head coaches after their playing days were over; those hires were not “black privilege”; those hires were “basketball privilege”.

Steve Nash played in the NBA for 18 years; he was named to the All-NBA team 7 times; he was an All-Star 8 times; he was the NBA MVP two years in a row and won the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award one time.  If there is an issue or a question or a job opportunity related to basketball, those credentials would get anyone – of any color or ethnicity – entry into the discussion if that person so chose to be involved.

Having said the above, I go back to my stance that great players do not make great coaches and I do not make any assumption that Steve Nash will be a guaranteed success as the head coach of the Nets.  That issue will work itself out over time and the record will demonstrate if this was a “good choice” or a “bad choice” by the Nets’ ownership.  However, under no circumstances do I believe this hiring choice was one of “white privilege”.

Dwight Perry had an item in his column in the Seattle Times last weekend that I missed completely:

“Giants manager Gabe Kapler challenged a play at first base with his team ahead 18-2 in the seventh inning.

“So why isn’t there an unwritten rule about that?”

The final score of the game in question was Giants 23 – Rockies 5.  Considering the vitriol expressed when Fernando Tatis, Jr swung at a 3-0 pitch to hit a grand slam home run late in a blowout game only about a week before this Giants’ game, I wonder why there was no outcry about Kapler’s challenge.  I am sure that if someone had questioned Kapler on that behavior, he would have had some arcane analytical point to make about the necessity for such a move.  Kapler seems to me to be one of analytical baseball’s high priests; he manages the game in a way that a friend characterizes as “analytics on steroids”.

MLB has moved significantly in the direction of analytics; while some of that movement is positive, there are some jarring aspects too.  I have seen games where players in the field take out a card/sheet from the pocket of their uniform to figure out where to play the next hitter in this game situation or for a pitcher to look to see how to pitch to the next batter.  For players at the top rung of their profession, that is a bad look; you don’t see NFL offensive linemen come out of the huddle checking their “crib sheets” to figure out what blitz to look for on 3rd and 8 at their own 25 in the third quarter.

Finally, one more observation from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Who better suited to be the White Sox’s stopper than righty Dylan Cease?”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Rest In Peace, Tom Seaver

Tom Seaver died earlier this week; he was 75 years old.  Seaver is probably the best player in the history of the NY Mets and had a 20-year career in MLB that led him to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He suffered from dementia and recently had contracted COVID-19.

Rest in peace, Tom Seaver.

Assuming that things continue along the trajectory they are currently on, the sports world will be very active very soon.  Baseball, professional basketball and hockey are “up and running”, the NFL is about to kick off its season; college football will happen in some of its normal venues; soccer, tennis, golf and horse racing are ongoing too.  It is almost as if the pandemic has been put under control.

Maybe, that is why a statement by Dr. Wayne Sebastianelli – the director of athletic medicine at Penn State – was so jarring.  Originally, he said that almost one-third of the Big 10 athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 appeared also to have myocarditis based on cardiac MRI scans.  Please note that Dr. Sebastianelli revised those figures saying that the data indicated about a 15% rate of myocarditis and not a 30-35% rate.

No matter …  This is another new discovery as medical science learns more about COVID-19.  There have been previous linkages between myocarditis and COVID-19; Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez is probably the most famous of the cases involving that linkage.  And an important thing to know about myocarditis is that it can be fatal if left untreated, and that means a person who contracts COVID-19 and exhibits recovery from the virus may not be totally back to good health.  There may be at least one lingering aftereffect which is less than benign.

Most people who need hospitalization for COVID-19 do not have cardiac MRIs done; so, the data for the general population is not available for comparison to the athletes tested here.  Nevertheless, these are data that cannot be cavalierly set aside.  Medical science needs to begin to shed light on a basic question here:

  • Is this seemingly high rate of coincidence between myocarditis and COVID-19 related in some way to the rigorous physical activity that produces “elite athletes” such that this is a minor concern for the rest of us “normal folks”?

While that may appear on the surface to be a minor point and need not be considered in the times when issues such as vaccines and therapeutics are being studied, there could be important consequences from possible answers to the question above.

  • Suppose a linkage can be shown between the training of an athlete and the likelihood of COVID-19 leaving behind myocarditis in the athlete after “recovery”.  Might that affect the way athletes prepare for their lives in that field of endeavor?  Would there be potential athletes who choose not to take on that added risk?  Might there be vaccines or therapeutics that would minimize the chances of myocarditis even if COVID-19 were contracted?
  • Suppose no linkage can be found between athletic training and myocarditis that follows a recovery from COVID-19.  If that is the case, then there could well be an awful lot of people unknowingly walking around with myocarditis which can be fatal if left untreated.

Let me do some back-of-the-envelope math here.  Before anyone tells me that this is too simplistic, let me plead guilty to that charge.  The reason is that I am not an epidemiologist and cannot do the calculations rigorously, but the “simple math” makes me sit up and take notice.

  • As of this morning according to Johns Hopkins University, there have been 6.17 million cases of COVID-19 in the US this year.
  • As of this morning according to Johns Hopkins University, there have been 187 thousand deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the US this year.
  • Simplistic Assumption Warning: If you subtract the deaths from the number of cases, you can approximate the number of people who have “recovered” from COVID-19 in the US this year.  Again, using approximations, that would mean there have been 6 million folks who have “recovered”.

Now apply Dr. Sebastianelli’s data.  If 15% of the people who contract COVID-19 also carry myocarditis with them AND if this is the situation with the general population and not just elite athletes, then there are approximately 900,000 people going about their everyday lives with a condition that “can be fatal if left untreated”.  Here is a newspaper account of what Dr. Sebastianelli said and how the Big 10 may have considered it as part of its decision to postpone the 2020 football season.  I am not trying to be Chicken Little; I do not know enough to be actively worried about this situation; I also do not know enough to ignore the possibilities here.

As the sports world continues along its path to return to a semblance of normalcy, I think we must continue to study and learn about COVID-19 and its long-term effects over and above its immediate effects.  The resumption of professional sports – – and realistically I put college football in that category – – will provide a lot of money/profit for players and owners and athletic departments.  Much of the attention has been given to the athletes in these endeavors as the ones upon whose shoulders that money will be accrued.  But wait; there’s more…

For all that money to flow into various coffers, there are thousands of other folks who must be actively involved to make it happen.  In addition to the players, coaches and officials, think about the people who set up and take down the stadium/arena environment, the concessionaires, the TV and radio production folks, the people who get the players and coaches to and from the game venues.  If Dr. Sebastianelli’s data applies to the general population, then those people also are in harms way being around potential spreading events and potential COVID-19 spreaders.

When the NFL kicks off next week and limited college football happens weekly, all the COVID-19 problems related to sports may not be in the rear-view mirror.

Finally, here is another slant on the subtle effects of COVID-19 on life in America from a Tweet by Brad Dickson:

“Since all the bank lobbies are closed I’m starting a GoFundMe for bank robbers who are not able to ply their trade. Please give whatever you can. Thanks.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

NFL Pre-Season Analysis For 2020

To the surprise of no one who had been even semi-conscious for the past six or seven months, 2020 has been atypical.  One week from today, the NFL will try to start its 2020 season on time and with a schedule that is intact.  The Chiefs and the Texans will kick off the season and I surely hope that it can go through to a conclusion with minimal COVID-19 interruption/impact.  I doubt that I am alone in that hopeful state.

One of the realities of the state of sports in the US in 2020 is that I have been paying a lot more attention to things other than the NFL’s preparation for its upcoming regular season.  In a normal year, I would have a reference document about player and coaching moves in the NFL offseason and about Draft selections and training camp injuries as the fodder for my annual “exercise in self-incrimination”.  I would use all of that to create here my annual predictions for every NFL team and their final record for the regular season.  This Pre-Season Analysis is the document that normally provides the basis for my great day of shame in February of the next year when I reveal how wrong-headed I was back at the beginning of the season.  I will, however, keep up the spirit of self-humiliation this year and identify specific predictions against which I can grade myself next February.  There are 23 specific predictions here; come next year, I will try to see if I can achieve a passing grade as a modern-day Nostradamus.

This year I cannot do a full team-by-team record prediction because the reference document with all the notations made over the six-months of the off-season does not exist – – because I was focused on other things and never compiled the references.  With a week to go until kickoff, there is no possibility that I could bring it all together in time – – and so, I decided to do it differently this year.  I will try to make predictions regarding the teams to make the expanded playoffs in January 2021 and I will try to make some specific commentary about events that should impinge on specific teams as the NFL season unfolds – – and I shall be assuming that it will unfold in its entirety.

I mentioned the NFL’s expanded playoffs for January 2021 so let me take a moment to remind everyone what that means:

  • There will be 14 teams in the playoffs this year instead of the 12 teams that had participated in recent years.
  • The 4 division winners will make the playoffs as will 3 wildcard teams from each conference.
  • Only the team seeded #1 in each conference will get a Bye Week now; each of the other 3 division winners will host Wild Card teams from their conference.

Let me start with the AFC West Division.  The defending Super Bowl Champs – the KC Chiefs – are in this division and they seem to have found ways to dodge the scourge that hits most Super Bowl winners.  They have most of their starters back again this year; their losses to free agency and COVID-19 opting out have been minimal.  The toughest opponents for the Chiefs in 2020 will be the injury bug and the coronavirus.  So, let me get my first prediction out of the way quickly:

Prediction #1:  The Chiefs will win the AFC West handily and – despite getting a run for the money from the Baltimore Ravens –  the Chiefs will get the AFC Bye Week in the playoffs as the #1 seed.

The rest of the AFC West may not pose a significant threat to the Chiefs but there is plenty of potential intrigue in which team finishes second and which finishes fourth.  I can make a case for any of the permutations and combinations for those three teams.  Taking them in alphabetical order:

  • Broncos:  They have a veteran defense and if you believe that Drew Lock showed himself to be a rising star in the NFL late last season, then Lock and the addition of some added offensive weapons could make the Broncos the next-best team in the division.  Or … Lock could have been a mirage and the Broncos could stink in 2020
  • Chargers:  They must replace Philip Rivers at QB and Tyrod Taylor has been named the starter for now.  If the Chiefs start to run away from the division, Justin Herbert might see action by mid-season.  The Chargers’ defense is good enough to keep them in lots of games this year.

[Aside:  The Chargers will play home games in the spanking new SoFi Stadium but there will be no fans in the stands.  That should not be a shock to Chargers veterans; the Chargers have been playing in front of next to no one for several years now.]

  • Raiders:  So, Jon Gruden is an offensive wizard.  This is his third year at the helm for the Raiders.  Here is the question:  When do we get to see the Raiders as an offensive juggernaut?  When do we get to see the Jon Gruden imprint on QB Derek Carr?  I see no compelling reason to put the Raiders ahead of the Broncos or the Chargers – – just as I see no reason to put either the Chargers or Broncos ahead of the Raiders.  The early schedule for the Raiders is difficult.  After a seemingly easy opener against the Panthers, the next four opponents will be the Saints, Pats, Bills and Chiefs – – all of whom I see as playoff teams.  Welcome to Las Vegas…

Prediction #2:  The AFC West will produce only 1 playoff team in 2020.

Next up will be the AFC South.  Any team here other than the Jags has a shot to win this division but there are no dominant teams here.  The Titans shocked the world last year making the playoffs with a 9-7 record and then going on to the AFC Championship Game only to lose there to the Chiefs.  The tendency would be to give the Titans the nod here because they have kept most of their team together through the off-season but that may or may not be a good thing.

  • Titans:  They have bet the farm that Ryan Tannehill is indeed a franchise QB and will not regress to the QB he was for the first six years of his career in Miami.  The Titans’ fans also have to hope that Derrick Henry continues to do his “Jim Brown imitation” once again in 2020 despite 386 carries in the 2019 season (including the playoffs).
  • Colts:  The key variable here is obvious.  How much tread is left on Philip Rivers’ tires?  The Colts’ defense is ordinary; they will need to score points to win.  Can Rivers give them the leadership – and more importantly, the passing game – to score those points?  He must be an upgrade over the 2019 showing of Jacoby Brissett, right?  Those young receivers – other than TY Hilton – really are NFL caliber players, right?
  • Texans:  If I tried to tell you that I understand the reasoning behind most of the Texans’ off-season moves, I would be a big enough liar to run for the US Senate.  DeShaun Watson is the offensive key to this team; JJ Watt’s health/availability is the defensive key.
  • Jaguars:  The Jags are going to stink this year.  I think the only question here is if they will be bad enough to secure the overall #1 pick in the 2021 Draft.

Prediction #3:  I will take a rejuvenated Philip Rivers to lead the Colts to the division title and the playoffs in 2020.

Prediction #4:  There will be only 1 team from the AFC South in the playoffs in 2020.

Turning now to the AFC North.  Last year the Ravens dominated the regular season and then laid a giant egg in the playoffs after having a BYE week.  I like them to dominate their division this year, but they will not enjoy a playoff BYE this time around.  Maybe that will be a plus?  The addition of Calais Campbell will make a very good defense even better; the loss of Earl Thomas may – if you believe reports – improve the locker room “chemistry” but it is hard to imagine that he will be fully replaced on the field.

Prediction #5:  The Ravens will win the AFC North comfortably.

  • Browns:  Last year, they were the “trendy pick” to make it to the Super Bowl only to see the team flop like a mackerel in a parking lot puddle.  It appears that the Browns may actually have adult supervision in the management and coaching ranks this time around and that may be what the team needs to exploit an awful lot of football talent on the roster.  Baker Mayfield had a huge sophomore slump in 2019 (22 TDs and 21 INTs); he needs to prove that was merely a bad season and that he is in fact the Browns’ franchise QB for the years ahead.

Prediction #6:  The Browns will make the playoffs and will win double-digit games in 2020.

  • Steelers:  Having Ben Roethlisberger healthy for more than 2 games will make a big difference this year.  Does anyone really need to see more of either Mason Rudolph or Duck Hodges to recognize that?  Last year, the offense was unreliable from game to game and quarter to quarter.  The defense was very good last year and should be good once again.

Prediction #7:  The Steelers will make the playoffs in 2020 making it three teams from the AFC North to play on to January 2021.

  • Bengals:  Joe Burrow will get loads of attention and opportunity to air it out because the Bengals’ defense should be giving up points generously.  The return of AJ Green at WR ought to be a big plus for the rookie QB.  Last year, the Bengals has the overall #1 pick; they will be within shouting distance of that “honor” again in the Spring of 2021.  The thing for Bengals’ fans to look for is competitiveness; the Bengals rolled over and played dead too often last year; it needs to be different this time around.

Now it is time to close out the AFC by examining the AFC East.  For the last decade, it was a clear choice as to who was going to win this division.  The only “judgment” involved projecting if the Patriots would get a playoff BYE and if one of the other teams would be able to muster up sufficient fortitude to become a wild-card team.  Not so in 2020 …  Much like the AFC South, there are 3 teams in this division who can take the division race down to the final weeks of the season – from Christmas Day until January 3, 2021.  I think the division champion will be decided on December 28 when the Bills visit Foxboro to play the Patriots; the winner of that game will be the AFC East champion.  Not to worry for fans of either side, the loser will be a wild-card team in the playoffs.

Prediction #8:  The Bills will win the AFC East.  The last time the Bills won the AFC East, Jim Kelly was their QB.

  • I think the addition of Stefon Diggs at WR combined with the added experience of QB, Josh Allen will make a big difference for the Bills’ offense.

Prediction # 9:  The Pats will continue their streak of playoff appearances as a wild card team in 2020.

  • Pats:  It may take some time to adjust to the new look on offense for the Pats in 2020.  Cam Newton is a fundamentally different QB than Tom Brady and the Pats will have to change up their offense to maximize Newton’s skills.  I think the Pats will be more of a ball-control/run-oriented team this year than we have seen in the past because I think it will take time for Cam Newton to adjust to the system and the players he has at the skill positions in New England.  Free agent, Leonard Fournette, is the kind of “big back” that Bill Belichick has used effectively in the past.  If Belichick passes on Fournette, that would indicate to me that he dislikes something about Fournette that goes well beyond his physical talents.
  • Dolphins:  They really surprised folks last year; they looked like a “2-win team” if things went their way.  They won 5 games last year and they improved their roster in the Draft and with free agency signings.  They will make things interesting in the division, but they are not ready to be a playoff team just yet.
  • Jets:  It will be a long season for NYC football fans.  The Jets are not a good football team.  Their defense was OK – but nothing better than that – until they traded Jamal Adams to Seattle.  You can hire all the spin doctors who will be out of work after the Presidential campaigns are over and they cannot spin that trade to mean that the Jets’ defense got better.  The schedule does the Jets no favors; the first 8 games look as if the team could be fortunate to be 2-6 when November rolls around.  If the Jets are worse than 2-6 at that point, I suspect there will be a coaching change in mid-season with Gregg Williams taking the helm.

So just to review, the AFC playoffs will have the Chiefs resting up for a week while the Bills, Browns, Colts, Patriots, Ravens and Steelers take part in Wild Card Weekend.

Moving along, here is a synopsis for the NFC West.  Top to bottom, this is the best division in the NFL overall.  The Seahawks were a playoff caliber team last year and made two particularly good additions in the offseason in Greg Olsen and Jamal Adams.  Those two moves make me think that Seattle is in “Win-Now Mode”.  The Niners must battle the curse of being the Super Bowl loser, but that roster is young and talented; they will be a tough out every week.  Both the Rams and the Cardinals would be dominant forces in any other NFC Division, but I think they trail the field in this division.

Prediction #10:  The Seahawks will win the NFC West and will be the top seed in the NFC playoff bracket.

Prediction #11:  The Niners will be one of the NFC wildcard teams.

  • Rams:  Brandin Cooks and Todd Gurley are no longer part of that offensive unit and I think that will show up in the season results.  On defense, Aaron Donald remains THE dominant defensive lineman – – perhaps the most dominant defensive player? – in the NFL.
  • Cardinals:  Even before the Cards acquired – – or stole – – DeAndre Hopkins from the Texans, there was every reason to believe the Cards’ offense would be better this year as Kyler Murray developed his game and the offensive scheme evolved a bit.  I think the Cards’ first round pick, Isaiah Simmons, is going to be a star in the NFL; he will help that defense right away.  The Cards are a good team, but they have 6 tough games against these division opponents on their dance card.

Next under the microscope is the NFC South.  Just as the departure of Tom Brady from the Patriots causes me to believe that the Pats will not be as formidable as in recent years, the arrival of Tom Brady in Tampa makes me believe that the Bucs will be significantly better this year as compared to last year.  Consider that Jameis Winston threw 30 INTs for the Bucs last year; Tom Brady has thrown 29 INTs in the last 4 seasons combined.  The Bucs defense is a good unit and the fact that they will not have to deal with nearly as many “sudden changes” is a big plus.  The Saints are always a threat with Drew Brees, Michael Thomas, Emmanuel Sanders, Jared Cook and Alvin Kamara on the offense.  The rub here is that Kamara is an uncertainty this year.  He was injured for some of last year – presumably fully recovered – but he has been conducting a so-called “hold-in” where he has reported to training camp but is not practicing.  The Saints do not have a replacement for Alvin Kamara.

Prediction #12:  The Bucs will be the NFC South champions this year.

Prediction #13:  The Saints will be one of the NFC wildcard teams in the playoffs.

  • Falcons:  The Falcons added Todd Gurley to the offense to give them a more respectable running game.  The question here is the soundness of Gurley for a 16-game season.  If he is the same player he was in 2017-2018, the Falcons got themselves a bargain.  We shall see…  Weep not for that offensive unit under any circumstances.  With Matt Ryan, Julio Jones and Calvin Ridley on the field, that offense will be just fine.
  • Panthers:  Matt Ruhle has been a miracle-worker in turning around sad-sack college football programs, but it has usually taken him a couple of years to make those adjustments.  Here he gets a double whammy.  Not only does he have a roster with holes; he has not had the off-season time with his players to start the learning processes for his new systems until mid-July.  Teddy Bridgewater and Christian Mc Caffrey will provide some excitement – and hope for the future – but this is going to be a tough year in Carolina.  Replacing Luke Kuechley and Thomas Davis at LB all in one season is a tall order, indeed.

Moving on up to the NFC North, I see a ton of question marks.

  • Vikings:  Is this the year that the Vikings figure out how to avoid losing those games they simply must win?  Is any thing more important to the Vikings than the health of Dalvin Cook?  Is Justin Jefferson an adequate replacement for Stefon Diggs?
  • Packers:  Is the Green Bay defense a top-shelf unit or did they markedly over-achieve in 2019?  Can the so-called “Smith Brothers” continue to dominate games?  Other than Davante Adams, who in the Packers’ receiving corps is a major threat?  Devin Funchess?  Why did the Packers use their first-round pick on a QB?
  • Bears:  The Bears’ quarterback play cannot be as bad as it was in 2019, can it?  Can Tarik Cohen be the main RB on the team for 16 games?  Will the secondary improve noticeably in 2020?
  • Lions:  There are always questions with the Lions; and, when they are answered – usually in the most negative way –  the reason is always the same:  It’s because they are the Lions.  Last year the Lions were awful on defense – and that is how Matt Patricia earned his stripes in the NFL.  Last year the Lions’ defense gave up more yards than all but one other team and ranked 26thin scoring defense.  In the offseason they lost Darius Slay who was the brightest light on that defensive unit.  The Lions must turn that around – – quickly.

Prediction #14:  The Vikings will win the NFC North.

Prediction #15:  The Packers will make the playoffs – – but neither of the other two teams in the NFC North will finish at or above .500.

The last division on the list is the NFC East.  Last year, I said the division was clearly bifurcated into two “Haves” and two “Have-nots”.  Such remains the case in 2020.  The Cowboys and the Eagles are solid, respectable teams; the Giants and the WTFs will stink.

  • Cowboys:  Let me put this simply.  Dak Prescott will make about $31M this year on the franchise tag.  He has been in the league for 4 seasons and has 67 starts – counting playoffs – under his belt.  It is time for him to avoid coming up small in big games.  The Cowboys have real potency at the WR position; they should score plenty of points.  The biggest concern for the offense is that the OL is aging – but it is still a top-shelf unit.

Prediction #16:  The Cowboys will win the NFC East.

  • Eagles:  Let me put this simply.  They have to avoid rampant injuries; their training camp has resembled a M*A*S*H unit this year.  Last year they won the division without having  speed, size or experience at the WR position.  Presumably, that will not be the case in 2020…

Prediction # 17:  The Eagles will make the NFC Playoffs.

  • WTFs:  Here is what this team will look forward to in the next offseason.  It will look forward to getting a new team name, that’s what.  There is a new coach in DC; that is a good thing because they have needed one for a while and Ron Rivera is good football coach.  He inherits a team with exactly one real strength – – the defensive line where the team has 5 first-round picks in the unit.  That’s it; that’s the list.  While in the process of “changing the culture” there, Rivera also gets to battle cancer this year and there will be distractions provided courtesy of the investigations into sexual harassment in the team executive suite.  I doubt that Tinkerbell has enough Pixie Dust on hand to get the WTFs up to .500 for the year.
  • Giants:  The good news is they have a new coach, an excellent running back and a second year QB who showed significant promise in his rookie year.  The defense – and particularly the secondary – will scare no one and that is the rest of the story.  Like the crosstown NY Jets, the Giants will be sad sacks in 2020.

Summarizing the NFC playoff picture, the Seahawks will get the top seed and the playoff BYE week while the rest of the bracket will be the Bucs, Eagles, Niners, Packers, Saints and Vikings.

One other feature of my pre-season predictions has always been coaches who I see on the hot seat and what I think will happen to them. So, in alphabetical order – – because I have no intention of trying to rank these entries – – here are my NFL Coaches on the Hot Seat for 2020:

  • Adam Gase (Jets):  His “calling card” in the coaching ranks is that he is a “QB developer”.  His recent record brings that into question since Ryan Tannehill blossomed as soon as he left Adam Gase and since Sam Darnold is still a “work in progress”.  Moreover, Gase has gotten himself crosswise with Jamal Adams – – who demanded and got a trade out of NY – – and with LeVeon Bell.  If the Jets are as bad as I think they will be, I will not be surprised if Gase is relieved of his role with the Jets before the end of the season.

Prediction 18:  I think Adam Gase will not make it to January 2021 as the head coach of the Jets and that Gregg Williams will be his interim replacement.

  • Doug Marrone (Jags):  This will be Marrone’s fourth year as the coach of the Jags and ever since they gagged away the AFC Championship Game to the Patriots in 2017, the team has been a mess.  Given the denuding of the roster over the last two years – five Pro Bowlers on defense and one on offense are gone – the Jags will probably be a doormat this year.  I do not think Marrone will survive the carnage of this season unless there is a real “Minshew Miracle” on tap.

Prediction 19:  I think that the clock will strike twelve on the Doug Marrone Era in Jax at the end of this season.

  • Matt Nagy (Bears):  He was the Coach of the Year in the NFL in 2018; then the Bears – and particularly their offense – were less than miserable in 2019.  Nothing seemed to be working in Chicago.  The Bears now have an overpaid Nick Foles and an under-achieving Mitchell Trubisky vying for the QB job.  Things do not look good in Chicago and Nagy could well be the casualty in that catastrophe.

Prediction 20:  I think Matt Nagy survives as the Bears’ coach as fans and “NFL Insiders” pin the blame for the Bears’ lack of success on the guy who built the roster.

  • Bill O’Brien (Texans):  The Texans have been in the playoffs four out of the five years that O’Brien has been the coach so this entry on the list is a long shot.  Coach Bill O’Brien’s biggest problem is the roster makeup given to him by GM Bill O’Brien.  He has made some strange personnel moves over the past couple of years and none make me scratch my head more than trading away DeAndre Hopkins for in injured running back and then “replacing” Hopkins with Brandin Cooks by sending away a second round pick.  The QB magic produced by DeShaun Watson could save O’Brien’s coaching job – – but the Texans really do need a GM…

Prediction 21:  I think the Texans definitely get a new GM for next year.  And Coach Bill O’ Brien will be a casualty – collateral damage if you will – of that GM decision.

  • Matt Patricia (Lions):  This will be his third season at the helm of a downtrodden franchise that had risen to the level of a “break-even team” under its previous coach, Jim Caldwell.  In his two seasons in Detroit, Patricia’s Lions have gone 9-22-1.  Yes, I know that Matthew Stafford was injured and out for 8 games last year; nonetheless, the Lions remain an irrelevant team under Patricia’s leadership.  I think it will take a 9-7 record and a healthy Matthew Stafford to achieve that record to save Patricia’s job after 2020.

Prediction 22:  I think Matt Patricia is coaching his final year in Detroit.

  • Dan Quinn (Falcons):  Lots of people were surprised when Quinn survived the BYE week last year.  The Falcons started the year 1-7 and looked lost in many of those games.  But he – and the team – turned it all around and went 6-2 in the second half of the year.  Quinn has been in Atlanta for 5 years and has been to the Super Bowl with the Falcons.  His seat is warm but not hot.

Prediction 23:  I think Dan Quinn makes it through 2020 without great jeopardy.

Mike Zimmer (Vikings):  I had him on my “watch list for hot seats” because 2020 was to be his final year under contract in Minnesota and there had been no extension given during the off-season.  However, in mid-July he did get a multi-year extension and his seat is now just a comfy one.

Before wrapping this up, let me just list here some of the things I jotted down about question marks hanging over some NFL players this year.  As I was musing about the season, these things cropped up in my mind, and even when I recognized that they were important questions, I was not confident that I had the answers.  So, just for fun and in alphabetical order:

  • Antonio Brown – – Will a team take him on with his 8-game suspension and his soap opera atmosphere?
  • Jadeveon Clowney – – So, where is he going to play in 2020 – – or will he sit out a season?
  • Todd Gurley – – Can he stay healthy?  Did the Falcons get a bargain signing Gurley for only $5M?  Did they get 2017 Todd Gurley or 2019 Todd Gurley?
  • Alshon Jeffrey – – Is he recovered from Lisfranc surgery?  Do he and Carson Wentz hate each other?  We shall see …
  • David Johnson – – Can he stay healthy?  If so, he will be an important part of the Texans’ offense.
  • Xavier Rhodes – – Had a lackluster year in Minnesota last year and signed on with the Colts for only $3M because of that performance.  But he used to be an All-Pro as recently as 2017.  Is he a bargain or is he washed up?
  • JJ Watt – – Can he stay healthy?  Great player when healthy and Texans need him on that defense.

The only thing left now is for the teams and the players in the NFL to maintain vigilance against an outbreak of COVID-19 such that the season can proceed as scheduled.

            So let it be written; so let it be done.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

Something’s Up …

It has been more than a week since the Ravens gave Earl Thomas his outright release and no NFL team has picked him up as of this morning.  That is the sort of thing that makes me stop and shake my head and wonder what is going on here.  Let me do a quick reset here:

  • Earl Thomas is 31 years old; he has been in the NFL for 10 seasons.  He has been selected for the Pro Bowl 7 times and has been named first team All-Pro 3 times.  Those are the sort of stats that orient a player toward Canton, OH.
  • Thomas was an integral part of the Seattle defense known as The Legion of Boom as the free safety.  He was the starting free safety on the Seattle team that won the Super Bowl.
  • There was a falling out in Seattle over contract matters and Thomas ended his days in Seattle being carted off the field with a broken leg and flipping the bird at his bench on the way out early in the 2018 season.
  • He signed on with the Ravens last year and had a Pro Bowl season.
  • In training camp about 10 days ago, he got into a fistfight with a teammate, Chuck Clark,  and was sent off the field.  Reportedly, the Ravens’ Leadership Council let it be known that they thought Thomas was “a problem” and took Clark’s side in the fight.
  • Coach John Harbaugh took that counsel and released Earl Thomas.

When that story broke more than a week ago, it was unusual on a standalone basis.  Thomas is not nearly a youngster in NFL terms, but he made the Pro Bowl just last year which would indicate to me that whatever toll the leg injury in 2018 may have taken, he still has miles left on the tires.  Yet, the Ravens’ Leadership Council and the Ravens’ coaching staff chose to release him outright than try to put the pieces back together.

Just a few weeks ago, another top-shelf safety, Jamal Adams, had a falling out with his team (the Jets) and forced the team to trade him.  In return, Adams brought two first-round picks, a third-round pick and a replacement safety that many feel is in the “good-but-not-great category”.  Even with that “setting of the market” for a top-shelf safety, the Ravens made no attempt to trade Earl Thomas; they just jettisoned him.

The reporters covering the story seemingly took sides in the matter too.  Clark was described as “mild-mannered”; Thomas was “churlish”.  One report had it that Thomas was aloof and not really a part of the defensive unit and that the rest of the players on the defense thought he did too much freelancing outside the limits of the defensive scheme.  Even if all of that is absolutely correct, Thomas still was a Pro Bowl caliber defender just last season in that defensive scheme.

At that point, I thought that there must be something strange going on inside the Ravens’ organization and this was the coaching staff trying to make sure that whatever it is that is ongoing gets stopped before it gets out of hand.  I figured that we would never know about the details until Earl Thomas retired and either went to the broadcast booth or wrote a book about his days in the NFL.  So, I filed all of this in the back of my brain as a “Mysterious Situation”.

However, this morning Earl Thomas remains unsigned; 31 other NFL teams have  – in practical terms – taken a pass on him since he was released on August 23rd.

  • Thomas is from Texas and has said openly and often that he would like to play for the Cowboys.  The Cowboys’ secondary was not a team strength last season.  Jerry Jones has never been one to shy away from players who have “issues” (assuming that is what put Thomas on the free agent market).  And Thomas remains unsigned…
  • The Chargers just lost their All-Pro safety, Derwin James, to a knee injury that will keep him off the field for the 2020 season.  And Thomas remains unsigned…
  • The Jets traded away an outstanding safety and got what most folks consider a “lesser replacement”.  And Thomas remains unsigned …

Now, it seems to me that there is more to this matter than a training camp fight and some internal strangeness regarding the Baltimore Ravens.  It is virtually certain that Thomas will pursue a grievance against the Ravens if they move to claw back any of the guaranteed money in his contract with the Ravens as the team might do citing his release being based on “conduct detrimental to the team”.  But that is “lawyer stuff” and not “gameday stuff”.  It just does not seem to me that is a big enough obstacle to keep Thomas on the outside of the NFL looking in.

About 10 years ago, Mazda had an ad campaign where the TV spots ended with a kid standing on the side of the road as the car flashed by and the kid muttered “Something’s up…”  If the Earl Thomas situation needs a visual as of today, I think that kid’s assessment of the situation is spot on.  Something’s up – – and I have no idea what it is.

As you might expect, Dwight Perry had something to say about all this in the Seattle Times:

“The Ravens cut Earl Thomas loose after he punched a teammate during practice.

“In other words, they simply converted him into a different kind of free safety.”

Finally, since I mentioned that Earl Thomas’ final public action with the Seahawks was his flipping the bird at the team bench as he was wheeled off the field with a broken leg, I want to close today with a pertinent definition from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Finger, The:  Something you give to other human beings when you cannot find the right words to say exactly how much their very existence has so deeply impacted your life.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Never Ascribe To Malice …

Over the past several months, I have not been paying much attention to the NFL in general because the other sports were maneuvering to get on the field before the NFL was scheduled to do so.  And when I focused on the NFL, I must admit that I spent most of the time looking at three issues:

  1. Can the NFL play its games in such a way as to avoid massive COVID-19 outbursts?
  2. How will the Bucs fare now that Tom Brady is their QB – – and how will the Pats fare now that Tom Brady is not their QB?
  3. WTF is going on with the Washington Football Team?

Until about 48 hours ago, I had not recognized that there is an NFL franchise that has been systematically tearing itself down for the past couple of years and seems to have finished the demolition about now.  I am referring to the Jacksonville Jaguars so let me do a reset here:

  • At the end of the 2017 season, the Jags led the Patriots by two scores in the 4th quarter of the AFC Championship Game with Blake Bortles as their QB.  They lost that game.
  • That team was obviously built around a really good and young defensive unit.
  • There were 5 Pro Bowl players on that defensive unit.
  • Over the next two seasons, the Jags finished dead last in the AFC South twice and their combined record for 2018 and 2019 was 11-21-0.

The Jags moved on from Blake Bortles – – but they overpaid for Nick Foles and subsequently sent him off to the Bears to cast their fate with Gardner Minshew.  The jury is out on Minshew, but he certainly has a realistic shot at being more productive than Bortles was.  That is the good news for Jags’ fans.  The rest of the news is a list of head-scratching moves that have dismantled that defense that got the team within about 10 minutes of a Super Bowl appearance.

  • A.J. Bouye was traded to the Broncos for a 4th round draft pick. Bouye had been a Pro Bowl CB and was only 28 years old at the time of the trade.
  • Calais Campbell was traded to the Ravens for a 5th round draft pick.  Campbell has been to the Pro Bowl 5 times; he was the Walter Payton Man of the Year in 2019; his birthday is today – he is 34 years old.
  • Malik Jackson was released; he signed with the Eagles as a free agent.  Jackson was 29 years old when released and he had been to the Pro Bowl in his career.
  • Yannick Ngakoue was traded to the Vikings last week for a 2nd round draft pick and a conditional 5th round pick.  Ngakoue is only 25 years old and has been named to the Pro Bowl.  [Aside:  Rather than play for Jax as the franchise player at a guaranteed salary of $17.8M in 2020, he signed a one-year deal with the Vikings for $12M.  Really…]
  • Jalen Ramsey was traded to the Rams for two 1st round picks and a 4th round pick.  Ramsey was 25 years old at the time of his trade and he has been to the Pro Bowl 3 times already in his career.

That is an impressive amount of talent that has been jettisoned by the Jags or has forced the Jags to trade them away.  If I have counted correctly, there are only 12 players left on the current roster who were on the roster when the Jags were in that Conference Championship
Game in January 2018.

I guess the braintrust in Jax did not want the offensive unit to feel too comfortable and so the Jags simply waived Leonard Fournette yesterday.  Fournette has been a head case but he gained almost 1200 yards on the ground for the Jags last year.  He is only 25 years old; he was the overall #4 pick in the Draft the year he came out of college; he has averaged 4 yards per carry in his NFL career.

It was fashionable to blame Tom Coughlin for the discord in Jax.  Coughlin is clearly an old-school guy and the narrative was that he clashed with “today’s young athletes”.  OK, even if I grant that to be absolutely the case, Coughlin was fired last December but the team traded Campbell, Ngakoue after that firing and released Fournette just yesterday.  Those three moves do not fit the narrative very well.  Coach Doug Marrone said that they tried to trade Fournette but could not get anything from anyone in a trade deal.  That may be true, but I will not be surprised to see teams get interested in signing Fournette now that he has been waived.

There is an aphorism that may be in play here:

  • Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

“Malice” here might be an unstated plan by the Jags to stink out the joint in 2020 to be in a position to draft Trevor Lawrence next Spring.  We have heard of teams that would “Suck for Luck” or “Tank for Tua”; it is not beyond possible for that to happen in Jax.  However, I am cautious about the existence of such a “plan” because the jags have had a notoriously difficult time engaging its fanbase for quite a while now.  From 2011 to 2019, the Jags have finished above .500 only once – – that year they went to the Conference Championship Game and choked away a win there.  It is not easy for me to accept that the owner would want another miserable season in the books as a way to bond with the fanbase.  But we shall see because the Jags for 2020 are looking like a rag-tag bunch that is going to the same place they have been 4 times in the past 9 seasons – – dead last in the AFC South.

Finally, consider this entry from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Fair:  1.  A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a hog-judging contest and consume fried cheese in the same location.  2.  What life never is, so suck it up and deal with it.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Rest In Peace, John Thompson, Jr.

John Thompson, Jr. died last weekend at the age of 78.  Most people know him for his accomplishments as the head coach at Georgetown; before that, he was an All-American player at Providence and a “bench warmer” – – behind Bill Russell on the Celtics.  I cannot pretend to have known Coach Thompson, but I did meet him and spoke with him more than a few times in the mid-to-late 1970s as he was in the process of establishing Georgetown as a basketball program on the national level.  I always found him to be insightful even though his view of various things was very different from the norm.  He was a physically large and imposing man; he was also gentle and warm.

Rest in peace, Coach Thompson…

About a week ago, the NY Times carried a story that was a one-off in the sports section and it did not get any follow-on reporting or commentary that I could find in other areas of the news media.  The story related to the arrest and charging of Pats’ owner, Robert Kraft, with solicitation of prostitution in February 2019 at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida.  The report in the Times – linked here – says that a 3-judge panel in the Florida appeals court unanimously upheld a previous ruling by a lower court throwing out the evidence against Kraft because the process by which it was collected violated his Fourth Amendment rights.  Here is what the Fourth Amendment says:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

In the “Orchids of Asia caper”, the evidence was collected by a warrant duly issued – – but the ruling is that the basis for the warrant was misrepresented to the judge that issued the warrant.  Kraft’s attorneys have issued the not-unexpected statement that this ruling not only ends the case against their client – – subject to an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court that may come later – – but that it is a foundational decision protecting all citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights blah, blah blah…

I do not read minds, but I suspect that Robert Kraft will be more than happy to be done with this matter as will the NFL at large.  However, it would not aggravate me in the slightest if Kraft also chooses to file a defamation of character suit against everyone involved in the misrepresentation of what was going on in that spa.  After the arrest, news headlines said that the investigation went beyond prostitution and that it was part of an operation against sex-trafficking.  Robert Kraft was charged along with more than 20 other men in this case; none of those charges involved sex-trafficking.  No one else was ever charged with sex-trafficking.  And yet, those sorts of issues are associated with Robert Kraft improperly because various officials in Florida misrepresented them.

Robert Kraft is clearly a public figure and the odds of a public figure winning a defamation suit are long odds indeed.  Moreover, filing such an action would dredge up unseemly reports about his behavior and he needs that like a third nostril.  Nonetheless, there is no real penalty to be assessed against those folks who exaggerated the severity of what was ongoing there.  Perhaps this case taught some of those folks what the Fourth Amendment limitations on their investigations are; I do not see that there is any comparable lesson here about exaggeration and misrepresentation of the severity of the actions of an accused person.

Moving on …  Sometimes, I can garner what I believe to be all I need to know about a subject from a brief comment.  Here are two examples:

“The three-week Tour de France is underway. It was more fun when all the bike tires were being punctured because discarded steroid needles were everywhere.”  [Greg Cote, Miami Herald]

And …

“Quick hit: If Usain Bolt can’t outrun the coronavirus without a mask, nobody can.”  [Bob Molinaro, Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot]

There is useless and then there is useless.  Until now, I had always considered things like the Associated Press pre-season college football polls – the ones for the teams and the ones for which players will be named All-America at the end of the season – as useless.  As of this morning I would like to place them firmly and irrevocably in the category of USELESS.  Here is a link to the AP Top 25 pre-season poll for 2020; 40% of the teams listed here will not play college football this year.  Seriously…

Imagine if for some bizarre reason I wanted to list the 10 best steaks ever eaten and somewhere in the middle of the list I put “Mastodon Sirloin”.  Given that mastodons have been extinct for about 10,000 years, you would not have any way to know if that entry on my list has any basis in reality.  Moreover, the entry there should make you think that my list is useless and/or that I, as the creator of the list, am as dumb as a stove bolt.

So much for the 2020 AP Top 25 pre-season college football poll…

Finally, The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm provides a definition for something that many folks consider to be an utterly useless item:

“Fruitcake:  A gift given to you last year by people who shrewdly anticipated your needing a doorstop this Christmas.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

More “WTF” From the Washington WTFs

Shoe number two just dropped.  It is not surprising that it dropped; it is a bit surprising what a thud it produced.  I refer to the Washington Football Team – the WTFs – and the revelations of the disgusting workplace conditions there for female employees and interns.  Let me do a quick reset here:

  • About a month ago, the Washington Post exposed a “toxic culture” within the team organization for women.  Seventeen former employees told a variety of stories of sexual harassment and sleazy working conditions.
  • The team did not deny those reports.  Two people in the scouting department were fired; the radio/TV voice of the team “retired” the day before the story broke; the team hired an outside law firm to “investigate” and recommend ways to change the culture.
  • Importantly at the time, none of the allegations involved players, coaches or team owner, Daniel Snyder.

Yesterday, new allegations were reported.  An additional twenty-five women have come forward with stories of their own.  The previous allegations were sleazy and slimy; the current ones are substantially worse.  Moreover, the new allegations do involve team owner, Daniel Snyder.

There are two of the new allegations that I find more repugnant that the others:

  1. Allegedly, Daniel Snyder suggested to one of the team’s former cheerleaders that she should go to a hotel room so that she and the team ophthalmologist – a longtime friend of Snyder’s – could get to know one another better.
  2. Allegedly, there were “secret videos” taken at a photo shoot for the team’s cheerleader calendar about 10 years ago that focused on naked body parts for the cheerleaders.  Then, the team’s senior VP for Communications had a video created that contained all the “good bits”.  The allegation goes on to say that the creation of the video was intended to go to Daniel Snyder.  [The Washington Post has a copy of that video which the former VP for Communications says does not exist.]

Here is the link to the report in the Washington Post; it will add to the two points above and introduce more slime to the story.  I encourage you to take the time to read this reporting; it is impressive reporting; if only half of it is provable, the situation inside team HQs for the past two decades has been outrageous.

After you finish reading that report, get yourself a cup of coffee and follow this link to read what Sally Jenkins wrote in the Post regarding these latest revelations.  Here is the opening sentence from her column; it is not a mystery what her vector heading is:

“This is what the NFL gets for not scraping Daniel Snyder off its shoe before now.”

When the first exposé hit the streets, many frustrated Washington fans thought that this would force Snyder to sell the team – – a condition that many fans here have wished for over the last decade and a half.  I said then that without any direct link to Snyder, the league would not be likely to force a sale even with the precedent of Jerry Richardson and the Carolina Panthers on the books.  Given the second shoe that dropped this week, that dynamic could change dramatically.  If it turns out that these new allegations can be proven, the reaction to date from the NFL via Roger Goodell will be insufficient.  Here is how Goodell described the new allegations in a statement yesterday:

“… unprofessional, disturbing and abhorrent…”

Ever since these rants have begun to appear on the Internet almost 20 years ago, I have had little good to say about Danny Boy Snyder.  However, until now, my “problems” with him have dealt with his hubris related to his knowledge of football and his entitlement and his perception of his exalted social stature.  Hubris is an annoying characteristic and it is not difficult to be averse to someone exhibiting hubris.  The allegations from earlier this week, however, make hubris look like the perfect way to make friends and influence people.  [Hat Tip to Dale Carnegie there.]

I find behavior that nudges up against “pimping out one of your employees to a friend” a lot more revolting than hubris.  I find the existence of a video that smacks of “Peeping Tom” a lot more revolting than hubris.  If the outside law firm investigating workplace conditions for the team corroborates these allegations, then I think Sally Jenkins is spot on in her description that the NFL will have to scrape Daniel Snyder off its shoe.  Stay tuned; this story is not going away quietly…

Lost in the much bigger NBA news related to the player walkout is a tidbit that would normally have sent a lot of reporters scurrying for inside info.  After being swept in the opening round of the NBA playoffs, the Indiana Pacers fired coach Nate McMillan.  No big deal, you say; that happened to Brett Brown in Philly too.  Here is the kicker:

  • Two weeks ago, the Indiana Pacers gave McMillan a one-year contract extension.

Nate McMillan has been the head coach in Indiana for four seasons; his teams have made the playoffs in each of those four seasons.  His overall record in Indiana is 183 – 136.  That is a winning percentage of .574 and all four of his teams had winning records during his regime.  Two weeks ago, he was worthy of a contract extension through the end of the 2021/2022 season; and then, earlier this week he was fired.  I do not pretend to know how all that squares up, and I have no place to send you for an explanation right now because that story has been buried by the player walkout.  C’est la vie…

Finally, the events of the last couple of days – player walkouts, sleazy allegations about the Washington Football Team and the strange firing of a coach – made me stop and think about what might be next.  That reminded me of an observation by the French philosopher, Paul Valery, that I came across while fulfilling my foreign language requirement in my sophomore year in college:

“The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

The NBA Players Walk Out

Yesterday, I wrote about declining NBA TV ratings and potential reductions in broadcasting rights fees that might come from those declines if they are not reversed.  I had NO foreknowledge of the NBA players’ choices to refuse to play their playoff games last night when I wrote what I did; now that I know what transpired last night, I am concerned by the idea of a “players meeting” with the stated objective of “determining the next steps”.

Let me get three things out of the way from the beginning so that there can be no misunderstanding:

  1. The shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI that is the foundation of the current protest and “walkout” by NBA, WNBA and MLB players is a horrific event.
  2. The perpetrator should be arrested charged and tried – – and if convicted – – should be punished to the maximum extent provided by the law.
  3. It stretches one’s imagination to conceive of a justifiable reason for any person to shoot another person in the back seven times; that stretch of the imagination goes beyond the strength of the warp and woof of the universe.

I presume that anyone who reads further into this rant understands my revulsion related to the events in Kenosha, WI this week.  If anyone might be unclear on that point, please go back and read those statements again; there are no mitigating adjectives and adverbs in there.

Now comes the time to consider the pragmatic realities that professional athletes must recognize as they demonstrate their revulsion to the events that cause my revulsion.  Here is some of that reality:

  • I write these rants 5 days a week because I find it fun and challenging to do so.  I do not derive a nickel from any of them.  There is no way that the existence of these rants in this backwater eddy of the Internet will confer any sort of “celebrity status” on me.  My writing here is my way of consuming time in my retirement years and a critical element in my continued pursuit of ways to avoid driving my long-suffering wife teaspoons.
  • It does not matter even a little bit to me if the NBA playoffs take a night off – – or take the rest of the season off.
  • For the NBA players, such indifference is hardly the case.  If they take a night off as a symbolic gesture, the NBA can find a way to adapt its schedule – and the TV networks will get over their hastily mandated scramble to fill the air time vacated by playoff games that were boycotted.
  • However, if they decide to double down on their efforts to be “social justice leaders” and refuse to play the rest of the NBA playoffs – – if that is the outcome of “determining the next steps” – – then the NBA players are playing “You Bet Your Career” and the NBA may be playing “You Bet Your Existence” very soon.

According to reports, two NBA teams – – Lakers and Clippers – – have pushed to end this year’s NBA season.  No other teams supported that position, but it appears as if Thursday’s NBA scheduled playoff games will also need to be “postponed”.  I believe the players here are walking a very fine line.

There are economic ramifications here:

  • The NBA playoffs present the league with approximately $1B of the $2.7B that the league collects for TV rights.  Cutting the playoffs off in the early stages will not make the “broadcast partners” happy.
  • As reported yesterday, TV ratings for NBA games are down significantly.  Add to that fact, all the TV networks are financially strapped.  Any cancellation here costs the networks the ad revenues they have already sold; any cancellation here will cost the NBA some of the current – and potentially some of the future – TV revenue for its broadcast rights.

Players who make millions of dollars a year “to play a child’s game” and then walk off that job will not make friends with many NBA fans who may be out of work and scraping to keep their lives together in the days of COVID-19.  Those fans are the eyeballs in front of the TV sets that provide the money to fund those multi-million dollar guaranteed contracts.  Not only might the players risk their financial status here, they can risk losing their “platform” or their “influencer status” if they lose the support of the “fans on the street”.

The players in the NBA – – and in other leagues that have leaned toward supporting the players in the NBA – – are adults and they can and should make their life decisions for themselves.  I am in no way interested in trying to alter whatever course(s) of action they find to be appropriate for them in this matter.  AND, because they are adults, they will need to face and endure any consequences that may come from whatever actions they choose to take.  If the Lakers’ and the Clippers’ players carry on and refuse to play in any future games this year and if the NBA playoffs continue without them, then those players will need to shoulder any and all of the economic and social consequences that come to them.  What will not be tolerable will be for any of those players to try to paint themselves as “victims” in this matter’ they are doing whatever they do by choice – – and by the fact that they have the economic wherewithal to make such choices for themselves.

  • The ONLY victim here is Jacob Blake.

Please recall that I said above that the perpetrator of that shooting should be “arrested charged and tried – – and if convicted – – should be punished to the maximum extent provided by the law.”  I stand by those words and I presume that every concerned NBA player would not disapprove of that position.  Now I have something dark to say:

  • Even if the maximum penalty is assessed here after a conviction of the murderer of Jacob Blake, these sorts of incidents will not stop overnight.
  • Even if the NBA players cancel the rest of this season and sit out all next season, these sorts of incidents will not stop overnight.

Several reporters this morning have characterized the walkout as the players sending a strong message that the social conditions in the US need to change.  I agree the players have sent a message and I agree that social conditions in the US need to change; but sending a message only begins the process of change.  First that message must be received; then it must be understood; then it must be acknowledged as valid; then it can – not will but can – spark change.

  1. The message has been sent.
  2. I think most folks understand the message, but some will deny understanding and try to deflect any explanation of the message to other issues.
  3. Sadly, I think there are too many folks who are not convinced of the validity of the message; and to make things worse there, I am not sure they will see a walkout by millionaire athletes as a reason for them to accept the validity of the message.  For many folks in this category, the linkage between an NBA walkout and the social issues here is tenuous at best.
  4. Change may begin to happen in areas where the first three of these milestones have been accepted and perhaps those changes can spark progress in stagnant communities in the US to move along this path to identify with and to act on the message that has been sent.

And that takes us back to the players.  A symbolic strike and a blizzard of Tweeting gathers attention.  But a symbolic strike and a blizzard of Tweeting will not create the momentum necessary to achieve the change sought by that Tweetstorm.  The need now is for people – – fans and also observers who are not NBA fans – – to see action(s) by players that move things closer to the goal of the sent message.  Actions – – not photo ops.  Actions – – not one-off donations to an NGO.  Actions – – not an Instagram video.

The players have the spotlight; they have the microphone in hand and the cameras are turned on and recording.  It is time for them to lead.  I hope that is what the players meant last night when they called their meeting to determine “the next steps”.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a civil rights movement that accomplished many important things.  He led with words and symbolic gestures – – and then he led with repeated and consistent actions over the course of time; and it was the actions that forced the changes.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Sports Media Today …

ESPN Radio has a new voice in the morning.  For what seemed like forever – actually, it was merely 17 years – Mike and Mike in the Morning was on the air.  Several years ago, ESPN moved Mike Greenberg to TV and the radio side morphed into Golic and Wingo.  There was always an element of lightness and humor with Mike and Mike that never seemed to take root on Golic and Wingo; the humor and banter there always sounded a bit forced to me.  Nevertheless, the ESPN morning radio offering was always my choice here in the DC area because the other two options have always been tedious.

The change at ESPN Radio now has three folks on the air in the morning.  They are Keyshawn Johnson, Jay Williams and Zubin Mehenti.  They have been on the air only a week and a half so there is plenty of time – and room – for growth.  The show’s producers seem to be using the leverage of ESPN to get top-shelf guests for the interview segments.  I have heard from Mike Krzyzewski, John Calipari, Tyson Fury and Ken Burns during my moments of drop-in listening; that is impressive for less than two weeks on the air.

What needs to develop – in my mind – is a more natural conversational tone to the program.  For most programs of this kind, that sort of tone takes a while to evolve.  The exception to this rule would be Pardon the Interruption where Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon had worked together and been friends for 20 years or so before they ever hit the airwaves.  So far, the new morning show is promising…

There is another aspect of sports media that is not nearly as promising, and it is a bit confusing.  The NBA TV ratings are down – and down significantly.  Yes, they are undergoing a “season-interruptus”; that has sort of happened before because of labor squabbles; today, the ratings are down much more than they were then, and the trend is negative.  Consider:

  • Games of the Week this year (ABC) averaged less than 3 million viewers per game.
  • Ratings were down on every network that carried NBA telecasts by at least 20%.

For perspective, recall that several years ago lots of folks were focused on the cratering television viewership for NFL games.  People opined that it was the Presidential election of 2016 that drew attention away from the NFL but that there were organic problems with the league involving things like CTE and kneeling for the Anthem.  As all of that played out, the average game audience dropped to 14.9 million viewers per game – about 5 times more than this year’s NBA audience.  Last year, the NFL audience rebounded from that low point and for 2019 the average audience was 16.5 million souls.

Putting the NBA numbers for this year’s regular season in another perspective, the TV audience for XFL 2.0 was about 1.5 million viewers per game.  The NBA – one of the top-shelf sports broadcasting properties in the US – had audiences about double the reconstructed XFL.

This is not good news for the NBA for more reasons than the raw numbers:

  • The NBA playoff games in “the bubble” have been good ones.  New stars are emerging like Damian Lillard, Jamal Murray, Donovan Mitchell and Luka Doncic; Anthony Davis’s game has blossomed and Kawhi Leonard just keeps getting  better.
  • There is not of sports competition on TV at this time; the NFL will not start for another couple of weeks and the MLB playoffs will not happen for another month.
  • But the audience is not soaring even under those conditions.

Here are some things that would worry me if I were someone “on the business side” in the NBA:

  • NBA regular season games have lost their TV luster.  Too small a percentage of those 1230 regular season games are consequential and even hard-core NBA fans recognize this.
  • The NBA has grown and developed by marketing its stars.  That has been a successful business model for the league.  Now, the stars have chosen to concentrate themselves on “super-teams”.  That makes the “less-than-super-teams” much less interesting and makes more of the regular season games inconsequential.
  • The existence of the “super-teams” diminishes interest in areas where there is no “super-team”.  When the regular season began in 2019, did any rational fans of the Timberwolves, Pistons, Bulls, Knicks, Cavaliers or Hawks think their teams had a chance to be champions this year?  How about win 30 games out of 82?  Because those teams are out of it from the start, the league has fewer teams to choose from to showcase on national TV games – and watching the same teams all the time becomes less interesting as the season goes on.
  • When the league schedules a TV game that seems consequential and fans tune in to see it, there is always the possibility that one or more of the star players who make the game consequential will be sitting on the bench “managing load”.  Of course, players need to care for their bodies; no one can argue with that.  However, that does not help with the audience numbers for such a game because watching what was anticipated as a consequential game turns into watching a JV contest.

Those four problem areas would concern me “on the business side” because they have been baked into the NBA over the past 25-30 years.  It took time and effort to crate that business model and it will take time and a lot of effort – and cooperation from the star players that the league has created and empowered – to make any meaningful change in direction.  The current TV deal for the NBA with ABC, TNT and ESPN runs through the end of the 2024/25 season and delivers about $2.7B to the NBA annually.  That TV contract is the big swinger in determining the salary cap for the teams and is the prime revenue generator for many teams.  The league needs to find ways to stabilize its audience numbers quickly and then figure out how to grow them at the time they begin to negotiate their next TV deal.

Finally, Bob Molinaro had the observation about sports media programming recently in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:

“East Coast bias: As I type this, the Red Sox have the American League’s worst record. They are irrelevant, in other words.  Somebody remind ESPN’s programming department.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………