This is the next-to-last Football Friday for the season; my long-suffering wife suggested that I would be happy to see all of that “deadline pressure” finished until late next summer. She doesn’t understand the rhythm and the focus that Football Friday brings to the table. I will actually miss doing these after next week.
As usual, I shall begin here with the results from last week’s “Betting Bundle”:
- Spreads and Totals: 2-0-0
- Season to Date: 42-43-2
And …
- Money Line Parlays: 0-1 Loss = $100
- Season to Date: 17-26 Profit = $357
College Football Commentary:
The TV numbers are in for the CFP Championship Game between Indiana and Miami, and the numbers are most impressive. I have no idea how the Nielsen folks make their determinations of audience size, but here are the data:
- Average viewing audience = 30.1million viewers
- Peak viewing audience = 33.2 million viewers
Even if those numbers are inflated somehow by 25%, that is still a huge TV audience for a game involving one team that is the antitheses of a “college football blueblood.” According to one report I read, this was the largest TV audience for something other than an NFL telecast since Game 7 of the 2016 MLB World Series. In case you don’t immediately recall that watershed event, it was the Chicago Cubs that won that Game 7 over the Cleveland Guardians giving the Cubbies their first World Championship since 1908 Oh, by the way, that baseball game went into “OT” or extra innings as they call it in baseball.
NFL Commentary:
The Baltimore Ravens hired Jesse Minter to be the successor to John Harbaugh in “Charm City”. I am not going to pretend to know a lot about Jesse Minter other than to say that he was the Defensive Coordinator for the Chargers in the 2024 and 2025 seasons. It would be difficult to suggest that he was a failure in that role. One thing is certain in that hiring decision; the Ravens’ coach should bring a much younger perspective to the job than did John Hartbaugh:
- John Harbaugh will be 64 years old in September 2026
- Jesse Minter will be 43 years old in May 2026
Meanwhile, the Steelers hired Mike McCarthy as their new head coach. That decision represents two major deviations for the Steelers franchise:
- Steelers’ coaches have been on the job for 15 years or more since the late 1960s. Mike McCarthy will be 63 years old in November 2026; I would not be penciling him in as the Steelers’ head coach come 2040.
- Mike McCarthy is basically an “offensive guy”. The last two Steelers’ coaches – – Mike Tomlin and Bill Cowher – – have been “defensive guys” who have set up the image and the narrative of Steelers’ teams since 1992.
The Cleveland Browns hired Todd Monken as their head coach. His calling card is as an offensive coordinator; some if not all of his recent success in Baltimore has to be attributed to Lamar Jackson playing the QB position. I am not a Shedeur Sanders’ hater, but I cannot bring myself to think that Monken will have the same talent level at QB in Cleveland that he did in Baltimore for the last few years. Then again, Monken is 60 years old and this is his first NFL head coaching gig; it’s not like he is looking at this job as a stepping stone leading to another 25 years in the league.
The Buffalo Bills promoted from within and have hired Joe Brady as their new head coach; Brady has been the offensive coordinator in Buffalo for the last two years. His ascension to the top job can be seen as organizational stability if that is what you want to see. However, something about that decision makes little sense to me:
- In explaining why ownership fired Sean McDermott, one of the major points made was that the owner sensed a hugely negative vibe in the losing locker room after the Bills lost to the Broncos in the Divisional Round of the playoffs this year.
- Let me assume that the owner(s) indeed sensed all that and that the owner(s) concluded that something had to change and then decided that it was the coach that had to change and not the players or the GM or any other factotum in the organization.
- OK, so riddle me this…? Joe Brady was part of the coaching staff in Buffalo in a variety of roles since 2022. How does he represent an organizational reset to change the vibe in the locker room?
Unless I missed something recently, there are still two open jobs as the head coaches of NFL teams. The Cards and the Raiders are still prowling about looking for a new leader. Those are two BAD jobs.
- Neither team has a bona fide QB. I think the Kyler Murray Era in Arizona is over and even if the Raiders draft Fernando Mendoza, it will be a while until he possibly leads them to respectability as measured these days by a 9-8-0 record.
- The Cards spent a lot of money on their defense in the last offseason and it led to nothing formidable on the field.
- The Raiders have – in my opinion – 4 players on their roster who could be considered “difference makers” if they were not the only players on the roster who were competent pro players.
- Any coach taking either of those jobs needs to be sure that his agent has an iron-clad clause in there to assure full payment of the deal when – not if – this new coach gets shown the door.
Just for fun, please consider these two coaching records:
- Coach A: Nine years with the same team; five times in the playoffs; regular season record = 82-67-0; playoff record = 9-5.
- Coach B: Nine years with the same team; eight times in the playoffs; regular season record = 98-50-0; playoff record = 8-8.
Those two résumés are comparable.
- Coach B is Sean McDermott who was just fired after losing a playoff game by a field goal.
- Coach A is Kyle Shanahan whose team was clocked in this year’s playoffs by 5 TDs.
- Hmmm …
The Pro Bowl Games will happen this weekend and I will miss every moment of the “action”. However, there is a comment that needs to be made here:
- It is finally time to apply euthanasia to the Pro Bowl and any of its variants such as a flag football game.
- Shedeur Sanders was just “elevated” to Pro Bowl status because Drake Maye is otherwise occupied by preparing for a Super Bowl game.
- Shedeur Sanders threw 7 TDs this year and 10 INTs.
- Shedeur Sanders is in the Pro Bowl over the likes of Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson and/or Trevor Lawrence. Don’t bother comparing those QB stats with Sanders’ stats. Oh, and if some NFL “official” says that the likes of Burrow, Jackson and Lawrence were invited to be in the pro Bowl but declined, consider that those players are sending the same message to the league that I will send here – – only in not nearly so subtle terms:
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- If such is the honor of “Pro Bowl Status” as of February 2026, the time has come to – – as George Burns used to say – – “say goodnight Gracie”.
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Last week’s Games:
Pats 10 Broncos 7: I said it at the time and I will say it again here; the game changed completely when the Broncos led 7-0 and had the ball 4th and 1 at about the Pats’ 10-yardline – – and they went for it and failed instead of taking the chip shot field goal. I don’t know what the analytics say in that situation and I don’t care what the analytics say in that situation, failing to take a two-score lead at that point in the game was a blunder. For the last decade, the narrative has been that Sean Payton is an offensive genius and a play-caller extraordinaire. Well not last week…
The Pats’ defense gave up one long completion to Jarrett Stidham in the first quarter and it led to the only score for the Broncos with 10:19 left in the first quarter. From that point on, the Pats’ defense looked almost like the Steel Curtain Defense; the Broncos gained 59 yards on that early TD drive; for the game the Broncos gained a total of only 181 yards for the day. Or maybe it was just that Jarrett Stidham demonstrated on a national stage just why he has been a career backup QB since coming to the league in 2019.
Having said all that, let me be clear that the Pats’ offense was not exactly humming along; the Pats Total Offense was a measly 206 yards in the game; that unit will need to do a lot better than that next week.
If you like punts and punt returns, this was a game for you; the teams combined to punt the ball 14 times.
Seahawks 31 Rams 27: There was another play-calling blunder in this game too. With about 5 minutes left in the game, the Rams had the ball at the Seahawks 6 yardline with a fourth-and-four trailing by 4 points. Instead of taking the field goal and making it a ”field-goal game” as opposed to a “touchdown game”, the Rams went for it and failed. [Anyone else see any parallelism here?].
Sam Darnold put to rest the critics for his stinker of a game in the playoffs last year with the Vikes; consider these stats:
- Darnold: 25 of 36 for 346 yards with 3 TDs and a passer rating of 127.8
- Stafford: 22 of 35 for 374 yards with 3 TDs and a passer rating of 127.6
Matthew Stafford might just be the league’s MVP this season and Sam Darnold was his equal on this day. Moreover, in clutch situations, Darnold outplayed Stafford:
- Seahawks converted 7 of 13 third-down situations
- Rams converted 1 of 8 third-down situations.
There are no games this week. Ergo, there is no “Betting Bundle” and the look-ahead to the Super Bowl – – nine days from now – – will have to wait until next Friday.
So let me close this next-to-last Football Friday with these words of wisdom from Bill Parcells:
“I think confrontation is healthy, because it clears the air very quickly.”
And …
“I can’t live my life worrying about something that might never happen.”
And …
“There are two things in New York, euphoria and disaster.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………