Tag: sports

Monday Night McCarthy

After three quarters of the offense doing less than nothing and scoring -1 points, the Vikings finally managed to put it all together and come back for a 27-24 win against the Bears. McCarthy looked frighteningly bad under pressure throughout the first three quarters, holding the ball too long, getting repeatedly sacked, and even throwing a pick-six to an ex-Viking, until apparently Kevin O’Connell told the OC to start throwing the ball down the field to Justin Jefferson. An excellent 4th quarter meant McCarthy finished with respectable stats: 13 of 20 for 143 yards, 2 TD, 1 INT, 98.5 QBR plus a rushing TD, and in his first game he accomplished something that tended to evade Kurt Cousins in his entire tenure, namely, a big win over a conference rival on national TV.

Other observations:

  • The defense has to improve its pass rush. It had three sacks; it should have had nine.
  • Jordan Mason was a nice pickup at RB for the Vikings. He looked shifty.
  • Caleb Williams looked like a cross between an eel and the young Russell Wilson in the pocket.
  • Justin Jefferson hasn’t missed a beat. When in doubt, throw him the ball. Also, when not in doubt, throw him the ball.
  • The Vikings clearly missed the Hitman in the secondary. And on the blitz.
  • McCarthy’s accuracy was not great and he was holding the ball a little too long when Chicago was obviously blitzing. On the TD pass to Aaron Jones, the ball was two yards short. But he’s got courage, the other players clearly like him, and the potential is definitely there.
  • McCarthy is the first Vikings quarterback to throw multiple touchdown passes in his debut since Fran Tarkenton threw four against the Bears in 1961.

All in all, beating Chicago at Soldier Field on Monday Night is not a bad start for a young QB, especially on a night when the defense wasn’t particularly good. And ruining Ben Johnson’s debut as a head coach is just a bonus.

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Never Seen That Before

The Golden Gophers were up 59-0 over some team called Northwestern State which looked more like Northwestern College in Roseville. After the stadium ran out of fireworks, and it became clear that even the substitutes were too much for the NSU players, the referee announced that the game had been called by mutual consent midway through the fourth quarter with the score at 66-0.

I’m not saying it was the wrong decision. In fact, given the circumstances, it was probably the right thing to do. I just want to know why they didn’t call the game early back in the days when the Gophers were losing 73-0 to Nebraska.

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Line to Go

I understand why the announcers are encouraged to refer to the yardage point that will give a first down as “the line to gain” since it is a line and not a “first down” in itself. But it’s awkward and doesn’t sound like a football term.

Which is why I suggest “line to go” to represent the first down line, since it’s in keeping with “first and goal-to-go” and so forth. So, if you’re a producer or an announcer reading this, try it. I suspect it will catch on in a way that “line to gain” won’t.

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Back in Purple

It’s very good to see Adam Thielen come back to the Vikes.

After plenty of rumors this preseason, the Vikings finally added depth at the receiver position— and it’s a familiar name for Minnesota fans.

On Wednesday NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported Minnesota was finalizing a trade with the Panthers to bring back veteran wideout Adam Thielen. The terms of the deal: the Vikings send a 2026 fifth-round pick and a 2027 fourth-round pick in exchange for Thielen, a conditional 2026 seventh-round pick, and a conditional 2027 fifth-round pick.

Thielen spent 10 years with the Vikings before joining Carolina in free agency in 2023. Thielen was a fan favorite in Minnesota for those years. He attended Minnesota State and broke into the NFL as an undrafted free agent with the Vikings. Thielen developed into a Pro Bowl-caliber wideout and was named to an All-Pro team in 2017.

Good vibes. Definitely good vibes going into this season. He doesn’t have much speed left, but that’s fine, since he’s always been the hands guy.

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The SEC Antes Up

The Big 10 was calling out the SEC’s outdated 8-game conference schedule that allowed it to schedule one more cupcake game every season. Now the SEC has stepped up to compete on an even playing field between the two power conferences.

After a meeting with athletic directors this week, the SEC has now adopted a nine-game college football conference schedule that has been looming for the last few years, thanks to a vote by presidents on Thursday.

All it took was the possibility of extra money, along with a push from the college football playoff committee to finally get them over a few hurdles. Now, it will come down to university presidents to make the final decision on whether to switch from an 8-game to 9-game schedule after this week’s meetings.

But, athletic directors don’t make potential decisions without their bosses knowing about what’s going on during these meetings that took place this week with conference commissioner Greg Sankey.

“Adding a ninth SEC game underscores our universities’ commitment to delivering the most competitive football schedule in the nation,” said SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. “This format protects rivalries, increases competitive balance, and paired with our requirement to play an additional Power opponent, ensures SEC teams are well prepared to compete and succeed in the College Football Playoff.”

While this has always been the correct path, there were times over the past year when the situation looked as though it would continue to be pushed down the road. That was until the thought of ESPN adding monetary stipulations to the move was discussed further.

What will this look like each year? Well, each team will play three annual opponents

  • The SEC will continue with a single-standings, non-divisional structure;
  • Each school will play three annual opponents focused on maintaining many traditional rivalries;
  • Each team’s remaining six games will rotate among the remaining conference schools; and
  • Each team will face every other SEC program at least once every two years and every opponent home and away in four years.
  • Also of note, the SEC had this to say about how teams will be scheduling future opponents, and which conference they must come from.

“SEC teams are required to schedule at least one additional high quality non-conference from the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten or Big 12 conferences or Notre Dame each season. The SEC will continue to evaluate its policies to ensure the continued scheduling of high-quality non-conference opponents.”

A lot of people are down on the recent changes to college football. But aside from solving the obvious moral problem of not paying the players who are producing all the revenue, most of the changes, including the influx of money and the transfer portal, have actually been really good for the competitive side of the sport.

It’s no longer possible for a recruiting powerhouse or a cheating booster base to stockpile the top two or three players at a single position anymore. A player can not only get playing time, he can actually make more money as the starting quarterback at a bottom-feeder team in a power conference or as a contender in a second- or third-tier conference than as a backup at Ohio State or Alabama.

Ironically, one of the things that people most hate about the changes, such as the near-death of the Pac-12 Conference, is actually the result of the conference leadership failing to accept the changes soon enough. Remember, all of this started with two UCLA basketball players rebelling against the unjust and unfair, and, as it turns out, illegal way they were being treated.

I haven’t had much interest in college football since I was in my early teens, but I found myself drawn into it as a result of the more balanced distribution of the talent over the last two years. And I very much doubt I’m the only one.

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Don’t Stop

If you don’t use it, you will lose it. A doctor shares a conversation with her 88-year-old patient.

An 88-year-old who I’d been seeing for falls, weakness, and a hip fracture told me I looked strong. Asked if I lifted weights.

I proudly confirmed his assumption as I’d been lifting for the past 9 years. He smiled and said he used to lift too. Shared his old PRs.

He used to bench press 215 lbs, squat 350 lbs, and deadlift 475 lbs at his prime. He trained several times a week & used lifting as a way to stay both physically & mentally fit. But at some point along the way, life happened, so his training sessions decreased. Then, before he knew it, he stopped lifting altogether in his 50s.

Then he got older. He now uses a walker to get around now. He has difficulty getting up from a chair and he’s fallen in his home, one fall leading to a hip fracture.

Then he looked me dead in the eyes and said:

Don’t ever stop. If I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t be your patient right now.

Ironically, it’s only because he’d been lifting into his 50s that he has survived to the age of 88. His decline began from a higher peak than most.

So whatever it is that you’re doing, from lifting weights to playing soccer, don’t stop unless you absolutely have to stop. You’re going to get older, but you don’t have to become frail and infirm.

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The Return of the Redskins

It’s only a matter of time before the Washington Football Team becomes the Redskins again:

The owners of the NFL’s Washington Commanders fear they will have to snub the woke mob and restore the original Redskins name – or risk President Trump throttling their deal for a new stadium, On The Money has learned.

That, at least, is the word from insiders close to private equity titans Josh Harris and David Blitzer, who in addition to the Commanders own the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils through their holding company, Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment.

The buyout billionaires are facing heat to bring back the Redskins name – and its famed, feathered logo, too – after the commander-in-chief has repeatedly ripped the new nomenclature, recently referring to the franchise as the “Washington Whatevers.”

This would be great. It’s a personal matter for me, because although I am a lifelong Vikings fan, both my grandfather and my mother were hardcore Redskins fans. I can still remember my mother – who is an American Indian like my grandmother – watching Redskins games in Minnesota while wearing an Indian headdress and banging on her little feathered tom-tom that she kept in the living room for just that purpose.

She was always a little torn back in the days when Roger Staubach played for the Cowboys, because while she hated the Cowboys, she was friends with him from his Naval Academy days.

The Redskin logo isn’t a symbol of shame or oppression to those who are Indians in whole or in part. To the contrary, it is a symbol of ancestral pride, just like the Vikings for the people of Scandinavian descent in Minnesota. The relationship between Florida State and the Seminole tribe is good example of that. I still refer to the team as the Redskins, and it will be good to see the name and logo restored in due course.

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Euro 2025 Women’s Final

I don’t see any way Spain doesn’t beat England, and beat England handily tonight. The Spanish team is like having six or seven Caitlyn Clarks on one team; if you watch this collection of all their goals in the tournament, the first thing that strikes you is how well the team plays together, passes, and moves without the ball. The second thing is the way that most of their goals aren’t the usual garbage-style goals that rely more upon the limitations of the defenders and the goalie than the skills of the attackers to go in the net.

Esther is an instinctive goalscorer who is a total predator in the box. Athenea is an aggressive attacking winger with crazy-good ball skills who doesn’t hesitate to take on multiple defenders. Vicky not only controls her side down the wing, but constantly sends in excellent crosses. Pina can score from outside the box. And despite being a team without much height, they’re really good in the air, Paredes in particular. I love the way the Spanish women repeatedly attack over the top of the defense as soon as they cross the midfield line; it’s a tactic that probably wouldn’t work in the men’s game, but when you’ve got midfielders and defenders who can reliably hit their targets 30 meters away, it’s a devastating one in the women’s game.

The other thing that is remarkable about the compilation is the way that they didn’t even need their best player, Aitana Bonmati, to score until the semifinal game against Germany. And her assist against the Swiss was a work of art.

England has proved incredibly resilient, coming back from behind to win at the end twice in the tournament, but I don’t think they’re going to come back against this much offensive firepower.

UPDATE: 1-0 Spain. Spain is much the better team, but England should have scored first on the keeper telegraphing a pass to a defender and getting intercepted. Greenwood vs Athenea on the Spanish right is quite the battle, but Greenwood is holding her own so far.

UPDATE: England wins on penalties. I definitely got that one wrong, but not as wrong as the Spanish coach did. Her substitutions were terrible, and why she had Salma Paralluelo taking a penalty after she’d whiffed on three good chances in front of goal are beyond me. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t even put it on target. Even though they retained possession, you could see Spain lose all of its attacking creativity after Esther, Athenea, and Alexia came out, and the Spanish defense was just lazy on the English goal.

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RIP Jim Marshall

Jim Marshall, a defensive end whose 19-year tenure with the Minnesota Vikings helped define the team’s hard-nosed identity, has died, the team announced Tuesday afternoon. He was 87.

“The entire Minnesota Vikings organization is mourning the loss of Jim Marshall. No player in Vikings history lived the ideals of toughness, camaraderie and passion more than the all-time iron man,” Minnesota’s owners said in a statement.

Marshall played 282 games (starting 277) during an unusually long career for any era; the former number is still a record for defensive players. He was weeks shy of his 42nd birthday when he played his final game in 1979.

Bud Grant: “Jim Marshall was special.”

Goodell’s Paradox

The NFL’s pursuit of “fairness” in potentially prioritizing win-loss records over division championships for playoff seeding has exposed how an even greater unfairness will be created if the league’s stupid proposal to devalue the divisions passes at the league owners’ meeting today.

The Commissioner wants the playoff tree to be reconfigured to tie seeding to record, without regard to whether a team won its division. The goal isn’t to promote equity when it comes to who’s at home and who’s on the road in the playoffs; the objective is to make late-season games more compelling by giving teams more to play for.

Whether that happens remains to be seen.

If the Commissioner gets his way on this (yes, the Lions proposed it, but the league office instigated it), it creates a separate issue as it relates to the scheduling formula.

Currently, every team plays: (1) six games against the three other teams in its division; (2) four games against all teams from another division in the conference, which rotates every year; (3) two games against the teams from the remaining divisions in the conference that finished in the same position the year before (first, second, third, fourth); (4) four games against all teams from a division in the other conference, which rotates every year; and (5) one game against a team from a division in the other conference that finished in the same position the year before.

By devaluing a division championship and emphasizing competition within the conference, the eight games every year that arise from an effort to ensure variety in schedule need to be reconsidered. Last year, the teams of the NFC North benefited from playing two of the weak divisions — the AFC South and NFC West. This year, it’ll be a much different story for the Lions, Vikings, Packers, and Bears; they play eight games against the teams of the AFC North and NFC East.

Likewise, the Rams have a very real chance at being in the No. 1 seed in 2025, given that they’ll play eight games against the teams of the AFC South and NFC South.

If a team’s record relative not to its division but to its conference will take on more importance in a playoff tree constructed based on total record, teams need to play more games in their conference. Ideally, every team would play one game against every other team in its conference — like college conferences did before they became too big to allow that.

If there is no value to divisions, or winning a division, then there is no reason to have the playoffs in the first place. Just do it like they do in soccer and award the conference championship to the team with the best record, and play the Super Bowl between the AFC and NFC champions.

But wait, that could be unfair to a team in one conference that had a better record than the best team in the other conference. So really, the playoffs should be eliminated altogether and the Super Bowl should be played between the teams with the two best records, regardless of conference.

Then again, isn’t that unfair to the team that finished with the best record? Why play the Super Bowl at all?

UPDATE: Another excellent suggestion that Roger Goodell should contemplate.

I just think there should be an equitable lottery of who should be the Super Bowl winner based on participation trophies.

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