Tag: sports

The Lingering Costs

  • In July 2021 during Eagles training camp, Jalen Hurts confirmed to reporters that he had received the COVID-19 vaccine. Multiple contemporaneous reports from The Athletic, and others documented him stating “I have the vaccine.”
  • The 2026 season of Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is most likely over. Hurts, who played eight days ago with a blood clot in his leg, has been diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis and a pulmonary embolism in each lung.
  • Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is out for the remainder of the season with blood clots.

There are a lot of stories about this in the sports media. A lot of different angles, all of which address how the Eagles have been handling the situation, if Hurts should have played in London, if Hurts should have flown back from London, what the Eagles will do for the rest of the season, and if this marks the end of Hurts’s career in Philadelphia given his current contract.

None of them address the elephant in the room: why does one of the healthiest, most physically fit young men in the world have a blood clot in his leg and pulmonary embolisms in his lungs? Or why the much-maligned Aaron Rodgers doesn’t.

What are the chances Rodgers doesn’t address this on Pat McAfee’s show…

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Indiana vs Ohio State

This should be a great game with serious Big 10 and playoff implications. I make no predictions, I’m just curious to see how it goes.

The professionalization of college football has been all to the good thus far, I’d say.

I’m not a huge fan of the superconferences, but they’ve certainly made the conference season games a lot more competitive.

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RIP Mike Ditka

Mike Ditka, one of the greatest examples of a great player becoming a great coach in NFL history en route to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, has passed away at the age of 86. The death of one of the NFL’s greats was announced Friday morning by his family.

Truly a multi-era legend. The 1986 Chicago Bears are one of the immortal teams. I still cannot figure out how they lost that one game that season. But I think we can all appreciate the Thanksgiving thoughts of Bob Swerski:

We thank Ditka, and God, for all they have provided, for the food we eat, the air we breathe, and for the domination enjoyed by a certain team, from a certain town…

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Skol, but…

The Purple are 4-0 and on top of the NFC North. Beaten the Packers. Beaten the Bears. The defense is more than on point.

And I haven’t had this little confidence in the offense since Bob Lee was starting the NFC championship game.

Kyler Murray is not a rookie and yet he can’t complete a pass to the WRs on the outside. I don’t know if KOC’s offense is too complex for him, he just doesn’t put in the work to learn it, or if he simply can’t see downfield, but Carson Wentz actually looks much better and Wentz is one-game backup material.

The Bears third-string quarterback is better than our starter or our backup. And as much as I like former Gopher Max Brosman – and it was cool to see his ex-teammates bringing the Little Brown Jug to the game to show him – what little we saw of him last year wasn’t exactly confidence inspiring.

If KOC and Flores win the division they both deserve raises, coach and coordinator of the year awards, and a new quarterback.

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Back to the 70s

It’s not often that I find myself wishing I was back in Minnesota. But seeing College GameDay there, watching the Michigan game and seeing the Golden Gophers reclaim the Little Brown Jug at home for the first time since 1977 definitely felt like a heartwarming blast from the past. I didn’t attend that game, but I attended several around that time – one game against Indiana is particularly strong in my memory – and it was so long ago that Tony Dungy, the retired Super Bowl-winning coach of the Colts and the Buccaneers, was the Gophers’ quarterback at the time.

Anyhow, congrats to all the Gophers and Gophers alumni for defeating the Wolverines at their new home.

College football is so much better with a) the playoffs, b) NIL preventing the big boys from stocking all the best players four-deep and c) all the new outdoor stadiums. I’m watching it again for the first time in decades.

And now that the Gophers are reclaiming the Little Brown Jug, can another Super Bowl appearance for the Vikings be far behind? Young Nasty University does look a lot like the Purple People Eaters of yore.

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The Severing of Nine

The ill-fated JJ McCarthy experiment has ended. The former 10th pick in the draft was traded to the Giants for a 5th round pick. That he turned out to be a bust surprised very few Vikings fans, precisely ZERO of whom were happy about the draft choice in the first place. Nine actually turned out to be worse than Christian Ponder. And Christian Ponder was an equally unpopular first-round draft choice who is the icon of what passes for an unacceptable starting quarterback in Minnesota.

Consider their stats. In addition to being healthier his first two years, Ponder had better stats across the board. McCarthy had a slightly longer pass average, but his TD-INT rate was 0.92 compared to Ponder’s mediocre 1.24.

27 458 774 58.2 4,788 6.3 31 25 72 62 75.7 42.5
10 140 243 57.6 1,632 6.7 11 12 62 27 72.6 35.6

Again, not keeping Sam Darnold was not the problem. Keeping Darnold was untenable for a variety of reasons and it could have worked out well for all the parties concerned. But not keeping Daniel Jones when all they had to do was give him the chance to compete for the starting job, or even just give him the starting job in the first place, was absolutely unconscionable.

It’s a good trade for both teams. The Giants desperately need a backup and at least the Vikings got something out of the mess. And who knows, back in the day there was a young Vikings quarterback who was sent off to New York for a few years and things turned out rather well when he came back to Minnesota.

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Guilty On (almost) All Charges

Yes, Virginia, Manchester City did break the financial regulations:

Manchester City have been found guilty of all but one of their 115 rule-break charges concerning the Premier League’s financial regulations. The competition accused the club of widespread financial cheating over an era of sustained success – with an independent panel hearing concluding in 2024.

There has since been a frustrating wait for a verdict but sources have disclosed that clubs have been informed that the panel has now reached a decision – and there is a belief it’s a win for the top flight. It is understood that the Premier League have triumphed on the vast majority of charges.

The verdict could lead to a variety of punishments including huge points deductions, financial penalties, and even relegation. Points deductions could even be applied onto previous seasons, raising the chance that City will be stripped of their Premier League titles.

I’m genuinely surprised. I was expecting the usual whitewashing. Of course, there is still the likelihood that the punishment will be a slap-on-the-hand involving ten points and a monetary fine. I’d suggest one level of relegation per season the rules were broken. Juventus and AC Milan had no trouble working their way back to Serie A, and it would make for a great multi-season saga to see the once-mighty City playing away games on tiny fields that usually average 200 spectators.

It would be a fittingly humiliating punishment and good for the sport.

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Zero Sympathy

Hall of Fame voter and legendary NFL writer Peter King protests the changes to the Pro Football Hall of Fame voting system:

Our good friend and former colleague, Peter King, spent 32 years on the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s selection committee. He has concerns about the recent decision to slash the panel from 50 to 28.

The reductions came with no explanation as to shrinking the number of voters or as to the voters who were kept and those who were removed. There’s no reason that fewer voters will make the process any better. King believes that one specific move will make it worse.

“That Rick Gosselin, the most conscientious and well-researched member of the [Hall of Fame] selection committee I saw in my 32 years as a voter, has been removed from the voting group gives me doubts about the future of the Hall,” King said on Twitter. “It’s outrageous.”

I still miss Peter King’s MMQB column, but he just doesn’t have a case here. The Hall of Fame voters did this to themselves when they self-righteously denied Bill Belichick unanimous first-ballot entry to the Hall of Fame. They lost ALL their credibility, and now no one will support them.

This and the seizure of Nestle assets in Russia are really two different applications of the same concept. If you behave irresponsibly for performative reasons, your ability to do so will be curtailed.

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The Potential Patriots Boycott

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens when Robert Kraft forces NFL fans to choose between endorsing his rabid support for Middle East genocide and their support for a particular NFL team:

Ed Sheeran has lost 200,000 Instagram followers in 24 hours as he faces a growing campaign to cancel him amid a Palestine row over his US tour. All of the remaining opening acts on his tour have dropped out in response to rapper Macklemore being kicked off the live dates following a ‘free Palestine’ speech.

Macklemore was due to open for Sheeran at eight of the remaining ten shows on his tour in America, which continues on Friday in Philadelphia, but on Tuesday it was announced that he had been dropped. Ed has now lost his remaining support acts – Billie Eilish’s brother and music partner Finneas, his close friend Myles Smith, Aaron Rowe, Lukas Graham and Beoga, who have put out separate statements announcing that they will not continue with their dates on the Loop Tour.

Breaking his silence amid the backlash, Ed, 35, said that his audience is often young people ‘from different backgrounds’ who do not expect his shows to be a political forum. While his Instagram follower count stood at 47.6million on Monday, it has now dropped to 47.4million.

Macklemore faced a boycott petition to remove him from the tour after he delivered a politically motivated speech in support of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank during his performances at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on September 4 and 5.

Responding with an Instagram statement after it was confirmed that he will not be the opening act for the remainder of the Loop Tour, the rapper claimed that Ed told him billionaire Robert Kraft orchestrated the move after ‘rallying stadium owners and issuing an ultimatum’. Kraft is the CEO of the Kraft Group, which owns the NFL team the New England Patriots, as well as the Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts where Sheeran is due to play later in September.

My sense is that a number of influential Jews in the USA have wildly overplayed their antisemitism card. It’s not the 1970s anymore. Young people around the world are much better informed than the Boomers were back in the day, when their opinions were guided by Roots, the construction of Holocaustianity, and the “plucky little Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and the USA’s Greatest Ally” narrative. And even for those who still hold sacred one or more elements of that propaganda, none of it grants Israel moral cover for either the Gazacaust, the invasions of Syria and Lebanon, or dragging the Trump administration into defeat and economic disaster.

That’s the thing about power. If you don’t use it well, and use it for the material benefit of others, eventually you’ll be held accountable for that. Robert Kraft has been a remarkably effective NFL owner, but now he is abusing his power as a well-connected venue owner and every opening act on Ed Sheeran’s tour has rejected that. Sheeran himself doesn’t need them, but I very much doubt that given his own heritage, he’s going to be terribly inclined to sacrifice his career for Robert “Five Dolla” Kraft and Kraft’s staunch support for imperialist genocide in the Middle East.

And the longer the economically suicidal War to Save Israel From Iran continues, the more likely it is that NFL fans are going to see that Robert Kraft has played his part in their own economic suffering and react in a similar fashion to the music fans.

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Skol, Baby!

Fire everyone! Send the O-line into the sun, and throw the rest in jail. That was the biggest collapse I’ve seen since the playoff game last year. 29 unanswered points against the Minnesota Vikings! Look guys, the good news is, it wasn’t the O-line’s fault, because the whole ‘let’s not block anybody while Brian Flores sends everyone on a blitz is a great game plan!” The biggest collapse I’ve ever seen. I’ve just… absolutely pathetic. Fire Matt Fleuer! I never want to hear about that extension ever again. I am so done with this team! – Annie Agar, Green Bay Packers fan

I’m not going to lie. There was a moment when Carson Wentz failed to hit an eight-yard throw over the middle, followed by an inept attempt to complete a screen pass behind the line of scrimmage, that I said “FFS, I CAN MAKE THOSE THROWS!” To say it was not looking good was an understatement; Flores was repeatedly sending the house, but Jordan Love was getting off his throws just in time before getting leveled and his WRs were repeatedly beating our unassisted cornerbacks.

But sometimes, one has to be patient. In the fourth quarter, the Packers’ offensive line wore down just enough that the blitzes started getting home, and once that happened, Love understandably fell apart. The final five minutes were absolutely brutal, and should terrify every offensive coordinator in the league.

Wentz was still terrible. I honestly think Nine should be the backup instead since for all his flaws, he can complete an eight-yard pass, he isn’t going to throw that retarded interception in the middle of the end zone that was bailed out by the refs and he isn’t going to hesitate to throw it long to JJ when there is a free play because the Packers jumped like Wentz did.

Anyhow, a much better start to the season than I’d expected when Kyler Murray went out early with a concussion. The Vikings will have to win games with their defense, but they certainly look capable of doing just that.

My favorite moment was when the Vikings took a 25-22 lead and the announcer said: “How much heat will Brian Flores put on Jordan Love right here? Will he back out into zones.”

No, no, he will not. Because Brian Flores is not a defensive coordinator, he is a madman. He promptly sent Dallas Turner on the blitz off the end. Tackle, sack, fumble.

Love was blitzed on 87 percent of his dropbacks – Pro Football Focus

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