1. Listening to Aaron Rodgers’s fans trying to justify his unexcused absence from mini-camp by comparing his ayahuasca provider to the Pope.
We are staunch libertarians on the matter, and even we aren’t buying this bullshit. Dudes, he skipped practice to go do some drugs. Just own it! We’re personally completely cool with Rodgers’s drug use, and we ourselves would not claim innocence on the subject. We are nothing if not sympathetic. But no amount of pompous, new-age jargon-laced rationalization is going to convince us that Brandon with the man-bun and the knitted messenger bag is actually a psychedelic hippie version of Pope Francis.
Its really okay to do non-addictive drugs just because you like them, or because you find their effects physically, emotionally and/or psychologically fulfilling. Really. Just don’t do them when you’re supposed to be at work and other people’s jobs and futures depend on your being there. And don’t pretend you’re kissing the Pope’s ring when you’re really just puking your guts out in a hut somewhere in the Amazon basin.
2. ESPN’s phony “outraged confusion” narrative at the Atlanta Falcons’ simultaneous signing of Kirk Cousins and drafting of Michael Penix.
The reaction shots. The horrible mugging. The strained outrage. The performative bullying of Dan Orlovsky when he actually, you know, spoke to someone from the Falcons and made the mistake of trying to make sense of the decision on the air. The long, boring, witless rants. After a couple of days, we were so over it. For fuck’s sake, they’re still talking about it.
Our question: who gives a shit? These moves mean one of three things: a) the Falcons have no clear vision for their future; b) they lack confidence in the vision they do have; or c) they are planning on having Penix sit for a few years behind Cousins and either starting him when Cousins retires, using him as insurance in case Cousins blows the other Achilles, or both. Take your pick. Both a) and b) are indicative of a bad team, and c) is indicative of a team that has resigned itself to mediocrity for at least the foreseeable future. All would be applicable to the Atlanta Falcons, and none of them would be surprising.
3. Seeing Adonai Mitchell’s face upon hearing that he had been drafted by the Indianapolis Colts.
He insisted that he was just upset at having fallen to the second round. We’re choosing to believe that he just doesn’t want to play for a slurring degenerate like Jim Irsay.
4. The NFL’s ability to turn even the simplest event into a gaudy, embarrassing, overproduced travesty while simultaneously pretending to be a bunch of philanthropists.
Draft weekend has become a trashy, tacky disgrace. A traveling sideshow. A grotesque Carnivale borne of an absolutely monstrous, profane level of wealth, with all of its terrible, ghastly trappings.
All the multi-colored klieg lights. All the stupid, mass-produced gear. All the bad CGI that clearly was only created because a group of production people were given a horrible amount of money to use for CGI. They could have given us a really lovely diamond ring. Instead, they gave us a giant tiara, covered in enormous rhinestones that all looked like they were stuck on haphazardly and then dipped in fake gold paint, and then more giant rhinestones were glued on, and then it was spray painted with some sort of metallic bronze, and then a bunch of sequins were glued around the edges and some nice cubic zirconia was stuck onto the front. It wasn’t just that it was all so ridiculously overdone, stupid looking, and unnecessary. It was that, despite the obviously enormous amount of money being wasted, it was still so BORING.
How do you spend that much money and come up with something so charmless and excruciatingly dull? Every minute felt like five. We wanted to scream, “get ON with it!” at every person who walked onstage to announce the picks, and then immediately hated ourselves because they usually represented some sort of Very Important Cause (even though the NFL was only trotting them out so everyone doesn’t think they are just a bunch of relentlessly greedy old men). So then we felt guilty AND bored.
Either show off your nauseatingly ill-gotten gambling money or make us feel like shit for not doing more to save the world, but don’t try to do both, especially when we know your only goal in life is to figure out new ways to keep raking in literally BILLIONS more dollars per year.
5. The Philadelphia sports media’s ongoing inability to figure out exactly what Nick Sirianni does around there; or, Nick Sirianni’s ongoing inability to explain his duties as Head Coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.
This past spring, Philly sports journalists began peppering Eagles’ coach Nick Sirianni with a series of questions about the exact specifics of his job description. His answers were apparently less than satisfactory because at a press conference last Friday, Sirianni was still trying (unsuccessfully, by the sound of it) to explain his role as Head Coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. We’re not sure which we find more amusing: the Philly sports media’s increasing agitation at Sirianni’s convoluted answers to their incredibly simple questions or Sirianni’s increasing discomfort as he realizes he can’t actually explain what he does.
6. Watching Pat McAfee and His Boys, feat. Bill Belichick ruin the Miami Dolphins’ Big Reveal of their first round draft pick.
We don’t know what the Dolphins did to McAfee and his crew, but we do know what they did to Belichick, and we couldn’t have been more pleased. Well done, fellas.
7. Realizing what absolutely hilarious standards the San Francisco 49ers have for the quarterback position.
Poor Kyle Shanahan. For years, at the most important position in football, he has been hamstrung by mediocrity, saddled with noodle-arms and game managers like Brock Purdy and Jimmy Garoppolo. Guys who can only take him to the Super Bowl, but never actually win it for him. Shanahan and the Niners are constantly throwing shade at their quarterbacks, referring to them as “system guys” and “game managers,” and blaming them whenever a big game is lost. No matter what boneheaded series of plays Shanahan manages to barf out in the clutch, its still somehow all the quarterback’s fault.
Of course, when Shanahan was OC for the Atlanta Falcons, they also lost the Super Bowl (falling to Brady’s Patriots in that famous comeback that both Pats and Falcons fans alike will still remember when senile). That time, though, the quarterback was future Hall of Famer Matt Ryan. Shanahan couldn’t very well blame Matty Ice for that historic debacle and everybody knew it, so when he was fired he simply failed up into the 49ers Head Coaching job. After losing Super Bowl LVIII, Shanahan wasted no time rushing to the media and telling everybody that it was definitely all Jimmy G’s fault, and he has made it clear ever since that his ongoing failure to bring the Lombardi back to San Fran is because he just can’t get his hands on the perfect quarterback.
If only he could have his muse, Kirk Cousins, then none of this would be happening.
8. Catching a glimpse of the New York Jets’ draft room.
It looks like an airport lounge from 1997.
9. Hearing Jerry Jones telling everyone that he is the best GM the Dallas Cowboys could ever have.
When we saw Jones at the big table on draft night it gave us a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. It was classic NFL, the NFL of a simpler time, the NFL of days gone by. Jones was in his element that night – directing traffic, working the phones, wheeling and dealing. We were watching a master at work, a master of the Deal. Jones is, indisputably, a master businessman. What he is not so much, is a master football team builder, and seeing him in the Cowboys’ draft room, back at the center of it all, took us back to the good old days, the days when (at least for our entire adult life) the Cowboys regularly and predictably sucked.
Jones’s son Stephen officially took over as the primary personnel decision maker less than ten years ago. Three years ago, Jerry also allowed his grandson to begin participating in drafting/team building. The results have been annoyingly impressive: talking Jerry into making the intelligent, disciplined choice of selecting Zack Martin over glamour pick Johnny Manziel, drafting CeeDee Lamb, signing steady, understated Dak Prescott, and finally achieving a small measure of actual – rather than media and pr generated – relevance. Their inability to win a Super Bowl during this period has apparently convinced Jones that his offspring are captaining the Titanic into an iceberg and that the only way to avoid catastrophe is for the master to take control of the wheel once more. On Monday he announced that he was “a long way from stepping down,” because nobody in the whole world could be a better GM for the Cowboys than he, Jerry Jones.
We couldn’t be more thrilled to hear it. Welcome back, Jerry!
10. The Boston sports media criticizing Jerod Mayo and Eliot Wolf for literally the exact opposite things at two recent preseason press conferences.
Tom Curran, on Wolf: “Why can’t he just answer my questions?!”
Bill Simmons, on Mayo: “He needs to keep his mouth shut.”
Patriots fans have also been treated to a litany of complaints about Mayo’s timing of press conferences, his phrasing on the subject of the quarterback competition, the “efficiency of his process”, and the fact that the national sports media found out the name of the Patriots’ 2024 starting quarterback twenty minutes before they did.
It’s gonna be a long year, y’all, but hang in there. We promise, we’re here for you!
(Hopefully our site won’t take as long to rebuild as the New England Patriots…)