Skip to main content

On Any Given Sunday

By

The Jets had the inside track on the Trevor Lawrence sweepstakes, yet they not only showed up on Sunday but gave the Los Angeles Rams a whipping they won't soon forget.  This proves again the old adage that on any given Sunday any NFL team can win.  Not to be outdone, the lowly Bengals took down Pittsburgh on Monday Night, handing the once vaunted Steelers their third straight loss.  Neither game was particularly close.  Both the Jets and Bengals led by as many as 17 points, holding off late charges by the Rams and Steelers.  The Rams suffered more than the Steelers, as it knocked them out of first place in the NFC West.  The Steelers are struggling but still have a one-game lead over the Browns.

Somehow the NFL has made it through 15 of its 17 weeks without any serious scheduling problems due to COVID-19.  The players have shown themselves remarkably disciplined given they are not being forced to play in a "bubble" as was the case with the NBA when it resumed its 2019-2020 season in late July.  There have been coronavirus cases here and there, causing some teams to be undermanned on game day, but not that many games were forced to be rescheduled and no games were lost.  Such was not the case at the collegiate level, where many games ended up being cancelled.

I suppose when there is so much money riding on the line, NFL players will be more careful about their personal contacts.  The only time they were forced to play within a bubble was during pre-season practice.  Those who did defy the restrictions immediately found themselves cut by their teams.  

Unfortunately, the NCAAF wasn't so strict.  Not only did Florida coach Dan Mullen flaunt restrictions by urging Gator fans to "pack the swamp," at their next home game, but more than 20 players and coaches on his team came down with COVID-19 after a road trip to Texas A&M.  The Aggies had only one reported case.  Mullen later apologized but the damage was done.  The Gators were forced to postpone that home game until the end of the year, losing to LSU at the Swamp. 

I'm really impressed the NFL pulled this season off (knock on wood).  It didn't seem possible given 32 teams spread across the country with opposing players, coaches and staff coming in contact with each other on a weekly basis.  The only serious problem appears to be the high number of injuries suffered across the league because the training schedule had been shortened prior to the season.  San Francisco appears to have suffered the worst, losing a high number of starters and limping along to a 5-9 record after playing in the Super Bowl last year.  Not so Kansas City, which is coasting to another Super Bowl appearance at a staggering 13-1, easily the best team in the league.

Following the Jets surprising victory, Jacksonville is now regarded as the worst team in the NFL.  The Jaguars won their opener over Indianapolis before losing the next 13 games.  By virtue of a tiebreaker they would get the first pick in next year's draft if both they and the Jets end up 1-15.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more