Archive for the ‘NFL’ Category

Obit watch: October 11, 2024.

Friday, October 11th, 2024

Ethel Kennedy.

Thomas Rockwell, author. His most famous book is perhaps How to Eat Fried Worms.

He was also Norman’s son.

Posing for a painting that depicted him rummaging through his grandfather’s overcoat pocket was one of his favorite childhood memories, he told Cobblestone, a children’s magazine, in 1989. That image appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1936.
“I had to stand on tiptoe while reaching into the overcoat, which was hung on an easel,” Mr. Rockwell said, describing how his father had composed the painting. “My father gave me a present for posing, and I remember feeling so proud and pleased that I’d helped him with his work. I know I’ve never enjoyed any gift as much as that one.”

This one goes out to great and good FotB pigpen51: Greg Landry, quarterback.

He wore the Lions’ Honolulu blue and silver for 11 seasons, tallying 12,451 yards and 80 touchdown passes.
In 1971, his first year as a starter, Landry passed for 2,237 yards and 16 touchdowns, earning a first-team All-Pro nod and his only trip to the Pro Bowl. He was the last Lions quarterback to earn that distinction until Matthew Stafford was named an alternate for the 2014 Pro Bowl.

Unusual for an era marked by pocket passers, Landry did damage with his legs as well as his right arm: He rushed for 2,655 yards over his career, which concluded with stints with the Baltimore Colts and the Chicago Bears. In both 1971 and 1972, he ran for more than 500 yards.

But with Landry, who was physically imposing at 6-foot-4, the Lions designed running plays for him, as would later be the case with current dual-threat quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens and Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills. The Lions even took a page from college football playbooks and drew up option plays, in which the quarterback has the option to carry the ball himself after the snap or pitch it to a running back, a rarity in the N.F.L.
Landry showed off his burst early in his career, during the Lions’ rout of the Green Bay Packers in the opening game of the 1970 season. Closing out the game in relief of the starter Bill Munson, Landry called a quarterback sneak on third down with two yards to go at the Lions’ 13-yard line. Instead of gutting out a few yards for a first down, he burst through the Packers’ defense and galloped for 76 yards — the longest run for a Lion since 1951.

Great and good FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Nobuyo Oyama, Japanese voice actress.

For about 25 years, Ms. Oyama was the voice of Doraemon, a character that first appeared in a manga created in 1969. Doraemon is a robot from the future, sent by its owner to the present day to help his great-great-grandfather solve his childhood problems and change his family’s fortunes.
The plump, earless, catlike robot typically helped the boy, Nobita Nobi, using gadgets from the future that he kept in his magical pocket. His deepening friendship with Nobita and his family was part of what made “Doraemon” one of the longest-running shows in Japan and beyond.

Que Saleh Saleh…

Tuesday, October 8th, 2024

Robert Saleh out as head coach of the Jets. ESPN.

He was 20-36 over roughly three and a half seasons with the Jets. Noted:

Saleh becomes the third NFL coach to be fired after losing a game in London, according to ESPN Research. The Raiders fired coach Dennis Allen in 2014 the day after they lost 38-14 to the Miami Dolphins at Wembley Stadium, while the Dolphins fired coach Joe Philbin in 2015 the day after they lost 27-14 to the Jets at Wembley. Saleh’s firing comes two days after the Jets lost 23-17 to the Minnesota Vikings at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

In other news, Josh Wolff was fired on Sunday as head coach of Austin FC, the soccer team. 45-30-60 over four seasons. Austin FC made the playoffs once in that period (2022).

Your NFL loser update: week 5, 2024.

Monday, October 7th, 2024

It was a full rich weekend. I was out all day Saturday and all day Sunday (at separate events) and did not get home until 10 PM last night. So blogging has been kind of constrained, and will be probably until tomorrow. (I have to drop my rental car off this morning, and I have an eye doctor’s appointment this afternoon that’s going to leave my eyes messed up.)

Anyway, NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

None.

I was right about the Jacksonville -Indianapolis game, but that gives me no satisfaction.

And, in other news, I’m thinking the only reason this wasn’t a forfeit is that it was a playoff game, and that would have been a bad look for MLB.

I am also waiting on the results of the Alabama appeal. As I understand it, SEC bylaws specifically forbid any team from scoring more points in a game than Alabama, so I’m thinking the conference is going to overturn Vanderbilt’s win and award the victory to ‘Bama.

Your NFL loser update: week 4, 2024.

Tuesday, October 1st, 2024

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

Jacksonville

Four weeks in, one team remaining. And I don’t like Jacksonville’s chances of going 0-17. This week they play Indianapolis (2-2) at home: ESPN has Jacksonville as a slight favorite.

Your NFL loser update: week 3, 2024.

Tuesday, September 24th, 2024

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

Cincinnati
Jacksonville
Tennessee

Three weeks into the season, three teams left. Right now, I’m liking Jacksonville’s chances to go 0-17. They play Houston next week. Houston is a big favorite, and is coming off a pretty embarrassing loss to Minnesota, so I’m liking Jacksonville to go 0-4.

In other news, and as noted on Sunday, the White Sox are now at 36-120, for a .231 winning percentage. Looking at this another way, in order to lose only 119 games and avoid tying the 1962 Mets…they can’t do it. (I think they would have to win approximately 116% of the remaining games.)

More seriously, if the Sox go 2 and 4 (.333 winning percentage) for the remaining games, they will finish at 38-124, for a .234 winning percentage. The lowest winning percentage in the modern era is .235 by the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, who went 36-117.

I am hoping for 125 losses. Why? Someone mentioned the other day that 2025 is the 125th anniversary of the White Sox…and they’ve ordered all kinds of memorabilia with the number “125” displayed prominently. That could be…awkward.

(It seems to me to be a little fuzzy, though, when the anniversary is. I guess you could call 2025 the 125th if you count when they moved to Chicago, which is not unreasonable. But they didn’t become the modern Sox until 1901.)

Obit watch: September 23, 2024.

Monday, September 23rd, 2024

Mercury Morris, one of the great NFL players. ESPN. NYT (archived).

Morris made no secret of the fact that he was filled with pride about the 1972 Dolphins being the first — and still only — undefeated and untied team in NFL history, pulling off a truly perfect season.
He also tried to make this clear: No, the Dolphins were not rooting against the teams that came close to matching their feat of perfection or had champagne on ice waiting for the moment that the last unbeaten team in a season gets defeated.
“And for the record, we DO NOT TOAST every time an unbeaten team loses,” Morris posted on social media in 2015, when the Cam Newton-led Carolina Panthers started 14-0 before losing the next-to-last game of their regular season. “There’s no champagne in my glass, only Canada Dry Ginger ale! Ha!”

Kathryn Crosby, der Bingle’s wife who had a pretty successful career of her own. NYT (archived). Other credits include “Anatomy of a Murder”, “The Phenix City Story”, and “The Night the World Exploded”.

Tongsun Park, who was at the center of the 1970s “Koreagate” scandal.

In 1978, he was indicted on charges of conspiracy, bribery and making contributions as a foreign agent, and he fled the country. He returned with a promise of criminal immunity to testify in Congress and before a grand jury.
He said that he had passed money to 31 members of Congress — up to $273,000 in one case — and while he denied acting on behalf of the South Korean government, a former Korean intelligence officer told Congress under oath that Mr. Park was working for Korean intelligence as part of an influence-buying operation code-named Ice Mountain.
But the accusations, splashily covered in the post-Watergate period, largely fizzled out. Only three of the 31 current and former congressmen Mr. Park named were indicted, and only one, Richard T. Hanna, a California Democrat, was convicted. He served a little over a year in jail.
The House, which considered disciplinary action against 11 sitting members, ended up reprimanding just three, in what critics called an example of Congress’s inability to discipline its own members.

He later got caught doing illegal lobbying for Saddam Hussein, and served five years for that.

Shortly after I posted Friday’s obit watch, the NYT posted their Nelson DeMille obit.

KMart. Sort of. The last “full-sized” store in the United States, in Bridgehampton, New York, is closing in October. There is one store left in Miami, but it is described as being the size of a CVS, not a full-sized store. There are also other stores in places like Guam and the Virgin Islands.

Your NFL loser update: week 2, 2024.

Tuesday, September 17th, 2024

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

Baltimore
Cincinnati
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Tennessee
Denver
New York Football Giants
Carolina
Los Angeles Rams

In other news, the White Sox have actually won a few more games. Mostly they won against the City Unknown A’s, though they beat the LA Angels last night.

Currenrtly, the Sox are 36-115, for a .238 winning percentage. That projects out to 123 loses this season. Put another way, in order for the Sox to lose only 119 games and avoid tying the 1962 Mets for worst MLB record, they will have to win 7 out of the final 11 games, for a .636 winning percentage down the stretch.

They play the Angels again tonight, and LA is favored by ESPN. Of course, LA was favored by ESPN in last night’s game as well, and you see what that got them…

Obit watch: September 13, 2024.

Friday, September 13th, 2024

Donald Sheppard passed away on September 7th. He was 104. BBC.

Mr. Sheppard served in the Royal Engineers during World War II.

Mr. Sheppard was one of more than 150,000 soldiers who crossed the English Channel on June 6, 1944. He landed at Juno Beach, in Normandy, under a hail of gunfire. More than 4,000 Allied troops died that day.
“When he landed on the beach, he said he was just walking over dead bodies,” his son said. “Dead boys, dead men. And they gave their life for our freedom. I think to him, personally, he never wants that to be forgotten.”

In 1945, Mr. Sheppard helped British forces liberate Bergen-Belsen, one of the largest concentration camps in Germany; more than 50,000 people, including Anne Frank, died there. When the British arrived, corpses lay in piles; about 60,000 people, emaciated and ill, were still alive.
Mr. Sheppard struggled to talk about the experience; a granddaughter, Daisy O’Brien, said she did not learn about it until she was a teenager. Mr. Sheppard would become emotional remembering that day, his son said.“He couldn’t believe that one human could do that to another human,” Jonathan Sheppard said, and would often lament the “senselessness” of war.

After his retirement, Mr. Sheppard devoted himself to keeping alive the memory of the soldiers who fought and died beside him. He raised money for veterans, made repeated trips to Normandy and, until recently, spoke to schoolchildren about the war.

Chad McQueen. I think I’ve noted before that I don’t do obits for celebrity children just because they are celebrity children, but he did have a career beyond being Steve McQueen’s son. Other credits include “V”, “New York Cop”, and “Firepower”.

Bob Weatherwax, Hollywood dog trainer. He was most famous for succeeding his father, Rudd, in training dogs to play “Lassie”.

On a trip to Philadelphia to promote the 1994 movie “Lassie,” a successful attempt to revive the franchise, he and the film’s star stayed at the luxurious Rittenhouse Hotel, where the celebrity collie dined on boiled chicken that was prepared by a chef, delivered by room service and washed down with distilled water.
Lassie usually traveled with Mel, a Jack Russell terrier. The two dogs watched “Lassie” reruns on Nickelodeon in between promotional appearances.
“The hotels say they wish they had more guests like Lassie,” Mr. Weatherwax told The Los Angeles Times in 1994. “They don’t have to deal with cigarette holes in the carpet or spilled drinks.”

Alberto Fujimori.

Joe Schmidt, one of the Detroit Lions greats.

Schmidt was named to 10 Pro Bowls, selected as a first-team All-Pro eight times and chosen for the N.F.L.’s all-decade team for the 1950s.
The Lions were an N.F.L. powerhouse in those years. They defeated the Cleveland Browns for the 1952 league championship; beat them again in the 1953 title matchup, when Schmidt was a rookie; and bested them once more in 1957, routing them 59-14. They also went to the championship game against the Browns in 1954, but that time they lost.
Schmidt was 6 feet 1 inches and 220 pounds, not especially big even by the standards of his era. But he anchored the defense on Lions teams that included his fellow future Hall of Famers Yale Lary, Jack Christiansen and Dick Lane (known as Night Train) in the secondary, along with an offense featuring Bobby Layne at quarterback, Doak Walker at halfback and Lou Creekmur and Dick Stanfel on the line.
He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, in 1973.

Schmidt’s teammates voted him their most valuable player four times. He was also the Lions’ longtime captain. When he retired after the 1965 season, he had intercepted 24 passes and recovered 14 fumbles.

Your NFL loser update: week 1, 2024.

Tuesday, September 10th, 2024

As foretold in the prophecy, we have returned.

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

New York Jets
Baltimore
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Tennessee
Las Vegas
Denver
Washington
New York Football Giants
Green Bay
Carolina
Atlanta
Los Angeles Rams
Arizona

In other news, the Chicago White Sox are now 33-112, for a .228 winning percentage. This projects out to 125 losses this season.

Put another way, there are 17 games left in the season. For the Sox to have only 119 losses and miss tying the record for worst MLB team in the modern era, they will have to win 10 out of those 17, for a .588 winning percentage.

Loser update update.

Friday, September 6th, 2024

The NFL regular season started last night.

The NFL loser update will return on Tuesday (because Monday night game) unless I am hit by a bus between now and then.

I am thinking that I will probably wait until Tuesday and combine the NFL loser update with the White Sox update, so I can take care of them both in one swell foop.

UnHinged.

Wednesday, September 4th, 2024

Rael Enteen, VP of content for the Washington Commanders, has been suspended. Which isn’t technically a firing, but I kind of have a feeling it is going to turn into one.

What happened?

Mr. Enteen met a woman on the Hinge dating app. He went out to dinner with her twice. During those dates, he made some…unfortunate comments.

He told…that, “over 50% of our roster is white religious, and God says, ‘F— the gays.’ Their interpretation. I don’t buy any of that. Another big chunk is low-income African Americans that comes from a community that is inherently very homophobic.”
…Enteen also said some players are “dumb as hell” and said some who were smart don’t stay that way after getting hit in the head too many times. He also said those who “get their heads knocked around a few times” are more susceptible to conspiracy theories.
Enteen also said, “I don’t think the commissioner of the NFL hates gay people, hates black people. Jerry Jones, who really runs the NFL, I think he hates gay people, black people.”
Enteen, who was with the New York Jets for two years before coming to Washington, called the league’s social justice initiatives “performative.”
“It’s not done out of the goodness of their heart,” he said. “It’s done because George Floyd changed the game … It’s to make as much money as possible. The NFL cares about the bottom line, like any corporation, above all else.”
Enteen said because the league makes so much money, “they can faux prioritize DEI for the sake of good publicity.
“Enteen told…that “most of the fans are high-school-educated alcoholics” and called them “mouth breathers.”

There were just two problems with these comments:

1) His date recorded them.
2) His date was actually “…an undercover reporter for the O’Keefe Media Group.

Kind of a big “whoops” there. But remember: these people hate you, and they want your money.

Edited to add 9/5: The suspension indeed became a firing.

Obit watch: August 7, 2024.

Wednesday, August 7th, 2024

Charles Cyphers, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “FBI: The Unheard Music The Untold Stories”, “Renegade”, “The F.B.I.”, and “Jake and the Fatman”.

Duane Thomas, one of the great Dallas Cowboys. ESPN.

Thomas spent the 1971 season without speaking with reporters and apparently his teammates.
It didn’t stop Thomas from performing on the field. He became the first player to score a touchdown in Texas Stadium in 1971. When that season ended, Thomas rushed 175 times for 793 yards and a NFL-leading 11 touchdowns.

Patti Yasutake, actress. Other credits include “Crossing Jordan” (the “Quincy, M.E.” of the ’90s except it sucked), “Murder One” (curiously, Charles Cyphers was also in “Murder One”), “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot”, and “T.J. Hooker”.

Joss Naylor, English sportsman. He specialized in “fell running”: basically, running up and down mountains for days at a time.

His feats running the fells — the term in northern England for hills and mountains — defied common sense and earned him multiple nicknames, including “Iron Man” and “King of the Fells.”
In 1971, Mr. Naylor became the sixth person to conquer the Bob Graham Round — a 24-hour challenge to finish a 66-mile trek over 42 peaks in Cumbria’s Lake District. He overachieved, topping 61 peaks in 23 hours 37 minutes.
The next year, he crossed 63 peaks in the challenge, followed by 72 in 1975 — both times in under 24 hours.
Still running at age 50 in 1986, he completed the Wainwright Round, a series of 214 summits, in just over seven days, setting a record that stood until 2014. (He would have finished faster had he not stopped to save a lamb stuck in mud.)

In competitions that sometimes lasted a week, he survived on scone-like cakes and black currant juice with a dash of salt and cod liver oil that he swilled straight from the bottle — “like whiskey,” he once said.

In 1971, after the Bob Graham Round, he took on the National Three Peaks Challenge, which involved racing up the highest peaks in England, Scotland and Wales in 24 hours, including driving time between the mountains. He finished in just under 12 hours. Nobody has beaten that time.

Bucca di Bankrupt. (Headline hatip to Mike the Musicologist.)