Archive for the ‘NFL’ Category

Blame Canada! Blame Canada!

Tuesday, November 21st, 2023

Matt Canada out as offensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Non-archive link, extremely aggressive about turning off your ad blocker. Archive link, which may not work for some people. ESPN, which will probably work for almost everyone.

Firings watch.

Wednesday, November 1st, 2023

What a great time of year. We’re in the middle of a cold snap right now…

and the Raiders fired head coach Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler.

McDaniels and Ziegler, both hired in January 2022, inherited a 10-7 team that made an unexpected run to the playoffs during the 2021 season — the organization’s second postseason bid since 2002 — under interim coach Rich Bisaccia and then-GM Mike Mayock, who took over following the in-season resignation of coach Jon Gruden.
Davis said at the time that McDaniels and Ziegler were expected to take the team to the “next step” in its evolution. Instead, the Raiders went a combined 9-16 without a playoff appearance under the new regime, as McDaniels finished his tenure with the third-worst record of any Raiders coach with at least 25 games.

Edited to add: ESPN is now reporting that the Raiders also fired Mick Lombardi, offensive coordinator.

da Bears fired David Walker, running backs coach.

Interestingly, while da Bears stink, the firing apparently wasn’t for that reason, but for unspecified “workplace conduct” issues.

Also interestingly:

Walker is the second coach on Matt Eberflus’ staff to leave in 2023. Defensive coordinator Alan Williams resigned suddenly on Sept. 21 and said he was going to “take care of my health and family.” The Sun-Times later confirmed his departure was related to conduct at Halas Hall.

Your loser update: weeks 6 and 7, 2023.

Sunday, October 15th, 2023

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

Carolina

Next week, Carolina and Houston (along with a few other teams) have a bye week.

I call out Carolina and Houston specifically because they play each other in week 8 (on October 29th): it will be a home game for Carolina. As I write this (and with the understanding that this is two weeks out) Houston is favored.

Obit watch: October 12, 2023.

Thursday, October 12th, 2023

Walt Garrison, legendary Dallas Cowboy, rodeo competetor, and Skoal endorser.

His best season was 1971, where he scored 10 touchdowns and had 1,174 total yards, and it was capped off by a 24-3 Super Bowl victory over Miami. He was named to the Pro Bowl that season.
A knee injury Garrison suffered while steer wrestling in 1975 ultimately ended his NFL career. He retired from Dallas as the third-leading rusher and fourth-leading receiver in team history.

Phyllis Coates, actress. Other credits include three appearances on “Perry Mason”, “Midnight Caller”, “The Untouchables”, and “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”.

Jeff Burr, director. IMDB. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

Michael Chiarello, celebrity chef.

Rudolph Isley, of the Isley Brothers.

Rudolph left the Isley Brothers in 1989 to pursue becoming a Christian minister. However, he has often reunited with his brothers over the years, including when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, an honor that was presented to them by Little Richard.

Your loser update: week 5, 2023.

Sunday, October 8th, 2023

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

Carolina

Not much more to say, really.

Obit watch: October 6, 2023.

Friday, October 6th, 2023

Dick Butkus, one of the greats. ESPN.

At 6 feet 3 inches and 245 pounds, good size for his era, Butkus stuffed running plays up the middle. He was also speedy and mobile enough to drop back and foil opponents’ pass plays. He was cited as a first-team All-Pro five times and was chosen for the Pro Bowl game eight times. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility.
Sacks did not become an official statistic until 1982, so the number of times Butkus smothered opposing quarterbacks remains unrecorded. But he was considered to have intercepted 22 passes and recovered 27 fumbles while playing for the Bears from 1965 to 1973.

Butkus was chosen by the Bears in the first round, third overall, in the 1965 N.F.L. draft and by the Denver Broncos of the American Football League in its second round. He went with his hometown team, a storied N.F.L. franchise owned and coached by the future Hall of Famer George Halas. In his rookie season, he intercepted five passes and recovered seven fumbles.
But the Bears fell on hard times during Butkus’s years. They won 49 games, lost 74, tied four and never reached the playoffs. In his last few seasons, Butkus played on with a badly injured right knee despite having undergone surgery. In May 1974, having retired, he sued the Bears for $1.6 million, contending that the team had not provided him with the medical and hospital care it had promised in a five-year contract he signed in July 1973. The case was settled out of court.

He also did some acting.

IMDB.

Joe Christopher, one of the original 1962 Mets.

He was a part-time player in 1962 — the perfectly awful “Amazin’ Mets,” as their manager, Casey Stengel, called them, had a 40-120-1 record that season — when he got batting tips from a Mets coach, the renowned Rogers Hornsby, who hit over .400 three times in the 1920s.
“He was sitting in hotel lobbies,” Christopher recalled in an unpublished interview in 2010 with George Vecsey, a sports columnist for The New York Times. Christopher recalled Hornsby telling him that the secret of hitting was “don’t let the pitcher jam home plate” and “it’s not about contact, it’s impact.”

In June, when he was hitting .307, he talked about getting a chance to play full time.
“I always knew I could hit, but nobody up here believed me,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I always hit well in the minors, but when I got to the majors nobody had any confidence in me.” He added, “They just wouldn’t give me a chance to play regularly. There was always that worry that if I went 0 for 4 I’d be on the bench the next day.”
He finished the season at .300, 16th best in the National League and only the third time a Met had reached that level. (The Mets’ Ron Hunt hit .303 that season.) He also led the Mets with 76 runs batted in and was second in home runs with 16.

He had a career batting average of .260, with 29 home runs and 173 R.B.I.

Keith Jefferson, actor. IMDB.

Russell Sherman, pianist.

Mr. Sherman, who gave his last recital at 88, made his name performing virtuoso works such as Franz Liszt’s daunting “Transcendental Études.” Referring to the composer’s reputation as a showman, Mr. Sherman told The New York Times in 1989 that he was engaged in a “lifelong battle to reconstitute Liszt as a serious composer.”

Mr. Sherman was in many ways an anti-virtuoso; he devoted much of his time to other interests, like poetry, philosophy and photography. In the late 1950s, instead of becoming a touring concert pianist, he left New York to teach piano at Pomona College in California and the University of Arizona in Tucson.
In 1967, he began a long tenure at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, hired by its president at the time, the composer Gunther Schuller. Mr. Schuller, who founded GM Recordings in 1981, produced a Beethoven album by Mr. Sherman, who became the first American pianist to record the complete Beethoven sonatas and piano concertos.
On a GM Recording album, “Russell Sherman: Premieres and Commissions,” Mr. Sherman performed works composed for him in the 1990s by Mr. Schuller, Robert Helps, George Perle and Ralph Shapey. His recordings also include works by Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as Chopin Mazurkas, the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas and Bach’s English Suites.

Some two decades later, Allan Kozinn wrote in The Times that Mr. Sherman’s “interpretive style, it should be said, is an acquired taste,” but that his “performances are usually illuminating alternatives to the standard view.”
Mr. Sherman resented these accusations of eccentricity. “I think of myself as a compassionate conservative” who responded “radically to the score and nothing but the score,” he told The Times in 2000. He suggested that listeners who disliked his interpretations lacked imagination.

Mr. Sherman married Wha Kyung Byun, a Korean-born former student of his, in 1974; she began teaching at the New England conservatory in 1979. They sometimes celebrated their anniversaries by performing together.

Obit watch: October 2, 2023.

Monday, October 2nd, 2023

Lucy Morgan, Florida journalist. She wasn’t someone I had heard of before, but the obit (which I encourage you to read) makes her sound fascinating.

She specialized in uncovering political corruption. In 1973, she went to jail because she refused to reveal her source for grand jury proceedings.

In 1976, the Florida Supreme Court overturned previous rulings against Ms. Morgan and expanded press privileges in Florida, setting a precedent that local reporters still cite.

She shared a Pulitzer (with Jack Reed) for exposing the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office.

Ms. Morgan’s reporting showed, among other things, that one in eight officers in Pasco County had criminal arrest records, and that more than half had lied about their pasts to get certified. One officer had an outstanding grand theft arrest warrant for stealing a police dog in another Florida county. Another had been the wheel man in several armed robberies.

She also exposed the sheriff of Gulf County, who got sent to prison for extorting oral sex from female inmates.

After the sheriff was found guilty of seven counts of violating the civil rights of female prisoners, Ms. Morgan returned to her office and found a dozen roses with a note: “From the women you believed.”

When she was about 60, she shattered her right ankle in the Florida House press gallery. But she continued limping around the Capitol building, bringing a fog of Trésor Eau de Parfum with her wherever she went. She greeted the legislators, lobbyists and maintenance people she knew not by asking, “How are you?” but instead calling out, “You doin’ somethin’ bad?”

Her investigations exposed widespread misreporting of gifts to state politicians, indicating that many of them should be charged with criminal misdemeanors. They also exposed what Ms. Morgan herself nicknamed the “Taj Mahal” scandal, which involved slipping an appropriation of more than $30 million for a luxurious courthouse into unrelated transportation legislation at the last minute.

Russ Francis, former tight end for the Patriots and 49ers, was killed in a plane crash on Sunday. Also killed was Richard McSpadden, a vice-president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA).

It appears they were taking off from Lake Placid Airport and there was some sort of problem. Reports say they tried to make it back to the airport but couldn’t.

Mr. Francis, in additional to a successful NFL career (first round NFL draft pick, three time Pro Bowl player) was also an avid pilot. He’d recently bought an interest in Lake Placid Airways, a local charter and scenic flight service.

Mr. McSpadden, in addition to being an AOPA VP, was a former commander and flight leader for the Thunderbirds.

Tim Wakefield, former Boston Red Sox pitcher (and a past winner of the Roberto Clemente Award). Cancer got him at 57.

Chris Snow, of the Calgary Flames. He was diagnosed with ALS in 2019, and passed away after a “catastrophic brain injury”.

Your loser update: week 4, 2023.

Sunday, October 1st, 2023

Lawrence asked me last night which of the remaining teams I favored to go 0-17.

My answer: da Bears and Carolina. I don’t believe the Vikings are that bad, and Denver at least has a coach who’s won a Superbowl.

How did that work out for me? Actually, pretty well.

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

da Bears
Carolina

da Bears play Washington on Thursday this week, while Carolina plays Detroit at noon next Sunday. Right now, the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network favors Washington (but not overwhelmingly) and Detroit (overwhelmingly). I’ll be joining FotB pigpen51 in rooting for the Lions, and the entire civilized world in rooting for an asteroid strike on FedEx Field.

Loser update update.

Thursday, September 28th, 2023

I should have put this in this week’s update, but I didn’t think to check the schedule until after I posted.

Denver (0-3) plays da Bears (0-3) at noon on Sunday.

Minnesota (0-3) plays Carolina (0-3) at noon on Sunday.

This means a few things:

1. I will probably try to post the loser update on Sunday afternoon after the games end, assuming I’m not napping.

2. We’re going to have two 0-4 teams. Unless there’s a tie, which I would not rule out.

3. It looks like Sunday is the last day of the MLB regular season, so I will probably post a special loser update on Monday for that.

Your loser update: week 3, 2023.

Tuesday, September 26th, 2023

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

Denver
Minnesota
da Bears
Carolina

70-20? That sounds more like a score from a low-scoring college basketball game, not a NFL one.

In other news, the worthless Chargers won, as did the Texans. But we still have Carolina.

Your loser update: week 2, 2023.

Tuesday, September 19th, 2023

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

New England
Cincinnati
Houston
Denver
Los Angeles Chargers
Minnesota
da Bears
Carolina
Arizona

Still a little early for any predictions on who will win the Owen 17 award this year, but I am kind of wondering if this could be the year for Houston. Or even better, the worthless LA Chargers.

Obit watch: September 13, 2023.

Wednesday, September 13th, 2023

Howard Safir, former NYPD commissioner and gun grabber.

In the final years of his life, Safir, who founded his own intelligence and security firm, has advocated for stricter policing on guns.
Last year, he floated the idea that those who purchase firearms in the city should be required to conduct yearly safety check-ins so authorities can make sure the weapons aren’t lost or sold off to unknown parties.

Neil Currey, noted bodybuilder. He was 34.

Brandon Hunter, former forward for the Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic. He was 42.

Mike Williams, former NFL wide receiver for Tampa Bay and Buffalo. He was 36, and died as a result of injuries sustained in a construction accident.