TMQ Watch has our tropes, too. One of those is referring to the team by their full legal name, “The New York Football Giants”.
What are some of our other tropes? The only other two we can think of are:
- “autonomous 1911 and heroin-vending robots”, which in turn is derived from TJIC (though the original was “autonomous Glock and heroin-vending robots”, but only heathens use Glocks.)
- Pointing out that Easterbrook is wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong about the 1972 Dolphins.
Are we forgetting any recurring tropes, all of you huddled wretched masses yearning to breathe free? Please let us know in comments.
After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
The title of this week’s column is, “What’s Behind the Perception of the NFL’s Declining Quality?” and Easterbrook spends about the first 1,400 words (of 5,200) trying to answer that question with a lot of “maybe…” qualifiers. Among his theories/complaints:
- “…less contact time in practice results in players whose basic block-and-tackle skills are not polished.” Honestly, we’ve kind of noticed that, too.
- The “7-on-7 generation”.
- College fads don’t translate well to pro ball.
- “…fear of traumatic brain injury turns professional football into a guilty pleasure.” We owe you guys a longer essay about this one.
- Too much information, not enough secrets.
Stats. Sweet: Kansas City. Sour: Chargers – Miami. Mixed: New England – New Orleans.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Specifically this rough beast: 700+ words on how unrealistic the Marvel TV shows are, with a bonus rant about the prevalence of “bottomless pits” in television and movies. This is the first “unrealistic television” rant we can think of in quite a while: of course, TMQ was off last year, but we don’t recall him doing any for the paper of record before that.
(Noted: from what we’ve heard, “Iron Fist” was crap, and “The Defenders” isn’t much good, either. And that’s from sources that have generally liked other Marvel series.)
As opposed to New York City, which illegally arrests residents for carrying legal knives.
The football gods continue to chortle, mostly over “daring” 4th and short plays vs. chicken-(salad) kicks. There are also apparently ticket booth gods in the Easterbrook pantheon. One wonders what the place of the Gods of the Copybook Headings is.
Something about teams in Los Angeles, to which we go “Huh?” There are actually some interesting questions to ask about “Forever” stamps and the Postal Service, all of which TMQ completely ignores.
More chicken-(salad) kicking: Cincinnati. (“After the latest loss, on Thursday Night Football, Lewis scapegoated offensive coordinator Ken Zampese, firing him.” We were expecting that.)
Passes aren’t miracles. “A miracle is an event that contravenes physical law—and long touchdowns don’t contravene physical law.” Well, no, actually, it isn’t. You can’t break the laws of physics, period, Gregg. And why don’t you go tell those parents whose child just had a spontaneous remission of leukemia that what they experienced wasn’t “a miracle” because it didn’t contravene physical law.
Wasteful spending on military jets to haul around people who want to feel important. Plus bodyguards. (Ding!)
See also. Like we said, we owe you a longer meditation on this subject.
“Adventures in Officiating”: what’s the difference between a pass receiver and a ball carrier? Apparently, more than one step.
The 500 Club. The 600 Club. The Club on Amazon.
Viewer mail: “Why can’t my Labrador retriever get a job as a professional driver?” That’s easy: because they lick everything, and who wants to handle a steering wheel covered in dog slobber?
Liberty 42, Indiana State 41. Texas Lutheran 37, Belhaven 0.
Next week: “The glorious reboot of a TMQ running item, New York Times Corrections on Fast-Forward.” Or, as we like to call it, “TMQ confusing his column with ‘Regret the Error’.”