Whipped Cream Difficulties

Sorry about last week, folks, but between the elections and our wanderings over the state of Oklahoma (motto: “It’s not Scotland.”) we just flat ran out of time before this week’s edition rolled around.

After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

NFL offenses were putting up huge numbers early in the season. Now they’re not. Does the Law of Large Numbers explain this, as TMQ thinks? We think it might have something to do with defenses coming together and improving as the season goes on: also, there’s more game film to watch in preparation.

The college football season has already started downhill in terms of weeks remaining; the pro season will start downhill soon.

We’re in week 11 of the NFL season. That’s not downhill?

As this occurs, most astonishing numbers will become merely interesting numbers. Sometimes this happens to individual players because of injuries, sometimes it happens to whole teams because opponents catch on to tendencies.

These are much better explanations than “the Law of Large Numbers”.

The 500 Club, the 600 Club, the 700 Club, and the 800 Club. Stat-O-Matic.

Sweet: Rams, Buffalo. Sour: Carolina. Mixed: New England-Tennessee.

Nearly 600 words on the state of telescopes. Which actually you ought to read, if you’re at all an astronomy or telescope geek (like us). But we wish TMQ had dived into the question of whether it’s worthwhile to build giant telescopes on Earth today, rather than space-launched telescopes like the Webb.

Hidden play: Dallas. Stupid plays: Arizona, Jets. Chicken-(salad) kicking: Arizona, Davidson College (member of the 800 Club), Oklahoma State.

Drew Brees. Why don’t they call time outs, especially in situations where a fake punt is likely?

This weekend in Hell’s Sports Bar, the infinite flatscreen TV endlessly showed, on repeating loop, nothing but the Monday Night Football matchup of Santa Clara versus Jersey/A, combined records 3-14. This was the worst Monday pairing since 1975.

We’re sorry, but: what other, better, NFL game was on at the time?

99 yard passes. 4th and 49 (we admit, we chortled at that). Bad announcing: ABC.

Your columnist pays attention to ballot initiatives and other forms of plebiscites. They are direct democracy—the instances in which voters make public-policy choices, rather than subcontracting to a public official.

Yeah. Right up to the point where the initiative is overturned by a higher court.

A constitutional amendment to elect members of the House of Representatives at-large, like senators, would eliminate gerrymandering of Congress and be a huge step toward draining the poison from American politics.

We think this is a strong contender for dumbest thing Gregg Easterbrook has said this year.

The coach of Miami University thinks the school is cheap. Also, the NCAA sucks.

Going for two was the right decision, and Gundy’s staff clearly had a good play in mind. It just didn’t work.

If it didn’t work, how do we know it was “the right decision”? Especially as opposed to resting your “exhausted Oklahoma State quarterback” and taking the 50/50 chance in overtime?

More 500 Club: Connecticut, Tampa Bay.

…internal WEEKLY STANDARD rules require Packers favoritism

That’s a wrap for this week, folks. Next week, we aren’t going anywhere, and expect to have more time available. In the meantime, the 50th anniversary of a great sporting event is coming up this weekend: we plan to have a post up on that.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2018 at 7:56 pm and is filed under NFL, Sports, TMQ watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.