After the jump, this week’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback (which you won’t be able to read in its entirety unless you subscribe to “All Predictions Wrong”, which is the actual title of Gregg Easterbrook’s Substack)…
TMQ spends 627 words considering this proposition. Some answers:
* “During the regular season there’s always another game, so defenses hold something back. During the playoffs defenses leave it all on the field or court.” Except there’s also always another game during the playoffs, unless you reach the Big Game. Are teams more likely to hold something in reserve in case they reach the Superb Owl, or pour it all out on the field and come into the big day exhausted? Does the two-week gap matter?
* Strength of schedule, or “…in the postseason, all opponents are good”. This is our preferred explanation.
Speaking of which, where are the cheerleader photos, Gregg? Also, we haven’t noticed a lot of “cold coach = victory” this season, come to think of it.
347 words about that NYT piece about She Who Won’t Be Named Here being secretly gay. You know, we have our issues with Gregg Easterbrook, and with TMQ. But one positive thing we will say about both: Easterbrook has never spent 4,764 words speculating on the sexuality of a celebrity. On the other hand, Easterbrook does have this weird obsession with bad things happening to be people who break up with Saylor Twift…
Oh the weather outside is frightful, but it’s fun to watch NFL players in blowing snow. Also: “there is now Junior Mints cocoa”? Why were we NOT INFORMED? (It’s not too late for us: they’re talking temperatures in the 20s here next week. Also, you can finance your Junior Mints cocoa.)
Bill Belichick. Washington Commanders. A match made in heck.
Stats.
Sweet: Washington (Losing yards on a 4th and 1 play. Why is this sweet? Because Washington got the second pick in the draft.), Arizona, Buffalo. Sour: Indianapolis (you gotta catch those balls, Tyler Goodson). Mixed: Jacksonville-Tennessee.
By TMQ’s invented “Good Less Bad” standard, Dak Prescott is the top quarterback of the regular season. At least, among “quarterbacks I find interesting”.
And remember, “Good Less Bad” is touchdown passes minus interceptions. So a quarterback who fumbles the ball away a great deal would not see any impact on their metric here, because fumbles don’t count.
Praise for the late Eugene Teevens.
The crowd in Green Bay was right to boo. “…a runner must be trying to move forward to stop the clock by going out-of-bounds”. Really? We were not aware of this rule.
“Quarterback Intrigue”. Why is the intrigue always with quarterbacks? Why do we never have “Tight End Intrigue”?
There’s an NBA offseason? That’s news to us. (Seriously: the last game of the 2023 season was June 12th, and the first pre-season game of the 2024 was October 8th. So that’s, what, three months of no NBA?)
Harbaugh. Godzilla. Bet you never thought you’d see those together, did you?
(We had more we wanted to say about Harbaugh, but were afraid of hurting someone’s feelings, so we held back. TMQ is right about the original “Godzilla”: if you’ve only seen the version with Raymond Burr, watching the original “Godzilla” is well worth your time. And you can get it in a nice Criterion blu-ray that includes the American version, too.)
(One of our great disappointments this NFL season is that the worthless Buffalo Bills made the playoffs. But at least the worthless LA Chargers finished 5-12.)
Hidden play: Michigan.
And your final four nominees for “Best Football Name” are:
- Bronko Nagurski, which we concede is a good choice.
- Peerless Price, not a bad choice, but it doesn’t stir our soul.
- Dick Butkus, clearly the correct choice in TMQ Watch’s humble opinion.
- Kool-Aid McKinstry, which also fails to stir our soul (though we are sure he’s a good person).
The football gods were busy again. Viewer mail: “odious billionaire David Tepper” is in TMQ’s AutoCorrect. And more on the odious billionaire.
Hedge fund management. And Snyder apparently made his pile in advertising, among other ventures.
“Single Worst Busted Coverages of the Season”: Indianapolis.
And that’s a wrap for this week, folks. Tune in next week, when TMQ asks:
As one of TMQ’s readers pointed out in comments, isn’t “All Predictions Wrong” a disclaimer? (It used to be “all predictions wrong, or your money back”, but we guess TMQ abandoned that when he started charging for his Substack.) How about “May contain sports-like substance”?