I think maybe panic is worth considering now.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Miami
Houston
Tennessee
Chargers
Tampa Bay
Houston is 0-4, which surprises me. But…is there a chance, maybe a slim one, but a chance, that the worthless Chargers could go 0-17 this year?
A man can hope, can’t he? Isn’t hope what defines humanity?
NHL teams that still have a chance of going 0-84:
Detroit
Philadelphia
Dallas
Chicago
Los Angeles Kings
Calgary
Still on the road, so not a whole lot of sophisticated commentary this week.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Miami
Houston
Tennessee
Chargers
Tampa Bay
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Miami
Houston
Indianapolis
Tennessee
Chargers
Washington
Tampa Bay
Atlanta
Still early in the season. Probably still to early to panic. But: Houston is 0-2? Washington looks to be in trouble. And the worthless Chargers are 0-2 as well.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Miami
New England
Cleveland
Houston
Indianapolis
Tennessee
Denver
Chargers
Washington
Dallas
Green Bay
Carolina
New Orleans
Tampa Bay
Atlanta
Rams
Remember, it is just the first week of the season. There’s still plenty of time to panic.
The start of the NFL season sort of snuck up on me while I was out of town.
The loser update will return sometime on Tuesday (should be back by then) to allow for the results of the Monday night games.
Tim Curry. NYT share link (may require registration or an email address or something).
Oddly, I have never seen “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. I didn’t move in the right circles when I was in school, and now it seems like that particular moment has passed.
Other credits include “Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties”, the 2000 “Charlie’s Angels”, “The Blues Brothers Animated Series“, and “Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain”.
The NFL Pro Bowl. Awful Announcing. Enough said.
Brenda Fricker, actress.
Other credits include “A Time to Kill”, “Quatermass” (1979), “The Quatermass Conclusion” (1979), and “Angels in the Outfield”.
I’m a little behind on this, but: Janice McNair, co-founder of the Houston Texans. NFL.com. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Lance Rentzel. He was 82.
Mr. Rentzel started out with the Vikings, but didn’t do that well, mostly due to injuries. He was traded to the Cowboys, and was a solid player. Quoting Wikipedia:
He was on top of the world. He married Joey Heatherton in 1969. But he had a problem.
In 1966, he exposed himself to two young girls in St. Paul. That incident didn’t get a lot of attention, and he pled down to “disorderly conduct”. But in 1970, he exposed himself to a 10-year old girl in University Park, Texas. That got more attention: Ms. Heatherton divorced him, and he was traded to the LA Rams. He was less successful there, and was suspended at the start of the 1973 season after being convicted of possession of marijuana. (He was still on probation for the indecent exposure charge.)
He also wrote a book, When All the Laughter Died in Sorrow, which I have in a box somewhere but haven’t read.
There were rumors a few weeks ago that the Christmas special was going to be cancelled, as the BBC and showrunners couldn’t find anybody who was willing to play “Doctor Who”.
Master Gunnery Sgt. Juan Jose Valdez (USMC – ret.). He was 88.
Sergeant Valdez was the last American service member out of Saigon on April 30, 1975.
…
…
Before loading helicopters at the embassy, Marines searched evacuees for weapons and threw any they found into a swimming pool. At dawn on April 30, Ambassador Graham Martin, carrying the American flag that had been lowered in the compound, boarded one of the last flights out. Sergeant Valdez and a handful of Marines stayed behind to protect his departure.
Panicked civilians soon broke through the gates and surged up the stairways of the chancery. The Marines retreated to the rooftop, barricaded the access door and waited for their own ride out. They could see North Vietnamese troops converging in the street.
Maj. James Kean, the commanding officer of the Marine guards, recalled years later in an interview with CBS News, “There were 17 divisions of North Vietnamese coming across the bridges into Saigon, and when the sun came up, we saw them.”
When the last helicopter, a CH-46 Sea Knight, descended to the rooftop, Sergeant Valdez stood back as Major Kean and nine enlisted men got on board first. Sergeant Valdez was nearly left behind: He was thrown off balance and fell on the rear boarding ramp as the pilot lifted off.
“The ramp, you could see behind me, it was starting to go up, and that helicopter wanted to get the hell out of there,” he recalled in a 2021 interview.
Staff Sgt. Mike Sullivan, one of the men already onboard, told The Los Angeles Times in 1990 what happened next.
“I looked at the back of the helicopter door, and I noticed two hands hanging there,” Sergeant Sullivan said.
Sergeant Valdez was grabbed and pulled aboard. It was approximately 8 a.m. on April 30, 1975. After a 30-minute flight, the chopper arrived at the U.S.S. Okinawa offshore.
When Holtz, slender and bespectacled, arrived at Notre Dame in 1986, taking on college football’s most pressure-packed post, he hardly projected the image of a tough coach who might inspire his players to win one for a latter-day Gipper.
“I’m not very smart and I’m not very impressive,” he remarked. “I’m 5-10, weigh 152 pounds, speak with a lisp, appear afflicted with a combination of scurvy and beriberi, and I ranked 234th in a high school class of 278.”
…
He did have a short and unsuccessful season with the New York Jets in 1976, which was also Joe Namath’s final season.
His team was 3-10 when he resigned with one game left in the season, walking away from a five-year contact to become head coach at the University of Arkansas.
“God did not put Lou Holtz on this earth to coach pro football,” he said.
In his memoir, he wrote, “My short-lived tenure in the N.F.L. has been a source of embarrassment for me, not because the Jets didn’t do very well under my leadership (they did not), but as a result of a so-so commitment on my part.”
…
When he was 28 years old with three young children, little family savings and his prospects of becoming a collegiate head football coach in doubt, Holtz set down life goals, professional and personal. He came up with 108 items.
While Notre Dame was preparing for its 1989 Fiesta Bowl game with West Virginia, he said he had accomplished 84 of those goals, among them sitting next to Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show,” meeting the pope and dining at the White House.
Holtz, a practicing Roman Catholic, met Pope John Paul II while touring the Vatican. Even before his award from President Trump, he was invited to the White House by President Ronald Reagan (who in the role of Notre Dame’s George Gipp in the 1940 film “Knute Rockne All American” implored Rockne from his deathbed to “just win one for the Gipper”). He also accepted invitations from Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who was governor of Arkansas during part of Holtz’s coaching tenure there.
Awful Announcing:
ESPN.
LaTroy Lewis fired as “assistant defensive line coach” of the Atlanta Falcons.
What makes this mildly interesting is: he was hired February 10th.
Mr. Lewis is accused of assaulting a woman while he was working for Michigan.
Oh, Minnesota.
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah out as general manager of the Minnesota Vikings.
And Derek Falvey out as president of the Minnesota Twins.
…
Falvey’s departure was framed publicly as a mutual decision to part ways.
Missed this the other day, but Joe Lombardi out as offensive coordinator in Denver.
Wide receivers coach Keary Colbert and cornerbacks coach Addison Lynch also were fired.
Kevin Abrams out at the New York Football Giants. I can’t exactly figure out what his title was: at one point, he was assistant general manager, but he gave that up in 2022, according to the linked article.
Also out: defensive line coach Andre Patterson, inside linebackers coach John Egorugwu, secondary coach/pass game coordinator Marquand Manuel, and cornerbacks coach Jeff Burris.
All of this is being attributed to John Harbaugh coming in and cleaning house.
I’ve been silent the past few days because there hasn’t been a lot to write about. Now there is.
The Buffalo Bills fired coach Sean McDermott.
This is very breaking: the Buffalo News story is short and mostly video. ESPN. NFL Network.
98-50 over nine seasons, with an 8-8 playoff record.
Sounds like a good start. Now, if they would just shut down the team, ban the players from the NFL for life, burn the stadium, practice facilities, and offices, plow the rubble into the earth, sow the ground with salt, and drive the players and staff before us in chains while we listen to the lamentations of their women, I’d be well on my way to happy.
(Subject line hattip. Shoutout to Lawrence Block.)
Mike Tomlin is out as coach of the Steelers.
But is it a firing?
This sure sounds like a resignation, not a firing. But there was a lot of speculation around the Steelers: many people expressed a belief that the team had grown stagnent under Tomlin, and there might be a change coming.
Nineteen years, never a losing season. But seven straight playoff losses, including to the Texans last night.
ESPN.
In other news, offensive coordinator Greg Roman and offensive line coach Mike Devlin are out at the worthless LA Chargers.
Sounds like a good start. Now, if they would just shut down the team, ban the players from the NFL for life, burn the stadium, practice facilities, and offices, plow the rubble into the earth, sow the ground with salt, and drive the players and staff before us while we listen to the lamentations of their women, I’d be well on my way to happy.
Kevin Patullo out as offensive coordinator in Philadelphia.
Mike McDaniel out as head coach of the Miami Dolphins.
Four seasons, 35-33 overall, 7-10 this season.
McDaniel’s first two seasons in Miami corresponded with a high-octane offense, back-to-back playoff berths for the first time since the early 2000s. That achievement put him alongside Don Shula and Dave Wannstedt as the only coaches in franchise history to make the postseason in their first two years.
Everything changed in 2024. Two games into the season and the Dolphins down 31-10 to the Buffalo Bills, Tagovailoa sustained a concussion. Miami would go 1-3 during Tagovailoa’s four-game stint on injured reserve. His return would yield middling results — the Dolphins went 5-4 but lost key matchups to the Green Bay Packers and Houston Texans — before he once again was injured, this time with a hip.
Also: Josh Grizzard out as offensive coordinator and Thad Lewis out as offensive assistant in Tampa Bay.