Executive vice president of football operations Jack Easterby out in Houston.
More from Pro Football Network by way of Lawrence.
Not much more to add to this, really: nobody seems unhappy with Easterby’s performance in the role. There’s a lot of “it was just time”.
The Texas are 1-3-1 and had a bye this past week.
Matt Rhule deposed as head coach of the Carolina Panthers, in the first NFL coach firing this season.
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As with the offensive coordinator dilemma, Rhule never identified a long-term, efficient quarterback. The team signed journeyman Teddy Bridgewater to lead the offense in 2020, but he was traded to the Denver Broncos following a 5-11 debut season under Rhule.
The Panthers traded three draft picks to the New York Jets for former first-round pick Sam Darnold last offseason. Darnold faltered as the franchise QB in Carolina, as he did in New York, and the Panthers remained on the hook for his salary through this season after picking up his fifth-year option following the trade to acquire him.
This summer, the Panthers tried to upgrade the QB spot by trading for former first overall pick Baker Mayfield. Through five games, Mayfield has struggled mightily, completing just 54.9% of his passes for 962 yards, four touchdowns and four interceptions.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
None.
Didn’t watch any of the games, again: I’ve been feeling kind of puny and spent most of yesterday sleeping. But the Raiders won, and that ends the loser update for 2022.
We’ll see you again in 2023, assuming we’re all still here.
Gavin Escobar, former tight end for the Dallas Cowboys. He was 31, and had been working for the Long Beach Fire Department. According to reports, he and Chelsea Walsh died in an apparent rock climbing accident “in San Bernardino National Forest near Tahquitz Rock”.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Las Vegas
Still nothing much to say about the weekend’s games, since I was busy having fun all day yesterday. But I will throw in a quick obit watch: The Pro Bowl.
Dear Mr. Chubb:
When your team’s defense gives up 13 points in the last two minutes of a game – the first time this has happened in 21 years – the loss is not your fault.
Just saying.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Cincinnati
Tennessee
Las Vegas
Atlanta
Carolina
Not a whole lot to say this week. I didn’t catch a minute of any of the games.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
New England
Jets
Cincinnati
Jacksonville
Tennessee
Denver
Las Vegas
Dallas
Detroit
Green Bay
Atlanta
Carolina
San Francisco
Arizona
Rams
I happened to be out at lunch with my mother on Sunday, sitting directly across from a TV playing the Houston-Indianapolis game. When we sat down, it was 20-3 Houston and the Texas seemed to be playing well. When we got up to leave, it was 20-6 and Indy was in scoring position after a Houston fumble.
Houston teams will always disappoint you.
Stolen by me from my beloved and indulgent aunt:
Edited to add: I went through this list of Cleveland Browns starting quarterbacks and tried to come up with a count. I may be off, but I didn’t come up with 59.
I came up with 64.
That’s Cleveland content, for my peeps in Ohio.
Daniel Stashower (The Beautiful Cigar Girl) has a new book out: American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt for America’s Jack the Ripper, about the Cleveland Torso Murders.
He also has a good piece up at CrimeReads tied to the book and his family history in Cleveland. I had no idea he was a good Cleveland boy.
I’m probably going to wait to buy this one, but that has nothing to do with Mr. Stashower, and more to do with the fact that I’ve read a fair amount about Eliot Ness and the hunt for the torso murderer. That includes a good write-up in Bill James’s Popular Crime and (I think) the original version of In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland’s Torso Murders.
On the lighter side, Field of Schemes has a good piece up on the quest for a new Browns stadium:
As I’ve said before, FoS runs a little left for my taste, but the one thing we agree on is opposition to giving money to sports teams.
(For the record, my Cleveland relatives who are sports fans informed me that they have given up on the Browns this year, as they are completely disgusted with their handling of the Watson debacle. I think this also means I can make jokes about the Browns without feeling guilty.)
This is stretching the definition of “Cleveland content” a little bit: Cedar Point is about an hour from Cleveland, but that’s close enough that a good number of Clevelanders go there. Anyway, Cedar Point is shutting down the Top Thrill Dragster coaster.
The Top Thrill Dragster gained fame for reaching speeds of 120 mph in just 3.8 seconds…
At the time it opened in 2003, it was the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. But it was later eclipsed by the Kingda Ka ride at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey.
The coaster had been closed since last August, after a woman was badly injured. Top Thrill Dragster entry on Wikipedia.
The NFL regular season begins Thursday, September 8th.
The loser update will return on Tuesday, September 13th (since we have to wait for the results of the Monday night game).
In honor of great and good friend of the blog, pigpen51, we promise that we will try to avoid Detroit Lions jokes as much as possible this year.
In honor of great and good friend of the blog, Manhattan Infidel (who recently returned to blogging), we promise that we will try to avoid New York Football Giants jokes as much as possible this year.
Len Dawson, one of the greats. NYT.
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In 1987, Dawson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, just 20 miles from his childhood home of Alliance, Ohio. Dawson, inducted into the Chiefs Hall of Fame in 1979, also was selected 1972 NFL Man of the Year, an award that honors a player’s contributions both on the field and in the community.
Dawson’s work as a broadcaster was recognized in 2012, when he received the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame, 25 years after he was enshrined as a player. Dawson, Frank Gifford, Dan Dierdorf and John Madden are the only members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame who also received the Rozelle Award, which recognizes “longtime exceptional contributions to radio and television in professional football.”
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More important to Dawson was the contribution he and the Chiefs played in Kansas City, a town searching for its major-league identity.
“The games themselves don’t mean that much,” he said. “You tend to forget the details. But our success was important to Kansas City. I like to think our football team played a part in changing the minds of people about Kansas City. That is the most significant thing to me.”
Tim Page, Vietnam war photographer. (Alt link.)
A freelancer and a free spirit whose Vietnam pictures appeared in publications around the world during the 1960s, he was seriously wounded four times, most severely when a piece of shrapnel took a chunk out of his brain and sent him into months of recovery and rehabilitation.
Mr. Page was one of the most vivid personalities among a corps of Vietnam photographers whose images helped shape the course of the war — and was a model for the crazed, stoned photographer played by Dennis Hopper in “Apocalypse Now.”
Michael Herr, in his 1977 book “Dispatches,” called him the most extravagant of the “wigged-out crazies” in Vietnam, who “liked to augment his field gear with freak paraphernalia, scarves and beads.”
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He published a dozen books, including two memoirs, and most notably “Requiem” a collection of pictures by photographers on all sides who had been killed in the various Indochina wars.
Issued in 1997 and co-authored by his fellow photographer Horst Faas, it was a memorial that he considered one of his most important contributions. The collection was put on permanent display in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina (affiliate link to used copies on Amazon). I’ve mentioned it before, but I think this is a great book.
His closest encounter with death came in April 1969 when he stepped out of a helicopter to help offload wounded soldiers and was hit with shrapnel when a soldier near him stepped on a mine.
He was pronounced dead at a military hospital, then was revived, then died and was revived again, finally recovering enough to be transferred to the United States, where he endured months of rehabilitation and therapy before picking up his cameras and heading back to work.
During this time, in an event that consumed much of his later life, two fellow photographers headed on motorcycles down an empty road in Cambodia in search of Khmer Rouge guerrillas and never returned.
Over the following decades, Mr. Page made repeated forays into the Cambodian countryside in a futile search for the remains of the two men, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone.
This goes unmentioned in the obit, and isn’t strictly relevant, but I find it an interesting historical footnote: Sean Flynn was Errol Flynn’s son (by his first wife, Lili Damita). To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Flynn and Mr. Stone have never been found: “In 1984, Flynn’s mother had him declared dead in absentia.”
Personal indulgence: Doris Emily Bedford Gerlat. She was the mother of my beloved and indulgent Uncle Allan (who is married to my beloved and indulgent Aunt Cheryl: the two of them are responsible for the Major Award among other things).
Jaylon Ferguson, linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens. He was 26.
Maureen Arthur. Beyond “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”, she was also in “The Love God?” as “Evelyn Tremaine” (the wife/cover girl of pornographer “Osborn Tremaine”). Other credits include “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, “Night Gallery”, “Mork & Mindy”, “CPO Sharkey”, and “Get Smart”.
Marion Barber III, of the Dallas Cowboys. (He also spent one season with Chicago.) He was 38.
Barber led the Cowboys in rushing for three consecutive seasons. The highlight of his time with the club came in 2007, when he rushed for 975 yards with 10 touchdowns and was named to the Pro Bowl for a Dallas team that compiled a 13-3 record.
Barber finished his career with 4,780 rushing yards and 53 touchdowns. He caught 179 passes for another 1,330 yards and six touchdowns.
Krishna Kumar Kunnath, aka “KK”, Bollywood singer. He was 53.
KK had been performing in an auditorium packed with college students when, after singing his last song of the evening, cameras caught him wiping his brow as he was led offstage in a hurry.
He was declared dead at a hospital soon after. The cause was not yet known, his publicist said.