NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets
Next week: the Raiders.
Archive for the ‘NFL’ Category
Your loser update: week 12, 2020.
Sunday, November 29th, 2020No! No, not Detroit!
Saturday, November 28th, 2020Coach Matt Patricia and GM Bob Quinn out in Detroit.
The two were tasked with elevating the Lions from their perpetual state of mediocrity to a perennial playoff contender, and instead brought more despair to a franchise that has not won a playoff game since 1992.
The Lions went 13-29-1 with Quinn and Patricia in charge and are in the midst of their third consecutive losing season. Patricia’s .314 winning percentage was far below that of the man he replaced. Jim Caldwell, who Quinn fired after going 9-7 in 2017, won 54.5% of his games, best among full-time Lions coaches in the expansion era.
I always say: “It’s not Thanksgiving until Detroit loses.” And the final straw seems to have been Detroit losing to Houston, 41-25.
Not exactly firings, but I don’t have any place else to put these:
1) The Denver Broncos have no quarterbacks for their game tomorrow against the Saints.
Driskel tested as COVID positive on Thursday.
2) Santa Clara County (who you may remember from “iPads for Permits”) has banned all contact sports in the county for the next three weeks, at all levels: San Francisco 49ers hardest hit.
You know, they told me if I looked hard enough, something positive would come out of this. And they were right.
Your loser update: week 11, 2020.
Sunday, November 22nd, 2020NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets
Next week: the 6-3 Miami Dolphins.
Your loser update: week 10, 2020.
Monday, November 16th, 2020NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets (bye week)
Next week: the worthless Los Angeles Chargers.
Obit watch: November 13, 2020.
Friday, November 13th, 2020…
Hornung scored a record 176 points in the 12-game 1960 season on 15 touchdowns, 41 extra points and 15 field goals. He also passed for two touchdowns that year.Hornung was the league’s most valuable player in 1961, when he scored a championship-game record 19 points (on a rushing touchdown, four extra points and three field goals) in the Packers’ 37-0 victory over the Giants.
All the while he pursued a robust night life of women and drink that seemed to have little effect on his on-field performance. His movie-star looks certainly had something to do with the attention: He was blond and handsome, 6 feet 2 inches and 215 pounds. He wore No. 5 in honor of his boyhood idol, Joe DiMaggio.
But Hornung’s career was marred when the N.F.L. commissioner, Pete Rozelle, suspended him indefinitely in the spring of 1963 for gambling on pro football, including Packer games, over several seasons. Hornung said he had bet on Green Bay only to win, and the league found no evidence to the contrary, but he remained suspended for the entire season. The ban was an outgrowth of an N.F.L. drive against gambling by players that also brought a one-year suspension for Alex Karras, the Detroit Lions’ star defensive tackle.
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Hornung expressed few regrets about his nightlife.
“I’m sure that during my playing days I wasn’t considered a good role model for the nation’s youth,” he wrote in his memoir. “But the way times have changed, I’d look like an altar boy if I played today. I never beat up a woman, carried a gun or a knife, shot somebody, or got arrested for disturbing the peace. I never even experimented with drugs during the season.
“All I did, really,” he went on, “was seek out fun wherever I could find it. Everything was all tied in together — the drinking, the womanizing, the partying, the traveling, the gambling. And, of course, football made it all possible.”
In other totally unrelated news, Hell is having a busy day today:
Tom Metzger, white supremacist.
Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”.
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Sutcliffe’s 13 known murder victims were Wilma McCann (1975), Emily Jackson (1976), Irene Richardson (1977), Patricia “Tina” Atkinson (1977), Jayne MacDonald (1977), Jean Jordan (1977), Yvonne Pearson (1978), Helen Rytka (1978), Vera Millward (1978), Josephine Whitaker (1979), Barbara Leach (1979), Marguerite Walls (1980) and Jacqueline Hill (1980).
He is also known to have attacked at least 9 other women: an unnamed woman (1969), Anna Rogulskyj (1975), Olive Smelt (1975), Tracy Browne (1975), Marcella Claxton (1976), Marilyn Moore (1977), Upadhya Bandara (1980), Maureen Lea (1980) and Theresa Sykes (1980). Claxton was four months pregnant when she was attacked, and lost the baby she was carrying.
Your loser update: week 9, 2020.
Tuesday, November 10th, 2020NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets
Next week is the Jets bye week. Vegas has the bye as a 14 point favorite over the Jets.
Your loser update: week 8, 2020.
Sunday, November 1st, 2020NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets
Next week, the Jets play New England on Monday night, so the loser update won’t go up until Tuesday morning.
Your loser update: week 7, 2020.
Monday, October 26th, 2020NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets
Next week, the 6-1 Chiefs.
Your loser update: week 6, 2020.
Monday, October 19th, 2020NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets
Down to one team after six weeks. I thought this was fairly rare, but it actually happened in 2016. And in 2015 and 2012, we had no losers at this point in the season.
Are the Jests bad enough to pull this off? My optimism is fading.
Your loser update: week 5, 2020.
Monday, October 12th, 2020NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Atlanta
New York Football Giants
New York Jets
Your loser update: week 4, 2020.
Tuesday, October 6th, 2020NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Atlanta
New York Football Giants
Houston
New York Jets
In related loser and sports firings news, having started the season 0-4, the Houston Texans have fired Bill O’Brien.
You know, I’m liking the chances for someone to go 0-16 this year. Not necessarily the Texans, but one of these four teams.
I missed the other big news yesterday.
Tuesday, September 29th, 2020There was another set of indictments that came down which I totally missed. And these are a surprise, though they don’t get the “tax-fattened hyena” tag.
Eight former NFL players and a Houston athletic trainer were indicted in a scheme to attempt to defraud an NFL player trust by submitting false claims for medical benefits, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced Monday.
The players, which include former Texans receiver Corey Bradford and linebacker Shantee Orr, are accused of submitting false reimbursement claims for physical therapy by Houston trainer Louis Ray, who owns Rehab Express in the Galleria area.
Apparently, this was the old “create fake invoices” scheme. The players would turn the invoices over to the “Gene Upshaw NFL Player Plan, a health-reimbursement account set up for former players”, get payments, pocket the money, and kick some back to Rehab Express for creating the invoices in the first place.
If I run the numbers on this after taking out Ray’s share, it works out to an average of about $76,000 per player. Which isn’t exactly small change, but it’s not in the sevenn or eight figure range where I would consider doing a crime and escaping to a country without an extradition treaty. Also, the payouts seem to have varied quite a bit:
Ray, 59, was indicted on a first-degree felony of Securing the Execution of a Document by Deception, for allegedly taking checks valued at more than $300,000.
Bradford, who was an original member of the Houston Texans in 2002 and played four seasons for the team, was indicted on a second-degree felony for allegedly taking checks valued at more than $150,000 and less than $300,000.
Orr, who played linebacker for the Texans from 2003 to 2007, was indicted for a third-degree felony for allegedly taking checks valued at more than $30,000 and less than $150,000. Fabian Washington, James Adkisson, Rex Hadnot, Clint Ingram and Chad Slaughter were indicted for the same.
Derrick Pope, who graduated from Galveston Ball High School and played linebacker for the Dolphins for four seasons, was indicted for a state-jail felony for allegedly taking checks worth more than $2,500 and less than $30,000.
Your loser update: week 3, 2020.
Monday, September 28th, 2020Cincinnati and Philadelphia tied, so both come off the list this week.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Atlanta
Minnesota
New York Football Giants
Denver
Houston
New York Jets
Obit watch: September 23, 2020.
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2020Gale Sayers, one of the great NFL players.
A consensus all-American at the University of Kansas — where he was called “the Kansas Comet” — Sayers chose to play for the Bears of the established N.F.L. over the Kansas City Chiefs of the upstart American Football League in 1965. He went on to have one of the greatest rookie seasons ever.
He led the league in all-purpose yards (rushing, receiving and runbacks) with 2,272 yards, scored 22 touchdowns, six of them in one game, and was named to the all-league team for the first of five consecutive years.
He was injured in 1968, went through knee surgery, and came back in 1969.
But 1969 became a somber season. For two years the Bears had matched players by position when they shared hotel rooms on the road. Sayers, who was Black, was paired with his backup, Brian Piccolo, who was white — apparently the first time a Black and white player had shared a hotel room for an N.F.L. team. The two men bonded, partly through racial jokes.
But in November that year Piccolo was found to have embryonic cell carcinoma of the lungs. Sent to the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he underwent surgery to remove a malignant tumor, but doctors found that the disease had spread to other organs.
The following May, Sayers was given the George S. Halas Award for the Most Courageous Player. In his acceptance speech, he said: “I love Brian Piccolo. I might have received this award tonight, but tomorrow I will take it to Brian Piccolo at Sloan Kettering. When you hit your knees tonight, please pray for Brian Piccolo.”
Piccolo died on June 16, 1970, at 26. Sayers was a pallbearer at his funeral.
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An injury to his left knee held Sayers to only two games in both 1970 and 1971. After fumbling twice in three carries in an exhibition game in 1972, he retired. He had scored 39 touchdowns in only 68 pro games and compiled a career average of 5.0 yards per carry.
In 1977, Sayers was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame at 34; he remains the youngest person to receive the honor. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame the same year.
Tommy DeVito, one of the original members of the Four Seasons. Interesting fact:
Ron Cobb, noted production designer and artist for SF films.
He created some creatures that appeared in the cantina scene of “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope” in 1977. He was also asked to help with spaceship illustrations for a movie pitch that would eventually become the 1979 blockbuster “Alien,” starring Sigourney Weaver.
Mr. Cobb’s work has appeared in several movies that have become classics of science fiction and fantasy. He designed scenes and costumes for the 1982 movie “Conan the Barbarian.” And he was a consultant for “Back to the Future” in 1985, helping to design the famous DeLorean time machine that transported Marty McFly, the character played by Michael J. Fox, back and forth through time.
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“He was passionate about making the science correct,” Ms. Love said. “He wanted accurate science, and he wanted great design.”
Mr. Bissell said Mr. Cobb devoured knowledge wherever he could find it and shared books on subjects including philosophy, technology and evolution. “Here’s a guy who actually just never cared about money,” Mr. Bissell said. “He always just cared about his work.”
Your loser update: week 2, 2020.
Monday, September 21st, 2020NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Carolina
Atlanta
Minnesota
Detroit
Philadelphia
New York Football Giants
Cincinnati
Denver
Houston
New York Jets
Miami
(Saints and Raiders are the Monday night game. Both are 1-0 at the moment.)