I knew that at least one team was going to come off the list (because of Washington – Miami). But I don’t think anyone was expecting Dallas to lose to the hapless Jets.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Miami
Cincinnati
I went back over my historical records, and it looks like we’re pretty much on track: the average number of teams with 0 wins at week 6 of the season is 1.6.
I didn’t think there was a whole lot to say this morning, but:
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets
Miami (bye week)
(Edited to add) Cincinnati (I think I accidentally deleted them when I was deleting Denver: thanks to Lawrence for pointing that out.)
Washington
As I was pulling this together, I started seeing reports that Jay Gruden is out as head coach of the Redskins. The reports are all “sources say” but there’s a press conference scheduled for 1 PM EDT.
Worth noting: next Sunday is this year’s edition of the “Who Cares?” bowl, in which Washington plays at Miami. I’m halfway tempted to watch this, as I kind of expect epic ineptitude on display.
Bill Bidwill, owner of the Arizona (formerly St. Louis) Cardinals.
I’m wondering if we’re going to see an NFL team for sale soon, and if that’s going to result in a possible relocation. LA and Las Vegas are off the map…but with the St. Louis Rams gone, and a past history for the Cardinals there…?
John Rothman. Kind of an obscure figure, but interesting: he pioneered electronic access to the NYT archives.
…
In 1972, Times staff members began testing the Information Bank as a research tool. It would soon augment the paper’s archives, known as the morgue, where file cabinets are packed with clippings dating to the 19th century. In Times Talk, the paper’s in-house newsletter, Mr. Rothman assured colleagues that “once the basic methods” of searching the Information Bank were mastered, “retrieving the information is quite simple.”
In late 1972, the first installation of the Information Bank outside The New York Times was made at the University of Pittsburgh’s Hillman Library. Within six months, its 14 customers included NBC, The Associated Press, the State Department, the C.I.A., the Library of Congress, Exxon and the Chase Manhattan Bank.
I’ve been running behind, so for this historical record: Jessye Norman.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets (bye week)
Miami
Cincinnati
Denver
Washington
In other news about minor sports, it looks like I was wrong in thinking there wasn’t going to be a historically bad baseball team this year. At least, depending on how you define “historically bad”.
The Detroit Tigers finished 47-114 (one game towards the end of the season was cancelled and they didn’t have a chance to play a make-up) for a .292 average. Wikipedia’s cutoff for “worst Major League Baseball season records” is .300 or below, which puts them 16th on the list for the “modern” era. (Wikipedia has them at .291, or .001 better than the 2018 Baltimore Orioles. I’m not sure why they give different numbers than MLB.com, but I’m going to blame floating point math.)
Speaking of Baltimore, they finished 54-108, with a .333 winning percentage. 108 losses is kind of pathetic, but…
Orioles GM Mike Elias finds positives in rebuild after 108-loss season
“Hey, we stank. But at least we weren’t the worst team in MLB this year! And we didn’t lose as many games as we did last year!”
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets
Miami
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
Denver
Washington
I’m liking the Jets and Dolphins chances, but it is still early.
It looks like the baseball season is still going on, so next week’s loser update may include some commentary. I don’t think there’s a historically bad team this year, but Detroit could come close.
Andy Green out as manager of the San Diego Padres. 274-366 over basically four years, during which the team never finished above .500. And they lost at least 90 games in the first three seasons. (They’re 69-85 right now.) ESPN.
Obit: Barron Hilton, son of Conrad Hilton, grandfather of Paris, and last survivor of the original AFL team owners. Sadly, the team he owned was the worthless Los Angeles (at the time) Chargers, but that was hardly his fault.
Marko Feingold. He was Austria’s oldest survivor of the Holocaust, and died at 106.
New York Post at its very best pic.twitter.com/ZSNNXSvFMh
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) September 21, 2019
(Hattip on the Feingold and Green stories to Lawrence. Hattip on the de Blasio obit to Mike the Musicologist.)
Well, things are shaping up. The Jets are using a practice squad quarterback as their starter, Pittsburgh lost their starting quarterback for the season, the Saints lost theirs for six weeks…and the Browns won. Even with the Browns winning, I’m excited about the prospects for an 0-16 team this year.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets
Miami
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
Jacksonville
Denver
Washington
New York Football Giants
Carolina
Welcome back, folks. Another year, another tie in the first game of the season, which means that the Lions and Cardinals (per our policy) are out of 0-16 contention.
Fortunately, there are a couple of teams that we think have a good shot at going all the way this year. In honor of the late great Manhattan Infidel, though, we plan to avoid jokes and snark at the expense of the Giants. Well, mostly.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
da Bears
New York Jets
Miami
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Pittsburgh
Houston
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Denver
Washington
New York Football Giants
Carolina
Atlanta
Tampa Bay
Cedric Benson, former UT and NFL player, was reportedly killed in a motorcycle accident last night.
He was 36. Reports are that a passenger on his motorcycle was also killed.
Looks like the NFL is getting fired up again.
Yes, the loser update will return this year. We haven’t sat down to consider which teams are likely candidates for the Owen-16 trophy, but maybe we’ll get some time to do that between now and the start of the regular season.
But we are sure everyone is asking this question: what of Gregg Easterbrook and “Tuesday Morning Quarterback”? Has he found a new home, since the “Weekly Standard” folded up their tent and headed into the long dark night? And what of “TMQ Watch”? Will that be a recurring feature next year?
To answer the last question first: sadly, no. No “TMQ Watch” in 2019. Why?
To answer many inquiries from Tuesday Morning Quarterback aficionados – just finished novel #4, researching nonfiction book #7, there are only so many hours in the day. So no TMQ this season. Not ruling out for future. pic.twitter.com/sKkPielXIM
— Gregg Easterbrook (@EasterbrookG) August 11, 2019
Not our choice, Easterbrook’s. We may try to keep an eye on his Twitter feed for noteworthy items relating to the NFL. But we’ve found that Easterbrook’s Twitter feed is a reliable way of pressure testing our cerebral arteries, so we don’t recommend making bets on how much and how often we’ll be doing that.
The paper of record has updated their Hal Prince, “Giant of Broadway and Reaper of Tonys” obit in place.
They’ve also added three corrections. So far.
I do like this a lot:
As both a producer and a director, Mr. Prince was a nurturer of unproved talent. Tom Bosley, for instance, later known as Howard Cunningham on the nostalgic television sitcom “Happy Days,” won a Tony in his first starring role in 1959 as the titular mayor of New York, La Guardia, in “Fiorello!” Liza Minnelli made her first Broadway appearance — and won a Tony — as the title character in “Flora, the Red Menace,” a 1965 politically-inflected musical set in 1935 about a spunky fashion designer who falls for a Communist. Produced by Mr. Prince and directed by George Abbott, “Flora” also featured the first Broadway score by the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, who later wrote “Chicago” and two shows produced and directed by Mr. Prince: “Zorba” and “Cabaret.”
A featured actor in “Cabaret,” Joel Grey, was a largely unknown nightclub performer with few theater credits when Mr. Prince hired him in 1966 for what turned out to be a career-defining role: the arch, leering M.C. of the bawdy Kit Kat Club in Weimar-era Berlin.
I think that’s one of the nicest things you can say about anybody in an obit: they were good at spotting and developing unknown talents.
Five performances. I thought the original production of “Carrie” ran for eight performances, but no: it only ran for five as well.
Also among the dead: Nick Buoniconti, linebacker for the Miami Dolphins in the 1970s (yes, he was one of the players on the 1972 team).
Mr. Buoniconti’s son, Marc, was paralyzed in a football accident in 1985. Mr. Buoniconti founded the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis:
For more than 30 years afterward, Buoniconti helped raise nearly $500 million for spinal cord and brain research carried out by the organization. He also played a critical role in directing the research and was a charismatic motivator of scientists and researchers.
Dr. Barth Green, a neurosurgeon and longtime chairman of the Miami Project, said in a phone interview: “People are walking now because of cellular transplants and the latest neuroengineering and bioengineering that has been applied to humans with disability. Nick was a stimulating force in that area, from bench to bedside. And this is someone who probably never took a science course.”
Pat Bowlen, Denver Broncos owner. Not much to say about this, other than it will be interesting to watch the ownership situation play out. NYT. ESPN.
Anthony Price, British author of espionage novels. I had not heard of him before last week, but John le Carré praises his work highly in The Pigeon Tunnel.
The Houston Texans have fired general manager Brian Gaine.
Lawrence tipped me off to this and forwarded a link to Battle Red Blog, which uses the word “bonkers” to describe this. It does seem odd to me: the season hasn’t started, after all. But it makes more sense to fire him after the draft – especially if the draft was a bust – than to fire him before and leave a new GM scrambling.
But was the draft that bad for the Texans? Honestly, I don’t know. I didn’t follow it closely.
Bart Starr, one of the greatest of the Green Bay Packers. NYT.
Starr’s name may have been the most flamboyant thing about him. But he proved to be skilled, sly and, by at least one measure, incomparably successful: He won three N.F.L. championships (for the seasons played in 1961, ’62 and ’65) in the pre-Super Bowl era, and then the first two Super Bowls, in January of 1967 and ’68. That Packers’ run of N.F.L. championships helped bring new attention to professional football as it moved into the Super Bowl era. (With his victory in 2019, Tom Brady has won six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots.)
Starr was named the league’s most valuable player in 1966 and received the same honor in Super Bowls I and II. He was selected to the Pro Bowl four times. And on a team known for running — with the flashy Paul Hornung and the rugged Jim Taylor (who died in October) — Starr was one of the league’s most efficient passers. He led the N.F.L. in that crucial category in three seasons and, on average, for all of the 1960s — even though his rival Johnny Unitas of the Baltimore Colts was often viewed as better. Starr set career records for completion percentage, 57.4, and consecutive passes without an interception, 294.
Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel prize winning theoretical physicist.
Much as atoms can be slotted into the rows and columns of the periodic table of the elements, Dr. Gell-Mann found a way, in 1961, to classify their smaller pieces — subatomic particles like protons, neutrons, and mesons, which were being discovered by the dozen in cosmic rays and particle accelerator blasts. Arranged according to their properties, the particles clustered in groups of eight and 10.
In a moment of whimsy, Dr. Gell-Mann, who hadn’t a mystical bone in his body, named his system the Eightfold Way after the Buddha’s eight-step path to enlightenment. He groaned ever after when people mistakenly inferred that particle physics was somehow related to Eastern philosophy.
Looking deeper, Dr. Gell-Mann realized that the patterns of the Eightfold Way could be further divided into triplets of even smaller components. He decided to call them quarks after a line from James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake”: “Three quarks for Muster Mark.”
Edmund Morris, biographer. I’m slowly working my way through his Theodore Roosevelt biographies, and I’d argue he’s at least as famous for those as he is for Dutch:
The columnist George Will attacked “Dutch” as “dishonorable,” and the writer Joan Didion accused Mr. Morris of resorting to the fictional device to conceal his own inadequacies as a fact-gatherer.
One of his toughest critics, Michiko Kakutani of The Times, called the book a “loony hodgepodge of fact and fiction” about a president that mimicked “the very blurring of reality and state-managed illusion that that president was often accused of perpetrating.”
No judgment intended here: this is in last place because it is breaking news. Bill Buckner passed away a short time ago.
He was most famous, unfortunately, for bobbling a play during game 6 of the World Series in 1986, costing the Red Sox the game and probably the Series. But there are other Sox fans who can speak with more authority on Mr. Buckner and his legacy.