Frank Reich fired as head coach of hapless the Carolina Panthers. ESPN for the archive challenged.
The Panthers are currently 1-10. Which, by a curious coincidence, is also the number of games Frank Reich coached.
Archive for the ‘NFL’ Category
Well, that’s done.
Monday, November 27th, 2023TMQ Watch watch.
Sunday, November 26th, 2023Well. Well well well. Well.
We were, as a matter of fact, sitting in church this morning, waiting for the service to start, when we received an email.
Someone who wishes to remain monogamous anonymous has gifted us a one-month subscription to Gregg Easterbrook’s Substack.
Our first reaction was: we’d really like to know who this person is. Perhaps they will out themselves in comments?
Our second reaction was: what a kind and thoughtful present to kick off the season of giving. Thank you, masked man!
Our third reaction was: how are we going to work this? At the very least, we feel an obligation to do a TMQ Watch for each new TMQ going forward. Should we go back and do the ones from earlier in the season? That’s doubtful, because the temptation to view them through the lens of hindsight is very high. Also, we currently have two major projects we’re working on for the Smith and Wesson Collector’s Association, so we don’t have as much time as we would like.
But we will promise to TMQ Watch TMQ, starting with this coming Tuesday’s entry. And, even though it is only a month subscription, we will promise to TMQ Watch TMQ through his post-Superb Owl column, which should wrap up the TMQ season. Even if we have to pay out of our own pocket. (That is not to say that we will not accept another gift subscription for another month, but even if that doesn’t happen, we’ll take on the assignment anyway.)
Firings watch.
Friday, November 24th, 2023Jack Del Rio out as defensive coordinator of the Washington NFL team.
The Commanders’ defense ranks last in points allowed and 29th in yards allowed — one year after ranking seventh and third, respectively, in those categories. The Commanders consistently gave up big plays and failed to make many of their own.
Washington has allowed a league-high 49 pass plays of 20 yards or more. The Commanders haven’t intercepted a pass in the past six games or caused a turnover in the past three.
Washington lost 45-10 to Dallas yesterday, is 4-8 this season, has lost three games in a row and eight out of the last 10.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Wednesday, November 22nd, 2023You know, I always say “It’s just not Thanksgiving until the Detroit Lions lose.”
But this year, the Lions are 8-2. And they are favored by a good margin over Green Bay. While I am generally sympathetic to the Packers because of their unusual structure (as you know, Bob) they are 4-6 this year, and I kind of resent the way the team is being run.
Plus, pigpen51.
So I find myself in the unusual position this year, in terms of rooting for laundry, of actually hoping that..the Detroit Lions win.
What mad universe is this, anyway?
Blame Canada! Blame Canada!
Tuesday, November 21st, 2023Matt Canada out as offensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Non-archive link, extremely aggressive about turning off your ad blocker. Archive link, which may not work for some people. ESPN, which will probably work for almost everyone.
Firings watch.
Wednesday, November 1st, 2023What a great time of year. We’re in the middle of a cold snap right now…
…and the Raiders fired head coach Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler.
McDaniels and Ziegler, both hired in January 2022, inherited a 10-7 team that made an unexpected run to the playoffs during the 2021 season — the organization’s second postseason bid since 2002 — under interim coach Rich Bisaccia and then-GM Mike Mayock, who took over following the in-season resignation of coach Jon Gruden.
Davis said at the time that McDaniels and Ziegler were expected to take the team to the “next step” in its evolution. Instead, the Raiders went a combined 9-16 without a playoff appearance under the new regime, as McDaniels finished his tenure with the third-worst record of any Raiders coach with at least 25 games.
Edited to add: ESPN is now reporting that the Raiders also fired Mick Lombardi, offensive coordinator.
da Bears fired David Walker, running backs coach.
Interestingly, while da Bears stink, the firing apparently wasn’t for that reason, but for unspecified “workplace conduct” issues.
Also interestingly:
Your loser update: weeks 6 and 7, 2023.
Sunday, October 15th, 2023NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Carolina
Next week, Carolina and Houston (along with a few other teams) have a bye week.
I call out Carolina and Houston specifically because they play each other in week 8 (on October 29th): it will be a home game for Carolina. As I write this (and with the understanding that this is two weeks out) Houston is favored.
Obit watch: October 12, 2023.
Thursday, October 12th, 2023Walt Garrison, legendary Dallas Cowboy, rodeo competetor, and Skoal endorser.
His best season was 1971, where he scored 10 touchdowns and had 1,174 total yards, and it was capped off by a 24-3 Super Bowl victory over Miami. He was named to the Pro Bowl that season.
A knee injury Garrison suffered while steer wrestling in 1975 ultimately ended his NFL career. He retired from Dallas as the third-leading rusher and fourth-leading receiver in team history.
Phyllis Coates, actress. Other credits include three appearances on “Perry Mason”, “Midnight Caller”, “The Untouchables”, and “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”.
Jeff Burr, director. IMDB. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Michael Chiarello, celebrity chef.
Rudolph Isley, of the Isley Brothers.
Your loser update: week 5, 2023.
Sunday, October 8th, 2023NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Carolina
Not much more to say, really.
Obit watch: October 6, 2023.
Friday, October 6th, 2023Dick Butkus, one of the greats. ESPN.
At 6 feet 3 inches and 245 pounds, good size for his era, Butkus stuffed running plays up the middle. He was also speedy and mobile enough to drop back and foil opponents’ pass plays. He was cited as a first-team All-Pro five times and was chosen for the Pro Bowl game eight times. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility.
Sacks did not become an official statistic until 1982, so the number of times Butkus smothered opposing quarterbacks remains unrecorded. But he was considered to have intercepted 22 passes and recovered 27 fumbles while playing for the Bears from 1965 to 1973.
…
Butkus was chosen by the Bears in the first round, third overall, in the 1965 N.F.L. draft and by the Denver Broncos of the American Football League in its second round. He went with his hometown team, a storied N.F.L. franchise owned and coached by the future Hall of Famer George Halas. In his rookie season, he intercepted five passes and recovered seven fumbles.
But the Bears fell on hard times during Butkus’s years. They won 49 games, lost 74, tied four and never reached the playoffs. In his last few seasons, Butkus played on with a badly injured right knee despite having undergone surgery. In May 1974, having retired, he sued the Bears for $1.6 million, contending that the team had not provided him with the medical and hospital care it had promised in a five-year contract he signed in July 1973. The case was settled out of court.
He also did some acting.
Joe Christopher, one of the original 1962 Mets.
He was a part-time player in 1962 — the perfectly awful “Amazin’ Mets,” as their manager, Casey Stengel, called them, had a 40-120-1 record that season — when he got batting tips from a Mets coach, the renowned Rogers Hornsby, who hit over .400 three times in the 1920s.
“He was sitting in hotel lobbies,” Christopher recalled in an unpublished interview in 2010 with George Vecsey, a sports columnist for The New York Times. Christopher recalled Hornsby telling him that the secret of hitting was “don’t let the pitcher jam home plate” and “it’s not about contact, it’s impact.”
…
In June, when he was hitting .307, he talked about getting a chance to play full time.
“I always knew I could hit, but nobody up here believed me,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I always hit well in the minors, but when I got to the majors nobody had any confidence in me.” He added, “They just wouldn’t give me a chance to play regularly. There was always that worry that if I went 0 for 4 I’d be on the bench the next day.”
He finished the season at .300, 16th best in the National League and only the third time a Met had reached that level. (The Mets’ Ron Hunt hit .303 that season.) He also led the Mets with 76 runs batted in and was second in home runs with 16.
…
He had a career batting average of .260, with 29 home runs and 173 R.B.I.
Keith Jefferson, actor. IMDB.
Russell Sherman, pianist.
…
Mr. Sherman was in many ways an anti-virtuoso; he devoted much of his time to other interests, like poetry, philosophy and photography. In the late 1950s, instead of becoming a touring concert pianist, he left New York to teach piano at Pomona College in California and the University of Arizona in Tucson.
In 1967, he began a long tenure at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, hired by its president at the time, the composer Gunther Schuller. Mr. Schuller, who founded GM Recordings in 1981, produced a Beethoven album by Mr. Sherman, who became the first American pianist to record the complete Beethoven sonatas and piano concertos.
On a GM Recording album, “Russell Sherman: Premieres and Commissions,” Mr. Sherman performed works composed for him in the 1990s by Mr. Schuller, Robert Helps, George Perle and Ralph Shapey. His recordings also include works by Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as Chopin Mazurkas, the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas and Bach’s English Suites.
…
Some two decades later, Allan Kozinn wrote in The Times that Mr. Sherman’s “interpretive style, it should be said, is an acquired taste,” but that his “performances are usually illuminating alternatives to the standard view.”
Mr. Sherman resented these accusations of eccentricity. “I think of myself as a compassionate conservative” who responded “radically to the score and nothing but the score,” he told The Times in 2000. He suggested that listeners who disliked his interpretations lacked imagination.
…
Obit watch: October 2, 2023.
Monday, October 2nd, 2023Lucy Morgan, Florida journalist. She wasn’t someone I had heard of before, but the obit (which I encourage you to read) makes her sound fascinating.
She specialized in uncovering political corruption. In 1973, she went to jail because she refused to reveal her source for grand jury proceedings.
She shared a Pulitzer (with Jack Reed) for exposing the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office.
She also exposed the sheriff of Gulf County, who got sent to prison for extorting oral sex from female inmates.
…
…
Russ Francis, former tight end for the Patriots and 49ers, was killed in a plane crash on Sunday. Also killed was Richard McSpadden, a vice-president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA).
It appears they were taking off from Lake Placid Airport and there was some sort of problem. Reports say they tried to make it back to the airport but couldn’t.
Mr. Francis, in additional to a successful NFL career (first round NFL draft pick, three time Pro Bowl player) was also an avid pilot. He’d recently bought an interest in Lake Placid Airways, a local charter and scenic flight service.
Mr. McSpadden, in addition to being an AOPA VP, was a former commander and flight leader for the Thunderbirds.
Tim Wakefield, former Boston Red Sox pitcher (and a past winner of the Roberto Clemente Award). Cancer got him at 57.
Chris Snow, of the Calgary Flames. He was diagnosed with ALS in 2019, and passed away after a “catastrophic brain injury”.
Your loser update: week 4, 2023.
Sunday, October 1st, 2023Lawrence asked me last night which of the remaining teams I favored to go 0-17.
My answer: da Bears and Carolina. I don’t believe the Vikings are that bad, and Denver at least has a coach who’s won a Superbowl.
How did that work out for me? Actually, pretty well.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
da Bears
Carolina
da Bears play Washington on Thursday this week, while Carolina plays Detroit at noon next Sunday. Right now, the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network favors Washington (but not overwhelmingly) and Detroit (overwhelmingly). I’ll be joining FotB pigpen51 in rooting for the Lions, and the entire civilized world in rooting for an asteroid strike on FedEx Field.