NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Carolina
Not much more to say, really.
Archive for the ‘NFL’ Category
Your loser update: week 5, 2023.
Sunday, October 8th, 2023Obit 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“He was sitting in hotel lobbies,” Christopher recalled in an unpublished interview in 2010 with George Vecsey, a sports columnist for The New York Times.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.
Loser update update.
Thursday, September 28th, 2023I should have put this in this week’s update, but I didn’t think to check the schedule until after I posted.
Denver (0-3) plays da Bears (0-3) at noon on Sunday.
Minnesota (0-3) plays Carolina (0-3) at noon on Sunday.
This means a few things:
1. I will probably try to post the loser update on Sunday afternoon after the games end, assuming I’m not napping.
2. We’re going to have two 0-4 teams. Unless there’s a tie, which I would not rule out.
3. It looks like Sunday is the last day of the MLB regular season, so I will probably post a special loser update on Monday for that.
Your loser update: week 3, 2023.
Tuesday, September 26th, 2023NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Denver
Minnesota
da Bears
Carolina
70-20? That sounds more like a score from a low-scoring college basketball game, not a NFL one.
In other news, the worthless Chargers won, as did the Texans. But we still have Carolina.
Your loser update: week 2, 2023.
Tuesday, September 19th, 2023NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
New England
Cincinnati
Houston
Denver
Los Angeles Chargers
Minnesota
da Bears
Carolina
Arizona
Still a little early for any predictions on who will win the Owen 17 award this year, but I am kind of wondering if this could be the year for Houston. Or even better, the worthless LA Chargers.
Obit watch: September 13, 2023.
Wednesday, September 13th, 2023Howard Safir, former NYPD commissioner and gun grabber.
In the final years of his life, Safir, who founded his own intelligence and security firm, has advocated for stricter policing on guns.
Last year, he floated the idea that those who purchase firearms in the city should be required to conduct yearly safety check-ins so authorities can make sure the weapons aren’t lost or sold off to unknown parties.
Neil Currey, noted bodybuilder. He was 34.
Brandon Hunter, former forward for the Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic. He was 42.
Mike Williams, former NFL wide receiver for Tampa Bay and Buffalo. He was 36, and died as a result of injuries sustained in a construction accident.
Your loser update: week 1, 2023.
Tuesday, September 12th, 2023NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Kansas City
Buffalo
New England
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
Tennessee
Indianapolis
Houston
Denver
Los Angeles Chargers
New York Football Giants
Minnesota
da Bears
Carolina
Arizona
Seattle
So not only did Detroit win, they beat the defending champions. Not only did the Giants lose (sorry, Manhattan Infidel) but they got curb-stomped by the Cowboys.
(On a side note, “The Cowboys” is a pretty good, though I wouldn’t say great, John Wayne film.)
The Browns won. The Texans lost. The worthless Chargers lost. The worthless Bills lost, even though Aaron Rodgers may be out for the season.
I think it is too early to predict a trend. But it wouldn’t shock me if Detroit won the Thanksgiving game this year.
Loser update update.
Thursday, September 7th, 2023The NFL regular season starts tonight.
The loser update returns next Tuesday.
Thank you for attending my TED talk.
Obit watch: September 1, 2023.
Friday, September 1st, 2023Gil Brandt, one of the men who built the Dallas Cowboys.
Mr. Brandt joined the Cowboys in 1960, before their first season, and worked beside Tom Landry, the taciturn head coach, and Tex Schramm, the innovative president and general manager, to make them a perennial winner and a two-time Super Bowl champion. In time, the Cowboys became known as “America’s Team.”
As the team’s vice president of player personnel, Mr. Brandt was known for expanding his scouting beyond major-conference schools. He drafted future stars like the wide receiver Bob Hayes, the defensive tackle Jethro Pugh, the offensive lineman Rayfield Wright and the linebacker Thomas (Hollywood) Henderson, who all played at historically Black colleges and universities.
Mr. Hayes, Mr. Wright, and the quarterbacks Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman are among the nine players whose drafting Mr. Brandt oversaw who were later elected to the Hall of Fame.
…
At Mr. Schramm’s suggestion, Mr. Brandt began using a massive IBM computer in 1962 to meticulously evaluate prospects. He assigned numerical values to many personality traits, including character and competitiveness, and to many physical qualities like quickness and strength; stored them on punch cards; and loaded them into the computer.
The result was a database that enabled the Cowboys to sift through information quickly and comprehensively, weigh the talents of prospects and make recommendations to Mr. Landry and Mr. Schramm. This gave the team a competitive edge.
…
Mohamed al-Fayed. I’m not sure how many people remember that name.
…
He’s probably better remembered as the father of Emad “Dodi” al-Fayed, who was killed with Princess Dianna and Henri Paul.
As rumors and conspiracy theories swirled, Mr. Fayed declared that the two had been murdered by “people who did not want Diana and Dodi to be together.” He said they had been engaged to marry and maintained that they had called him an hour before the crash to tell him that she was pregnant. Buckingham Palace and the princess’s family denounced his remarks as malicious fantasy.
The deaths inspired waves of books, articles and investigations of conspiracy theories, as well as a period of soul-searching among Britons, who resented the royal family’s standoffish behavior and were caught up in displays of mass grief. In 2006, the British police ruled the crash an accident.
And in 2008, a British coroner’s jury rejected all conspiracy theories involving the royal family, British intelligence services and others. It attributed the deaths to “gross negligence” by the driver and the pursuing paparazzi. It also said a French pathologist had found that Diana was not pregnant.
Mr. Fayed called the verdict biased, but he and his lawyers did not pursue the matter further. “I’ve had enough,” he told Britain’s ITV News. “I’m leaving this to God to get my revenge.”
Obit watch: August 21, 2023.
Monday, August 21st, 2023Ron Cephas Jones, actor. THR. Other credits include “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”, “Law & Order: Organized Crime”, and “NYPD Blue”.
Chris Peluso, theater actor.
Randy Minniear, former running back for the New York Football Giants.
After playing fullback at Purdue, he was selected by the Giants in the 20th round of the 1966 NFL Draft and would first play in 1967, when Earl Morrall was the quarterback.
“They rate him as the greatest backup quarterback of all time,” Minniear told the Thursday Night Tailgate podcast in 2021. “And that’s one of the things they say about me. I was the greatest benchwarmer of all time. I will tell you this, while I was down there on the end of the bench by the water bucket not one was stolen in five years.”
“The Peripheral” and “A League Of Their Own” at Amazon Prime. Both of these shows had been renewed for a second season (though “ALOTO” had only been given a four-episode run) but Amazon is apparently re-evaluating their plans in light of the strike.
I don’t care much about the baseball show. I was slightly interested in “The Peripheral” because Big Bill Gibson. But I haven’t watched any of the episodes, and am kind of thinking maybe I should read the book first.
Obit watch: July 26, 2023.
Wednesday, July 26th, 2023Johnny Lujack, one of Notre Dame’s greats. He was 98.
Lujack was an outstanding passer and a fine runner at quarterback, as well as a brilliant defensive halfback, a place-kicker and occasionally a punter. He was a two-time all-American and played in only one losing football game at Notre Dame. He also played baseball and basketball and ran track.
He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1960 and had been the oldest living winner of the Heisman, the prize awarded annually to college football’s leading player.
“He’s probably the greatest all-around athlete I’ve ever seen in college football,” Frank Tripucka, the backup to Lujack at Notre Dame and a longtime pro quarterback, told Steve Delsohn for the oral history “Talking Irish” (1998.) “He was six foot and maybe 180, but he was just a very tough guy from western Pennsylvania.”
…
Lujack took over as Notre Dame’s quarterback in November 1943 when Angelo Bertelli left for military service. He took the Irish to a 9-1 record and their first No. 1 national ranking.
He left Notre Dame for the Navy during World War II and served aboard a vessel chasing German submarines in the English Channel. He returned in 1946, when the Irish fielded an overpowering team composed largely of war veterans.
When Notre Dame played Army in November 1946 in a matchup of unbeaten teams, Lujack was hobbled by a sprained ankle, but he played nevertheless, on both offense and defense. He threw three interceptions, but in the third quarter, playing at defensive halfback, he saved the day for Notre Dame.
Coming across the field, he pulled down Army fullback Doc Blanchard, the 1945 Heisman winner, on the Irish 36-yard line, making a low tackle as Blanchard raced down the left sideline.
“I was the last guy between him and a touchdown,” Lujack told The New York Times in 1981. “I read afterward where I was the only guy ever to have made a one-on-one tackle on him. If I’d known that during the game, I’d probably have missed the tackle.”
…
Lujack took Notre Dame to a 9-0 record and a third national championship in 1947, his Heisman Trophy year, when he passed for nine touchdowns and 777 yards and ran for 139, averaging more than 11 yards per carry. The Associated Press named him America’s male athlete of the year.
In January 1948, the Bears signed Lujack to a four-year contract and a bonus, for a total of about $80,000. (A little more than $1 million in today’s money).
Lujack led the N.F.L. in pass completions (162), yards passing (2,658) and touchdown passes (23) in 1949, when he threw for six touchdowns and passed for a league-record 468 yards in a game against the Chicago Cardinals. He was a two-time Pro Bowl player and was named a first-team all-N.F.L. player in 1950. He retired after four pro seasons to become a backfield coach at Notre Dame.
Obit watch: June 15, 2023.
Thursday, June 15th, 2023Glenda Jackson. NYT (archived).
Other credits include “T.Bag’s Christmas Ding Dong”, “The Patricia Neal Story” (she played Patricia Neal), and “The Nelson Affair”.
Robert Gottlieb, noted editor.
…
…
His memoir offered a highlight reel of snarky critiques of authors — the Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul (“a snob”), Ms. Tuchman (“her sense of entitlement was sometimes hard to deal with”), William Gaddis (“unrelentingly disgruntled”), Roald Dahl (“erratic and churlish”).
“He wasn’t just an editor, he was the editor,” Mr. le Carré told The Times. “I never had an editor to touch him, in any country — nobody who could compare with him.” He noted that Mr. Gottlieb, using No. 2 pencils to mark up manuscripts, often signaled changes with hieroglyphics in the margins: a wavy line for language too florid, ellipses or question marks advising a writer to “think harder and try again.”
…
Mr. Gottlieb joined Knopf in 1968 as vice president and editor in chief. He edited Robert Caro’s Pulitzer-Prize winning biography of Robert Moses, “The Power Broker” (1974), cutting 400,000 words from a million-word manuscript with the author fuming at his elbow. Despite the brutal cuts, their collaboration endured for five decades and became the subject of a 2022 documentary, “Turn Every Page,” directed by Lizzie Gottlieb, Mr. Gottlieb’s daughter.
“I have never encountered a publisher or editor with a greater understanding of what a writer was trying to do — and how to help him do it,” Mr. Caro said in a statement on Mr. Gottlieb’s death.
Flashing his range, Mr. Gottlieb also edited “Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life” (1981), by Henry Beard, ghosting for the Muppets starlet, and Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” (1988), which prompted the outraged Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to issue a fatwa urging Muslims to kill the author.
LeAnn Mueller, co-owner of the highly regarded Austin barbecue restaurant la Barbecue and member of the prominent Mueller barbecue family. She was 51.
I have not seen any updates on the criminal case against the la Barbecue owners. The only obit I’ve found that even mentions it is from the Austin Chronicle.
Jim Turner, former kicker for the Jets.
…
The most memorable game of Turner’s career was the Jets’s face-off against the Baltimore Colts on the afternoon of Jan. 12, 1969.
The Colts belonged to the older and better established National Football League, while the Jets were part of its upstart competitor, the American Football League. The Super Bowl, held for the first time in 1967, then pitted the best team from each league against the other.
The Colts, led by quarterback Johnny Unitas and coach Don Shula, had beaten the powerhouse Green Bay Packers, winners of the previous two Super Bowls, en route to qualifying for the 1969 championship.
While Unitas and Shula epitomized the stoic masculinity that many fans associated with football, Namath, the Jets’ quarterback, nicknamed Broadway Joe, was a figure of loudmouth swagger, and none of his public comments had ever seemed less creditable than his guarantee that the Jets would become the first A.F.L. team to win the Super Bowl by beating the Colts.
Namath played well — completing 17 of 28 passes for 206 yards, earning him the Most Valuable Player Award — but it was Turner, a decidedly Off Off Broadway figure, who was the decisive player. He provided the Jets with their margin of victory and alone scored more points than the Colts did.
…
Homer Jones, wide receiver for the New York Football Giants.
Jones was a member of the Giants from 1964-1969, where he was named to the Pro Bowl in 1967 and 1968.
“Homer Jones had a unique combination of speed and power and was a threat to score whenever he touched the ball,” said John Mara, the Giants president and chief executive officer.
“He was one of the first players (if not the first) to spike the ball in the end zone after scoring a touchdown and he quickly became a fan favorite. I remember him as an easygoing, friendly individual who was well liked by his teammates and coaches.”
…
Not quite an obit, but Nautilus reran a nice article about Cormac McCarthy at the Santa Fe Institute by one of his co-workers.
The entrance to SFI also serves as a mail room. When I first entered the building there was behind the front desk a permanent massif of book boxes. It was clear that the boxes were constantly cleared and just as quickly replenished. In this way the boxes achieved a dynamical equilibrium. In the study of complex systems this is called self-organized criticality and was made famous as an explanation for the constant gradient of sand piles and the faces of sand dunes.
The agent of this critical state was Cormac, who busied himself digging—like Kobo Abe’s entomologist in Women in the Dunes—to ensure balance at SFI and the growth of his library.
Obit watch: May 20, 2023.
Saturday, May 20th, 2023Playing for the Browns from 1957 to 1965 after earning all-American honors at Syracuse University in football and lacrosse, Brown helped take Cleveland to the 1964 National Football League championship.
In any game, he dragged defenders when he wasn’t running over them or flattening them with a stiff arm. He eluded them with his footwork when he wasn’t sweeping around ends and outrunning them. He never missed a game, piercing defensive lines in 118 consecutive regular-season games, though he played one year with a broken toe and another with a sprained wrist.
“All you can do is grab, hold, hang on and wait for help,” Sam Huff, the Hall of Fame middle linebacker for the Giants and the Washington team now known as the Commanders, once told Time magazine.
Brown was voted football’s greatest player of the 20th century by a six-member panel of experts assembled by The Associated Press in 1999. A panel of 85 experts selected by NFL Films in 2010 placed him No. 2 all time behind the wide receiver Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers.
He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, the Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1984 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995.
He retired in 1966…
…
Handsome with a magnificent physique — he was a chiseled 6 feet 2 inches and 230 pounds — Brown appeared in many movies and was sometimes cited as a Black Superman for his cinematic adventures.
“Although the range of emotion Brown displayed onscreen was no wider than a mail slot, he never embarrassed himself, never played to a demeaning stereotype of the comic patsy,” James Wolcott wrote in The New York Review of Books in his review of Dave Zirin’s 2018 biography, “Jim Brown: Last Man Standing.” He called Brown “a rugged chassis for a more self-assertive figure, the Black uberman.”
One of Brown’s best-remembered roles was in “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), in which he played one of 12 convicts assembled by the Army for a near-suicide mission to kill high-ranking German officers at a French chateau in advance of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. He next played a Marine captain in the Cold War thriller “Ice Station Zebra” (1968).
IMDB. He was also a prominent civil rights activist.
Martin Amis, British novelist.
…
Mr. Amis’s misanthropic wit made his voice at times reminiscent of that of his father, Kingsley Amis. Kingsley, who died in 1995, was one of the British working- and middle-class novelists of the 1950s known as the Angry Young Men and became famous with the success of his comic masterpiece “Lucky Jim” (1954).
Father and son were close, but they disagreed about much. Kingsley Amis drifted to the right with the rise of Margaret Thatcher; he once publicly referred to his son’s left-leaning political opinions as “howling nonsense.”
…
Mr. Amis’s talent was undeniable: He was the most dazzling stylist in postwar British fiction. So were his swagger and Byronic good looks. He had well-chronicled involvements with some of the most watched young women of his era. He wore, according to media reports, velvet jackets, Cuban-heel boots, bespoke shirts. He stared balefully into paparazzi lenses.
His raucous lunches with friends and fellow writers like Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie, Clive James, James Fenton and Mr. Hitchens were written up in the press and made other writers feel that they were on the outside looking in. He seemed to be having more fun than other people. His detractors considered him less a bad boy than a spoiled brat.
…