Sunday 1/19/25
I have to admit that I wasn't displeased to wake up and see that the Lions were drilled yesterday by the Commanders. I go to the box score and I saw four Lions players having thrown passes--you know things haven't gone well if that's the case--with Goff tossing three interceptions (plus there was another one).
My sense was that the Lions were really buying into themselves. The way their coach talked, that kind of thing. Sometimes pressure gets to a team--like the Bruins a couple years ago with their first round choke. Sometimes the lights/hype gets to a team and that was these Lions. They were the hot team, the trendy team, the team with the coaches in vogue, and that made them ripe for getting waxed. Plus Goff isn't a when-it-matters guy. He's done well for himself in Detroit and played better in the regular season than ever before, but he is still Goff.
I get why people find the Chiefs frustrating. I watched a goodly chunk of that game and they do get a lot of calls. Are the officials intimidated by the Mahomes/Reid mystique? There is something to this claim beyond typical sports fan grousing.
It's not just the preponderance of favorable calls, though. The Chiefs seem to be helped in their cause by the other team's mistakes. I know, one wants to say that the Chiefs have some hand in these mistakes because of their big-play ability--and that Chiefs defense was swarming and getting to the quarterback with regularity yesterday--but there are also these unforced errors by the other team that serves to sink the ship which the Chiefs don't have a direct hand in. Or at least they're not physically creating those plays. I suppose it could be because they're in the other team's head, and that is a part of sports (look how many boxers were as good as knocked out before the bell rang to start their fight against Mike Tyson during his prime). For instance, when the Texans kicker missed that point-after attempt that would have tied the game late in the third quarter you kind of knew that that was going to be that. It was so deflating.
But then there's also Mahomes, who has become this flop artist. He goes for the call. You should be able to pop the quarterback at all times. Get rid of the slide, because players like this are milking it. He'll fake the slide. Now that's not in the spirit of the rule. It's a pretty dishonest move. And I don't mean tricky move. It's almost like a dirty move. We think being dirty is hitting someone in the balls when the refs aren't looking or something like that, but this is dirty, too. I saw where he pulled up right at the edge of the sideline yesterday when he was going out of bounds so that he could take a hit and do a flop to try and get a late hit penalty called.
The now-mediocre Celtics lost at home--yet again--to a mediocre Atlanta Hawks team. I nailed it with the Celtics. And I was saying this home court problem thing really early on. One could check this record. During a timeout in the action, Brian Scalabrine must have used the word "we" in five sentences in a row. I just think he sounds like a child. You are not on the team and you're not seven. Say "Celtics." Have some credibility.
Bad loss for the Bruins. They were up 5-3 on Ottawa with about five minutes left to go in the game, and then they ended up losing in a shootout. Jeremy Swayman is not a goalie who gets you wins. He doesn't make the big saves when you have to have the big saves. Things need to be going right in front of him in order for him to succeed. He doesn't bail you out, he doesn't grab you that win.
I hope the Bills don't choke today, which is what it'd be. The Ravens look like they'll be without Zay Flowers, which will mean more quarterback runs. I am quite skeptical that you can win it all with a quarterback who is so run-reliant. I don't think it's efficient. Without Flowers they lose a big part of their ability to throw the ball down the field and set up other throws even when Flowers isn't being targeted. Pretty crazy that he's the Ravens' first-ever drafted receiver to make the Pro Bowl. Not All-Pro, simply the Pro Bowl which isn't that hard of a thing to make.
I haven't seen a weather report, but it's Buffalo on January 19 and you'd expect harsh conditions. (Actually, just looked and it won't be that bad, with the temperature warming up over the day to get to the low twenties by game time. The difference between 23 degrees and 8 is extreme if you're just running stairs at City Hall, never mind playing a football game.)
I'd like to see Josh Allen have his moment, his big rite of passage moment, and defeat Mahomes and the Chiefs in Kansas City to go to the Super Bowl. It could very well happen, I just don't think it will.
Watched some of the BC-Duke basketball game last night, which was at Conte. BC vaguely hung around in the first half but it was no contest in the second half and Duke cruised to an easy win. Been a long time since BC basketball was a factor. The hockey team, though, took both games of a home-and-home against a tough Providence team--they were ranked sixth in the nation--on Friday and Saturday nights.
I saw a post from a Yankees fan yesterday that he was scared about the 2025 Red Sox saying they should be really good, whereas I'm expecting a last place team. The Red Sox' off-season strategy in recent years--which actually stretches back like half a decade at this point--is hope that the guys who were already on the team get better than they were up until then--the Red Sox will throw out some phrase like "continue to develop"--while bringing in players near the end of their careers, guys who fell off after injury, and reclamation projections (I mean, do you think Walker Buehler is going to go 17-7 with a 3.23 ERA? Because I don't). That's exclusively what they do with the pitchers they acquire.
And then they hope for the best, but I don't think they even hope all that hard. I think they're just slapping out a roster without much interest one way or the other. Then, at after the season, they hold that press conference where Sam Kennedy pretends to be all aggrieved and makes these pledges about the next year, hoping, I guess, that no one remembers that he did the same performance with the same words near about the year prior.
He said this year that the goal was to win 90-95 games and, with that, the AL East, and I was like, "Are you both that stupid and that defeatist?" 90 wins isn't winning you the division, and it's unlikely 95 is either. 90 wins might not get you the last Wild Card spot. This is what you're shooting for? Wins in the low 90s? That's the goal? That's not much of a goal. That's a depressing goal. I wouldn't be too concerned about the Red Sox if I were a Yankees fan.
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