Thursday 1/16/25
The Patriots hired Mike Vrabel to be their head coach, and I don't feel great about it, or at least not how they went about doing this, which was typical of the Krafts. They interviewed two Black candidates in perfunctory fashion to satisfy--in what to me was a typically arrogant way for them--the Rooney Rule, knowing it was going to be Vrabel all along.
I don't feel good when a proper job search is not conducted and it's a matter of someone simply getting their guy, meaning someone they know. If Vrabel hadn't been a Patriot, would have this have happened? Would they have hired him? Probably not.
What is the harm in a job search? Why do the Krafts hate doing an actual job search? You don't know who might bowl you over with their plan, their vision. Go through the process. Be open. Don't just do retreads. Maybe Vrabel would have emerged as the best candidate. But it's better to see a process through. The Krafts are very hubristic. People who are thus are almost always insecure.
I saw a ranking of the ten best NFL pass rushers of all-time, which had Chris Doleman in the seventh spot. One of my all-time favorite players who got overshadowed a bit because he played when Lawrence Taylor played--Andre Tippett was in that same camp--but he was very exciting.
For the 1983-84 season, Wayne Gretzky led the NHL in even strength goals, power play goals, and shorthanded goals. This, of course, had never been done by anyone else and has never been done by anyone since. It just about goes without saying that he also led the league in assists and by a stupendous margin.
With all of the Overchkin goal-chase hype, people are failing to understand at all what Wayne Gretzky was as a goal scorer. They'll just say, "Goalies back then were plumbers in pads!" No one else did these things or came close to them. What people also don't understand is that if you're just aiming to score and not play-make, that's a different proposition.
To me, the best goal scorers--someone I'd consider as the best goal scorer ever--would need to score every which way. I'm not say, from that standpoint, that that's Gretzky. But it would be, say, Mike Bossy. On the rush, in the slot, off the rebound, down low, up high, snap, slap, wrist, and backhand shots, deflections, quick release or big shot and both. Mario Lemieux would be another goal scorer adroit at scoring in a multiplicity of ways. Not all the same ways as Bossy, but Lemieux was a breakaway artist, too, and Bossy wasn't that, though he was no slouch in the breakaway department.
Marcel Dionne scored 731 regular season NHL goals--he wasn't much of a playoff performer--but he is now this rarely talked about superstar. A lot of that has to do with people not knowing anything from before a given period of time and that almost all knowledge in the present day--which is to say, what passes for knowledge and isn't knowledge at all--comes from social media. I can't conceive of not knowing things I am free to know. It's mind-boggling to me. And being into something and not learning about that thing is equally mind-boggling. I'd feel like I was walking around in darkness.
Anyway, Dionne didn't score these goals right around the crease, off of things like rebounds and tip-ins, but he didn't have some great shot. Gretzky had a very accurate shot--and the most accurate slap shot in hockey history. Someone might want to say, again, that Dionne potted all of those goals because of the goaltending at the time, but why weren't others doing it then? The goaltending argument is a tiresome one to me. Look at the sticks these guys were using compared to the sticks players have today. Go pick up a 1980s Titan sometime.
Ten years ago at this time, there was much debate as to whether Tom Brady was better than Joe Montana. Not that long ago. Now the gap between Brady and Montana is understood to be a given.
When I was a kid growing up in Mansfield, Patriots quarterback Tony Eason was a kind of whipping boy. People made fun of him a lot because often when he was pressured it was as if he said, "Oh no, the rush!" and then dropped to the ground in terror and assumed the fetal position.
And while there is a degree of truth to the above--which was helped along by people thinking that the Patriots' other QB--who'd been on the roster forever--in Steve Grogan--was this stoic, manly man who took his beating and simply carried on--a true New Englander--it's also true that Eason had two star-level seasons as an NFL quarterback. He could really throw the ball.
One of the reasons I'm unsold on Drake Maye--despite what everyone else is saying about him--is because the Patriots had a bunch of winnable games this year and Maye couldn't win them. Further, he helped lose them. People hype Maye up because it's 2025. What I mean by that is he has skills that translate well to social media clips. The five-second thing that you click on.
That's not the same as efficacious consistency. People elevate the "ooh and aahh" throw/play while missing the forest for the trees. Quarterbacking and oohing and aahhing aren't necessarily the same thing. He was this way at North Carolina. You'd have a play where he chucked it forty yards down the sideline and put the ball in a tight window, and then you'd have two trash plays like where he'd miss a guy on a short crosser or he'd under-throw a ball. Having an arm and playing well--and consistently well--are often not the same thing.
The "Bombs Away" Celtics lost on the road--where they're better than they are at home--to the lowly, now 10-31 Toronto Raptors last night. I have said in here that the Celtics won't be winning the championship this year. I said it before the season started that I thought they were a one-and-done champion.
But they are noticeably underachieving this season and I'm starting to think that they could be bounced early in the playoffs. They have their own institutional arrogance holding them back: They worship at the altar of their analytics people (and their analytics-driven coach). The over-reliance on the three-point shot has caught up to them. Teams know they the Celtics are going to be all bombs away from behind the arc. If the Celtics want to repeat, they need to morph and do it while they still have time in the regular season. You can't be only bombs away, and that's essentially what they are now.
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