Friday 9/6/24
If you're not as good as other teams, and you want to beat other teams, one thing you can do is make sure you're in better shape than the other teams. I've heard a number of times about Jerod Mayo putting the Patriots through a physically demanding training camp. I hope that's true. It can make a difference.
How long before Jacoby Brissett gets hurt for the Patriots? One game? Two? Three? I don't think the Patriots have much of a plan. I'm not expecting Brissett to last. I do think the Patriots have a shot this Sunday in Cincinnati. My expectation is that they won't be drilled, anyway. I'll likely be at the Brattle watching King Kong.
NFL season opened last night. The league is boring, play quality is not high, there are no great teams. Chiefs can win again. Have a better chance, I think, than any other team that had won two in a row. Patriots weren't going to win in 2005. Elway retired with the Broncos. Cowboys had too much dysfunction. 49ers had really tough NFC competition. Those back-to-back champs in the 1970s had juggernaut teams to deal with. The Chiefs don't have any opponents like that. The Bills? You never know what you're going to get with them. Sometimes they're the best team in the league, other times they'll make sure they find some ways to lose. Matt Milano is a big loss for them.
I keep hearing how Mahomes will surpass Brady, he's on pace to exceed him, etc. I think that's very, very unlikely. Gretzky had a run of titles closely bunched early on. Doing it later in one's career is the trick. That's where Brady beats you. So unless you win them all pretty early--which is unrealistic--I don't know how you do it. Also, Mahomes wasn't very good last year. Guys do slip. They get worse. And that can happen whenever. I'm not saying he won't be great this year. But it's something to keep an eye on. Last year he wasn't what he had been.
Random baseball thoughts: Carl Yastrzemski should have won the 1970 AL MVP. Carlton Fisk should have been the 1977 AL MVP runner-up. It was Al Cowens instead and Fisk was still several players back. I don't understand that.
I also don't understand why I'm not letting this go, but if the Red Sox want to have any chance at all of making the postseason, they need to sweep the White Sox at Fenway this weekend. There aren't enough games left to make up the games they're behind. I mean, there are, but now you need someone in front of you to lose and keep losing, and/or you need to win seven in a row and twelve out of fifteen. And that could very well not be enough.
The Twins and Royals are playing each other this weekend, so you want one of them to sweep the other. But 5.5 games back with twenty-two games left just isn't feasible. Cora keeps saying the Sox are a .500 team but they're really not. Sure, if you're going by the whole season, but they haven't played like even a .500 team in a while.
The Red Sox have already lost two games this year to the White Sox--which not many teams can say--and they're bad at home, so a weekend disaster is on the table to put a disastrous bow on another pathetic season. It's almost impossible to be swept by the White Sox but you could drop two out of three.
But: If the Sox sweep, then they pick up at least two games on someone, and they're 3.5 back with nineteen to play. Again, the math is really working against you now. You need the big win streak. This team isn't capable of a big win streak. Or half a big win streak. It's the Red Sox, so I think this way. They're my favorite team. It's unfortunate that they're not any good. I know this. This team has been in the playoffs once since 2018. You want those games.
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