Monthly Archives: September 2021

Monday Morning Coffee

That was a big time statement win by the Rams yesterday at SOFI over the Bucs. Matt Stafford continues to look amazing in Sean McVay’s offense, and the defense kept delivering big hit after big hit. Tom Brady hasn’t taken that kind of punishment since Gisele scolded him for not taking out the trash. 3-0 is a very nice start for this team, but one that I’m not terribly surprised at. This team is very good. Whether or not they are a Super Bowl team might depend on whether they can get home field in the playoffs, in a wildly competitive NFC, especially NFC West. I’m sure come November, the Bucs are going to be a lot better as well, and in the mix for home field too. For now, the Rams biggest concern should be San Francisco, who has owned them for the last few years. They won’t have to play them until November, and now the Cardinals and Seahawks are up next.

The Chargers really almost found a way to blow it against the Chiefs.  It turns out Brandon Staley  is actually a mad man, opting to go for a touchdown on 4th down, instead of running the clock down and trying a game winning field goal.  Maybe nobody told him he was playing against Patrick Mahomes.  To be fair though, it’s a bottom line business, he took a gamble, and it paid off.  Of course the Chargers missed that PAT.  Where do the Bolts find these kickers? It’s like they only want to sign kickers who suck.   Justin Herbert is on his way to being a star, and for now, the Bolts are an opportunistic 2-1.  Some of the close games are going their way, but the fact the Chiefs lost the turnover battle 4-0 yet were in it until the last play suggests they might be the better team in the long run.

Elsewhere around week 3 in the NFL, I think I want to see the Raiders and Broncos play a few more games before declaring them elite. They are each 3-0, but the teams they have beaten are a combined 0-9! Cliff Kingsbury thinks he’s playing PlayStation and is attempting 68 yard field goals in the Cardinals win over the Jags.  Only the Lions would lose a game on a 66 yard field goal that bounces in. Ryan Tannehill remembered how to play quarterback in the Titans win over Colts.  Big Ben suddenly has a wet noodle as a throwing arm, as the Steelers got pounded by the Bengals. I guess Aaron Rodgers also isn’t mailing it in anymore, since the Packers took down the 49ers yesterday.

To college football, where USC got dismantled by Oregon State over the weekend.  The last time the Trojans lost to the Beavers at home, JFK was hooking up with Marilyn Monroe.  Donte Williams should probably start cleaning up his LinkedIn profile for his next gig after a blowout like that.  This was another game where the Trojans had way more talent than their opponent, yet they made their opponent look like an NFL team.   That’s how important coaching is in college football, and there is none at USC.  There’s also no tackling, no discipline, and Kedon Slovis is nothing close to a Heisman Trophy candidate that people thought he was.  The good news is that barely anybody was at the Coliseum to watch it, and that will probably be the case for the rest of the season

The Bruins got back in the win column with a win over Stanford.   I don’t know if I would call this an impressive win, but you’ve gotta give Dorian Thompson-Robinson credit for being tough and coming back after a shoulder injury.  He came up with a big 75 yard TD pass.  It still feels like Bruin fans are stinging from their loss to Fresno State last week.  However, they still have a great chance to be an elite Pac-12 Team.  We’ll see if Chip Kelly lives up to thatnhype because this is his last chance as far as most UCLA fans are concerned.

Elsewhere around college football, Notre Dame crushed Wisconsin at Soldier Field.  Brian Kelly became the winningest coach in school History for the Irish, and for him to don it in a game where he needed his backup QB is the most Brian Kelly thing ever.   6 other ranked teams lost, so it’s going to be fun pretending like it’s wide open and someone other than Alabama will win the title this year.  Clemson lost to NC State, and their CFP chances lasted about as long as the rap career of Vanilla Ice.  I think it’s been all downhill for the Tigers since Dabo appeared on Tik Tok.  

Let’s be real….the Dodgers aren’t winning the division.  They had their chances but the Giants win more often than Andrew Friedman updates his computer software.  However, now they should be worried because the St Louis Cardinals might never lose again.  They are hotter than the sun, running away with the 2nd wild card spot in the NL, and suddenly pitching like Greg Maddux is on the mound for them every night.  Meanwhile, the Dodgers offense can disappear on any given night, and so can their defense, which happened over the weekend.  Now their pitching looks vulnerable too, with Scherzer, Buehler, and Kershaw getting knocked around like bowling pins in their last few starts.  Dodger fans might as well be preparing for imminent doom, because most of us can see how this season ends.

Finally for the the Angels, the last few weeks they’ve been fielding a lineup of Uber drivers and Shohei Ohtani.  Joe Maddon basically called out Perry Minasian and Arte Moreno for not spending money on pitching in a very tactful way last week.  However, pitching isn’t all they need.  They need their highest paid players like Mike Trout, Anthony Rendon, and Justin Upton, to be healthy and playing at an elite level.  They don’t have enough depth for them not to be.  There is pitching available this off-season, but I still don’t believe the Angels can outspend teams to get it.  They’ll need to get creative or else it will be rinse and repeat for another year.

Monday Morning Coffee

September 20, 2021

Everyone’s goal in life should be to find someone that looks at you the way that Matt Stafford looks at Cooper Kupp. Kupp came up with 163 yards receiving and two huge touchdowns, in yesterday’s big road win against the Colts. It was also a small coming out party for Sony Michel, who picked up 46 yards late in the game. There are few things that are certain in life: death, taxes, and Daryl Henderson getting injured. That definitely explains why the Rams gave up picks to get Michel, who stepped in nicely for Henderson. Two weeks in and two nice wins for the Rams. Next week will be tough against the Bucs, who have been tearing up the NFL themselves.

Then there’s the Chargers. The referees clearly didn’t do them any favors yesterday, but some things still haven’t changed. The Chargers still can’t seem to get it done in close games, and their home games are largely attended by the opposing teams fans. Not even a new stadium can stop that from happening. You would think Clay Helton was coaching the Bolts yesterday with all the penalties that were taken. Even Lebron and Magic probably went to that game yesterday to see the Cowboys, rather than to see the Chargers play. It’s a whole new season with a whole new stadium, but nothing feels like it’s changed.

Elsewhere around the NFL, the Steelers were as terrible as their towels in their loss to the Raiders yesterday. Lamar Jackson put the Chiefs defenders on ice skates, in the Ravens win over KC. Baker Mayfield and the Browns are really good, and Mayfield hasn’t even started grabbing his crotch yet this season. Zach Wilson had more turnovers than Betty Crocker in the Patriots beat down of the Jets. The 49ers beat the Eagles in a game that was sloppier than a happy hour with the Kardashians. The Bucs dismantled the Falcons, and Tom Brady continues to just give the middle finger to Father Time.

To the College ranks, where it’s safe to say it was an eventful week for USC Football. The Trojans shocked the world by firing Clay Helton after the Stanford game. It remains to be seen if this was just a publicity stunt to appease the fan base, or if they really plan on getting serious about winning again. If James Franklin, Luke Fickell, or Matt Campbell ends up as the next coach, they are serious. If not, they are still the same underachieving program of the last decade. On the field though a win over Washington State isn’t anything to make you want to go party on fraternity row. However, the Trojans might have a QB controversy on their hands. Jaxson Dart looked damn good, and it makes you wonder if he’s the best quarterback on the team right now, given the ineptitude of the previous coaching staff. Plus if nothing else, Jason Dart sounds like a great QB name. Only time will tell, but it seems like Dart might get another chance next week against Oregon State.

As for UCLA, they came crashing back to earth on Saturday night at the Rose Bowl. The Bruins lost to Fresno State late in the 4th, and they looked about as prepared as I am to date Jennifer Aniston. The defense was simply not there. The offense was unable to execute. For a team that beat “the mighty LSU” this was a trap game they badly fell into. I don’t know about you, but Chip Kelly suddenly looks like the same scrub coach he’s been for the last few years. There’s still time, and Fresno State might even be solid, but Bruins fans can’t be nearly as optimistic about this team as they were a week ago.

The Dodgers have only 12 games left in the regular season, but they still trail the Giants by one game in the NL West. The good news for LA is that Clayton Kershaw is back, and he looks great. The bad news is that the Padres are sinking like the Titanic, so they might not be able to help the Dodgers catch the Giants like we thought they might. It’s ridiculous though that Giants broadcaster Dave Fleming was talking smack on the Dodger pitchers, suggesting that the foreign substance crackdown has harmed the LA pitching staff. That’s simply an ignorant take since the Dodger pitchers are statistically far superior to the Giants pitchers. Then again it’s the Giants, so why should we be surprised? Here’s to hoping the Dodgers can stick it to Flemming and the Giants before the season is over.

The Clippers had an adorable ceremony to celebrate the ground breaking of their new Intuit Arena. It should open in 2024-2025, and Steve Ballmer is hyping up the fact there are more bathrooms in this arena than any other. That’s really not a selling point Steve, unless the bathrooms are symbolic of all the toilet bowl worthy playoff performances we’ve seen from the Clips. On the court though, the Clippers are rumored to be pursuing John Wall. Wall is a distressed asset, who would actually be a nice addition for anybody. He’s expensive, but he can still play. I have a hard time seeing anybody come up with matching salaries to make a trade for him though.

Finally, The Walking Dead went down on AMC last night. Name a more cheesy video than the Commonwealth introduction clip. I’ll wait. It had some real “Lost” Dharma Initiative vibes. Aaron basically turned into Shane right there and lost his mind. Herschel almost being the same damn age as Judith makes no freaking sense. That one Hilltop walker has some gorgeous looking hair. It’s so perfect. Makes me think someone in the apocalypse is styling the hair of walkers. Where did Heath go after all this time? Does anybody remember him? I would ask the same thing about Connie, but AMC spilled the beans that we’re going to see her next week. There’s a weird almost sexual tension between Negan and Maggie. Looking forward to the last three episodes of this year!

Monday Morning Coffee

September 13, 2021

It’s only one game, but that’s exactly how I expected the Rams to look in their season opener against the Bears. It turns out Matthew Stafford might actually be a lot better at this football thing than you thought he was, now that he has receivers, a good defense, and an elite coach I’m a little unconvinced of the effectiveness of their run game long-term, but they’ve got time to figure that out. That NBC Broadcast got a little awkward when Al Michaels incorrectly identified a woman as “Matt Stafford’s wife”. Meanwhile, I’m not so sure how badly the Bears offense needs to look for them to start Justin Fields. He’s clearly the QB with the higher ceiling, who gives them a better chance to win now.

Meanwhile, the Chargers did not look like the Chargers yesterday, and that was a good thing. That was a game that the Bolts would almost always lose in previous seasons, but Justin Herbert stepped up. So did Austin Ekeler, and I love the fact he has a complete love affair with his fantasy football owners. It’s such a strong affair, it’s awkwardly better than many people’s marriages. The Bolts have lost so many of these close games in seasons past, it feels like they have to have some positive regression to the mean. Yesterday was a good start, and Brandon Staley may be the guy to finally turn that around.

Elsewhere around the NFL, Dak Prescott was great, but Tom Brady, Gronk, and Antonio Brown played like it was 2012 in the Bucs win over the Cowboys. Bills Mafia is probably going to be jumping off bridges instead of on tables after their loss to the Steelers. The Browns turned back into the Browns late in the game in their loss to Kansas City. Aaron Rodgers and the Packers looked like clowns against the Saints, after a whole off-season of noise. The Texans don’t even know how to tank after beating up on the Jags.

To the college ranks where all you people calling for the firing of Clay Helton after USC lost to Stanford are hilarious. It’s like you have been asleep at the wheel for the last 6 years, pretending like Pete Carol still coaches this team. Saturday’s result was no surprise for those of us that have been paying attention. The USC administration isn’t prioritizing football like you think they should be. They just wanted a coach like Helton who can be under their thumb. If you are delusional like Bill Plaschke of the LA Times, you think SC is going to fire Helton before the season ends. Think again. He’s not getting fired until the school gets serious about winning again. Until then, expect more losses to Chardonnay drinking nerds like Stanford.

Elsewhere around College Football, Notre Dame barely survived against Toledo. Even Touchdown Jesus was covering his eyes for the majority of that sloppy game. The Irish victory against FSU a week earlier sounded impressive until the Seminoles lost to Jacksonville State on a last minute miracle. Oregon shocked Ohio State, and I’m pretty sure the Buckeyes were going to lose when this happened.

To baseball where the Dodgers swept away the Padres over the weekend, but it looks like they have no chance to catch the Giants with 18 games left in the regular season. On one hand, I respect the idea of the Dodgers keeping dudes like Will Smith and Corey Seager fresh for the playoffs and not burning them out in September. On the other hand, we need to see a lot less of Cody Bellinger before this dudes confidence is shattered like a beer mug at fraternity happy hour. At this point, even if the Dodgers brought up a minor leaguer hitting .220, he would be more productive offensively than Bellinger. If the last week has shown anything, it’s that this team is capable of exploding offensively at any time, or forgetting how to hit entirely with their swing for the fences approach. That’s a scary thought with a one game wild card on the horizon. Max Scherzer is somehow even better than Trevor Bauer though, and may just be all the magic the Dodgers need in October.

The Lakers traded Marc Gasol last week, which was really a bummer. I liked Gasol because he could stretch the floor, unlike DeAndre Jordan and Dwight Howard. However, the real issue with trading him is that the team doesn’t really have much salary to move in future trades, and even fewer draft picks I trust Rob Pelinka and all, but hopefully the Lakers don’t need any tweaks during the season, because their tool box is pretty limited.

Finally, the Walking Dead went down last night on AMC in another episode that really “caught fire” by the end of it. I think most of us were rather pleased that the dog survived so we didn’t have to show up at the AMC studios with pitch forks and tiki torches in protest. Why is it always Daryl who ends up getting taken prisoner? The better question is who will end up with final custody of that dog? It should be Daryl when its over. Every time a missing character returns, you can always count on them being a part of the villain group. Carol would probably have shown Leah the flowers at this point. Pope is one scary villain. He’s not Negan with Lucille or Alpha, but if you are BBQ’ing dudes in a fire, you’re pretty scary.

The Walking Dead - sezon 11, odcinek 4 - recenzja

Monday Morning Coffee

September 6, 2021

The Lakers must be determined to sign every player they struck out on in free agency in the last decade. Dwight Howard, Carmelo Anthony, and now DeAndre Jordan. I’ve been happy with all the signings to this point, except for DJ. DJ is an aging player with fading athleticism, an outdated skill set, at an outdated position. His free throw shooting is also so bad, he makes Shaq look like Rick Barry from the charity stripe. I’d much rather see the Lakers split their center minutes between Dwight and Marc Gasol, who can at least stretch the floor with his shooting. This is really starting to play out like the script of an Expendables movie.

To College Football where USC was in typical season opener form on Saturday at the Coliseum. I haven’t seen a season opener that bad since last year. Or the year before that. Or the four years before that! They found the win column against a lowly San Jose State team, but it was pathetic. Six straight years of this rinse and repeat Clay Helton nonsense. The offense is a mess, the o-line can’t protect anything, and the play calling has no imagination. I’m beginning to think Helton could get away with sending e-blasts with porn content throughout the University, and they still wouldn’t fire him. That seems to be how low football is on the priority list at USC. The good news (or maybe bad depending on your perspective) is that Stanford is coming to town next week and those Chardonnay drinking nerds aren’t very good at football right now.

Meanwhile, UCLA looked the best we’ve seen in years in a huge win over LSU. It’s been four years of hate on Chip Kelly, and rightfully so. The Bruins looked like they were playing a high school team with a high school size crowd last week vs Hawaii, so I wasn’t sold yet. Now they’ve got my attention. The running game is solid, the defense is making plays, and Dorian Thompson-Robinson is suddenly playing better. I still don’t know how good this team can be, but thus far, they are making me think they can contend for a conference title. That would be a miraculous turnaround, but let’s see if this is the same elite looking team that shows up against Fresno State, and the same Chip Kelly that suddenly remembers how to coach for the first time in 10 years.

Nice win by Notre Dame yesterday vs Florida State. Jack Coan looks like much more than a capable successor to Ian Book. However, the story that made headlines afterward was Brian Kelly making a joke by saying he’s a fan of execution and maybe his entire team needs to be executed. Of course the Twitter police was out in full force ready to arrest him for this comment. Those people definitely need their lives re-examined if they are offended by what he said. I think it’s safe to say the delivery of the joke could have been much more polished, and was rather poor, but what kind of idiot thinks that Kelly meant he was going to kill those kids?

Walker Buehler picked a bad day to forget how to pitch. Buehler didn’t have it yesterday, while Max Muncy and Chris Taylor didn’t have it all weekend. The Dodgers dropped 2 of 3 and now trail the Giants by a game with 25 to go. The Dodgers and Giants are going to go down to the final games of the regular season to decide the NL West. It’s somewhat of a shame these two rivals aren’t going to play again during the regular season. I say somewhat because these games have been stressful. So stressful, there’s probably not even a software update for Andrew Friedman’s computer that can adapt to that stress. Despite losing two of three over the weekend, the fact the Dodgers are in this position is somewhat amazing. Cody Bellinger has been awful, Clayton Kershaw, Dustin May, Corey Seager, and Mookie Betts have been injured. Trevor Bauer has been an idiot. Now AJ Pollock is injured. That’s not easy to overcome, even for a team with a payroll as large as the Dodgers. The real shame though is that regardless of who wins the division, these two teams are likely to meet in a 5-game NLDS rather than a 7-game NLCS.

As for the Angels, all you need to know about them is that they started some dude named Jansen Junk yesterday. This is not surprising because the Angels have been starting junk on the mound for years! The Angels can stop pretending like they are in some kind of a pennant race anytime now, and officially shut down Mike Trout for the season. On the bright side, the Angels are getting a nice look at younger players like Brandon Marsh, who has been tearing it up lately. The Halos are going to need a lot more Brandon Marsh’s to develop to support their top heavy payroll.

Well here we are, just one week away from NFL Football. I fully expect the Rams to beat the hell out of the Bears next Sunday. The Bears offensive line is older than Joe Biden. The Rams defensive line is going to eat them alive, and Aaron Donald should have a field day. The Bears secondary could also easily get manhandled by the likes of Cooper Kupp, Robert Woods, and Van Jefferson. If this doesn’t happen in the opener at Sofi Stadium, you should be supremely disappointed.

Then there’s the Chargers, who should be in for a battle with The Washington Football Team. Washington has one of the best defenses in football, and at 1:00 pm EST, the Bolts would rather be drinking coffee in their pajamas at that time. A year ago you might pencil this in as a win, but now this feels like a much improved Washington team, and a Charger team we still can’t trust in big games.

Finally, nice episode of The Walking Dead last night on AMC. PETA is probably going to come after the producers of the show once they saw that a horse was killed and the meat was fed to the people of Alexandria. Bet you’ll never look at horses the same. That last walker kill by Negan hit a little bit too close to home, and felt a lot like him murdering Glenn six years ago. Alden probably wanted to get left behind because hanging out with Negan and Maggie is like hanging out with your two divorced parents who still don’t get along to this day. The Reapers are creepy, the Commonwealth are weirdos, but they don’t creep me out as much as Alpha and the Whisperers. You think people were upset when Glenn died? If dog dies next week at the hands of the Reapers, people are going to show up with pitch forks and tiki torches at the AMC studios.