December 9, 2024
What a surprising and phenomenal win by the Rams yesterday against the Bills! Some of you forgot that the Rams are actually coached by Sean McVay, who is in fact one of the best coaches in football. Matt Stafford was a play-action passing killer, and the Rams condensed formations gave the Bills a hard time all game. Say what you will about LA benefitting from some poor officiating, but they still did a great job involving their running backs in the passing game with quick dump-offs, and taking well timed shots down the field. McVay should never give up play calling duties. The Rams could easily win their next 4 games, and they still have an opportunity to make the playoffs by either winning the division or a wild card berth. This team is still dangerous and can play with anybody when it’s healthy. Hopefully they continue to show that over the next 4 weeks.
As for the Chargers, they hung with the Chiefs right until the end on Sunday Night Football, but sure enough, the Chiefs won another close game. At some point you would think KC is bound to lose one of these close games, but it just hasn’t happened yet. Say what you will about the refs and all, but they just know how to execute when the game is on the line, and they have the best quarterback in the game in Patrick Mahomes, even though he sounds like Kermit The Frog. The flip side to all this is that the Bolts have 8 wins with the worst Wide Receivers and Tight Ends in the league. It’s only going to get better. I could still see the Chargers upsetting any of higher seeds in the 1st round of the playoffs given how tough they are becoming to play against.
Last night we learned that Juan Soto signed a 15 year deal with New York Mets for $765 million. The contract actually has escalators to make it worth up to $805 million. Good for Soto for getting the bag, but it’s hilarious that Jeff Passan and others are out here claiming the Mets had a better future. Good one guys. The Yankees have Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Gerrit Cole. The Mets have Francisco Lindor and no pitching. The Yankees offered $760 million, which he and Scott Boras thought was poor people stuff. That means he thought he probably thought whatever the Dodgers offered wouldn’t even be able to feed his family. Funny, I haven’t seen any “The Mets are ruining baseball” tweets yet since this news broke, even though they will have a higher payroll than the Dodgers. The Boys in Blue dodged a bullet not signing this guy, and all you need to see is how much better the Padres were last year without him. Nice move though bringing back Blake Treinen. Hopefully they can do the same with Teoscar Hernandez, Walker Buehler, and Kike Hernandez. Michael Conforto was a nice addition as well.
I didn’t really want to talk about it, but at some point I guess I have to address the train wreck that is the Lakers. They may have won last night, but this team just looks like they don’t care for many stretches. How can a team with Lebron James and Anthony Davis play like that? I don’t want to hear about injury excuses from Lebron. There are no circumstances where you should just get blown off the floor in games like the Lakers have been the last couple of weeks. Many fans have just about had it with this team and want to trade Lebron and AD to start rebuilding. I’m just not there yet with this group. We’re only a quarter of the way into the season. With that being said though, if they don’t show us they will start caring, this team is certainly not worth investing more assets and draft capital to win-now.
The Clippers meanwhile are treading water nicely in 6th place in the West, but the questions about Kawhi remain. Bill Simmons tweeted out that he has heard from sources that Kawhi will be back by Christmas. However, when you ask Ty Lue, he has no idea. This is so typical. People see this guy ramping up his activities and he looks fine, prompting the speculation that he will be back soon. You know though that his people are going to keep holding him back from playing to preserve whatever he has left in his knees. It’s Ground Hog day all over again!
To College Football, where the 12-Team playoff bracket was announced yesterday. America definitely won yesterday when Alabama was not part of the field. My Fighting Irish of Notre Dame will be the 7th seed and face Indiana in the 1st round, for an in-state cold weather battle in South Bend. That should be a good one, and a very winnable game for them. In fact, I don’t hate their chances against Georgia either. If there is one thing we learned though, it’s that the committee does value not just winning the Conference Championship Games, but even playing in them. That’s why the likes of Penn State and Texas were the 5th and 6th seeds.
Meanwhile, the Trojans are going to wrap up the season in the Las Vegas Bowl, facing Texas A&M. Ok, it’s kind of cool that they will play at Allegiant Stadium, but that’s about it. USC fans can’t be happy about playing in Vegas in a year where 12-teams can now make the playoffs, Big Ten or not. To put more salt in the wound, the Trojans have an alarming number of High School California recruits who ended up going to other programs, which isn’t a good look for Lincoln Riley. This program is going to have to rely on the transfer portal for some significant improvement next year.
