Current sports: How MVPs and Halls of Fame work, cupidinous Lane Kiffin, Patriots flaws, the Vikings' QB, stadium statuary, Tom Brady's analysis, uneducated media people, Jaylen Brown's HOF chances

Monday 11/24/25

The Chiefs may have saved their season yesterday. If they hadn't come from behind and then beaten the Colts in OT that would have been it for the playoffs.

Watched some of the Cowboys-Eagles game, which the Eagles led 21-0, though I thought the Cowboys could still make it a game. Wasn't impressed by Philadelphia. In some games, a team is three scores better than the other team, and in some other games one team has just happened to score three times and the other team hasn't scored yet. I felt this was the latter type. Not that I expected the Cowboys to win. I thought, "Just get within seven and make it interesting"--from the viewing perspective, I mean. But then they won 24-21.

People outside of New England don't like him--they resent his success, his appearance, the somewhat wooden way he comes across--and they were going to say he was bad at his analyst job no matter what (at least at first), but Tom Brady has more insight into what's happening in a game than just about any other color guy now.

The Patriots could have lost yesterday to a bad Bengals team in Cincinnati and in some regard deserved to. When I see a team go for it on fourth down clearly because someone from Yale with an analytics readout says that's how it should be based on the data when it is obvious to someone who understands sports and context and the flow of a game to kick the field goal and take the points, I think, "Stop being an asshole and play the game correctly." I will root against that team.

I don't root against the Patriots for obvious reasons, but they did deserve some comeuppance yesterday for their blundering inside of the five yard line with this insistence on (seemingly nearly always) going for it on fourth down. They are not good near the goal line. I'd say they're a disaster down there. They can't run the ball well anyway. Drake Maye doesn't have Brady's ability to sneak the ball for that necessary yard. True, Brady was the best I've ever seen at that, but still. Shouldn't be this hard. They are very predictable in these situations. You know they're just going to slam into the line and be fortunate not to move backwards.

Mike Vrabel will be coach of the year. It's inevitable now. Too big of a turnaround for him not to be. The Patriots' win streak has been nice, but they strike me as vulnerable. Then again, everyone does. More so this year than any other year. The entire NFL is like the Eastern Conference of the NBA last year. Open.

Timing will play a big role in who emerges from the conference. Bills fans are calling for the heads of the people in charge there, but I'd try and relax if I was a Bills fan. Could be that their bad stretch/sag is well-timed.

Having said that, it wouldn't surprise me if Josh Allen never wins a Super Bowl. And, on a more surprising note, it also wouldn't surprise me if Connor McDavid never gets a Stanley Cup. Chances are one of them does but not both, and that one is McDavid, but it could happen easier than you might think.

It's telling that Drake Maye has not had a single 300 yard game in his career. That's a Troy Aikman-like stat. He's have thirty-four pass attempts, twenty-five completions, throw for 240 yards, two touchdowns, zero picks. Is he ever discussed as an elite passer? Volume is part of the elite passer thing. Volume matters. I pay a lot of attention to passing yards.

There has been talk in New England about how there should be a statue outside of Gillette for Rob Gronkowski. Yeah, I don't think so. People are silly with these statues. What do they really do for anyone? Okay, I get the Doug Flutie statue outside of Alumni in Chestnut Hill and the Brady one at Gillette, but how far do you want it to go? We need more sports statuary outside! There already has to be one for Bill Belichick--given how these things work--and then you have two.

A better choice than Gronkowski anyway? Adam Vinatieri. Why? Well, I think if you're going to have a statue of someone outside of an arena, that person has to represent more than who they were as a player. There has to be additional symbolism. Weight. Vinatieri is synonymous with the whole thing, the rise of the dynasty, how improbable it was at first. The magical quality.

But, if you do this, then you're focusing on early days, like things trailed off after that. The Patriots of Vinatieri and the Patriots of Gronkowski are connected in a way, but they're also not in a bunch of other ways, so it'd also be like you were making light of the second half of the dynasty or as though it didn't happen according to your own statuary hagiography.

The Vikings need a quarterback. J.D. McCarthy derailed that "program." You can have all of the rah-rah and "intangible" stuff, but in the NFL you need to be able to play. The rest of it only counts for so much. They made a bad move automatically installing him like they did and thinking their upward progression would continue.

Announcers shouldn't say that a team trails by a touchdown with they trail by seven. Be clearer. You can't assume the extra point in the NFL.

Lane Kiffin is to me all that is wrong with college football coaches. I don't know why you'd bring this guy in because he's always looking out for number one. That's all he has any interest in. The next dollar, the bigger salary, the next job. He's not staying and building. Every job for someone like that is a rung for their own financial advancement. Even if he had the best or perfect job. He won't be long for it. And he'll always have an eye on something and somewhere else, from the moment he shows up.

Bruins are sliding again. That team is all over the place.

A Boston sports media person used the word "niggling," and the co-hosts--people in their forties and up--thought he said a slur--you could see it in their reactions and then later they commented on it--because they don't know that very basic and perfectly fine non-slur of a word despite being paid a lot of money to be in media because of...what? Their minds? How well and entertainingly they talk?

Just about everyone in media is a moron. They don't know words, basic English, anything about sports, anything about anything. None of that is the basis or any part of how it works. I imagine I probably used that word in grammar school. "Niggling commentary." A niggling remark.

Speaking of sports media morons: I heard two of them here in Boston the other day on a midday show--and these guys are in their late fifties, I believe--actually say that Patrick Mahomes would probably make the Hall of Fame and Lamar Jackson could. Of all the stupid remarks...How can you be this ignorant? Flat out? But to be that ignorant about your subject and have that job and make that money? To have so little idea for how it works, history old and new? Just no clue?

Patrick Mahomes is every bit the obvious Hall of Famer, and has been for a long time, as Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Bobby Orr, Babe Ruth, Peyton Manning. Those kinds of guys. I'm not saying he's on their level. But screamingly obvious first ballot Hall of Famer? Yeah. Same level of no-brainer in that regard.

Lamar Jackson is also a very obvious first ballot Hall of Famer, and I don't even like his game. I don't think he plays a way that allows you to win at the highest level, and I doubt he'll ever quarterback a team to a Super Bowl. But the guy has two MVP awards. He has the highest passer rating in the history of the league. That's a misleading stat (on account that if you played before these times, no matter how good you were, you couldn't have a rating as high, given the rules, how the game was played, what was allowed, and so forth; John Elway's career passer rating is under 80 and Lamar Jackson's is almost 103; do you think Lamar Jackson is thirty QB rating percentage points better than John Elway?), but he still has that top spot as of right now.

I'll break down this MVP thing quickly. In the NBA, it's impossible to win more than one MVP and not make the Hall of Fame. It's also pretty much impossible though maybe not as impossible, if that makes sense. I guess there was a chance Kurt Warner didn't get in, but he did. Let's call it impossible. You can be great in the NFL for five years and make the Hall of Fame. So, if you play seven years, win two MVPs, are okay in a couple other years, and then not so good in the rest, you will get in. It's almost impossible and may be impossible to win more than one MVP in the NHL and not make the Hall of Fame. It's never been done. While we're at it: It's very hard to win a single MVP in the NBA and the NHL and not make the Hall of Fame. Plenty of guys have won an MVP in the NFL and not make the Hall of Fame. You can win two MVPs in baseball and not make the Hall of Fame. This happens. It's the nature of the sport. You can win two Cy Youngs in baseball and not make the Hall of Fame. Bret Saberhagen, for example. But you can't win three Cy Youngs and not make the Hall of Fame probably not matter what else you do or how bad you were the rest of the time. Are we clear here?

Here's something that gives you an idea how daft so much of these predictors and probability things are. Is Jaylen Brown of the Celtics a future Hall of Famer? You think he'll get in? He had 35 points last night, by the way, in a Celtics win over Orlando. Putting up a lot of points this year with Tatum down. The NBA Hall of Fame is weird. Guys get into who you think wouldn't--Mo Cheeks, for instance--but there are no real arguments or complaints from anyone, unlike with the baseball Hall of Fame, which is nothing but arguments and complaints. But with basketball, the selections are almost always accepted as perfectly kosher.

My guess is that many people would say Jaylen Brown is not on a Hall of Fame track. (Discounting the Boston people who'd say that no doubt he is, citing his two postseason MVP awards if they happened to remember them.) If that's so, consider the Celtics of the last half dozen years or whatever. There's been this tendency to talk about them as a team that ought to have been a juggernaut. A team that won multiple championships. I said I thought they were done winning championships. They got their one and that's usually it. Do you think Denver gets another? The Bucs? I mean, sure, maybe. But typically--these days--you get bounces, the timing is right, you have favorable, fortuitous match-ups, and you break through. You don't stay where you got to. It's momentary.

It could be that that Celtics team had one Hall of Famer on it. How many NBA teams won multiple championships with a lone Hall of Famer? Or without three? Or more? It's not a thing. Those Celtics teams were closer to that 2004 Pistons team than anyone else thought. But that's who they were most similar to in my mind. Now, I hope Tatum comes back, and they win two more titles in four years or whatever. I would find that very surprising though.

I was talking about predictors though. If you go to basketball-reference, you'll see that they give Jaylen Brown a 2.1% of making the Hall of Fame. There's a big list that has the probability for everyone, including guys in the Hall of Fame, treating them as if they weren't. Like they were still active. Understand? Michael Jordan is at 100%. Charles Barkley is just under.

I'm not a huge Jaylen Brown person, but I would have put him around 40%. Here's where I'll blow your mind: Isaiah Thomas--so this is the Celtics' IT, not Isiah Thomas of the Detroit Pistons--is at 7%.

I mean...that's absurd. B.J. Armstrong is at 2%. What are these garbage predictors? You cannot take any of this stuff seriously. He has a chance of this, these are the odds of a comeback now, here's this teams win probability after the second inning in this given game.

It's all stupid, unfounded, not real, not based in reality. It's fantasy, which makes a certain amount of sense, given the popularity of fantasy sports with many a zombie-fied American, many of who are also fast becoming gambling addicts, and that most people have but a perfunctory, "no more than is necessary"--which lessens every day in our terror-farce of a world--relationship with reality themselves.

Steve Kerr the player--not the championship winning coach--is ahead of Jaylen Brown. The role player who averaged 17.8 minutes per game for his career. What is this nonsense? But that same nonsense--or something similar--is also why the Patriots go for it on fourth down on many of those occasions.