Please, Bob Costas, enough; potentially historically bad Bruins deal; creepy Bill Belichick; how to trick Bob Kraft

Monday 10/7/24

Bob Costas can't help himself. He kept himself reined in the other night, but he's back to palavering and trying to be some clever quipster again tonight. The problem is that he's not interesting and he's not witty. He's just some guy who has read the occasional book about baseball history in a society where no one reads or knows anything about history, and he runs out these super basic factoids that I knew when I was six-years-old, then he kind of stands beside them to say, "See? Aren't I a fountain of knowledge?"

He got less blowback the other day so that has ended up emboldening him tonight to do his fuddy-duddy routine. I have never thought this man knows baseball at all. Didn't think it when I was a kid, don't think it now, never thought it at any point in between. Again, he read a few baseball history books, that's it.

Tonight he told me that Hunter Renfroe is an excellent defensive outfielder. He isn't. He's a butcher out there who stomps around really hard on routine plays so he looks like a "gamer" and all of that nonsense.

It's depressing that things I knew in first grade are now things that make people think you really know a subject. The stuff I knew--like the first most basic stuff I learned--that I never thought was worth saying to people because if you knew anything at all then this was what you knew.

But no one knows anything.

I did not know until tonight that Jeremy Swayman signed with the Bruins for eight years at $66 million. That is a terrible contract for the Bruins. I cannot believe they gave him that term or money. Eight years? He's never been a starter in the NHL. He's done nothing. Won nothing. I think this could go down as one of the worst deals, if not the worst, in Bruins history.

I am floored by this deal. He's never played more than 43 games in a season. He's a malcontent. He's soft. His feelings get hurt.

The pressure will be on this guy now. He's turned off a lot of people in this market, and if he doesn't play well he's going to hear it. He better be good, for his sake.

The Bruins have a habit of overpaying their own players, but even by their standards this is extreme. Honestly, this could be the worst contract in the entire sport. Eight years for a goalie. I mean, wow. Eight years for a goalie who has never been a starter? My mind is blown. Seriously. I can't believe they did this. You don't overpay for running backs and you don't overpay for goalies. The goalie position means less than it ever has. Goalies are pretty replaceable.

Bill Belichick is gross. His twenty-something-year-old girlfriend is gross. A photo of them popped up in my feed earlier. What is this sad egomaniac doing? Sketchy, sketchy guy. What is this harlot doing? I know what she's doing. How do you have that little self-respect for yourself?

Belichick is in a commercial now. I think it's for some home security system. I don't know. I tend not to pay a lot of attention to these things and I'm always doing a bunch at once.

Anyway, some player calls him on the phone, and I guess Belichick is being cryptic or something in his answers, and then at the end he sort of snickers and says to himself, "I still got it," and I thought, "No you don't, brother. You haven't had it since like 2004. And you sure as hell haven't had it since you forced Brady out of town. Did you have it when you brought in Cam fucking Newton and you hired your kids and your friends and your friends' kids? Did you have it when you made Matt Patricia and Joe Judge co-offensive coordinators?"

Sounds like the Patriots are going to make a change at QB. So what the hell was the point of ever starting Jacoby Brissett?

Great plan.

Look at this wreck of a team. The coach can't manage the clock, you have a guy getting arrested the day before a game for a violent crime, players are griping, there's no talent anywhere to be found on the roster.

I'll save the Patriots some time and aggravation. Listen to me, Patriots organization! You made a mistake with Mayo and all of these guys on the staff. Don't make it worse by keeping it going because of length of contracts or thinking it's better to see the process through, whatever you might be saying to yourself.

Fire the coach, the OC, all of them, first chance you get, which realistically means the end of the season. You don't have anything right. These aren't the guys. Mayo is not the guy. You didn't even do a job search for goodness sake.

Do you know why Mayo was hired? I do. I'll tell you the real reason. Robert Kraft loves nothing more than having his ass kissed. It's so, so, so, so important to him. Mayo realized this and kissed and kept kissing.

I know how Kraft works. You kiss his ass enough, or make him look good, like he's the one making these smart decisions and that's why things are going great, and he says you're like a son to him. That's his big thing. "He's like a son to me."

You can fool this insecure man so easily. Hell, Aaron Hernandez completely snookered him. Do you know how dumb Aaron Hernandez was? Even by jock standards Aaron Hernandez was a special kind of dumb and Kraft was completely taken in by Hernandez's ass kissing.

You made a guy who has never been a head coach your head coach. In the bloody NFL. That is nuts. You don't even interview anyone else.

Then you made a career retread the offensive coordinator. A guy who managed to be both a retread and someone no one ever wanted as their OC.

I can't get over that Swayman deal. Eight years! So, what? He was in camp yesterday, practices with the team, then he's in net for a real game later this week? What if he gives up 5 because of the rust? Shit can snowball on you.

I'm telling you, this guy better come in and be light out, one of the two or three best goaltenders in the league, and I don't believe that's who he is in ideal circumstances.

Bob Costas is telling stories about Thurman Munson now. I like a good Munson story, but there's no point to any of this. He's just going on and on, down his private memory lane. Word count-wise, I bet you Costas has said three times more words tonight than he did during Game 1 when he came off like someone who was contrite for having annoyed so many people. A very brief penance period.