Click above for every Jimmy Garoppolo play vs. Dallas. This is my way of saying…I’m not sure what to think of Jimmy G heading into Lambeau Field on the frozen tundra.
I didn’t think there were any real surprises on Super Wild Card Week-End. I thought the San Fran vs. Dallas game had the most potential for a great game. The Joe Burrow vs. Derek Carr game held together for a watchable game. Otherwise in a word the other four games were …unwatchable games with three quarterbacks in Kyler Murray, Mac Jones, and Jalen Hurts going down to lopsided defeats along with retiring Big Ben.
I would say this to Caleb Williams’ father… it wasn’t a stellar weekend for Lincoln Riley’s NFL Quarterback Prep School.
This to me just reinforces how critical the quarterback position is once you get to the NFL Playoffs. Jimmy G actually played fairly well till he threw that horrible fourth quarter pick which gave the pathetic Dallas Cowboys some hope they never should have had given the physical whipping they took in the first three quarters.
But now we’re to the Divisional Round…which for me is the best week-end of NFL football played every year. Obviously…I’m moving Jimmy G the enigma down on my Divisional Round Quarterback rankings…but, I’m not giving hope up on Jimmy G just yet. That’s why we play the games on the field and not on the internet.
Kyle Shanahan has to have that very private Al Pocino to Willie Beamon conversation this week and basically say, ” Jimmy… John Lynch and I have a Super Bowl team in need of a Super Bowl quarterback. Are you that guy or not?”
Seems pretty simple to me.
I think all four games this weekend have great potential for us fervent NFL fans… but I’m a Packer fan who’s intrigued by what I think Jimmy G should be as a quarterback, but some reasons just seem to have some quarterback demons holding him back. Hopefully… both Bosa and Warner are a go so we NFL fans get to see this game played to its full potential.
What a great poem which in essence wasn’t listened to by anybody.
Maybe there was a five minute lull there, but really, if anything, this country since Amanda Gorman’s inspirational poem has sunk even deeper into the dual abyss of hatred and ignorance.
As I’ve clearly stated on my blog…I think both parties suck to varying degrees. That’s why when I left the Republican Party in 2000–it took me about five minutes to decide to re-register as an Independent and not as a Democrat.
You would have thought the party of Lincoln would have at the least had a reflective moment after January 6th, but not to be from the party of law and order and Christian evangelicals.
Not to be.
James Carvelle was absolutely right…it’s always about the money even when on film you have a departing president urging a group of disenfranchised whites trying to hang a sitting vice-president and overthrow an election.
Yikes. Even in the throes of the Civil War …Lincoln didn’t have to encounter this until they killed him after his re-election.
There doesn’t appear to be one courageous Republican senator like there was in 1972 when Howard Baker and Barry Goldwater went to Richard Nixon and told him it was over for him being president any longer.
In the end Trump was absolutely correct in 2016 when he said, “I could shoot someone in broad daylight in certain parts of our country and it wouldn’t matter.”
Trump was right. That’s how far the party of Lincoln has sunk and how nothing beyond their hatred of the far left matters any longer.
It was a beautiful poem delivered by Amanda Gorman, what a shame no one from the Party of Lincoln took the time to listen to it minus maybe Liz Cheney and several others.
Here we are fifty-three years since the assassination of Martin Luther King and from any social setting, let alone whites vs. blacks, that we find ourselves unable to decipher justice on any level even when it’s on film.
I just finished reading Sidney’s autobiography…The Measure of a Man. Five stars across the board.
Sidney’s writing voice transmits elegance, smarts, toughness, dignity, and character from the opening page thru the last page of the book.
The book was released in 2000 and was a selection for Oprah’s Book Club back in the day.
Why is it white people loved Sidney so much? I’d love to go to a Trump rally in the deep South and ask them if they treasure Sidney Poiter’s work? Ask them what they know about Sidney’s life.
Was he just an uppity nigger who didn’t know his place in America? I mean, what was it about Sidney which in a sense transformed the manner in which motion pictures started becoming made during the 60’s in the midst of the Civil Rights movement?
Sidney was born premature at all of three pounds. The doctors told his parents, Reginald and Evelyn, their son wouldn’t live. But he did.
As Sidney repeats endlessly in his book…it is from Reggie and Evelyn of which he got his character and work ethic.
His parents were dirt poor sharecroppers on a tiny island in the Bahamas called Cat Island. Their lone crop was tomatoes. There was no indoor electricity or plumbing. The toilet was outside.
At the age of fifteen Sidney was sent to live with some relatives in Nassau. Sidney had no formal education and struggled with his diction and reading skills.
Sidney spent several years in Nassau before moving northward to Miami in search of more opportunity.
It was in Miami in which Sidney figured out he was black. It was the first time in his life he realized he had a different skin color. It was the first time he came to know what the words Jim Crow meant to a black person. It meant as Sidney wrote…’For the first time in my life I realized I was perceived as three-fifths of a human being by white people.’
Sidney didn’t last long in Miami and became restless in a hurry. With all of forty dollars in his pocket he went to the bus station in search of a new future where he wouldn’t be thought of as three-fifths of a human being.
He asked the ticket attendant at the bus station where he should go for his next place to live with only forty bucks in his pocket. The attendant said, ” Probably…New York. That’s eleven bucks for a round trip ticket.”
Sidney replied, ” Give me a one-way ticket.”
And that’s how Sidney Portier from French descendants in Haiti went from tiny Cat Island to New York to become one of the greatest actors the world has ever known.
Sidney made a living washing dishes. Then he and a friend opened a small barbeque shack in Harlem. Then one day Sidney saw a sign which was advertising auditions at the American Negro Theatre.
Sidney went and read for a part in an upcoming play and was told to leave the building and never come back by the manager of the theatre. He was told his inability to read and his thick Bahamian diction made him unfit to perform.
Sidney didn’t quit. He got a friend to tutor him with his reading and began working on his diction and the manner in which he spoke.
One year later…Sidney went back to the same theatre and auditioned for the lead role. Sidney was beaten out by another young black actor who Sidney admitted had a much better singing voice than he did. But Sidney was given the alternate’s role…which was a beginning.
Then fate came into play when on the night of the play opening, the male lead actor a chap by the name of Harry Belfonte became ill and couldn’t perform.
Sidney stepped in and became something of a hit.
A white agent by the name of Marty Baum came to notice Sidney in the play and came to offer Sidney a small part in a film which would pay $750 dollars a week… was a small fortune considering Sidney was making less than $30 dollars a week from the barbeque restaurant.
Sidney read the role and was given the part…but then there was a problem. Sidney told the agent he couldn’t take the part because he didn’t respect the character he was being asked to play in the movie. He said Reggie and Evelyn would never approve of their son playing the part of such a weak individual. Swear to God. Can you imagine that in today’s world?
Marty Baum the agent shakes his head in disbelief and wishes Sidney the best with his acting future.
Sidney goes back to washing dishes and the barbeque restaurant.
A year passes and out of the blue…the agent Marty Baum reappears in Sidney’s life with a part he thought Reggie and Evelyn might approve of playing in an American film.
Sidney loved the roll and then became Marty Baum’s best client ever.
When we think about Martin Luther King Day what I specifically think it should mean is this….’The American Dream should be there for all three-hundred and thirty Americans to aspire for if they have the guts, the will, and the destiny to make it happen.’
Every child in this country along with their parents should be able to dream and dream big. That’s the American Dream and it should not be exclusive to those conceived in an Ivy League sperm bank or who have parents who paved the way thru a trust fund.
But in closing…so much of what transpired with Sidney Poitier happened because Reggie and Evelyn Poitier dreamed along with their son and told him to dream big while never forgetting his roots.
Have a meaningful Martin Luther King Day and dream big.
Michael Smerconish’s question of the week was a great one. Is Joe Biden’s presidency doomed?
I would vote no, but with a caveat attached…it will be doomed if he continues to attempt to govern for the 20% on the far left who voted for him in the recent election. He’ll be done just like Jimmy Carter.
History should be a teacher. I’m stunned a political survivor like Joe Biden has allowed his presidency to be kidnapped. Joe Biden is a moderate. He was saved in South Carolina by James Clyburn because Clyburn was politically smart enough to know Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete B had no chance whatsoever of appealing to registered Independents who now make up more than 40% of registered voters.
Recent presidential history tells us Reagan, Clinton, and Obama all centered their presidencies after or before the mid-terms of their first term. The Democrats are getting ready to be historically eviscerated in the upcoming mid-terms just as Reagan, Clinton, and Obama were in their first term mid-terms. The same could be said for Bush 43, but that was perhaps different because of 9/11 and the two historically doomed wars created during that time frame.
I’m an Independent who was previously what I would describe as a socially liberal Republican because I in fact think you should have to work if able and not be given everything by the federal government. I know…how stupid could I be? But the difference with me and the Trump people is that I do believe the federal government is needed to in fact act as a societal check and balance.
My angst with Donald Trump is fairly clear. I think he’s a spoiled trust fund brat who’s never given a shit about any other human in his life. I think he’s punk who was basically given political oxygen by the fact the GOP field in 2016 was so incredibly weak and pathetic.
When I as an Independent voted for Joe Biden it was for primarily one reason… that reason being Joe Biden wasn’t Donald Trump as a human being and I hoped Biden would govern as a level-headed moderate.
As the pandemic and the economy go…Joe Biden’s chances will go is my take. Despite all the roil…you know what the Dow did in 2021…it went up 28.5%. Jobs are available everywhere. Our economy has changed. It will continue to change even more. Oil and the price of gasoline has always been a volatile market. Crisis begats opportunities for those smart enough to visualize the New Next Big Things human consumption-wise.
People have already forgotten the exit from Afghanistan. What they should never forget though in fact was the historical entry into Afghanistan and why we were so stupid to do so in the first place. Plus…this was Trump’s call as well—so for those in his camp who can read this won’t be an issue in 2024 because Biden was basically following what Trump had put in place before he left office.
Remember what James Carvelle always told Bill Clinton…’It’s always about the economy, stupid.’
So if I were Joe Biden what I would do is call Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and see if I could work out a deal to get some things done on… 1 voting rights legislation, 2 a pragmatic approach to salvaging the Union per Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and 3 coming to terms with the fact Joe Biden was elected POTUS for the very reason he’s not Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, or Pete B.
Joe Biden wasn’t even on the leader board when James Clyburn altered American presidential history.
That may sound insensitive on my part, but again go back to that South Carolina primary when James Clyburn saved Joe Biden and in fact saved the Democratic Party from its own far left wing.
There…I just wrote on my sleepy little underground blog what no one in the Democratic Party seems to be willing to say in public on January 15th, 2022.
This is why we play. For the goal achieving portion of the season. The regular season means nothing at this point. Single elimination for the Lombardi Trophy.
My list is in my view the top eight quarterbacks still alive who coupled with their specific team have the best chances of winning the Super Bowl one thru eight.
Ryan Tannehill and Jimmy Garoppolo are on my list for two reasons…1 they both play on teams with strong defenses, and 2 they both play on teams who can run the ball in cold weather. Neither made my top eight in the regular season, but if both of these guys can stay away from throwing picks and managing the game like Peyton Manning did in leading the Denver Broncos to their most recent Super Bowl championship….it wouldn’t shock me to see the Titans and 49’ers make a run.
My stat of the week pertains to the San Franciso 49’ers…When Jimmy G doesn’t throw a pick… San Fran has not lost a game this season. I think the 49’ers at Dallas is the most intriguing game this week-end for that reason. If Jimmy G plays turnover free—it wouldn’t shock me to see the 49’ers get on a roll.
Derrick Henry for the Titans. He might be rusty, but what he’ll also be is rested. If Tennessee advances it would not shock me to see the Titans make a run and possibly win the AFC Championship.
And, of course, everything begins and ends with Tom Brady. I think the key for Tampa is for Mike Evans and Gronk to not get injured and add in that regard to an already depleted Bucs’ wide receiver corps. Tom is Tom. The end.
Absolutely no sports for me tonight. A brutal Canadian front is bearing down on Deer Creek as I post. Just got in wearing shorts walking the wooded creek-line with Pauli looking for the mountain lion at dusk. We needed to do this because there’s no way in hell… I’m walking her tomorrow with wind chill temps projected at zero.
Football and basketball galore tomorrow, but tonight it’s a winter music-fest with some red wine to get prepared for the massive temperature drop-off.
I still haven’t done my initial NFL Playoff Top Six quarterback ratings, but I’ll get to it tomorrow morning. No sports tonight though. Just music and wine.
Stay warm. Be safe. Be kind to others and bring your dogs inside.
I dread the cold tomorrow. As much as I love Toronto…I could never make it thru a Canadian winter. Who am I kidding there? Oklahoma is a challenge as it is. I wish I could just click my heels three times and wake up in Cozumel or Puerta Villarta and watch the NFL playoff games on the beach drinking cold Pacifico beer.
One of the best concerts I ever attended was Firefall playing backup for Marchall Tucker. To be young again.
Need to close this out and get my game face on for the NFL Playoffs. I love this song. Not a huge commercial success. But one of my favorite Firefall songs.
Even the Thunder couldn’t lose this one. The Nets without Kevin Durant and the still unvaccinated Kyrie Irving were on the last night of a four game in five days stretch…. this is one the Thunder couldn’t lose.
Plus…I think whenever Hinkie-Presti can beat Durant and Harden it’s cathartic balm for his provincial franchise to get all fired up. The Thunder rolled. In the process OKC won a game they’ll probably regret come mid-April.
This game marks the mid-way point for the Thunder in the eighty-two game NBA regular season. OKC now stands at 14-27…which means for me to hit my 22-60 bet on the Thunder’s win total this season…the tanking Thunder need to go 8-33 the second half of this season.
Chris Fisher actually used the word alacrity during the broadcast while I was watching my Thunder ten-minute quota. I was stunned. Where did that come from? I loved it, but I wonder how many Proud Boys and Oath Keepers even knew that word existed. I loved it though.
Alacrity….noun: brisk and cheerful readiness.
I love that he had the nerve to use that noun in Oklahoma. It must have been the former USC broadcaster in him. I’m giving Chris Fisher a helmet sticker. Not many Oklahoma dudes dropping alacrity in their daily conversations. Juanita Elijah, my high school English teacher from John Marshall would have kissed Chris Fisher for using alacrity during a Thunder game.
The LA Clippers may be tanking full fold pretty soon so maybe there’s hope for OKC that pick will actually turn into a player since Poku is back playing G League basketball again.
I watched maybe ten minutes of this game then started watching other things on Thursday night:
Texas Tech rolled Mike Boynton’s offensively punchless Cowboys in Lubbock like I thought they would.
Memphis won their 11th straight game.
Milwaukee rolled the Golden State Warriors at home.
The streaking Boston Bruins, 10-3-2 in their last fifteen games, beat the Philadelphia Flyers 3-2 in Boston behind a David Pasternak hat trick. It was the second night in a row the Bruins were featured on either TNT or ESPN …so for me it was a nice hockey week.
With the Thunder now down to 7th place in my current Oklahoma sports relevancy poll…this is where I’ll pick it up with my hockey coverage. Trust me…you won’t get this anywhere else in Oklahoma.
The Bruins can score goals and have a wonderful power play, but I just don’t know how far they can go with the emotionally volatile Tuuka Rask in net.
In hockey—you build your team from the net out if you aspire to hoist a Cup… and I fear while the Bruins are an exciting team to watch in the regular season—it could be tough for the Bruins come Stanley Cup Playoff time. Pray for Tuukka.
I need to get ready for the NFL Playoffs and the cold weather headed our way. Nothing better than a brief cold spell while watching NFL playoff football.
In case you didn’t know…on Tuesday night in Waco,the Texas Tech Red Raiders ended defending champion Baylor’s 20 game winning streak with a hard fought wire to wire game.
Here’s Coach Adams at the pre-season Big 12 presser as he discusses the transition from being Chris Beard’s associate head coach for five years prior to landing the Texas Tech job.
This is a no frills interview of which only college basketball junkies might enjoy. Mark Adams looks more like a pastor than a college basketball coach, but don’t judge the cover…he can flat out coach.
Coach Adams at various college levels was a head coach for twenty-five years and won a junior college national championship along the way. He was also with Chris Beard in Little Rock before Beard made the move to Lubbock.
Coach Adams was the associate head coach at Texas Tech for the previous five years and was elevated to the head coach position when Chris Beard took the Texas job last spring.
Mark Adams is a Texas Tech alum and this is his dream job. He’s one of these guys who fly under the radar screen, but was a huge part of Texas Tech’s run to the national championship game three years ago.
Coach Adams is also known as a coach who has transformed the Big 12 into this basketball monster conference which boasts tough man to man switching defense. Coach Adams has been known as a guy who’s tweaked it to perfection in the Big 12. Kind of like Ron Adams in the NBA as far as being a defensive guru.
Interestingly, O State former head coach Sean Sutton has been on the staff with Coach Adams for several years now and stayed in Lubbock after Chris Beard departed for his alma mater in Austin.
Tonight in Lubbock…the Red Raiders host Oklahoma State in what should be a defensive grind it out type of game.
One would think if Tech wins this game coupled with its upset of Baylor–the Red Raiders will be headed up into the Top 12 or so of next week’s poll. I’m circling Texas Tech as a March Madness Cinderella possibility.
There’s a lot of great stuff going on in the NBA currently, but at the head of the class even beyond Phoenix and Golden State are Ja Morant and the streaking Memphis Grizzlies.
On Tuesday night the Grizz handled the Warriors even with Klay Thompson scoring 14 points in just over nineteen minutes while recording a team high +17 rating.
It didn’t matter what Klay did because the Grizzlies are on fire even without one of their better players Dillion Brooks out for awhile. The Grizzlies won their 10th staight game and 20th out of their last 24 games.
The Grizzlies are on the cusp of being the next young NBA team in a small market city to become a league favorite kind of like the Thunder were almost a decade ago.
I was wrong earler this season when I wrote the Thunder are a year behind Memphis in their rebuild. That was overly optimistic. Even if Oklahoma City hits the lottery and lands say a Paulo Banchero….the Thunder after two years of shamelessly tanking like they have will take at the least another two years to then integrate a winning culture and learn how win in the last four minutes of games against good teams.
Sometimes you have to lose to be winner again, but in the NBA you have to learn how to close out against good teams. You have to not only be talented, but be menatlly and with a collection of players who ply smart with an edge to their game.
Memphis has a good young coach in Taylor Jenkins and a deep team which could maybe use another veteran piece to add even more wing scoring.
But what Memphis has most of all is the next star of the league in Ja Morant who on Tuesday night did the unthinkable when in the midst of Klay Thompson’s return made the Splash Brothers the seconf tier storyline of the night.
What a gorgeous mid-January winter day in Oklahoma. Caleb Williams didn’t need move to SoCal with January winter like this in Oklahoma. This is very San Diegoesque …albeit with climate change attached. But still.
The Thunder played last night and actually found a way to extract defeat from a win over the Wizards with Bradley Beal sitting and a fistfight breaking out in the Washington locker room at halftime between KCP and Montrell H. That has to be a first for the now 13-27 shamelessly tanking Thunder with only one game left till we reach the halfway point of this season.
And to make it even more gratifying…KCP hit the game winner for the self-brawling Wizards with a 25-foot accidental bank shot just right of the arc with a couple of seconds left.
Orlando at the midway mark is the leader in the clubhouse thru 36 holes with a 7-34. Bubba Watson is till out on the course at the 17th green at 7-33. Then OKC is holding the fourth spot at 13-27.
Hinkie=Presti needs to amp up the shameless tank death march another notch or two if he wants Paulo Banchero wearing one of those sleek new white Thunder jerseys on draft night. A white Thunder cap with that jersey would be sharp. Little Nick Gallo needs to start working on it…given he really doesn’t do anything else except embarrass sports jounalists everywhere. I think he went to Vandy…and that’s an exceptional school. He has no excuses at this point. But from I’ve read Rachel Nichols is headed to TNT…so that dream of mine is dead with her joining the Thunder.
Only forty-two games left. Get out and enjoy the weather thru Friday because then we get cold weather on Saturday to make the NFL Playoffs-Round I even better to watch.
Next up…my Top Four NFL QB Ratings heading into Round L.