I’ve been bad and missed the past 4 weeks or so of FMQB. We’ve had a lot to talk about! I’ll try to summarize some interesting pieces of the season without getting too long winded. Sorry if it’s a bit scattered.
Prior Week Points of Interest:
It was interesting to see the Ravens completely dismantle the Chargers in Week 7, but then get outplayed by the Dolphins.
There was a ton of bluster about the fan who caught Brady’s 600th TD but gave it back. People were saying he gave up $750,000! Brady and the Bucs took care of the guy with season tickets, autographed merch, and 1 Bitcoin. But I highly doubt the actual ball would go that high. Why would it, because it’s a round number? And Brady will have thrown probably 40 TD’s past that number by the time he’s done?
Tough to see Jameis Winston go out for the season with an ACL.
That Daniel Jones catch was insane as it was, but even better since he is a QB!
Week 8 was the week of Backup QB’s, and all 4 Backup QB’s won games: Jets, Cowboys, Seahawks, and Saints all won
Week 9 was the week of upsets, with the Titans over the Rams, Broncos over Cowboys, Giants over Raiders, and Jags over Bills
Mahomes is definitely off, something is wrong. It’s almost like he used his athletic ability the past 3 years and that was enough to not only get him by but to excel. But now mechanics seem flawed, he’s throwing INT’s like crazy. They barely beat the Packers with a backup QB. Tough to be confident they make the playoffs this year.
Carson Wentz’ left handed pick 6 was one of the worst plays I’ve ever seen. A-la Dan Orlovsky running out the back of the endzone.
Old Interesting Stats:
* Trevor Lawrence has only lost 2 games in his football career after leading by double digits. Both were to Joe Burrow
* Trevon Diggs is on pace for 17 INT’s this season
* Mike White, in his first NFL start, had more passing yards than any Jets QB in the past 21 years!
* Derrick Henry has been out for 2 weeks, and is still 110 yards ahead of the 2nd place running back.
* Cooper Kupp is on pace for 1924 yards and Stafford is on pace for 5234 yards.
* Myles Garret is on pace for 22.5 sacks
Quick Hits
The Titans are looking like the team to beat in the AFC. Weird that one of their losses was to the Jets, but otherwise they are 6-0 against playoff teams from last year. They beat the Chiefs and Bills in back to back weeks (the AFC Championship last year).
Raise your hand if you had the Bengals and Cardinals as the #1 seeds after Week 7. Didn’t think so.
Every team in the AFC North and AFC West have 5+ wins and winning records.
Quotes of the Week:
Aaron Rodgers to the Bears “I own you.” Not really wrong, he’s 22-5 against them in his career
FMQB on Tuesday: “I don’t know what happened with Odell Beckham Jr, but he’s going to be a cancer to any team who picks him up”
FMQB on Thursday: “OMG we got Odell!!!!”
Free Agency:
The Trade deadline came and went without much bluster. I think most people expected DeShaun Watson to be traded to the Dolphins, but it never happened. Probably the biggest surprise was Von Miller going to the Rams. And then the Odell saga was just odd, like all of a sudden his offensive line didn’t know what was going on, his dad posted the video of all the times he was wide open and Baker didn’t throw to him. And then he was released. You’d have to think the Browns could have gotten a 2nd or 3rd round pick for him. Also Cam Newton getting signed by his old team is definitely a surprise but sort of fun!
Aaron Rodgers and his Misinformed take on COVID (Warning, this is a rant):
The past 2 weeks, the news that has dominated the NFL is Rodgers positive COVID case, which isn’t terribly surprising since they Packers had a small outbreak ahead of the Cardinals game. What IS surprising is that everyone thought Rodgers was vaccinated. I’m going to go on a bit of a rant here, and talk about a few things point by point on how Aaron is trying to defend his decision, and about COVID in general in the Sports world right now.
First off, he lied about his status. He half-heartedly tried to apologize this week for “misleading” people, but the damage he did by saying he was “immunized” (when he wasn’t) is what the fallout is about, not his choice, it’s the lie and his justification for it. His teammates had to have known as he was apparently following some protocols for unvaxxed players. But the fallout would have been dramatically less if he had taken the Kirk Cousins, Carson Wentz approach and said in the offseason that he wasn’t vaxxed.
He claimed to have consulted with Joe Rogan. If there’s anything worse you can say than “I did my own research,” it’s probably “I got my medical advice from Joe Rogan.” Subsequently, he’s taking Ivermectin, which although we love to give people crap about taking horse dewormer, it does have human uses. But it’s been proven by all the top doctors in the world to not be an effective drug against COVID. But his top doctor is Joe Rogan, so that’s saying something.
He questioned the vaccine’s effectiveness and that people were still contracting and dying from COVID even though they had been vaccinated. First off, months before the vaccine was readily available doctors were hoping for 70% effectiveness, the fact that it’s 90% is wildly successful, but it’s never been pitched as 100%. The goal is to bring the cases and deaths down, which the vaccine is successful in doing. We’ve seen study after study that essentially shows that unvaccinated people are somewhere betwen 5-40 times more likely to even get a case, and anywhere from 88-97% of deaths come from unvaccinated people. With Rodgers’ rationale, there’s no point in wearing a seatbelt because people still die in car accidents who are in seat belts, or if Brady is the best QB of all time, why does he still throw interceptions?
Back on the Ivermectin comment, he claimed he was taking it and “felt great.” So what? Nearly 80% of cases are still asymptomatic. Somebody could claim that they got COVID, but went to Cracker Barrel and they feel great. They’re not interconnected. He also claimed it has been used over a Billion times in India, but didn’t leave out the fact that India has removed Ivermectin from their treatment protocols.
Rodgers also claimed that people who contract COVID have the most robust immune response. He’s most likely referencing the Israel study which as a reminder is not peer reviewed. But even looking locally, they’ve said that 1/3 of people who have had COVID don’t even develop any antibodies (vs. 100% of vaccinated individuals), and a recent study in Oklahoma of all places showed that even at the height of Delta, reinfections were outnumbering breakthrough cases 2 to 1.
He claims an NFL Doctor told him that it was impossible for vaccinated individuals to contract or spread COVID. This is also highly unlikely, as we’ve known really for over a year that the vaccines aren’t 100% effective, so very unlikely that comment would have been said from the medical community (the NFL also vehemently denies that was ever communicated).
He claims that he’s allergic to an ingredient in the mRNA vaccines. While doctors claim this is extremely rare, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say it’s true. Then take the JNJ vaccine. He said his reasoning not to was due to blood clots. On a large study, they found 28 cases of blood clots after 9 million doses, (1 in 320,000 get a blood clot) while the dangers of blood clots by contracting COVID are incredibly higher (1% of anybody recovering from home get blood clots, up to 5% of hospitalized patients have them). I’ll take 1 in 320,000 over 1 in 20 anyday.
He whined about the unvaccinated being “superspreaders” and being “made to think we’re the danger.” Well that’s also true, because not only do they spread the virus in higher rates, they’re also more likely to get it in the first place.
Rodgers claims that he’s a critical thinker, except he runs to the circles to where he wants the answers from (aka. Joe Rogan) instead of top doctors and epidemioligists in the world. If he’s a critical thinker, he should listen to all sides and make a decision, and there are actual statistics and studies that essentially debunk nearly every point he has brought up.
And then to top it off, he attempted to quote Martin Luther King to explain the plight he’s going through, but of course botched the quote.
So why should we care? A few reasons. Rodgers claims not to be an “anti-vax flat-earther” but then goes to spew all the information the anti-vaxxers use to not get vaccinated. Rodgers is 100% a role model, and his platform was just used to put every talking point out there to an audience. The vaccines are the #1 way out of this pandemic, it protects those who cannot be vaccinated (any child under 5, or the people who have legitimate medical reasons). It also protects the vaccinated. This seems to be the biggest complaint from people saying “it’s not our obligation to protect the vaccinated.” Well it’s also not your right to endanger the entire country from something that is preventable at this point. Colin Powell is a perfect example, he has multiple diseases going on, so of course gets vaccinated to protect himself, but in these rare instances it still killed him. If we get to herd immunity (which isn’t likely) or at least endemic stage, those that are vaccinated are also inherintly safer.
Back to football after this, but the $14k fine was a joke for multiple violations of protocol. A suspension was needed as now every other unvaccinated player sees the precedent. Also CeeDee Lamb was fined $20k for an untucked jersey, so it’s safe to see where the NFL’s priorities are.
Last thing, but part of the reason that Rodgers faced so much backlash is of course because he’s MVP caliber, however he’s in the SEVERE minority with his reasoning. Reminder that nearly 80% of adults have at least 1 dose, so while the other 20% are incredibly vocal about their stance, a vast majority of Americans are looking at Rodgers like he’s a quack.
Playoff Predictions
As the AFC stands now, in order it’s Titans, Ravens, Chargers, Bills, Raiders, Steelers and Patriots. I think the Browns and Bengals are knocking on the door, it’s hard to show confidence in KC but you have to imagine Mahomes figures something out. My prediction would be that the Raiders and Steelers fall out, and the Browns and Chiefs make it in. Otherwise I like Tennessee to nail the 1 bye.
The NFC is Cardinals, Packers, Buccaneers, Cowboys, Rams, Saints and Falcons. What, the Falcons are in as of now?!?! I think injuries will catch up with Arizona to let the Bucs take the #1 seed. I also see the saints and Falcons falling out, replaced by maybe the Vikings and Seahawks. But narrow field considering the #7 seed is .500
Memes (lot of them!)
FMQB 