Some More Sports Takes

As promised, a few more sports takes.

NFL

A month into the NFL season, so time for a quick look at where we are at.

Is there a dominant team, or any clear Super Bowl favorites? I don’t think so.

Buffalo is undefeated, but only thanks to an epic comeback in week one against Baltimore. Their defense has been shaky as hell. The Ravens are a complete mess at the moment. I’m not worried about them missing the playoffs; their schedule is much easier on the back half, they play in a terrible division, and they always start slow. Now, they’ve put themselves in a very difficult position where their most likely path to the Super Bowl will go through both Buffalo and Kansas City, on the road, so I rate them, at best, as the third choice to come out of the AFC. Are the Chiefs fixed? It’s too early to say, and they are in a soft spot in the schedule, so we’ll find out in a couple weeks when they play Detroit. Of the other AFC teams, only San Diego seems capable of challenging the Bills-Chiefs, and as they just had a typical Chargers loss to the Giants, I put no faith in them.

As for the Colts, their ceiling has elevated some from my pre-season expectations. They seem like a 9–10 win team now if they stay healthy. They are going to have to put up points to balance their porous defense. We’ll see how they look when they play the Chiefs and Texans back-to-back in November.

In the NFC I guess you have to say the Eagles remain the clear favorite. They are back to doing the “winning but looking bad doing it” thing they do all-too-often. But it wouldn’t be Philadelphia without some kind of drama that gets people fired up. They’ll be fine.

My preseason Super Bowl pick was Green Bay, based on my belief that they would be a much better team in January than September and October. That is still on the table, as they’ve looked very good in a couple games, and pretty mediocre in two others. Their season-long battle with Detroit will be fascinating. The Packers dominated the Lions week one, but the Lions have been more impressive since then. That race, and perhaps the #1 seed in the conference, may come down more to which team handles its business better against Minnesota and Chicago than the rematch later this season.

Like the AFC, I think there’s a pretty steep drop off after the top teams. That could change if the Niners get healthy, Minnesota figures out its quarterback situation, or even if Dallas can find a way to play any defense at all.

I picked Green Bay over Buffalo a month ago. I’m not super confident in that choice at the moment, but I also don’t see a reason to revise it quite yet. We’ll take another look at the end of October.

Royals

My half-assed, no-research-involved prediction for the Royals this season was 86 wins. I hoped that would be enough to sneak into the playoffs again this year. Then, who knew, if Baltimore made it the Royals could sweep them again before losing to a division champ.

They ended up winning 82 games, and would have needed at least 87 to reach the postseason.

Once again the offense let them down. Too many long stretches in the season where they would have one good inning then eight in which they did nothing. Their lineup just had too many holes. Top prospect Jac Caglianone came up after destroying the minors and did the typical Royals minor league phenom thing by scuffling badly in his two big league stints, which sandwiched a trip to the DL. It was asking a lot for him to fix all that ailed the R’s offense. Hopefully he gets his confidence back and can slide into a full time role next year. He has all the talent.

Carter Jensen was impressive as a late season call-up. He closed the season with a 482 foot home run. Hopefully Salvador Perez has at least one more year left, allowing Jensen to roam while spelling Salvy behind the plate occasionally.

Pitching was a strength of this team coming in. If not for several injuries, I think the staff might have been good enough to carry the team to the postseason.

The good news is most of the injuries have resolved themselves, or should by next spring. Along the way the R’s found three new promising arms in Noah Cameron, Ryan Bergert, and Stephen Kolek. There are a lot of good arms in the staff, a mix of veterans signed for multiple years and young guys on rookie contracts. The team has to use a combination of that strength to find another bat for next year. And they need to do better than the Brady Singer for Jonathan India trade from last winter. Singer was solid for the Reds, helping them reach the playoffs, while India was kind of stinky.

The big benefit of being in the American League Central is you’re never really out of the race. Cleveland was a dozen games back in July, still 10 back when September began, and ended up winning the division. Healthy pitching + improvement from the young hitters + the addition of at least one more legit bat should be enough to get the Royals back in contention next year.

Playoff predictions? Given I’ve barely watched or followed any baseball aside from my limited attention given to the Royals, I’m not sure I can make even quarter-assed picks.

Instead, I’ll rank the teams by my rooting interests, from who I most want to win to least.

American League:
Seattle
Detroit
Cleveland
Toronto
Boston
New York

National League:
Milwaukee
San Diego
Cincinnati
Philadelphia
Chicago
Los Angeles

Bruce Pearl

This fucking guy.

Yet another coach who spent his career demanding his players sacrifice their personal needs for the good of the team, who demanded individual responsibility and acceptance of the coach as supreme, has decided to abandon his program at the moment most convenient to him and his needs but that is worst for the university.

There have been many of these craven turns over the years, coaches quitting after the academic year has begun forcing their former employer to basically hire who he tells them to hire. And in this case it’s Pearl’s fucking son, who has never been a head coach at any level. In fact, his entire post-high school basketball career is a product of his father’s position. He played at Tennessee when his dad coached there. After trying the real world for a few years, his dad hired him as an assistant. Now, with pops quitting six weeks before the season begins, young Steven has been named the new head coach and given a five year contract

Auburn was just in the Final Four and they are handing the program over to a man who has never been a head coach at any level.

Oh, and get this, Bruce Pearl didn’t quit because he was burnt out, facing a health challenge, or other reasonable explanation. No, this asshole is expected to run for either the US Senate or governor of Alabama and realized that if he coached this year, he would miss valuable time campaigning for the primary elections next spring. Way to turn you back on the kids you recruited, Bruce!

A man with zero political experience thinks he can just jump in and instantly become one of the most powerful politicians in the country. Based on that alone it should be obvious that he’s aligned with our current president.

I’ve never wanted a coaching hire or political campaign to fail as publicly and embarrassingly as I want the Pearls to fail in their next endeavors. Given the state of our country, pops will probably win and then be our next vice president.