V's Rabbit Hole

  I am learning that if I want to be a sports fan , I'm doing it wrong. Which, as it turns out, is liberating. It frees me up to consider myself an analyst – if not among that particular club of Analysts. An analyst by definition only, then – because what I really want to do is watch and observe the game, the League, and (now that I have inserted myself among them and come to the conclusion that I am not one of their number) the fans. It's weird that I have to give myself permission to do this in these pages . How many writers do that? I imagine the number is asymptotic. Though, thinking of it, I'm sure most authors don't need to give themselves authority  their publishers do that for them. Paychecks go a long way to making us think we're doing something right with our time, don't they? I'm hearing the Robot Devil in my head right now. “Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can't have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!” I ima...

  Last night is the first time my mind has let my heart down in a game prediction. I haven't been paying nearly as much attention to the accuracy of my predictions as I should be (if only so I can write mea culpas to pad my publication counts). When I wrote up the Green Bay/Arizona game that we watched last night, I imagined it going just like the one we ultimately got: a defensive contest where the offenses would look like they're struggling a lot, and the Packers stealing a sneaky victory at the end.. What I wrote was that this would be a shootout and Arizona would come out on top. What happened was this: I let downer Packers fans get in my head. The consensus among fans seemed to be that their defense was “dog shit” in the redzone, and that was going to get them blownout by the Cardinals this weekend. And boy do I feel vindicated for tweeting that I thought the Packers actually have a good defense; and boy do I feel like a damn asshole for not writing every single thou...

  Tua Tagavailoa just can't stay out of the headlines. There are a lot of ways that we can interpret what's going on in Miami – there are a lot of ways that what's going on in Miami is being interpreted, both by the National thinkers and talking heads and by Dolphins-centric thinkers and talking heads. It almost always goes back to “what the organization thinks of him” or “how the organization is treating him.” Which— I find the latter of these especially funny. Any toxic workplace or disrespectful management chatter you hear is projection: People unhappy with their employment living vicariously through defending Tua. But, where we are right now, we expected all of this. We all went into the 2021 season saying that this was Tua's make or break year. Because he didn't show anything last year – in fact, he got benched twice for his performance (or lack there of) and blown out when he needed a win to make the Playoffs – he needed to show us something this year f...

  What is up with this bye-week schedule? Six teams last week, only two this week? Whatever, I'm not in charge of the schedules – they'd be way worse if I were. If you were looking for it, there was no Game Rewatch Power Rankings yesterday, and won't be for Week 7. I hated that week. I looked at my rankings and didn't see any teams moving meaningfully, and honestly, as much as I was saying I feel like I'm learning things – everyone I listened to yesterday saw the same things. And I chose to be discouraged; so I worked on something else instead. I'm back though with the Week 8 Game Power Rankings, Preview and Predix— I'm rebranding because I'm not sure it's implicit what this piece is about. At a glance, I can already tell you this is going to be a more interesting week of football than last week was. I wish Sunday and Monday Nights were better – only one of them cracks the top-8 of a 15-game slate. So... not great. But we've got some meaty...