7 comments Bill Simmons Is Still Using His Opinion as Fact

I got asked recently on Twitter if BotB was done or not. It's not, though the lack of activity probably gives the illusion of a more definitive answer. I start posts (will I ever post this one? Who knows?) and then get busy and never finish them. I have mixed feelings, as I started a new job two years ago and it felt like a clean break from the writing here that I loved, as writing on this blog took up a large portion of my day and caused me some sort of stress to get completed in a timely fashion. A lot of the posts here had some time sensitivity around them. I still enjoy writing here and that is why I haven't put up a farewell post. I'm also an "all or nothing at all" type of person. I'm in, or I'm out. I write 3-5 times per week or don't do anything, as I hate half-assing things. I want to try to half-ass though. Half-assing is the goal, in terms of posting frequently.

I have not read MMQB, TMQ or any Bill Simmons in the last two years. Okay, maybe a few MMQB, but none of the other two. I didn't even know where TMQ was located on the Interwebs anymore until someone Tweeted the link to me. If I read them, I am compelled to write about them. So no, Bottom of the Barrel is not done, I just haven't figured out how to make it not done. I started this blog in 2008. I was 28 years old and I'm now not 28 years old. I don't want to be Bill Simmons, writing the same shit over and over and over again until nobody cares anymore. I read Drew Magary now and think, "Jesus, this guy is doing the same stuff he was doing 5-6 years ago" and feel sympathy for him despite the fact he's doing quite well for himself. I'm getting older and I have less time to bitch about bad sportswriting. I always feel compelled to adapt and change, because staying in a rut singing all the greatest hits isn't my type of thing. I have to change for fear of becoming stale. The change here was a forced step-back to let off the throttle.

There was always an expiration date on this blog in that I didn't want to and couldn't do the same writing I always did here. Sometimes you just have to stop, because a mid-40 year old person making the same jokes he made 15-20 years ago is just not who I want to be. I can't stand in-authenticity (a word?) and don't want to be in my upper 40's being the person I used to mock for pretending to be younger in order to desperately keep the same readership I used to have. I don't want to be the person quoting Meek Mill when I just had to Google his name in order to make the reference. So it felt like a clean break two years ago, but I knew I didn't want to stop completely. Yes, a clean break involves a break entirely, so you see the contradiction there. I still want to be here writing, just not so badly that it interferes with my job and ruins what I see as the tiny amount of authenticity I have to mail in order to mail-in some posts. You can't cover up bad jokes and bad writing, so I chose/was forced to step back. There is my long answer.

So reading some articles from the same people who I have written about a lot here, they do not have this fear of getting stale. As you will see, Bill Simmons has not changed his jokes at all and Gregg Easterbrook is still rotating the same 4-5 topics every NFL season. It is sad to me. What's even more sad is Bill Simmons has tried other things and failed (which, I predicted on multiple occasions here...he wants to be more than a writer, but that's what he is) or not had the same amount of success he had writing. Now he's bashing ESPN in his writing, because he's free of them! FREE! Finally, he has that annoying corporate backing that made him the name he is and paid for all those nice things he has so he can starfuck all day on his podcast off his back. Did you know he used to write for the Jimmy Kimmel show? I wonder if he's mentioned it recently? Probably. So Bill's new schtick is to bash ESPN and then continue with his old schtick.

So...Bill Simmons hasn't changed at all. Today he tries to figure if the NBA is actually more marketable than the NFL. One could find this answer fairly easily using metrics such as viewership, jersey sales, income the athletes in each sport earn through marketing opportunities, etc., but none of these metrics would be as asinine and kill as much column space as Bill's way of determining the answer. He answer this question in a mailbag where Bill's Simmons Clones write in questions to him, desperately hoping he answers the question this time in order to validate their existence.

Today’s agenda: a mailbag-picks hybrid that ends almost as many times as that Chiefs-Raiders game Thursday night. 

Whoa! A hybrid mailbag!? This is totally different from the other 100 mailbag-picks columns that Bill has released through the years. I'm intrigued enough to read, but first, I need to find out how "The Ringer" is different from "Grantland," how much money HBO has given to get the website going and keep it going, as well as figure out exactly what the hell the site is supposed to be. Other than a hybrid pop-culture/sports site that spent an inordinate amount of space on talking about "Girls," at the behest of the HBO leadership as repayment for their investment in Bill's awful television show ("Any Given Wednesday"? Was that the title?) on HBO which failed for reasons that were ABSOLUTELY NOT Bill's fault...what is the Ringer? We may never know.

Bill blames the time slot, the fact other shows were premiering at the same time and anything other than his ability to run a television show for "Any Given Wednesday's" inability to draw an audience. I'll allow others who actually watched the show figure out the reason the show failed. I can take an educated guess though.

As always, these are actual emails from actual readers.

(Narrator) They were not.

Q: On your podcast you said that the NBA is going to pass the NFL eventually, because NBA players are more likable and marketable. What year did this start occurring in your opinion?
—A. Fitzgerald, Boulder

"A. Fitzgerald"...more like Not A. Realperson.

BS: You know how the WWE tells fans not to try wrestling stunts at home? I’m about to pull a Dan Dierdorf and disagree with myself.

But no one else is allowed to disagree with Bill or prove him wrong, because then he will either (a) change the subject or (b) move the goalposts to show he wasn't wrong. 

How could we actually prove this?

You cannot prove this, as it is not able to be definitively proven by the manner in which Bill will go about it achieving this end. There are ways to prove it, but these ways don't waste nearly as much space and don't involve Bill proving his opinion as fact. 

I hopped on Pro-Football-Reference, determined the biggest stars from the ’97 season, then found their 2017 doppelgängers from an admittedly ambiguous age/talent/career/respect/celebrity/resonance/charisma standpoint. Then, I determined which doppelgänger was, for lack of a better word, bigger.

So to prove this, Bill took his opinion of the stars from 1997 and compared them to his opinion of what these 1997 stars are comparable to in 2017, then he used his opinion on a not-carefully selected seven characteristic scale to compare these two generations of athletes. Adding up these statistics he never complied in which to compare these athletes, he then he used his opinion on which athlete was more marketable. So he based his selections on his opinion, used more of his opinion to think of these characteristics for each athlete that would be used to measure marketability, then didn't use a numerical ranking system of any type to show how he reached his conclusions, instead choosing to use his opinion based on (shrugs shoulders, looks around the room)...but more importantly here is Bill's conclusion! 

Bill couldn't even be bothered to pretend to use random numbers to compare the athletes from '97 and 2017? He's so lazy that he introduces criteria and can't even turn this criteria into numbers at least pretending there was a thought process? Well, onward to the conclusion, which is obviously where Bill wanted to go before he created the question "A. Fitzgerald" had. I mean, before "A. Fitzgerald" emailed the question to him.

Before we get there to the conclusion, let's look at the "Mad Scientist Who Shirks Empirical Data or Numbers Because Because Because Because Let's Just Get to the Conclusion," Bill Simmons, and how he compared NFL players to each other (doppelgangers!) who don't even play the same position. 

Von Miller (’17) > John Randle (’97)

Doppelgangers! One is a LB and the other is a DT and they are separated by 40 pounds. It's all the same though. 

Matthew Stafford/Ben Roethlisberger (’17) > Jeff George/Warren Moon (’97)

I just can't with this comparison. I can't. Warren Moon and Ben Roethlisberger? 

Ndamukong Suh (’17) > Bruce Smith (’97) 

One is a DT and the other is a DE. If Bill thinks Ndamukong Suh and Bruce Smith are doppelgangers then I think that says more about his study based on his opinion which uses no numerical data to reach a conclusion than anything else. 

Bill is mailing in his mailed-in mailbags. 

Khalil Mack/Aaron Donald (’17) = Derrick Brooks/Kevin Greene (’97)

Khalil Mack has 34.5 career sacks in his short career, while Derrick Brooks had 13.5 career sacks over his entire career. Their playing style is the exact same, other than it being entirely different. More like identical twins is what Brooks and Mack are, if the identical twins were not identical and didn't know each other at all. Mack and Brooks are basically Ronde and Tiki Barber, joined at the hip in the lore of NFL history. 

Also, Aaron Donald is the doppelganger of Kevin Greene? Really? I didn't miss reading Bill's drivel. 

Kareem Hunt/Tyreek Hill (’17) = Marshall Faulk/Terry Glenn (’97)
Warren Sapp/Michael Strahan (’97) > Geno Atkins/Myles Garrett (’17)

… and it starts getting silly.

Yes, NOW it starts getting silly. Prior to this moment, the exercise in Bill Simmons circle-jerking was based on proven opinion and the scientific method as shown through the use of 7 carefully chosen categories whose results literally don't exist in any form to show how Bill came to the conclusion based on his opinion. But now, things are getting silly. 

But guess what. I was wrong! 2017’s stars more than held their own against 1997’s stars. There goes that theory. What about hoops? The NBA is more popular today, right? Our 2017 guys would win 80 percent of the matchups, right?

2017: LeBron, Curry, Westbrook, Harden, Durant, Giannis, Kawhi, CP3, Griffin, The Brow, Draymond, Dirk, Klay, Giannis, Kyrie, Wall, Carmelo, Thomas, Love, Embiid, Lillard, Gasol, Hayward, Boogie, Towns, Porzingis, Lonzo, Simmons.

1997: Jordan, Shaq, Iverson, Malone, Barkley, Hakeem, Robinson, Garnett, Kemp, Duncan, Penny, Hill, C-Webb, Ewing, Payton, Miller, Mourning, Hardaway, Kidd, Stockton, Sprewell, Mutombo, Rice, Richmond, Baker, Young Kobe.

Oh shit! Not only were NBA players just as famous and marketable 20 years ago, but Jordan doubled as the biggest basketball star we’ve ever had.

Serious question...are there people who read this and think, "Great point by Bill Simmons!"? I ask because this is honestly pure bullshit and I'm embarrassed that Bill has written it down to where he can share the embarrassment that he has become with the rest of the Internet. 

Where the hell does Bill even get "Our 2017 guys would win 80 percent of the matchups, right?" from? He has absolutely no concrete basis upon which to base this claim. He's basically just typing words. Where in here does it show that NBA players are just as famous and marketable 20 years ago? He literally just wrote down the names of NBA players, typed a curse word and reached his conclusion. I think I can do this.

Is cancer as deadly as the Black Death? 

Cancer: Bones, operations, prostate, breast, Odell Beckham, surgery, brain, liver, doctors, Ewing Theory, Jimmy Kimmel

Black Death: Rat fleas, mice, boats, death, bubonic, Rocky IV, gangrene, pandemic

Oh hell no! Not only is cancer just as deadly as the Black Death, but the Ewing Theory says if I had to have a biopsy to remove malignant tissue, the tissue that grows in it's place could eventually lead to me having even stronger mental and physical abilities. So the Ewing Theory says cancer may not be a bad thing. We all should want it. Let's go to the next mailbag question.

I'm kidding, of course. There is more space to waste with this exercise in showing off Bill's nonsensical findings. 

So, what’s really going on here? Two things …

1. We don’t like football as much because of concussions, greed, Goodell, oversaturation, the gratuitous violence, all the unseemly off-field stuff and everything else I covered in this piece. In 1997, we didn’t cringe when receivers had their clocks cleaned over the middle, or when quarterbacks got annihilated by a weakside blitz and had to be revived with smelling salts. We enjoyed that stuff. That was football, baby! We didn’t feel even remotely guilty about it. The star power didn’t change; we changed.

I see Bill still uses the word "we" to describe himself when he thinks everyone was also wrong or had a misconception. It wasn't Bill that had the misconception, it was all of us. Also, "we" don't like football now as much as "we" liked football in 1997? Really, Bill? Is this a fact? I'm not sure it is.

True story: The Madden NFL ’96 video game arrived with a then-hilarious wrinkle. Whenever a player got injured, you heard a crunch followed by Pat Summerall saying, “Oh no, there’s a man down.” Eventually, anyone playing realized that you could maim players after the whistle, which led to more hilarity, real-life arguments (“How could you do that, you dick????!”) and actual truces between two buddies agreeing NOT to maim players after the whistle. This really happened. I swear to God.

Bill writes this like nobody else in the world has ever played "Madden NFL '96."

He's swearing to God and everything when talking about a video game many people have played and it takes 2 minutes to pull up footage (Bill includes a YouTube link by the way) of this "then-hilarious" wrinkle, but he's perfectly fine blazing through the entirely unprovable conclusion the NBA is more marketable than the NFL without a single shred of empirical evidence outside of his opinion. You can find evidence of the video game wrinkle in a matter of minutes, yet Bill feels the need to swear to God it exists. But proof his conclusion the NBA is more marketable than the NFL, he is confident his complete lack of empirical evidence presented here shows all the proof necessary. No swearing to a deity necessary.

Bill Simmons as a used car dealer:

(Bill) "This car can fly once it gets to the speed of 88 mph."

(Customer) "That's not true."

(Bill) "This car also gets 28 miles per gallon. You have to believe me, I swear to God. Fucking believe me, man."

(Customer) "I do. It's right here on the stic---"

(Bill pulls a knife and threatens a child with it) "You gotta believe me. This car. It gets great gas mileage. Swear to God. It really does!" (starts carving the gas mileage number into his cheek)

(Customer) "I believe you!"

(Bill) "Great, thanks. Also, magic elves are the reason the car flies."

(Customer) "I don't believe you." 

(Bill) "Well, we will just be wrong about that then if the car doesn't really fly. Let's sit down in my office and start talking numbers. I'm kidding, I don't use numbers to quantify anything."

2. We like basketball more than we did in 1997,

There you go. This is how "we" feel. I know you may think you personally feel differently, but you don't. Trust Bill's instinct on this. You like basketball more now than you did in 1997.

YouTube and Twitter allowed us to consume specific plays in easily digestible bites; and the people covering the sport itself went from a bunch of older, out-of-touch white guys to a younger, more diverse group that actually consumed it.

You see how out of touch Bill is? He believes that because the demographics of those who cover basketball has changed, the sport has become popular as a result. Four issues here with these claims: 

1. What? So younger, diverse people were not watching the NBA and now they are because those who cover the sport reflect a younger, diverse crowd? I've heard of people needing to see themselves reflected on a movie screen, television show or in the athletes actually playing a sport, but I've never heard "Well, I would watch the NBA but there just aren't enough young, diverse journalists covering the sport."

It's nonsense, that's what it is.

2. Bill is an older, out of touch white guy.

3. This reasoning could also be used for why the NFL is more popular now. Highlights are everywhere and there is a more diverse group of people covering the sport now. Of course, Bill is functionally incapable of making a cogent point because frankly he doesn't give a shit. Of course, his loyal readers seem to have the same problem solving and reasoning skills as he does.

4. Where is the evidence there is a younger, diverse group of journalists covering the sport and this has caused more people to watch? I'm slowly going dumb at this claim. Bill absolutely does not think his points through. What if the NBA is losing viewers due to white, out of touch white guys not watching it as much due to their demographic no longer represented as often in the sports journalism industry? Bill never thinks about this because he's lost in his tunnel vision, no-facts-used argument right now.

Check out this email from Rez in Sacramento …

“It's October 18 with a full slate of MLB playoff games and another NFL weekend coming, yet it feels like the world is watching the NBA. Boston fans are on suicide watch, Kings fans are screaming the refs screwed them, Giannis is having a statement game, my dad is texting me Thibs is overrated, my girlfriend is arguing Bobby Portis wasn't suspended long enough ... IT'S OCTOBER 18TH!!!! The only people who are supposed to be watching NBA games right now are Zach Lowe and youth groups who scored cheap tickets. No seriously, that's the list. Am I crazy??? This idea of NBA dominance is so delightful my brain won't accept it as possible.”

Until this decade, when did anyone ever treat the preseason, summer league, Opening Night and July 1 like these were monumental events? It’s unbelievable. Did you ever think you’d care about LeBron James’s shirtless workout videos or Russell Westbrook’s passive-aggressive Instagram photos? It never ends. NBA stars stumbled into a way of connecting with fans—during the season, during games, and even during the offseason—that stars from the No Fun League simply can’t replicate.

"Yes, I have anecdotal evidence on line 1, it would like to talk to you." 

This is peak "Here is what my friends and I think, so it must be what everyone else thinks as well" reasoning. I can't argue the NBA didn't have an eventful offseason, but the NFL owns the offseason just as much if not more than the NBA. And NBA diehard fans treated the preseason, summer league, and Opening Night as a monumental event. Did other people who are casual fans feel this way to and this reflects the improved marketability of the NBA? Eh, not so sure. Try to remove yourself from your social media bubble and try to accept that your thoughts are not reflective of everyone else's thoughts. Also, everything that was written here about preseason games being monumental events can be said for the NFL too. 

But again, Bill doesn't care about facts, evidence or anything of the like. He knows the point he wants to prove and will ignore evidence contrary to his point. 

Football isn’t dying by any means; the ratings and attendance and merchandising money tell us as much. 

The ratings say the NFL is more popular than the NBA. 

But culturally? NBA careers last twice as long 

The length of an NBA career is not a culturally related point. Also, the length of a player's NBA career has almost nothing to do with marketability, absent outlying extremely popular players whose careers are cut extremely short for one reason or another. 

and the league’s stars shine a little more brightly.

This is not a fact. This is an opinion. Over the past twenty years Bill has consistently not been able to tell the difference. I'll help him. 

Bill's HBO show was awful - an opinion

Bill's HBO show was canceled- a fact

How does Roger Goodell not get fired yesterday? He’s grown the league so poorly that the NFL’s signature video game was forced to use NBA STARS to seem a little more hip! What?

This is regarding Madden 18 using NBA players in an advertisement for the game. 

I have a very low opinion of  Bill's intelligence. He says a lot of things that are lies, he lives in his own world where the facts are what he chooses them to be, he has the capacity to do better but just doesn't seem to want to go in that direction, and the people who do like him are very loyal, which confuses me. But to say Roger Goodell should be fired because a private company chose to use NBA players in their marketing for an NFL game is an incredibly ridiculous statement. It would be like firing John Skipper because a column on Grantland outed a transgender golfer who eventually committed suicide. There is a lack of causation there.

It's a fucking video game. There are 100 reasons to fire Roger Goodell that are valid. I don't know how Bill Simmons manages human beings at "The Ringer" if he wants to fire the NFL commissioner because of how Madden 18 is marketed. 

Next is a mailbag question about "The Challenge" on MTV. I would think after taking two years off from Bill's mailbags something would change. How naive I am. 

Q: Why don’t we refer to Philip Rivers as Octo-Dad?
—Dean, Juniper Hills, Calif. 

Because it's stupid and only someone who thinks he is funny would call him that. 

BS: I can’t think of a single reason.

As I said. 

Q: Can we find Jared Goff a nickname?
—Tyler Goffi, Shamokin, Pa.

 

BS: Sure—what about J-Go? I’m not afraid of Jared Goff down four with two minutes left. You know who I’m afraid of? J-Go. Done!

Are there really people who read Bill Simmons and are entertained by it? If so, how? Do these people lack friends who can answer these questions? Why must it be Bill who answers them? Also, "J-Go" as a nickname? It's so lazy, but it allows Bill to keep churning content. 

Q: On the heels of Al Michaels's “Harvey Weinstein/Giants” joke, followed by the ensuing apology within an hour, it made me wonder what are the Top 5 or Top 10 Sports “On-Air Comments Then Apologies” of recent memory? A few that come to mind are: Lee Corso's F-bomb, Matt Millen/Jaws Polish Comment, Brent Musburger oozing over Katherine Webb, and Bob Griese's Taco Apology.
—Ross M., San Francisco

BS: Let’s answer this next week. America, please, send me the best on-air apologies you remember to themailbag@theringer.com.

My favorite apology, though it was not on-air, was the one where the editor-in-chief of Grantland apologized for outing a transgender golfer (Dr. V), helping to ruin that golfer's life to the point that golfer committed suicide. That editor-in-chief was really, really sorry for helping to ruin a life though. It's understandable though. Who knew outing someone was a misstep? Certainly not anyone that runs in Bill's young, diverse crowd that has caused the NBA to exceed the NFL in popularity. Bill was surprised to hear you shouldn't just fucking "out" someone:

Caleb’s biggest mistake? Outing Dr. V to one of her investors while she was still alive. I don’t think he understood the moral consequences of that decision, and frankly, neither did anyone working for Grantland. That misstep never occurred to me until I discussed it with Christina Kahrl yesterday. But that speaks to our collective ignorance about the issues facing the transgender community in general, as well as our biggest mistake: not educating ourselves on that front before seriously considering whether to run the piece.

I didn't realize grown adults still needed to be educated on this issue, but again, I also wasn't so concerned with "the scoop and story" that I was willing to publish a story without looking into the impact some parts of the story could have on the subject's life. 

Anyway, Bill needs to bash ESPN real quick. 

I’m always partial to ESPN apologizing at 12:30 a.m. (when just about everyone in Boston was asleep) for erroneously saying two different times that the Patriots illegally taped a St. Louis Rams walkthrough before Super Bowl XXXVI.

Isn't it funny how we didn't hear Bill complain about this a decade ago as ESPN was bankrolling his career, giving him a platform to make his career and throwing money into Grantland? I know Bill is going to bash ESPN, but it's always going to feel spiteful to me based on where he came from and what they helped him to achieve in his career. Bill wasn't a journalist who worked his way up to ESPN like 90% of the other ESPN employees. He was smoking pot, bar tending, and writing a blog when ESPN plucked him up out of obscurity and gave him a platform. It doesn't work that way for most other ESPN employees, so Bill being resentful probably won't ever make sense to me, no matter how it all ended. Plus, I always think Bill is going to come crawling back to ESPN at some point.

Q: In your 9/22 mailbag you wrote: “Bill Simmons is never changing his mind on these six things” and one was “Rocky 3 was the best Rocky movie.” And yet in 2002, you wrote a lengthy breakdown where you not only claimed that “the first Rocky was the finest of the bunch, no question” but went on to rank Rocky IV AHEAD of Rocky III for rewatchability. How can we ever trust you again? My children cried when they found out.
—Ben, Chicago 

Oh no, Bill is contradicting himself again. We all know that Bill is NEVER wrong, so he will weasel out of the fact he can't remember he once had a different opinion based on the point he wants to prove at the time. 

BS: Rocky III is the best Rocky movie. Rocky IV is the most rewatchable movie. Huge difference.

Yes, semantics say this is a massive difference. But let's see how Bill addresses that he ranked "Rocky" ahead of "Rocky 3" in 2002 and now claims in 2017 that he is never changing his mind that "Rocky 3" was the best Rocky movie. I'm sure he will sufficiently expl---

By the way, now Sly Stallone is directing Creed 2? He’s 71 years old!

"By the way, LOOK! SOMETHING SHINY! GO PLAY WITH IT! Now let's go to the next mailbag question and ignore how I ignored a question posed to me about how I contradicted myself. Also, the fact I chose to publish a question where I contradict myself probably doesn't show how little mail I'm getting these days. I'm still popular. It's not like I'm answering questions posed by the same person or anything. THAT would be a clear indication I'm not getting as much email from my SimmonsClones asking me to justify their existence as I used to. Thank goodness that's not happening."

Q: I literally just dropped Aaron Rodgers for Orleans Darkwa on my fantasy football team. Can we all agree to stop doing fantasy football? Thanks.

—Marc, Madison, Wis.

Q: I can't wait for you to mispronounce/misspell Brent Hundley's name for the rest of the Packers season. Or is it Brett Hundley? Brent Hudley?
—Marc, Madison, Wis.

Oh no. There are probably two guys named "Marc" who live in Madison, Wisconsin. Most likely. I doubt Bill gets such little mail these days that he had to publish two unrelated questions from the same person to fill out his mailbag. That would never happen.

Q: The Saints-Packers line moved 10 points with Aaron Rodgers’s injury. Why isn’t this a good way to tell who the MVP is? Which players would cause the biggest line moves?—Eric, Denver

Because gambling lines are not necessarily indicative of which individual players are the most valuable. Gambling lines are set up by Vegas to get gambling action on a game, not an indication of which player that is missing could be the most valuable. Of course, Bill likes this idea because Bill lacks logic and is stupid in that way.

BS: You’re right — only Rodgers swings it by double digits. I’m fine with deciding the MVP this way. 

Okay, I'll play. Drew Brees gets injured and now the line moves 11 points, because Brees' backup isn't as good as the Packers' backup in this scenario. Does this mean Rodgers is not the MVP, instead Brees is? And how in the fucking hell can you tell who the MVP is when that player plays all 16 games? If Tom Brady plays all 16 games and throws for 6000 yards and 98 TD's, is he not the MVP because the line didn't move due to his never getting hurt? This ridiculous method to choose the MVP requires the person to become injured in order to see how much the line would move. Also, this theory is subject to so many outside influences that can affect a gambling line that I can't believe I've wasted this many words talking about it. It's dumb, Eric. That's why it's not a good way to tell who the MVP is.  

My old ESPN teammate Chad Millman once came up with a great “I wish I had thought of that!” idea called PSVAR (point spread value above replacement) that’s basically gambling VORP. Guess who had the highest number every year? Aaron Rodgers. 

It would be really nice if Bill shared how this PSVAR was calculated, but anybody who knows Bill Simmons or how he writes his columns know that PSVAR is calculated through a really shitty process that we are better off never knowing. More than likely, it uses subjective numbers to get to the PSVAR calculation. 

Our PSVAR top five for this goofy 2017 season probably looks like this:

Rodgers: +10
Brees: +8
Brady: +7
Ryan: +7
Wentz: +7
Watson: +7

That. Is. Six. Players. Not. Five. Learn. To. Count. You. Fraud.

What’s the most amazing thing about that list? 

That you are incapable of counting to the number 6? That you don't tell your readers how you came to these numbers which make up PSVAR? That even you don't know how you came to these numbers because you wrote the word "probably" meaning you haven't calculated the actual numbers and are making them up in order to prove the point that Aaron Rodgers is #1 and to feign surprise when your made up list of five players that is really six players comes to a conclusion based on fake data that you think should surprise everyone but really shouldn't, because again, YOU ARE MAKING IT ALL UP OUT OF THIN AIR?

I find all of those things amazing.

Deshaun Watson! Who knew?

Yes, who knew that Deshaun Watson would make the Top of PSVAR? Certainly not anyone who can count to 5 and knew that Watson was number 6 on the list. Certainly not anyone who still has no idea how PSVAR is calculated.

Also, I can't emphasize enough that Bill is feigning surprise at the fact Deshaun Watson is in the Top 6 of PSVAR when it appears to be a metric based on absolutely no real data. In fact, here are my Top 5 NFL players in PSVAR this year:

Aaron Rodgers (+10)
Blake Bortles (+3)
Brian Hoyer (+2)
Drew Brees (-2)
Frank Gore (-455)

OH MY GOD! WHO KNEW THAT FRANK GORE WAS THE FIFTH MOST VALUABLE PLAYER IN THE NFL THIS YEAR? AND HIS NUMBER IS NEGATIVE, WHICH JUST GOES TO SHOW HOW ALL NFL PLAYERS ARE TRASH THIS YEAR AND WHY MADDEN 18 HAD TO USE NBA PLAYERS TO MARKET THE GAME WHICH PROVES THE NBA IS MORE MARKETABLE THAN THE NFL!

This is empirical evidence that PSVAR proves the NFL is less marketable than the NBA right now!

Q: I am perplexed about the cries that the NFL is conspiring to keep Kaepernick out of the league. Isn’t this just a case of the talent not matching the headache? Other notables chased from a job for the same reason: Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Tim Tebow, Bill Simmons.

—Britt 

If you want circumstantial proof that Bill makes up these mailbag questions, this is an email from "Britt" who apparently doesn't live in a city or state. More than likely, Bill put this fake mailbag question in here as an inside joke. As Britt McHenry, the ex-ESPNer and now conservative pundit, believes that Kaepernick is being kept out of the NFL because of his talent level, not as a result of his being blackballed by the NFL. So I am betting this is a made-up mailbag question that Bill put in as an inside joke directed at an ex-coworker and this is one of many mailbag questions Bill has made up over the years. 

Then Bill outlines the plot for "Speed 3." It's so bad I didn't even have the energy to copy and paste it here. I like you all that much, as there are some things I will spare you from. 

Q: There has been a lot of talk about how the Browns have blundered by passing on good QBs such as Wentz and Watson. I think this wrongly assumes that these quarterbacks would play at a similarly high level if they were with the Browns—it’s the opposite of the Ewing Theory, players of a high caliber will get dragged down on a terrible team. Can you come up with a snappier title than the “Our shit team will always result in shit players” theory?
—Brendan, New York, N.Y.

BS: The Pewing Theory? [Wincing.] Come on! He baited me into that one! Don’t judge me!

So a theory based on money charged for pews. Ummmm...okay. 

By the way? I actually believe in the Pewing Theory. 

No way! Bill believes in a ridiculous theory where he will have to manipulate certain information and leave out certain information in order to show the veracity of his theory? This is so unlike Bill.

We have nearly 20 years of evidence now that the Browns ruin everything. Twenty years! The 2.0 Browns are right around the same age as Shawn Mendes, Lonzo Ball, Markelle Fultz, the daughter from Modern Family and 528 different YouTube stars.

Bill is pretending like he doesn't know who Ariel Winter is. That's funny and kind of inexplicable from the guy who made part of his fame from making it okay to ogle Anna Kournikova when she was still underage. But whatever.

The Browns kept turning away franchise QBs like one of those tortured TV heartthrobs who doesn’t want anyone to fall in love with him because he knows they’ll get hurt.

I mean...what? This is the best tortured comparison Bill can make? 

They’re basically Dylan McKay after he came back to 90210 a few years after his gorgeous wife was murdered by her father’s mafia hitmen, only now he had a heroin problem and even MORE baggage. Guess what. Even THAT pop culture reference was older than the 2.0 Browns.

The self-awareness around knowing you are using an old pop culture reference doesn't take away from the fact that you still used that pop culture reference. That reference is from 1995, so it would be the equivalent of someone in 1995 repeatedly making a pop culture reference to a television show from 1973. Feels old. 

Q: What did you think of your dad’s performance on Curb Your Enthusiasm?

—Brendan, Perth, Australia

BS: It’s been a brutal October for my dad. The Red Sox got knocked out. The Yankees are still alive. It’s the worst Patriots team in eight years.

Oh yeah, cue those violins for Bill's father that this is the worst Patriots team in the past 8 years. This team may not even make the AFC Championship Game, which makes me wonder how Bill's father will ever get past such misery.

The Hayward-Kyrie era lasted five minutes before being derailed by the most gruesome NBA injury maybe ever.

It's so hard being a Celtics fan these days, knowing your team that spent big money to bring in Hayward in order to not win the NBA title this year still isn't going to win the NBA title this year. What a letdown.

Speaking of letdowns, Bill's mailbags are always a letdown for those who don't worship him.

7 comments MMQB Review: MMQB Brought To You By Yahoo and the NFL Edition

Peter King still doesn't know what a factoid is and thinks that Johnny Manziel (who he doesn't know personally at all he admits) needs to do better in order to keep his NFL career alive. This week Peter talks about winning streaks, how Internet football is all the rage around the world, discusses the Dolphins turnaround under the bro Dan Campbell, and he writes "What a country" because there is hockey in Brooklyn. Peter King gets to write a weekly column AND hockey is in non-traditional cities. WHAT A COUNTRY THIS IS! Except for the gun violence, of course. The gun violence and the people who insist on acting in a way while in public that Peter disproves of. Those people who talk on the phone while running in the park can fall into a lake, but otherwise, what a country!

Sunday was a historic day in the NFL, a little bit on the field, and a big bit off. On: Carolina’s 27-16 win over the Eagles means the NFL has five 6-0 teams simultaneously for the first time in league history—Carolina, Cincinnati, Denver, Green Bay and New England.

One team sticks out pretty badly on the list as not belonging. Probably the team that can't throw the football very well and has had a somewhat shaky time in the passing game with a thrice-rejected wide receiver as their #1 receiver.

And though Buffalo-Jacksonville in London wasn’t a marquee game, it accomplished just what the NFL and Yahoo, the provider, had hoped. Yahoo announced that it had 15.6 million unique viewers and 33.6 million total live streams of the game; roughly 33% of that viewership came from outside the U.S.

This goes to show that if the NFL live streams one game between two non-playoff teams then people will watch the game possibly. Also, it shows that Peter King is going to sound like he is doing PR for the NFL and Yahoo in this MMQB. You know I have been somewhat suspicious about the NFL trying so damn hard to have success overseas, but Peter King is very, very fucking impressed with this first live stream result. This could open up the NFL to being able to live stream games and then not have games on television anymore. Which means NFL fans in the United States, you know, the people who buy the vast majority of the apparel, season tickets and actually support these teams, can all huddle around a computer or tablet (maybe even Roku!) at a party to watch a game stream. Sounds like fun.

And there’s little doubt that, though the league treats its 256 regular-season games like home-TV gold, it’s likely to parcel out more than one game to an internet company in 2016.

Probably not a bad idea. I bet the NFL's dream is to have teams in several different countries and never actually show the games on television. They can just live stream them all and everything will be great because people in other countries TOTALLY don't know that the NFL is a clusterfuck when it comes to concussions and doling out punishment to players who step outside the law or choose to deflate a football by a few PSI. Foreigners are so blind to all the NFL's faults. That's the ideal market for the NFL. 

Let’s begin with the stories of the week, from south Florida, New England, Charlotte, London, Indianapolis, New Jersey and Seattle, with stuff about donuts, the ticking time bomb that is Greg Hardy, and the deep scar that won’t be leaving Lovie Smith anytime soon.

Man, having Rex Grossman as his quarterback in Chicago has really left an impression on Lovie Smith. I bet he has nightmares about Grossman randomly throwing the ball deep in the hopes of a completion. 

Greg Hardy. I think the sooner we realize that Hardy is a member of the Dallas Cowboys only and absolutely only because he is a very good defensive end with rare pass-rush skills, the better off we’ll be.

Hey Peter, I think "we" already knew that Hardy is on the Cowboys roster because he's good at football and don't need to be reminded of this. If Hardy had a down year before his legal issues, like Ray Rice had, then maybe he wouldn't be defended and enabled like the Cowboys are doing for him. It's never been unclear as to why Hardy is with the Cowboys. If he couldn't play, he wouldn't be on the Cowboys roster. 

The video put on air by Mike Florio at NBC on Sunday night, showing Hardy in a sideline conflagration with Dallas special-teams coach Rich Bisaccia—slapping the clipboard in the coach’s hand threateningly, causing the coach to shove Hardy and Hardy to get in his face—showed a player bordering on out of control.

Yeah, but he is a team leader according to Jerry Jones. This is just an example of Hardy being a leader and telling the special teams coach that as a leader of the Cowboys team he isn't going to give a flying fuck what he thinks and he feels the need to be disrespectful in order to prove just how much of a team leader he is.

Hardy is a troubled guy and enabling his behavior, as has been done during parts of his NFL career isn't going to help this situation stay in control. 

I don't expect the Cowboys to cut Hardy. He plays too well. But it would be nice if, instead of saying things like what a great and fiery competitor he is, someone with the Cowboys would say: “If Hardy continues to act volcanic, he’s going to have to find somewhere else to play. If anyone will have him.”

Okay, well that's stupid Peter. The Cowboys are never going to publicly say that no one else will want Hardy nor will they say publicly he's on the edge of not being a Cowboy anymore. Should they? Possibly, but I don't think any NFL teams would call out a player on the team in this fashion. If a Cowboys player did it, and I'm sure at least one thinks it, then he knows his comments would be chum in the water for a circus surrounding the team. These types of comments just aren't happening. 

Midway through the fourth quarter in a rout of Houston, Tannehill threw a 10-yard out pass to backup tight end Dion Sims. It was high, but Sims raised one hand and the ball bounced off it. Had he put both hands up, who knows? But it was a catchable ball, for sure. So Tannehill finished 18 of 19 for 282 yards with four touchdowns (all in the first 16 minutes) and no interceptions.

Player on the rise. Tannehill should play for the Rams so they could have a player on the rise for a team on the rise. In all non-snark, Tannehill has plenty of good players around him and it's about time the Dolphins let him play to the strengths of those players around Tannehill. Maybe now Tannehill won't feel the need to berate practice squad players, though I'm sure that report was totally untrue. 

Afterward I said to Tannehill it was a shame about that 19th throw. “What’s that?” he said. You know, I said, the fact that it ruined his perfect day. He acted as if it wasn’t a big deal, because of the way the day was game-planned.

Peter loves to do this shit. He loves to be cutesy by bringing up the one thing that went wrong on an otherwise flawless day when interviewing a player, as if no one but Peter is aware that one thing went wrong. It's like Peter wants the player to come off as a team player and be like, "My God, you are so smart to notice this one thing I didn't notice about my or the team's performance today." Why the fuck would Tannehill think this missed pass was a big deal when the Dolphins played so well otherwise? 

Obviously, the coaching change in Miami is agreeing with Tannehill. He’s an 83.3 percent passer in the two games since Dan Campbell took over. “He wants us to play like we played as kids, with a love of the game,” Tannehill said.

Peter King has a massive fucking erection right now. Ryan Tannehill says Dan Campbell wants the Dolphins to play the game like kids, precocious little kids who haven't a hair on their body from puberty and don't know the evils of life and how disappointing it is to grow up and be a man. Playing like kids for the love of the game as Peter stands to side and wonders why can't HE be a little kid. Then he could play the game like a little kid like Tannehill does. They could both be little kids, hugging after a touchdown, giving half-fives and grabbing some lemonade and hoping mom will let Ryan sleep over on a school night. Just this once. Brett Favre played the game like a child and that's how Dan Campbell wants the Dolphins to play, just like precocious little kids. Nothing is better in Peter's mind than watching kids play sports, even if he has to stay by law on the other side of the fence and at least 250 yards away from the action. 

Dan Campbell. Stop saying, “Who cares? He’s beaten Tennessee and Houston, and they stink.”

I mean, I'm not saying that, but this is still a relevant point. Even if Joe Philbin was a disaster as a coach, it doesn't mean the Dolphins aren't playing above their head right now. Maybe not, but it's possible the Dolphins aren't as good as they have shown themselves to be over the last two games and Joe Philbin was terrible at his job. There is an opinion in between these two that could be factual. 

Part of my job at NBC on Sundays is to pay particularly close attention to the 1 p.m. ET games before production work for the Football Night show begins in earnest. And the difference in the Dolphins has been startling. One sack in the first four games. Ten sacks in the two games since Campbell took over. Clearly the players are playing with more drive, more passion. If you don’t love what you’re doing, it’s going to show in your work, negatively. And it’s clear these players like playing for the new boss.

Well, the Dolphins also claimed to like playing for Joe Philbin at one point. Remember Cameron Wake with his "Philbin comes and talks to us at night and seems to really care for us now" comments? The Dolphins are now winning, which means they like playing for their coach. 

Tom Brady. The Patriots are 6-0. Brady has thrown one interception, in 251 passes. For those inclined to hate him, or treat him the way so many baseball fans treat Alex Rodriguez, for instance, nothing he does will change your mind about him.

I don't know if I understand the A-Rod comparison here, but that may just be me. Even some Yankees fans don't like A-Rod, while Patriots fans are fiercely protective of Brady. I guess it's an easy comparison because they are both considered cheaters. 

Rex Ryan. The Bills had the fourth-best defense, statistically, in football last year, and Ryan said in the spring, “I know we’ll be better this year.” They’re 11th this morning. Players are grousing about roles. The quarterback who played Sunday, EJ Manuel, shows occasional flashes of good deep-ball throwing, but he cannot be saved.

Another flashback moment...remember last year when Peter suggested that E.J. Manuel should just say "fuck it" and throw the ball deep down the field? I'm not sure what that memory has much to do with anything right now, but Peter's suggestion that Manuel can't be saved and he's good at throwing a deep ball every once in a while just made me remember it. 

Kawann Short. Short is the one demanding more attention these days, and he’s proving that Gettleman was smart to eschew a receiver or cornerback early in that ’13 draft. When you can get quick big guys on the defensive front, Gettleman believes you never pass on them—and the pick of Short is proving him right.

Actually, when a team can get quick big guys on the defensive front, I think nearly every GM thinks you can't pass on these types of players. It's not just Gettleman who is smart enough to think, "Man, that big guy sure is fat, fast and dominant. Perhaps I should try to acquire him through the draft." 

The great live-streaming experiment.

“First,” said Brian Rolapp, “we wouldn’t call it an experiment. We waited until now because we wanted to make sure the internet could handle it;

Of course. I mean, so many people have dial-up phones and Internet these days that the NFL and Yahoo had to make sure these people who wanted to watch the Buffalo-Jacksonville game had enough free hours of AOL to watch the entire game. 

My experiment with Bills-Jags on Yahoo, 

Geez Peter, it's not an experiment!

I suppose, was not unlike others in the United States with things to do on Sunday morning. In my Manhattan East Side apartment, I tried two devices, a laptop and a smart phone, just before the game kicked off. Got into Yahoo.com immediately on both, and painlessly got the game up in time to see Kevin Harlan and Rich Gannon give me a quick preview.

In Peter's "Manhattan East Side apartment" as opposed to simply, "my apartment," because it's important to know the exact location of Peter's apartment in order for this story about Internet to be told. Without Peter mentioning he lives on the East Side, I would have been totally confused. 

Rolapp and some NFL employees watched from a conference room on Park Avenue. “We had it up on laptops, tablets, Surfaces, iPhones, Roku, Xbox, everything we could think of,” he said, “and the stream held up well on all of them.”

I'm amazed to hear the NFL didn't have problems with the live stream video of the NFL football game that is the beginning of a new era in how the NFL presents their product to consumers. Here I thought the NFL would report the live stream didn't work at all and they are giving up trying to live stream games and any revenue they may go along with it. 

So the NFL wanted to see three things when it decided to take one of its three Sunday morning games from London and show it free on the internet only,

1. Will it lead to the league making more money?

2. Is there a way to present this product while also taking away a home game from one of the current NFL teams while also increasing how much money the NFL makes?

3. Will it lead to additional revenue for the NFL?

Two: The league wanted to see if there was an appetite for the game in some of the places where the NFL is underserved. Russia and China, for instance, and a Sunday morning game in Eastern Time would be a Sunday evening prime-time game in large swaths of Asia.

You know what? Fuck it, let's just put an NFL team in Taiwan. Why not? This live stream did well in that country, so obviously that means an entire NFL team can be supported in the country. Actually, here is a better idea. What if each NFL team has to play one international home game every year? Each team will play seven home regular season games per year and eight road games with an international game in there as a home game. Of course, season ticket holders will still be charged for 10 home games. 

Three: Would it all go smoothly enough so that the project might expand and more games would be exclusively streamed to the net beginning next year?

And if it goes smoothly once, why not expand the project to see if the Internet can handle more games exclusively streamed to the net? What if the NFL just stopped having football games in actual stadiums, still charged money to watch the games on the Internet, and simply played games in an empty venue where every person who would normally watch the game in the stadium has to pay to watch it on a computer? Of course, season ticket holders will still be charged extra for the 10 games they would go to if they actually were able to attend any of these games. 

The vast majority during the regular season and post-season are spoken for through 2020 and 2021. But there are three Sunday games (currently the early-window London games, starting at 9:30 a.m. ET) available, and there will be the Thursday night package in 2016; CBS is on a one-year deal for Thursdays in 2015, simulcasting with NFL Network and then ceding to NFL Network alone beginning in Week 9. That 16-game package is now up for negotiation for 2016 and beyond.

Money! Money! Money! 

I think it’s likely there could be a Sunday game plus at least one Thursday game headed for the internet in 2016.

It's a great idea actually. Usually the Thursday night games are shit, so why not share that shit with the rest of the world that doesn't have CBS or NFL Network? 

The MMQB asked fans around the world who watched the game on Sunday to send us their views of the streaming experience. Their responses were what you’d think if you watched: positive.

It's impossible for Peter to ignore this live streaming non-experiment of course, but it does sometimes feel like he's doing PR for the NFL and Yahoo in this MMQB. Nary a negative word was spoken about the live stream. Apparently no person in the world had an issue viewing the live stream. 

Tyrone Carriaga
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Gametime: 8:30 p.m. Sunday

“I watched at home using Apple TV. I watched because I do not see a live game as part of the TV package here. The start time was convenient as well. It looked like standard definition most of the game.

Standard definition? Where can I sign up for watching sports in standard definition? I have a television that I paid $2000 for which shows the best picture possible, but if I can get sports in standard definition instead of high definition then I'd like to sign up for this immediately! 

The rest of the comments are basically an advertisement for Yahoo and the NFL, including:

“I watched at home, on my phone and then my laptop. I try to watch as many games as I can. Big NFL fan. Playing at Wembley adds a little something extra. It's great to see a soccer temple being used for football. The quality was excellent. I expected a less-fluent transmission, but it turned out to be flawless.

Overall it was good. Quality on par with NFL Game Pass [the NFL’s subscription streaming service for fans outside the U.S. and Mexico]. No hassle, just click the link and it worked.”

I'll take any bit of NFL football any way I can.

I feel like the famous picture of Peter beside Roger Goodell eating lunch should be somewhere in this MMQB. It is not though, much to my dismay.

Watching NFL games on TV in Brazil is a very choppy experience: Between snaps (commercial breaks, timeouts, on-field reporting etc.), a lot of footage you see in the U.S. doesn't get televised here, so the viewing experience is not as good. The online stream was a smooth and consistent viewing experience. It was great. Much better than expected. Yahoo outdid themselves on the streaming quality.”

What if the NFL televised games on the Internet AND on a regular television? Or would that not work because it would mix revenue streams too much? I'm glad the game was a success, but it was one game, so I'm not jumping out of my seat with excitement quite yet. But Peter wants everyone who reads MMQB to know this non-experiment was a success. There was no hassle and it was in standard definition. All dreams have come true. 

More progress needs to be made. The co-chair of the NFL’s Head, Neck and Spine Committee, Seattle-based doctor Richard Ellenbogen, was in London for the conference. He is also one of the NFL’s unaffiliated head-trauma experts on the sidelines, and has the power to take a player off the field if he sees the player wobbly or otherwise showing symptoms of a concussion.

He has "the power" to do this. I'm a little confused as to how this gentleman is the co-chair of an NFL committee, but also unaffiliated with the NFL. Perhaps I'm just stupid. It just seems if he is the co-chair of an NFL committee then he is affiliated with the NFL in some way. 

I asked Ellenbogen if he ever felt like he, and those in the think tank Saturday, held the future of football and perhaps other contact sports in their hands. It’s clear that football is under such fire that its existence could be threatened if the fathers of the game don’t do more for the health and safety of players.

Because, yes Peter, Ellenbogen is going to say the NFL's existence would be threatened if they don't do more for the health and safety of the players. He's the co-chair of an NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee, but he will also pronounce the league DOA if he and the rest of his committee don't do more. I simply don't believe Ellenbogen would make it sound like the future of the NFL is in his hands, because that makes the situation sound dire. The NFL disapproves of this. 

“No question it’s important,” Ellenbogen said. “But the unintended consequences of getting rid of contact sports would be an unmitigated disaster. Whatever we do, please do not have the conversation about banning these [contact] sports. The benefits of sports—for physical health, for the benefits of being on a team—far outweigh the risks. I can’t even imagine the consequences if enrollment started declining in sports like football and lacrosse.”

Ah yes, a doctor who sounds like he is carrying water for the NFL. The benefit of sports OVERALL far outweigh the risks, but the risks of individual sports could outweigh the benefits of those sports. It is not as if lacrosse, football or any other sports considered "dangerous" were no longer active sports that kids and adults would have no other way of being in good physical health or exercising in any fashion. Contact sports aren't the only sports which provide good physical benefits to those who participate in sports. There are plenty of other sports that adults and children could play which would provide an opportunity for good physical health. I'm not saying to ban football, but this doctor isn't doing too much to convince me he's not carrying water for the NFL by answering a question this way. Ellenbogen is making it sound like there are no other options for those who want to exercise, other than these contact sports. 

“All losses hurt. Some leave a deep scar. This is one of those.”

—Tampa Bay coach Lovie Smith. The Bucs blew a 24-0 lead at Washington and lost, 31-30.

This may not be a good thing for a head coach to say. The last thing a head coach usually wants is for his players to dwell on a difficult loss. Great way to set an example for a young quarterback and Lovie's team by saying a loss left a deep scar. Even if it's true, does Lovie really want his team focusing on the tough loss and not trying to move on to the next game? Kudos to him for being honest, I guess. 

“If they trade me, I’d quit today.”

—Baltimore wide receiver Steve Smith Sr., perhaps nervous that one of the teams most inclined to trade in recent NFL history—the Ravens and their pragmatic GM, Ozzie Newsome—are on the verge of going 1-6 with the trading deadline eight days away. He made his remarks to the team’s website.

I don't believe Smith would retire if he were traded. Still, one can see why the Panthers inexplicably released Smith two seasons ago. It's not that he's a bad guy by any measure, but he can be difficult at times. This is one of those times. He'd rather continue to play on a losing team than move teams halfway through his last season in the NFL in an effort to get a Super Bowl ring. 

DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK

Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, cornerback, New York Giants. There’s the Matt Cassel factor here—he threw interceptions on three straight series midway through the Giants’ 27-20 win over the Cowboys on Sunday in New Jersey—but credit Rodgers-Cromartie for being in the right place at the right time for two picks totaling 70 return yards and one touchdown.

The important thing to note here is that Peter believes Matt Cassel was terrible in his only start this season, yet later in MMQB Peter will make it seems like the Bills made a mistake by trading Cassel at the beginning of the season and keeping E.J. Manuel. I guess the terrible QB the Bills traded is better than the terrible QB on the Bills' roster. 

GOAT OF THE WEEK

The Houston Texans. Just an awful performance, falling behind 41-0, being outgained at one point 275-0. Time to do the proverbial look-selves-in-the-mirror and the gut-check and, well, all the other clichés.

I can't imagine what could go wrong when the Texans collect every backup quarterback the Patriots didn't want. How can Bill O'Brien fail as a head coach? He is affiliated with the Patriots AND he seemed like such a decisive team leader when the cameras were rolling for "Hard Knocks." It's almost like cameras can lie. 

EJ Manuel, quarterback, Buffalo.

He followed that up with interceptions on the next two series, including one right into the arms of Telvin Smith, who returned it for a touchdown. Great end zone view on the Yahoo stream, with Manuel staring the entire time at the spot he threw to, and Smith baiting and waiting. Easy pick.

Excellent view by that Yahoo stream. Enough about football, Peter wants to talk some more about Yahoo and how great the stream was of the Bills and Jaguars game. You could see, in standard definition, by how much Blake Bortles was overthrowing his receivers. What a country! No, because this was an international broadcast, what a world!

Buffalo’s worst nightmare—first when drafting Manuel in 2013, then when dealing Matt Cassel to Dallas for a 2017 fifth-round pick.

Is this their worst nightmare? Is Matt Cassel playing for the Bills really what would fix their season? Cassel didn't exactly blow the roof off the joint in his one start with the Cowboys behind a pretty good Cowboys offensive line. Is the crappy QB not on the roster really a better option than the crappy QB on the Bills' roster? 

You may not recall this. It’s been almost 10 years. But when the Patriots decided to let Adam Vinatieri go in free agency, the team was criticized in some corners for not ponying up to re-sign the kicker, who’d been the epitome of clutch.

I remember it vividly. Shockingly, someone other than Peter King can recall events that occurred longer than a few years ago. It comes as a huge surprise to Peter this is true. 

• In Vinatieri’s six years (regular-season and post-season) playing for Bill Belichick, he made 82.9 percent of his field goals.

• In Gostkowski’s 10 years playing for Belichick, he has made 87.7 percent of his field goals.

Yeah, but Vinatieri was the epitome of clutch, so that has to count for something, right? 

In the last 10 games against each team in their division, the Patriots are:

• 8-2 against the Jets.

• 8-2 against the Dolphins.

• 8-2 against the Bills.

Again I will ask, is this a product of the Patriots being great or the division not being very good? The AFC South is crap and the Colts have been feeding from that division for quite a few years now, but when criticizing teams like the Seahawks who make the playoffs at 7-9 just remember there may be a 12-4 team that made the playoffs based on competing in a shitty division. 

Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week

I traveled six miles Friday evening to Barclays Center—what a pleasant surprise, seeing Mr. and Mrs. Brasco, Don and Alissa Banks, there—to watch an Islanders hockey game. Hockey in Brooklyn. What a country.

Rich white people all got to the same hockey game in Brooklyn. Peter left his apartment on the East Side and went to this hockey game. What a country to see someone that Peter knows at a hockey game! What a world! What a planet! What a solar system!

The place wasn’t invented for hockey. I feel for the fans who have to travel from the Island to see the Islanders.

The venue sucked. What a country. 

Bonus: The drinks and food are really good there. Brooklyn Lager on tap, with a slice of square Williamsburg Pizza, terrific crust and fairly light, complete with fresh basil.

The pizza had good crust and fresh basil? So basically it was...pizza? 

I just saw the whole video of Cowboys Greg Hardy on the sidelines. He is totally out of control going after one of their coaches. Terrible.

— Tony Dungy (@TonyDungy) October 26, 2015

I was unsure if this was terrible or not, but now that the Football Coach Jesus says it is, then I guess Greg Hardy's behavior was terrible. I bet Tony Dungy wants to mentor Greg Hardy. That is Dungy's thing. He wants to mentor. Perhaps someone should mentor Dungy on how to win more than one Super Bowl with Peyton Manning. 

Ten Things I Think I Think

1. I think this is what I liked about Week 7:

c. Fantastic throw, catch and lunge for the touchdown by the Jags’ Blake Bortles and Allen Robinson on the first touchdown of Sunday.

Ask Davon House, Blake Bortles can throw the ball just like Aaron Rodgers. Just minus the talent, throwing ability, feel for the pass rush and any other attribute that makes Rodgers so great. 

i. Good CBS graphic in the first half at Foxboro: Pats 46-4 in their previous 50 home games, best 50-game home record in the league in at least the past 50 years.

BREAKING NEWS: The Patriots are a really good team. 

m. The tip-of-the-fingertips catch by Gary Barnidge, Cleveland’s emerging stalwart tight end. (You just might read about him very soon at The MMQB.)

Don't tease us about this, Peter. I bet Barnidge is a free agent after this season and Peter wants to describe how Marvin Demoff (I have no idea if that is Barnidge's agent or not) can structure a compensation package exactly to where the Browns won't be able to compete with it. 

p. Incredible effort by Detroit’s Ziggy Ansah, sprinting 72 yards to catch Adrian Peterson and knock him out of bounds at the 3-yard line. It saved Detroit four points. Instead of Peterson scoring a touchdown, the Vikes settled for a field goal.

This note about great hustle from Ansah will not appear in TMQ, because Ansah is a first round glory boy pick. If it does show up, I'm sure Peter would focus on how Peterson, a highly-drafted glory boy who brags about how great he is, was caught from behind. 

w. The transcendent year Josh Norman is having for Carolina. Did you see the pass-breakup he had near the end of the first half, which looked absolutely like the touchdown the Eagles desperately needed? Norman sold out, flicked it away, and saved four points; the frustrated Eagles settled for a field goal.

Norman made a great play, but he was sort of beaten. He had no choice at the time but to sell out and dive to block the pass away from the Eagles player. 

2. I think this is what I didn’t like about Week 7:

b. Folks online (Twitter, elsewhere) grousing they couldn’t watch the Buffalo-Jacksonville on their big screens. Stop. Just stop. Buffalo-Jacksonville, first of all. Second: It’s bonus football, in a specially created window because it’s a London game. Third: 95 percent of the complainers would never have watched this game anyway. So stop.

I love how Peter writes this. He's really pushing this Yahoo live stream isn't he? Peter wants to write about how popular the game was, while also dismissing the game as not being worth showing on television because it is Buffalo-Jacksonville. Apparently Buffalo-Jacksonville is good enough to be watched by 30 million+ people online, but not good enough to be shown on the television. This is as opposed to all those great games played in London that have been televised. You know, all those games between two teams that don't have winning records.

I actually tried to watch the game, but didn't feel like watching it on my computer. I did not complain about it, but I can understand why some people may have. Peter doesn't think this complaints are worth much though, because 95% (and that's an exact number) would not have watched this game anyway.

k. Brandon LaFell’s hands in his first game back from injury for New England. Four first-half drops. Six for the game.

Brandon LaFell at his worst. Hands of stone. 

n. Valuable and versatile Carolina rookie hurricane Shaq Thompson (knee), who’s been an eye-opening addition, sitting on Sunday night.

q. The Bills’ inactive list for Sunday: the starting quarterback (Tyrod Taylor), two starting-caliber wideouts (Sammy Watkins, Percy Harvin), one of the best defensive tackles in football (Kyle Williams), a starting offensive tackle (Seantrel Henderson), and an emerging running back (Karlos Williams).

Players get hurt. This is why an 18 game schedule would never work. I'm not sure the playoffs would be much fun to watch if the NFL went to an 18 game schedule. 

y. Not to harp on this stat,

Peter will now harp on this stat. As soon as he says he doesn't want to or won't do something, he tends to do that exact thing. 

but there’s a symmetry to the Colts in the Pagano/Luck Era now: Indy is 20-20 in games outside the division, including playoffs.

I mean, it was just last year that Peter was talking about what a great coach Chuck Pagano is and all of that. Now Peter is pointing out how the Colts can't beat teams that aren't in their division. Life comes at you fast. 

Though his production has plummeted, he’s gotten paid. In his three post-Vikings seasons, Harvin has been paid $31.5 million. Comparing his production as a Viking to his production with the Seahawks, Jets and Bills:

• Vikings (54 games): 387 touches from scrimmage, 10.3 yards per touch, 24 touchdowns … 27.9 yards per kick return, five touchdowns.

• Seahawks, Jets, Bills (19 games): 109 touches from scrimmage, 8.7 yards per touch, three touchdowns … 24.8 yards per kick return, no touchdowns.

He's the Josh Freeman of wide receivers. Of course, Peter won't harp on Harvin's lack of production as he did for Freeman's lack of production because Harvin didn't help to get Peter's buddy fired. 

8. I think if you believe Sunday was the end of the Jets for this season, after the Patriots made sure all is back to normal in the AFC East with a home win over New York, consider these points:

I don't know if anyone thought this was the end of the Jets for the season. I'm not sure why Peter is writing this. 

• The Jets are 4-2.

• In the next seven weeks, they play teams with a combined record of 18-28: at Oakland (3-3), Jacksonville (2-5), Buffalo (3-4), at Houston (2-5), Miami (3-3), at the Giants (4-3), and Tennessee (1-5).

Tell me why it’s unlikely the Jets could be 10-3 entering the final three games of the season: a fascinating Week 15 Saturday night game at Dallas (with Tony Romo, presumably, back), the Patriots at home two days after Christmas, and a nippy affair at Buffalo three days into 2016. I’m just saying I certainly don't consider the AFC East race to be wide open, but it might not be over yet.

Peter, you are the one who is talking about how dominant the Patriots have been in their division. Not many other people are claiming the AFC race is over. You are countering an argument that I'm not sure many people are making. 

10. I think these are my non-NFL thoughts of the week:

g. RIP Cory Wells, one of the lead singers of Three Dog Night. I show my age here, but I loved that band. “Shambala” and “Mama Told Me Not To Com,” were two of Wells’ best.

"Mama Told Me Not to Com" was the first song to encourage people to stay off the Internet. It's the anti-technology song to end all anti-technology songs. Mama told him not to com, but he logged on anyway. Probably to watch the Buffalo-Jacksonville live stream. 

k. Did you see the Georgia Tech player, waving teammates away from the loose ball that would become a return for the winning touchdown of Florida State-Georgia Tech? Good thing at least one Yellow Jacket paid no attention. Coaches: Don’t assume your players know all the rules. 

NFL players don't know the rules. There is evidence the officials in the NFL don't know the rules. So this doesn't surprise me the players in college and the NFL may not know the rules. 

m. Beernerdness: Had a Sidewinder Southwest Pale Ale (Revolver Brewing, Granbury, Texas), made with water from an aquifer on the property of the brewery—and a hint of agave, which is a first for me in a beer, I think—and really enjoyed it.

Peter drank a pale ale! This was a beer that didn't require a fruit or anything like a slice of an orange in it to taste good! This is progress!

n. Hockey’s a strange game. The Devils lost their first four games, 3-1, 5-3, 3-1 and 2-1. In the past week, they won their next four: 2-1, 3-2, 5-4 and 4-2.

It's crazy that one result for a team doesn't mean that team will have the result in every single game. How amazing that professional sports teams will play well or play poorly over short stretches of the season. What a country. Only in hockey. 

The Adieu Haiku

The byes wreak havoc.
No Bengals, Packers, Broncos.
Week seven: quite meh.

There are six undefeated teams, but none of the undefeated teams were interesting enough for Peter. Much like the Adieu Haiku, Week 7 was "meh." In fact, the best thing about the week was the Yahoo live stream. What a great success for the NFL! Has Peter mentioned what a great success it was? He really enjoyed watching it in his apartment on the East Side of Manhattan.

0 comments What A-Rod Has Wrong Today: He Participates in Unfunny Skits for ESPN

Lately A-Rod has made some serious missteps that the New York sports media has had a chance to jump all over. A-Rod hasn't helped the Yankees' ratings and then he failed to make the All-Star team. Those were two egregious errors that A-Rod made. Now Mike Lupica has made the vital discovery that A-Rod has in fact made another error in judgment. He participated in an unfunny skit at the ESPY's this year where he pretended to apologize for a variety of things. At this point, the New York media can't rip on A-Rod for his performance on the field, so they are having to reach in order to criticize him. Lupica says A-Rod "strikes out looking" (get it?) in taking part in the unfunny skit and takes joy in finally getting the chance to write about what an asshole A-Rod is. It's a glorious day for Mike Lupica. He's probably sitting on the edge of his seat talking over someone right now, gleefully happy that he finally can pile on A-Rod again.

Alex Rodriguez has made hardly any mistakes since he returned to the Yankees after serving a full-season suspension for Tony Bosch and for being up to his eyeballs in baseball’s case against Bosch’s Biogenesis clinic.

Ah, but now he has made a mistake that isn't really a mistake and Mike Lupica is all over it. He's on the edge of his seat, trying to seem as tall as possible and talking over anyone who dares to try to be in the same room as him. 

Mostly Rodriguez has hit, and reminded everybody that if you can still produce in sports, fans will find so much forgiveness in their hearts they’re afraid sometimes those hearts might burst like frozen pipes.

Yes, fans are so good at finding forgiveness when a player hits well. Being that Mike Lupica is unable to focus on anything that doesn't involve him, I wonder if he knows that A-Rod has gotten more favorable coverage from sportswriters as the 2015 season progresses. Why? Because A-Rod is producing. But yeah, fans are the fickle ones. 

He has said all the right things and attended charity events, and gotten himself straight, at least for the time being, 

But the fuck up is coming. Mike Lupica knows it. If it doesn't come, then Mike Lupica will blow a small thing out of proportion to make it seem like A-Rod has not gotten himself straight.

and barring any future problems with baseball drugs, with the commissioner and with Yankee ownership. He has, by all accounts, been a bedrock of good behavior in the Yankee clubhouse, especially with young players.

I don't know how many times Mike Lupica can write "A-Rod has been on his best behavior...so far" in this column without it seeming more and more repetitive. Yeah, he hasn't screwed up. Get to your point. 

the way he is covered these days, you can probably forgive him for wondering how Caitlyn Jenner beat him out for the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPY Awards — why he thought it was a good idea to stand in the spotlight at the ESPYs on Wednesday night and participate in a painfully lame and hideously unfunny apology skit with Joel McHale and Ken Jeong from “The Hangover” movies.

A-Rod screwed up because he participated in an unfunny skit at an awards show. This is where we are at now in trying to find things that A-Rod has done wrong. He was a part of a skit that wasn't funny, which apparently is the only reason needed for Mike Lupica to bring up the fact A-Rod used PED's again and criticize A-Rod for lacking funny. A-Rod didn't write the skit and he's not a comedian. He simply took part in the unfunny skit. 

Because even Rodriguez has to know that what he was accused of doing with Bosch and convicted of doing by arbitrator Fredric Horowitz isn’t funny, with or without penis gags. And isn’t ever going to be funny.

PED's are a life and death situation to Mike Lupica. This shit is very serious. If a player uses PED's to gain an advantage, then he should not make jokes about it. Sure, he could casually mention he used amphetamines in an interview 30 years after he retired as if he was taking Flintstones vitamins and not amphetamines, but that's not big deal because those baseball players from the 60's and 70's are heroes and everyone was doing. So that makes it fine. Don't joke about PED's. It's a super-serious subject. 

Just so you know: The set-up at the ESPYs was that Jeong would act as Rodriguez’s surrogate as he finally “apologized” to the whole wide world.

So Rodriguez stood there like a prop and kept handing pieces of paper to Jeong, while McHale stood on the other side of Jeong looking as flop-sweat desperate to get laughs as he had been since his opening monologue.

It wasn't funny. There's no doubt about that. Again, A-Rod didn't write the skit and this participation in the skit is just a way for Lupica to remind everyone that A-Rod is a cheater and find something to be angry with him over. 

Nobody expects big yuks from award shows, at least when Tina Fey and Amy Poehler aren’t hosting them these days.

Mike Lupica: "A-Rod took place in an awards show skit that wasn't funny. How dare he do this while making the crowd uncomfortable with the lack of hilarity."

Mike Lupica: "Award show skits aren't ever funny, so nobody expected the ESPY's to be funny anyway."

But somebody thought this material was funny, and Alex Rodriguez clearly signed off on it, so on they went. And on.

Yes, I'm sure A-Rod spent a few days vetting the script and then re-writing portions of it to better capture his personality. After that, his agent signed off on it, but only after a few of A-Rod's demands were met. 

There was some weird, nervous laughter from the crowd occasionally. There was even a shot of Derek Jeter laughing, though it was hard to tell whether he was doing that to be polite, or just reveling in Rodriguez making himself a part of the show like this on a night when Jeter received a Sports Icon Award.

The Jeter has to make an appearance as the anti-thesis of what A-Rod has become. The Jeter is the Batman to A-Rod's Joker, the Superman to A-Rod's Lex Luthor. The Jeter was not impressed with A-Rod's skit, merely only laughing at how Rodriguez was making an ass of himself. One would think the on-the-field performance comparison between The Jeter and A-Rod at the age of 40 might be made, but there's no need for that. Rest assured, if The Jeter had a line of .304/.363/.438 last year this would be something Lupica brings up. He didn't, so there's no need to compare the two hitters at the age of 40.

By the way: Here is a part of what Jeter said upon receiving that award:

This is especially relevant point in a column about A-Rod participating in an unfunny skit. 

“I’ve had a special relationship with the fans and my teammates over the last 20 years, but in retirement I’ve come to realize that being a part of the larger community of sports is a gift — and more importantly it’s an honor. You’ve inspired me for years, and you continue to inspire me.”

(Bengoodfella wakes up because this was a boring and very cliched, yet kind, statement from The Jeter)

So Jeter took one route to the stage on this night and the guy who used to play to his right at Yankee Stadium took another.

It always comes back to a comparison between The Jeter and A-Rod...that is unless the comparison isn't flattering to The Jeter, in which case no comparison should be made. It's lazy writing, but nothing more should be expected from Lupica. 

Maybe you could have given Rodriguez some props for being able to laugh at himself on this occasion, except there were no laughs here, about “Game of Thrones” or droughts or Greece or the Knicks or any of it.

Yeah well, as you just wrote, nobody expects big yucks from awards shows. So I'm not sure why you would expect this skit to be funny based on your own opinion of award show skits.

At the very end of it, after Jeong stopped reading, McHale asked Rodriguez if there was anything he wanted to say and Rodriguez said, “I’m good.” Before that, of course, we got this supposedly edgy material from Alex Rodriguez’s faux apology at the ESPYs:

It's not funny. Who cares? Why is this unfunny skit worthy of a column being written about it? 

Yeah. These are the jokes. By the time it all ended, you felt as if you’d had to sit through one of those old four-hour Yankees-Red Sox games out of the past.

Brilliant writing by Lupica here. This is as opposed to one of those old four-hour Yankees-Red Sox games from the future or the present? Yeah, if those games are old then they must be out of the past. Mike Lupica is one of those old writers from the past who thinks his written word is the gospel and shall not be questioned. These are the things that happen when you've had an entire career of smoke being blown up your butt and choose to ignore any criticism others may have of you.

Maybe Rodriguez thinks he can be the kind of performer that we’ve found out Peyton Manning can be.

Yes, I'm sure at the age of 40 A-Rod has decided he's going to try and become the type of performer that Peyton Manning can be. More likely, A-Rod just took part in the skit without a long-term plan or a single thought of spring boarding a career off the skit.

Maybe he’s already thinking about a post-playing career in broadcasting, when his Yankee contract finally runs out sometime in the next century. But if he is considering a future career in show business, he might want to take a closer look at the material next time.

We all know Derek Jeter wouldn't take part in an unfunny skit for the ESPY's. He would never do that.

He has hit better than perhaps even he himself thought he ever would again. He’s said and done all the right things. Then came the ESPY Awards.

Yes, one unfunny skit at an awards show has ruined all of Alex Rodriguez's accomplishments over the 2015 season. This is a true and logical statement.

His arbitration hearing was funnier. This is the first dumb thing he’s done since Bosch.

Imagine how Mike Lupica would respond if A-Rod actually did anything worse than show bad taste in jokes made on an awards show. The fact that Mike Lupica actually took A-Rod's participation in this skit, managed to bring Derek Jeter into the discussion, and tried to make all of this into something more than bad comedy shows a dedication to the A-Rod hating craft that he may someday try to perfect...while sitting on the edge of his seat, trying to be as tall as possible and talking over others, of course. 

2 comments Here's a Scorching Hot Take About the Redskins Naming Controversy

Careful, I don't want you to burn yourself. There is an old, old hot take coming from Mike Sielski who gives no-nonsense looks at Philadelphia sports for Philly.com. Well, maybe this isn't a no-nonsense look at Philadelphia sports (it's more for Washington D.C. sports), and it's more nonsense-filled than no-nonsense, but that's okay. See, his hot take says that reporters and sportswriters not only should use the term "Redskins" even if they find it offensive, but they have a journalistic obligation to use the word. They are being dishonest to their readers by simply referring to the Redskins team as "Washington." There is also something about being an unreliable narrator, which only proves the author may not know what a true unreliable narrator is.

The Eagles play the Washington Redskins on Saturday.

That sentence wouldn't appear on the editorial page of The Washington Post, or under the bylines of various sports columnists around the country, or in the student newspaper at Neshaminy High School in Bucks County. Those publications and people have decided that the word "Redskins" is so offensive, as a slur against Native Americans, that they will not use it.

No more offensive than the way Daniel Snyder runs the Redskins, but that's beside the point (puts up the tag about Daniel Snyder being a terrible owner). 

To these writers and media outlets, the NFL team in the nation's capital is always "Washington,"

And nobody is confused by them being called "Washington" because there is only one NFL team in Washington and that is the Redskins. I don't even notice when a columnist uses "Redskins" or "Washington" and not the word Redskins. Maybe I'm super-racist and am not aware of how racist I am. Otherwise, if a writer doesn't want to use the word then it is up to him or her. I only notice when a writer does something stupid like Gregg Easterbrook does and writes "R*dsk*ns" to where it calls attention to the fact he's using the word, but not really. 

never "the Redskins," and they are of course free to take such a principled stand.

Except they aren't free to take this principled stand. 

It's just that they really shouldn't.

See? They are free to take this stand, except not really. 

Here's why: This idea might come off as old-fashioned, especially in our diverse and ever-expanding media world,

Usually when a writer says he's going to come off "old-fashioned" he is about to complain about others censoring what he wants to say that some find offensive, clinging to old ideas against the use of new ideas or knows what he is about to write is a load of crap but wants to make it seem like the idea is tied to old values and not backwards thinking.

but if you're a reporter or a columnist or a newspaper or a magazine or a news website or maybe even an independent blogger or pretty much anyone who practices what can be called journalism, your primary responsibility ought to be the same: Report the facts as accurately and completely as possible, present them as accurately and completely as possible, and don't let any agenda - political, social, personal - get in the way of those goals.
 

Absolutely. I'm going to write two sentences as if I were a sportswriter or journalist and you as the reader tell me if by changing a single word if I have let any agenda get in the way of reporting the facts accurately and completely. 

"The Redskins announced today that they were going to be benching Robert Griffin and Jay Gruden would be the new starting quarterback, while Jim Haslett will take over head coaching duties. The Redskins have decided to put Robert Griffin on the trade block." 

"Washington announced today that they were going to be benching Robert Griffin and Jay Gruden would be the new starting quarterback, while Jim Haslett will take over head coaching duties. Washington has decided to put Robert Griffin on the trade block." 

So in substituting "Washington" for "Redskins" how in the hell have I let any agenda I have affect how the facts are presented? Are the facts more incomplete now that I didn't call them the "Redskins"? Does the reader become confused about the news I am presenting? Not at all. So while if I refused to use the word "Redskins" then I would obviously have some sort of social agenda, it has not and it will not, affect the news or reporting that is contained in these sentences. There is no commentary involved and the reader doesn't get different news simply because I don't use the word "Redskins." 

You start with that foundation, and you build your news story, your analysis, your commentary (however mealy-mouthed or strident) from there. That's the promise you make to your readers.

The problem with banning "Redskins" as a reference to Washington's football team, then, is that you're breaking that promise right off the bat.

But using "Redskins" or "Washington" isn't breaking the promise, it's simply referring to the NFL football team in Washington by one name rather than the other. That's all. I don't care if someone uses the word "Redskins" or not. It doesn't matter to me. As long as they are called the "Redskins" I will probably use the term. But the use of "Redskins" or "Washington" doesn't affect the overall reporting by a journalist like the author wants to believe happens. 

You're revealing immediately that, in what's supposed to be your role as a reliable narrator, you are actually unreliable.

The definition of an unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility has been seriously compromised.

It's a narrator who can't be trusted because the narrator makes mistakes, speaks with bias and lies. How in the process of reporting a story about the Redskins is the narrator lying, making a mistake in his report or having a bias when simply referring to the team as "Washington"? The information is the same and nothing is being withheld from the reader.

You're telling your readers: We have a principle or an agenda that goes beyond informing you. In fact, we'll withhold information from you if we believe it runs counter to that agenda.

What information is being withheld? If anything, a journalist is being reliable in allowing the reader to see off the bat he won't use the term "Redskins" because he/she finds the term offensive. A reader can catch on quickly to an unreliable narrator and the narrator is still considered unreliable, but in the case of journalists reporting on the Redskins, there are no lies or a bias that can come from not using the term "Redskins." The information is the same no matter which term the journalist uses. 

Once a news organization places such advocacy ahead of thorough, precise, honest reporting, it fails to stick to the fundamentals of journalism, and it puts its credibility at risk

How does Peter King fail to stick to the fundamentals of journalism by calling the Redskins "Washington" in his columns? He's reporting the same information he would otherwise if he did call them the "Redskins," but he's just not using the term. 

This author is taking a no-nonsense approach and filling the reader's eyes with nonsense. As long as a journalist isn't secretly creating fake stories that make the Redskins look bad because they won't change their team name (which there is no evidence any journalist who won't use the term "Redskins" is doing this), there is no advocacy being placed ahead of journalism. 

But there is at least a general consensus in our society and culture about which words rise to the level of vulgarity, and that consensus hasn't been reached yet with respect to "Redskins" - at least, not as this particular sports franchise still uses the word.

Fine, it's not a vulgar word as defined by the FCC. I would love to read how the author can explain simply referring to the Redskins as "Washington" is hurting a journalist's credibility. He won't do that. He prefers to simply state that it makes a journalist who won't use the R-word look like an unreliable narrator or as lacking credibility, but won't explain how the information given to the reader by an author who won't use the R-word is different to cause this imprecise, dishonest reporting. 

Remember: No one's suggesting that, for all his faults, owner Daniel Snyder wants to retain the franchise's name for the express purpose of demeaning or mocking Native Americans.

Unintended consequences. Snyder knows some people are offended by the word and regardless of whether he is retaining the name because he doesn't want to change it or because he wants to mock Native Americans is irrelevant. So regardless of his intentions, some Native Americans feel demeaned or mocked. 

I like how the author doesn't give a shit about the unintended consequences of Daniel Snyder keeping the Washington team name as the "Redskins," but he creates unintended consequences that don't actually exist when referring to journalists who report on the Redskins but call the team "Washington." Daniel Snyder doesn't mean to mock Native Americans, but journalists who don't use the term "Redskins" are lying to their readers and putting their credibility at risk. Got it. 

(Does Snyder want to continue making millions of dollars by keeping the name and its recognizable tradition? Sure. Does he want to avoid upsetting the team's fans and sacrificing ticket sales? Absolutely. That makes him rather greedy, which means he's pretty much just like any other NFL owner.)

This is pure speculation, but I would imagine Daniel Snyder would sell as many t-shirts and sell as many tickets to games if the Redskins were called the "Washington Bureaucrats." Okay, maybe not that EXACT name, but you get the point. There is tradition behind the team name, but fans tend to get over things and re-naming the team gives them a chance to buy all new Washington apparel. 

The objections to the name are grounded in the notion that the word itself is offensive, no matter how or why it's used or why the franchise won't change it, and therefore it should not appear in print or online.

And some journalists choose to not use the term "Redskins" which doesn't change the meaning of what they write at all. The information is still the same. 

But if we're to apply that logic to similar terms or words, there should have been media who referred to this former NFL quarterback as Chris Guy Who Went To Louisville. See if you can find anyone who did.

Okay, so it's really hard to take this guy seriously when he writes shit like this. For a guy who writes in a "no nonsense" fashion these are two sentences full of nonsense. Chris Redman's name was "Chris Redman," so that's why he was referred to in that fashion. He could change his name, but it's not considered to be offensive like "Redskins" is deemed offensive. One is the name of a professional sports team and the other is the last name of a human. I don't see the parallel being drawn. 

I'm not arguing that the franchise should change its name or that it shouldn't,

Of course not. A person would be silly to think deeming those who refuse to use the term "Redskins" as lacking credibility and being dishonest is even close to supporting the Washington Redskins not change their team name. There is a much stronger parallel to Chris Redman having to change his name because no one finds it offensive. 

and I'm not arguing that it's wrong for a media member to support a name change and say so publicly.

Support the name change and do it publicly, but just don't write it down, then go about doing your job. That's the key. Support the name change. That's fine. Just don't use the term "Washington" in place of "Redskins" because that throws all journalistic credibility out the window. 

But I am arguing that even if Snyder were refusing to change the name solely because he was an overt bigot and racist, the journalistic responsibility to provide information to news consumers supersedes the desire to avoid offending anyone.

The information shouldn't change if the author is using the term "Redskins" or "Washington." I'm not sure how this is so confusing. 

"Redskins" is the official name of a franchise in the National Football League. It is a fact. You report facts.

They also play in Washington D.C. and calling them "Washington" is also reporting a fact. It's a very weak argument to claim journalistic credibility is being ruined by using "Washington" in place of "Redskins." This stand against the use of the R-word is just a refusal to use the word, not the very basis upon which a journalist discusses the Washington Redskins. Using the word or not using the word should not affect the coverage. 

You call them the Washington Redskins because it's their name, and because that's supposed to be your job.

If a journalist can call them the "Redskins" then why not call them "Washington"? And it's not necessarily "your job" to refer to the Washington Redskins as the "Redskins." The job is to present information about the NFL team in an accurate fashion. Calling them "Washington" should have no effect on that end goal.