The Buscher

The good news: the game is out July 19th The bad news: the description in the game store is entirely focused on Ultimate Team So basically need to hope they hit Dynasty out of the park on the first try because they'll likely go the way of Madden and ignore it in favor of Ultimate Team in all future installments. I hate EA.

I understand the khaki because it's the color their pants were at the beginning - also despite the team being called Big Blue by the fans, red was actually the main Giants color for the first three decades. Blue pants in 2025 would work for me if they were going to keep a modern variation of this around.

Giants unveiled their Century Red jersey they'll wear twice this year. Pretty gaudy but given it's their 100th year I don't mind the nod to history. But I don't have much interest in seeing them return for 2025.

Steve Cohen deliberately cooled off on his emotional in-game tweeting after getting all kinds of flack for it in 2021 but he let one slip tonight. He replied to a tweet from a fan asking to blow it up with "all in the future, not much we can do until the trade deadline" and he deleted it within 15 minutes, probably after Stearns or someone else from the office called him in a panic asking him to take it down because this could lead to media blowback, fan disenchantment, bad player morale etc. But of course it was screen grabbed and the media are running with it and has at least some fans in an uproar. Already saw a Mets aggregator account moaning about how this is the first time they're ticked at Cohen because it's May 15th, they're 1 GB of the Wild Card and he's already thinking about selling. Personally this doesn't bother me at all. All it does is confirm that he's a fan watching the same team the rest of us are. I don't really care if the losers on this roster are mad at him and frankly maybe this is a last hope to light a fire under them. From what they've been showing there's almost nobody on this roster worth keeping.

Jesus Christ. I do have Netflix and a lot of people have Netflix but that's not really the point here. They're just making it harder and more expensive for people to watch football and eventually there will come a time where fans of a team say, meh, guess I'll just skip this one.

The Giants schedule seems to have leaked. Playing the Vikings week 1 which is surely going to cause some overreaction narratives depending on what happens. If JJ McCarthy lights them up while Jones sucks half the fans who were like "thank god we passed on JJ" are going to do an instant about-face. Weirdly both Dallas games are on a Thursday - hosting Dallas on a Thursday night and then later going to Dallas on Thanksgiving afternoon. Not really happy that the Giants will once again get massacred by them on national TV twice but oh well. Carolina and Atlanta were two road games I was targeting if I wanted a fairly cheap trip to see a road game, the Carolina game is in Germany and Atlanta game is the week of Christmas where flights are crazy expensive so yeah, that's out. Maybe next year.

Funny to think when that trade happened that Goff was just viewed as a throw-in placeholder QB to hold the fort for a year or two until they can draft their guy. He's adapted to that system perfectly.

I threw a question out there on the Giants subreddit about unretiring some of the older numbers given they're all also in the Ring of Honor. Consensus was overwhelmingly no. This sorta surprised me given the Reddit crowds usually trend younger but comments were pretty much just "No, this is a way to remember older generations and if it means some kid doesn't get the number they want, too bad." But then I remembered it was also the Giants 100th season this year so there's no way they were gonna do it this year anyway (not that Mara was ever going to). I'd argue it'd actually be the best timing to honor those guys and mention giving their numbers to the next generation to carry on their legacy but whatever. They announced a bunch of stuff they're doing for the 100th season. They're also doing a March Madness style bracket on social media to vote on the best play in team history. It's all a bit of a formality because everyone and their brother knows it's the Tyree Helmet Catch, likely against Manning-to-Manningham sideline catch in the finals. But just looking through the list of plays brought back some nice memories.

Well, the Knicks’ lack of depth finally caught up with them today. This was a rout straight out of the gate. Given how close the rest of their playoff games have been, this blowout probably ensures that if they even get to the Eastern Conference Finals they’ll be carrying a negative point differential.

Not to my knowledge - I think part of the idea of lessening the restrictions on jersey numbers was because some of the older teams had started to run out of numbers allowed within a positional group. But it'd been requested for ages anyway as so many marquee college players came in with numbers out of their allowable ranges. Probably helps merch sales a bit too to let these guys get "cool" numbers.

Malik Nabers is wearing #9 in rookie camp, likely just a placeholder number as it's also worn by Graham Gano. A lot of these early round rookies want to wear single digits but their only hope of getting one now is if either Gano or punter Jamie Gillan (#6) are willing to sell up. Brian Burns took #0 when he got traded. Deonte Banks just took #3 when it freed up from Sterling Shepard's retirement. Kayvon Thibodeaux actually bought #5 from Gano as a rookie so he's not giving it up. Jones is #8 which was Nabers' college number but he'll have to wait at least a year for it. The other 3 single digits are retired. Which I guess brings a more overarching point that with how many players are on a football team it's kinda ridiculous the Giants have 13 retired numbers especially since half of them were guys who played 70-90 years ago. The Giants have a Ring of Honor which displays the number of the honored players whether those numbers are retired or not. Unless their great-grandkids were to put up a huge stink I feel like putting some of those really old retired numbers back into circulation wouldn't be the worst thing. No disrespect to Ray Flaherty (#1), Tuffy Leemans (#4), or Mel Hein (#7) but that's some prime real estate nowadays!

Seeing as the Knicks haven't won a title in 50 years, if the refs are trying their hardest to help them they've not done a great job with it. The Pacers can cry me a river. Also in addition to Reggie Miller calling the game yesterday, the postgame show had Shaq and Barkley, rather than praise the Knicks for the win, both openly saying they thought the Knicks were incredibly overrated and that they hoped the Celtics stomped them in the next round. It was a level of bias that felt like I was watching an SNL skit.

Knicks lost Brunson for a quarter and a half only for him to come out and put up a good second half. Nice to have a win that wasn't heart attack inducing. Love it. Injuries continuing to pile up so I'm worried of things swinging when they get out to Indy but this has been a great start to the series.

After Claudio, Swerve, and Jamie Hayter were DLC last month they announced Samoa Joe in the next round and then today that Adam Copeland and Jay White are also going in. I suspect the next wave after that will be Ospreay, Okada, and Mercedes. Anyway while it makes sense all the big names are going in it does make me a bit sad that we’re straying further and further from any hope of Evil Uno getting into the game. The man still is promoting this game. Sneak him in there for free!

Fun night of basketball with the Knicks win and that surprising Minny beatdown - that team is on fire.