The Buscher

Greg Olsen is supposedly interested in the Panthers' head coaching job. Has zero coaching experience outside of youth football. Hiring team legends rarely works out but weirdly it might be a better PR decision for Tepper than hiring a mediocre candidate, which is all you'll get with how volatile his ownership has been. And for Olsen it actually kinda makes sense since Brady's about to waltz in next year and send him to the Fox B-Team because they're paying him so much. He can secure the Tepper bag and know he'll always be able to go back to broadcasting again after.

They'll almost certainly wind up with an uninspired choice who is probably secretly banking on spending half his contract or more getting paid to sit on the couch when he gets fired.

Josh "the Texans had to beg the rest of the league to please interview him so that hiring him as head coach with no experience would seem legitimate" McCown

Reich was always a bad hire but all the rumblings in the spring were that he and his staff preferred Stroud. Reich himself disputed that in the past month but that doesn't really mean anything, of course he's not gonna publicly bury his own QB as not the one he wanted. When your owner and GM aren't on the same page with the coach regarding a major decision like that, it's rarely gonna turn out well. Reich might be fired now but it's tough to see David Tepper, who is really impatient, not firing Scott Fitterer after the season too. He's gonna hire someone who can successfully pitch to him "here's how we can put a winning team around Bryce Young" because that decision's made and they're pretty much stuck with it now.

Quentin Johnston being benched and already looking like a draft bust on the same night Zay Flowers explodes is very fitting. Atrocious night for the front office on top of yet another atrocious night for Brandon Staley. Not sure why any Chargers player would listen to that guy anymore so they may as well get rid of him now.

Elliott makes a 59 yarder in the rain. Gabe Davis runs the wrong route on a would-be walkoff TD. Bills just let the Eagles waltz right down for the win. I really don’t care that their defense is suspect and they’re always playing razor close games. The horseshoe is firmly up their ass and I don’t see evidence of it stopping.

Belichick coached this game like someone who worked things out with Kraft and decided he’d do his part in embracing the tank. The Giants’ chances at getting Maye or Caleb without a trade are dead now but I’m not that bummed about it. Plenty of really good prospects in the top 10. Give me Marvin or an OL + a late 1st round Jayden Daniels trade up and I’m just as happy.

Tommy DeVito being the only Giants QB who can consistently get the ball downfield to Jalen Hyatt. Just as we all drew it up in May.

Good thing none of these tight late-season matchups will matter in a year when everyone and their brother gets to be in the playoffs!

Michigan win it 30-24 on a final drive interception. What a game.

I’d wager Boyle has a future in coaching. Plenty of shitty backup/third string QBs only stick around as long as they do because they’re viewed as smart guys to mentor young players and run a scout team. But to bench Wilson for a guy who is clearly worse is impressive. Allen Lazard was a healthy scratch today. Has done pretty much nothing after inking a $40 million deal. The Jets had a terrible free agency and yet ownership might give Joe Douglas a pass for it because Rodgers wasn’t there to throw to the guys he wanted.

Congrats to the Jets on managing to find a QB worse than Zach Wilson.

New Orleans Saints vs Atlanta Falcons (4) Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs Indianapolis Colts (3) Cleveland Browns vs Denver Broncos (1) Jacksonville Jaguars vs Houston Texans (2) Buffalo Bills vs Philadelphia Eagles (5)

I love how the general discourse amongst most fans is "damn, Eagles probably winning it all" and the Eagles' fans are like "shut up shut up shut up"

I know they’ve played a bunch of close games and they were one play away from losing several of them but it just feels tough to imagine the Eagles not taking home the Lombardi in February.

Holy shit 6 takeaways for the Giants bye bye Ron Rivera

Well, I don’t really want the Giants winning games at this point but if the game keeps up like this it’s hilarious that Tommy DeVito will get Ron Rivera fired tomorrow.

Chiefs/Ravens AFC Title game to me feels like a fun, close game that the Chiefs narrowly win due to one or two borderline calls and we get the immediate outrage reaction of "The NFL wanted Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl".

Burrow has direct fantasy implications for me in 3 leagues: -In the Dynasty League I'm 4-6, have a 2-game deficit to make up for the playoffs and arguably will be finished if I can't beat Srar this week since she's one of the teams ahead of me. I did bench Burrow in favor of Goff this week and think he's a perfectly viable fantasy starter the rest of the way but my team feels a bit too inconsistent week to week to go on a run. -Another random league I'm in I grabbed Kyler as an emergency stash and, again, have him playing this week with Burrow benched because I hated Burrow vs. the Ravens. Don't feel great about that team's chances but it's slim pickings at QB. -League I've been in for over a decade I don't have Burrow but I do have Joe Mixon and this is probably gonna raise his stock significantly the rest of the way, he'll be treated as a bellcow. More annoying than all of this is I have a handful of Bengals playoff-related bets that looked dead in early October, got my hopes back up and now they're dead again.

The media stuff is probably the most direct reason I can give to Mets fans who still are pining at the idea of signing him why it's very unlikely to happen. It's not the money - I don't necessarily believe the rumors that the Mets will deliberately scale back payroll. I don't think they'll have the same level of "win now" approach to free agency as they did the last two years but they're obviously gonna be interested in any top players who can help them long-term and Ohtani, Yamamoto, Soto etc all certainly qualify. There's little doubt in my mind that Cohen will plop down the most lucrative offer of any team if he really wants him. And despite the shit year last year I think there's plenty of baseball-related stuff they can successfully pitch to Ohtani. A solid core of stars, some exciting young prospects on the team now and a bunch more in the farm from their trade deadline selloff. Ohtani's said to be a big believer in metrics and the new pitching lab + Stearns and Mendoza being analytically-inclined would help. And, of course, an owner willing to spend. But the one thing the Mets can't guarantee Ohtani is that they can shield him from the media. It's literally impossible in this market. Even in LA you can kinda get away with it and the Angels made it possible for him. In New York though, keeping a guy away from the media means every slump you're gonna have arrogant reporters and loudmouth sports talk radio hosts screaming about a lack of accountability. The media here thrives on blowing everything out of proportion and turning everything into a circus. There's plenty of other orgs that can give Ohtani the largest contract ever, set him up with as good of a chance of winning next year if not more, and allow him to mostly hang in the background. If he came to either NY team it would be legitimately stunning.

Earlier this week Passan said something to the effect that probably very little will be known about Ohtani until he makes his decision. Yesterday other reports surfaced that his camp has made it clear to teams that he does not want his free agency visits to be leaked, and will hold it against teams if info gets out. He basically wants the whole process to be as quiet and with as little attention as possible. In a world where the sports media try to get every story as soon as possible - it's wild to think that the biggest free agent signing of all time, a landscape-altering player who will get the largest contract in history, will just randomly have his decision posted on Twitter one day without anyone even knowing who is in the bidding.

So they weren't paying him anymore, but officially any player who either retires under contract or is put on an indefinite suspension under contract is on a team reserve list where your contract is basically frozen. Most players who retire while still contracted to a team just stay on the reserve list indefinitely, teams probably have hundreds of guys like that - just think of all the guys who retire in training camp while still with a team etc. If a player chooses to unretire, their contracted team still owns their rights. Some players just go back to the team. Some teams will try to swing a trade (see: Favre unretiring and the Packers trading him to the Jets vs. just cutting him). But a lot of the time the team will simply cut the player especially if they're no longer in the plans. I wouldn't be shocked if Myles Jack decided to reconsider retirement and the Eagles have no space in their LB room, so they've released him into the open market and he can go anywhere. With all that being said, Bernard Williams feels like it has to be some sort of clerical error. Maybe the guy got suspended and never actually fired any retirement papers or something.

So I always hated when people would complain about the show still being on the air. Most of this criticism really was from people who stopped watching ages ago and seemed to care more about preserving the legacy of the show, as if the peak years of the show would be retroactively ruined. I've definitely missed more episodes than I've seen over the last 20 years but I never understood complaining about the show being on - if you don't want to watch it you don't have to, but clearly enough still are to keep FOX happy. This current season might be the first time I'd actually be happy to see the show end. Has absolutely nothing to do with the jokes - nearly every episode has a few good moments. Has everything to do with how rough some of these voices sound now. Julie Kavner's voice was shot years ago but now Dan Castellaneta and Harry Shearer seem to be right there too. Like they sound in pain. It's kinda upsetting to listen to.

Owners unanimously approved the Athletics' move to Las Vegas. The new stadium won't be ready until the 2028 season, but their lease with the Coliseum expires after 2024 and it feels unlikely they'll work out an extension given the contentious nature of how this all went down. So it's essentially RIP to pro sports in Oakland in 10.5 months from now. So the A's will have three years playing in their Vegas AAA stadium, loaning Oracle Park from the Giants when they're out of town, and probably getting some games in Mexico or other locations.