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Also, Matt Stafford threw a ball directly to Tramaine Brock after the Cards punted it away, and Brock dropped it. Arizona could have easily won because of that. They should have won, if only so I could watch Matt Patricia eat his pencil in frustration. But at least they tied.

Bucs at Panthers: Last week, the Panthers got dragged for teaming up with Lowe’s, another billion-dollar entity, to buy a new lawnmower for a kid who was doing yard work around his neighborhood to help save up for college.

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This falls squarely into the genre of Not Actually Heartwarming At All news stories, like when CNN tweets an item about a rural town raising money to help pay for a baby’s kidney dialysis. The dark underbelly of these stories always involves vulnerable people forced to raise money for shit they shouldn’t really have to raise money for. In theory, the Panthers should have just given the kid a fucking scholarship, and they were ratioed accordingly. But for every ratio, there is an equal and opposite backlash TO that ratio, as evidenced here:

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Annnnnndddd now I’m depressed. I really gotta move to Amsterdam.

Jaguars at Texans: Two weeks ago, SIR Movement progenitor Keith Olbermann took a break from making coworkers cry at their desks and got mad at us for having the temerity to call a baseball manager a coach.

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You know what’s odd, apart from everything in general? Coaches go by “Coach” as a nickname all the time, but the same is NEVER true of managers. No sideline reporter is ever like, “Manager Boone, does Aaron Judge ever hit his head on the top of the dugout when he walks down into it?” That would sound just wrong. Therefore, all managers across all sports should be referred to as Coach from now on. Let’s just make it consistent already. What’s Keith gonna do about it, besides tweet about how the Galveston Huckle Rays of 1911 are turning over in their grave pits?

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Bears at Broncos: I should have mentioned this last week, but my GQ contract ran out at the end of July (I’ll still go back there from time to time), so I signed a new contract to write for GEN, a new magazine within Medium. You can see all the shit I do for them here. They asked me to do mostly politics takes. That, of course, is my forte. Everyone knows this. They know how knowledgeable I am about the ISSUES that affect us all.

With that in mind, GEN asked me to livetweet Thursday’s Democratic Presidential debate from their Twitter feed. All three hours of it. Oh god. Anyway, follow the magazine here to experience the MAGIC while I call Mayor Pete a hapless pud in real time! Beats watching Jameis Winston attempt to play quarterback again!

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Chiefs at Raiders

Cowboys at Skins

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One Throwgasm

Patriots at Dolphins: If you told me there was a Steve Belichick and asked me to visualize a Steve Belichick in my head, I swear that this is precisely the image I would conjure:

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Steve used to have long, butt rock hair. This hair is better on him. He looks like he would jump out of a Ford Mustang and cut you with a butterfly knife if you ever made an offhand remark about his old man. YOU CALLIN’ MY DAD A CHEAT? THAT’S MY DAD! JOKE’S ON YOU HE’S FUCKING HIS MISTRESS ON A BOAT AS WE SPEAK!

Colts at Titans: Marcus Mariota threw for three TDs last week, which will surely account for half his total TDs all season. Normally, Mariota plays like a really capable backup, so it was fun to see him playing like an actual starter for once. He might just get the hang of this job by 2037.

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Niners at Bengals: I’m not ready for John Ross to be productive. Feels wrong, really. My hope is that he goes back to sucking so that I don’t regret making fun of him all those times. THAT’LL TEACH THAT YOUNG MAN SOME MANNERS.

Browns at Jets

Bills at Giants

Pregame Song That Makes Me Want To Run Through A Goddamn Brick Wall

“Showerbeers!” by Bomb The Music Industry! From Thor:

This song harkens back to the days when you could smoke cigarettes in bars across the country and leave them smelling like a neglected child on a public school bus. Anyway, I had never heard of the concept of drinking a beer in the shower until 2008 when I heard the lyric:

“The only reason I take a shower is so I can drink a SHOWERBEER!”

You’ll likely recognize the opening sample from the seminal 90s film “Can’t Hardly Wait.” This song is 53 seconds of self loathing punishment where all bets are off. You can take a 53-second bong rip. You can shotgun a tallboy for 53 seconds. Hell, you could even butt chug a fine Pilsner for 53 seconds and get so shithammered you run through a goddamn brick wall while you watch the Vikings get their helmets rubbed in shit again.

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Yeah, this song is under a minute and it has a fucking intro! That is bold. I admire it. Anyway, just my luck that I had to stop drinking the same year I find out about this song AND Coors Light runs an ad in tribute to shower beers. It ain’t right. I’m gonna have to go do a bong rip in a steam room to make up for it.

Gregg Easterbrook Memorial Haughty Dipshit Of The Week

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I know I’m old because no one listens to my old man opinions anymore. Thankfully, every so often, bestselling author Jonathan Franzen pops out of his little birdhole to make me feel young again by issuing the haughtiest old man takes ever to come off the spool of a vintage Smith Corona typewriter. Here’s Franzen in The New Yorker—where else?—explaining why fighting global warming is silly, and why mankind should embrace a hot, fiery death instead.

If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.

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There’s a germ of an idea in this article somewhere, about how false hope for improving the environment has lead to a form of complacency in ways that fatalism might not have. But really, all Franzen wants to do is frame this as a LITERARY dilemma, working the end of human civilization into his ongoing, writerly attempt to divine what this all, like, MEANS, man. Ryan Cooper put it better:

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Novelist brain is real, man. When the idea of mass extinction gets you super excited about the potential turns of phrase you might be able to wring from it, you’re this guy:

Things will get very bad, but maybe not too soon, and maybe not for everyone. Maybe not for me.

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Oh well, I’m glad YOU’LL be dead before the rest of us. Can you speed that up a bit? I have football to watch.

As a non-scientist, I do my own kind of modelling.

“I call it BEYOND scienceing. When there are no words and they should have sent a poet, they are talking about me.”

To borrow from the advice of financial planners…

Oh, do you not have many of those?

I might suggest a more balanced portfolio of hopes, some of them longer-term, most of them shorter.

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I’m gonna ignore that suggestion and go burn a pile of Styrofoam instead. Let’s get on with this apocalypse. Can’t come fast enough!

Magic Johnson’s Lock Of The Week: Jets +2.5

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“Last week I predicted the New York Jets would lose, and they did! But now I am picking them to win, which is different! Wow wow wow, these games can change! I know the Jets are injured, but that means now other guys get a shot! So excited for my trip to Bulgaria to meet Jurkic Hosflo, who’s harvesting blood from orphaned children to help power modern riverboats! Jurkic is a great friend! It’s an honor to be his guest for a tasting of exotic fig wines!”

2019 Magic record: 1-0

Fantasy Player Who Deserves To Die A Slow, Painful Death

I lost last week because I started Michael Badgley at kicker and he didn’t end up playing at all. That’s on me for not paying attention, but also: Fuck kickers. There’s a reason DFS doesn’t have kickers. They suck and they shouldn’t ever get injured. How the fuck you get hurt just kicking a ball? POP A GREENIE AND GET BACK OUT THERE, CHAMP.

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Bad Local Commercial Of The Week!

Airport Plaza Jewelers! Straight outta Buffalo comes WNY’s answer to Marty and Elayne at the Dresden Room in Los Angeles. From Alex:

They have been airing commercials like these for years.

I bet they have. When you’re a drive-thru jeweler who can do a shitty Louis Armstrong impression, you milk it for all it’s worth. Your life is the REAL gold.

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Fire This Asshole!

Is there anything more exciting than a coach losing his job? All year long, we’ll keep track of which coaches will almost certainly get fired at year’s end or sooner. And now, your potential 2019 chopping block:

Bill O’Brien*
Matt Patricia
Jay Gruden*
Doug Marrone
Dan Quinn*
Ron Rivera
Freddie Kitchens
Pat Shurmur
Mike Tomlin
Bruce Arians
Kyle Shanahan
Adam Gase

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It’s Thursday and I’m still trying to parse this quote from Jay Gruden after he kept Adrian Peterson in dry dock for the Eagles loss on Sunday:

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Gruden still has about five supporters in the D.C. area, all of whom are enamored with the man’s supposed bluntness, even though he hasn’t won jack shit and has never earned the right to call out anyone publicly.

Anyway, even if you admire Gruden for having the caustic honesty of a decent HVAC guy, this quote still doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Peterson was the leading rusher for the Skins a season ago, coming to the rescue after second-rounder Derrius Guice got hurt (SURPRISE… he’s hurt again!). The Athletic reported that most people with the Skins believe Peterson is still the better option. And yet here is Gruden, blanching at the idea of playing his own capable back in a display of self-ownership normally reserved for his bosses. “Sure I could start a RUNNING BACK if we’re gonna RUN the ball. Like that day’ll ever come! LOSERS.” He’s done. He’ll be offensive coordinator in Oakland by December.

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Great Moments In Grandpa History

Reader Ryan sends in this story I call THE OLD MAN AND THE SATCHEL:

My grandfather was blind. He had macular degeneration and lost his eyesight at 35. It didn’t stop him from having a successful career and being a loving father, husband, and grandpa. After my grandmother passed away, however, he was lost. He was fiercely independent (could use the microwave, empty the dishwasher, get the mail, etc) and stayed at their house for the 6 months or so after her death while his children got him set up to move into an assisted living facility.

As such, my cousins and I would stay with him on weekends just to make sure everything was okay. Once, shortly after I finished high school, my cousin and I were staying over, drinking his beer and watching tv. We were sitting at the bar in the kitchen at around 10:30 PM. My grandpa walks in. He was coming to reheat his always-present heating pad in the microwave. It was warm, so he was sleeping in a white v-neck shirt and boxers. We said hi to him, and, at the same moment, looked down and saw it.

Maybe unbeknownst to him, or maybe he just didn’t give a shit. His dick and balls were fully hanging out of the fly of his boxers. He seemed not to notice. He talked with us, heated his neck pad up, got some water, and wished us a good night.

I will never forget the sight.

And I will never forget the sight of it in my head. The important thing is that your grandpa never saw his balls that night. He was the real winner there.

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Gametime Snack Of The Week

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Crab salsa! You might think it’s a bad idea to eat jarred seafood that hasn’t ever been refrigerated. But for me, the action is the juice. The salsa was tasty. Excited to take things to the next level by trying crab honey mustard a week from now.

 Gametime Cheap Beer Of The Week

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Amsterdam Navigator Extra Intense! Because when you’re a navigator, you can’t settle for just REGULAR intense beer. You need shit that will ruin you good and fast. Reader Kyle explains:

Picked up a can of this dirt water in Paris after watching the USA getting their asses handed to them Friday afternoon at the Ryder Cup. Cost a Euro or two at an outdoor market that sold produce after dark. Its extra intensity can best be described as alcoholic off-brand soda. Still waiting on this 8.0% to kick in. #XXX

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Won’t be long now! You’ll be dead on the floor within seconds.

Jim Tomsula’s Lifehack Of The Week!

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“Ugh, my ass. You ever get that dirty ass? Here’s what I do for that, okay? First off, I scoop some ice from outside the 76 station. They charge you for ice but they can’t see you taking it if you never go inside. That’s an honor system, but the only honor system I care about is Larry Gumstick’s down in Baton Rouge. Larry has a code, and you’d best get with that code.

“So anyway, ice your valley down there. Then what you wanna do is rub some ashes all over it. Fine ash. Nothing chunky. They sell this stuff at like beauty parlors for hundreds! Foolish. I just grab a handful from Creamed Chipped Beef Mary’s fire pit, rub it good and hard, and suddenly you could eat Mary’s beef off of there. And I have! You’ve heard of shit on a shingle. This is HEAVEN on a shingle.”

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Sunday Afternoon Movie Of The Week For Dolphins Fans

The Old Man And The Gun, based off a David Grann story in The New Yorker of the same name that I also highly recommend. This is Robert Redford’s final movie, which makes me sad because, between this and All Is Lost, Redford aged perfectly into movies where he plays resourceful old farts. They should have made him the Joker’s dad or something.

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Gratuitous Simpsons Quote

“How many times can you laugh at that cat getting hit by the moon?”

Enjoy the games, everyone.