Hope you don’t have, ya know, a job and can actually watch this rescheduled playoff game. Thats exactly why they normally schedule these games after 5 pm, but hey bubble sports are unpredictable so what are you gonna do? The Blue Jackets-Lightning game went into 5OT last night or if you’re fancy, quintuple overtime. Those guys played over 150 minutes of hockey last night, which is like 2.5 games played consecutively.
Bruins fans: Please for the love of god score so we can watch our game before 2am
Apparently the NHL needs 90 minutes between games to get the ice back into shape, which had the Bruins 8 pm puck drop continuously moving backwards. So when the 3 pm game didn’t end until after 9 pm the NHL figured lets just kick the Bruins to the morning rather than have a game go until 2 am. Something the Red Sox could learn a thing or two about…
Now we have the first Bruins playoff game in over a year taking place before high school lunch at 11 am.
If however you’re one of the lucky ones and don’t have work today (or you’re just a raging alcoholic) then this is setting up to be quite the day.
The Boston Bruins are playing playoff hockey tonight. I repeat, Playoff. Hockey. Now lets all ignore the fact that this is a little weird for Round 1 to be starting on August 11th and lets also ignore the fact that the Bruins were far and away the No. 1 team in the NHL for months only to get relegated to the four seed after a bad 3 game stretch. Because none of that matters now. It’s playoff hockey time which means I get to booze out of my Stanley Cup glass once again.
Now, the last playoff game the Bruins played in was a crushing letdown on home ice to let yet another Cup slip through their fingers, but this year’s team was the best team in the NHL all season long. So hopefully the boys can shake off the rust and get their shit together tonight or this COVID interrupted season could be over for good before anyone even realizes they were back.
Make sure you’re properly hydrated for tonight’s game and just start watching this on repeat until puck drop.
After getting brained by the ghastly Orioles over the weekend, the Sox got right back to it immediately going down 7-0 to the Mets. In normal times I probably would have fired up the PS4 and checked the boxscore later. With the pandemic though I literally have nothing else to do and I’m worried that baseball might get cancelled before the end of the month after the Marlins COVID outbreak. So I persevered and the Sox actually made it a game, but the only real entertainment Sox fans are getting this year is in the form of Dennis Eckersley. I’ve made no bones about my stanning for Eck over the years. He is a legitimately excellent broadcaster. Eck is also uniquely hilarious in the way he speaks, but also because he doesn’t give a single shit about ripping the team.
Dont’a Hightower now becomes the fourth Patriot to opt out of 2020, joining OT Marcus Cannon, FB Danny Vitale and OL Najee Toran. https://t.co/NzfDCxgXEh
And so Patriots RB Brandon Bolden also is planning to opt out of the 2020 season, which would make him the fifth New England player to miss this season.
Today has been a rough day for the New England Patriots and I haven’t even finished my morning Iced Tea from Dunkies. This was bound to happen as the guinea pig that is the MLB showed everyone just how quickly an entire sports league can turn into a disaster with this bastard that is coronavirus. The Marlins have had 17 guys test positive and because of the six degrees of separation other teams like the Phillies and the Yankees had to cancel games as they awaited their own COVID test results.
So if you’re an NFL player watching this quickly unfold, it has to make you think. Is this worth it? If you’re Dont’a Hightower and you’ve already made millions and millions of dollars and won three Super Bowls and you just had a baby, do you want to risk bringing that infection home with you? Even if you’re Clay Travis and you think the risk of getting into a car crash is worse (seriously), do you want to have the anxiety of worrying about that every day for the next several months? It seems like a lot of Patriots players are saying hell no.
Bert Breer was on Toucher and Rich this morning and half jokingly wondered aloud is this the price the Patriots pay for having a team comprised of a bunch of smart, thoughtful veterans. It’s a good question because if you’re a young player or a fringe roster guy you might not have secured the bag yet and you may never get another job that pays nearly as much as the NFL. So thats a risk you are a lot more willing to take than an established/paid veteran in this league. Especially when the average NFL career is like 3.3 years.
The question now is how much are the Patriots in trouble and what if even more players opt out? If you’ve listened to the McCourty brothers at all you have got to be worried about whether they’re going to play or not. Those two are intelligent and vocal guys and they have expressed valid, legitimate concerns with resuming play. Right now the Pats have lost their starting Right Tackle, their best Linebacker, a key special teams and depth RB, plus their fullback and another OL. All of this after the team was already tasked with replacing Tom Brady as well as key veterans like Jamie Collins, Kyle Van Noy, and James Develin.
To be brutally honest I don’t expect most of these leagues to finish the season. There’s just too many people interacting with one another and especially in the MLB with teams flying all around like its no big deal. Now imagine that with rosters triple the size in the NFL. The leagues that went with the bubble are the only real shot we have of seeing a completed season this year, but even the NBA has dudes hitting up the strip club for some drums and flats. I don’t know about you, but a strip club is one of the last places I’d want to be during a freaking pandemic. The NHL may be the only league to get through the year as they have a bunch of historically laid back homebodies in hockey players quarantined up in Canada.
Now I’m not going to panic about the Patriots just yet because I tend to agree with my friend here below, even if it is because I’m wearing rose tinted glasses that Belichick and Brady fused onto my face over the last 20 years.
Am I a piece of shit because I still believe that in the current NFL climate, the Patriots will be better than most people expect because Bill Belichick will have them far better prepared and everyone else will be a mess by comparison?
But that’s assuming we even get to the start of the season. Players weren’t even due to report yet and the Patriots had five guys opt out. Lets watch this Marlins story play out a bit more and see if MLB can get back on track because we’re less than a week into the season and it already has the makings of a doomsday scenario.
However, if MLB can’t stem the outbreak and more importantly assuage any player concerns, it could be the harbinger of bad news for the NFL in 2020.
Breaking: Mookie Betts and the Dodgers are finalizing an agreement that is expected be for 13 years at more than $380 million, sources tell @JeffPassan. pic.twitter.com/NUEKWVloge
I am kind of shocked of the size of this deal if the reports saying it’ll be $350-$400 million are true. That number, while absurd, sounded completely likely 6 months ago, but then when COVID cancelled sports for half the year a lot of people like baseball Hall of Famer Peter Gammons speculated this could tank the Free Agent market. A lot of teams are eating a lot of money and with no fans in attendance for the foreseeable future they will be eating a lot more. So a $400m deal seemed unlikely even for a free agent of Mookie’s stature. But then again it’s the Dodgers so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The Dodgers don’t know the meaning of fiscal responsibility. They are the Yankees of the mid 2000s without the actual success.
I am still OK with the Mookie trade. I saw a ton of sad Sox fans on Twitter this morning as the rumors of the deal spread like wildfire, going so far as to compare it to losing Jon Lester. The Lester comparison is lazy and not even close to the same thing. Lester was an excellent, home grown, fan favorite and a reasonable guy by all accounts yet the Sox still lowballed the shit out of him with a $70m contract offer. He would rightfully so be insulted by the offer, get traded to Oakland, and then sign a 6-year $155 million deal with the Cubs. Thats the definition of misreading the market. With Mookie he is looking to reset the market and become the top 2 or 3 highest paid player of all-time. And the Sox have been offering him deals north of $200m for years, but the former MVP doesn’t want to take a penny less than top dollar. And thats fine! Get your money dude, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense for the Sox to just give Mookie a blank check.
I seem to be in the minority around here, but I don’t think there is a shot in hell a $400m Mookie deal ages well. I love Mookie, I own a Mookie shirt, and he’s arguably the best homegrown prospect the Sox have produced since Roger Clemens. But, he’s also a 5’9″ 180 pound guy with massive up and down seasons on his resume. Over the last four seasons Mookie’s batting avg has been .318, .264, .346, .295. I know batting avg is an old guard stat, but even his WAR has been all over the place (9.5, 6.3, 10.6, 6.9). Those are still great numbers (Betts finished No. 8 in WAR for position players in 2019), but those variances would give me concern if I’m writing the check.
For $400m you need to produce power consistently and to be honest you need to be built like a linebacker so I won’t worry about your body breaking down. Obviously you can never predict injuries and big guys are just as likely to break down (Mo Vaughn, A-Rod), but I have more faith in a big guy continuing to hit for power than I do in a 180 pounder hitting 30+ home runs a year into his late 30s. Mookie’s true value is in being a five tool player. He hits for average, power, steals bases, throws well, and plays elite defense, but 5 tool players rarely age well so while I love Mookie I’m not banking $400m on him being the same player in 2032 (!) that he is today.
I’m not going to give John Henry and the Sox credit for this because they fell ass backwards into it, but with a 60 game season this year the Mookie trade looks even better. You’re essentially trading 2 months of a guy who was not going to resign here for promising big leaguer Alex Verdugo and a top prospect in Jeter Downs.
I know Big Z accuses me of being a prospect hoarder, but I’m playing the odds here and with arguably the worst pitching staff of my lifetime I don’t think the Sox were a threat to win it all this year anyways. Theo Epstein stepped on a hornets nest when he coined the term “bridge year,” but its true you can’t just pay everyone all the time without taking a step back every one in a while to retool and reload.
My first reaction is it’s hard to take a rapper seriously when they say they’re going to retire. I mean Jay-Z said he was retiring after The Black Album and that was in 2003. He’s since un-retired and released five more albums. Plus artists in general don’t normally have the ability to just walk away from their art. It’s not like a football player who has to retire because his knees are shot. Look at HOV, Eminem, Ice-Cube, Ice T, RZA, E-40, Missy Elliott etc. They’re all north of 45 and still putting out tracks.
However, Logic has been one of the hardest working dudes in the game over the past decade. He’s put out six mixtapes, six full albums, plus the criminally underrated soundtrack to accompany the freaking novel he wrote, Supermarket. Not to mention five headlining tours.
So while I hope this is more like MJ retiring to play baseball and Bobby Tarantino just needs to take a couple years off to get away for a while, but if not I wish him the best because he has given us a TON of music to bump to.
PS – Logic’s farewell album is being produced by No ID and is coming out in less than a week?
I know these pump up hype videos are very common these days on social media. Tom Brady and Julian Edelman post them before every big game, but Cam Newton must have a cinematographer on the payroll because he’s releasing like two a week. Today we get a mashup of Cam working out with guys like OBJ while the absolute GOAT of revenge Petyr Baelish provides the foreboding voiceover.
This offseason has been absolute chaos with Cam Newton not finding a job until July and questions of whether the season will actually start on time or not, but hey, chaos is a ladder.
If you think Cam’s not out for blood this season you’ve got another thing coming. Just please be healthy because I really want to see a pissed off former MVP going at the rest of the league’s neck.
Let me just sit here and enjoy the one thing that makes me a little bit happy…this fresh, delicious, tasty, meaty, turkey-filled…Cold Cut Combo. I eat three every day to help keep me strong.
Bill Belichick spending a good part of the day on the Branford Green! The @Patriots head coach & 8-time Super Bowl champ filming a spot for @SUBWAY. More tonight on @WTNH at 6pm! pic.twitter.com/DCqyUshcbp
Unless that day off includes a delightful afternoon on a park bench crushing a 5 dollar footlong. What’s Bill’s go to sandwich? It’s gotta be something efficient, not too exotic, but probably a great value loaded up with veggies. No bacon because thats like a flashy WR thats overpriced and doesn’t ever actually help you win the Super Bowl. My official guess is an Italian BMT with everything on it.
In all seriousness though I am waiting with bated breath to see the finished product of this commercial. It could literally just be Bill sitting on a bench with no music, no voiceover, no context. Just Bill housing a sub on a bench for 20 seconds as the Subway logo fades in. I mean, hell I’m craving a sangwich right now. Brilliant marketing.
And no, I can’t go more than a couple of days without making a reference to a 24-year-old Adam Sandler movie.
So theres really not much of a rush hour these days as time is a flat circle during the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean you can’t blast some new #RushHourRap from your couch at 8 am. Well after a rough couple of years dealing with personal issues, Kid Cudi is back and he’s brought the one and only Eminem with him. This is a catchy track and a lyrically impressive song from Marshall. Em does more than just play with pronunciations as he plays with his tempo, which will have you rewinding the song a few times just to make sure you caught every line.
The 300s 