As soon as the Patriots trade down yet again tonight I am giving up on watching the draft and turning on Chris Hemsworth’s new Netflix movie that just dropped. Whether Hemsworth can sustain a career outside of the MCU remains to be seen, but this looks like a pretty sweet action flick. Oh and it seems like Thor is a good guy to boot!
Persistence pays off – not only did this guy get an autograph, he also does all my motorbike stunts from now on. pic.twitter.com/6StPOFFRoe
Well now, this is something fit for quarantine. Just perfect. Normally blog worthy? Well actually yes. Anytime a guy of Sloss’ ilk decides to publicly announce he is not only supporting but actively participating in and organizing an event centered around day drinking, that is what we call the “wheelhouse.” So quarantine or not this would be just wonderful.
I’ve written about our Scottish comrade-in-booze Daniel Sloss here before. His first two specials popped up on Netflix out of nowhere and knocked my fuckin socks off. Honestly up there with anything else stand up-wise on Netflix or beyond. His newest special “X” is on HBO and also exceptional but not everyone has HBO so didn’t think it’d be as worth noting.
What is he like? Well, onstage he is high-energy, befriends you in a tell-you-to-go-fuck-yourself sort of way, and isn’t afraid to touch on tough subjects not meant for laughs. In “X” he describes his show as (something like I’m paraphrasing) “50 minutes stand up and 10 minutes Ted Talk”. But it’s brilliant. Offstage (from what I’ve seen in podcasts) he relaxes a bit more but is just as hilarious and is normally hammering beers and talking shit about other people, himself, and his country.
Needless to say I’m stoked for this. Day drinking is one of quarantine’s few simple pleasures. What once you were made to feel guilty about and shamed by society for is basically now encouraged. And now you have a funny-accented dickhead of a drinking buddy to keep you amused through it. So head on over to Sloss’ IG this Saturday at 3:00pm EST and have some fun.
PS – Also check out FOTB Pat Dowling (@patdowlingmusic) on IG every Friday at 6:30pm EST. Kid crushes the tunes.
The Bruins had the best Quarantine Content of the year last night in the form of a livestream Zoom call with the 2011 Bruins as the team watched Game 7 of the Cup, crushed beers, busted each other’s balls, and crushed some more beers. This is the kind of content we need more of while we’re all locked away in our houses. You always hear that hockey players are the most normal, down to earth guys, but this was like being a fly on the wall in the locker room as they F bombed former players, tip toed around NSFW stories, Gregory Campbell laid into Marchand, all while Lucic polished off a couple bottles of red. As would be expected this got more interesting as the night went along as everyone got more sauced up.
The hardest I’ve laughed in a while was watching Tuukka bemoan the fact that he just had a third daughter. When someone else said they just had their third son Tuukka yelled into the camera “HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT HAPPEN?!”
I am *shocked* that the Bruins haven’t scrubbed this from the internet yet, so definitely check it out before the PR team gets to it.
Lucic interjects in a conversation about how goalies are more protected in today’s NHL: “I wonder what happened to them being so sensitive.” pic.twitter.com/KIgZYGMv78
Somebody needs to do a wellness check on Julian Edelman and take away his shoelaces. But seriously, you have got to be shitting me Gronk. I’m seriously going to have to watch two of my favorite athletes of all time play together for another team this season? Holy shit did the devil collect quickly on the deal for my soul after Super Bowl No. 6.
This all came out of thin air after RapSheet tweeted Gronk was interested in coming back and was a done deal in a matter of about 30 minutes, which made it all the more jarring.
Sources: Retired #Patriots TE Rob Gronkowski has told New England that he’s interested in playing football again — and would want to do it with the #Bucs and QB Tom Brady. A trade would have to be worked out for this to happen.
Bucs close to getting Gronk @RobGronkowski tells me. Bucs waiting on word of physical. Still thinks to iron out but should be good within 24 hours @NFLonFOX
I didn’t even have time to craft a witty tweet before the next breaking news siren sounded. Now we’re just reacting to the cold hard news that is in fact a done deal.
If we’re being honest I was hoping for more than a 4th for Gronk and a 7th, but I guess objectively speaking it makes sense as he has just one year left on his deal and hasn’t played football in more than a year. When Marshawn Lynch decided he wanted to come out of retirement to play for the Raiders, the Seahawks were only able to swap a 6th for a 5th and thats probably the closest comparison.
But in the span of 32 days to lose the greatest quarterback of all time for nothing and now arguably the greatest tight end of all time for a 4th stings a bit.
Karen Guregian also reported that this wasn’t just a sudden urge from Gronk to play football again.
From @kguregian: Per a source, the all-world tight end has imagined this scenario of reuniting with Brady for quite awhile. This wasn’t a spur of the moment decision to request a trade. If Brady ever left, Gronkowski was going to join him wherever he landed.
I can’t say that surprises me all that much since Gronk confirmed rumors of a nixed trade to the Lions before the 2018 season, saying he’d retired before playing for another QB.
Gronk asked about the trade to #Lions report. “Yeah, it happened. Brady is my quarterback. I’m not going anywhere without Brady.” pic.twitter.com/PZqpEZCJJY
After a year doing TV, selling CBD, hosting music festivals, and winning WWE belts Gronk will be back catching balls in 2020 from none other than Tompa Brady. His off the field stuff was hit or miss, but let us never forget his Hall of Fame meathead moment on New Years Eve.
NFL mock drafts are largely useless, except The 300s Mock Draft from Mattes, but nobody really knows what the hell is going to happen in the draft. Joe Burrow is definitely going No. 1 overall, but after that its anyones guess which way the draft unfolds. With that being said there has been some chatter around the potential of the Patriots going against everyone’s expectations and trading up to draft Alabama QB Tua Tagovailoa.
Is that really a possibility?
Over at Pro Football Talk Peter King has the Patriots trading up to No. 13 to snag a sliding Tua after the Dolphins take Oregon QB Justin Herbert at No. 5. Well that would assume Detroit (could use a young QB), Jacksonville (could definitely use a QB), and the Chargers (Tyrod Taylor is QB1 right now) all pass on him. Even with the medical red flags considered, I find that pretty hard to believe. King’s breakdown of the scenario below:
I don’t think that would even be enough to get up to No. 3, especially considering Thuney’s on the franchise tag for one year at $15M.
In the past 20 years Belichick has traded up in the first round four times, but not since 2012 when he traded up twice to land Dont’a Hightower and Chandler Jones. They do have 12 draft picks and obviously BB loves to wheel and deal having made 77 draft day trades over the years so the Pats will likely be moving one way or the other.
On Sports Illustrated Bert Breer has the Dolphins taking Justin Herbert at No. 5 and Tua going No. 6 overall to the Chargers, but hedges by saying it’s a hunch because the Chargers GM Tom Telesco is “as cagey as they come.” Meaning they could legitimately take a Tackle here and ride with Tyrod Taylor at QB or it could just be the Chargers trying to throw people off the scent. Breer does go on to say though,
“And if Tagovailoa doesn’t go here? I really don’t know how far he’ll fall.”
That would seem to be the prime scenario for the Patriots and potentially fit in with King’s prediction. Tua slides a bit so the Pats don’t have to give up the farm to trade into the Top 5. Maybe Tua does fall to No. 13 and Bill swings a deal with San Francisco who just so happen to owe the Pats a franchise QB after the Jimmy G deal.
And with reports of the Patriots being nowhere close to an extension with Joe Thuney, who they franchise tagged, maybe he gets included to sweeten the deal for SF along with a few picks. This almost makes too much sense because what kind of team is going to trade for a guard on a one year $15 million deal? Oh I don’t know, maybe a team that feels like it’s on the cusp of a title and maybe even lost a close one in the Super Bowl last year?
The biggest knock on Tua leading up to the Draft has obviously been his health after dislocating his hip last season at Alabama. He’s also has had surgery on both of his ankles and has broken his wrist twice.
Belichick has NEVER been shy about drafting guys in the first round with blatant injury histories though, sometimes bordering on malpractice as the GM. Sony Michel has been on the field, but already had a repaired ACL when the Pats took him in 2018 and just this past offseason had a “minor” knee surgery quietly. In 2014 Dominique Easley already had two ACL tears when he was coming out of Florida and wouldn’t ya know it, could never stay on the field for the Pats because of ACL injuries. So don’t let injury history make you think Belichick won’t take a guy with potential because he will.
Plus then we have the well known Belichick mouthpiece Michael Lombardi with this quote below.
“That’s got to get around, that at least one team failed the physical on Tua,” Lombardi said on The GM Shuffle podcast. “Others have to be concerned now as well. … It’s not just his hip. … I mean, he’s brittle. You can’t deny it. … Look, I’m not disputing the evaluation. I’m saying that they flunked him on not just the hip [but] on the multitude of injuries. The risk far outweighs the reward.”
Is that Bill using an NFL media pundit to try and tank Tua’s stock value around the league?
Jesus christ did I just talk myself into Bill Belichick trading up to draft an injury prone QB? I think I did. If Tua slides and the team can get him without completely mortgaging the future with a Ricky Williams type trade then I say absolutely do it. I’m of the mindset that you should draft a QB every single year because they’re that valuable. Throw as many darts at the board as possible until you hit the bullseye because until then it doesn’t really matter how strong the rest of your roster is. With Tom Brady gone, that should be a draft strategy the Patriots strongly consider. Does Tua’s injury history and size concern me? Sure, but this is also a league that just saw a 5’9″ guy in Kyler Murray go No. 1 overall last year as QBs get hit less and less every year. Tua’s ceiling is so high as he was the hands down No. 1 pick heading into last season and was the 1A after Joe Burrow’s monster year before his hip injury. So if you can get him without completely hamstringing yourself, do it.
So the NFL Draft is going on as originally planned Thursday night, except due to the coronavirus the entire thing is being done remote. Imagine your job being on the line and the future of an NFL organization relying on your Zoom account? Well apparently there have already been technical difficulties and that is not a good sign for Thursday night.
More on today’s mock draft technical glitch: The Bengals didn’t do anything wrong; wasn’t their fault. But the glitch resulted in a two-and-a-half minute delay, per source. https://t.co/q70MLZ14D4
I was on the phone with a head coach talking about the mock draft today and he was losing his mind because his Internet went down…apparently his young children were all on their iPads using up the band width. “ everybody get off the Internet”-in loud dad voice. I hung up.
I’m really hoping for some live streams of coaches and GMs sitting at their draft war rooms kitchen tables because I need to see these old football guys losing their shit like me in a fantasy football draft when the laggy internet drafts the wrong guy.
I’ve been searching for the best program for video chatting coworkers or doing happy hours with friends and guess what? They all suck. I don’t know how people do these calls with more than 3 or 4 people. Some have horrific audio and video delays, others are legitimately overloaded from the surge of people working from home, and none of them run smoothly consistently. And thats just me talking about client campaigns or crushing a few crafties with some buddies, not trying to manage the future of a billion dollar franchise.
Some of these GMs are better prepared than others or at least are pretending to be. Take John Elway for example, who looks like he’s opening up a Buffalo Wild Wings in his house.
But then you’ve got guys like Bill Belichick who don’t even know what Facebook is so this shouldn’t be a disaster at all.
I’m just waiting for Leeroy Jenkins to bust in when someone’s on the clock and really throw a wrench into this draft.
They’re here! The new Patriots jerseys are here! And I am…underwhelmed. In the age of sports talk radio and hot takes on twitter every day, the idea of straddling the fence has essentially become a punishable offense. You either love something and you’re swiping your credit card as we speak or it’s hot garbage and the team should just contract. Well prepare to be disappointed because that is exactly how I feel about these uniforms. They’re fine. They aren’t great, I’m definitely not buying one, but they’re not terrible. They’re just meh.
My biggest disappointment is that they aren’t even new. The Patriots announcing the Color Rush jersey becoming the primary home jersey as “new” is a stretch. They’ve been wearing these jerseys for years; that’s not new.
The white jerseys are also super OK.
But again they aren’t all that different from the team’s normal white roads, aside from those new shoulder stripes.
Seriously though, these are basically the same thing.
Come on!
I know I shouldn’t be surprised, Mike Reiss already told us the changes were going to be minor. These aren’t terrible, BUT the Patriots missed a huge opportunity and I can’t believe it. If you’re going to just repurpose old product (Color Rush jerseys) and repackage them as something brand new, at least do it right. The white on white color rush jerseys the Pats rocked in Tampa a couple years ago were CLEAN.
Yet the Patriots decided to go white on blue and just muck it all up.
So these jerseys are fine, they’re nothing great, but I think the team missed an opportunity here. It was time for a change, the Patriots were smart to go with a slightly different look in the post Tom Brady era, but unfortunately the Krafts will not be getting any of my stimulus check Trump Bucks.
I blogged about this a couple weeks back as we broke down the best jerseys in franchise history and pondered what the Patriots could potentially do with new unis. My campaign for the throwback red jerseys was pretty quickly killed by Mike Reiss who reported the jersey tweaks would be minor. However, this teaser video the Pats just tweeted out has me rethinking all that.
I know the cynics out there are bitching that so many teams are only changing their jerseys (Pats are the 4th team this offseason by my count) because Nike wants to hawk more gear, but sometimes a little change is a good thing. Especially with the end of an era and TB12 now in Tampa Bay, I am not opposed to something new. So help me God if this is a Jay Glazer-esque hype train only for it to be much ado about nothing. I’m not going to take my pants off for new piping accent colors, this isn’t Uni Watch.
The countdown is on and there really couldn’t be a more appropriate day for the Pats to make the announcement: Patriots Day. We’ll be back to break it down after the reveal and potentially blow some stimulus check funds on a fresh new jersey.
Yahoo – With Jalen Green announcing he’s bypassing college and joining the NBA’s G League for the 2020-21 season, he’s attempting to forge a new path for elite prospects.
The five-star recruit who is ranked No. 2 in the 2020 high school class by Rivals.com has reached a substantial six-figure deal, sources said, to partner with the G League for a year before entering the 2021 NBA draft, where he’s a candidate to be the No. 1 overall pick.
I know I’m in the minority here, but I just have never been a big college basketball fan. March Madness is great sure, but I just could never get into college basketball and I think a big reason is because all the best players are only around for a season, maybe two. If you play all four years of college ball, chances are you’re not going to be an NBA player unless your name is Draymond Green.
This isn’t the NFL where athletes legitimately need time to physically mature to handle the league. No, 18-year-olds can physically play in the NBA no problem. Thats not to say many of them would be elite right off the bat, but Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James proved going to college is not required to be a successful NBA player. Not to mention the NCAA looks more and more crooked each and every year as it finds new ways to screw athletes out of money. So if a kid is good enough to play professionally, then why should anyone be able to tell him no you need to go to Duke to pretend to do homework for 6 months, then you can go pro. Cut the crap.
I blogged about this back in March 2018 as the NBA has long been considering a solution for grooming young players that don’t want to go to college, but aren’t exactly floored about playing overseas. What I said back then:
If you’re going to require that players are at least a year removed from high school and the NCAA continues to be the money grubbing scheme that it is, it only makes sense to make the G-League a legitimate alternative to college. A place where players can get actual NBA level coaching and make a little coin without getting athletic directors and coaches everywhere investigated by the FBI.
Chris Haynes continues in the Yahoo article and mentions the idea of a “Select Team.”
“The G League will create a “Select Team” in a designated city with a few roster spots for elite high school players who want to play professionally instead of going to college, sources said. The rest of the roster will be made up of veteran players.”
Go hang around campus in your iSlides, get your National Championship on, take down a couple co-eds…not a bad gig. Or go pro in the States making six figures a year with nothing but a high school diploma? Ok, still not a sweet enough deal?
“The G League is also offering Green a full scholarship if he wants to obtain his college degree.“
LOL kick rocks, NCAA.
Adam Silver will go down as one of the great sports commissioners for a lot of reasons (integration of social media, e-sports, progressive views on marijuana, ousting Donald Sterling), but he may make his biggest mark in history for righting the wrong that was his predecessor’s baby: the One and Done rule. The One and Done rule has been in effect since 2005 so it’s “only” been 15 years, but Silver may have just found the solution to this tricky question. Rather than throwing kids straight into the fire that is the NBA or forcing them to go to college, Silver and co. came up with the idea of giving athletes a legit salary to play in the G-League while they level up. If you ask me, 9/10 kids are going to take that offer over playing for free at college and risking an injury.
Another huge perk to going this route is that this “Select Team” will only play about 20 games instead of the usual 50 in the G-League or 30+ in college or 82 in the NBA. Workload is probably a bigger factor than anything else as young players can gradually get used to a longer schedule.
We’ve seen a lot of guys look for ways around the One and Done rule. Back in 2018 Darius Bazley actually passed on this exact idea of joining the G-League in favor of an “internship” (with a $1 million salary) right in my neighborhood at the New Balance HQ. Bazley ultimately went No. 23 overall in the following NBA Draft so while he earned some serious money in the short term, the argument could be made he hurt his longterm career earnings by not getting the on-court experience in the G-League (or college).
None of this will really matter if Jalen Green flames out in the G-League and drops in next year’s draft, but this could be the start of something big.
The 300s 