This song is like a fastball; don’t think just throw. The beat and production on this are so sick that it’s best not to overthink it here. Just turn the volume up as loud as possible and let this track do its thing. Oh and a feature from my dude Aminé never hurts.
ESPN – The Jacksonville Jaguars are expected to sign Tebow, 33, to a one-year contract later this week or next week to play tight end, a position he never played in high school, college or his previous three-year NFL career, a source confirmed to ESPN. A deal has not been agreed upon at this time. Once he signs, he will be reunited with Jaguars coach Urban Meyer, who coached Tebow at Florida and won a pair of national championships with the Gators.
Tim Tebow is approaching Cosmo Kramer levels of winning at life with this latest endeavor. Tebow has lived a life of unimaginable success in all facets of life, the ultimate jack of all trades master of none.
He was a five star QB recruit coming out of high school, won two national championships and a Heisman trophy at Florida, was a 1st round draft pick in the NFL, won a playoff game, moved on to broadcasting where he became a consistent face on ESPN covering college football, then tried his hand at professional baseball and made it to Triple-A, then married a legitimate Miss Universe, and now he will join the Jaguars 5+ years after the last time he strapped on a helmet, oh and he’ll be doing it as a tight end.
Truly a fantasy camp of a life.
Despite all that I love Tim Tebow, but I can understand anyone who might gag at the Captain America resume and truly absurd life this guy has lived. With that being said Tebow switching to tight end is something he should have done nearly a decade ago when the Patriots cut him after the pre-season in 2013. I admire a guy sticking to his guns and saying fuck that I’m a quarterback, but at some point we all have to realize our strengths and acknowledge our weaknesses and play the hand we’re dealt. Tebow looks to be in pretty good shape, but pretty good shape is not exactly NFL tight end shape and he’ll be 34 before the season starts, which is ancient in the NFL. So we might see some flashes but ultimately wonder bitterly what could have been if Tebow had been less stubborn back in the day. Maybe he could have been a reliable weapon for Tom Brady and the Patriots behind Gronk in two tight end sets. Who knows?
Either way it’s a smart move by the Jaguars though because they aren’t signing Tebow to be a backup tight end (they have 5 TE’s on the roster already), no they’re signing him to be a player-coach and to help install Urban Meyer’s team culture for his former University of Florida coach. Meyer is taking a huge gamble (mitigated mightily by having a once in a generation QB prospect in Trevor Lawrence) by jumping from the comfy confines of his college football success to the NFL. Just ask Nick Saban, arguably the greatest college coach of all time, how the NFL worked out for him. So Meyer is looking around for any advantage he can find and familiarity is one of the biggest advantages there is. If his former protege in Tebow can act as another coach on the field and help get other players to buy into Meyer’s system, then it’s absolutely worth the roster spot.
Plus as a guy who has dealt with an absolutely absurd level of attention and scrutiny in his career (hell, people went to Double-A baseball games just to watch him strike out), Tebow can help take some of the spotlight off of and help mentor Trevor Lawrence. Not to mention Tebow is originally from Jacksonville where he is a living legend so with that and Meyer in charge, it’s the perfect situation for him. If Tebow is effective in his role it would not surprise me at all to see him transition into a full-time coaching role as early as next season since this is only a one year deal.
But as a guy who purchased a Tim Tebow No. 5 Patriots t-shirt at the Allston Star Market in 2013, I’m just excited to see my guy back in the league.
It didn’t look good. not then anyway.
It was training camp and fairly deep into it if I remember correctly; at least halfway through. The roster was starting to shake out, or at least shake out as much as a roster in which decisions seem to be made more from Coach Belichick’s conversations with Leonidas’ Ephors than actual empirical football evaluation, could. It was the 3rd training camp for wide receiver and punt returner Julian Edelman. He was, I’ll mention just this once, a college quarterback who converted to receiver to try and make it in the pros and had stuck around the Patriots for a third consecutive camp despite some underwhelming performances, particularly in the return game where he had a chance to be a legit value add. We liked the guy I remember. He was a good story and he was spunky and he reminded us just enough of stalwart, star slot receiver Wes Welker to have some hope. I guess he and Welker were similar enough, being undersized, lightly regarded coming out of college guys who made their living with scrappiness rather than pure athletic talent.
If you listened to local media though this was the end of the line for Edelman. There was just no sense keeping both him and Welker and he wasn’t good enough in the return game, yet to keep around. Nope, this was it, we had other guys, time to cut bait. Even some national folks said the same thing. The feel-good story stopped there.
Then, I remember, came another angle that emerged. Recalling this now it sounds insane given how secretive Coach Belichick is however I remember it as clear as day. It was some sort of Pats preseason TV show. An inside look. He was in some sort of office; maybe his own, maybe a training camp temporary setup. And he was with one of the Pats’ backup quarterbacks. They were drawing up and breaking down offensive plays and sets. And they were pretty much set on them. This was the going to be part of the plans going into the season you could just tell. And Edelman was heavily involved. He was far from cut at least. The local guys had it wrong. The national guys were wrong. Julian Edelman was going to get at least a third chance.
It’s now 9 years later now and after a 12-year career Julian Edelman has decided to hang them up. After a litany of injuries, three Super Bowls, one of which he was named the MVP of, and enough clutch moments to become one of the bigger legends in Boston sports history, he has decided, as he said himself, that the wheels have finally come off.
There is an old and quite emotive line I’ve read that goes something like, “One day you and your friend went inside after playing together all day and no on knew it was the last time.” Even writing that just now hit me a little bit. And it is kind of like that with Edelman. We knew it was getting towards the end. Supposedly he played in six games in last years absolute mess of a season and that just sounds high. We knew as of last week he couldn’t “play a full season” this year, which isn’t really something said about a player in the NFL’s availability. Either he’s hurt or not; or he’s available or not. That’s it. So the ambiguity gave way to the ominous writing on the wall. Which was the question of: Is this it? And it was. It happened strangely as we know. He was actually cut, with the “failed physical” designation, a few hours before his official announcement. But I guess when players are cut with this designation they are entitled to some sort of disability compensation from the CBA. So, knowing he couldn’t play anymore, the Pats did Edelman a solid.
As I mentioned, he had too many clutch moments to count. The most memorable for me is him snagging that ball out of the air, him already basically on the ground, the ball not inches from being incomplete itself. It didn’t seem possible. Not until the third or fourth replay. He also retires with a perfect QB record, being 3/3 with 3 TDs and 100-some odd yards. He locked down Anquan Boldin in the slot once when the Pats were devoid of corners, something akin to what one of his spiritual predecessors, Troy Brown, had to do for the team back in the day.
Most of all, something I’ve waited to touch on, was his passion. His desire. His drive. I wouldn’t say Edelman played with a chip on his shoulder as much as he played with a fire in his belly. Who doesn’t remember him berating his teammates for celebrating too early? Who doesn’t him remember screaming “YOU’RE TOO FUCKING OLD” in Tom Brady’s face during the AFC Title game a couple of years ago, probably channeling the feeling of being written off as used goods to fuel his own performance that night. He is one of the most entertaining “Mic’d Up” features, giggling like a madman and proclaiming he “LOVES CONTACT!” after taking big hits. Massive hits, from multiple linebackers at once. He was a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart, as Vincent Vega would have described.
So it’s JE11, out. It’s Foxboro Forever. It’s no more worshipping at Our Lady Of The Immaculate Hand Towel. But good Lord, it was a hell of a run. It was the most unexpected of runs.
Thanks for everything, Jules.
Gonna have to go ahead and disagree with Red on this one. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, I hate these uniforms. I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate these uniforms.
The one constant through all the years, Red, has been baseball. For the past 90 years, the Red Sox uniforms have been nearly as constant. Sure, the Bosox font on the front of the jerseys and on the cap has been tweaked a bit since the days of Ted Williams, they wore red hats for a few years in the ’70s, and refreshed the road unis in the early ’90s. But you could watch any Red Sox game since World War II and immediately recognize them. This uniform feels like a stunt. A stunt better left to the Astros, Brewers and Rays of Major League Baseball.
This design just doesn’t do it for me. I understand the reference to the Boston Marathon (even though it won’t be run on Patriots Day this year), but couldn’t they use a little more, um, red for the Red Sox uniform? This looks like a random Boston shirt you could buy above Park Street. It’s a Boston Marathon softball uniform, not a Red Sox uniform.
What’s even more irksome is that this uniform feels like it is trying to one up the most significant addition to the Red Sox wardrobe since they ditched the pullovers after the Bucky Dent game. The original (This is Our Fucking) City Connect jersey:
No word if UCLA and/or Adidas will try to block this obvious copyright infringement:
I know the Sox are trying to stay under the luxury tax threshold again this year. Hopefully they can sell a few of these jerseys at the souvenir store to raise a few more bucks. I know times are tough for John Henry and company. Maybe they could have a bake sale next.
Rovell says six more teams will unveil similar City Connect uniforms this season. Let me know when teams like the Dodgers, Yankees and Tigers participate in these shenanigans.
We are 𝗕𝗢𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗡.@nikediamond x Red Sox pic.twitter.com/R8ZX27VUff
— Red Sox (@RedSox) April 6, 2021
I’m not going to overthink it and get too verbose. These are sick, plain and simple. Granted if you’re not from Boston these probably look like some failed Easter Peeps yellow cross promotion. But hey, if you know you know. What’s more, the Red Sox never do stuff like this, which is fair considering the logo and the team colors comprise one of the most recognizable and historic brands in the world. It is nice to switch it up every once in a while though and for better or for worse that’s exactly what a partnership with Nike will deliver.
Obviously these are an homage to the Boston Marathon, which is a legitimate holiday around here turned fierce display of local pride after the Marathon bombings back in 2013.
I was a huge fan of the BOSTON B-Strong jerseys the Sox wore, immortalized by David Ortiz’ “This is our fucking city” speech, when they returned to play after that tragedy.
So it’s cool to see the Sox tapping into a huge part of the Boston culture for a new alternate. A lot of these City Edition jerseys in the NBA have already become kind of forced, but I would say Nike hit the nail on the head with the first of its City Connect MLB jerseys.
Representing more than a team. pic.twitter.com/F0yvahwzOd
— Red Sox (@RedSox) April 6, 2021
The stenciled lettering on the chest is a slick callback to the Marathon finish line and I love the pinned bib on the sleeve too, real nice touch there.
Now the Boston Marathon may not be happening on Patriots Day again this year due to Covid, but the Sox are still playing at 11:05 am so we can all still down some Bud Lattes before noon as we slowly resume some semblance of normalcy.
Just like that the Red Sox fall to 0-3 and are already chasing a losing record less than a week into the 2021 season.
Nathan Eovaldi and Tanner Houck looked great in the Red Sox first two games of the season, which was super encouraging to see. Eovaldi struck out 4 in 5.1 innings giving up just 1 run and only got pulled because of the analytics (rather than his performance) and the fact that you don’t want your injury prone 1A starter throwing 120 pitches on Opening Day. Houck was also dynamite as he struck out 8 in 5 innings and surrendered just 2 earned runs. Obviously Eovaldi is an injury waiting to happen and Houck has thrown 22 innings in his entire career so the optimism here is fragile. Oh and in the last game of the opening series Garrett Richards did exactly what we all knew he would do and got shelled giving up 6 earned runs in just 2 innings.
I’m not about to freak out but getting off to a fast start is more important than you think. Just about every time the Sox have had a losing record in April over the past decade they’ve missed the playoffs. Do you realized that despite their massive achievements (two World Series titles since 2013) the Red Sox have missed the playoffs 7 out of the last 11 seasons?? This is no time to start slow because the Sox have shown they cannot dig themselves out down the stretch.
Now there is reason for some optimism here. If Eovaldi (injury prone) and Houck (young and unproven) can be a solid No. 2 and No. 3 and if Eduardo Rodriguez can come back and be the ace the Red Sox expect him to be, then the team’s pitching staff could be…I’m gonna say it…pretty good. At least in the sense that you only need 3 starters to get through a playoff series. Now, I say ace with a small “A” until E-Rod shows he can return to and improve upon his 2019 form (19-6, 3.81 ERA) after a year plus missed due to Covid and now dead arm etc.
That’s before you even start to think about Chris Sale coming back from Tommy John. The team has been very tight lipped about the time table for his return, but mid-late summer would make sense based on when he got the surgery. I’m not pinning my hopes on another guy coming off Tommy John, but if the Sox are in contention by late summer then the return of Sale could be a huge shot in the arm for this team.
The biggest disappointment of this young season though has without a doubt been the offense. Say what you will about the absolute disaster of historic proportions the 2020 Red Sox were, but they still finished 2nd in Hits, 5th in Total Bases, 3rd in batting average, and 8th in Slugging Percentage in all of baseball last season. So we know if nothing else this team can hit. So to get swept by the Orioles with little to no production from the lineup was ugly. Sure it was the first series of the year with temperatures just above freezing at times, but to score just 5 runs in 3 games against the Orioles and the corpse of Matt Harvey is concerning.
The Sox have no time to dwell as they’re right back at it tonight against the defending AL champs, Tampa Bay. With Nick Pivetta and Martin Perez starting the first two games of the series though the Sox will need to finally get the offense going if they want to avoid really falling into an early season hole.
Here.
— Red Sox (@RedSox) April 2, 2021
We.
Go.#OpeningDay pic.twitter.com/2L0lpcyqsQ
Hope everyone was prepared to ugly cry on this Good Friday Opening Day because Dustin Pedroia just made it super dusty up in here. This isn’t just another mindless hype video; this is a guy who is talking from the heart about never taking the game for granted. Go out there and bust your ass and play like a champion because the game can be taken from you at any moment. Nobody know that better than Dustin Pedroia.
With that being said, Opening Day is here baby!
That’s the beauty of baseball. It’s something about Opening Day taking place in the beginning of spring as winter is finally beginning to thaw and flowers are starting to slowly blossom. Sure it’s 34 degrees right now, but we all know it’ll be sunny and 70 before too long. Not to mention the cold dark hell we’ve all gone through over the last year, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. This is exactly why people say baseball is more romanticized than any other sport. I know the Red Sox in all likelihood are going to suck this year, but after another miserable Boston winter I have hope for better days ahead.
Sad news this afternoon as we learned that Jessica Walter, a.k.a. Lucille Bluth, has passed away at 80 years old. Reading her obit in Variety, it’s obvious she did a lot more than just play Lucille Bluth and I will definitely have to brush up on many of those performances. Still, to a generation of television viewers, especially early-middle millennials like myself, I can’t see her and not think of some of the best comedic lines ever spoken on broadcast television.
I’ll be sure to make myself a vodka rocks and a piece of toast for breakfast this weekend in her honor. Until then, I’ll be rewatching some of her best moments from Arrested Development.
I originally intended to watch Zack Snyder’s definitive edition of Justice League in multiple viewings due to its ungodly 242 minute runtime. But I have to admit, once I got going it sucked me in and I ended up banging out the entire #SnyderCut in one sitting because it delivers big time.
The difference between the Joss Whedon theatrical release (which some people that are more clever than I have dubbed Josstice League) and the Snyder Cut is night and day. Granted it’s twice as long, but it’s broken up into six parts (not including the prologue and epilogue) which lend some credence to the rumors that HBO Max considered releasing it in weekly installments rather than all at once. Now if you’ve never seen the theatrical release you may just think this is a four hour masturbatory act from Snyder and I wouldn’t necessarily fault you for that assumption, but this just may replace Blade Runner’s Final Cut as the definitive example of a Director’s Cut.
So we all know by now that DC was trying to replicate the massive success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which continues to run laps around DC with the also massive success of WandaVision on Disney+. However, this is 13 years in the making with the first Iron Man coming out all the way back in 2008 followed by The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America THEN the first Avengers movie.
The biggest misstep DC made was releasing a very strong Man of Steel movie, an OK Batman vs Superman movie (that I often forget Wonder Woman is actually in), and then immediately jumping into Justice League with the addition of Aquaman, the Flash, and Cyborg. With only two of the six characters fully developed it was kind of a tall task to jump straight into team movie, introduce a new villain, and then bang it all out in 2 hours. Now I’m not saying you need to painstakingly recreate every single character arc because we all know Bruce Wayne’s parents were gunned down in front of him as a kid, and Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben was killed because of Spider Man’s carelessness. We don’t need to see that explained all over again, but Batman, Superman, and Spider Man are the three biggest superheroes in the entire history of the comic book genre. Not everyone knows the back story of Aquaman (all my knowledge is from the Vinny Chase movie in Entourage), the Flash (unless you’re a big CW fan), or Cyborg (best known from the cartoon Teen Titans, IMO).
In the original theatrical version all three of those characters get put on the back burner so you never really have time to care about them. With the opportunity presented by a four hour movie, Snyder really dives into the back story of all three, particularly Cyborg, and gives you a reason to want to see these characters succeed. Plus it also does a much better job teasing the Aquaman and Flash standalone films.
It’s hard to get into too much detail as to why the Snyder Cut is so much better without spoiling a lot of what made the cut so enjoyable so I encourage you to watch it before Twitter spoils it. I can say that the quippy Joss Whedon dialogue got axed, the motivations of many characters have changed (for the better), Darkseid is actually, ya know, in this movie, and gone is the unsightly red sky plastering the final act in the original. The new cut is overall darker (both visually and thematically), more violent, more serious, and is even rated R (yay F bombs!). So it is much truer to Snyder’s original version. But to be fair even if he had finished the movie originally, Snyder would have never been allowed to release a four hour R-rated tentpole superhero flick. So while what he has accomplished here is huge, it’s important to keep in mind that he was able to move the goal posts a bit, a luxury which he or Whedon would not typically have had.
I cannot believe how different this movie is after Snyder allegedly filmed only four minutes of additional footage in his reshoots. Granted Snyder had a whole series of DC films planned for what was dubbed the Snyder Verse so there was a lot left on the cutting room floor that he was able to just pick back up. There are also tons of easter eggs and threads (like what actually happened to Robin) that are finally pulled on here just to tease viewers in the name of fan service.
Now comes the inevitable question of “what if?” What if Joss Whedon never came on board and Snyder had been able to finish his original vision? Would the DCEU have never collapsed on itself and would we already be discussing Justice League 3, the Ben Affleck standalone Batman film, and a potential Jared Leto Joker spinoff? DC has to have known (hoped?) this would be the case and provide new life to an IP that was on ice after critical and commercial indifference. It is kind of a bummer because Snyder fully pulls back the curtain to show us what he was working on and we’re unlikely to ever see that vision realized. The new Knightmare dream scene that is towards the end of the movie (rather than earlier on in the original) is a perfect example of this. But hey, I never thought the internet would ever be able to bully a major studio into investing tens of millions of dollars into a reshot, recut version of a failed tentpole film, and here we are.
I really want to kick down the doors at DC right now and give them the Herb Brooks Miracle speech about great opportunity. That’s what you have here tonight, boys. I’m sick of hearing about what a great cinematic universe Marvel has.
Through their own failures DC has accidentally stumbled into an amazing opportunity here with the multiverse. They can finally stop trying to replicate the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It didn’t work, it happens. With the multiverse DC can simply make all of these random one off films and individual stories with different actors and just punt on a shared universe until they decide to bring everyone together again. It’s something DC has already test run on its various TV series with the Crisis on Infinite Earths event where they even brought back my dude Tom Welling for a brief Superman cameo. If rumors about the upcoming Flash standalone movie are to be believed then DC is really going to lean into that exact mindset with the multiverse as multiple Batmen are allegedly set to appear in the film.
Watching the Snyder Cut is a trippy experience because even the opening minutes are entirely different from the original version with previously unseen footage. I felt like I had Alzheimer’s because in my head I know I’ve seen Justice League multiple times but now it’s…different.
Admittedly, my viewing of the Snyder Cut may be seen through rose colored glasses after 3+ years of the internet lobbying for and then somehow actually getting a completely recut and reshot version of beloved IP. And it worked! Now do Game of Thrones.
Only person that I’m up against is me
I’m hella humble, don’t mistake, that shit is weak
Show my daughter if she fall, it’s cool, just get back on your feet
I’m here to give you all these tools and then my life will be complete
Show you what you dream is true and what you want in life and reach
And now I gotta take a look at me and practice what I preach
You are who you wanna be
And now I gotta take a look at me and practice what I preach
Lute is an artist out of Charlotte that signed with J. Cole’s Dreamwork label back in 2015, which probably explains why I like this track so much. Humble, hard working, and motivational all wrapped up in some slick rhymes, check out Lute’s “Life” and the powerful visuals that only a year like 2020 could truly inspire.
The 300s 