Tag: Emmanuel Acho

Tom Brady Went From Belichick Criticizing Him Privately to Bruce Arians Dumping All Over Him Publicly

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Bruce Arians came out of the gates FIRING on Sunday after losing the first game of the Tom Brady era and if I were Brady I would be bullshit for getting thrown under the bus in Week ONE. I’m half expecting Brady and Gronk to drop a Hit Em Up remix dissing Arians before next weekend.

Its been widely reported that one of the reasons Tom Brady left New England, other than it was just time for a change of scenery, is that his relationship with Belichick had started to grate on him. Belichick treated Brady like a first year player (or Fucking Johnny Foxboro according to Giselle) and gave him just as much criticism as the next guy in the locker room. Except Belichick did it privately. You never heard a word about this in press conferences even if Brady played like garbage, which he rarely did. Welp, if getting criticized privately bothered Brady he must love whats going on in Tampa Bay right now.

Arians went out of his way to very publicly blame both interceptions on Brady. Now I’m no film geek so I’m not sitting here watching the All-22, but I would bet my non-existent house on the fact that Tom Brady is reading coverages better than Mike Evans.

To paraphrase the great Katt Williams “…maybe we should stop beating our kids……publicly.”

Even if it was TB12’s fault, you just overhauled your entire team and moved heaven and earth to bring the greatest player of all time to a city known for nothing but strip clubs and you immediately rip the guy the first chance you get? Now that he has a real QB in the room, Arians is like Kelly Kapoor in a blazer.

Granted, Brady isn’t going to just go into the tank and pout because his coach criticized him on TV, but uhhh this ain’t exactly helpful. I had this discussion with Big Z the other day, but this is literally the worst offseason ever for a 43-year-old QB to change teams. As Big Z put it, meetings were outlawed and preseason games cancelled.

Some people thought it came off as Arians yet again throwing his QB under the bus, most notably Emmanuel Acho was chirping the Bucs coach.

The problems went far beyond the QB for Tampa though as they were an undisciplined mess on Sunday with tons of penalties, miscommunications, and ugly plays like the muffed kickoff return that two Bucs had to legit work together to somehow pull off.

If, and this is a gigantic if, the Bucs can get their shit together they are obviously a very talented team and can do some damage in the NFC. I have never doubted Tom Brady once in my life, so I’m certainly not going to start now, but they better get organized.

Lets Talk About What Nobody Wants to Talk About

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It’s been difficult to write much the last week while the country is gripped in protests, riots, civil unrest, and let us not forget about the coronavirus pandemic thats killed more than 100,000 people. 2020 has been the year from hell and the murder of George Floyd was the tipping point for many Americans.

In times like these we typically turn towards sports to help heal the rawest of wounds. It sounds silly, but it’s true. Sports has always been the unifying force that society uses to bring people of all different backgrounds together, if only for a couple of hours.

I’m torn on this because sports have unified people during horrific times like 9/11 and helped kickstart difficult conversations after tragedies like Eric Garner’s death, but maybe not having sports right now is for the best? Without any sports to speak of theres nothing for us to turn our attention towards. We’re all stuck at home and forced to have the difficult conversations that sometimes we’re all too quick to turn the page on.

The 24/7 news cycle never sleeps, but it seems like as a nation we’re all focusing on the same exact thing right now. We may fall on different sides of the issue, but we’re all talking about the same issue, which is how progress begins.

A lot of people are learning, and hopefully growing, in real time. Drew Brees faced the swift wrath of not just twitter, but his own teammates and peers from around the NFL after he denounced protestors kneeling during the anthem.

…and then apologized less than 24 hours later. Life comes at you fast, Drew. It was a shockingly tone deaf statement from one of the faces of the NFL. It’s been 3+ years since Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the National Anthem to protest police brutality, but plenty of people, Drew Brees front and center, still think it’s about the military or “disrespecting the flag.”

I don’t know what kind of reaction Brees expected from these comments during what may be the height of racial tensions in my lifetime, but he has, unsurprisingly, been getting ripped by players across the league including by his own No. 1 receiver, Michael Thomas.

Malcolm Jenkins put out a heartbreaking video directly responding to Brees’ comments and effectively telling him to just shut up and listen.

The McCourty twins eviscerated Drew Brees for leaning on the military as a reason for denouncing the kneeling protestors.

Brees issued a lengthy apology this morning, less than 24 hours after his original comments, but I find it hard to believe he was this glib to begin with so the apology does ring a bit hollow. Hopefully Brees and everyone who sees this exchange use it as a learning experience.

We try to not get too political here, but after hearing the pain in the voices of some of my black friends it would be selfish to not use the minuscule platform we have here to at least say something. I’m a white guy in his thirties so I’ll never know what it’s like to be a black man in America, but one of the main things I heard from friends of mine is to simply see and acknowledge our differences. Saying you “don’t see color” is misguided because that only blinds you to the issues that people of different races experience on a daily basis. It’s important to see, and celebrate, the differences between us all. Ignoring those differences may be done with good intentions, but it takes away from our ability to use any privilege we do have to help, even if its just calling out a friend or a family member on their shit.

I’ll leave you with this video that former Eagles linebacker Emmanuel Acho put out yesterday: Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man