26 Comments

"Life is too short and precious to waste two days waiting for the Jets."

Excellent use of too/to/two in the same sentence!

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And I did not mess it up!

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I am not kidding when I tell you I just taught the two/to/too homophones to my 2nd grade class last week. I wish I had this sentence to use as a model.

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There is no way the Jets are age appropriate for second grade.

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Ha!!!! Definitely not :)

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"The source of the Schotten-speculation was initially radio host Shan Shariff"

I think it's great that we're letting typeface classifications host radio shows these days.

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“Saints? That sounds like a transition.”

Ok Abed Nadir.

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I am stunned that for the first time in my adult life, the Bears did the sensible thing and not only went after the hot coaching candidate, but actually landed him. There are a million ways they could still fail to become Super Bowl contenders, but this is exactly what I wanted them to do at this juncture.

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I had completely forgotten the Raiders were looking for a coach too. Probably not a big deal.

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I for one look forward to reading the novelization of the upcoming Vrabels in the Attic movie

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Only if the young Kelly Swanson is in it.

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Rectum is a disgusting word and somehow highly appropriate for the Pats

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i forget the reason why but i was able to boot up my TI-92 recently -- the four AA's it ran on had probably been hibernating there since the Clinton administration

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Very sad about ben johnson leaving what he giving up

Ive up

Eup, m enson

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This is one of your all-time best, Mike! Hilarious and spot-on.

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>> Josina Anderson reported that Glenn planned to sign with the Jets late on Wednesday morning. I am publishing this without any final corroboration of that report.

I understand the journalistic preference for two sources; but if Josina reports it, I believe it.

QUESTION:

Is fate going to complete the one-two punch on Ravens fans this week, following up the playoff loss with Todd Monken getting hired away? I read that he's in play for the Raiders and Jags. I tried to read more, but the tears in my eyes blurred my vision.

>> Anthony Weaver ... is the arithmetic mean between Mike Vrabel and Mike Macdonald. That makes him ... another Dennis Allen.

Some inside-baseball Ravens fan perspective on Anthony Weaver:

In the 2022-23 offseason, John Harbaugh made Weaver a sort of chairman / coordinator for the search committee they ran to hire into open spots on their staff. The hires they eventually made were:

OC Todd Monken

safeties coach Dennard Wilson

"pass rush coach" Chuck Smith

WR coach Greg Lewis

QB coach Tee Martin

RB Coach Willie Taggart

Now, I'm not in the building, I have no more of a clue than any other fan about who owns what percent of the decision-making / shortlist-compiling for those jobs. But! They had logical in-house candidates for each of those spots, and Harbs loves him some in-house candidates. Of those hires, only Willie Taggart (deep Harbaugh ties with Jack & Jim) and Tee Martin (on staff in another role) were "predictable" Harbaugh moves. The other four were out-of-the-box —

Okay, it might seem strange to refer to the OC of the 2-time college natl champ as an "out of the box" hire. But in nearly 20 years of coaching the Ravens, Harbs had not made a college-to-coordinator hire without a pre-existing connection.

· Cam Cameron had a deep family relationship with the Harbaughs; had recruited & coached Jim to Michigan, later hired John at Indiana in 1997 to coach spec teams and DBs.

· Mike Macdonald was a John protege who took a finishing semester abroad at Michigan with Jim; looked like the plan was always for him to return and take up the mantle.

· In contrast, Todd Monken was a non-incestuous college-to-coordinator hire.

(Harbs' other finalist for OC that offseason was Eric Bieniemy. The bloom is off Bieniemy's rose now, but in Jan 2023 his stock was at its peak. He was another great-resumé candidate with no previous Harbaugh connection. Bieniemy dithered about staying with KC, Monken asked for a decision so he could inform Georgia, Harbs pulled the trigger.)

Where I'm going with this:

I suspect that Anthony Weaver had a big, big hand in widening the vision of the coaching search for those roles beyond "the usual suspects". And the hires were friggin OUTSTANDING across the board. Just to put the highlights on a list:

— Monken's performance is of course well known.

— Dennard Wilson was poached to be Titans DC, and seems to have done well. Better initially than the guy the Raven retained, Zach Orr.

— Chuck Smith has coaxed back-to-back career highs in sacks from Kyle Van Noy, helped Nnamdi Madubuike to consecutive Pro Bowls, and unlocked presumptive draft bust Odafe Oweh into a 10-sack guy.

— Greg Lewis has helped Zay Flowers become the first Ravens-drafted WR *ever* to make the Pro Bowl (at WR; they had a couple go at KR and Daren Waller went as a TE), and helped Rashod Bateman finally transition from what you once called "vaporware" to a real contributor.

— Tee Martin has reportedly earned a lot of credit for gaining Lamar's trust and helping him. I don't know any specifics; but at the very least he obvsly hasn't screwed up.

— Well, one can't exactly credit Willie Taggart for Derrick Henry being good. But Justice Hill has blossomed into a HELL of a passing-down back these past two seasons; a crucial cog. And last year pre-injury Keaton Mitchell looked like a budding Hall of Famer, a MORE explosive version of De’Von Achane.

TL,DR:

I suggest you keep on your radar the idea that Anthony Weaver may have some serious chops at the "CEO" aspects of being a head coach.

(He's also ridiculously handsome: looks like the new boyfriend that the protagonist in a Tyler Perry movie gets at the end as a reward for making it thru the hardships of the plot. Easy to picture him smiling at Jill Scott as the music swells on the soundtrack.)

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"The Patriots hired Josh McDaniels as Mike Vrabel’s offensive coordinator in a feat of organizational contortionism: a football franchise plunging ever deeper into its own rectum until it vanishes in a non-Euclidean blip."

This may be my new favorite.

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Someday Tanier will get over his Brady hate and forget he divorced Bünchen…but likely no time soon.

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It's really shocking how many burner accounts Tom Brady has.

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Also impressive that he took the care to include the umlaut but still misspelled her name. Time does not heal all wounds.

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Hehe

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i don't recall Mike mentioning it in quite some time, myself.

When you need to come up with as many jokes as Mike needs to, you don't board up any wells.

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She divorced him.

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Well, to-may-to, to-mah-to, so far as that kind of thing goes, really.

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"...But, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part..." George and Ira! Of course, instead of Tom and Giselle, I'd rather dream of Fred and Ginger...

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I hope not. It's going to be a long time before I get tired of jokes at Tom Brady's expense.

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