Ghost Hunters International
Ghost Hunters International
Sam Darnold exorcises his demons, Lamar Jackson engineers a comeback, the Texans avoid penalties (for half an hour) and the 49ers are overcome by adversity (again) in this Week 5 NFL Walkthrough!
Let’s kick things off with a talking point that I have already seen/heard making the rounds on the NFL Hot Take Blabosphere:
Question: If the Vikings keep winning like this, what do they do with Sam Darnold and J.J. McCarthy next offseason? Do they sign Darnold and trade McCarthy? Do they franchise-tag Darnold and make McCarthy wait another year? Or do they dare to let Darnold leave as a free agent?
Answer: Have you ever considered living in the present, you barking-mad lunatic?
Ghost Story
Sam Darnold is an encapsulation of the Jets experience, the focused totality of decades of hubris and frustration. That made Darnold the perfect instrument to precipitate the 2024 Jets, the wooden stake the Vikings drove through Aaron Rodgers’ undead heart on Sunday.
Long ago, in 2018, the Jets anointed Darnold their would-be savior, a title that has long been more sacrificial than sacramental. As per organizational custom, the Jets immediately exposed their young quarterback to the twin torments of their own negligence and the screeching siren song of the New York media.
The tabloids and talk shows twisted Darnold’s rookie honesty about “seeing ghosts” from a morsel of undigested coachspeak into a damning confession of unworthiness. Sleep-deprived paranoiac Adam Gase later arrived to malpractice upon Darnold in an unholy effort to prove he could build a FrankenManning monster. There were other unlikely, unfortunate events: Darnold remains the only noteworthy individual over the age of 14 to ever contract mono. There were also fine games and fleeting moments of optimism, but those were crushed by the tectonic force of Jets putrescence.
Finally, Darnold — like a Dickensian urchin devastated by a brutal apprenticeship — got shipped off to an even bleaker situation: the David Tepper/Matt Rhule Panthers, the Victorian workhouse of NFL franchises.
You know we’re discussing a London game when you get both Charles Dickens and Mary Shelley references.