Week 1 of the NFL season is in the books. Matt Drufke has questions. Fancy Boys Football experts Brandon Andreasen and Jack Baker have answers. Let’s mailbag.
The Bears won! That’s pleasant. Down 23-6 to start the final quarter, Mitchell Trubisky threw three touchdowns (to three different targets) and helped the Monsters Of The Midway squeak out a victory. So, here’s the question: which team will we be seeing more of this season: the Chicago Bears of the first three quarters, or their fourth quarter self?
Brandon – Just because I love having my beating heart ripped from my chest, I’m going to say they are closer to a version of the fourth quarter. Hopefully Matt Nagy sees what many of us have said for a year and what was on display Sunday: Trubisky is at his best when he is just out there playing, not overthinking. There is a similar, maligned Chicago athlete having a great season by just playing. Jason Heyward was one of the naturally smartest baseball players in the game. Then he entered the Cubs system, which relied on analytics and in-game swing analysis. Heyward never adjusted to it. Thanks to the Astros cheating scandal, in game swing analysis is banned. Now Heyward is just playing, and because of it, he is having a great season.
If Nagy just let’s Mitch play, no bells and whistles and trick plays, just lets him trust his arm and instincts, this will be closer to the Mitch we see this year.
Jack – I’d like to say the Bears are the team we saw in the fourth quarter, but more likely they’re the team we saw in the first quarter and 13 minutes of the second. Until the offense completely unraveled in one of the worst two minute drills I’ve ever seen, the Bears were who we thought they were. A solid defense with an okay running game and a QB who can’t set his feet long enough to throw accurately to one great wide receiver and a tight end who can’t jump nearly as well as he thinks he can.
Is that good enough to make the playoffs? Possibly.
Even though the Bears won, they still let Adrian Peterson run for almost a hundred yards against, according to Jack, one of the best front sevens in football. That’s crazy to me because it seems like Adrian Peterson is a hundred years old and been playing in the league forever (though his bio shows that I’m six years older than him, and I’m ready to kill myself). Peterson joined Detroit just days before the season after the Washington Marxists (see last week’s mailbag) released him. Can Peterson have meaningful games for the Lions? And which historical figure of the last 100 years would you like to see him stiff arm on the way to the end zone? For me, the answer is former Secretary Of State Henry Kissinger.
Brandon – Adrian Peterson does this every year. He has a great game to start the season before turning back into a mirage as fantasy football players go chasing him in the Sahara desert. He is a piece in that offense, but he is also 52 years old. He is football Ricky Henderson at this point. Just drifting from team to team, league to league.
As for who Is like to see him truck into the end zone? I’d personally love to see him dig up the remains of Ronald Reagan, hang him up like a scarecrow, then stuff arm that back to hell where it belongs.
Jack – Henry Kissinger and Ronald Reagan are both great choices. I want to see a prime Peterson run through the conservative democrats who thwarted Henry Wallace’s bid for Vice President at the 1944 convention beast mode style.
Nothing makes me sadder than watching a high-round rookie quarterback play, which is exactly what happened when the Bengals started the overall #1 Joe Burrow. A team doesn’t get the best draft pick unless they’re bad, and a young QB is rarely the answer. Usually, you just watch as big grown adult men turn the rookie’s bones into sand. Now, Burrow didn’t have a bad game in Cincy’s loss to San Diego, but the question still stands: Would it be better for him holding a clipboard watching a veteran journeyman get his brain smacked in? Or, like Shakira’s hit song “Try Everything” from the movie Zootopia, are the Bengals right to watch him fall and get up over and over?
Brandon – Burrow will be fine, and you have officially hit your Shakira quota for the year.
Jack – This isn’t the NBA where 19 year olds need time for their bodies to mature before they can really keep pace with professionals. If you think a football player needs to sit for a year, then don’t take him number 1 (or trade up to 2, dammit Ryan Pace).
Last week, I asked you who will win it all. Let’s change things up: What team will have the worst record in the NFL this season?
Brandon – I hope it’s the Jets. They have the least likeable coach in NFL history, a fucking bulging eyed goober who rode a few good games from Josh McCown into two NFL coaching stints. He is so comically sour and rotten, you would swear he fell from the Bill Belichik coaching tree.
Keep an eye on the Lions, though. Their coach is shaped like one of those ride-on floor cleaners they use at Wal Mart and he has now blown more 4th quarter leads than he has won games. The Lions could salvage some wins by firing their coach. The Jets can’t.
Jack – The Jets are the least talented team in the NFL, but they’re a boring choice. The Browns and Giants will both be in contention, but I’m going out on a limb and taking the Eagles.
I know that they won the Super Bowl two years ago and they play in the NFC Easy so ESPN thinks they’re great, but so far they’ve lost two starting offensive lineman for the season, their right tackle (the best right tackle in football) is hurt, their left tackle was injured and only came back to play guard but had to be moved back to tackle due to injury, their running back missed week 1 and has a hamstring injury so his season is mostly toast, they’re counting on two of the most injury prone receivers of all time in Alshon Jeffrey and everyone’s favorite anti-semite DeSean Jackson. Plus, Carson Wentz is good for at least one season ending injury a year and was already sacked by Washington 8 times. They’re only saving grace is that they get to play 6 games against the NFC East.
I got a chuckle Sunday night when I saw Ezekiel Elliott display his “Feed me” tattoo after scoring his first touchdown for the Cowboys. Let’s assume that Elliott is channelling the plant in Little Shop Of Horrors, so I can ask you this question: What current NFL athlete should also have a tattoo that references a musical, and what should that tattoo be?
Brandon – I want Odell Beckham Jr to get a tattoo of Dick Deadeye, the forboding sailor from the late 19th century musical “HMS Pinafore.” Why that tattoo? Because Dick Deadeye will be swabbing the poop deck.
Jack – I am fundamentally opposed to your dumb questions, but if I have to answer, I want Taylor Lewan to get a tattoo of George Taylor as depicted in the hit musical “Stop the Planet of the Apes. I Want to Get Off!”
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