Greetings from the sports desk located somewhere below decks of the Good Pirate Ship RedState. Sammy the Shark and Karl the Kraken are their usual dynamic selves at the moment:
Good help is so hard to find these days. Still, they know more about football than some people …
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Anyway, being on the other side of a senior discount means remembering when Monday Night Football was a really, really big deal. Difficult though it may be to believe for the small fry, there once was a time when the only NFL games you saw on Sunday were your local, or local-ish, team plus whatever was deemed worthy of a national broadcast. But everyone, unless there was a regional blackout, got Monday Night Football, which was usually a marquee matchup. The broadcast for years featured play-by-play by Frank Gifford, color commentary plus comic relief by former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith, and Howard Cosell as played by Howard Cosell. Cosell was the announcer America loved to hate, a role in which he luxuriated as he baited his critics via his garrulous asides. Ah, nostalgia.
As time and cable marched on, with every game becoming available to most anyone willing to pay for NFL Sunday Ticket, Monday Night Football diminished in importance to the point where, in 2006, ABC sloughed it off to ESPN. The matchups have also diminished, with NBC’s Sunday night broadcast usually getting the cream of the weekly crop or a reasonable equivalent thereof. Still, once in a while, you get something worth watching. Such was the case on September 23, when the Washington Redskins Commanders defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 38-33 in Cincinnati.
It’s not often you see an entire game in which neither team punts, but such was the case here. Washington’s keys to victory were its offensive line dominating Cincinnati’s throughout the contest and rookie quarter Jayden Daniels posting eye-popping numbers — 21 completions out of 23 attempts for 254 yards and two touchdowns. In addition, Daniels rushed for 39 yards and a touchdown. The Commanders scored a touchdown on each of its first four full possessions (the team took a knee to end the first half).
While Daniels occasionally showed a not atypical habit for rookie quarterbacks, namely avoiding a safe play in order to look for the spectacular, the numbers accurately reflect the quality of his play. As noted, there were no punts in the game. Washington scored on every full possession, which, given the Commanders’ decidedly less-than-stellar defense, is the only way it can consistently win. Save for a missed field goal, the Bengals scored every time they had the ball as the Commanders were hardpressed to slow Cincinnati down on the ground or in the air. That said, Washington’s defense did manage to keep the Bengals out of the end often enough to secure the win. While no one is thinking playoffs, the Commanders are at least fun to watch for the first time in close to forever.
Elsewhere in sports, aside from the Detroit Tigers, it appears that no one wants to secure one of the three available American League wild card slots. The Baltimore Orioles currently have top billing with a four-game cushion over the aforementioned Tigers and the Kansas City Royals but are 3-7 in their last ten games. Detroit is the exact opposite, having won their two most recent games and seven out of the previous ten. Kansas City? They’ve lost seven in a row and eight of their last ten. This has opened the door to the Minnesota Twins, who are one game behind the Royals despite losing seven of their last ten. The Seattle Mariners are 1 1/2 games behind Kansas City. Given that they have won seven of their previous ten, they’re obviously going about this the wrong way.
The National League is far more settled, with the Philadelphia Phillies having clinched the NL East to join the Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers in singing “We Are the Champions” and selling t-shirts. The Phillies are presently a half-game behind the Dodgers for the best record in the National League, so this will be something to watch during this, the final week of the regular season. The wild card has the Atlanta Braves 1 1/2 games behind the Arizona Diamondbacks, with the San Diego Padres and New York Mets holding the first two spots. Lots of scoreboard-watching awaits.
Have a terrific Tuesday, everyone.
