Despite starting the season with a 2-4 record, the New England Patriots now have the inside track to win their division. Not only has the team won five straight to move to 7-4 on the year, it also leapfrogged the Buffalo Bills in the standings in Week 11.
While the Patriots beat the Atlanta Falcons 25-0 on Thursday Night, the Bills were blown out 41-15 by the Indianapolis Colts. The defeat has now dropped Buffalo to 6-4 on the year, and below its AFC East rivals in the standings.
The division now looks as follows 11 games in:
New England Patriots (7-4)
Buffalo Bills (6-4)
Miami Dolphins (4-7)
New York Jets (2-8)
Obviously, though, nothing is decided in the AFC East just yet. After all, New England and Buffalo will still have to meet twice this season: the Patriots will travel to Western New York in Week 13 before welcoming the reigning division champs to Gillette Stadium in Week 16.
Both games will have massive implications on the AFC East and the conference’s playoff picture as a whole. This week’s results, however, have made winning the division a much more realistic goal for the Patriots — and not just that.
After all, New England now also owns the third seed in the AFC with plenty of potential to move up even further. After all, one of the conference’s top teams was also beaten on Sunday: the Tennessee Titans’ seven-game winning streak came to an end thanks to a 22-13 upset loss to the Houston Texans. With Tennessee now 8-3, the Patriots could move ahead of them in the standings if they beat them in the head-to-head matchup next Sunday.
Since dropping a thrilling overtime game against Dallas on Oct. 17, New England has churned out five straight victories, with four of them coming by double-digits. The Patriots have held each of their last three opponents to fewer than eight points, including a shutout of the Atlanta Falcons on Thursday night.
It gets even better for Bill Belichick’s crew. The 25-0 drubbing of Atlanta encompasses seven straight scoreless quarters by the Pats’ defense. In fact, the Pats haven’t allowed their opponents to score on any of their last 19 drives. During this five-game winning streak, New England is outscoring its opponents 175-50.
The point is, this unit is irrepressible right now, and its spurt has the football world wondering if it will be able to preserve it into the postseason — and perhaps even all the way to the Super Bowl.
“This would be too Hollywood,” Shannon Sharpe said Friday on “Undisputed,” regarding the potential championship matchup between Mac Jones and former Patriots QB Tom Brady of the defending-champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers. . . .
“Coach Belichick has the Patriots playing really well right now,” he admitted.
“We know this about his teams: They always get better. Late October, heading into November and December, is when they start playing their best football. This is where the really good teams separate themselves. [Belichick] says, ‘look, I’m not a fast horse, I’m a steady horse, and I want to steadily build.'” . . .
Chris Broussard opined that Belichick utilizes Jones in a way that is exactly what they need. “That is a Super Bowl-caliber defense,” Broussard said. “I’m not saying they’re the best defense in the league, but it is a defense that I think is good enough to be a Super Bowl defense.”
You could see this coming. The Patriots were 2-4 after they lost that overtime game to the Cowboys, but the players at the time said they knew they were a better team than their record showed. In their next game, New England put a 54-point whupping on the Jets, and a lot of people said, “Well, yeah, but . . . it’s the Jets.” OK, so then the Patriots won a road game against the Chargers, had been 4-2 with wins over the Chiefs and the Browns. Going into that game, a lot of people saw it as a crucial test, but afterwards a lot of the same people suggested the Chargers were overrated. Fine, whatever. Then New England beat the Carolina Panthers — their third consecutive win, making their record 5-4 — and the skeptics were like, “Well, the Panthers are kind of weak.” (One week later, Carolina beat the NFC-leading Cardinals.) Next, New England faced a home game against the Cleveland Browns, who were coming off a big win against the Bengals — a definite AFC contender, and the Patriots absolutely wiped the floor with them, such a blowout that Coach Belichick took Mac Jones out in the fourth quarter.
The came Thursday night — a primetime game, with just three days’ rest. Would there be a letdown after the big win over Cleveland?
The Patriots answered this with their best defensive performance of the season — four sacks and four interceptions, limiting Atlanta to just 177 yards total offense in the shutout. And although New England’s offensive wasn’t spectacular, Jones was 22-for-26 with a TD pass, while running backs Rhamondre Stevenson and Damien Harris combined for 125 yards rushing. Not bad for a Thursday night, and with their record now 7-4, New England has the fifth-best record in the conference, just a half game behind the AFC-leading Buffalo Bills. The Patriots now have 10 days to get ready for a home game against the conference-leading Tennessee Titans on Nov. 28, and if they win that game . . .
“Mac Jones has some stuff in him, some intangibles, that I think are maybe the greatest we’ve ever seen from a quarterback,” Clark said. . . .
The former Steeler also dished out praise to the Patriots defense, calling them “Super Bowl-caliber” while giving the Patriots an optimistic outlook for the rest of the season.
“When you watch Bill Belichick teams, what do we always see? They are a team that ascends as the season gets closer to the end – the New England Patriots become the team playing their best. We are watching this team evolve,” Clark said. “Over the next four weeks – they’ve got two games against the Bills, they got the Titans, they got the Colts – I believe we leave that stretch of football games saying that the Patriots are top-tier contenders to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl.
“I believe it with my heart. I don’t want to believe it with my mind, though, because I want to be able to find it but you just cannot. This Patriots team is playing too good and this is Bill Belichick’s best coaching job of his career.”
"Mac Jones has some stuff in him, some intangibles, that I think are maybe the greatest we've EVER seen from a quarterback. … From neck up, I don't know if we've ever seen a rookie that is better."
On Saturday, I wrote that if the New England Patriots could “get a convincing win” against the Cleveland Browns, fans would begin talking about the team in Super Bowl terms. Sunday’s 45-7 win was about as convincing as could be and, having won four games in a row, the Patriots now have the second-longest current winning streak in the NFL (the Tennessee Titans have won six in a row). They now have just three days to get ready for a Thursday night game at Atlanta. The Falcons got beat badly by Dallas on Sunday, and New England will be heavily favored Thursday, where a win would put them at 7-4 with six games left to play.
Sort of feels like old times. The weather is getting colder … the Patriots are rounding into form … the possibilities are intriguing … and it’s a fourth-quarter party here at Gillette Stadium with a comfortable lead.
The intriguing possibilities of which Mike Reiss speaks are obvious enough. At this point, is there any team the Patriots can’t beat? They’re two weeks away from a home game against the Titans, currently the best team in the AFC, and you can’t rule out a New England victory. No rookie quarterback has ever led his team to the Super Bowl, but Mac Jones is starting to look like he may be the first to do it:
Mac Jones looked like a seasoned veteran with his best performance of the season, raising the possibility this team could make a legitimate postseason run. Most promising for the Patriots is Jones had been grinding through a couple of so-so games the previous two weeks, sparking questions about whether he had possibly hit a rookie wall. He smashed through it against the Browns (19-of-23 for 198 yards, three TDs), displaying the accuracy and decision-making that had shown up more consistently earlier in the season, and he was poised and on-point in third-and-long situations. The Patriots have proved they can consistently run the ball, and with Jones and the passing game finding its groove, the offense looked the best it has all season.
See how the artful euphemism “legitimate postseason run” is used there to avoid what every Patriot fan is thinking: Super Bowl, baby!
A month ago, the New England Patriots were 2-4 and appeared headed for a second straight season of irrelevance.
Four games later, they are back in a familiar spot as a playoff contender in the AFC.
Mac Jones threw three touchdown passes, rookie Rhamondre Stevenson rushed for a career-high 100 yards and two scores, and the Patriots rolled to a 45-7 victory over Cleveland Sunday as the Browns lost quarterback Baker Mayfield to a knee injury.
The Browns (5-5) have dropped four of their last six and haven’t won at New England since 1992, when Bill Belichick was their coach.
Jones finished 19 of 23 for 198 yards passing. Hunter Henry added a pair of TD receptions as New England (6-4) went 7 of 9 on third down.
“That’s how you want to play the game of football,” Jones said. “It’s just a three-level game and when we click on all cylinders, we can be pretty good.” . . .
Cleveland got on the scoreboard first via a 2-yard TD from Mayfield to Austin Hooper.
New England responded with a 15-play, 83-yard drive on which Jones went 6-for-6 for 55 yards. The drive took 9:39 off the clock, concluding when Jones tossed a 3-yard touchdown to Hunter Henry, his sixth TD catch in seven games.
The Patriots then turned defense into offense. Kyle Dugger returned an interception 37 yards, setting up a 5-yard TD run by Stevenson.
J.C. Jackson dropped what would have been an interception on the Browns’ ensuing possession, forcing a punt that pinned the Patriots on the 1-yard line. It didn’t stop them from marching the length of the field in 11 plays and scoring on Jones’ 23-yard TD pass to Kendrick Bourne.
The Patriots added two more long drives in the second half. They marched 92 yards to Stevenson’s second TD, a 2-yard run in the third quarter. Backup quarterback Brian Hoyer led a 95-yard scoring drive in the fourth.
Putting together four long touchdown drives like that is what inspired the familiar victorious feeling Mike Reiss described. As in the glorious days of Brady — Saint Thomas of Foxborough — the Patriots cranked out first downs like a machine, converting on 7 of 9 third downs. Here are two of those conversions, from their 99-yard first half drive:
Being a ’Bama fan, naturally I want to brag on Mac Jones, but what about that rookie running back Rhamondre Stevenson? He was a fourth-round draft pick, and the reason he went so low in the draft — 120th overall — was because he’d gotten suspended at Oklahoma for some unexplained disciplinary infraction, creating “character” questions. NFL teams are reluctant to spend big money on a player who has off-field issues, but the Patriots took a chance with Stevenson, and he looks like a winner. Now, back to bragging on Mac, whose accuracy was amazing:
To hit that kind of pass against double coverage? Wow.
As Jones himself said, though, it was an all-around team effort, and if the Patriots can replicate that performance down the stretch, there is absolutely no limit to how far they can go this year. Even though the players constantly repeat they’re taking the season one day at a time, fans are under no such obligation, and if New England fans aren’t yet thinking ahead to Feb. 13, they should be. All the way, baby!
Look, I don’t want to get too hyped up here. At 5-4, New England is still just one game above .500, but they’ve won three in a row after last week’s win over the Carolina Panthers and — interesting comparison — this is their first streak of three consecutive wins since Tom Brady led the Patriots to an 8-0 start in 2019. It is of course too early to compare rookie QB Mac Jones to Saint Thomas of Foxborough (for such is Brady’s status among Patriots fans), but if New England can get a convincing win in Sunday’s home game with Cleveland, fans will begin talking of the prospect of Roman numerals, IYKWIMAITYD.
Is that crazy? Perhaps, but after a 2-4 start, the Patriots have begun to gel as a team, integrating their rookies and free agents into Coach Bill Belichick’s system, and Sunday’s game will be a big test of whether they are serious playoff contenders. Most of the experts pick New England to win at home, but the consensus is a very close game with Cleveland, which is coming off an impressive 41-16 win over Cincinnati. The word “physical” is being used in a lot of forecasts for this game, as the Browns rely on their muscular offensive line to move the ball on the ground and, even with star RB Nick Chubb out of the lineup due to COVID-19, Cleveland’s running game is still very powerful.
New England’s defense has been impressive, and were crucial to last week’s victory over Carolina. Patriots cornerback J.C. Jackson — picked up by Belichick as an undrafted free agent out of Maryland three years ago — had two interceptions, including a pick-six. During this week’s “Belichick Breakdown” video, the coach explained how Jackson’s pick-six was made possible by the heads-up play of defensive lineman Christian Barmore and linebacker Matthew Judon. Barmore, a rookie out of Alabama — Roll Tide! — was not fooled by the play-action and was pursuing Panthers QB Sam Darnold, while Judon released from his coverage of the tight end to add more pressure on Darnold, who made a desperation pass that Jackson picked off and returned for the TD.
The Patriots’ defense has allowed only about 19 points per game, but that includes giving up 28 points in an early loss to New Orleans and 35 points to the Cowboys. Their past two road wins — 24-6 at Carolina and 27-24 at the Chargers — are more typical of how well New England is playing on defense, and most experts predict a score Sunday in the range of Patriots 24, Browns 21. Almost no one thinks Cleveland will get more than three touchdowns in Foxborough, and if the Patriots defense can hold the score down, it’s a winnable game. When you compare the Browns and Patriots in their games against common opponents (the Texans and Chargers), New England’s defense looks stronger. Cleveland gave up 21 points to the Texans, while the Patriots allowed 22, but the Chargers beat the Browns 47-42 — with Los Angeles QB Justin Herbert throwing for nearly 400 yards — which suggests that Cleveland’s secondary is vulnerable. That means it’s up to Mac Jones on Sunday.
Both of New England’s top running backs, Damien Harris and Rhamondre Stevenson, missed practice all week due to concussion protocols, and are listed as “questionable” to play Sunday. That means the Patriots will probably have only Brandon Bolden and J.J. Taylor in the running game, which would in turn put more pressure on Mac to have a solid performance at quarterback. You’ve got to think Jones has been watching a lot of film of that Browns-Chargers game, looking to rack up a 400-yard game against Cleveland, but Patriots fans would be happy if their rookie QB can just have an average game, since Jones currently ranks 15th among NFL quarterbacks, ahead of such veterans as Ben Roethlisberger and (ahem) Cleveland’s Baker Mayfield.
Early in the season, Jones had problems because the Patriots were rebuilding their offensive line. Mac’s been sacked 17 times, but still has managed to rank 9th in completion percentage and 10th in total completions. His yards per pass attempt is only 19th in the league, but that’s better than Roethlisberger or KC’s vaunted Patrick Mahomes.
So while Sunday’s game will be crucial in terms of New England’s chances for winning Super Bowl LVImaking the playoffs, it is also likely to be a major test for Mac Jones. His performance as a rookie has been endlessly analyzed and critiqued by ESPN panelists and other commentators, but Jones undeniably has the ability to become a great quarterback. We have seen the evidence with our own eyes, as when Mac came back after throwing a pick-six against the Cowboys and, on his next play from scrimmage, hit Kendrick Bourne for a 75-yard TD.
If you watch the video, you’ll see Jones drops back to his own 15-yard line, and the pass hits Bourne at the Dallas 45, meaning it traveled 40 yards in the air — and yet critics say Jones has a “weak” arm?
That play just happened to be the longest TD pass by a New England quarterback since Tom Brady in 2017. And the week after their loss to Dallas, the Patriots hung 54 points on the Jets, with Mac throwing for 307 yards and two touchdowns. Everybody reacted to that the same way, “Yeah, but it’s the Jets.” However, the Patriots haven’t lost a game since, and return to Foxborough this Sunday just a half-game behind the Buffalo Bills in the AFC East. If they can avoid mistakes and play their best game, there’s no reason New England can’t dominate Cleveland. This game will get the widest national TV coverage of any Patriots game so far this year, and if they turn in a truly dominant performance? Well, I expect I won’t be the only one talking Roman numerals then.
Three weeks later — and three wins later — the AFC East standings:
Buffalo Bills ………………. 5-3 New England Patriots … 5-4 New York Jets …………… 2-6 Miami Dolphins ………… 2-7
The AFC playoff competition is wild this year. The Patriots and the Bills are among seven teams (along with the Chiefs, Raiders, Chargers, Bengals and Browns) with five wins after Week Nine.
Bill Belichick has the blueprint for beating Sam Darnold, and it starts with disguising coverages.
His players just seem to do the rest.
New England’s defense intercepted Darnold on three consecutive possessions in the second half — including one that J.C. Jackson returned 88 yards for a touchdown — and the New England Patriots cruised past the Carolina Panthers 24-6 on Sunday for their fourth win in the past five games. . . .
Mac Jones overcame two early turnovers and threw for 139 yards and a touchdown, rookie running back Rhamondre Stevenson had 106 yards from scrimmage before leaving the game with a head injury and Damien Harris and Hunter Henry scored touchdowns as the Patriots (5-4) improved to 4-0 on the road.
“Getting a win on the road is a hard thing to do and we’ve done a good job of that this year,” Jones said. “The defense was lights-out.”
J.C. JACKSON WILL TAKE THAT 88 YARDS TO THE HOUSE! #ForeverNE
The University of Alabama survived a scare Saturday against LSU, coming away with a hard-fought 20-14 victory to keep alive the Crimson Tide’s hopes of another trip to the college football playoffs.
LSU stopped Alabama’s running game — something that is cause for concern going forward — and forced the Tide to rely on quarterback Bryce Young’s passing arm. The sophomore did well enough, throwing for 302 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions, but it was close.
During the fourth quarter, my brother Kirby needed an extra dose of his heart medicine. Fortunately, the ’Bama defense stepped up.
Sophomore linebacker Will Anderson Jr. put on a tackling seminar, with 12 tackles, including 8 solo tackles, one solo sack and another shared with fellow linebacker Christian Harris. In the fourth quarter, when LSU drove more than 70 yards to threaten Alabama’s lead, senior tackle Phidarian Mathis came up with a sack which caused what looked like a fumble, but was ruled an interception. In another key play late in the first half, Harris broke up an LSU pass, tipping the ball into the air where it was intercepted by junior safety Jalyn Armour-Davis:
That pickoff gave the Tide possession at the LSU 39, and Young then hit three of his next five passes, connecting twice to Jameson Williams before hitting John Metchie III for the touchdown.
Just by the way, as my brother commented during last night’s game, Jameson Williams — a junior transfer from Ohio State — has been a “godsend” for Alabama. If he can avoid injury, Williams bids fair to follow DeVonta Smith’s path to the Heisman Trophy and first-round NFL pick. Here he catches a 58-yard touchdown bomb from Bryce Young:
— Boom or Bust: The Draft Show (@BoomOrBustDraft) November 7, 2021
Now I should perhaps mention that Kirby is not a Bryce Young fan. Although Young is listed as six feet tall, that’s three inches shorter than Mac Jones, and Kirby thinks Young, whom he calls our “midget quarterback,” is in reality no taller than 5-10. Regardless of that, even a three-inch difference in height is very significant, in terms of a quarterback’s ability to see over the onrushing defensive linemen, who tend to be very tall, and Young’s limitations are obvious enough to anyone who seriously studies the videos. Young hits most of his passes toward the outside, perhaps because of his difficulty in seeing receivers in crossing routes over the middle. While this factor may not prevent Alabama from making another run at the national championship, I think it could reduce Young’s future value in the NFL.
But of course, this is getting way ahead of where Alabama is right now. Their one loss to Texas A&M won’t hurt the Tide in terms of making the playoffs, because A&M is 7-2 (their two losses to Arkansas and Mississippi State) and will move up in the rankings this week. However, a second loss would be fatal to ’Bama’s playoff hopes. The Crimson Tide have two remaining regular season games, against Arkansas (6-3) and archrival Auburn (6-3), and if Alabama struggled against a 4-4 LSU team, how will they do against two arguably superior opponents? This is headache enough for Tide fans, but even if ’Bama manages to win those two games, then they would have to face No. 1 Georgia in the SEC title game. And my God, have you seen Georgia this year?
The Bulldogs average 38.4 points and 180 rushing yards per game. Alabama averages more points per game (43.0), but fewer rushing yards (152.7). Beyond that, Georgia’s defense has been phenomenal, allowing just 59 points in nine games — 6.55 points per game — while Alabama has given up 179 points in nine games, 19.88 average points per game.
Of course, Jesus warned his disciples against borrowing tomorrow’s troubles, and it is therefore un-Christian of Alabama fans to be looking ahead to Georgia, when we know that the Tide will have their hands full against Arkansas next Saturday and Auburn in the Iron Bowl. We must be faithful to Christian teaching, and take them one game at a time, without fretting about a possible apocalypse against Georgia.
It all comes down to the defense, I believe. Alabama returned nine defensive starters from last year’s national champions, but so far this year, they haven’t produced the kind of signature performance that many fans expected. Maybe this win over LSU is a good omen for the future.
But there I go again, borrowing tomorrow’s troubles. Forgive me.
“In the context of journalism, here, we are dealing with a new kind of ‘lead’ — the Symbiotic Trapezoid Quote. The Columbia Journalism Review will never sanction it; at least not until the current editor dies of brain syphilis, and probably not even then.
“What?
“Do we have a libel suit on our hands?
“Probably not, I think, because nobody in his right mind would take a thing like that seriously — and especially not that gang of senile hags who run the Columbia Journalism Review, who have gone to great lengths in every issue during the past year or so to stress, very heavily, that nothing I say should be taken seriously.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing in Washington: The Boys in the Bag,” Rolling Stone, July 4, 1974 (collected in The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time)
The Patriots won Sunday, and it was sloppy as hell, but it was still a win.
Mac Jones was inconsistent, and New England was plagued by mistakes — a key fumble and penalties, including one that nullified a touchdown run by Damien Harris — and yet somehow they managed to defeat the Chargers 27-24. This was a must-win game, and they won it, bringing their record to 4-4 on the season, thus putting themselves in the middle of the AFC playoff chase with nine games to go in the season.
The real keys to Sunday’s win were two interceptions by Adrian Phillips, one of which he turned into a go-ahead touchdown, and outstanding special teams play by Gunner Olszewski, who had four punt returns for 80 yards, helping the Patriots in terms of field position. Finally, there was a 14-play, 54-yard drive in the fourth quarter that chewed up seven minutes before ending in a field goal that put New England ahead 27-17. That kind of clock-consuming, ball-control offense is underappreciated in the era of high-scoring razzle-dazzle football, but it enabled the Patriots to go home with a “W,” and that’s what really counts.
The thing about being a football fan is that, in identifying with a team, you share their fortunes. When I decided to become a Patriots fan — because they drafted Mac Jones from Alabama — Roll Tide! — I didn’t stop to think of the emotional toll that might be involved in this new fandom. When New England started the season 1-3, I was mortified. Being born and raised a ’Bama fan, I’m not accustomed to losing, and since Nick Saban took over in Tuscaloosa, thank God, there hasn’t been much losing. It’s an “off year” for Crimson Tide fans when we don’t win the National Championship, and it’s a disaster if we lose as many as two games in a season. Alabama fans would be burning Saban in effigy if the Tide ever started the season 1-3, so you can imagine how embarrassing it was for Mac Jones (and for me) to begin their season so badly. Yet there were glimmers of hope amid the gloom, and after New England blew out the Jets 54-13, it was possible to see them with a path to the playoffs if — and it seemed like a big “if” — they could beat the Chargers.
Baby, just look at this beautiful Jones-to-Agholor pass:
Critics keep saying Mac Jones has a “weak arm,” and I’m like, what? If you pay attention to that play, you see that Mac is on his own 33-yard line when he throws it, and Nelson Agholor catches it at the Chargers’ 19-yard line — that pass went 48 yards in the air, and notice that Mac was throwing under pressure from the Chargers’ rush. “Weak arm,” my ass.
Sometimes the best way to start a story is with a weird digression. Don’t even bother trying a “lead,” but instead plunge off into something that seemingly has nothing to do with your main topic — “the Symbiotic Trapezoid Quote,” as Thompson called it. My theme here is about teamwork and loyalty, and the inspiration was Ace of Spades ripping into AllahPundit for trying to spin the McAuliffe “tiki boys” stunt:
And it was stupid for the leftwing partisan AllahPundit to attempt to cover for his Palz on the Left and claim that this was just an innocent attempt at street theater which inadvertently turned into a hoax.
Recently AllahPundit claimed the story that Florida now had the lowest covid rates in the country — remember, bloggers at Hot Air “claim” stories on a first-come, first served basis — just so he could attack DeSantis by claiming it was hypocritical that DeSantis did not take the blame for Florida’s higher August covid rates but is taking credit for their lowest-in-the-nation October rates.
AllahPundit somehow doesn’t notice that it’s equally hypocritical for AllahPundit to have spent all August attacking DeSantis for higher Florida covid rates but now refuse to grant him credit for the low October rates.
Or that it is hypocritical of AllahPundit to blow off surging covid rates in the blue states of New England, where they have forced vaccinations and masking and all the wonderful coercions his frightened Karen heart craves.
But this is now typical of the alleged conservative blog Hot Air — it runs the same sort of opinion pieces that you’d find on Salon.
Which isn’t much of a surprise, given that in 2017, Salon named AllahPundit as one of the 25 conservative bloggers worth reading.
Their other picks? Lincoln Project pedophile-enablers Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens, and actual Lincoln Project pedophile John Weaver.
Former “conservative” blogger Jen Rubin, and former “conservative” fundraiser Ana Navarro.
As well as Noted All-Around Conservative Expert Tom Nichols, and Jon Podhoretz and S.E. Cupp.
As well as Noted Cvckshed Resident Bill Kristol, and Noted Bulwark Writer and Alanis Morrissette Lookalike Tim Miller.
Steven Hayes of The Dispatch. And David Frum.
You can read the whole thing. Lately, Ace has been ripping Allah at least once a day, five days a week, and I fondly recall the days — circa 2007 or so — when it seemed like Ace was just kind of nudging around with Allah, like buddies playing the dozens, but more recently it has become apparent to me that Ace really hates Allah’s guts. And why?
Because AllahPundit is not, and really never has been, a team player.
Like football, politics is a team sport. Just turn on CNN sometime, and see them all shaking their media pompoms for Team Democrat. We know what team they’re on, and we want to beat that team. The whole point of conservative journalism is to do a Mark Gastineau-style sack dance on the faces of those dishonest liberal media hacks.
Even if being on Team GOP is inevitably a disappointment — always being forced to swallow some worthless “bipartisan compromise” arranged by Mitch McConnell and/or an army of corporate lobbyists — it’s usually the best we can do, and a damned sight better than the catastrophes that happen whenever Democrats are running the show. Whatever any conservative’s complaints may be about Trump, you can’t fault him for his full-throttle assault on the “fake news” media, and for this is for nothing else he deserved our loyal support.
As Ace ran down that “Salon 25” list, placing AllahPundit in the company of weasels like Tom Nicols and Rick Wilson, it raised the question in my mind: “In what sense was AllahPundit ever a conservative?” In the Charles “Little Green Footballs” Johnson sense, perhaps?
There’s a freaky acid flashback, eh? Months at a time now go by without LGF ever crossing my mind, but now that it has . . .
Oh, the terrible DANGER posed by “racists” cheering for the Braves!
Exactly what has Charles ever done that would qualify him for recognition as a Friend of Indigenous Peoples? That’s the really annoying thing about these people — they think they deserve praise as Humanitarian Philanthropists merely for the act of going on Twitter and calling Republicans “racist,” as if this demonstrated their courage.
CNN’s ratings are in the tank and nobody reads LGF anymore, because this kind of phony Courageous Stand Against Racism stuff is boring.
And as Ace points out, what’s the rationale for Salem Media Group (SMG) to keep publishing the Democrat Trojan Horse that is AllahPundit? How is that justified, from a business perspective? SMG originated as a Christian radio network, but AllahPundit’s an atheist.
Then, on the other hand, when you think about how soi-disant “conservative” Christians like David French have baptized liberalism, so to speak, as a function of their #NeverTrump obsession, I guess AllahPundit’s atheism isn’t really disqualifying. But his #NeverTrump tendency has definitely put him in the same basket as the rest of the “Conservatives for Biden” crowd. Byron York assesses the damage:
He promised to deal with the COVID pandemic, and the pandemic came back with a vengeance. He promised to improve the economy, and growth has slowed, with inflation becoming a critical concern. He promised to restore America’s place in the world and then led a disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. He promised to fix President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and instead brought chaos to the border. Of course his job approval rating is going down. How could it not?
You can read the whole thing. My point is that the market doesn’t seem to be demanding whatever it is AllahPundit is supplying.
Closet liberalism, masquerading as “conservative” punditry, may have had an audience once upon a time, but that time is clearly over:
Republican Glenn Youngkin leads over former governor Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia gubernatorial polls one day before the heavily-watched election.
Youngkin shows a two-point lead over McAuliffe in the Virginia gubernatorial race poll with likely voters, conducted by Insider Advantage and first reported by FOX5. The poll found that 47 percent will be voting for Youngkin. The poll is bad news for McAuliffe, whom only 45 percent of respondents said they would vote for in tomorrow’s race.
Two percent of the respondents said they would be voting for another candidate, Princess Blanding. Additionally, six percent were “undecided.” . . .
Matt Towry, from Insider Advantage, told FOX5 that his company noticed a “shift” towards Youngkin. He added that this election would have everything to do with getting voters to turn out.
“McAuliffe is a very gifted politician. He knows how to turn out his vote. Youngkin is obviously coming on strong. So, it’s going to be down to the wire,” Towry added.
Regarding the six percent who said they were undecided when asked, Towry noted that “they don’t plan on voting” and “most of the vote is already baked into these numbers.”
Can we trust these polls? Will the Democrats in Virginia come up with one of those ballot-harvesting “miracle” wins with a 3 a.m. truckload of absentee votes to give McAuliffe the margin of victory? We can’t rule it out, and there are probably corpses of Democratic voters in Oakwood Cemetry awaiting their electoral resurrection Tuesday. But we cannot allow this possibility to discourage Republican voters — living, breathing, legal residents of Virginia — from actually voting. Maybe the fix is in, but Virginia Republicans have to vote as if the machinery of Democratic vote fraud weren’t going to nullify their ballots. Keep in mind that Biden beat Trump by 10 points in Virginia, so for this election even to be close is something of a miracle. If Youngkin manages to pull off an upset here, it will send shock waves across the nation. And maybe, just maybe, it will drive a stake through the heart of #NeverTrump.
Shove it down their throats and do a sack dance on their faces.
This morning I woke up at 6:30 a.m. and reached for my phone. I’d fallen asleep after watching YouTube videos of police chases, which I consider therapeutic — something to distract me from the insanity of politics. So I swiped the screen to get back to my YouTube home page, and one of the first videos I saw was titled, “NFL LIVE | Marcus Spears ‘believe’ Mac Jones lead Patriots beat Chargers in week 8,” an 8-minute clip from ESPN’s Friday broadcast. The algorithm has got me figured out. Ever since the New England Patriots drafted Alabama quarterback Mac Jones — Roll Tide! — I’ve become a Patriots fan and, leading up to this make-or-break game against the Los Angeles Chargers, I’ve been watching hours of videos about Jones and the Patriots. But after ae couple of minutes of trying to watch this “NFL LIVE” clip, I became so annoyed and distracted I switched it off. Diversity has run amok at ESPN.
The host is a 33-year-old former Florida beauty queen — Miss America 2013 — named Laura Rutledge. Now, I don’t know about you, but where I come from, football is a man’s game. As I’ve explained here before, I was a small-town newspaper sports editor for several years early in my career, and used to be a fairly enthusiastic sports fan, but since the 1990s, there has been a severe diminution of the amount of mental bandwidth available to pay attention to sports. As my journalism career went in a different direction, I simply didn’t have time or energy to devote to watching games the way I did in my 20s and 30s.
All of that is by way of explaining my mystification about ESPN having a woman host its morning NFL talk-show panel. Somehow, over the past 20 years or so, TV executives have decided that “diversity” requires them to have a quota for women in football coverage, which is crazy.
FOOTBALL IS A MAN’S GAME!
This is an indisputable fact, and until rather recently, football journalism was also a man’s business. Someone who has paid more attention than I have to sports broadcasting in recent decades will have to tell me when the “sideline girl” phenomenon began. Every football broadcast has a play-by-play announcer and a color commentator, and the addition of a sideline reporter, who reports on injuries, etc., is a recent development, and it appears that TV executives decided that this was the job where “diversity” should be applied, so that having girls reporting from the sidelines became a phenomenon that I suppose many younger viewers now take for granted. But football is still a man’s game, and it used to be that nearly all announcers were former football players themselves.
Who set the standard in this business? Legends like Pat Summerall, who played for 10 seasons in the NFL, where his career highlight was kicking a 49-yard game-winning field goal for the New York Giants under Coach Vince Lombardi. Then there was Frank Gifford, who scored 77 touchdowns during a dozen seasons with the Giants. You could go down the list of the most successful football broadcasters, and they were almost without exception former players. One of the rare exceptions was Howard Cosell, but a lot of fans always hated Cosell — indeed, his abrasiveness was part of his value on Monday Night Football, sort of like the villainous “heel” in pro wrestling. As part of the MNF team alongside Gifford and “Dandy” Don Meredith (who threw for 135 touchdowns and ran for another 15 TDs in nine seasons with the Dallas Cowboys), Cosell was a contrasting flavor — the extra spice in the recipe. What the original MNF crew provided, during the years when it was routinely the highest-rated show on television, was a sense of camaraderie. It was like watching football with your buddies at the bar, including that one know-it-all loudmouth (Cosell) who doesn’t know how to shut up.
FOOTBALL IS A MAN’S GAME!
Watching football is an occasion for male bonding, allowing men to celebrate the fraternal feeling of being “one of the guys.” It’s why guys turn their dens into “man caves” decorated with sports memorabilia, lounge chairs, a beer fridge and a gigantic TV. Adding female reporters to football broadcasts ruins the whole manly vibe of the ritual.
Why do you think ESPN’s ratings are in the tank? And it’s not just because they’ve got girls reporting football. Look at the lineup on the NFL LIVE panel — white female (Rutledge), black male (Marcus Spears), Asian female (Mina Kimes) and black male (Ryan Clark). Is it just accidental that ESPN doesn’t have any white males on this broadcast?
We may stipulate, arguendo, that there are practical considerations involved in certain aspects of the “diversity and inclusion” agenda that are not about politically correct “wokeness.” About 60% of NFL players are black, 25% are non-Hispanic white and 15% are some other ethnicity, and complaints that blacks are “underrepresented” (as the diversity consultants might say) among the broadcasters covering the league would be understandable. (And yes, there have been such complaints.) But when we consider that 100% of NFL players are men, what’s up with women being 50% of this NFL LIVE panel?
The regular rotation of panelists on this ESPN program also includes Dan Orlovsky (former QB for the Detroit Lions) so there’s your “token white guy,” I suppose, but if you think of sports broadcasting in terms of audience — which one imagines ESPN executives would — does it make sense to relegate white males to such a token role? And to do so by creating an apparent token role for Asian-American women? Not that I have any kind of personal animus against Mina Kimes, by the way. She is an actual journalist, who won awards for her business reporting before she joined ESPN in 2014. But why is she on NFL LIVE?
FOOTBALL IS A MAN’S GAME!
Excuse my repeated emphasis of this point, but it is my belief that part of what’s wrong with ESPN’s ratings (a problem affecting the NFL and sports broadcasting more generally) is the disrespect of the predominately male audience by trying to impose female broadcasters this way. Everybody knows — it is a fact notorious — that there is no real audience for women’s sports, e.g., the WNBA can’t fill an arena. Only because of government intervention via Title IX have women’s athletics reached something approaching “equality” in college sports, but there is no audience for these games, not like there is for men’s sports.
Perhaps even more damaging to the NFL’s value, from a marketing perspective, is the overrepresentation of black players, in comparison to the U.S. population, which is only 14% black. Far be it from me to argue for quotas in sports, the way liberals insist on racial quotas everywhere else, but whites are more than 60% of the U.S. population — the largest demographic, and thus the largest potential audience — so the fact that only 25% of NFL players are white can be considered a marketing problem for the league. And when you then factor in the way ESPN seems to be implementing a “No White Guys” policy on NFL Live in order to fill their “girls talking about football” quota, it’s scarcely surprising that the network’s ratings are in the toilet. It is in this context, then, that we must view the antics of Colin Kaepernick, who collected at least $3.8 million after getting drafted in the second round, had two good seasons, and then became a “social justice” activist after he got benched in 2016.
If you understand that the NFL is a profit-seeking business, dependent upon fan support and TV revenue, this kind of “woke” activism is obviously damaging to the brand, and adds to the marketing problems that the league already faces because of demographics.
