Another Swing And A Miss

Well, not just the fact I missed this one from a few days ago (not on his Twitter feed), but check out this great call:

We shouldn’t have wasted our time wondering. It’s clear who the Patriots will start at quarterback

Cam and Mac. Mac and Cam. It’s been a sports radio talk-a-thon, a gridiron soap opera, getting us through a hot/rainy August while waiting for games that finally count in September.

I don't know about you, but I find that verbiage extremely irritating, lazy and unoriginal.

Why did we waste our time wondering?

The Patriots final preseason game was Sunday night in the Meadowlands against the Giants (a 22-20 Patriot win) and it’s clear there was never any real competition for the job of Patriots’ starting quarterback.

Cam Newton got the start for the Patriots Sunday. Again. Even after a “misunderstanding” that took him away from the team for five days and would have landed any other Patriot a week in the Cooler. Not Cam.

Let's circle back to the beginning of the column:

Update: The Patriots released Cam Newton on Tuesday morning and named Mac Jones the starting quarterback.

Shank was saying something about coolers?

Change Of The Guard?

That's what Shank's thinking, after Cam Newton seems to have fucked things up over the weekend:

Doesn’t Cam Newton’s latest episode give the Patriots enough reason to start Mac Jones?

Call me a dreamer. We all know Mac Jones is the future of the Patriots at quarterback. And now I am hoping he gets moved into the starting job sooner than expected, because the Patriots can’t rely on Cam Newton … because Newton won’t get the vaccine.

The last time Bill Belichick wanted to change quarterbacks, he had Mo Lewis around to get the job done for him. A Lewis hit put veteran Drew Bledsoe in a hospital and Belichick was able to switch to a guy named Tom Brady.

Fast-forward 20 years and allow for the possibility that Belichick again might make a sudden change at quarterback. Is it possible that Newton’s hiatus will give Belichick the reason he needs to switch to Jones?

I recommend this column - Shank presses coach Bill Belichick for answers, which is like getting blood out of a rock, and the column's solid. I think the notion that Mac Jones will eventually become the Patriots starting quarterback at some point this year is pretty much a foregone conclusion around the Boston area; the only question is when.

The Starter

Shank rips off Greg Bedard of Boston Sports Journal, who appeared on the Felger & Mazzarotti show yesterday and said Cam Newton will be the Week One starter for the New England Patriots, and now so does Shank:

It was only preseason. By any definition, meaningless.

But Cam Newton on Thursday night in Philadelphia played like a man who’d heard enough about rookie hot shot Mac Jones. Newton helped his cause. And there seems to be little doubt he is going to be the Patriots’ starting quarterback at the start of the season.

We know by now that Bill Belichick loves Newton the way he loves Lawrence Taylor, special teams play, and the Army-Navy football game. Newton returned the love in Philly, completing 8 of 9 passes for 103 yards and putting two touchdowns on the board in the first quarter of New England’s second preseason game against the Eagles.

You can read the rest of it if you missed the game; if you watched the game, you already know that the rest of the column's a standard game recap (read - BORING!).

DHL Dan CXXXV - Making An Obvious Point?

$10 says Shank picked this one up from Felger & Mazz's radio show yesterday:

Expect Bill Belichick to stubbornly stand by Cam Newton, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while shedding a tear and closing the book on Jimmy G …

▪ It took Bill Belichick less than a minute to kill the great buzz that accompanied his fortunate and meaningful selection of Alabama quarterback Mac Jones in the first round of Thursday night’s draft.

Before he was even asked a question, Belichick made it clear that “Cam’s our quarterback.”

So here we go. After 10 billion words about Garoppolo, Zach Wilson, Justin Fields, Trey Lance, Mac Jones, Mac Davis, Zac Efron, Teddy Bridgewater, Bridgewater State University, and Mrs. Fields Cookies, prepare yourselves for obtuse and obstinate repetitions of “Cam’s our quarterback” for the next six or eight months.

It will not matter if Jones arrives with the skill sets of Bart Starr, Joe Namath, and Tom Brady. It will not matter if Cam Newton takes the Patriots to a 1-3 start, throwing passes that die in the dirt or get run back for touchdowns by assorted Bills and Dolphins. It will not matter if Rodney Harrison goes on TV and again says that Newton can no longer play in the NFL.

Hold that thought for a minute...

One of the reporters tried, following up on Bill’s unsolicited declaration of love for Newton Thursday night:

Q. “Going back to your comments off the top, you said that ‘Cam’s our quarterback.’ What exactly does that mean?” (Wow. Talk about walking into one.)

A. “Just what I said.”

The battered, intrepid reporter came back with, “How long does that last for?”

“I don’t know,” said Belichick. “Somebody would have to play better than he does.”

Isn't there a contradiction with this last sentence and Shank trying to tell us Cam Newton would still be the starting quarterback if they went 1-3 in their first four games?

The Obligatory Cam Newton Column

On occasion, I'm not sure what to make of certain columns by Dan Shaughnessy. Today is one of those times.

For instance - how often do you see two lead paragraphs in a column be about something else besides the main column theme / subject? If you're Shank and you can use them to take cheap shots at the Patriots, that's what you do:

If Cam Newton is healthy, this is a Patriots signing to get excited about

There was Patriots news everywhere Sunday night. For the third time since 2007, the Patriots were spanked by the NFL in a cheating scandal, this time losing $1.1 million and a third-round pick for videotaping an upcoming opponent’s sideline.

While this story was breaking, The New York Times resurfaced a Globe report that a three-judge panel in Florida this week will review a ruling that tossed video evidence from Bob Kraft’s solicitation charges at the Orchids of Asia spa in early 2019.

Oh, and in the same evening, we learned that Cam Newton, a former Super Bowl quarterback who was MVP of the NFL in 2015, is signing a one-year, make-good contract with the Patriots.

The rest of the column is cliche-filled evenhandedness in discussing Newton's potential contribution to the team. And we get hit with this kind of laughable bullshit:

The Patriots just replaced a Super Bowl, NFL MVP quarterback with a Super Bowl, NFL MVP quarterback.

This is a big story in our news-starved sports summer of 2020.

He probably wrote that just to troll people, right?

Off By 24 Hours

Shank delayed his weekly appearance on 98.5 The Sports Hub by a day, and he wasn't there to rehash his latest column for a change:

On with @ZoandBertrand today from 11-1. We will be ripping Bruins, Cam Netwon, and looking forward to C's tonight.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) February 10, 2016

Shank ripping professional athletes? I'm shocked!