DHL Dan CLXIX - Explosive Issues

Former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores has launched a lawsuit against the NFL and three specific teams, and Shank has some thoughts on it:

Brian Flores shined light on two explosive NFL issues — race and tanking — and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while missing Truck Day …

▪ The Brian Flores lawsuit is bad news for the NFL on multiple levels. It’s clear that the Shield’s Rooney Rule is a farce and that Black coaches have a legit gripe; they are not getting due respect or consideration from NFL owners.

The fat-fingered Bill Belichick text in which Hoodie congratulated the wrong Brian and revealed the Giants had already decided on Brian Daboll was appalling. Flores handled Bill’s blunder with grace, then submitted to a charade interview with the Giants.

Flores has demonstrated toughness, fearlessness, and competence. As head coach of the Dolphins, he was 4-2 against Belichick and 19-14 in his last two seasons. This gets you fired?

NFL Free Agency Has Begun

...and we all know what that means - time once again to criticize the New England Patriots!

Patriots’ free agency spending frenzy has heads — and theories — spinning

Bill Belichick has put the NFL on notice that the Patriots are back in business.

That was stolen right off of Felger and Mazz yesterday, and the rest of the column is basically copy and paste of the same show. There are other parts of the column that make it wretched as well, like weak sarcasm and analogies, a bunch of Shankisms, a mention of Larry Bird and of course contradicting himself yet again:

In less than 24 hours, while most of the league stood still, the Patriots locked up the best two tight ends on the market (Henry and Jonnu Smith), a Super Bowl wideout (Kendrick Bourne), a receiver from the Raiders (Nelson Agholor), a Pro Bowl linebacker (Matt Judon), a defensive back with green hair (Jalen Mills), a nose tackle from Miami (Davon Godchaux), and a lineman cut by the Jets (Henry Anderson).

“I’ve never seen a spending spree like this,” said former Patriots general manager Upton Bell. “Are the Patriots checking the borders to see who might be coming across?

“They have to do this because they drafted poorly for a number of years. That used to be deadly, but now you can make up for it with free agents. Luckily, they have the money and the cap space.

“Belichick is good at picking up people. The difference is that, in the past, he picked them up to complement what he had. Now he’s signing people to fill positions that were never filled properly.

“Look at their roster. It’s almost like they are the Red Sox, starting all over again.”

There is a Sox-like overreaction to the Patriots’ supermarket sweep.

The critics are being mean. Let’s shut everybody up by overpaying free agents.

How the sports world has turned around here. The Patriots and their fans used to laugh at bad teams that went out and opened their wallets for free agents. Now the Patriots are one of those teams. Je suis Tomato Can.

Shank spent the entire 2020 season ragging on the Patriots for (at a minimum) not spending money on players, only to turn right around and criticize Belichick and the team for doing exactly that.

It's probably just easier to recognize one truth that's been pointed out over and over again - If the New England Patriots do 'X', Shank will find a way to criticize it.

Fine Their Asses!

Shank wasn't happy about last night's game:

Doug Pederson is a disgrace to professional sports.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 4, 2021

In fact - he was so pissed off about it he cranked out a column calling for some heads:

NFL should come down on the Eagles for Sunday night’s performance

Maybe they should, but they probably won't.

The Philadelphia Eagles are a disgrace and should be punished by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

The Eagles intentionally lost a “Sunday Night Football” game that had massive playoff implications for two other franchises. Philadelphia’s tank job served to improve its draft position from ninth to sixth, so the league should take away that first-round pick. Then fine the owner, suspend coach Doug Pederson, and apologize to all of us for insulting our intelligence and allowing Philly to throw a game.

Remember Deflategate? The Patriots lost their first-round pick, a fourth-rounder, got fined a million bucks, and saw Tom Brady suspended four games just for taking a little air out of the footballs. The Patriots were punished for breaching the integrity of the game. Tampering with the footballs was deemed a competition violation.

Based on that premise, his logic is sound. However, to use Shank's phraseology Deflategate was a bag job of a punishment and doing the same thing here would establish an ability to second guess a coaching decision, which is somewhat defensible were it not for the three pick improvement in draft pick. I'd be on board with that one at least being pushed back to the original slot; maybe taking it away completely would be a useful deterrent for future wannabe tank artists.

The rest of the column's worth reading and it'll be interesting to see what NFL commissioner Goddell does with this hot potato.

Other Than That, How Was The Game Shank?

It seems that Shank didn't like certain aspects of last night's game between the Rams and the Buccaneers:

Vomit-inducing: randy moss interviewing Gronk for MNF. Why not Deion Sanders and Antonio brown? Hate-watch is underway

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) November 24, 2020

I think we all know that Brady’s greatest weapon in 2020 is pass interference

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) November 24, 2020

Brady gets away with another fumble that’s not called. What a joke

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) November 24, 2020

Shank The Scold II - A Continuing Series

The National Football League seems to want to get on with professional life. Shank, naturally, has a problem with it:

How does the NFL continue its season as postponements and positive COVID-19 cases pile up?

Decades from now, football historians will talk about this NFL season the way folks today talk about Major League Baseball during World War II.

Wait, you mean the St. Louis Browns were in the 1944 World Series? And they played the Cardinals? And every game was played in the same ballpark?

People will look at the 2020 NFL season and wonder how it was that the Patriots postponed games three times in eight days in October. Why did they fly to Kansas City, play a game, and come home on the same night? Why did they start Brian Hoyer at quarterback? Why did they go almost a whole week without reporting for practice at Gillette Stadium?

Second guessing, one week after the fact - classic Shank. A ratioanl sort may ask - what good does a one or two day delay in playing games actually accomplish, other to than fuck things up? Why not simply remove players & personnal with positive tests from the team until they've quarantined? Does that make too much sense for the likes of Shank?

Skip the bullshit that comprises most of the rest Shank's column and let's cut to the chase:

The arrogant NFL needs to stop its presidential pretending that COVID-19 is a mere nuisance that might change the date of the sacred Super Bowl. It’s more than that. It’s about the health and safety of the players and their families. The virus has plans that Roger Goodell cannot control.

As I pointed out on Thursday and what this column still reflects - the Wuhan flu / coronavirus is precisely a nuisance. With the litany of reported positive tests I still have yet to read about any NFL player or staff member becoming sick or hositalized from the virus (fun fact - most people under 50 years of age don't get sick from this or any other virus unless they have contributing factors), and it bears repeating if it does happen, these sports chumps will be at DEFCON 1 calling for everything in the NFL to come to a screeching halt. Until that happens, it's rightly called a nuisance, much like Shank's presence at a press conference.

Does anyone remember 'duck and cover', the thing taught to schoolkids in K-12 during the 1960's and 1970's that in the case of a nuclear explosion you just hide under your desk and that's all it required to escape the devastation of a thermonuclear bomb going off? If you're within five miles of the blast radius your chance of going from 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit within a second is at 100%, and there isn't a fucking thing you can do about it, never mind being downwind from all that fallout. The lockdown measures and ensuing mentality reek of this similarly idiotic mindset. Even the WHO, after months of bullshitting the entire world, now finally admit that lockdowns should be a last resort because they cause serious economic damage in its wake. Might want to take that last one to heart, Shank & company...

The Tampa Bay Bradys?

The NFL finally returns to start their 2020 season and already Shank is acting like a huge douchenozzle:

Are you ready for the first all-Boston NFL doubleheader of the 2020 season?

For the first time since the Boston Braves and Red Sox split the affections of Hub hardball fans, we have two professional teams playing in the same major league.

The New England Belichicks kick off Sunday on CBS at 1 p.m. The Tampa Bay Bradys play on Fox at 4:25.

Are any of you as irritated as I am when Shank says stupid and unfunny crap like this? Does he think he's being clever or witty? Well, I'm pretty sure he's the only one.

The Belichicks, a.k.a. the New England Patriots, open their season vs. the Miami Dolphins at an empty Gillette Stadium. There will be no cheerleaders, no musket men, no Brady, and no guarantee of winning the AFC East for the millionth straight season.

First off - I'd like to continue to point out how god damn lifeless any professional sports event is without fans in the stands, and now we get insult added to injury by not having cheerleaders to boot? Last night's game between the Chiefs and the Texans had 22% of the stadium filled with fans, who were wearing masks, doing social distancing and all that bullshit. The risk that's run by continuing to shut fans out would be to make this situation worse. We now have, from a financial perspective of an NFL franchise, no gate revenue, no parking lot and concession stand revenue and (this is the big one) an all but guaranteed reduction in future TV rights the next time the contract gets negotiated because the suits at the networks will not pay the same level of broadcast fees to the NFL & its teams when the viewing numbers dip or fall off the cliff. How long can the NFL (and team owners) risk a permanent reduction in its fan base and still expect the same TV revenues? It's not going to happen, and something will have to give. That 'something to give' is a fucking no-brainer in my book - start returning to normal, like yesterday.

The Bradys, formerly known as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will play the Saints in the empty Superdome in New Orleans. Playing as the Buccaneers for a half-century, Tampa Bay was the losingest team in professional sports. Most recently, the Bucs have finished last seven times in nine seasons. All that is expected to change now that they are the Bradys.

God damn, this asshole's really pissing me off now...

We will be watching. Both games. This weekend and every weekend.

The problem is - a lot of other people won't be watching and the NFL, like all professional sports franchises, better figure out and fix this problem before the the damage is irrreversible.

Oh - Shank continues on with the Belichicks and Bradys shtick - screw that; I'm outta here.

Bandwagon Dan / Double Standards

Shank comes out (again) as a cancel culture warrior:

This one really isn’t very difficult.

The Washington Redskins need to change their name. Today.

It’s been obvious for such a long time.

This is not a new thought, or an idea owed to the challenge flag thrown regarding US history. I’ll spare you the discussions about the Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Chiefs, Golden State Warriors, and Florida State Seminoles.

Knock yourselves out arguing which nickname is an honor and which one is an insult. I admit I have never been insulted by the mascot of the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. Or the Celtics’ leprechaun. Others are welcome to be offended.

So if you're a pasty white Irishman like Shank is, you can fuck off about changing those nicknames. These nicknames for people of a lessor pallor, however, must be changed.

He's mentioned this one in the past but it seems to have a new urgency now. I wonder why that is? Let me know when you want to start burning some Seminole game programs, Shank.

Dan Shaugnessy, Wrong Again

Shank's trying to set the table for the New England Patriots in the same manner he's been doing for at least six years now:

Roethlisberger down in Baltimore. Comes back. But it is a reminder that we are reaching pt in NFL season where best player on every team in Pats path will get hurt

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) November 4, 2018

Except for one small detail - he was back in the game two plays later:

He got the wind knocked out of him. He’s fine !

— Bill (@WilliamMStocco) November 4, 2018

Shank did note that Big Ben came back in the game, but you and I know that wasn't the point of the tweet. When the Patriots get to this point of the season and are one of the top teams in the AFC, he generally pushes that notion (every key player of our opponents and potential playoff rival will get injured) and / or this one:

Here it comes. Patriots not that good. They win anyway. Seen it one million times

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) September 24, 2018

I can hardly wait until the stupid 'coin flip' and 'double score' tweets in a few hours, but he did spare us the semi-predictable pregame 'Brady vs. Rodgers' column, for which we should all be grateful.

More Tomato Can Misinformation

Here's Shank yesterday morning:

On today with Zo and Beetle @ZoandBertrand from 11-1. Plenty of Sox in first hour. Plenty of Tomato Can talk, too.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) November 14, 2017

One commenter blew that one right out of the water:

Too bad AFC East is tied for 2nd in wins per division and is the only division w/ all teams winning at least 4 games and is playing NFC South who is 1st in wins

— Dudley DooRagz (@DudleyDooRagz) November 14, 2017

I'm willing to bet that if you look here from this point forward, to the end of the regular season, this point will be borne out. Remember that Shank first started using the 'tomato can' insult against the other three teams in the AFC East division (Buffalo, Miami and the New York Jets). He's since expanded it to include all NFL teams not named the New England Patriots. I'm not sure if Shank would continue to use the phrase even if you hit him over the head with these numbers (because he hates numbers), but I wouldn't put it past him.

There's also a commenter here that pointed this out - this fact (AFC East win totals being greater than all others) has held for the past ten years (the end year being 2015 or 2016) even if you adjust for removing the Patriots / other top division winner from this total. Unfortunately I can't find that post right now. To some extent, Shank is oblivious to certain facts, especially the numeric ones.

And Now For Some Roger Goodell Bashing!

I'll let the professionals handle this one:

Roger Goodell’s office made it official early Tuesday: The NFL commissioner is electing to attend the NFC Championship game between the Packers and Falcons Sunday at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

In today’s corporate-speak, this is what’s known as “bad optics.’’

It looks as though the commissioner is afraid to come to Foxborough.
...
What is the big deal, Roger? You are not Salman Rushdie hiding from the followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The Wells Report is not “The Satanic Verses.” There is no football fatwa in Patriot Nation. This is a sporting event.

Just How Dumb Is This Guy? - II

It looks like Shank just gave us a new theme:

Wonder if Odell can get Berman to overturn suspension?

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) December 22, 2015

First point - Odell Beckham Jr. is being suspended for one game for multiple penalties in yesterday's game as well as taking a run at Panthers cornerback Josh Norman. Beckham has appealed this decision. Tom Brady was accused of complicity in allegedly deflating footballs before last year's AFC championship game with the Colts and faced a four game suspension, which was appealed, denied by the same man who ruled on the original suspension, then adjuicated in a Federal courtroom, where Judge Berman basically pulled down Roger Goodell's pants and exposed the massive deficiencies in both the examination of evidence and due process procedures inherent in the original ruling and the appeal process.

Second point - is Shank seriously suggesting a one game suspension for an attempt to injure Josh Norman is worthy of a Federal judge's intervention?

This blogger will go with Shank's historical propensity for trolling & stirring the pot; for him to suggest otherwise simply shows a staggering lack of perspective or a room temperature IQ.

Ball Dropped

Apologies, as professional obligations prevented me from commenting on Shank's latest foot stomping until now.

The again, it doesn't matter much. His complaint from yesterday's column reads like your standard whining from the leftist Globe weenies - Entity X is bad because it derives money from a product we don't approve of. Which is rich, coming from a columnist getting somewhere between $80K and $100K in income every year to write two or three columns of questionable quality every week.

I'll grant his point about the long-term effects of concussions on football players, but let's ask this question - why is this issue now coming to light in the press in recent years when that specific phenomenon may have been known for decades, and these reporters and columnists probably / likely knew about it and chose to look the other way? Long term injuries from football, like former Chicago Bears defensive lineman Dan Hampton's ten (maybe twenty) knee surgeries, are fairly well documented. Should we be led to believe that the media simply didn't know about concussions until recently? Much like the steroid era in baseball, can we conclude that sports reporters and columnists were aware of the situation and chose not to report on it until other forces compelled them to do so?

If columnists like Shank want to pretend that they didn't know about these situations and now use them as cudgels against certain professional sports organizations, what weight should we give to their opinions now? I say little, if any.

Tank Job

As the NFL hires outside counsel to investigate the Ray Rice matter, Shank is not impressed with the man chosen for the job.

The NFL continues to reel in the wake of its domestic violence scandal, and the league wants to assure you that the truth will come out when former FBI director Robert Mueller completes his review of the conduct of the league and its leader in the days, weeks, and months after Ray Rice punched his fiancée in an elevator in Atlantic City Feb. 15.

It’s certainly possible that we’ll get true disclosure in the Mueller Report. Commissioner-under-siege Roger Goodell pledged that Mueller will have “the full cooperation of NFL personnel and access to all NFL records.’’

Swell. But this investigation is already compromised and will remain compromised because, despite Mueller’s long and impressive career, his position as a partner at the WilmerHale law firm demonstrates an enormous conflict of interest regarding any investigation involving the NFL.

Interesting column - how often do we say that around here?

Indignation And Outrage!

With the recent domestic abuse problems of four NFL players (Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, Grag Hardy and Ray McDonald), Shank joins the vast chorus of self-righteous media harpies, politicians and sundry others in hysterically overreacting to the issue and mounts his Shetland pony high horse to express his feelings about the current state of affairs in the NFL. Throw in a few tangential issues, and we have the classic Shank moral outrage column.

We have outrage. We have heightened awareness. We have thousands of hours of programming, debating who should be allowed to play football this Sunday, and whether Roger Goodell is fit to be commissioner of the National Football League.

Magazine covers and newspaper headlines expose and condemn the criminality of ballplayers while the league itself acknowledges that playing football causes brain damage in nearly a third of the pro players. And social media, of course, never sleeps, providing an endless forum on the awfulness of it all.

Did you know the NFL involves a lot of money? Those greedy bastards! Shank's here to helpfully remind you of that:

On Tuesday, we had mighty Anheuser-Busch (halfway through a six-year, $1.2 billion deal with the NFL) firing a veiled threat at The Shield.
...
Meanwhile, the overstuffed NFL owners keep getting richer,
...
Until the beer barons and their friends withdraw sponsorship...
...
The NFL is a $9 billion industry and Goodell has pledged to his owners that he will make it a $25 billion industry. Think Bob Kraft or Daniel Snyder or Jerry Jones wants to mess with this game plan? Think again.

Nothing like appealing to the base emotions of greed, jealously and resentment to whip up the outrageous outrage, is there?

And what's a Shank NFL column without a shot at Patriots owner Bob Kraft?

Think Kraft is going to take a stand and talk about the sins of the NFL? Think again. According to Forbes, the Patriots are worth $2.6 billion and appreciated by 44 percent since last year — which is the same year in which Aaron Hernandez was arrested for murder, shortly after the Patriots signed him to a $40 million extension.

At least he gets one thing right:

It goes on everywhere. It is a societal problem, not just an NFL problem.

Which is precisely why the self-righteous media harpies and the rest of the lynch mob (like this asshole) might want to take a step back in piling on the NFL like this problem is the sole purview of the NFL and will be resolved by kicking the players out of the league and shitcanning Roger Goodell. I'm not holding my breath on that one...

Still Gasping

Not one to pile on the hyperbole, we get this beauty from Shank in today's column:

MINNEAPOLIS — Kickoff could not come fast enough.

The worst week in the history of the National Football League finally came to a close Sunday when more of the suspended and the suspected were ruled out of games and finally America had football again. And everything went on the way it always does.

If you conveniently ignore the weeks of the JFK assassination, Ray Lewis accused of murder, 9/11, Rae Carruth being convicted of murder, Aaron Hernandez accused of murder and Jovan Belcher killing his girlfriend, then himself, I suppose he's right...

Shank On Roger Gooddell

Looks like Shank's back to his old self:

Roger Goodell and NFL owe us some straight answers

The NFL is now in full-blown Watergate cover-up mode, and commissioner Roger Goodell is a modern-day Richard Nixon.

Does Goodell resign, raise his arms in a Nixonian victory salute, and flee in a helicopter from the rooftop of NFL headquarters in Manhattan? Or are we perhaps overreacting?

The Ray Rice Domestic Violence Scandal changes every hour, and it’s increasingly possible that it might be unsurvivable for the mighty commissioner of our most popular league.

Goodell is either lying or he is incompetent and has lost control of his office. Neither is acceptable for the NFL boss who was paid $44 million last year.

Shank On Ray Rice

Instead of crapping on the Patriots yesterday, today we get a column about Ray Rice, formerly of the Baltimore Ravens.

Things moved quickly on NFL Monday.

At 4 a.m., TMZ released video showing Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice delivering a left cross to the face of his then-fiancée, Janay Palmer, in an Atlantic City casino elevator back on Feb. 15. Palmer was knocked out cold.

Reaction was predictable. Social media exploded and there were calls for Rice to be banished from the NFL. There were also suggestions that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell be fired if he had seen this video before handing out his hideous two-game suspension.

At 10:08 a.m., the NFL issued a statement in which it contended that the video was not available to the league when Goodell delivered his wrist-slap to Rice.

At 2:18 p.m., the Ravens announced that Rice had been released.

I was expecting a bit more self-righteousness from this column. I'm sure it will show up again eventually...

DHL Dan XXVII

A day after John Henry the Boston Globe snubs Shank's latest book on baseball, Shank responds with the most obligatory, boring and predictable of NFL playoff columns - the quarterback rating column!

When it comes to handicapping the NFL playoffs, it’s all about quarterbacks. The tournament starts Saturday, when the Chiefs play at Indianapolis. Here’s one man’s ranking of the 12 QBs in the 2014 postseason.

To anyone that follows football, that's probably the most informative part of the column, and the rest of it is equally uninspired and underwhelming.

Truly an epic mail-in job of biblical proportions...

The Obligatory JFK / Football Column

With the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, it's only natural for Boston Globe writers to pen a few hundred columns on the subject; here's Shank's contribution.

Friday is the 50th anniversary of the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Three-quarters of the people in this country today are not old enough to remember the tragedy, but Baby Boomers forever will recite where they were and what they were doing when they got the news from Walter Cronkite.

Two days after the assassination — the day before the president was buried in Arlington National Cemetery — the NFL went ahead with its full schedule of seven games. The decision was made by NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle and it haunted him for the rest of his days.

Like a few of Shank's columns, including the predictable next installment of the Brady - Manning saga in the next few days...

Arrogance, Reflected

After spending the better part (for a writer as hacktastic as Shank, is that a contradiction in terms?) of his mediocre career lambasting players as prima donnas, owners as arrogant, and everyone else as basement trolls, The CHB has truly become that which he lives to despise.

For today, for the second time in three days and the third time in a month, The CHB calls the Texans "frauds" and says the Patriots will walk over the competition to the AFC Championship.

Who is calling who arrogant? For The CHB, whose range as a columnist runs the gamut from childish name-calling to demeaning of talent and everything in between -- and why not, since he's had a pretty lucrative run perpetrating his own fraud on the owners of the Boston Globe -- this is the epitome of his projectionism.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Btw, oh Curly one, it's Reliant Stadium, not Reliant Field.