Posts Tagged ‘patriots’

Sports: Old Times Back in Foxborough, The Dutch vs the Sox, The Unintimidating Celtics, the very intimidating Bruins and Seattle to Milwaukee finally.

Posted: March 9, 2023 by datechguy in baseball, Dynasty, dynasty baseball, gaming, nba, nfl, nhl, online gaming, Sports
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If you are a person 35 our younger all of your memories of the New England Patriots are likely memories of victory and Dominance thanks to the greatest sixth round draft pick ever made and the most important hit in the history of the NFL which combined gave you 20 years of Tom Brady. So given the potential of Aaron Rogers going to the Jets the shock of the Patriots being the worst team in their division is hitting many fans hard.

However if you are 60ish or older you remember a time when the Patriots were the worst team in New England (including the Whalers) so all of this brings us back to the days of our youth.

Given the state of the country these days perhaps it will be cathartic for us to have something to complain about.

The RedSox who used to rule the roots in New England but the last few years have seen their star fade as their stars leave.

One of the those starts Xander Bogarts is currently playing in the World Baseball Classic for the Dutch and has led their team to upset victories against both Panama and Cuba, CUBA

If only Boston could get players like that.

The Boston Celtics broke a 3 game losing streak yesterday they currently sit in 2nd place in the East right behind Milwaukee. The Celtics are still the favorite to go to the finals but while they are clearly the most talented team in the East there are at least four teams in the East capable of winning a seven game series against them.

Most importantly not a one of those teams are afraid of them.

I’ve never seen so powerful a team produce so little shock and awe among their rivals.

While the Celtics are not scaring anybody the Boston Bruins are riding roughshod over the entire NHL with an insane .831 winning percentage losing only 8 game out of 62 played.

While there still a long ways away from the record of 132 points set by the 76-77 Canadians who only lost 8 games the entire season they have exceeded every expectation that anybody had for this team at the start of the season.

If they roll though the playoffs at anywhere near the rate they will become the top dog in town really fast, particularly if the Celtics stumble.

Finally our face to face Dynasty Baseball league is winding down and my magic number for the final playoff spot is 1 with six games to go.

Just a few months ago I ruled the roost but a 10 game losing streak dropped me to the bottom of the standings.

In our 1957 League my Brooklyn dodgers are chasing the Braves and the Cardinals and we’re gearing up for the expansion draft with two teams (Cubs and Twins) joining for our 1971 league we’re just waiting for Dynasty to finalize the release online.

My team seems to be pitching heavy this season so to take advantage of that situation I am finally making the move to Milwaukee that I held off on for 1970 while my Pilots tried to repeat.

Given the teams in the league I likely don’t have a chance but it will still be a fun season.

Under the Fedora Thoughts Mac can’t win, Missing an Opportunity, The Bodies are Piling up, What a difference less than 20 years makes, Missing the Biggest lede of the year

Posted: December 28, 2022 by datechguy in baseball, Blame Biden Administration, covid, culture, nfl, official oppression, war
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Mac Jones can’t win.

Last week he was pilloried by Patriots greats on the air for not doing all he could to stop Las Vegas (had to stop myself from typing “Oakland”) from scoring on that last play that cost New England a game they should have won.

Now a week late he makes a desperate attempt to stop Germaine Pratt from scoring a touchdown on a recovered fumble that if not for the Dolphins falling apart might have ended their playoff hopes and he’s attacked for it and fined by the NFL.

It may or may not be fair but I think that Mac is in a no-win position. He can’t be Brady and will never be Brady.

At least the Redsox Went from the greatest hitter of all time (Williams), to an all time great HOF (Yaz) to a power hitting Hall of Famer (Rice) to a pretty good outfielder (Greenwell) over 25 years easing the blow. No such luck for spoiled Pats fans.

There was a time before Tom Brady when the Redsox ruled this town. Even in the days of Russell, Havlicek and Bird it was a baseball town. Tom Brady made the difference and while David Ortiz kept the flame alive Brady’s timeless success wrenched the city away from the bats and balls and delivered it to the pigskin.

Right now the Patriots are in the lowest point that they’ve been and if the Red Sox ownership was smart they would take this moment to invest heavily to grab back the hearts of the fans from the gridiron and back to the diamond.

The current strategy may be penny wise but it’s pound foolish. The Pats are giving the Sox a huge opening which a wise ownership should drive right through.

However I suspect they are not all that wise.

Just four years ago you didn’t have stories of people “dying suddenly” at young ages. Now it’s so common that if a week passes without such an event it’s a miracle.

The worst of it is that now we have more studies from every inhabited continent that show Ivermectin (.02 a pill) to be effective against COVID. as noted “100% of these have shown positive results.” at the same time the Twitter files have revealed a concerted effort to suppress information and/or opinions from medical experts contrary to the sanctioned positions of the Biden Administration.

These people and those who submitted to their will have a lot of bodies to answer for and they are very lucky that it is no longer considered fashionable for those who have had husbands ,wives, children and parents die from their despicable acts to take personal revenge. It it was, none of those bastards would last a week.

It has been less than twenty years since the Massachusetts Supreme Court by a 4-3 vote legalized gay marriage in the state and then governor Mitt Romney did all he could to keep it off the ballot in order to advance his presidential ambitions.

Now twenty years later we see the results as summarized in a single tweet

All this is by design, the next generation of Jeffrey Epstien’s and the next generation of Prince Andrews and the like who they will serve need to get their fodder from somewhere.

Incidentally I suspect there are more than a few Epsteins out there still serving the same customer base that Ms. Maxwell keeps in her head. Jeffrey just happens to be the one that was caught which makes him the exception.

Finally the single most significant story of the day is likely this one. The drone war in Ukraine and Russia:

In interviews in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, a range of intelligence, military and national security officials have described an expanding U.S. program that aims to choke off Iran’s ability to manufacture the drones, make it harder for the Russians to launch the unmanned “kamikaze” aircraft and — if all else fails — to provide the Ukrainians with the defenses necessary to shoot them out of the sky.

The shift to drones by both sides is a incredibly significant change to the war. The story continues

In fact, one of the Iranian companies named by Britain, France and Germany as a key manufacturer of one of the two types of drones being bought by the Russians, Qods Aviation, has appeared for years on the United Nations’ lists of suppliers to Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. The company, which is owned by Iran’s military, has expanded its line of drones despite waves of sanctions.

The administration’s scramble to deal with the Iranian-supplied drones comes at a significant moment in the war, just as Ukraine is using its own drones to strike deep into Russia, including an attack this week on a base housing some of the country’s strategic bombers.

The widespread use of drones in warfare and the Islamic state of Iran’s ability to produce “Kamikaze” drones should be of great worry to us as that is likely going to be the next tool of international terrorism and it goes without saying the next phase of warfare in general. After all consider the cost of maintaining a single destroyer vs the cost of a drone that can be programed to hit a specific geographical location.

If that doesn’t put a shudder in your spine nothing will.

Under the Fedora Sports Thoughts My 5% Bruins Solution, Kyrie Decades in the Making, A big Spread, Rational Natural Selection , No Hitters Larson and Marketing

Posted: November 5, 2022 by datechguy in baseball, nba, nfl, nhl, Sports
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Yesterday the talk of Boston Sports Radio was the Bruins signing of Mitchel Miller who was apparently quite an ass as a youth when he was 14.

The thing that really clinched the anger was the sudden “apology” just before the signing and the fellow insisting it had nothing to do with Hockey, which confirms he’s still an ass.

The whole principle of a juvenile court system is so people aren’t punished as adults for things they did as kids but re is a reason why we have a juvenile court system on the other hand you also want to provide an incentive for folks to avoid this kind of thing in the future so here is what I’d do.

He wants to play in the NHL fine, 5% of his contract should go to the kid in question and since he waited six years to apologize, that 5% should continue for the first six years of his career. And since the Bruins decided to make the signing let them match that 5% as well.

You can’t make a person virtuous who is not but you can provide incentives to make virtue less expensive than vice. I guarantee if a young jock figures this kind of thing will cost him real money it will at best stop cold or at worst produce the required contrition without a six years wait.

Kyrie Irving has been suspended five games for tweeting out a link to an Holocaust denying documentary.

Given the left’s embrace of this kind of thing and the NBA’s embrace of the left it’s almost a shock Brooklyn punished him even if the team does reside in one of the most Jewish sections of the nation.

The NBA itself has decided to leave him alone and leave things to the Nets. After all as far as the NBA is concerned he didn’t do something really horrible in their eyes, like hitting China for slave labor etc. If he had Irving would have gone the way of Enes Kanter Freedom and not see the inside of an NBA court again. Irving cost him embarrassment, Kanter cost them money.

One more thought. The idea that Kyrie actually might have bought the idea that the black race are the actual tribes of Israel is no surprise to me. It’s been 25 years since Mary Lefkowitz warned us about this stuff in Not Out Of Africa: How “”Afrocentrism”” Became An Excuse To Teach Myth As History With 25 years of this going on since the release of this book without any pushback the wonder is that it isn’t more prevalent.

Boston sports radio is all over the place on the New England Patriots. Nobody seems sure about anything except that they’re not good enough to beat Buffalo. Here is their remaining schedule:

  • vs Colts
  • vs Jets
  • at Vikings
  • vs Bills
  • at Cardinals
  • at Raiders
  • vs Bengals
  • vs Dolphins
  • at Bills

With the exception of the Bills there is not a team on the list they aren’t capable of beating nor any time not capable of clearing their clock. Given the parity in the league, the quality of their roster and the uneven play of everyone. I’d not be surprised to see them finish anywhere from 11-6 to 4-13.

It’s bad for the nerves but good if you want some mystery in how a game will go.

There has been a lot of fuss about the fact that there are no American born black players on either roster in the World Series this year. This is being pushed as a stain to baseball, but frankly it’s not a stain in terms of racism but a stain in terms of marketing.

Part of it is cost you can play football or basketball with a single ball and a small group, but you need at least 10 or 12 for baseball, plus bats gloves but more importantly both the NFL and the NBA have done a much better job of marketing of both marketing its stars, both in general and to the black community in particular. Meanwhile the Latino stars from central and south America are huge in their countries and within the communities.

Personally I think it’s crazy. MLB besides being a better game has guaranteed contracts, less physical punishment in terms of contact and the potential for a longer career if you can’t sell that and the players to kids dying to become athletes then you need another career.

A great example of this lack of marketing is the current world series. It’s been a great playoffs and a spectacular series but game four illustrated exactly why.

The Astros put together five runs in the fifth to give them a 5-0 lead in a game they desperately needed to win. Meanwhile Christian Javier pitched six no hit innings, and then was pulled with a five run lead.

Now I understand priority one is to win the game and the Phillies have a history of coming back. But there is no reason why the Astros could not have had Javier pitching in what is likely his final start of the year and a five run lead could not have come out for the 7th with Bryan Abreu ready in the pen if he gave up a hit.

There is a reason why Don Larson is remembered 66 years after his perfect game in the 1956 World series, but I had to look up who the starter was to see who pitched in the Astros no hitter.

Personally I think MLB should fire their entire PR staff of the league and start again.

Five Cam Newton Release Mac Jones Thoughts

Posted: September 1, 2021 by datechguy in nfl, Sports
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I don’t watch football anymore except for Tom Brady, but the release of Cam Newton is such an interesting story that it deserves a blog post:

  1. This caught a lot of people by surprise in the sense that since Mac Jones was drafted the question has been Cam or Mac, Mac or Cam. This has been the conversation every single day on Boston sports radio and a lot of the consensus has been that it was Cam’s job to lose. Right up until the story broke nobody saw it coming.

  1. There is some speculation that Newton was released as a favor to him once he had lost the QB competition to Jones (which wasn’t clear to the public two days ago) because being released now gives him a chance at a starting position in another organization. Any other season this would not likely be possible but with two weeks before opening day this is something that a team could actually consider.

  1. The release of Newton brings two different conflicting woke dynamics into play here. Cam was the first black “starting” quarterback in the history of the Boston/New England Patriots franchise (Jacoby Brissette started two games during Tom Brady’s “Deflategate” suspension). So you would think that there might be a bit of the race card pushback on this move, particular as it’s a “Boston” Team. However Cam was also “unvaccinated” and right now among those who are woke the decision not to get the COVID vaccine by a very public figure who has a large fanbase is considered almost as beyond the pale as voting Trump. It’s no accident that I’ve heard sports folk talk about Cam’s vaccinated status concerning this move but I’ve not heard a word concerning race although in fairness there is not an “ineligible” list based on race.

  1. While Cam’s shortcomings were a standard feature of sports talk radio last year locally, nationally there was little or no such discussion concerning Cam Newton’s performance or lack thereof. There was further (and listening to the radio yesterday) still a whole plethora of people who all had excuses for his leading the Patriots to their 1st losing season since before Tom Brady took over the team. The speed at which a team decides to pick up Newton or if he is picked up at all will tell us if this was just pundits being pundits or if front offices and GM’s around the league were part of that willful blindness that seems to engulf folks on the subject of Newton and the Patriots

  1. It would seem to me that one of the deciding factors here would be Jones similarity to the Brady style which is the offense that the Patriots Josh McDaniels has had success with. Expect to see a lot of this over the next decades as a generation of kids who watched Tom Brady play and pretended to be him or dreamed of being him over the last twenty years reach the college and pro-level. It remains to be seen of any of said kids can come anywhere close to being him but it’s worth noting what Newton’s departure means in terms of age and experience among AFC East starting QB’s

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