Pick Your Poison To Get Mad About
The best and worst thing about this time of year is how everything gets heightened. One of the worst sides of that curse is the discourse.
The playoffs, and post-Championship week in general, are usually an utter mess of discourse. The two teams that lose always generate a lot of anger and argument because emotions between fanbases are extremely high. Just last year we had the Bengals’ unnecessary roughness call on Mahomes that sealed the game, and even worse, the 49ers fanbase whining into the darkest depths of space about how the game wasn’t fair because Purdy got hurt so early. You might remember Vikings fans being frothing mad at Eagles fans who acted like jerks after the Eagles spanked them a week after the Minneapolis Miracle. You might remember pretty much any time Aaron Rodgers and the Packers lost. This is a very good time of year to have takes on the internet about sports.
This week has already given us a wealth of ammonia and bleach to mix together into a beautiful mustard gas of toxic online discourse. Let’s use this comic as a big fat excuse to just hit the whole menu at once like an online argument mukbang. I’ll start!
TAYLOR SWIFT
Obviously the right-wing conspiracy nuts who think this whole thing is a psyop are lunatics doing their typical conspiracy thing. The idea of this all being a manufactured thing is absurd. Now, is the league capitalizing on this? Sure is! Why would you even expect otherwise? The most popular music artist on the planet is dating a popular tight end on the most currently successful team in the league. The NFL would be stupid to not endorse it. There are now gameday threads in the Taylor Swift subreddit. New people are discovering football thanks to this and I think that’s beautiful. The whinging gatekeepers who are very mad about it (and it is usually a very particular type of guy most of the time, you know the type of guy) are being crybabies about people enjoying football for different reasons than them when it isn’t even that bad now. The broadcast coverage of the Swift thing has died down significantly after those first two weeks. She’ll get maybe a couple total minutes of screentime during games of 3 and a half hours and it’s just her cheering in the booth. It was definitely annoying to begin with, but now the bitching about Taylor Swift is more annoying than the stuff itself. Let the Swifties enjoy football because of a celebrity they like being there. It’s fine. Football is for everyone.
BROCK PURDY
Purdy once again did nothing to truly silence his critics or prove them right once again. Purdy remains an enigma of a QB, a guy who clearly has the talent and skill to play well and frequently does, but also frequently seems to be propped up by his surroundings. He played like a bonehead sometimes in the two playoff games, but he also had some killer throws and drives when it mattered. We are no closer to truly knowing how good Brock Purdy is. Him winning or losing the Super Bowl will only make all of this worse. This is a no-win argument that will only be answered with time. The things we can say for sure about the guy: It is pretty damn cool to have Mr Irrelevant be the starting QB in the Super Bowl. He also looks 14 years old.
LAMAR JACKSON
Sad to say Lamar really needed to at the minimum reach the Super Bowl this year to shake off the haters and it ended about as badly as possible for the guy. He’s got a few playoff wins under his belt and presumably a second MVP award incoming, but he’s pre-2006 Peyton Manning now. A guy who is very good until it counts and he can’t get past the better guy and therefore is a choker. It’s not fair. It was never fair. Winning a Super Bowl is fucking hard. Reaching a Super Bowl is fucking hard. Haters will hate. They will move the goalposts as much as is necessary. But winning that trophy will get them to go back and grumble in their holes instead of seizing every opportunity to jump on the guy. He played bad on Sunday. The Ravens offense as a whole was trash ass with poor gameplanning, no good adjustments, and horrible playcalling. It is going to haunt him forever if they can’t get over the hump soon.
ANALYTICS FEATURING DAN CAMPBELL
I initially came down on the side of “Dan should have taken the points at least once” in my first reaction Sunday night. Some more time and info I hadn’t considered has swung me back closer to “Dan Campbell made the right choices”. I did not realize how questionable the Lions kicker had been this year from 45+, so there was a valid reason to not trust him to make that late kick, and the payoff to making the conversion would have been substantial. The Lions just could not execute. The decision was fine. The real mistake the Lions and Campbell made was calling that run play in the final drive that got stuffed. That forced them to use a timeout and ensure that they would need to onside kick the ball. The Lions lost because they abandoned the running game that worked in the first half, they stopped being able to execute when it mattered, and god abandoned them.
THE REFS
I thought the officiating this weekend was basically fine. The Lions didn’t get screwed over at all! Ravens fans, and anyone with significant investment in the Chiefs losing, seemed to disagree. Ravens fans in general have always had a very “WE ARE A SMALL MARKET TEAM THAT NEVER GETS THE CALLS” energy to them so I usually dismiss it. The taunting call on Zay Flowers? The problem there isn’t the call. It’s the rule. By the rule as it exists, Flowers did exactly what you can’t do. Good call by the standards of the rule. The personal foul from Kyle Van Noy headbutting Kelce when Kelce was being a bit of a shit? Don’t retaliate. Never retaliate. The refs will always, always, call the penalty on the retaliatory actor. The playoffs tend to get fewer penalties called in general as the refs always step back a bit and usually only call the more obvious penalties. Ticky tack stuff gets by. The Chiefs got away with some ticky-tack stuff. The Ravens got rightfully called for some blatant fouls.
MOMENTUM
The word and concept of momentum have become weirdly controversial, especially in analytic circles. It’s also a subject I have been thinking about for quite some time in the background, so I’m not going to go more into it here and save it for a later comic.
CHIEFS UNDERDOGS
If you see any fan or player of the most successful franchise of the last 5 years talk about how everyone counted them out, you should be legally allowed to kick them in the taint.
SUPER BOWL REMATCH
I did not want this either. The most boring possible outcome out of what we had left.
PRO BOWL/NFL HONORS DISCUSSION
Lamar is probably the MVP. I think it should go to Christian McCaffery, but to be honest this year is very weird for MVP candidacy. There aren’t obvious frontrunners. It shifted constantly during the season and I think mostly settled on Lamar because at the end of the regular season the Ravens were the main team that hadn’t had big that big notable loss on the resume. Purdy lost his argument when the Ravens spanked him. Dak lost his argument when the 49ers spanked him. Hurts lost his weak argument when the Eagles got revealed as frauds. Mahomes should unfortunately have a bigger argument but the Chiefs offense was so flawed all year thanks to the WRs. Maybe CJ Stroud actually deserves it. What about comeback player of the year? It’s obviously Damar Hamlin but it continues to raise the question of what Comeback means. Last year Geno won it…for coming back from being…mediocre and a backup? Is it coming back from injury or irrelevance? They need to define this award better.
What other toxic discussion sludge has caused you pain these past two days and you just have to get something off your chest? Let it rip below.
As much as I hate the weirdo manosphere people still on the Swift hate train, it was still hilarious when Mile High was blaring Shake It Off after the Broncos finally beat the Chiefs.
Can someone explain to me why the league leader in touchdowns and the guy who dragged a mediocre Bills offensive roster to a fourth-straight division title is an afterthought in the MVP race?
QB Record and turnovers. That’s literally all it is.
If Allen was the guy he was during that late season win streak the entire season I think he probably earns it, but MVP is also very much a consistency award
I agree. The bad start basically killed his chances even if it wasn’t entirely his fault.
Ken Dorsey and his effects have been a disaster on Bills football
Because he has 21 total turnovers.
Josh Allen Stats: 66.5% 4830yds (Total) 44 Touchdowns 21 Total Turnovers 92.2 Passer Rating
Lamar Jackson: 67.2% 4,500yds (Total) 29 Touchdowns 9 Total Turnovers 102.7 Passer Rating
Say what you want about Jackson; but most voters are pciking Jackson over Allen.
And this is why the NFL has become an inferior product. The discourse has gotten more unbearable than the NBA discourse, which I didn’t think possible. It’s why MLB has become my favorite, because the discourse there is actually sometimes semi-intelligent rather than just screaming platitudes into a void.
My secret is to watch the football and only read a little bit of discourse from the funny comic man that I then forget about after an hour of office work.
Same funni foobaw comic
That’s how it goes when you have a reactionary media cycle that’s basically never-ending. People hear bad takes get spewed relentlessly and regurgitate them without any second thought. It’s why MLB (and even moreso NHL) barely getting any coverage is a blessing in disguise. The people that talk about those sports actually have to know a thing or two about those sports and get just get away with repeating the same narratives they heard from Talking Head #57 on ESPN.
*can’t just get away with
In the NHL’s case, that’s “barely getting coverage in the US.” Canadian media is another story, a lot of NHL discourse from the Great White North is comparable to a lot of NFL and NBA discourse.
True. I can’t imagine the discourse that stems out of Canada.
The Vancouver all-sports station just rebroadcasts CBS Sports Radio when it’s not broadcasting local or national content. Can’t speak for the other markets or other media outlets but … I’d say the NHL discourse in Canada is worse than NFL or NBA in the US but not as bad as college football.
May I recommend MLS? It’s still niche, so most of the discourse is about the actual sport. Plus, scarves!
“It’s all here, fast kickin’, low scorin’, and ties? You bet! You’ll see all your favorite soccer stars, like Ariaga, Ariaga II, Bariaga, Aruglia, and Pizzoza! This match will determine which nation is the greatest on Earth, Mexico or Portugal!”
WE PAID FOR BLOOD!!
The issue with the Zay Flowers call was not the call itself, but the fact that they NEVER call that sort of thing.
“But so many murders are unsolved!” is a terrible murder trial defense.
Dude, Flowers shoved Sneed, spun the ball at him, stood over him, flexed, and trash talked him facemask to ear hole. It doesn’t matter how rare a taunting call is (9 each in ’22 and ’23 seasons for the record), you can’t do that. Even in the 90s that would have been an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
Nah, Flowers earned that penalty. And Van Noy shouldn’t have risen to the bait when Kelce grabbed Roquan Smith after the whistle. You can’t go for the taunting trifecta, and you have to know that the refs will usually penalize the player who arrives late to a scuffle, not the instigator (unless it’s flagrant).
I’m pissed that we made Arthur smith the OC and that we don’t have a QB also all these problems except Purdy I like him and I agree that cmc mvp
I actually think Arthur Smith is a good fit for OC; he may not be a great head coach but people forgot he was OC during Derrick Henry’s best seasons. His Smash mouth playstyle fits Pittsburgh perfectly.
I feel like the folks getting deep into the Taylor Swift conspiracy weeds have watched a little too much Metalocalypse
How about the fact that Myles Garrett will probably win DPOY over Micah Parsons or TJ Watt despite almost completely disappearing over the last 7 weeks of the season?
There is no way Garret is winning DPOY; He doesn’t lead the league in any meaningful stat and doesn’t have as much of an impact as Parsons, Watt, Crosby, or even Mack this year.
I pick Dan Campbell because I saw this coming a mile away. The Cowboys game should have been a learning lesson for Dan. Sure, he got hosed on that call and they should have converted and won the game, but shit happens and sometimes you need to make the smart move and give your team the best chance to win possible.
I personally don’t really have a problem with him going for it in a vacuum (especially with Badgley’s questionable kicking record), but my biggest questions was at the end of the half. Why settle for 3 there? In my mind I thought “oh he’ll go for it and that’ll break the 9ers, game over”. Why settle in that situation, but go for it in objectively worse situations? I don’t know if Campbell got rattled by the moment or what, but he clearly understands playoff games against legitimately talented teams require a different approach. Especially when you can feel the 9ers getting more and more momentum with each drive, sometimes you need to make the smart decision that buys your guys more time instead of falling on your sword. In the regular season that works just fine, but that stuff sends you home in the playoffs.
I also saw a lot of people piling on him for saying that he didn’t know if they’d be back in his post-game presser. He’s right. Teams far better than the 2023 Lions made it this far and never made it back. I remember the 2017 Vikings thinking they were just a QB away after getting bombed by Philly. What about Sacksonville who came so close to a Superbowl berth with Bortles at the helm? I’m sure the Bengals and Eagles both thought it’d be an easy road back to the Superbowl, but look at what happened to them. A lot can go wrong and it may very well be that Dan Campbell doesn’t get back to the playoffs let alone the NFCCG.
Josh Allen not being able to get it done in big games. It drives me crazy because somehow his turnover problem all but disappears in the postseason. He is objectively a better player statistically in playoff games. And his defense just keeps getting marred by the next GOAT of the sport. Man it sucks to be a Bills fan. First Brady, now Mahomes. What the fuck
“New people are discovering football thanks to this…”
YES! I think it’s awesome that Swifties are watching football because of this.
Anyone who bitches about Taylor Swift…. we can’t be friends.
Hard agree. Take the hate and dump it in the trash.
What do you define as “bitching” about swift? Do you just mean things like “taylor swift ruined football”? Can I say that I really don’t like her music at all?
You can absolutely say you don’t like her music. A lot of people do. Some of those people got on Insta to ask questions about NFL football because they’re watching it now. That goes way beyond cool and good.
tl;dr Be jealous of the guy whose girlfriend suddenly has questions about an out route versus an option route.
And it’s not just that new people are *watching* football… they’re *learning* it, too. I’ve seen a large of people talk about their wives, girlfriends, daughters, etc asking questions. Questions about play calls, or penalties (not the the NFL knows the definitions of those anymore than the guy sitting on his couch), or why certain players line up the way they do, and so on.
And, oh yea, that’s the other thing – a lot of these new fans are women. Which may be a bigger reason that certain fandom elements hate Swift, because as everyone knows, girls will simply ruin the game of football.
Please see fourchan dot org slash ess pee for all SNEED related discussion.
3 guys and a baer getting called out hard here xD
also shout out to 3 guys and a baer.
I have seen many of my Ravens fan brethren try to blame the refs for us losing and it makes me want to poke out my eyes. The refs didn’t make Todd Monken give the RBs six carries. The refs didn’t make Zay Flowers blatantly taunt and then fumble out of the endzone. The refs didn’t make Nelson Agholor drop a 3rd down pass on the opening drive. The refs didn’t make Lamar ignore open running lanes and make bad throwing decisions because the narratives about him being a bad passer live rent free in his head. We lost because we fucked up. Plain and simple.
Oh, Dave, Dave, Dave… you forgot a topic that has already been starting to get talked about. *deep breath* Thomas *SLAM* Eduardo *SLAM* Jean *SLAM* Pierre *SLAM* JimBob *SLAM* Brady has been retired-unretired-re-retired for only ONE season, and they are already debating… is Patrick Mahomes BETTER than him? I really don’t care what the answer is, but you just KNOW that’s gotta be driving Brady up the wall. I expect him to come out with more of his whiny: “Boo hoo, the NFL is so much easier than it was back in MY day, before I whined and cried and made them change all the rules about protecting quarterbacks! WAHHH!!”
Mildly off topic, but my 9er loving friend pointed this out to me. The first big name 1st round QB of the 2018 draft class to make the Super Bowl is…. SAM DARNOLD!!! It looks like those idiot Jets fans with the “Thank You Giants!” shirts were on to something. 😯
Imagine if Brady and Mahomes plays in the 1980s with LT and Reggie wreaking havoc against the offense.
The Mahomes vs Brady discourse is going to be unbearable in 10 years. Mahomes will have 5 rings when he retires but will have smashed every passing record Brady set. So you’ll have one camp that’s like “look at how great a passer he was, and 5 rings is nothing to sneeze at”, and then the other camp that “super bowl QB wins are the only stat”
I can’t imagine he’ll have the longevity to catch Brady in total passing yards, but we shall see.
oh my god it’s literally going to be Lebron/MJ all over again, isn’t it? Uggggggggggggggh!!!!
Yes. Yes it will.
It’s going to be a very bizarre argument because of the fact that they technically played in two different eras and both kind of enhance the arguments for each side.
On one hand, Brady played a significant portion of his career in a much tougher passing era (2001-2009ish), which obviously hurts his stats. Plus, he played nearly all of his career at a time where seasons were only 16 games, not 17, so Mahomes’ numbers are always going to be significantly more inflated by virtue of just playing in more games. And God forbid the league expands to an 18 game schedule which will muddy those waters even further. And that’s not even mentioning the offensive systems they played in and offensive supporting casts that they worked with through most of their careers, where Mahomes has the obvious edge. Even still, I think Mahomes would have average like 5000 yards and 35+ TDs over the next 12 seasons to catch Brady’s statline, which is much easier said than done.
On the other, Mahomes will have won most of his Championships (assuming he does break the 4 ring barrier as well) in an era where he had to play one extra game, as well as the fact that only the top overall seed gets a first round bye instead of the top 2 seeds, so you can make a real argument that the many championships that Mahomes potentially wins would have been far more difficult to achieve, even if he ends up with less, since he had to win them under much tougher circumstances than Brady did.
Really, what makes this debate so weird is the fact that Tom Brady played so long that he actually finished his career in the same era that Mahomes started his, and was just as good as Mahomes was, if not outright better. And they literally played each other several times including on the biggest stage. My guess is that eventually people are just going to look at Super Bowl 55 (and possibly the 2018 AFCCG) and say that Tom got him where it mattered, but concede that Mahomes was more talented like they’re already doing. I have my opinions on that subject, but that’s another debate for another time.
Frankly, having this debate now is kind of ridiculous. It just feels disrespectful to the guys like Peyton Manning, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, etc. since Mahomes somehow immediately passed all of them up before he’s even finished his 7th season.
100% with most of what you said here. I’m not against the talking heads spending a little time talking about what something might mean for the future, but yea, it’s a little silly that the guy is, what, 6 seasons into his career and they’re already making projections for the next 14 and just paving over Peyton et al.
I don’t think Tom Brady himself cares–actually I think he probably welcomes the idea of Mahomes overtaking him.
Brady’s fans are definitely pressed about it, though. lol
I actually disagree, I think Brady doesn’t want Mahomes passing him even if he’d never admit it. Brady’s entire career was basically held up by his stubbornness to never stop. I think he loves being the GOAT but he’s not a big trash talker.
Dang, I got so busy yesterday I never got a chance to revisit this thread before everyone else moved on. But in the offchance you see this… HE CARES. That letter they published a few years back, where he was writing to his friend with gleeful abandon about how Peyton sucks and was going to retire in a few years, while he was just gonna keep on chugging, wooo wooo… there’s no way the psycho competitive person writing that who abandoned his life and family so he could play for 20 friggin’ years just shrugs when people are already questioning if someone else is better than him one season removed from his retirement. He won’t say it publicly, but he’s absolutely fuming.
I will admit that saying he doesn’t care outright is a stretch. I was mainly trying to poke fun at his fans (myself included) who are fighting with people tooth and nail about it.
The way I see it is that it probably does bother him a bit, but not as much as it would if he were still playing. Since he’s retired (and most likely staying retired), I think he’s just at the point where he recognizes that he has zero control over the debate now and has to accept it for what it is. I’m sure he’d prefer if no one ever questioned his King Status but that’s never been how media discourse works. He’s a fiery competitor, but he’s offered nothing but praise and adoration for Mahomes whenever the subject comes up, and I do think it’s pretty genuine. He might not welcome Mahomes overtaking him but I don’t think it’s killing him.
Wouldn’t Joe Flacco be the obvious comeback player of the year? Coming off the couch mid season on top of what seems like a decade of his reputation as a QB cratering from being sort of the Brock Purdue of his day to the poster child for bad contracts to middling journeyman. It’s a similar logic to Geno Smith getting it last year but on a larger scale. Also I’d be a good way of indirectly rubbing Watson’s (and the Haslams’) face in shit.
Was Flacco the first $100M contract and originator of the money fort comics too?
Flacco literally said in an interview that Damar should be it and “what am I coming back from, being old and not being on a team for a few weeks?”
He’s right too
McDiscourse just announced a special on Caleb Williams draft discourse!
“coming soon for a limited time only!” Draft discourse is like a bunch of McRibs: everyone tries to hype it up like it’s new and interesting and definitely only here for a little while, but it’s just the same thing trotted out once a year. “Generational WR talent?”…yeah and he’ll be outplayed by a third rounder who has Mahomes throwing to him. “This QB would be number 1 if he had come out in last year’s class”….yeah, until he gets drafted by a bad team, plays poorly because of it, and we realize it’s all a crapshoot (I remember when TLaw was John Elway and then you had people the next few years talking about how other QBs would be taken ahead of him). It’s just the McRib of McDiscourse.
I watched the Bills/Chiefs game at the local Bills bar, and very much enjoyed the immediate, intense, and good-natured booing every time Taylor Swift was shown on the screen.
The bar didn’t hate Taylor Swift, we just wanted to boo everything Chiefs that week.