Dallas Heat Playin' Tricks On Me!

It might be the cold air that has suddenly struck Minnesota and given me a brain freeze faster than sucking down a freshly made chocolate custard shake from Culvers to quickly (I love Culvers) or it might be the fact that I’m sick and have consumed enough Dayquil to take down a herd of elephants stomping through The Serengeti, but it might be time to put Dallas in the conversation of Super Bowl contenders. It’s been a while since we could actually say that! In the famous worlds of Billy Currington “is this Georgia heat playin’ tricks on me Or am I really seein' what I think I see?” Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys always seem to poke their head around in the playoffs but has never really scared anyone, but after Sunday night and what they did to the Eagles it may be time to put them in the conversation with legit Super Bowl contenders… Orrrr is it that the Eagles are more fraudulent than a check written by Frank Abagnale Jr? Both can be true. The Cowboys Mike Tyson’d the shit out of the defending NFC champs on Sunday Night Football! The Cowboys didn’t even need all 12 rounds, they knocked Jalen Hurts and The Eagles out with the first blow in the first round, it wasn’t even a challenge the Eagles didn’t even put up any sort of a fight! It was like Mike Tyson knocking out Michael Spinks in the first 90 seconds of their infamous 1988 fight, arguably Mike Tyson’s most impressive victory! Speaking of arguably the most impressive victories, that had to be the Cowboys most impressive victory of the year! It couldn’t have come at a better time either. With the win over Philly and Detroit doing the usual Detroit things that they do every year. This time it came in the form of a blow-out loss to the growl-less Chicago Bears! Dallas not only catapulted themselves over the Eagles to the top of the NFC East. But they also moved past the Lions and whoever the hell is going to win the NFC South, into second place in the NFC playoff bracket. By the way, Detroit is going to squander this opportunity for sure. It’s the best opportunity Detroit has had to make a playoff run since Barry Sanders was scampering around in the backfield back in the early 90’s.

The Eagles offense has not been anything special this year, far from it and it looked even worse against a great Dallas defense. They look a little bit off for a team that is 10-3 but the real problem in Philly besides which cheesesteak place to go to (so many great options), is that defense. Man are they just bad, Dallas could have gone for a stroll out there on Sunday and still dusted that secondary. I may be wrong about this, but with that defense and that offense the Cowboys have a real shot at this thing this year. They have only one problem standing in their way from making it to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl besides themselves imploding in the playoffs like they usually do year after year and that’s those minors from the 49ers out there in the bay area. Even with a QB that was picked last in the 2022 NFL Draft in Brock Purdy who has been nothing but sensational this year, they are hands down the best overall team and I don’t think that it is even close. That offense is beyond loaded from Debo just busting out of tackles and out running everyone on the field, he’s looking like Nelly in The Longest Yard with all those tackles he has spun out of this year. To McCaffery, who should be the MVP this year, he has been nothing short of amazing. He is the reason why you pay great running backs. He has added a dynamic to the 49ers that may be unrivaled by any team in the league. Now my brain could be a little fogged over like a Bay Area morning from the fact that I may or may not of threw a little future down on the 49ers back in June when I was at a little gem of a sports book called Diamond Jo’s just off the first exit into Iowa when you’re going down interstate 35 coming from Minnesota, but they are truly the best all-around team. Quick side note if you have never rushed down to the boarder of Iowa and Minnesota to stop in at Diamond Jo’s on a Sunday morning before kick off of the noon games just to place a quick few bets, you haven’t lived. Since Minnesota doesn’t have sports betting, we kind of have to find alternative measures to scratch our gambling itch. So, we load the car up with a bunch of degenerate gamblers, head an hour and half south, place some loosing bets and get back just in time for kick off… We might have a problem…

The NFC has a lot of trash blowing around in that conference. It seems like there are only 3 teams that have a chance to represent the NFC in the Superbowl, The Cowboys, 49ers and the Eagles well 4 if you count the Motor City Kitties. That’s it because as of right now the Vikings are in the playoffs who are on their 4th string QB, The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are leading the NFC South, the worst division in football with a record of 6-7. But what has to be the most surprising team of all that is in the playoffs as of right now is the Aaron Rodgers less Green Bay Packers. This Jordan Love kid has played well over the last few weeks. Maybe the Packers knew what they were doing by trading away the 4-time NFL MVP. That does not include the smattering of other below .500 teams trying to a get spot in the big dance. The Rams, Seahawks, Saints, Falcons and the Giants… Wait the Tommy DeVito lead Giants are still in the mix for the Playoffs…. How the… I don’t know how that is possible, I thought it was the luck of the Irish not the luck of the Italians… I don’t think any of those teams have a chance to beat the 4 previously mentioned Super Bowl contenders. I knew The NFC was in rough shape this year, but I didn’t know it was this rough. The NFC is in such rough shape that it makes Barry Seals take off on a dirt runway in an overweight plane full of cocaine look like the smoothest take off ever.

With all that being said, I don’t think it’s the Dayquil talking. This might actually be the best opportunity that Dallas could have to make a Super Bowl run since back in 2014 when Tony Romo and Dez Bryant went into the frozen Tundra of Green Bay and beat the Packers in the divisional round of the playoffs… Oh, wait Dez Bryant “dropped” the ball that would have given them the lead. If you’re a Cowboy’s fan that one still must sting… Back to this year, Dallas has the defense and the offense to walk into any stadium in the NFC and take down any team. But there is one major problem… so do the 49ers. From a viewer perspective I hope we see Dallas and San Fransico in the NFC championship; it has the makings of being one for the ages. But if you both somehow loose and we end up with Vikings vs Buccaneers in the NFC Championship, I might have to see what’s on the Hallmark channel that night… ohh boy, I hope it’s a love story about a relationship that is on the rocks and is close to the end, so they take journey back to their home town to see their families for the holidays and with a little help from their families and little Christmas Magic of course, they end up realizing that they love and need each other… Please don’t do this to us Dallas and San Francisco… we need you in that NFC Championship…

The Start Of A New CDL Season!

You smell that in the air, of course you do it’s the smell of your dirty laundry basket filled with your Taco Bell-stained Taylor Swift Era’s tour sweatshirt, sitting next to your over heating PC because you haven’t done anything but order Taco Bell Crunch Wrap Supremes and Baja Blasts from Door Dash while you game the new Call Of Duty Modern Warfare III. Incase your wondering Logan are local door dash driver is doing well, he just had his third kid, we kind of chat every day when he drops off my food… With every yearly release of Call Of Duty comes a lot of anger and complaining towards the game, “it’s same game as last year, these guns all suck, we don’t need 98 attachments for each gun, how come these 13 years olds are so much better than I am but more importantly why the hell are they not in school at 11am on a mother fing Tuesday…” but what also comes with a new Call Of Duty besides the rage quit, is fast paced fun that is hard to beat, no matter our complaints, so much so that year after year we still end up buying the game and playing for a lot more hours than we probably should. Now I know what you’re thinking "but Brett this is a sports blog why are you talking about playing Call Of Duty against some goated 13 year old kids?.." Well I’m getting there… With every release of a new Call Of Duty means about a month later after you have wiped the red out of your eyes, brushed the crusty shredded cheese off your lap from three door dash orders ago and stepped outside to breath in some fresh air for the first time since release, you realize it’s the start of the new Call Of Duty League season, CDL for short.

Now I know what you’re thinking again, “Brett gaming isn’t a sport.” Well, you wouldn’t be wrong… or would you? Have you ever tried gaming for more than 8 hours and still have the focus and ability to hit a 360 no scope from 800 meters away? I think not! These guys are athletes just like Patrick Mahomes and Lebron James, it’s just in a different way. So, I would argue that it’s not only a sport but it’s one of the fastest growing sports in the world and one of the most entertaining to watch. It’s growing so fast that NFL Franchise team owners are getting involved by buying teams so they must see some value in the future of Esports. But, Let me tell you, that you haven’t lived until you are sitting in a dive bar somewhere off Grand Ave in St. Paul Minnesota with a group of strangers that haven’t seen the light of day in months getting up off their chairs, high fiving the guy next to them and screaming in joy at the TV when Attach hits a quick-scope, no-scope, head shot from halfway across the map to give the Minnesota Rokkr the lead in the match. The place goes bonkers, with people chanting at the top of their lungs “LETS GO ROKKR… LETS GO ROKKR”, I swear it’s louder than any sporting event I’ve ever been to. Well besides the old Metrodome back in the day when they used to “allegedly” pump sound into the stadium to make it impossible for the opposing teams to hear each other yell from 3 inches away.

It’s not just Call Of Duty that has created entertaining gaming leagues, Fortnite and League of Legends have created gaming tournaments that millions of people watch across the world on YouTube or in person. It has been amazing to watch Esports just sprout from the tiniest of seeds to a full meadow of sun flowers in no time at all. These gaming leagues even host tournaments inside of sold-out stadiums and arenas which is just remarkable considering the fact that NBA Franchise like the Orlando Magic can’t remember the last time they sold out an arena. But out of all these Esports leagues I think Call Of Duty does it just a little bit better than the rest of these leagues. CDL did this thing right when they decided to set it up by using cities and states across multiple countries to give your region of the world a team to cheer for. Just like a sports franchise. Some of the teams in the CDL include, Alanta Faze, Boston Breach, Seattle Surge, Toronto Ultra, Texas Optic and our favorite the Minnesota Rokkr. My brother got a group of us into the CDL lifestyle when we thought it was so stupid to go watch people play video games when we could be at home playing ourselves. My brother who hasn’t cheered for any sports team in his life, to be honest he actually hates sports. So, when he told us about this Call Of Duty League and the Minnesota Rokkr with so much excitement and glee in his voice, I was surprised and curious at the same time. He dragged us reluctantly to a watch party at some bar in Minneapolis and the second we stepped foot inside that watch party and felt the energy of all the fellow gamers gathered around in support of the hometown team it was like the first time that you have been to a sporting event all over again. We couldn’t help but instantly become Minnesota Rokkr fan boys and we aren’t ashamed to admit it. We also aren’t ashamed to admit that, well some of us aren’t ashamed to admit that we even have custom made Rokkr jerseys with our gamer tags embroidered on them. I have my gamer tag RonsBentWand which may or may not be a sexual inuendo about Ron Weasley’s Wand from the Harry Potter series, embroidered right above my heart on my purple Rokkr jersey for the world to see. Yes, I’m a grown ass man, leave me alone…

But Something sad has happened this year… There are no more watch parties. The Minnesota Rokkr have decided to put a kibosh on those. Now everyone just goes back to what they did before, hiding their fandom in their houses with their jerseys on watching the team play alone. The energy that once filled all us gamers with joy when the Rokkr made a great play in search and destroy to make a comeback vs Beans and his Boston Breach squad to win the match is gone. It has now turned into a quiet fist pump in our living rooms with a subtlest of “Let’s Go Rokkr” chants, it’s just not the same… But In the Rokkrs defense they were very generous with what they provided at these watch parties. They moved the parties out of bars and opened the doors to their facilities at the lavish, voted best in the NFL Minnesota Vikings headquarters, fed us pizza and soda pop and didn’t charge us a dime which was beyond anything I could have expected. But we don’t need anything like that, it’s just not necessary, we would be happy just being stuffed in the corner of a greasy bar, on the smallest tv in the building, paying our own tabs and watching the match as a community just to feel the energy of our fellow gamers and fans of the team.  

Even though the pageantry of the watch parties is gone for now, I will still sit in my living room with my purple Minnesota Rokkr jersey on and tune into the matches because they are truly entertaining and fun to watch, these guys are good, really good at what they do and its beyond impressive to watch especially through the eyes of someone that has .54 lifetime K.D. (kill to death ratio) some would say that’s average… I’m more of the capture the point kind of guy anyways… But hey if you have never tuned into a CDL match before, give it a shot. It’s the opening weekend of the CDL, turn off your infrastructure videos for 10 mins, switch on over to a CDL match between the Miami Heretics and the Carolina Royal Ravens and get immersed in the CDL world. What can it hurt? And here’s a funny concept you may find out you actually enjoy watching it. I was reluctant at first but with anything in life food, drinks, sports, activities, how can you hate something if you have never tried it.    

I Think we Can Blame Mac Jones…

What a long hard fall from grace this has been for the greatest NFL coach of all time. But, what defines a great coach? Wins, Losses, championships, the number of times you get accused of cheating, doing it without a great QB, doing it with a great QB, breaking out a whole new defense just before a Super Bowl just to confuse a young Sean Mcvay and make it borderline unwatchable for the viewer? Or is it the impact that someone has had on the game as a whole. Whatever your definition of a great coach is I think Bill Belichick fits in everyone’s description. Bill Belichick now in his 49th NFL season has created a culture up there in the northeast corner of the country. A culture built on hard work and “no days off, no days off, no days off.” Which is great while you’re winning but when you start to lose and lose in the way that the Patriots have this year, things start to get really ugly, really fast. The Patriots have lost three straight games by giving up 10 or less points. I don’t want to completely blame Mac Jones but here is some in depth, deep dive, hard hitting, analysis for you… I think he might stink! Do you know how bad your offense must be to lose 3 straight games while the defense only gives up less than 10 points? The answer is bad. That’s about as bad as Fast X… can we just come together as a community and make sure that they don’t ever make another Fast and The Furious movie ever again. I mean the second Ludacris and Tyrese went to space I was so out on that whole series, but jokes on me I went and spent ten bucks to go see it in the theater. In my defense it was 102 degrees out and my Patrick Bateman of a roommate didn’t have the air on, so I had to go hide in a theater just to cool off. You know how hard it is to ruin a Large blue raspberry mixed with cherry Icee and a Large buttered up popcorn? It’s hard, it’s really hard and Fast X accomplished just that with flying colors… This just in they are making Fast 11. Get excited…

For the first time that I can remember Bill Belichick and his stocking cap that never seems to cover his ears looks confused. His stocking cap looks like a high school hockey player thinking he is cooler than the rest world, you know what’s not cool losing an ear to hypothermia, cover those ears up no one wants to see your greasy blonde locks that haven’t been washed in a month, hanging out the back of some crusty, old NHL stocking cap that your dad picked up while he was away on business in Edmonton…. Anyways… Bill looks about as lost and confused on the sideline as a nursing home sitting around the communal breakfast table gumming down some blueberry yogurt, talking about Tik-Tok. In his defense looks can be deceiving, he doesn’t run the offense that’s Bill O’Brien’s job and he has looked more lost than Bill this year. Bill is a defensive guy, and the defense has held up pretty well this year. Even the unruliest Boston sports fan can’t be mad at that defense, they have played well. I still think we can blame Mac Jones… When you have a resume as good as Belichick's you can’t fire the guy, especially when he has, 300 Regular season wins, 31 Post Seasons Wins, 6 Super Bowls, 11 straight Division Titles. Or is that just Tom Brady’s resume? The problem with Bill at this point in time is that his winning will be forever linked to Tom Brady like Bob Tenor and Walt Tenor are stuck to each other. It was an amazing run that we will probably never see again. We could take the time to appreciate both of their greatness without signaling one out for being the reason why the winning happened even though as of right now Brady has the ultimate trump card, he won another Super Bowl down in Tampa without out Bill…. 

About 7 years ago we couldn’t have been more excited for a Thursday night match up like this, two of the great coaches of all time going head-to-head. Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots vs Mike Tomlin and the Pittsburg Steelers clashing tonight on Thursday Night Football!!!!!! Now it sounds like this… The 2-10, can’t find any offense, coached by a man that looks like he should be in a Boston nursing home, sitting in a creaky old rocking chair, an inch away from his 27 inch Vizio TV with a pixelated line running through it, yelling “that’s not how you play defense, You F********** Bums”, New England Patriots vs a team that nobody on this overheating planet knows how they are 7-5, Pittsburg Steelers. It just doesn't have the same ring to it. But with that being said, the game turned out to be pretty darn good with a some what confident looking Bailey Zappe slinging the pill all over the field to a bunch of receivers that I couldn’t tell you one name of, looking like a very competent QB for the first time all year and Mitchell Trubisky being…. Well Mitchell Trubisky not terrible, not great but not terrible. That combination along with two pretty darn good defenses lead to an entertaining first half, that are good buddy Al Micheals made abundantly clear that he had the over in. He couldn’t contain his excitement on letting everyone know that there were 31 points scored in the first half and your “local book maker” had the line set at 30 for the whole game. He doesn't care that everyone knows he is betting while broadcasting and I’m here for it. I love it! Then things unfortunately came back down to earth a little in the second half, the second half is kind of what we expected the whole game (unless your Al Micheals with his AWS stats), good defense, bad offense, with no points and lots of punts, even a blocked punt made an appearance! But once again the NFL and its viewers won because it came down to the wire and was an exciting finish with the Patriots defense finally shutting the door for good on the Steelers with final score of 21-18 and giving Bill his 301st regular season win.

So, what do we do with Bill? He clearly still has it on the defensive end of the ball. The Patriots are going to have an early pick in this year’s NFL draft even though last night’s win didn’t help their cause for getting an all-time prospect in Caleb Williams. Will Bill do what he always does with his first-round picks and try and trade out of the first round to get more picks or will he use that pick to draft a franchise QB like Bo Nix, Michael Penix Jr. or Drake Maye since the last first round QB taken by the Patriots went so well… I offically blame Mac Jones. Nobody knows what’s going on underneath that new but somehow worn out at the same time stocking cap of his because he never says anything. But it might be time for him to relinquish his GM duties because the last few years of trying to acquire talent have not been great by any means. I’m not a Patriots fan but I do love to see greatness have the exit that it deserves. I really hope the old ball coach can figure things out and exit the league like the way April Hoffman smokes a cigarette long and making it last and not like Will Hayes who sucks it down as fast as he can and just like that it’s gone. But if last night has any inclining that he can still do this, let’s give him the chance that the alleged cheater deserves. No matter who you are, who you route for, I think we can all get on board with that. Yes, even you tortured Jet’s fans.