[DFO] Hate Week & Thursday Evening Open Thread

At last, we reach the zenith of Hate.

No, not my childhood. That’s for my “discussion” with the therapist. (Insert Moose gif here.)

Something more visceral…

There we go.

Much like Tom Brady, it’s time for Roger Goodell’s annual appearance during Hate Week.

Even as the season started, he knew he was up shit creek with no paddle. In his “Letter to the fans” from the start of the season, he tried to acknowledge that he was flying by the seat of his pants,

The NFL in 2020 will not look like other years. Players and coaches will be tested for the virus regularly, including every day for a while. Preseason games have been canceled. Everyone in the team environment must follow rigorous health and safety protocols to keep themselves and each other safe. When there is a positive test, strict regulations will be enforced to isolate and care for that individual and to contain the virus before it spreads.

And unlike his pal up there, he didn’t have to write just one.

Of course, the season started off with a bang – err, “BOO!” – as the fans of Kansas City showed on national TV what they thought of the NFL’s social justice initiatives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fiy8IJM9rQ

Just one month later, in another letter to “the NFL Community”, he was again emphasizing that they were really trying hard,

“We cannot grow complacent — not the players, not of the coaches, not the rest of personnel,” Goodell said. “Ninety percent is not good enough in this environment.”

I don’t know – 90% is better than most players’ grades in college. And if they went to North Carolina, it means their “tutor” was “well-compensated”.

When rescheduling inevitably had to happen, the benefit of bye-weeks & no/minimal paid attendance were readily apparent in how easily games were shifted about. Week Five was the first of many such ridiculous circumstances, and was the week the Broncos actually had functional quarterbacks. Just look at this “minor adjustment” like it’s no big thing:

Jesus. At least they didn’t have to convert currency. Could you imagine being one of the few fans able to attend games, and all of a sudden this right-turn happens to your travel plans. Who can afford to gas a Winnebago twice in this economy?

Now, Week Twelve was the week when we had Thursday through Wednesday football, because the Ravens-Steelers game had to be moved from Turkey Day to the first Wednesday in December, with the Steelers-WFT game pushed to the following Monday from Sunday AND not nationally broadcast because it was a regional broadcast. (Let’s also relish the fact that that game against Alex Smith started the Steelers decline.) And Week Thirteen was the grand week when the Broncos had no functioning quarterback, giving Kendall Hinton his moment in the sun.

Being the COVID Commissioner, Goodell has tried to steer the media towards focusing on the games and certainly not the questionable testing & scheduling practices that allowed them to complete the season. According to the data miners at Defector:

• A total of 333 individual players were placed on the NFL’s COVID-19/Reserve list over the course of the season.
  • Rough math is that this means about 20 percent of the players in the league.
• Baltimore led the league in numbers of players placed on the list with 37.

• The median number of days a player spent on the list was 9.

This all comes down to who did what. In a report published by the CDC – link to the actual paper here, because I know some Kommentists are genuinely curious and can read medical jargon – in conjunction with the NFL & NFLPA, the most important thing they noted was this:

The most important interventions were not the vast testing and tracing system the NFL had deployed. It was the universal use of masks, minimizing in-person meetings, closing dining rooms and constant spacing. The league even told teams that players should not carpool to work.

“Players deserve a lot of credit,” Mara said. “This was a burden on them to be apart from their families. They were very disciplined and those were not easy protocols to follow and they kept changing.”

What the paper did not say was something that had become apparent in the NFL: The rare outbreaks were self-inflicted wounds, caused by a failure to properly follow the protocols.

So they got lucky, and repeated messaging about risks & isolating the odd positive player kept the league from having things blow up on them. They didn’t have a bubble like the NHL or NBA, because they didn’t want one, but survived that risk mostly by chance.

Thus, because fortune favours the ignorant arrogant bold, here come the bootlicking platitudes:

^{Guess which one matters most?}

Jesus. I guess we can add “Messiah” to Doctor Fucking Goodell’s name.

This “success” obfuscates the truth of the situation. The league collectively lost $4.0 billion in revenue, only offset by the large TV deals signed before the apocalypse. (FYI, the Cowboys are estimated to have lost the most – $630 million, based on 2018 numbers.) Concussions & flu transmissions were down, which is a net positive but only happened because of how the league managed the apocalypse.

Non-guaranteed contracts changed the way some players played, so as to avoid getting hurt & maximizing their deals. Further to that, a total of 67 players opted out of the season, getting a $150,000 “stipend” if they had three credited games of service on a 53-man roster, meaning that those that didn’t were kind of forced to play in order to earn a salary. (Also, the $150,000 stipend is considered a salary advance or loan that will be offset against any money earned in the future from playing in the NFL. Technically, a player would owe his team $150,000 if he never played another down of football after opting out.)

Mostly, the entire pandemic took away from the whole “team” experience for some people:

“I chose Tampa and it’s just been an amazing experience,” Brady said Thursday. “The only thing that’s been difficult is I just haven’t been able to meet (people). There’s a lot of people in here that I never really had a chance to get to know. Certain players on defense that I just don’t know very well (because) we’re not able to be together in certain rooms, we’re not able to eat together, we’re not able to travel well — we don’t get the normal camaraderie that you have on a normal team.”

WELL THAT FUCKING TEARS IT! You hurt Dreamboat, Mr. Goodell, and you know what happens to people who hurt Tom Brady, don’t you?