January 16, 2018
Todd Monken's aggressive philosophy, Tyvis Powell's journeyman travels, Demario McCall's time arrives, and more.
Thank you to Twitter for pointing out I have survived Hell World long enough to see the release of Now That’s What I Call Music Vol. 69. It’s funny because it’s the sex number and terrifying because I remember owning Now That’s What I Call Music No. 4, which included classics like:
Backstreet Boys: “Larger Than Life”
Britney Spears: “You Drive Me Crazy”
Jennifer Lopez: “Waiting for Tonight”
Ben Harper: “Steal My Kisses”
Smash Mouth: “Then The Morning Comes”
Hanson: “This Time Around”
I was such a piece of shit as a kid that I used to think I was cool for owning that CD. Almost as embarrassing as admitting I used to pay regularly pay $20 for CDs that featured—at best—five good songs.
The Browns hired a 52-year-old white man named Todd who wears bucket hats to coordinate their offense, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Such is the bliss of being a Cleveland fan in 2019.
I shared Monken’s baller quote yesterday where he shit on five-yard plays. But tough talk is one thing. No coach has ever promised to play less aggressive.
Thankfully statistics vindicate Monken’s philosophy.
From Ryan McCrystal of draftace.com:
Perhaps more important than just his tendency to throw on early downs is the fact that Monken prefers to throw downfield on early downs.
According to Sports Info Solutions, no team in the league threw the ball 10 or more yards downfield on first down more than the Buccaneers (30.9 percent). This was far and away the highest rate, with the Browns coming in a distant second at 23.7 percent. The league average was 17.2 percent.
Further evidence that Monken is committed to aggressive downfield play calling is his tendency to continue throwing downfield when his first-down call doesn’t work.
In second-and-10 situations, when most coaches get ultra conservative and play for the mythical “third-and-manageable,” Monken remains committed to the downfield pass at a high rate. 28.4 percent of the Buccaneers second-and-10 plays resulted in a throw 10 or more yards downfield, once again the highest rate in the league, edging out Sean McVay’s Rams at 27.6 percent, per Sports Info Solutions.
Baker Mayfield already throws one of the prettiest deep balls in the league. His throws along the sideline are especially sublime.
I’ve never been a fan of head coaches calling their own plays, but I’m going to let Freddie Kitchens cook with this one because he’s dealing cards like he’s been a head coach for over a decade (big words coming from a soft man typing from an even softer recliner, I know).
I’m getting hitched in November, and I hope Piqua Whitney is ready to marry a 32-year-old roadie for the Browns. Opposing fans won’t like us when we roll 20,000 deep into their stadium on the heels of a 12-0 record.
NFL practice squad players can make no less than $7,500 a week, which sounds like a helluva deal to working Americans with no savings or health insurance.
Like a large majority of America, however, most practice squad players live paycheck to paycheck.
Look at former Ohio State safety Tyvis Powell, one of the best humans to play under Urban Meyer. Despite being near the top of his profession, he deals with economic anxiety like the rest of us.
From Natalie Weiner of sbnation.com:
The NFL players who still haven’t had their primetime breakthrough rely on that narrative, too. “You hear all those undrafted success stories ... I mean I was in Seattle, so I had a bunch of examples right in front of me,” says Tyvis Powell, an undrafted safety who has played for five different teams in two years since spending his rookie season with the Seahawks. “I was like, ‘I’m going to be the next one to do that.’ Things just haven’t worked out that way, but the good thing is that I keep getting opportunities.”
The price of taking those opportunities, though, is much steeper than fans might imagine. Players at the bottom of the roster and on the practice squad have to be prepared to move across the country at a moment’s notice, for reasons that may have nothing to do with their own performance: a player in a different position group gets hurt, so suddenly adding depth there takes priority.
Those moves are only partially subsidized by teams, cutting into what are already comparatively modest practice squad salaries. Powell, who moved from the Niners to the Jets and back again during the 2018 season, estimates in his career he’s spent $15,000 just on relocating to play. “It’s unfortunate, but it is a job,” he says. “I’ve come to learn it’s better than nothing.”
This is why I want to pay college football players. A large majority of players won’t star in the NFL. Yet they’ve already attained enough skill to star in a multimillion-dollar industry.
I respect the hell out of practice squads. I’d quit if a boss asked me to move from New York to San Francisco back to New York in the same year for anything less than $10 million.
This is it. This is the year Demario McCall shows why he’s the greatest football player in Ohio State history.
From Colin Hass-Hill of elevenwarriors.com:
No one can be quite sure whether McCall’s musical chairs have ended. Might he return to H-back at some point? Who knows. At one point in his Ohio State career, McCall thought he’d be a running back until his time in college came to an end. At a different moment, he imagined his career would take off as a wide receiver. Neither happened. One thing’s certain: he’s at ease returning to running back.
“It just feels so comfortable and so home to me that it feels like it's natural,” McCall said. “I'm not going to lie, receiver was something I had to work at. It was something I could do, but at the end of the day, that's a position that you have to work at to become good. So, I feel like I'm a tailback who can do receiver things.”
Demario McCall is a running back and that’s what he should play. If Day realizes that, McCall will show why he should’ve been playing over Mike Weber last year.
I maintain a small apartment in Franklinton, which stands across the street from Mount Carmel Hospital. Little did I know how close I came to a rogue death squad.
From JoAnne Viviano of dispatch.com:
Mount Carmel Health System says one of its intensive-care doctors gave “significantly excessive and potentially fatal” doses of pain medication to at least 27 near-death patients between 2015 and 2018.
Dr. William Husel, who had worked for the system since 2013, has been fired, and details of an internal investigation by Mount Carmel have been turned over to authorities, the health system’s top executive said in a statement Monday.
The statement was released after a lawsuit was filed earlier in the day in Franklin County Common Pleas Court against the health system, the doctor, a pharmacist and a nurse in the 2017 death of a 79-year-old Grove City woman who was allegedly administered a fatal dose of the powerful opioid fentanyl at Mount Carmel West hospital.
The families of all patients involved had requested that lifesaving measures be stopped, but the amount of painkiller prescribed was beyond what was needed to provide comfort, said Ed Lamb, president and CEO of the Columbus-based health system.
This reminds me to call my lawyer and update my will. If I’m unfortunate enough to live until I’m 79, any doctor that cranks me full of fentanyl should be considered a good samaritan and lauded at my funeral by the dumpster behind the nearest Waffle House.
THOSE WMDs. The Lyman family’s holy siege of America… Major snowstorm to hit Ohio on Saturday… In rural America, there are few people left to drive ambulances… The right’s bid to short-circuit inequality with cheap gadgets… Trump’s allies plan to meddle in the 2020 Democratic primary… An in-depth explanation of the history and current state of every Columbus high school.